22.1

January 6, 2070, at 0700
Parque Del Mar, Apartment #317

Crystal's irises flared open on the couch, blazing red. The cocktail of varied blood had propelled her from a greenhorn Fledgling to a middling Commoner. But she had a grip on the Bloodline Rank gig now. From Fledgling to Commoner was all about quantity. Hitting Noble status would call for quality. And to leap Ancient? That required a lab, and her Blood Rituals and Arcane Engineering skills had to be on point.

And Sovereign? Forget about it. Not happening till she dug into her second class after Warlock.

"More layers, more juice," Crystal drawled, launching herself off the sofa. A ping to the Padre confirmed her success. The final crate joined the spent gear in the dungeon. Unlike her Militech ShellShield DX-1D10T, these crates lacked defensive capabilities. They were chum for the fish.

Her new Bloodline Rank did come with perks, like stretching her skills beyond the level ten ceiling of human genius. Twelve was the new cap, but she knew those two extra points would make all the difference.

A level ten was like a prodigy with a blade, but twelve? That was the stuff of legends.

A vivid flash of red in Crystal's eyes recalled Julio Palacio's sick plan to use her as a BD plaything. The higher-ups needed solid proof to act, but she had no such requirements.

But first, a little housekeeping.

The Scav Den in Megabuilding H2 was long overdue for a clear-out. They hadn't budged and had even sprawled into a fourth floor.

It was high time they felt the fury of a lady with a lot of pent-up frustration and a library of very personal BDs, courtesy of her smoking hot pal.

Judy's feelings were no secret, thanks to those revealing braindance. She was game for something more with Crystal. The only reason Crystal hadn't made a move was her level. Without sufficient control, draining Judy could be a fatal slip-up, a pang of guilt she'd never shake off.

Better to rack up some skill points and beef up Icy Veins. She was okay with it as long as it didn't make her robotic. Judy's mortality was a different issue she hadn't touched yet. It didn't scare her too much. With enough eddies, life extension was easy - the Afterlife's owner was living proof.

She wasn't in panic mode. She was banking on her Blood Rituals and Arcane Engineering skills to find a solution. She wouldn't be around forever, but keeping Judy young till she was out? That was doable.

Prep time. She slipped into her badass Jinguji bodysuit and tossed on a coat, eyeshades, silent boots, and teched-up gloves. A smear of red lipstick, the perfect exclamation point. Today's ensemble was a bold, blood-concealing red. Handy for the Scav den cleanup.

She booked a moving company and a storage unit. The loot and storage were bot jobs. Her own Clean cantrip and dungeon flatline body disposal method had the rest covered.

She scooped up Roundrat, stowing him in a coat pocket. Sgt. Fluffyfeathers shot him a glance that read, "Rather you than me, choom." Crystal rolled her eyes; Fluff had to stick around as Judy's last line of defense. Leaving the apartment, she breezed down the stairwell and through the lobby like the boss lady. Thanks to her cleanup of the Animals' pit, security had been ramped up.

Crystal’s eyes were lit with a flame of freshly spilled blood, glinting with dangerous intent as she emerged from the luxury of Parque Del Mar Plaza’s area into the no man’s land thoroughfare leading to Megabuilding H2. The glaring neon lights reflected off her sleek Jinguji bodysuit, her silhouette a spectral wraith against the vivid colors of the drab morning city.

The journey from Parque Del Mar Plaza to Megabuilding H2 would usually be considered a dangerous trek through Noir City's urban sprawl. But for Crystal, it was a mere stroll. The glow of her eyes promised an agonizing demise to any fool willing to challenge her. Crystal set a brisk pace towards Megabuilding H2. No hobos or street urchins blocked her path. Her new Bloodline Rank’s aura exuded a palpable sense of danger. The kind that sent a chill down the spine of any ganger with half a brain. It wouldn't deter the dim-witted, but anyone with street sense would steer clear.

