Clash! Clang! Clang! Bang!
"Guh!"
I let out a choked breath as I was ragdolled across the floor with a single kick, my Black Knight Sword clattering besides me.
My body lay prone on the floor, a sweaty, ragged mess. One of my Black Knights approached and picked up the blade I dropped, and put it away. The Black Knight I was sparring with bowed politely and put away his shield and plastic sword.
Today, I have learned that someone so heavily reliant on Precognition isn't SHIT compared to someone who has properly honed their skills through real practice and training.
First of all, I want you to forget everything you knew about these bastards from the games, these are not the sluggish slow Black Knights that swing once every 5 swords that are telegraphed enough that they may as well shout out loud "Here comes the club!".
No, there were the most expert knights of Gwyn, these were 2-meter-tall superhumanly strong elite knights that were used to fighting everything ranging from armies to bus-sized demons.
I was used to overwhelming my enemies with Precognition, rightfully so, with a Gun I had an immense advantage, I just had to point at their weak spots and pull the trigger. I could even perform similarly with a sword. But when up against a real Swordsman?
Against an enemy who does not lose their calm because of a surprise? I could do profoundly little, sure I could dodge their sword swings with my Precognition but there was no room to capitalize on it. The knight's form was too sturdy and left too little exposed for me to retaliate. And whenever I tried and found a weak spot, they just... adjusted.
Say, I ducked under a swing and tried to stab forward. The knight simply adjusted his posture to make the blade glance off the side. After all, there was not actually much difference between me reading their movement through Precognition and an actual fighter reading their movement skill. They even managed to trap me by throwing an attack, but not putting much power into it to double back and catch me.
This fight also led me to discover a problem with my Precognition that was good to learn now. Precognition took me focus to use, I had to pay attention to the future which could distract me, like focusing too much on the fist and catching a kick because of it.
These things I had never discovered because of gunfights and my assassin fighting style never putting me in a situation where I would need to learn that, but it was good to be taught it before I got it taught to me by someone who would carve the lesson into my gray matter.
"I'll admit, I had my doubts when you first told me about these guys but holy shit. What kind of world are they from?"
Lucy crouched down to my level and dabbed sweat away from my forehead with the towel she prepared beforehand. There was a hint of concern in her voice due to me getting hit pretty hard, but she got used to it after I got thrown around the 4th time, and it was clear they were making sure to not hurt me too bad.
I sighed and caught my breath as Lucy sat down next to me, I dismissed the Black Knight back into storage, it was good to have the apartments private gymnasium all to myself like this. Once I managed to get my breathing in order, I went to address Lucy's question, she had gotten really curious about other worlds after the meeting with the Dealer and liked asking me about them and listening to me.
"They are from Lordran, a Kingdom of Gods and Humanity, though mostly gods as the head as you might imagine. Although I say god, they were more like big humans with special abilities and bigger power. They are the personal knights of Gwyn, the god of sunlight and the strongest god who drove Dragons to 'extinction'."
Lucy let out a small whistle of appreciation.
"Wow, no wonder they are so strong, I can't even imagine how strong those guys must be, or how their world looks like. I never really believed in Gods, until now I guess."
I chuckled lightly, right, entertainment sucked so bad in this world. Fantasy stories were so poorly developed, High Fantasy and High Magic were not really a popular genre developed here, not even DnD or Lord of the Rings.
"Yeah, whatever you are seeing now is more like them intentionally trying their best to not hurt a toddler. The kinds of enemies they face makes anything in Night City look like chumps, compared to a truck sized roided bull demon wielding a man sized axe made of bone, the only challenge I pose to them is accidentally hurting me."
"And you have 50 of these guys? I think they alone could probably storm Arasaka tower."
I let myself go limp and planted the back of my head into Lucy's thighs as she raised an eyebrow but did not voice any objection. Her thighs were so warm and was exactly what I needed after getting my shit pushed in by my very own knights.
"Eh, kinda. They definitely could not be stopped easily, especially if I just summoned all of them at once in the middle of the lobby. But I'd lose a lot of knights, and once Adam Smasher comes out, it's game over, gun too big and man too fast."
Lucy let out a chuckle while pressing on my cheek with her finger.
"I'm not sure he'd be a big problem with Giffany around. You're beyond unfair, an army that can't be quick hacked that you can deploy any time and magical AI."
I considered it good progress that Lucy could mention Giffany casually. She was still visibly uncomfortable around Giffany even after several days of having met her, but we were making good progress, astounding progress even considering the depth of her Artificial Intelligence related trauma.
Rebecca got along with Giffany but that did not surprise me so much, for her loudmouth and sometimes being rather obnoxious. Rebecca was rather charismatic.
"Right, speaking of Giffany, it was today, wasn't it? I should prepare to leave soon."
Today would be the day I'd be visiting the corpo I would "kindly" commission the body of Giffany for. The same one that double-crossed me since I dislike bullying those who have not crossed me.
Those who have crossed me being fair game of course.
I reluctantly got up from Lucy's lap, it was time to go back into Mercenary mode. You'd expect Corpo's to be easy to intimidate but it's usually the opposite, fuck it, being a Corpo is scarier than being an Edgerunner, those bastards are not easy to crack. Precisely why I made Giffany get some... "dirt" on him.
While I do dislike methods such as this, if they are willing to play dirty, I'm willing to show them how deep the mud pits can go.
"A kiss for good luck before I go?"
"Heh, you're such a sap."
With a playful comment, Lucy put a small kiss on my lips and sported a more flirtatious look.
"When you come back, you may get more than a kiss. So make sure to keep yourself safe."
Hearing Lucy say that in that tone made my neurons go into overdrive. I gave her a salute.
