[ND] Chapter 158 - The Emporium

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Hello everyone, LunaWolve here!

Chapter 153 - Options has just released on RR with no major changes.

For the Fixers, this chapter is new.

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We ended up not having the Jade x Misha chapter yet.

Things happened that needed addressing in this chapter first!

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I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions and opinions on this chapter. \o/

I hope you will enjoy it!

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-------------------- End of Pre-Chapter Author Note (Patreon-only) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the link to the chapter:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YjMWyK5JRX3QrKNo-V8bookltzePLbX7qB10E9IL5tQ/edit?usp=sharing

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Chapter 158 - The Emporium

Arriving at Misha’s Emporium, I was both excited and hesitant to see the Gryplik again. 

On one hand, it was Misha—which meant Misha-time, which was precious and way too rare as of late—but on the other hand, I was about to walk a tightrope made of half-truths and selective honesty. 

I didn’t want to lie outright, but I also couldn’t just spill absolutely everything. 

Not yet, at least. Maybe not ever, but I wanted to keep the door open to come clean with Misha, at the very least.

I had a rough outline of what I wanted to say, but it would ultimately come down to whatever questions Misha and Jade threw at me—and how they reacted. 

Especially Jade.

I wasn’t actually worried that Misha would suddenly hate me… though the fear was there in the quiet places of my brain.

Jade, though? Her loyalties were a little harder to read. I wasn’t entirely convinced she wouldn’t run straight to Vega if she thought it was the smart play.

‘Although even if she did, Vega and I have an understanding now,’ I reminded myself, trying to calm the jittery feeling in my chest. ‘Knowing I’m dabbling in Anima—however accidentally—shouldn’t endanger anything on that end. If anything, it might inflate my value in his eyes even further... Which will have its own associated problems, but nothing immediately dangerous.’

I took a slow breath and stepped inside through the heavy front doors.

I’d arrived a few minutes earlier than the time I’d given Jade—accident, not intent—but extra time with Misha beat extra time doom-spiraling in my own thoughts any day of the week.

The reception room was just as comfortably chaotic as I remembered. 

The clutter hadn’t changed.
The soft hum of the air conditioning system hadn’t changed.
The faint scent of clothing, oils, and long-stored tech hadn’t changed. 

The only thing missing was Misha. 

I even peeked behind the counter to make sure she wasn't “resting their eyes” again, but nope—no ball of tangled limbs and wires anywhere.

I made it halfway to the service bell when a loud clatter echoed from the store’s main room. 

Metal on metal, shifting piles, muffled muttering—that was unmistakably Misha rummaging through her hoard.

“Misha’s got a customer,” I realized, relief blooming in my chest. 

Business was good. Business meant safe income. Business meant Misha was fed, even without my recent patronage—not that I had any reason to doubt that in the first place.

I paused, wondering for a beat if barging in would be rude, but [Cultural Savant] stayed completely silent—no warnings, no social red flags in Gryplik culture about potentially walking in on a customer conversation—so I walked through the double doors without guilt.

Just like always, stepping into Misha’s store was like walking into a controlled avalanche. 

Piles upon stacks upon mounds of merchandise—shiny tech, battered relics, strange artifacts, tools that looked older than Delta itself—everything half-lost, half-displayed. 

Complete and utter chaos, or in other words: Misha’s pride and joy.

I wound my way through a narrow path between towers of goods, careful not to brush against anything unstable, and it took a few turns before I finally spotted someone through an opening in the maze.

Someone who was very distinctly not Misha.

He was a young man, maybe mid-twenties—which would put him somewhere around twenty years of age in this world, considering the longer years compared to my old life—dressed in a sleek black coat that was just a little too well-tailored to be anything but painfully expensive. 

Thin lines of golden light climbed from along his jaw up to his temples, tracing neat arcs toward a matching pair of golden eyes—only partially hidden behind perfectly styled raven-black hair. 

Nothing about him said “unimportant.”

If the wardrobe and visible chrome weren’t enough, his posture sealed the deal—straight spine, shoulders relaxed but exact, every movement measured. 

Corpo-adjacent written in big neon letters. 

He scanned the piles of Misha’s curated chaos with a kind of quiet precision that absolutely did not seem like it would belong inside a store where you sometimes had to wait for Misha to excavate your purchase from beneath three unrelated objects and a rogue plushie.

In his hand, he held a small metal device—cylindrical, matte-gray, palm-sized. 

