A Hard Knock Life: Bitter Sweet Symphony (ch. 6) (Patreon)

Oni Lee lunged for me, and it was only dumb luck that saved me. I backed up, trying to avoid the swipe that would have cut me in half, and stepped on the soldering tool that Bakuda had dropped when I entered. My feet were swept out from underneath me, saving my life, but the tip of his mantis blades still dragged across the flesh of my chest, starting at my sternum and ending at my collar bone near my shoulder.

My back hit the ground with a thud, the air knocked out of my lungs -- I barely felt the wound on my chest beyond a burning sensation. Oni Lee recovered from his missed blow, twisting in midair and landing lightly with a foot on the desk, and used it as a springing off point to lunge at me again. My hands went to my laptop case, bringing it up to use as a shield. One of the mantis blades punched through it like it wasn’t even there. But it was enough to stop it from punching through my skull with the same ease. Oni Lee yanked his arm to the side, carving apart the metal and plastic like butter.

Two halves of a pistol fell from the ruined case, but I paid that no mind. I lashed out at him, grabbing hold of one of his forearms while my other hand went to the bandolier at his chest. I went to kick him in the gut at the same time, but that idea died a dog’s death when Oni Lee lashed out with his other mantis blade. Yanking my hand back, I nearly lost my other arm.

With a fumbling grip, my prosthetic went to the pin on the grenade, the only action I could think of, and it was enough to make Oni Lee still. His mantis blades were poised to skewer me through the floor, but he didn’t move an inch as I slowly pushed myself up to my feet, keeping a finger on the pin at all times.

“I’ll fucking do it,” I snarled at him. “I’ll kill us all,” to prove the threat, I tugged at the pin. Oni Lee’s head tilted to the side as if he was studying me. I think he believed me because he didn’t move. Was he afraid to die, or did he not want to risk Bakuda’s life? I’m betting it was the latter. Mentions about Oni Lee were few and far in between. He was more of an urban myth than anything.

A cape that could clone himself and teleport. His calling card? Using himself as a suicide bomber.

How to play this? “Bakuda, you absolute bitch, you are coming with me,” I snapped at her, the older girl was hiding underneath the desk. She looked up at me with wide eyes, but I didn’t dare look back at her. My focus was zeroed in on Oni Lee. “Get the fuck up. You hear that, you ninja dickhead? You so much as come near me, and your tinker is dead.”

It was a risky gamble. A real risky one. I was betting my life on Bakuda. Which is what made it so risky. If she didn’t believe me? Then I was screwed. If she had lied to me? I was about to get cut into bite-sized bits. My fate was in her hands. And the irony was not lost on me either. I’d be laughing about it if I wasn’t staring down a murderous ninja.

Bakuda hesitated, before she slowly began to crawl out from underneath the desk. That spurred Oni Lee into action. He lunged at me, his red hot mantis blades closing in on me. I reacted on instinct and threw myself forward.

Throwing up my prosthetic as a shield, the mantis blade bit into the metal like it was nothing. Only with the same action, I pulled the pin on the grenade and dropped it at our feet.

I think he thought I was bluffing about that because he zeroed in on the grenade. The other mantis blade that was poised to skewer me, or cut me in half, was diverted as his attention was stolen. Curling my good hand into a fist, I slammed it into Oni Lee’s face as hard as I could as I threw my weight against the smaller man. I had no clue if he took care of the bomb I just dropped at our feet, but it didn’t matter.

It was my chance. I sent Oni Lee into the wall, his back hitting it with a thump. Ripping my prosthetic free and ignoring the deep groove cut into its surface that still glowed, I went for his eyes. Fighting dirty is how I fought best -- optics made going for the eyes a less viable tactic in recent years, but I imagine getting a piece of tech shoved deep into your eye socket was at least uncomfortable. My metal thumb jabbed itself into the red light, making the screen crack-

“Behind you!” Bakuda shouted a moment before the Oni Lee that I had pinned to the wall collapsed into ash. Whipping around, I saw another Oni Lee with one of his mantis blades cutting the grenade I dropped in two. Oni Lee looked up at me, one of his ominous red eyes dark. He rose to his full height, his mantis blades fanning out wide, blocking off any thought of escape.

