Life's Not a Fairy Tale (No Matter How Much I Want It To Be) Ch.7 (Patreon)

“You’re insane, you know that?”

Becca’s reply was perky and just served to prove my words, “Aww, thank you! You’re so sweet, choom!”

“That wasn’t a… never mind,” I sighed. “Still… Militech? Really?”

Becca grinned, “What’s the point of being an edgerunner if you don’t live on the Edge?”

She shrugged as she continued, “Plus, I need some new toys to play with and Militech has that preem shit.”

“How do you even see this playing out?” I asked.

“You work your netrunner magic to get us inside and then we start blasting everything that moves. It’s not like this is their main headquarters so security should be relatively light.”

“And we’re supposed to do this with just the two of us?”

“Yup! It wouldn’t be much of a trial otherwise, would it?”

“It totally would! This raid would be hard for a whole team of Night City Legends, much less just you and me!”

“Pfft, have some faith, choom. We’ll be fine.”

“… I won’t be able to convince you, will I?”

“Nope! So you better strap in and prepare to ride Becca’s rollercoaster!”

I couldn’t contain the sigh that escaped my lips. There was just no use resisting forces of personality like Becca. She had an energy that pulled people along for the ride. She was charismatic, just the right amount of insane, and both adorable and sexy at the same time. It was a deadly combination. I’d never been very good with dealing with type A personalities like her, but it was nice to have all that energy focused on me for once.

It was also kind of late to bring all this up. We were currently perched on the roof of a building across from the Militech warehouse that Becca had chosen to raid. Laid prone to minimize our silhouettes, my eyes were scanning every inch of the small compound even while my augmented senses trawled the virtual space in the same area.

Even as I cased the warehouse, my body was working on integrating my newest smartmatter implant. I’d saved the blueprint of the Sandevistan I’d sold to Maine in the database that came with the Corporeal Transcendence Engineering heritage upgrade. CTE was what allowed me to utilize smartmatter at all. I could use that smartmatter to change my physical form in almost any way I could imagine. It basically made me into a shapeshifter, though it wasn’t quite as simple as that.

My body stayed biological until I changed a certain body part using smartmatter. So before my hand was cut off by that junkie, it was still biological. Once I used smartmatter to augment a body part, that body part would take on the properties of the smartmatter. I’d been shying away from full-body transformations for exactly that reason. Even if smartmatter could be indistinguishable from biological matter, I was hesitant to cross that line quickly.

CTE also took a lot more effort than an inherent shape-shifting power. Both in the actual changing process and in generating the smartmatter material used in the change. It wasn’t as simple as willing myself into another form with a vague idea. I had to have an actual blueprint, either scanned or designed by me, to assume another form. I was already anticipating the nutty forms I could design with my Science and Engineering Talents when I had the time to sit down and dedicate myself to that task.

The Sandevistan was settling in quite nicely. I could feel it moving against my spine every time I shifted, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. Little thrills of electric fire pulsed from it every so often, sending lightning down my nerves. I could feel the liquid potential pooling at the base of my brainstem.

“Alright, I’m going in,” I eventually announced.

Becca cheered me on, “Good luck, choom! Fuck those corpos up!”

I closed my eyes and delved into the aether. The world digitized itself around me. Ones and zeros came together to form vague buildings and systems in the world of cyberspace. Pure data and information streamed directly into my brain as I swam against the current. My awareness left my body and ‘flew’ into the system across the virtual street from me.

I expected Militech’s systems to appear as a great, impenetrable wall. They didn’t. They appeared as a vessel of some kind, armed to the teeth with rows and rows of ‘guns’. It was an imposing sight. One befitting of a global weapon-manufacturing superpower. But it also seemed more focused on offense and retaliation than it was on defense.

My digital awareness circled the vessel for a while, not even daring to poke it less I was filled with bullets of malware. At first glance, the only way through was a direct assault. I didn’t fancy throwing myself into the digital meatgrinder though, even if I was almost positive I’d eventually get through. Instead, I searched for more subtle openings.

The solution hit me while I was staring down the barrel of one of the many ‘guns’ that poked out of the vessel like the spines of a porcupine. This was an entrance as well. I could fly down the barrel of this ‘gun’ and make my way inside from there. Most people would avoid the business end of the weapons pointed at them and Militech might not have even realized that their sources of strength could also be weaknesses. It was just suicidal and unintuitive enough that I was decently confident it would work.