As she strolled through the grimy alleyways, the faint echoes of the neon district gradually gave way to the drab dying shadows of the corporate clans. Drone-fed surveillance and corpo-sec guards lingered like buzzards, predatory eyes scanning for any sign of insubordination. She slipped past without being spotted.

Halfway through her trek, a group of remnant Voodoo Boy gangers tried to stand in an underpass's murky shadows. They used some weird tech to detect her, but it fizzled into sparks as she watched. Decked in second-rate augmentations and high on something cheap, they probably thought they had a good chance. Crystal's lips curled into a wicked smirk; she had a different notion.

"Scram," Crystal's voice resonated, laced with a nasty warning, "or you're gonna be this morning's red rain." It was less of a sign and more of a taunt.

Unmoved, the lead ganger, a hulking cyborg with a skull for a face, cackled wildly. "We'll see who's rainin', sweetheart."

In a blur of movement, Crystal was upon them. Her bodysuit shimmered as she danced through their ranks, a deadly ballet of violence. A single sword easily cut through flesh and metal, and blood spattered the cold asphalt. The final scream of the moronic leader rang out, abruptly cut off as Crystal's hand pierced his chest, ripping out his cybernetic heart.

The rest of the tiny amount of trash left scattered, leaving their fallen comrades behind. Crystal stood alone amongst the carnage, her scarlet eyes burning brighter than ever behind her shades. With a flick of her wrist, the ganger's heart was flung into the underpass wall, a gruesome warning for the others.

She needed to put points in Icy Veins.

Unfazed, Crystal continued, the memory of the ganger's face reflected in his still-beating cybernetic heart bringing a wicked smirk to her lips.

When the silhouette of Megabuilding H2 rose against the new day’s sky, Crystal slowed her pace. She gazed up at the towering monolith, a fortress of chrome and glass nestled amidst the decaying urban sprawl.

With a deep breath, she sauntered closer. It was a behemoth of steel and concrete, intimidating even by Noir City's standards. Crystal's crimson gaze narrowed as she surveyed the patrolling drones as watched them move in strict patterns. These were not delivery drones but repurposed sentinels for the Scavs. Her mind began weaving a plan that would get her in quietly and end with the nightmares being evicted permanently.

"Time to shine, Roundy." Crystal winked, nudging Roundrat onto the grimy concrete. The rat seemed to defy gravity in response, hovering a few inches off the ground before shooting off like a pixelated rocket. After a few beats, Crystal's vision flooded with new credentials, her status in the Megabuilding’s authority hierarchy climbing at ludicrous speed.

"Fluff's got some freaky tricks up her feathers, eh?" she murmured, her lips tugging into an amused smirk.

Crystal barely broke stride, stride confidently into the Megabuilding like she was the one signing the paychecks. Because, for the next full-day rotation until the server update sniffed out her stunt, she might as well have been.

Her eyes flickered as floors suspected to house the Scav nest glowed in her vision. A soft mental nudge and the building’s alarms were put to sleep. Even if someone heard the commotion and hit the panic button, they'd get nothing but an automated lullaby. NCPD was babysitting Wellspring 708 while Crystal took a leisurely elevator ride up. Courtesy of Sgt. Fluffyfeathers and her newly forged backdoor into the Militech Minotaur guarding the ground floor.

Fluff was just as overcautious as Crystal.

As the elevator hummed, taking her upwards, Crystal pinged Fluff, wondering how her feathered friend managed this bit of magic. An image of Roundrat gnawing through a specific tangle of wires popped up, the rat's fur puffing up like a cartoon. It took the little fellow a few tries, it seemed.

Crystal alighted one floor above the Scav infestation. Floors Sixty-Three to Fifty-Nine were their grimy operating rooms, doubling as chop shops. Conveniently, these floors had a straight chute to the building's garbage dump. Keeping an operation, this dirty hush-hush took more than a few greased palms.