I’d be dead without Bakuda here. Not in the sense that she just gave me a warning, but if she wasn’t here, and I was alone with this guy in a room? I’d be dead. No doubts about it.

Crouching, I acted like I was about to lunge, but instead went for the assault rifle on my back. I barely managed to point it in his direction before he crossed the distance between us, taking a swipe at my gun at a speed that seemed too fast to be human. The gun was reduced to two pieces, so I flung the remaining piece in my hand at him. He ducked as he went low, one of his mantis blades shifting up.

As the blade lunged upward, I slammed my prosthetic hand into it. The blade punctured the steel, and the smell of burning slag filled the room. My other hand lashed out, grabbing hold of his other arm at the elbow. It was a bad place -- the moment I grabbed hold of his arm, I felt nothing but metal. And he was stronger than me. He took his time showing me that by inching his mantis blade closer to my flesh and blood arm until it touched my skin.

I swallowed a scream of pain as he started to burn his way up to my shoulder, no matter how hard I tried to drive his arm away. My prosthetic hand was being reduced to slag, melting around his mantis blade. I could only take a chance. Making a desperate gamble, I kicked at Oni Lee’s balls, an action that he stopped effortlessly.

It was enough for a distraction. Yanking my prosthetic to the side, I slung the molten metal from it all over his face and body. The stench of burning flesh and hair filled the room. I thought he would scream or something, but he just went still. A pain stopper. He had a fucking pain stopper.

At that same moment, Bakuda darted out from underneath the desk. Instead of just making a break for it, she reached out to Oni Lee and slammed something into his leg. We both looked down to see what it was, and my eyes went wide at what I saw. One of the OS card bombs. It was jury-rigged into a spike of some kind.

Reacting instantly, I kicked Oni Lee in the chest, knocking him away from me. Not a second too soon because his leg started to turn into ash. He had time to look down at his missing leg before he started to collapse into himself. In seconds, Oni Lee was just a pile of ash in the middle of the floor. The only parts that were left were his prosthetics.

“Oh, shit,” Bakuda muttered, creeping out from underneath the desk. I saw a small workshop underneath -- the soldering tool I had tripped on, wires, and a few chips. “We have to get out of here. Like, now. There’s no way that Lung won’t know about this,” Bakuda said, and there was gut-wrenching fear in her voice.

I looked down at my prosthetic -- the entire hand was gone for the most part. I just had a little bit of the palm left. The forearm was screwed too, with a deep cut that went down to the middle. My shoulder burned like nothing else, enough so that I barely felt the scrape on my chest. The sheer number of close calls that I had just now…

“Yeah, we need to go,” I said, swallowing the pain. Barely. My guns were done for. So was my laptop, for that matter. My gaze landed on the pile of ash and the tech in it. “How long does it take for it to go inert?” I asked, reaching out to grab a box and dumping what was in it as Bakuda answered.

“Only a few seconds. I didn’t want to start a super plague or something. That’s how you get everyone after you,” Bakuda answered. My prosthetic was shot, so I would have to use my flesh and blood one. I swallowed thickly and really wondered if I could take her word for it. Bakuda seemed to realize that because she took a step forward and stuck a hand in the ash, grabbing Oni Lee’s bandolier of grenades.

She put them on, stubbornly refusing to look at me. “I get it,” Bakuda told me, reading my thoughts. There was nothing I could say to that, so I grabbed Oni Lee’s arms and tossed them in the box. It was morbid as all hell, but I was an arm down at the moment, and the moment I could, I was going to use one of them as a replacement.

“Get those grenades ready,” I told Bakuda, hefting the box up. She nodded, taking one off the bandolier as she hugged the side of the wall. She looked to me for… reassurance, or something. I nodded, and she seemed to brace herself, before she threw the door open. It was then that I realized that it was soundproofed because the sounds of gunfire hit us like a wall. Bakuda flinched back, retreating back into the room.

I pulled up the camera feeds and looked beneath the loop I had cut. From my position, I saw that Jackie was to the left of us, peeking around a corner and blind firing. I saw blood on his shirt, and a scorch mark on his jacket. He had been stabbed. Fuck. On the right side was the ABB. Almost all of them. The rest were finding a way to circle around us. Double fuck.