So with a deep breath, I dove into the mouth of the proverbial beast. A dark tunnel of code delivery methods surrounded me. I could practically feel the junk-code viruses and brute-force malware that should have waited for me at the end of the tunnel. They never materialized though. A light appeared at the end of the tunnel and I flew toward it. I guess Militech had thought of this entrance method and was using it as a covert yet intended backdoor into their systems. Well, that or I had just accidentally stumbled upon a digital maintenance shaft.

Passing into the light left me slightly disorientated, but I quickly regained my bearings. An admin account for the warehouse’s system sat before me. I cracked my metaphorical fingers and got to work. My neural implants plugged into the account and I began the tedious process of cracking a password through brute force. I was lucky that my implants could do most of the legwork. I could just sit back and focus on jamming any warnings the system potentially sent out. Though the convenient lack of alarms told me that this probably was an intended way into the system even if anyone who used it should have known the password.

Time moved differently in cyberspace. Minutes in the real world were hours here. Soon enough, I had cracked my way into the admin account. From there, I had access to everything. Most importantly, I had access to the cameras, security communications, and alarm system. A flicker of thought turned all those things off. As far as Militech was concerned, this warehouse was dead for the foreseeable future. Someone at HQ would undoubtedly notice the blackout soon so Becca and I had to move fast.

I resurfaced into meat space. Becca was practically vibrating with excitement next to me. I took a couple more deep breaths to center myself. I’d already decided I wouldn’t try to stop the murder-loli gremlin who was my partner from killing. It was pointless. It also didn’t mean I had to completely join her though. Oh, I did not doubt that I’d still kill some people during this raid, but I could limit that body count as much as reasonably possible. I’d try to start this raid as nonlethally as I could and only switch to lethal after Becca’s or my life was threatened.

“Ready?” I asked. “The warehouse should be in the dark right now. There won’t be a better time to hit it.”

“Fuck yes, choom! Let’s blow this bitch!”

Becca whipped out a pink and green shotgun from seemingly nowhere, which was saying something coming from a guy with a literal hammerspace. I sighed as my Overture revolver appeared in my hand in a similar fashion. The first thing I was going to be looting was a silencer. The Overture hit like a mule, but it was also loud enough to wake the dead as a result. The Razor straight machete materialized within the smartmatter of my right arm, ready to spring out at will and tear through whatever was in front of me.

We made our way down from the building and crossed the street to the warehouse. The fence around the warehouse compound was usually electrified, but since I had access to the warehouse’s system, it was currently just inert metal. A single swipe of my arm parted the chainlinks of the fence, allowing me and Becca to slip inside.

A patrolling guard walked along the fence, facing away from us. Becca’s eager grin told me she was seconds from running up and flatlining the guy. I had to pick her up by the waist and place a hand over her mouth to stop her. No one in the warehouse had noticed the blackout yet. I wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible. Becca just giggled and licked my palm when I didn’t immediately let her down.

Ignoring the gremlin in my grip, I ghosted my way to the outer wall of the warehouse proper. A quick mental glance at the building’s schematics showed me a fire exit nearby. No one was guarding the fire exit and with the alarms disabled, gaining entry to the warehouse was so simple it was criminal.

Even through her excited struggles, I still kept a tight grip on Becca. I didn’t trust her to not run off the moment I let her down. This place was basically paradise for a rimbo like Becca. [AN: Rimbo: A gun-toting sex kitten (from Rambo + Bimbo)]

I tucked us behind a rack of shelves while I examined the warehouse’s interior. Bright overhead lights lit up the expansive space. Even with the light, I could barely see the back wall of the warehouse. It just seemed to go on and on like some kind of physical catalog. Everything had an order or a place. Crates were stacked upon other crates, reaching up to the ceiling. Rows and rows of shelves and racks segregated the warehouse into long, narrow, alternating lanes.

I reluctantly let Becca down but kept a hold of the scruff of her jacket to prevent her from running off too quickly, “Alright, I want you to stick with me now. We’re going to at least try to be sneaky about this.”

Becca pouted but I bulled ahead before she could say anything, “Now… where do you want to start?”

That consolation made Becca perk up and forget her pout, “Guns! I want to see if we can find an Mk.31! C’mon, c’mon!”

I sighed as Becca started pulling me along by my hand. Almost instantly, she had completely abandoned the idea of stealth at the prospect of more dakka. ‘At least we’re not going to get caught soon,’ I thought as I checked the cameras I was still jacked into.

The cameras were off for anyone who wasn’t me at the moment and the guy who should have been watching them was on break. A few more Militech security goons were lazing around the warehouse’s breakroom with him. Only two goons were patrolling the warehouse floor and they were on the other side of the building right now. The rest of the compound’s security was outside. Currently, no one else had even the slightest notion that we were here.

