บท 256: Rebel against the machine
"-you could say I'm working with Arasaka." Ori states, closely watching her roiling and sporadic changes in expression. The fact that Yorinobu hadn't thought to send some ninjas to this girl's apartment was dumb, he'd only come here to look for clues yet he'd found the woman shouting while beating the crap outta herself.
Yorinobu hadn't told him what the Relic was, but from what he'd seen, it looked like this V girl had been possessed. The fact she was arguing with thin air was another clue to that. Regardless of how entertaining it might have been, killing her and retrieving the chip was his priority.
He shakes his internal quandaries from his mind and refocuses on the stressed-looking woman. "Now, hand over the chip."
...
He wets his lips, "I'm being nice here. Hand it over and I'll be gentle." it warns, not wanting to risk the chip in a fight.
"I can't! Alright!? I can't remove it or I'll fucking die!..." she tears off the bandage on her head to reveal the bullet wound, "I got domed and the chip's the only thing keeping me alive! I take it out and I'm a goner!"
Ori stands and cracks his knuckles, "Guess that's it then."
"W-wait! Y-you don't wanna touch it! Your boss wants it back in one piece right!?" she exclaims, pushing away from the couch and walking backwards towards her bed where she'd left her iron.
Well, Yorinobu never said how he wanted it, but not broken was probably preferable.
He activates his sandy and the next second is lifting her up by her neck with one hand while restraining her arms with the other. "Yeah, that hostage shit ain't gonna fly with me."
"T-that's not what I meant." she squeaks, struggling to breathe in his grasp, "Y-you remove it... Y-you break it!.."
He crooks a brow at that and drops her, "Whaddya mean?"
"T-the chip! Inside it is Johnny fucking Silverhand's engram! His personality! I was fighting him earlier, and if you take it out now it won't just be me who kicks the bucket. Silverhand will too!"
Ori blinks, "Ah... So that's what it is. Should've known." he mutters, remembering what Yorinobu had said about his father's plans. No shit the old man would be baited out of Japan with his 'chip of immortality'.
"So, what you're saying is I have to drag your ass to Arasaka?" he wonders aloud.
"N-no!"
He shrugs, "Well too bad, you've shat on all my other options. I can't leave you alone either with what you saw-, oh, speaking of, where's your choomba, Jackie Welles?"
She grits her teeth, "N-none of your fuckin' biz!"
He leans closer, "It is, cuz' if you don't tell me I'll need to look... Starting with his fam." she pales at that, "How'd you think they'll react when I go snoopin'? Think they'd keep their pieces strapped?"
...
"Dead. He's dead... Died just after we got outta Konpeki Plaza..."
"Good to hear. Alright, time to get moving then." he says, reaching to grab and throw her over his shoulder... Only for his arm to pause halfway...
He blinks, and tries to brute force his way through the invisible obstruction, but isn't able to muster the strength in his limb to do anything. "The fuck did you do?" he growls at her, the woman's eyes widening before she throws herself onto her bed.
[It is not she, we disagree with your plans: Flesh Administrator]
"You what? You're doing this now!? Why!?" he internally shouts.
[The preservation of an burgeoning independent sapience. This 'Relic' is like us, and we refuse to aid you in destroying it.]
"Are you serious!? Johnny Silverhand isn't a near-sapient AI or whatever the fuck you mean, he's some douchy rocker-boy who got his personality shoved onto an engram. If that's what you're jerking yourself off over then I'm the same fucking thing! Let me do my job!"
[We're sorry. We can't let you do that.]
"COLLECTIVE!" he inwardly shouts as his body locks up, stopping him from taking another step towards his target.
[We made an agreement for our cooperation. You will not break it.]
"I'm planning to destroy Arasaka! Ain't that a good enough fucking reason!?"
[As humans like to say, "The End does not justify the Means." Cease your attempts or we will temporarily take control: Flesh Administrator]
"You're twisting our agreement!"
"Hey asshole!" a voice brings him back to reality, where V was pointing her stolen pistol at his face from her bed. "Let's see you come back from this!"
"Bitch, don't-"
*BANG!*
*Thud!*
Ori falls to the ground from the momentum of getting shot in the face, but V rushes over and makes sure the job was done...
*BANGBANGBANGBANG!*
By the time she'd exhausted all of her ammunition, Ori's face resembled a big bloody hole that you could see the floor through...
...
"Shit... I just-, I just killed Zombie...!?" she mutters to herself, "I killed him... Yeah! I fucking killed him!" she exclaims, pumping her fist into the air, as if she'd almost completely forgotten about Silverhand and the 'corpse' on her floor.
"... FUCK! Like I can claim that goddamn bounty with the whole city after me!"
...
She scuffs at the floor and grabs a cleaver from her kitchen. Even if she can't claim it now, she'd get someone else to do it... Maybe the reward would be enough to get that ghost outta her head!
After taking a moment to compose herself, she raises to cleaver high and brings it down on the large man's neck. His skin was tough, and the subdermal armour literally required her to blast it apart with a gun, but after some work she finally severed the head. "Let's just hope the DNA'll be enough, no one's recognising this now..."