“Gimme one of those,” I said, grabbing a grenade from her bandolier. This one didn’t have a pin in it and it looked more like a ball blue ball than it did a frag grenade. Brushing my thumb over it, it primed and I flung it to the right. I ducked into the room, but through the camera feed, I saw it land near the entrance. ABB thugs dived out of the way, only to be washed over by blue fire that took out the camera I was watching them from. Quickly switching to another, I saw that the blue flames had vanished as quickly as they appeared.

There was only bone and metal left of the ABB.

“Jackie?!” I shouted, poking my head out to see the older man doing the same. An expression or relief washed over his face as he came out from his hiding spot.

“I thought you were done for, V. Oni Lee came out of nowhere, skewered me, then jumped into the room. The others came in after,” he explained, before his eyes drifted to Bakuda. They narrowed dangerously, likely wondering what she was still doing alive.

I tried to shrug, but my shoulder hurt too much, “Plan changed. Are you good?” I asked Jackie, looking down at the wound on his stomach. Just below the ribs. Looks like it was cauterized, so there was no blood.

Jackie nodded, “I’ll be fine so long as we get to Vik.” He answered, casting a glance at me, mostly focusing on my ruined prosthetic. “Did you deal with Oni Lee?” He asked as we began hobbling towards the exit. The entire hallway was scorched black, with the doors having melted off their hinges. Now they were warped and still glowing red.

“I did,” Bakuda spoke up, looking between us. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. She looked behind us. “And we’re going the wrong way. Follow me,” Bakuda ordered, turning around and started walking in the opposite direction. Jackie winced when he came to a stop, glancing at her, then at me.

He offered a feeble smirk, “Get distracted by a pretty face?”

“Nah. Learned something about myself,” I said, sliding my ruined prosthetic under Jackie’s arms, and gesturing for him to throw it over my shoulder. I nearly fell over when Jackie sagged against me, before we both started following Bakuda. He was in worse shape than he was letting on.

“That being?” Jackie questioned as we walked along, seeing Bakuda head into a room.

“I don’t like killing helpless people,” I said, earning a breathy laugh from Jackie. I had noticed a trend. I had Jonah dead to rights, but I let him go because he was pathetic -- a naked and broken man. Same with Bakuda -- she was an absolute pathetic sight, to the point that her rage was pathetic. And I let them both live. I hadn’t known that about myself. No one had ever been at my mercy before.

Jackie shook his head as we hobbled into the room after Bakuda to see her tearing through boxes that were stacked against the walls. The order that she had told me about, the one belonging to Oni Lee… She was probably looking for it. “V? I think you’re an idiot,” Jackie told me as he gave me a smirk. “But, I like your style.”

I let out a huff of laughter, the compliment almost making me forget that I felt like shit. Bakuda let out a noise of triumph as she tore open another box. She began pulling items out and it took me a moment to realize that they were bombs.

“Vincent? Toss the arms in here, and carry it. We’re bustin 'out of this joint before Lung shows up,” Baukuda said, hefting a bomb. She walked over to the wall of the room and pressed some buttons on the explosive in her hand, before she traced her finger onto a touch screen. Jackie and I shared a look -- she was getting bossy, but she did have a point about the bombs. So, that’s what I did.

A second later, Bakuda detonated the bomb. There was a flash of light that my optics instantly dimmed, letting me see what was happening as the light exploded outward, and when it faded, it had carved out a set of stairs that led up and outside made of some kind of synthetic material -- a plastic of some kind. Light streamed into the dimly lit basement, and we needed no other encouragement. Bakuda headed up first, and she simply stood there at the top of the stairs, her hands stretched out wide as if she was trying to absorb as much sun as possible.

I looked around to see that the staircase led right outside of the building. Cycling through the camera feeds, I saw that the ABB were still circling around, and after a minute of them trying to convince each other to go down and risk getting another grenade to the face, I saw one of them inch towards the door. “We don’t have long,” I told them both, snapping Bakuda out her revelry. "We need a ride."

Jackie grunted, "No taxi well let us in looking like we do," he muttered.

"I'm stealing a car," Bakuda informed, heading to the road. She looked left, then right, before deciding to go left and disappeared from sight. I tapped into the backdoor I had through her eyes and saw her pick out a Galena G240, a faded blue hunk of junk. She threw a rock through a window before she started hot-wiring the car. It sputtered to life and Bakuda hopped into the driver's seat.