"Yes ma'am, not even Adam Smasher could scratch me now."
I jest, but on my patrons incomprehensible name I won't let a single soul even so much as bruise me.
"Good luck with that 'Grimm', I'll be waiting."
Right, quick in, quick out, I'll be needing the entire look along with the mask for this one. Intimidation was more important than comfort this time.
✧―✧―✧―✧「」✧―✧―✧―✧
『Fawkes Moore - Raven Microtechnics』
"Fuckin' mercs."
Fawkes slumped into his chair and muttered in annoyance, his body still ached from the beating those thugs employed by that "Capitan" pig. It wasn't his fault those shitty two bit mercs were too stupid to understand the basic logistics of attacking a convoy.
Just as he was about to check his messages on his work computer, his eyes lit up as a call came through.
[Loretta Calling...]
His daughter was calling him, that was unusual, but it did bring a smile to his lips, after she got married he didn't have many opportunities to visit her, especially with his workload.
"Hey honey how are you-"
The call opened, but the voice that opened was not his daughters.
['Hello Fawkes, please turn around.']
Click!
His blood froze as the distinctive click of a guns hammer sounded behind him, putting his hands up, Fawkes slowly turned around in his chair to come face to face with a man dressed in what could only be described as riot gear lounging on a chair behind him, holding an Overture to his head.
This was not the first time Fawkes had a gun up to his head but.
"Why do you have my daughter's number!? Who the fuck are you!? What do you want-"
"Shhhh, let's use our indoors voice." He said with a voice of eerie calm. "If someone so much as knocks on this door, let alone enters it. Someone else might knock on your daughters door and come inside too. Apartment 21 on the third floor was it?"
His mouth went dry and his hands felt cold, they had his daughter. And this was a sick psychopath with a gun pointed at him. From his years of working at Raven, he could tell this fucker was not messing around and would actually shoot him if given the chance. So he did not say anything and let him continue.
"I am the Mercenary you tried to screw over. Yours truly, Grimm." And suddenly the situation got considerably worse than if this were a counterintel team. "And I wanted you to do me a favor, not a big one, definitely not so big that it'd be worth my life. But I am a man with simple wants."
Fawkes backed up just slightly, his foot inching towards the invisible manual emergency button on the floor, all of the emergency messages he tried to send already failed but they had protocol for situations like this.
"You know Fawkes, I didn't expect you to be smart, but you never fail to impress me with your lack of intellect."
Crack.
"Argh!"
"Shhh! I said inside voice. Do you really hate your family Fawkes? My friend is a bit of a sadist you see, if I give them the ahead, who knows how they would take their time before shooting your family like dogs."
Fawkes grit his teeth as his optics showed his control over his precision arms being overwritten, and his fingers bent different ways. Having been noticed, and the threat of his family on the line, Fawkes had no choice to bend his head.
"I-I'm sorry, please don't hurt them, I-I'll give you whatever you want!"
"Good grief, you should have led on with that. What I want you to do for me is a simple favor, it won't even affect your career. I know you have enough pull, so I want you to build this Gemini Body for me. As fast as possible and without skimping on a single detail. Do you understand? I don't want a single strand of hair off color, not a pore of skin out of place, it will be exactly as specified, nothing more, nothing less."
The mercenary, no the reaper bent his waist until his glaring red visors were eye level with Fawkes.
"Do you understand what I'm saying? Any displeasure, any dissatisfaction I feel is a threat against poor Loretta and your grandson Michael. I know where they live, I know which routes they take to work and school, I know what fucking doors and windows they pass by Fawkes. So I hope you won't try to fuck me over this time, Netrunners are awfully hard to protect against, after all. Now, do you accept? Nod if yes, don't you if you hate your family."
This was not a man. This was a demon.
The only thing Fawkes could do was numbly nod his head. He did not believe the gemini body thing for a second but he was truly out of choice.
The merc patted him on the shoulder and nodded.
"Good man, I knew even someone like you could see logic. Here are the specs for what I want, you get 5 days. Be done by then. And here is a little extra."
Fawkes watched as 3 different files were downloaded into his Neuralport. As the man had said, one of them was a gemini body of a... very colorful young woman that had enough implants to consider an actual war machine. They also transferred 8 Million Eurodollar labelled as Implant funds. Fawkes had a lot of words to say but he dared not voice any of them.
"One of them are just images of your family going about their daily lives so you know I'm not bluffing. And the other is a Daemon that will monitor you and turn your brain into a boiling soup if you try anything funny, you won't even be able to wipe your ass without it knowing. Don't worry, it will auto-delete itself within 7 days as long as you aren't stupid."
With that, the merc got up and patted him on the shoulder one more time and walked towards the door that led to the rest of the building, he could be caught easily but his confidence was terrifying.
"Good luck Fawkes, and don't disappoint me. Your family is counting on you."
Click!
With that,, the door closed behind the merc with a soft click. And Fawkes looked at his shaky hands, trembling as operating a jackhammer, from his hands, his eyes drifted down. His pants that cost his 20,000 Eurodollars were now soaked in a terrible stench.
He had pissed himself.
Feat Achieved! Make Fawkes Moore piss himself
+1x Silver Skill Gacha Ticket
A/N: Grimm is getting in some much needed practice, unlike Darksouls, these are the actual knights and not the poor imitations from the game. These guys hunt demons and dragons and can launch humans like softballs with weapons that are heavier than I am. They can cleanly wipe the floor with anyone but the biggest of mercs, but unfortunately, that kind of power still means profoundly little to artillery.
Grimm is scary, when he tries at least, there is a very big threat in someone who handles your life like a simple convenience. Even Corpo's cannot deal with Grimm's scary real nonchalance. But hey, Gemini Body for Giffany is on the way!
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