Becca flitted around the alley of shelves we were in, cracking open crates that caught her eye before ultimately dismissing all of them. We were currently in the ‘attachments and miscellaneous gear’ section of the warehouse and while Becca was uninterested, I made sure to loot my fair share. Scopes, sights, silencers, muzzle brakes, and an entire arsenal of grenades found their way into my Pocket Space. Everything was scanned for future use and multiple copies of everything were taken. I even stamped a few crates for my Patrons.

From there, we made our way into the armor section. Armor was harder to move, but would be even more profitable than attachments if we found the right fence. I also found an old M96 Ghostsuit tucked away on one of the shelves. That was a pretty notable find. Militech Ghostsuits were the pinnacle of wearable camouflage in Cyberpunk. They could emulate the environment around them, rendering the wearers essentially invisible unless they moved about too much. It was more than useful enough for me to scan and stamp before moving on.

Our looting continued with cyberware. Everything here, no matter how useless, was taken by me. Much like with the attachments, one copy of everything was stamped and the rest were stashed away in my Pocket Space. I also made sure to keep an eye out for anything useful to integrate into my body, but the only thing that stuck out was a Maneuvering System that allowed for movement in midair. Everything else either had drawbacks I wasn’t comfortable with or just wasn’t all that useful.

Becca was very close to pouting by the time we finally found the weapon section of the warehouse, “Finally! God, can’t these corpo gonks learn to put the good stuff in the front?”

“Yeah, ‘cause they want to give burglars an easy time of it,” I snorted.

“Well, they should! It’s just polite.”

“I’m pretty sure ‘polite’ is consistently the last thing on Militech’s mind.”

“Whatever… At least they make some nova guns, choom. Look, look! There it is!”

Becca rushed over to a rack filled to the brim with guns. Big guns. Heavy machine guns, if I wasn’t mistaken. They must have been the Mk.31s that she’d been looking for. She whipped one off the rack and spun it in her hand in a way that defied physics. She squealed with delight when she pulled back the action of the empty firearm and hugged it to her chest.

I excused myself to let Becca get to know her new baby, “I’ll… just go find you something to put in that beast…”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Romeo!”

Luckily, Militech kept their ammo near their guns. I grabbed a couple of boxes of rifle ammo and gave them to Becca. She was already loading the weapon before I had a chance to caution her against giving away our position. I groaned at the loud sound that echoed from the gun when Becca attached the box magazine and the bolt slid home. She giggled manically while her hands caressed her new gun.

I went to chastise her but was interrupted by an unfamiliar voice, “Hey! Stop right there! What the fuck are you doing here?! Mikey? Mikey, come in! We’ve got- dammit. Radio’s down.”

Once he realized he couldn’t get in contact with the rest of the warehouse, the security goon responded in the typical Militech fashion of ‘shoot first and ask questions never’. Which, in this situation, might have been his best course of action. He had two intruders in front of him and one of those intruders had a loaded heavy machine gun that could tear through any body armor he might have been wearing. His assault rifle — a futuristic, bastardized version of an AK-47 — came up to his shoulder and barked with gunfire.

Cursing myself for losing focus on the rest of the warehouse, I dove at Becca, pushing her down and getting both of us out of the line of fire. Becca didn’t even flinch as she hit the ground, instead using the solid surface that was suddenly under her as a platform to stabilize her Mk.31. Her return fire tore a jagged diagonal line across the ceramic plates of the goon’s chest armor. I could hear the rest of the warehouse’s security complement scrambling to respond to the sudden hail of gunfire even as the first goon fell to the ground dead.

“Fuck, Becca! We’re going to have to talk about your tunnel vision if you want to do something like this again…” I swore.

Becca at least had the decency to look sheepish, “Heh, sorry, choom. I couldn’t help myself. I just get like this around irons, especially when it’s corpo-grade shit.”

I sighed, “It’s my fault too. I got too distracted by all the loot and other shinies and I forgot about the rest of the situation. I even lost my connection to the system. I need to stop them before they can put out an alarm. Think you can cover me while I plug myself back in?”

“You got it, boss-choom!” Becca saluted me. “You can count on me! No one’s getting past this much dakka!”

She set herself up, laying prone while aiming down the row of shelves we were between and wiggling her hips from side to side in a… distracting manner. I’ll be honest, that plump and inviting backside hypnotized me for a second before I was able to shake it off. My eyes closed and I dove back into the net. Following my previous path into the system was simple enough, but once I got back to the admin account, I found myself locked out.