"She leaving us behind?" Jackie questioned as Bakuda pulled out, stopping at a stop sign. She could keep going left and leave us behind, or…

"Nah," I told Jackie, Bakuda turned right and pulled up at the end of the alleyway. The two of us hurried up, first throwing Jackie and the box in the back, before I got in the passenger seat. The moment I did so, the ABB poked their heads out of the stairway that Bakuda had made. And they wasted no time firing on us. "Go! Go!" I shouted, ducking down as bullets tore through the car as it lurched forward.

I patted myself down to find that I hadn't been hit. "Jackie? Bakuda?" I questioned, looking over to see Bakuda looking like she was on top of the world. She probably wouldn't have even noticed if she had been shot, she was that high on life. She seemed fine though.

"All good back here," Jackie answered. "One of Oni Lee's arms saved me from a bullet." He was okay? I could barely believe it.

"It wasn't the left one, right? I need a new left arm. Again," I added, realizing that I had lost two arms today. I was just lucky that they had been the same arm.

"Where am I going?" Bakuda interjected, weaving through traffic while her eyes darted to the mirrors to make sure that we hadn't been followed.

Jackie groaned, "Vik's. Go to Vik's," he muttered, his voice weak. I looked back at him to see blood growing on his pants leg. My eyes widened, earning a slight smirk from Jackie that looked far too weak for such a huge guy. "Too big of a target for my own good," he remarked, blood seeping through his fingers where he had been shot in the leg.

"Fucking drive Bakuda."

…

"Vik!" I shouted, dragging Jackie through the gate with the help of Bakuda. Vik jumped out of his seat, paling when he saw Jackie.

"Get him in the chair," he snapped at us as we rushed to do just that. Jackie settled into the chair, his eyes fluttering, barely aware of Vik inspecting his wounds. His lips thinned as he saw the stab wound on his stomach -- "He's going to need a new liver," he muttered to himself as he began to work.

I stumbled back, watching as Vik opened up Jackie and started operating then and there. He said nothing else, and I couldn't stomach to watch. Shaking my head, I walked out of the surgery area, heading upstairs, and I only realized that Bakuda had followed me when I reached the top. I said nothing as I took a seat at the top of the stairs, looking down at the stairs we had just walked.

Bakuda hovered around me for a moment, before she took a seat next to me. We sat in silence for a long minute. I couldn't say for her, but my mind was blissfully blank. No thought at all. Just a moment of peace after a crazy day.

"Your arm," Bakuda spoke up, gesturing to me. "Let me see it. Your ripperdoc is busy and you'll need an arm again soon."

I met her gaze for a moment, "Are you going to put a bomb in it?" I was compelled to ask the question, earning a deep scowl from Bakuda.

"No, I'm… just fuckin'…" She trailed off, unable to put her thoughts into words, much to her frustration. "Okay?" She finished without voicing a single word to convince me. Despite that, I got it.

Wordlessly, I stuck my arm out to her and she unveiled a row of thin tools that had been tucked into her thigh high stockings. She looked down at it for a moment before she began dismantling the ruined prosthetic. Bakuda practically drowned in her hoodie, which went over her short shorts. She wasn't particularly tall either and the wind from the broken window made her hair an absolute mess.

Bakuda looked worse than she had in the underground room, yet at the same time, more alive.

"You said that my bomb did this? How'd you survive it?" Bakuda asked as she set pieces of the ruined prosthetic aside, salvaging what she could and getting rid of the rest.

I started to shrug, only to stop when my shoulder flared with pain. "I had a shotgun with me since I thought Lock was leading me to an ambush. He jumped away when he realized that you were going to kill us. I reached out and got a little ash on me, so I just shot it off before it could spread." That made her hands pause for a moment, before resuming her work.

Bakuda didn't say anything after that. She just kept dismantling my arm. Once that was done, she wordlessly got up, headed to the car that we stole, then came back with the mantis blades and box of bombs. Setting them to the side, she grabbed one of Oni Lee's arms and started taking it apart too.

We sat in silence for a while. A long while. Then she spoke up.

"Why did you help me?" Bakuda questioned without looking up, her voice tightly controlled to show no emotion.