"Fluff, start digging for dirt. The money kind," Crystal instructed through their spiritual link as she carved an inverted reverse pyramid into the bathroom floor of an empty apartment. With her nails hardened into lethal points, she lifted the cut-out slab, revealing the bathroom on floor Sixty-Three. These megabuildings were built like damn tetras puzzles. She bet her last eddy it had something to do with saving dough.

And right now, the only thing that mattered was that the bathroom below was empty. Slipping in, she replaced the plug, leaving no trace of her grand entrance. "Got eyes for me, Fluff?" she asked, reaching out through their connection.

"Showtime," Crystal drawled, her left eye lighting up with a wireframe view of the apartment, tagging all lifeforms on the floor. With that, she settled in to play the waiting game. No need to brawl with the two full-chrome borgs per floor. The downside of swapping meat for metal was that metal was so much easier to hack. Like a digital toxin, her Daemon code snakes seeped through the security network tether every borg maintained with the Scav's mainframe.

Bit by byte, they choked on their synthetic dreams, their electronic life force smothered in the digital cradle. Meanwhile, the trio of lightly chromed losers who wandered into the bathroom Crystal was staked out in never wandered out.

After a few hours, all the Scav's borg guards had been flatlined. The doors to each apartment were sealed shut with soft clicks. A quick recon confirmed only three Scavs were out playing hooky. Then Crystal got down to business.

Inside the Scav den, urban decay and casual brutality had hijacked what used to be home for many. The air was heavy with the stench of rotting meat, which Crystal, with her vampiric senses, found mildly disgusting. Her lips twisted into a wicked grin, her eyes a foreboding crimson glow in the dim light as her pupils dilated. Her hand tightened on the grip of her darkblade rapier, its edge shimmering with spectral darkness. This wasn't a pit of despair. This was her playground.

Her boots' hollow echoes against the cold concrete floor marked her entrance from the bathroom, darkened blade at the ready. Each step was a concerto of lethal stealth, her entire being a vortex of predatory energy. The first Scav in the living room barely had time to gasp before her rapier impaled him. With a deft flick, she withdrew the blade, his body relaxing in death onto the floor with a muted thud.

Graceful as a ballerina in a warzone, she sidestepped a volley of bullets from a trio shouting in Russian, her silhouette a blur of deadly elegance. Another Scav, chromed for speed, made a futile charge. A single thrust of her sword through his augmented ticker turned off his lights for good.

The last two barely lasted a breath, their dying gurgles an eerie serenade in the deathly silence as they were methodically converted to crimson still-life. As she danced her deadly waltz, blood splashed, metal sparked, and by the end, the first floor was an abstract art installation featuring twenty bodies. The tang of iron hung heavy in the air.

Crystal had no worries about the floors below catching wind of her dance. Roundrat had jammed all outgoing comms from her kill zones. She cut open another hole in the bathroom floor and kicked it open, announcing her arrival on the second floor with a resounding crash. She landed rapier-first, silencing a stunned man on the throne.

It was the wrong way to go, in Crystal’s opinion.

Exiting the bathroom, she was greeted by an urban battlefield, Scavs huddled behind makeshift barricades. With all the borgs silenced, there was no need for stealth or silence. She initiated Dark World, the pulse of cybernetic doom radiating from her. Their reinforcement of the doors made it impossible to escape.

The most heavily chromed guards felt it first, their systems short-circuiting under the onslaught of her electronic plague. Their futile attempts to recalibrate their vision were cut short by her sword's cold, dark blade. The remaining Scavs could only watch in stunned disbelief as their muscle dropped like flies, their shock morphing into raw terror. Clearing the second floor was a breezier affair than the first.

The third floor was a massacre on the loop. By now, the surviving Scavs had an inkling of the shitstorm heading their way, but it mattered squat. Crystal sliced through their defenses like a vibro knife through old tires, her rapier painting a bloody trail to the final floor.

She kicked the hole open to the fourth floor, landing softly amidst the cold corpses of the Borg guards. In the ensuing screams, only the whisper of her rapier and the dying cries of her enemies echoed.