When it rains, it pours… Fuck. Militech definitely knew we were here and some corpo had decided it was a good idea to turn on the Black ICE. If I tried to hack into the account now, there was a nonzero chance that I’d be killed on the spot. Militech didn’t play around with their Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics (ICE). Now that they knew their system had been compromised, they’d gone straight to DEFCON 2.

And that also meant the alarms were certain to be back online. Additional corpo goons would be rushing to reinforce the warehouse. Militech probably had me and Becca on camera as well. Even if we got out of this intact, we’d have a Megacorp gunning for our heads. At this point, any hope of a ‘clean’ job was out the window. Like Dorio had said… I better be ready to go loud.

My return to my physical body was met with the sound of sustained gunfire. Becca poured almost a pound of lead down range before she stopped shooting. Then came the giddy giggles I’d come to expect from her. A small pile of bodies lay at the end of our hallway of shelves.

“This… thing… is… insane…” Becca said to herself with a breathless mumble. She sounded like she was on the edge of orgasm.

A helmeted head peeked around the corner at the end of the shelves. The helmet was almost instantly popped open like a cork by a single round from my Overture. Even if stealth was a fool’s errand at this point, I’d taken the time to outfit my revolver with a looted silencer. The silenced but still decently loud crack of my gun knocked Becca out of her heavy-machine-gun-trance.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying your new toy,” I hummed. “I have some bad news though. They locked me out. Reinforcements are almost certainly on the way and we need to move.”

“But Romeoooo~…” Becca whined. “I’m just getting started.”

“And you’ll get plenty more chances to shoot at stuff while we make our escape. I for one don’t want to find out what corpo lead tastes like.”

Becca still pouted, “We should at least loot some more stuff before we leave. Looting takes like half a second when you do it.”

I sighed and caved, “Fine, but I’m only taking whatever is on the shelves right here.”

She beamed a smile at me and turned her attention back forward. Another staccato burst of gunfire mowed down a goon who tried to sneak out of cover while we were talking. Becca fell back into the ‘zone’ and I started looting this hallway of shelves to the bone. Entire crates of firearms, large and small, disappeared into my Pocket Space. The few I didn’t take were stamped for my Patrons with my loaned stamp.

I’d taken more than half a ton of various kinds of loot this run and my Pocket Space still wasn’t even close to being full. The Pocket Space didn’t feel infinite, but it did feel spacious enough to store anything I could pick up from this world. I had purchased the Sweet Home perk after all, even if I couldn’t access it directly right now due to my Patrons’ fuckery. I was hoping they had just limited my portals and that there was still a hectare of land waiting for me within my Pocket Space.

“Okay, time to go,” I said as I finished up.

Becca had added another body to her pile while I was looting. I picked up the petite rimbo and slung her over my shoulder. She continued shooting behind me as I ran down the aisle. I was just in time too. I heard several of the warehouse doors bang open and an army’s worth of boots stomp inside. Reinforcements had arrived and we were surrounded.

I beelined down the row of shelves and into another, racking my brain for anything that could get us out of this mess. A thick curtain of covering fire from Becca followed my path through the warehouse. I thought back to the schematics of the building, quickly realizing that we were well and truly boxed in. This was Militech’s turf and they didn’t want us getting out of the warehouse alive.

“I feel like the turret on a tank, choom!” Becca shouted, laughing over the cacophony of gunfire.

… Bingo. Becca’s words tickled my brain, reminding me of something I’d seen in the warehouse’s catalog. I changed directions in the middle of an aisle, scrambling up the shelves like a monkey. With the whole warehouse floor laid out below me, I could see the many squads of security goons Militech had sent to kill me and Becca. I could also see a spot in one corner of the warehouse without any of the tall shelves that crowded the rest of the building.

I made my way in that direction, hopping between shelves at a dead sprint. My legs augmented themselves with smartmatter as I ran. Every jump was easier than the last until I came to a stop perched above my goal: the warehouse’s vehicle bay. The key to our escape lay below me. One vehicle stood out amongst the cargo trucks.

The Militech Basilisk wasn’t the largest vehicle down there but it was the most intimidating. It was as if the heavy-duty dual-seater hovertank was made for this exact moment in time. As if it was made for our escape. The tank was locked and offline, but it was the work of a second to pop that baby open and get its engine purring.

I hopped off the shelf, dropping to land directly on the hovertank. Becca was startled at the sudden elevation change. She turned to say something to me before she saw what we were standing on. The Basilisk’s armor hummed beneath my feet as I quickly went about getting Becca and myself inside it. My brain was already hooked into the tank’s system so I handed Becca a neural headset so she could man the gun. I had to slide it on her head myself because she was too busy goggling at me and our new ride.