"Can't give a reason better than the one I already told you. I felt like it," I answered. "Up until that moment… as far as I was concerned, you were an evil bitch and I was going to enjoy killing you. Then I saw you. Realized that there was more to the story."

Bakuda shook her head, "So, what, me killing your friend and making you shoot your arm off is all water under the bridge?" She questioned sharply, not buying it for a second.

"Fuck no," I responded just as quickly. I shifted so I was looking directly at Bakuda, "I'm never going to forgive Lock's death. Ever. He was my friend and because of you, I watched him die." To Bakuda's credit, she met my gaze rather than flinching away. I would have been more pissed if she had. "I'm never going to forget that," I told her with a shake of my head.

Bakuda gave me one of her own, "You make absolutely no sense, you know that?" She muttered angrily at me.

"It makes sense to me," I argued. "I get why you did what you did. I sure as fuck don't agree with it, but I get it. You were desperate to get out."

"So I was just too pathetic to kill?" Bakuda snapped at me, sounding pissed at the very idea. I let out a huff of laughter at that.

"Pretty much," I agreed. Her blue eyes narrowed into slits, glaring pure murder at me. "Up until that moment, until I really saw you -- you were this absolutely evil bitch that needed to die. But you aren't. You were just desperate as hell. So, I decided to give you something that most people don't get in this city."

Bakuda continued to glare at me, "That being?"

"A second chance," I answered. She continued to glare at me for a long second until her eyes dipped down to my arm.

Bakuda fell silent again, "And if I want to be forgiven?" She asked in a guarded tone.

"Then be worth the second chance you got," I told her.

After that, we fell back into a long silence that was only broken up by the sound of heavy thumping from a strip club across the road, the sound of Bakuda's tools at work, and the city's nightlife starting to pick up as the sun drifted towards the horizon.

Bakuda did good work with the arm, that much I could admit. It was much sleeker than my previous one. Enough so that it didn't really mesh well with the thickness of my real arm. Yet, as I watched her work on it, I found areas of improvement that I could make. Simple things like shifting the wires for better rotation, or increasing the connectivity.

Meaning that my ability, my power… I think it worked on more than just code.

Optimization. So far, that seemed to be the common theme when I used my power. Improving Ping, my eyes, and now improving my arm? And I think I was right about that because the word seemed to feel me with… righteousness, for a lack of a better word.

Honestly, I don't think it suited me at all. I was probably the most unoptimized person I knew.

Bakuda withdrew her tools, gesturing for me to give a test run. I tested my new arm's maneuverability and response. This one, I could feel sensations in. They were muffled, but there. And, with a thought, I popped the mantis blade out of my forearm. It shot out, glowing an ominous red, glowing red hot that I knew could cut through iron like butter. I heard someone gawking at it, prompting me to urge it back in its sheath.

"Feels good," I admitted, because it did.

Bakuda grunted, "You're a merc, right?" She asked me out of the blue, looking up at me.

"Technically, I guess," I offered. "Though, I don't think I've ever actually done any merc work. That job at the docks… pretty sure that one just made me a criminal."

"Way to sell yourself," Bakuda remarked. "Are you interested in a job? I mean, I know you're rolling in eddies right-" Bakuda began, only to cut herself off when I shook my head. "You don't want the job?" She asked with an edge of fear in her voice.

"I'm not rolling in eddies," I corrected. "I spent my share on my optics and that arm. The rest is going to Lock's family."

It was difficult to describe the look that she gave me at that. Like I had just said the stupidest thing that she had ever heard. "You have to be the weirdest guy that I've ever met," she told me, sounding like she meant the words from the depths of her soul. “How’d you even make it this long? In this city?”

“I stayed out of trouble.”

Bakuda shook her head, looking briefly amused, before it fell away. “After this… there’s no way that Lung won’t come for me. Oni Lee was his enforcer. With him dead, he’s going to look weak. So… he’s going to do whatever it takes to take me back.” That wasn’t much of a shock. In this world, of all the powers, a tinker was the most valuable.

Tech… there were days when tech seemed like it could do anything. Every time it seemed as if technology had reached its peak, there was another breakthrough somewhere. Tinkers? Each had their specialty, but what they could do was miles ahead of what anyone else could even think of. And that made them special. And special was just another word for valuable.