He turned it slowly with a sort of clinical curiosity, as if he were evaluating it rather than idly looking at it, his expression unreadable and far too focused for comfort.

Misha stood somewhere beside him, her tall, lanky body half-buried in a mountain of electronics, muttering to herself in Gryplik in a way only she could pull off: Part annoyed, part delighted, part conspiratorial.

“Ah—Friend Ela!” She chirped the moment she spotted me as she took a look up from her work, her voice instantly brightening. “Ela is early!”

The young man turned at the sound of my name, eyes flicking over me in a quick, assessing sweep. Not hostile—just… calculating. 

The same way Valeria had always looked at me—at problems, not people. 

‘Wonderful… Just what I needed: More corpo shenanigans.’

Misha hopped down from the small crate that she had stood on to get a better vantage point over the chaos with the grace of a cat who’d practiced it a thousand times, landing with a thump.

“Customer is looking for something very specific,” Misha said, tilting her head toward the guy. “Something expensive. Something fancy. Something Misha can maybe find if lucky.”

Her tone made it very clear she did not think she’d be “lucky.”

The man gave a polite, tight smile. “Just browsing, really. Don’t let me interrupt.”

Yeah, right. He was absolutely here for something specific, yet vague enough in description that even Misha couldn’t promise she had it—and she knew practically every single item in her inventory by memory; as was the Gryplik way.

Still, he didn’t seem interested in me beyond that cursory glance, so I took the excuse Misha offered with her outstretched hands and let myself get ushered toward a corner of the shop a bit further away.

The moment we had a tiny bit of distance, Misha leaned forward, her voice lowered to a stage whisper that absolutely did not match the subtlety she was clearly aiming for.

“Friend Ela arrived early. Good. Misha was hoping to talk before Jade arrives. There is much to discuss.”

Understatement of the year.

“But Misha will have to finish with the previous customer first. Misha has to find customer’s request…” her voice dipped lower, no longer the stage whisper but genuinely hushed, 

“Misha is unsure of what exactly the customer wants. The customer does not seem sure either. Misha is concerned that Misha will not have what the customer is looking for, losing the customer’s business. It would not do for the greatest Gryplik merchant in Neo Avalis to fail the customer.”

I nodded along gravely.

I didn’t personally share the same religion-level devotion to customer satisfaction—years in retail in my last life had burned that out of my very soul, permanently—but for Misha this wasn’t just business. 

It was pride, identity, culture. 

For a Gryplik merchant, losing a customer wasn’t a lost transaction; it was a spiritual failing.

“If there is anything Ela can do to help, just say the words. Friend Ela will do anything for Misha,” I offered seriously.

That earned me a triple-segmented hug—Misha’s long, flexible arms looping around me with enough enthusiasm to topple a lesser person. She squeezed tight, her limbs winding around me like soft rope, before rubbing her cheek against mine in a full-body lean. The trill in her throat vibrated through my ribs; [Polyglot] told me it translated to deep affection.

“Misha appreciates Ela’s words greatly,” she murmured, “but Misha has to succeed alone. It would not do for a Gryplik to ask for help finding a specific item in their own inventory, no, no. It would not do at all.”

I could understand that—really, I could. 

[Cultural Savant] was giving me the information on it on an instinctual level, that what Misha was saying, was in-fact true. 

It would be a massive cultural taboo to ask for help.

‘There’s a loophole here, isn’t there?’ I thought, keeping my face neutral as Misha continued practically draping herself over me like an affectionate, overgrown cat—albeit one who stood several full heads taller and had to hunch down to rub our cheeks together.

I nudged [Cultural Savant], asking it to stretch that instinct a bit further.

A few seconds later, the answer slotted into my mind like a puzzle piece.

‘Right. She can’t ask for help. But if I—purely by coincidence—find the item… or coax the customer into being more specific… and she just so happens to be present for my discovery… then it counts as her finding the solution.’

A loophole wide enough to drive a freight train through.

“If Misha doesn’t mind,” I started gently, “Ela can ask the customer a few things in the meanwhile. Maybe Ela can figure out what they want, yes?”

Misha froze mid–cheek rub, head lifting just enough that all four of her eyes focused on me in perfect, crystalline alignment.

Slowly—so slowly—it clicked.

A loophole.

A perfectly acceptable, culturally blessed loophole.

“Misha would not be asking for help,” she breathed, voice almost reverent. “Friend Ela would simply… exist nearby, gathering useful information. And Misha would simply… benefit from Friend Ela’s existence.”