“You are so getting laid when we get out of this…” despite how tense our situation was, Becca’s words managed to shock a laugh out of me.

“Oh? So you like my second present?” I asked, feeling some of the tension leak out of me.

“Keep getting me gifts like this and you can be my Mainline, choom.”

I raised a teasing eyebrow, “You sure you want to propose in a tank while corpos are trying to kill us?”

“Hell yeah! This shit is peak romance as far as I’m concerned!”

“Alright, save the sappy shit for later, Becca,” I chuckled. “You’ve still got more gonks to flatline.”

Becca squealed with delight and lunged across the tank’s cabin. Her lips slammed into mine, molding to me like glue. I couldn’t help but return the kiss. Becca melted into me the moment my lips started moving as well. I felt a full-body shiver run down her spine. She was gasping for breath when I eventually pulled back and broke the kiss. She looked at me with pure lust burning in her eyes.

“Becca? Big gun to play with, remember?” I reminded her.

Frustration and excitement flashed across her face, “This isn’t over, Romeo. Now get us out of here before my pussy decides it can’t wait any longer!”

I gave her a mock salute, “Ma’am! Yes, Ma’am!”

The Basilisk’s engine was kicked out of its idle state. I laughed as Becca growled something about how she could be “wasting gonks while getting head in a tank”. My mind combed through the tank’s systems, clearing it of bugs and tracking software to the best of my ability. I heard the turret rotating above our heads as Becca began to scan for targets to take her sexual frustration out on.

The corpos had lost us when I started jumping between shelves. The roar of the Basilisk let them find us again. Several corpos squads streamed into the warehouse’s vehicle bay. Most of them cursed when they saw what we were in. I saw a few just straight-up give up on the spot. The ones who didn’t were trying to yell orders at me and Becca, but the thick armor between us and them made it easy to ignore them.

“Becca? If you would?…”

Becca’s manic grin returned to her face, “With pleasure~ Eat shit, you cock-blocking bastards!”

The whole tank rumbled with the retort of the 20 mil autocannon. A whole squad instantly went up in an explosion of smoke and fire. The rest of the goons were sent scrambling for cover. I revved the engine and we started to slowly hover forward. A shelf exploded as another round left the barrel of the cannon.

To further the chaos of our escape, I poked my head out of one of the tank’s hatches. Grenades — freshly materialized from my Pocket Space — scattered across the vehicle bay floor. Flashbangs and Incendiary grenades popped with deleterious effects. The gas tanks of the trucks around us went up in fireballs. The flames spread, consuming everything they could.

In the safety of our armored, hovering tin can, Becca sighed, “God, this is so romantic… Best date ever.”

“This is a date?” I asked. That was news to me…

Becca snorted, “Duh, choom. It’s been a date since you got me a heavy machine gun as a present. Keep up.”

“Is it weird that robbing a Megacorp is my first date?” I wondered.

“Nah, you’re living the dream with a banging babe who’s willing to ride shotgun with you.”

It was my turn to snort, “‘Banging babe’? Really?”

Becca blushed and laughed at the same time, “Shut up! You know what I mean…”

She distracted herself from my teasing laughter by firing the autocannon again. Another chunk was torn out of the interior of the warehouse. Deciding we’d done enough damage to cover our escape, I stomped my metaphorical foot down on the throttle. The Basilisk shot forward. This thing was surprisingly nimble for a 50-ton machine. I angled us toward the garage door in front of the vehicle bay.

Thankfully, Becca was on the same page as me. Two shots shredded the steel of the garage door before our tank bullied itself the rest of the way through. From there we were as good as gone. All of the corpos were too busy hiding in fear or trying to fight their way through a spreading warehouse fire to chase us.

We sped through the streets of Night City. Unsurprisingly, people were quick to get out of the way of a literal tank hovering at them at 40 miles per hour. I was pretty sure I’d gotten rid of any way Militech could have used to track the tank, but I stopped a ways away from Becca’s apartment just to be sure.

After dismounting, I sucked the whole tank into my Pocket Space. There was definitely no way Militech was going to be tracking it down in there. As soon as the Basilisk was gone and the scene was clean, Becca grabbed my arm and began frantically pulling me in the direction of her apartment. I went to ask what she was doing but the look on her face when she turned around silenced me. She was dangerously horny at the moment and I somehow knew she wouldn’t stop until I fucked her through her bed.

“Bro! You better get the fuck out of here unless you want to hear me cum myself unconscious!” Becca shouted the moment she kicked open the door to her apartment…