The Sun Reborn Ch. 17 (Cyberpunk 2077)

A/N: Hanako POV!

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Sitting behind her desk in her office, Hanaka Arasaka stares at the man who has just bowed to her. The bodyguard who failed her father. Even after two weeks, it was still hard for her to believe that her father was dead, truth be told. Saburo Arasaka might have been old, but he was also an institution. And she knew he’d had no intention of dying any time soon.

Hanako’s relationship with her father had been a complicated one. She loved him and had no intentions of disappointing or displeasing him. She was his youngest and his only daughter, and she had been raised to respect and obey her father, the Patriarch of the Arasaka Family, above all else.

… Perhaps if she was the chronological age that she looked, she would even still abide by that mandate. However, despite everyone viewing her as a beloved Princess, the innocent maiden of the Arasaka Corporation to be put up on a pedestal and left untouched… Hanako could only pay lip service to that ideal. It was all a façade at this point.

The facts were, she was nearing eighty years of time on this planet, and despite her youthful, pristine appearance, Hanako had seen too much and experienced too much to remain her father’s perfect Princess forever. No, for all that she loved him, for all that she had no desire to displease her father, Hanako nevertheless had her own ambitions, her own agenda.

Now that Saburo was gone… things could begin moving forward in a lot of ways. However, there was just one major issue with that. Yorinobu. She loved her brother just as much as she loved her father. Truly, she did. And yet… Hanako was perhaps one of the only people alive who knew why her father was in Night City in the first place. What he was here to do.

Her father’s death and Yorinobu’s rise did not sit well with her, in spite of her love for her brother. Things… did not add up. Perhaps that was why Hanako had decided to entertain this meeting, arranged off the books. Perhaps that was why she was willing to allow the bodyguard who failed to safeguard her father’s life to walk in her presence without consequence… for now.

That didn’t mean she was going to take it easy on him, however.

“What do you want, Takemura?”

The man hesitates for a brief moment, before clearing his throat.

“It is about your father’s killer, Arasaka-sama.”

Hanako narrows her eyes at that, letting the temperature in the room drop another few degrees as she directs every bit of her iciness towards Takemura. She can tell from long experience that what he has to tell her isn’t something she wants to hear. She can also tell that what he has to tell her is something she NEEDS to hear.

But even with that latter realization, Hanako puts up a token effort of resistance.

“My brother is the CEO of the Arasaka Corporation now, Takemura. And as I’m given to understand, he is the one who commanded you to find our father’s killer, come hell or high water. It is the only reason you are still part of Arasaka, if I’m not mistaken.”

Goro Takemura inclines his head, shame written all over his face for his failure.

“Yes, Arasaka-sama.”

It is good that he feels shame. But not good enough. Not by a long shot. She is a woman of nearly eighty years of age… and yet, in some ways Hanako recognizes her emotional growth has been stagnated. She misses her father dearly.

“Then tell me, why are you coming to me instead of bringing information about my father’s killer to my brother? Why arrange for this meeting with my bodyguard to slip under my brother’s notice?”

Lifting his head, Takemura looks her right in the eye.

“Because, Arasaka-Sama… your brother is your father’s killer.”

Something stabs into Hanako’s heart. Her first instinct is to order Oda to kill his counterpart. He would do it too, without hesitation and without mercy. Whether Takemura would just lay down and die is another question, but Hanako herself is a self-taught Netrunner with over half a century of experience. Between the two of them, her and Oda working together could put him down in a heartbeat.

… Thinking it out and playing out the execution in her head does a lot to help Hanako calm herself down and refrain from that impulsive reaction. In the end, she does not order Takemura’s death, despite his words. Mostly… because she can taste the truth in them already, as much as it pains her.

Yorinobu stole the Relic. He forced their father’s hand, making them both come all the way to Night City in order to retrieve it. The details of the Secure Your Soul program could not be allowed to reach the public and Hanako knew that her father had been ready to take drastic measures to retrieve the Relic from Yorinobu.

She had asked her father to let her go in his stead, but he had refused. She had asked her father to be lenient with Yorinobu, but he had not been able to tell her what he intended to do.