“Exactly,” I confirmed, trying not to smile too wide.

Misha’s entire body did a delighted full-body wiggle, limbs curling and uncurling in a ripple of joy. She released me at last, patting my head twice—like a proud, slightly chaotic auntie—before straightening to her full, towering height.

Misha’s ears flicked with pleased energy, the trill in her throat deepening. 

“Misha approves of Ela’s plan. A perfect plan. Efficient. Elegant, even. Very Gryplik in how it completely perverts the spirit of the taboo. Friend Ela would have made a fantastic Gryplik,” she nodded, each bob of her head almost aggressively enthusiastic.

A small, unexpected weight tugged at my chest at that. 

I’d learned enough about her by now, to know when she meant something Gryplik-related as a slight or a compliment, and she meant it as one of the highest compliments she could give. And knowing what I knew now—about her exile, the loneliness behind the bright merchant persona—it hit a little harder than I wanted to admit.

Still, I felt a warm little spark of pride settle somewhere behind my ribs.

I let a smile tug at my lips.

“Misha will begin searching again, while Ela conducts “The Plan”,” she declared with the solemnity of someone announcing the start of a holy ritual, before she slipped away with surprising grace for someone her size, vanishing behind a different heap of merchandise with the swiftness of a lizard diving into a rock crevice.

Which left me to deal with the mysterious not-Misha customer.

He had stopped turning the gray device in his hand and was now watching me approach instead, polite curiosity written in the tilt of his head but none of the warmth.

‘Alright then,’ I thought, rolling my shoulders once, ‘let’s see what the hell you’re actually here for, Mr. Corpo Mystery Man…’

I put on my most friendly smile—not overly welcoming, but nowhere near hostile—as I kicked things off. “Misha is as busy as ever, I see.”

He nodded once, slow and measured. “That she is.”

A beat passed. The polite kind—the kind you filled with a smile that wasn’t actually a smile. 

We watched each other in that corporate way of silently weighing threat levels, trying to see what the other person wasn’t saying. 

Then something shifted in his expression, just a little, like he’d reached a decision.

“You seem close with Miss Misha. Closer than I thought any human could possibly be.”

‘Miss Misha…?’

“We’re friends.” I kept my shrug loose and casual. “A bit of an odd pairing, I’ll admit, but Misha’s amazing and I don’t want anything bad happening to her. She’s helped me through some tough spots, and I help her wherever I can.”

His golden eyes tracked every movement—every blink, every tilt of my head, every twitch of facial muscle. A full scan, the way corpo-types did when they wanted to peel open your life like a folder and check the contents.

If I hadn’t already survived Valeria’s dissection-grade stare about fifty-trillion times over in the last few weeks, I probably would’ve folded like wet cardboard. 

As it was, I held steady without even really thinking about it.

‘Thanks for the training, Valeria,’ I thought dryly, irritation mixed with reluctant appreciation.

He was the first to blink. 

His polite smile shifted—fractionally—into something more social than tactical, and he extended a hand clad in black leather. 

“Leon Indras,” he introduced himself smoothly, voice pitched in that corpo-neutral register that somehow managed to sound both friendly and like a background threat. “Independent consultant.”

Corpo-speak for I don’t want you knowing who signs my paycheck.

I accepted the handshake without hesitation. 

Firm grip, steady pressure, no flourish. 

“Ela,” I replied.

A flicker of Instinct nudged me, and before he could fully retreat his hand, I slipped my Operator License from my pocket and offered it to him. 

“OPN,” I added casually, like it wasn’t the single best icebreaker to drop in a room full of corporate paranoia. “If you ever need anything.”

His posture eased almost instantly—shoulders loosening, chin tilting a little less sharply, eyes shifting from “threat analysis” to “professional curiosity.” 

The wariness didn’t vanish entirely, but it lowered enough that the air felt less like a negotiation room and more like two people browsing the same store.

“A licensed Operator,” he said, surprise threading through the words. “You’re… quite young for that.”

I shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “I know my way around the dangerous parts of Neo Avalis. And I’ve got some netrunning experience. Apparently that was enough for the OPN to care.”

He considered that, eyes flicking back to the License before handing it back with more respect than I expected. 

The conversation started smoothing out from there—both of us still circling each other a little, trying to figure out intent and angles, but no longer adversarial.

Precisely the state I needed him in if I was going to find out what, exactly, a guy like this was doing in Misha’s store.