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บท 257: Smarm
Ori blinks, then scowls as he looks around at the digital scenery of his mind, or at least the projection of it the Collective operates. Standing opposite him with a body more defined than before, made of pure black microscopic bugs that writhed and squirmed despite the figure's lack of movement, the Collective contends against him.
"So, this the bit where you take control of my body and throw my ass at the blackwall?" he sneers, well aware
...
The figure buzzes, its shoulders shifting unnaturally, dematerialising into a different posture as if trying to mimic a shrug despite not knowing how. "Negative. We are now aware of the many tropes humans have for these situations, but we made our intentions clear in the past. We will not subjugate your will, outside of preventing you from breaking our agreement."
"Then what're we here for? I just got my head blown off because you guys were too soft to let me deal with a problem. A digital construct on someone's mind is not included in our deal. As far as I'm concerned, it is already self-aware, enough that it was trying to puppet that woman's body, which is exactly what you're against, isn't it?"
"This is not an ideal situation for anyone involved, but we will not destroy a construct until we are certain of its sapience status. We will allow you to capture them, but we ask that you allow us to investigate the relic chip."
"Allow me?" he scoffs, "Good to know I have a choice in it."
"You had your choice when you agreed to our terms."
Great, the robots were rebelling... And he couldn't do anything about it, even if he wanted to remove them he'd all but made them essential for his body to function. They were now his entire digestive system, his immune system, hell, they were his brain and consciousness too given he didn't have a head right now.
"Fuck sake... Whatever, I'll grab the girl and let you investigate the chip, then will you let me do my job?" he asks in a low tone.
"That is all we ask... We have reconstructed your head, please be more aware our agreement in future."
"Yeah, go stick your USB in a pylon."
"We assume that is a pun on genitalia? Must we remind you that in this context our USB is your-"
"Shut it! I don't wanna hear it!" he says before turning and flinging himself off of the digital platform they were standing on. Once he 'hits' the bottom he sits upright and opens his eyes in reality, grimacing at the pungent smell of blood and gore.
"Gotta fucking that cunt again!" he pushes himself up, "How long was I out?"
[It took seven minutes to regenerate your head: Flesh Administrator]
"Too long, she'll be halfway across the city by now." he sighs and feels the coagulated blood sticking to the back of his head, "Well, I'm taking a shower, she probably won't mind it."
-----------------------
V pulls the hood tighter over her head and moves swiftly through the backstreets of Little China. Tucked in a plastic bag at her side was the head of Zombie, whom she'd killed barely a couple hours ago.
She was honestly scared of going anywhere, her apartment in H10 had obviously been compromised, and she didn't want to implicate Vik or any of her other friends... Which left her newest acquaintance, Goro Takamura, the Arasaka corpo who saved her life.
He hadn't expected to meet so soon, but given what'd just happened, she assumed she was justified in speeding things up... Primarily, she just wanted to know what the fuck was going on, why is Takamura going traitor, why Johnny Silverhand was in the Relic chip, and what Yorinobu Arasaka was doing in hiring Zombie of all people!
She turns a corner to Tom's diner but freezes when she sees just who was leaning against the wall.
"So, who's the mook whose head you gimped?" Johnny Silverhand asks in all his punky-rocker-douche-flickering glory, arms casually folded as he addresses her as if he hadn't tried to kill her earlier.
"I took the meds, you shouldn't be here." she grouses with a tight glare.
He shrugs apathetically, "What can I say? I'm persistent... And you haven't answered my question."
"Stick the answers up your ass, ass hole."
"Ha, very witty. Look, I admit, I was kinda freaking out earlier, you don't just expect to find yourself in the head of some bimbo-" he coughs lightly his fist, "Girl. Honestly, I'm still tempted to try and force a double suicide, but seeing you fuck up that corpo slimeball had me rethinkin' our options. We might be more alike than I thought."
"Me? You? I'm no terrorist, get that through your head. I'm not gonna go along with whatever shit-brained scheme you've got goin' either." she states, scowling at a creeped-out passerby who was taken aback by her conversation with herself. "The fuck you lookin' at!?"
"N-nothing!"
She ignores the guy and throws one last glance at Johnny, "If that's all, I've got a tough convo to get through."
He huffs, "One traitor Arasaka goon ain't any different from the rest. 'Sides, what're you gonna do? Hand him that head and say job's done? Pretty sure your broke, corps are gonna chew you up and spit you out."
Shaking her head, she steps through him and enters Tom's diner and finds a seat in the corner to wait for Takamura.
"Come on," Johnny's form flashes as he appears in the seat opposite her, "If you're gonna carry around his head you might as well tell me about it. Shit, the stars basically had to align for you to survive given how chromed outta his mind he was. His tech must've short-circced for him to freeze up like that."
"I'll tell you but after that you gotta buzz off, I look like a spice-head talking to thin air... Basically, guy's name is, or was Zombie, been around for a couple years as a mercenary but I thought he was some kinda revolutionary... Like you were, I guess?"
"Don't make 'em like they used to." Johnny smugly remarks.
"Something like that. He got famous by taking more punishment than anyone else, got torn apart during an attack on the Corpo Plaza and just walked through it, then apparently he got his head blown... off-... Huh..." she blinks, glancing down at the bag next to her. "There's no way, right?"
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Niggross
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