Us, I silently corrected myself. We and us. I was a tinker now too, though no one knew that yet.

“So, the job is to protect you from the infamously dangerous rage dragon?” I hazarded a guess, scratching at my cheek with my new hand. Lung was a well-known quantity. Comparatively speaking, amongst the Asian gangs, the ABB was small compared to the Tyger Claws. The latter had something like eight thousand members according to the web, so that number was probably higher.

Comparatively, the ABB had a recorded number of a thousand. Maybe two. Yet, the ABB remained a thorn in the side of the Tyger Claws for years, and Lung was the reason why. A regenerator that ramped up the more danger he was in. The angrier too. I had seen him once walking down the street on his way to show off why he was so feared.

Eight feet tall, built like a brick shit house -- he only wore a pair of pants, revealing the silver scales that covered his body. I had no idea if they were a part of his power, or tech. His face was adorned with a metal mask shaped into a snarling dragon. The moment I saw him, I didn’t just cross the street so I wouldn’t have to share a sidewalk with him. I flat out crossed a city block. The guy was the picture of the shit that capes were capable of. I learned that much when I read the news that night and saw he had burnt out a club that decided to pay protection money to the Tyger Claws instead of him.

The news said there had only been a few casualties. Word on the street? Everyone in the building had died. Dozens of people.

“Yup. Feel like taking the job?” Bakuda asked, sounding like she suspected the answer.

“Sure. Do I get paid?” I asked, earning a look from Bakuda. Her gaze lingered, searching for any sign of deceit.

“Seriously, what the fuck is with you?” Bakuda bluntly asked, standing up. “I really don’t get it.”

I shrugged, “Before I answer, my price is the box full of tinker tech bombs,” I told her. Bakuda stared at me for a moment, looking more utterly perplexed with each passing second. She glanced down at the box before she offered a shrug and a nod. I stuck out a hand, my prosthetic one. Bakuda hesitated a moment, thinking it over, and decided to shake my hand. The deal was made.

It was eerily similar to the one that we made when the bomb was placed in my head.

Letting go, I smirked, “Lung’s going to be coming after me too, you know. You, he wants to keep. I’m guessing he has something else in mind for me,” I pointed out. Bakuda seemed like she never considered that. “The cameras were tampered with, so were the sensors, and we destroyed the evidence… but those ABB thugs saw us on the way out. Might have our faces. Don’t know yet. The only way we’ll know for sure is if the massively pissed off dragon shows up.”

Yeah, the thought never occurred to her. “Fuck,” she cursed, glancing down at the box of grenades she had paid me with.

I didn’t have time to enjoy the victory, because Vik poked his head out, “You’re still here?” He questioned, prompting me to give him my full attention.

“Is Jackie…?” I questioned, worry clutching at my heart.

“The big lug will be fine. Come on down, and you can see for yourself,” Vik said, “Just go tell Misty first, okay?”

Bakuda shifted where she stood, “I’ll go do that. You pick this stuff up,” Bakuda told me, heading into the building. I sighed before doing exactly that -- scooping up the loose parts from my destroyed one, and the parts that were shaved off from my new one, I tossed them into the box filled with bombs. It was a little worrying doing so, but if they were so fragile, they wouldn’t be moved in bulk.

Heading down, I saw Jackie was passed out on the table. “How bad was it?” I asked, earning a sigh from Vik.

“It was a close call,” he admitted. “He’s lucky that livers are always kept in stock because some drunk always needs a new one. So, he’s sportin’ a new synth liver, and there’s a wire mesh covering up the parts I had to snip because of the burn damage. He’ll be sore for a day or two, but after that, provided that the liver takes, he’ll be right as rain. Not even a scar.” Vik cast me a look, not so subtly looking at the new arm I was sporting.

He chose not to remark on it. “Speaking of scars, let me take a look at you,” he said and I was all too glad to let him. I winced a bit when I pulled off my shirt, revealing the damage done to me by the mantis blade. My shoulder was the worst injury. It was a deep cut that was black around the edges. My chest was little more than a nick in comparison.

Vik sat me down on his stool as he injected something into my shoulder that immediately numbed the pain. He took a scalpel and I tried to not pay attention to the fact that he was cutting off pieces of my shoulder. “So, you survived. And brought back a girl? She who I think she is?” Vik asked me in a low tone, aware that Bakuda could be back at any second.