When the last enemy was silent, Crystal's grip on her rapier relaxed, the dark metal coated in the life essence of her victims. Amidst the carnage, her eyes blazed brighter than ever. The Scav den was scrubbed, with only three minnows left to fry.

She unlocked the doors to each level with a flick of the On/Off cantrip, stepping aside as the clean-up bots moved in. In less than an hour, the apartment was stripped to its bones. Everything was cataloged for later scrutiny. Even the battle-scared floors were patched up with robotic precision. Crystal couldn't help but be impressed. She was paying the extra cost now for the future payday later.

A quick five stops and five castings of Clean later, all traces of her destructive dance were gone.

Staring down the gaping maw of the Megabuilding's center shaft, a twisted thought bubbled up. "Fluff, reckon we can sic the Minotaur on our last trio?" As her favorite chicken clucked, affirmative the fate of the last three was written into code. Crystal turned her attention to the two messages that had been kept suppressed during the slaughter.

Level Up!

5 Attribute Points gained!

5 Skill Points gained!

Warlock Level Gained!

Devil Sight unlocked!

A second message slightly different also appeared.

Level Up!

5 Attribute Points gained!

5 Skill Points gained!

Warlock Level Gained!

Ability Score Improvement traded for Weapon Sharpening!

New Two -Handed Longsword form unlocked!

"Can the universe handle more than One?" Crystal teased, her gaze smoldering as it roved over the lethal elegance of her new blade. With a sigh of satisfaction, she let it dissolve, vanishing into the ether from whence it would return when needed.

Slipping out of the Megabuilding was a piece of synth cake, but Crystal was perched on a stool at a nearby street vendor, chomping down on a soy dog with all the fixings as she kept an eye on the entrance. It wasn't precisely patience; more like calculated anticipation.

As her trio of final marks stumbled into the view, the Militech Minotaur snapped to attention. "Halt! You're under arrest for..." it blared in a synthesized monotone. Before it could finish, the spray of bullets mowed them down. Three Scavs, barely holding their 'drunk' comrade upright, took their last bewildered breaths before they hit the pavement. The NCPD, as predictable as a Netrunner on stim, reassured the rubberneckers that they were doing their job, promptly calling in a body wagon to clean up the mess.

Crystal watched, a wicked grin spreading across her face before sauntering off toward her digs. Her hired synths pinged her the coordinates of the warehouse holding her newly gained goodies, which she promptly passed along to Padre. With her pockets bulging with eddies, she was in no rush to haggle for a more minor cut.

Now, the only task of fundamental importance was allocating a fair number of points into Icy Veins. Just enough to cool her jets but not enough to plunge her world into a deep freeze.

Once safely ensconced in the sanctuary of her high-rise apartment, Crystal sank into the comfort of her sofa, her gaze settling on the urban sprawl below. Sgt. Fluffyfeathers, her ever-reliable cyber hen, ran a psychological profiling program, flashing an array of images designed to tweak her responses.

Her body twitched and squirmed subtly, a dance of tension as her emotions roiled and twisted, responding to the simulation. Once the profiling was complete, she did what she'd planned: allocated a solitary point into Icy Veins.

Serenity.

A lake of tranquility, chilled but not frozen solid, reflected in her mind. The profiling program cycled through again, but her responses this time were smooth, a languid pulse against the harsh edges of the emotionally stimulating program. Like a gnawing rat in her neural circuitry, the relentless undercurrent of irritation had gone silent. Just one point, and it had disappeared, fading into the static like an offline radio station.

It was downright bone-chilling.

Not the effect itself but the brutal reality that it had to exist. Her recent run-ins with Noir City's underbelly made it crystal clear: Icy Veins wasn't just a luxury but a necessity. Did one have to max out to twenty points to survive the endless, grinding centuries in this chrome and neon reality?

Crystal wasn't sure if she wanted to uncover that hard-edged truth.