Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 2.3

2.3

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“I can barely even tell the difference!” Buck wondered, going through a series of stretches that I had instructed him to do.

“That’s the idea, yes.” I hummed.

It had taken a grand total of forty five minutes. Ten to remove the arm, twenty five to modify it until it was absolutely perfect for its new purpose, and ten more to reinstall the thing.

That was a speed that you couldn’t get anywhere else in this city. Limb replacements took time, and a lot of it, under conventional wisdom.

Conventional wisdom met the wisdom of the Chozo, and lost. Badly.

His new limb was very nearly indistinguishable from his organic arm. The size, the shape, the weight, the colour, and the feeling, it was all the same between both arms. The only thing that would give it away was the durability and the strength it had, and those were two things that weren’t obvious at a glance.

“Over the next two days, the nanites will finish completely integrating your limb into your body.” I explained. “I do not expect any issues-” There wouldn’t be. “- but just in case, please give me a call if you notice anything happening.”

The nanomachines were actually only there to handle the integration into the other Cyberware he had installed. By this point, Buck’s Neuralware had been adapted to completely, so there was no real point doing anything there, but the link between the shoulder and the arm had been damaged in a relatively minor way during the previous installation. It would have fixed itself eventually, but it really wasn’t that much of an expense for me.

I would gain more from the reputation of thorough work than I’d have kept from not spending that amount of resources, honestly.

He reached out, grabbing a small, cylindrical block of metal with his hand. Then, he squeezed, lightly at first, but quickly adding more force.

The metal groaned, and then cracked. Its smooth surface bent and warped, deforming under the forces that hand was capable of.

“Incredible.” He marvelled.

I chuckled. “Come back sometime in the next two or three weeks, and we’ll make sure that everything has gone the way that it should.”

Buck smiled, and-

And a rather sudden clang echoed in from the outside.

“What was that?” Buck asked, eyes suddenly turning towards the door. Alert, just like anybody who frequented the streets of this city needed to be.

“That-” I said, rising from my seat. “- was somebody testing my security system.”

The door opened, the glass returning to its normal shade. I stepped through the passage, and then walked to the entrance.

I stepped outside to find a man laid out on the ground, in front of the Bodega’s doors. It was immediately obvious that he was a ganger, and a pretty heavily chromed up one at that. All of his limbs were made of metal, as was his face on top of that. A bunch of smooth plates, carefully laid out so that they could slide over and under each other, producing a fairly wide range of expressions.

That face did now have a new dent in it, though. The denting left him looking a little stupid, because now his mouth was frozen in a look that wasn’t too dissimilar to a gaping fish.

There was a small group of people watching. Some of them had clearly gone inside my Bodega while I was busy with Buck. As for the ganger, he was scrambling to his feet, so I decided to give him a helping hand.

And by that, I mean I reached down, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and lifted him clean up to my eye level, letting him dangle in the air.

“It hasn’t even been a full hour.” I said, to the very suddenly scared ganger. His hands came up to wrap around my wrists, and I tilted my head to the side as that stupid face stared back at me. “And I already have someone trying to steal from me.”

Blue stepped through the plasma barrier to my side, and I briefly looked over to see that she was holding a box.

“Really?” I asked, turning back the ganger. “A microwave. You didn’t pick anything smaller, less conspicuous, or more valuable. You chose a microwave. It would have been cheaper to just buy it.”

“Hey- Hey!” The ganger tried to bluster. “I didn’t steal shit!”

A drone floated up to me, and projected a hologram.

I -and everybody who was currently watching this spectacle- was promptly treated to a video of the ganger carrying the microwave’s packaging box through the Bodega. He started to sprint nearly the second he rounded the exit, only for Blue to leap over the counter, holding a hand out in a ‘stop’ gesture. “Sir, I must-” Her voice rang out through the speakers, but it was all she managed to say as the ganger tried to run right past her.

‘Tried’ being the operative word. Blue shifted her hand slightly, and her hand slapped into his face. He literally spun, Looney Tunes style, through the air, the box going flying only for Blue to catch it easily. The ganger was less fortunate, and went right out the front door.

The video closed. I turned back towards the ganger, and raised an eyebrow.

“Uhhh...”

“Don’t.” I said, shaking my head. “You’re looking for an excuse, but you made a stupid decision and committed a stupid act. You put no effort into scoping out the place you intended to rob, made no effort to judge your potential success against your failures, came without any form of backup, and had no plan whatsoever. It is, quite frankly, a nearly impressive degree of stupidity, and I don’t know how you managed to survive this long in this city if this is your level of incompetence.”

It boggled the mind. Truly.