I nodded. “Yeah. Turns out I’m not a cold-blooded killer,” I admitted.

“Then you’re in the wrong line of work, V,” Vik remarked. He was probably right about that. Bakuda, too. I tried to explain it to both of them, but I hadn’t done a good job of it. Not really.

“I want to be the best, Vik. The best. But I’m only gonna do it my way.” I wouldn’t compromise on that. Ever. Bakuda and the others could say what they liked. This was my integrity.

I heard Vik sigh, “The world doesn’t work like that. Much less Night City. This city will chew you up if you keep at it like this,” he offered his advice. To anyone else, that was probably serviceable advice. Just not for me. I was too stubborn by half.

“Then I’ll make sure it chokes on me,” I retorted.

Vik set down the knife and applied something to my shoulder. Something cold. “Alright, give the shoulder a few rotations…” I did so and he seemed satisfied. “Good. turn this way,” he ordered before he started working on the cut on my chest. “What happens now, V?” He asked me as I tried really hard to not look down.

That was a good question. A great question, really.

“I’m thinking of going after Lung,” I voiced an idea that I had, making Vik go still. He shifted, looking down at me. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell what he thought by the look he was giving me. “He’s not going to let this slide, Vik. None of it. My left arm? Care to guess who it came from?”

Vik looked down at it and seemed to grow pale. “Fuck me,” he cursed, realizing whose arm it was.

“So, the way I see it -- I go after him before he comes after me. He won’t expect that. And I have a few tinker-tech bombs. I figure… I just lob a couple at him, he dies, and… well, I’ll probably have the ABB after me, but without Lung or Oni Lee, the Tyger Claws will move in for sure, so I’ll probably be fine.” It sounded really stupid, but I thought it was a solid plan. Letting Lung come after me meant giving him time to ramp himself up. It meant I might have to deal with more people than just one royally pissed off dragon. It meant that he could prepare defensive measures against the tinker tech that I had.

Going on the offensive… it was possibly the one thing that he would never see coming. Simply because the idea of it was so stupid that no one would consider it viable, which is exactly why I thought it was viable.

“Probably,” Vik echoed with a shake of his head as he resumed his work. I was likely saved from another lecture by Misty and Bakuda coming down the stairs. Except, based on their expressions, I really hadn’t been.

“It’s Lung,” Bakuda blurted. “He’s tearing through Little China… and I think he’s heading here.”

“Oh…” I muttered, a little stunned. “Never mind Vik…” So much for that plan. How did he find us? The car? Bakuda? Did it even matter? No… no, it didn’t, I thought to myself, looking at Jackie. He was passed out and likely would remain so. Vik had done enough for us. “Vik, you got a gun I could borrow?” I asked, my brain shifting into such a high level of ‘oh shit’ that I achieved a level of calm worthy of a Buddhist monk.

Vik shook his head, “V, don’t even think about it.” He warned me, his tone severe. “Just don’t.”

“Too late. Already thought about it and I’m too stubborn to change my mind,” I told him, offering a self-deprecating grin. I wasn’t about to let Lung come here and burn the place down. I wouldn’t bring death to these people. I wouldn’t let their homes and lives be destroyed for helping me. “So, I’m doing this with or without a gun. Bakuda? Can you pick me out a Lung-killing grenade, please?”

Vik, for a moment, I thought was going to punch me. There was a growing fury on his face because I just wouldn’t listen. Then he seemed to let all that anger out in the form of a bone-deep sigh. He silently reached into a gap between his desk and one of the drawers and pulled out a shotgun. He passed it over to me with a shake of his head, already writing me off.

Misty watched in silence, letting Bakuda awkwardly walk up to me before she passed me the bandolier of grenades. It had been topped up. “Top three are for Lung. Don’t be anywhere near when they go off. Twenty feet at least. The bottom five are crowd control.” She told me as I put on the bandolier.

I met her gaze and nodded. Right. I was really doing this, wasn’t I?

I gotta admit, this was not what I thought today would bring me when I woke up this morning. Maybe… Maybe I really should have just gone to school.

“Alright. Tell Jackie goodbye. I’m going to go kill Lung now, so… I’ll see ya’ if I see ya’.”