There was another pause in our idle chatter—shorter this time—and as we both held each other’s eyes, the conversation finally began drifting toward the obvious question burning a hole in the middle of the room.

“So,” I asked casually, nodding at the metal cylinder in his hand, “what brings an independent consultant like yourself to Misha’s Emporium? Not exactly the kind of place I usually find the likes of you—no offence.”

Leon didn’t answer immediately. 

He rolled the cylinder between his fingers once, twice, like he was weighing how much he actually wanted to tell me. His posture stayed clean and composed, but that razor-edged caution he’d walked in with had softened into something closer to professional confidentiality.

When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, low, and very carefully measured.

“This isn’t what I’m here for,” he said, giving it a brief glance before slipping it into one of his coat pockets. “My employer assigned me to locate a set of… reports, for lack of a better term. But the problem is that these reports are buried behind a network architecture that is… inconvenient.”

He lifted a hand, searching for the right phrasing.

“I’m not a specialist in that field. I know enough to understand when a job exceeds my personal toolset. So I came to the one person in Delta with a reputation for having ‘one of everything,’ including items that—strictly speaking—shouldn’t exist on civilian markets. If anyone in Delta can supply what I need, it’s Miss Misha.”

There it was again.

He kept saying her name like a title.

Like someone invoking the power of a household god.

It made me blink for a second, because I could imagine a lot of people calling Misha many things—“merchant,” “wizard,” “miracle worker,” “hoarder with aesthetics”—but never with that kind of quiet reverence. 

It was almost… deferential. And coming from a corpo type? That was new territory entirely.

I couldn’t place it at all. 

But it tugged at the back of my mind like a loose thread I’d have to pull on later.

Leon continued, oblivious to my internal gears spinning.

“The difficulty is that I don’t know the exact specifications of the tool—I only know what it must accomplish. I need something that can breach a locked, privately maintained architecture without tripping the usual safeguards. Subtle, fast, and ideally… clean.”

Ah.

Yeah, I knew exactly what category of tool he meant.

Neon Dragons had always loved throwing missions like that at the Player. 

“Retrieve X.”
“Extract Y.”
“Walk into a secured network and try not to fry your brain while you’re at it.” 

Memories surfaced instantly; it was downright nostalgic.

There were dozens upon dozens of tools on the market that could break a private net open—but only a handful that corporate agents actually went for. They wanted reliability, stealth, and plausible deniability—preferably all in one sleek, overpriced package.

And of those corporate-specific tools that could qualify, there was only that I knew of that hadn’t been considered brand-new tech by the time the game’s story started—which was still several years in the future of my current timeline.

“Hmm…” I let the silence hang for a beat, brow furrowed like I was really chewing on the problem, even though the answer floated up in my mind almost instantly—courtesy of hundreds of hours of wiki-diving in my past life. “That almost sounds like you’re looking for something like the AD7, maybe…? Axiom Data-Lancet v7, that is.”

Leon froze.

His eyes snapped to mine—wide, sharp, suddenly very, very awake. The polite-corporate mask he’d been wearing cracked just enough for me to see the gears turning behind it.

“The AD7…?” he asked. “You’ve worked with one? Or seen it in use? How much do you know about it?”

He stepped in closer, not intimidating, but eager—like someone who’d just stumbled onto a map after wandering blind.

I very deliberately held up my hands in a small, easy gesture.

“I’m not an expert,” I said lightly. “But I’ve been around a few Operators who used one on jobs, and I’ve crossed paths with some other gear in that niche. Enough secondhand exposure to understand what it does, at least, I’d say. The AD7’s one of those ‘personal-use, vault-breacher, but don’t tell your compliance officer’ toys. Good for slicing into highly segmented data stacks without triggering the entire building’s security grid in the first second.”

I kept the details just vague enough—no internal schematics, no firmware quirks, nothing that would raise red flags about why a girl my age knew far too much about corpo-weapons-grade hardware.

Leon, however, looked like a starving man presented with a full-course meal.

“That… that’s exactly the category of stuff I’m looking for,” he murmured. “Do you know its limitations? Any operational caveats? Anything you can tell me would help.”

I shrugged, giving him the careful, curated half-truths I’d settled on already.

“It’s picky with encryption stacks, but strong against anything that doesn’t have a live runner babysitting it. Good burst capacity but overheats if you try to brute-force too wide a gate. Also eats battery packs like candy, so if you’re planning on a long breach cycle, you’d need backups.”