All of that said… what Yorinobu claimed to have happened made little sense. His official story was that his father had been poisoned. But then… who were those others in his penthouse suite? If Saburo were poisoned, why did mercenaries under the employ of a Fixer like Dexter DeShawn need to be inside of the penthouse?

It simply didn’t add up, and Hanako wasn’t buying any of it. So yes, some part of her, deep down, had pondered whether Yorinobu had arranged their father’s assassination. However… that wasn’t what Takemura was saying. He didn’t say Yorinobu hired their father’s killer. He said Yorinobu WAS Saburo’s killer.

Hanako lets out a shuddering breath, still watching the failure of the bodyguard cooly. She lets nothing of her internal chaos show on the outside. Outwardly, she is as calm and collected as ever, as icy and sharp as ever. She stares at Goro Takemura wordlessly for a long moment before finally responding.

“A heavy accusation, Takemura. Does it come with proof, or is this merely the flailing of a desperate man, drowning under the guilt of his own failures?”

Her words are so harsh and cutting that Takemura actually winces, his shame growing even further. And yet, his back remains straight, his shoulders squared. He does not buckle under the pressure.

“There is a recording, Arasaka-sama.”

A recording. Hanako’s lips purse together, and she nods to Oda. There’s a moment where the two bodyguards exchange data. Takemura sends Oda the recording, where Hanako knows that her bodyguard will isolate it and pick it over with a digital fine tooth comb for any traps or backdoors. She has full faith in his ability to make sure the recording is clean, mostly because she’s the one who gave him those abilities. She wrote the code to his ICE; she designed and oversaw the construction of his cyberware. Above all else, Sandayu Oda is HERS.

Finally, Oda looks to Hanako and nods. He doesn’t need to say anything else. He sends over the recording and Hanako accepts it. Of course, she does her own sweep as well, though thanks to her skill it probably looks like she just trusts her bodyguard as barely half a second passes before her eyes alight with a blue glow and she begins watching the recording.

What plays out… causes her heart to plummet. Believing is one thing. Seeing it with her own two eyes, knowing it to be the truth… that’s another entirely. The video is through the eyes of a thief hidden in the large server pillar of her brother’s penthouse suite. It’s short, but it shows everything it needs to.

Her father arrives. Her father sends Takemura and Smasher away. Her father and her brother talk… and Yorinobu acts. He kills Saburo. He smashes Saburo’s head against the glass, unknowingly committing murder in front of eyewitnesses hidden just out of his view.

The video ends with Yorinobu declaring his father has been poisoned, despite Saburo’s skull being caved in, despite his corpse being right at Yorinobu’s feet.

Heinous. Utterly heinous. No part of her wants to see it again, but Hanako rewatches it, nevertheless. She doesn’t just rewatch it several times, she outright dissects it. People might see her as Arasaka’s Princess, as a pristine doll put on a pedestal, forever beautiful and untouched by the harsh realities of the world around her.

That was a nice little lie perpetuated by her father. In truth, Hanako was one of the better Netrunners in the world. She did not claim to be among the very best, for there was always a bigger fish, but she certainly put herself in the upper echelons. Certainly, she knew how to discover is a recording had been doctored, altered, or faked in any way. Better even then Takemura at such things.

… It’s not fake though. The recording is real. Yorinobu murdered their father. The questions she had over what happened that night are all answered now, and she almost wishes they hadn’t been.

Though, this brings up a new situation entirely. The Relic.

“… You retrieved this recording from the thief after tracking them down and killing them, I presume?”

She would need to find out where he’d dumped the body and- Takemura hesitates… before bowing his head and shaking it in shame.

“No, Arasaka-sama.”

What? Hanako fixes her father’s former bodyguard with a narrowed eye glare.

“Explain.”

“I tracked the thief to a place called the No-Tell Motel, where he had already killed his Fixer, Dexter DeShawn.”

Hanako remains silent. That was not the story Takemura had told about how he’d found DeShawn, but she supposes she shouldn’t be surprised, all things considered.

“I am ashamed to admit that he got the drop on me, turning my cyberware against me, bringing me to my knees, and forcing me to watch that recording against my will.”