“I am detaining you until the NCPD arrives.” I said, and one of my drones floated behind him, the sound of an electric zap echoing out not a moment later. The ganger jerked, and then went limp in my grasp.

Some people, I swear...

“Put that aside, Blue.” I said, my head tilting as I briefly glanced at the robot, who she went right back inside with a cheerful affirmation.

“Handled that quickly.” Buck said, from behind me.

I turned around, and saw him looking at the ganger still in my hand. He focused on my hand, before his eyes shifted my arm, before ultimately going to the open door of the Bodega beside me. “It wasn’t very difficult.” My first thief, of such low quality. Oh well.

He hummed. “Still sounds like a story, though.”

Ah. He’s a Media.

“You may do what you wish, Buck.” I said, before walking past him, still carrying the unconscious ganger.

I opened up the security log as I went down the hallway, and then through the staff door. As expected, my security system had already sent an alert out to the NCPD after an incident had occurred. How long it would take them to respond... Well, in this era, they hadn’t been given over to corporate management completely, so they were indeed actually doing their nominal jobs.

That still left them dramatically outnumbered, often outgunned, and quite busy. Their higher-ups would probably push them over to me as soon as they realised that their oh-so-precious High Value Client was the one who’d sent the message, though.

I promptly added on to that initial alert with the new situation, informing them that the would-be thief had been detained. That would get them to come much more quickly, as there was nothing that the higher ups of the NCPD loved more than easy arrests. It made their statistics look better, after all.

I left him in a chair in the staff room, and left a pair of drones to make sure that would stay there. He wouldn’t be going anywhere, but the appearance that he was being watched over would be useful when the NCPD arrived.

I exited the private hallway, and went back towards the clinic room, now with nobody waiting for me inside.

I took my seat again, leaning back in it as I relaxed. With a thought, an Autgent projected a series of holographic screens, showing the various viewpoints of different cameras throughout the building. The only ones that I was currently interested in were the ones showing the inside of the Bodega, and the outside of the building.

There weren’t that many people inside the Bodega, and a lot of them looked like they almost couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Which was fair, I supposed, considering that almost everything else in this city was designed to gouge people for everything they were worth from start to finish. My simple and straightforward approach was almost more alien than myself.

Other Bodegas would sometimes do it, but no other Bodega was quite like mine.

The sole exception to this disbelief was, unsurprisingly, the one person who already knew that I could back up my boasting with actual results.

Buck was going up and down each aisle, examining almost everything that I had in stock, his eyes glowing a steady orange as, I presumed, he recorded his little adventure. He eventually came to the aisle that had the food, and lingered there for a bit, focusing on the packages that I had laid out.

I watched him deliberate for a bit, before he grabbed a few bags and started loading himself up. He grabbed a bunch of things, from mostly meat and sauces with a side of a few fruits and vegetables, and finally grabbed a cookbook that I kept directly next to that entire aisle since I knew very well that most people in this city didn’t actually know how to cook, relying instead on prepak self-cooking meals, food that could be microwaved, or paid other people to prepare things for them.

Evidently, that particular bit of an inspired decision was now working out.

Good. Hopefully, people will eventually be able to treat themselves to something that doesn’t taste like plastic, heavy metals, or acid.

He took it all to the counter, where Blue rather energetically yet quickly went through the entire order, paid for it, and promptly left.

I elected not to glimpse the future to see how this one works out. However it goes, that’s how it would go.

Either way, business wasn’t going to be particularly busy any time soon, so I waved a hand, making those screens vanish as new ones showed up.

This time, the subjects were significantly more varied. Some of them were status monitors, displaying the various machines, resource supplies, and more of this facility. Downstairs, the biovats were already getting to work replacing what had been bought, and so the fusion generators had kicked their output up a bit as they started to work to replace the elements that would shortly be used up.

It would be a while, and a much greater volume of sales, before they were actually pushed to the point of stressing their capacity though, so I flicked that screen away after making sure it was working properly.

As for the rest, there were a variety of things. A few windows opened to Datapool pages, the vanishingly few that I’d found so far which were actually something approaching useful. For the most part, they consisted of neighbourhood watch-esque info sites, places where people reported on weird shit that was happening around the city. Santo Domingo was... usually relatively tight-knit, so it could function as an early warning system for major activity that didn’t make it into the corporate news, at least.

Aside from that, I was still digging through the absolute minutia of Night City’s legal code. I had gotten through a lot of it over the past week, but I’d been doing mostly focused dives on specific subjects, so I expected I would still be going through the rest of it for a few more days yet.

I had plenty of time to spare.