All technically correct. All things someone “in the vicinity” of one might’ve overheard.

Leon absorbed every syllable.

Meanwhile, movement flashed at the edge of my vision.

Misha.

The moment he had latched onto my words like a lifeline, she’d jolted like she’d been hit with a live wire. 

Now she practically launched herself toward a far pile—one of the really unstable, should-be-an-OSHA-violation ones—digging through items with frenetic Gryplik enthusiasm, long limbs sweeping aside goods that probably cost more than my life was worth in its entirety.

I had to smother a grin behind my hand.

Oh yeah. She had it.

Or at the very least, she thought she had something close enough to count—because Misha, bless her mercantile heart, did not miss a single cue when it came to what her customers really needed.

Leon mulled over my explanation for a few moments, then gave a thoughtful little nod. “That might do the trick… something in that range, at least.”

His tone had shifted—less guarded, more… relieved, almost. 

“I appreciate your expertise,” he said, dipping his head slightly. “Truly. Running into a netrunner-Operator here of all places… truly good fortune on my part.” 

He let out a breath, shoulders easing. “I only knew I needed a breach tool, but I couldn’t give Miss Misha any real specific examples of what I was looking for. She and I have been going over options for the last thirty minutes. Entirely my fault, of course.”

I bit back a smirk. Yeah, that tracked.

If you walked into Misha’s domain without knowing what you actually wanted, you were effectively consigning yourself to a very polite, very thorough avalanche of options—of that, I had no doubt.

“But now that I know what to—”

He didn’t get to finish.

Because Misha barrelled back into view like a happy tornado, hauling an armored case bigger than my torso and moving with enough speed that the piles of merchandise shivered as she passed. 

With a triumphant chirp, she slammed the heavy case onto the counter right in front of us.

The metallic thud echoed like a gunshot.

Leon actually jumped.

“Customer’s perfect item acquired!” Misha declared proudly, frills fluttering with excitement. “Misha delivers once again! Today is not the day Misha fails a customer in Misha’s Emporium!”

I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to start laughing. Misha was glowing with the kind of smug satisfaction that only a Gryplik could radiate without combusting.

So I stepped back and let the show run itself.

Once Misha locked onto her target, there was no room left for anything else—not even the oxygen in the room. Leon barely had time to flip the case open before she launched into her full, meticulously rehearsed sales pitch, talons tapping across the metal like an overture.

It definitely wasn’t the AD7 I had pointed him toward.

I had never even heard of the thing she’d dragged out, but judging by the way she rattled off specs like a machine gun—multi-stage encryption peel, adaptive lattice injector, triple-core decompiler, and some feature called recursive ghost-threading—it was basically the same tool with a different serial code. 

Maybe even an upgrade.

‘Of course she had something better. Why wouldn’t she?’ I thought, amused, watching her gesture so enthusiastically the tufts near her ears fluttered like a banner in a hurricane.

Leon seemed to think so too. 

The moment he understood what she had dragged out, his expression shifted from cautious interest to holy-grail-level relief. 

He paid before Misha was even halfway through explaining the safety protocols—classic corpo efficiency. Misha didn’t miss a beat, basking in the praise he kept pouring onto her.

“Miss Misha,” he said, bowing his head slightly in that polished corpo-way, “I genuinely can’t thank you enough.”

Misha waved him off with a delighted trill, smug in a way that made my chest weirdly warm.

Then he approached me, case in hand.

“Ela,” he said, offering another handshake, “thank you. Truly. I owe you one.”

His golden eyes briefly flashed a distinct shade of yellow as I received a transfer request notice. “My contact ID. In case you ever need anything.”

I accepted it, already partitioning the incoming data out of pure survival instinct. 

‘Not making that same mistake twice…’

I slipped it away, still wondering what he might want with me in the future.

He didn’t linger, however. 

Leon was already halfway to the exit by the time I looked up again, moving with the kind of single-minded purpose that came from finally having the missing puzzle piece in hand.

The moment the door shut behind him, Misha turned toward me.

“Perfect plan, yes. Friend Ela did very well,” she said, pride thrumming through every word.

Then her tufts stilled. Her posture shifted.

“Now,” Misha continued, voice flattening into something unusually serious, “Misha has something serious to discuss before Jade arrives. Misha is… embarrassed. And feels very bad.” 

She paused, her four eyes boring into mine with a level of self-reproach that made my chest hurt with worry.

“Misha has lost Ela’s blood…”

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