That admission causes Hanako’s eyes to widen imperceptibly. That shouldn’t have been possible. She hadn’t handwritten Takemura’s ICE as she had Oda’s, mostly because her father failed to see the value in her skills as a Netrunner, and had others in Arasaka do it. Even still, she’d at least looked it over, and knew how good it was.

Disabling Takemura, turning his cyberware against him, and forcing him to watch her father’s death like that… that spoke to a certain level of competence that did not match up with either of the thieves that she’d just seen in the recording of her father’s murder.

“He also prevented me from sending a message to Yorinobu announcing that I’d tracked down his father’s killer, as well as showed me the three Arasaka Cyber-Assassins that your brother assigned to follow and kill me if I got too close to the truth, Arasaka-sama.”

Of course. Hanako purses her lips together, not really surprised that Yorinobu wanted to tie up loose ends. But then, by that logic, she was a loose end. Would her own brother have her killed? She would have sworn up and down that he would never do that… but he’d killed their father. So what wasn’t he capable of, really?

“Furthermore, he claimed to know Yorinobu’s true intentions as well, Arasaka-sama. He claimed that Yorinobu would be happy to leave me on a… a wild goose chase for as long as possible, because it would give him all the more time to finalize his plans of dismantling the Arasaka Corporation from within.”

… What?

For the first time since this conversation began, Hanako is truly shocked. But only for a moment. Then, that feeling of shock passes, replaced by an ice cold sense of certainty. It didn’t make sense, but only because she was looking at it through the lens of her own perspective and life experiences.

Yorinobu was the Emperor now. For what purpose would anyone give up the amount of power he had? If she were in his position… but that’s just it. They are not the same person. And despite their physical youth, chronologically, they’ve both been alive for a very long time.

Her brother well and truly hated her father. He’s hated Saburo for decades at this point. He might have paid lip service from time to time, but Hanako is close enough to Yorinobu to know that that hatred never truly went away.

It wouldn’t be enough for him to merely kill Saburo. No, he would want to destroy everything that their father had ever built and damn the consequences.

So long as he moved carefully and slowly, he could do it too. Though, now that she knew his true plans, Hanako could move to block him. She could work against him covertly.

Yorinobu’s intentions to sabotage their family’s corporation are good to know, but not the greatest immediate concern, Hanako decides. In fact, not even his murder of their father is the greatest immediate concern.

“This thief… this mercenary… what is his name? What does he want? Where is he now?”

He had the Relic. THAT was the greatest, most immediate concern. They’d found the Relic’s casing in the maintenance shaft of Konpeki Plaza. They had not found the Relic itself. Which meant this man still had it. The man who had witnessed her father’s murder held the future of their corporation in his grasp. She needed to know more about him.

“His name is V, Arasaka-sama. He swore to me that he intends to remain in Night City. He seemed entirely unconcerned about facing retribution from us. He also told me to call him when… when we needed a bullet put in your brother’s head. He said he would be happy to do it… for the right price.”

Hanako’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. That did not sound like the slightly panicked rookie mercenary who had somehow managed to get all the way into her brother’s suite in Konpeki Plaza. She needed to know more about this man. She needed to find out what he'd done with the Relic, and where it was now as well.

... But at the same time, she had to be careful. Yorinobu was watching her. Hanako had already been aware of that, but now she knew why he was keeping such a close eye on her. His reasons were twofold, but out of fear that she might learn or simply decide he’d killed their father, and also because he didn’t want her to learn of his plans to sabotage the corporation from within.

If she put herself out there too much, she risked exposure. Continuing to use Takemura as a go between was probably for the best. And yet… there was a third option as well. A risky, somewhat rash option. But for those same reasons, Yorinobu would never expect it. The very idea wouldn’t ping on his radar whatsoever…

She could call upon her niece, Michiko. The other woman was not part of Hanako’s faction within Arasaka, but Hanako was still sure she wouldn’t abide by Yorinobu’s wishes to burn it all to the ground. Michiko could move where Hanako couldn’t, at this point. And yet, it would be undeniably risky to bring the other woman in on this. Michiko knew nothing about the details behind the Secure Your Soul program…

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A/N: Also just in case there's any confusion, because there was for me, I looked and as far as I could tell, Hanako seemingly does not learn about Saburo's engram until after she's kidnapped in the original timeline. That's why she doesn't know about it here either.