CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX - A PARTING GIFT

I shifted my hips, slowly removing my panties beneath the covers, then slipping them off my legs entirely. I... could really go for a smoke. One of Jane's cigarettes, as a reward for a job well done.

But, alas, I was without.

Glancing to the other side of the bed, I was greeted by Fran's slack-jawed expression. She wasn't a cute sleeper, though she didn't snore, and... I may have contributed to her current state.

Truth be told, last night had been a bit of a trip. Yes, I'd wasted a night that I could have spent training or practicing or learning new stuff. But like... what was the point of living at all if I didn't seize the opportunity to pin a pretty corpo princess to a bed and have insanely kinky powerplay sex?

Dammit, wasn't that the end goal of life?

Not that it worked out for me. It took seven long, glorious loops, before I finally started to figure out how to not get Ojou to, uh... spin things around on me.

Look, everyone aspired to a certain image when it came to sex. I aspired to be a top, to be the demanding one, to be in control. It was hot. Obviously, Fran had other ideas, and it took me a while to figure how to keep things going at the kind of pace I'd wanted.

All that experimentation was definitely worth it, though. The princess had a few tricks that I was going to add to my own repertoire.

Anyway! I was imminently satisfied, and the only way to make it better was to sneak out of the room and her home without leaving a trace.

Minus the panties. That was going to haunt her, I knew. Heh.

They were kind of expensive, but like... it was a good psychological test, no? Would she keep them? Send them back? Have them dry-cleaned? Hang them in a frame? Would she sniff them like the degenerate she tried very hard not to appear as?

I didn't know, and I think that it would be funny to find out.

Anyway, I found my pants and things by the couch, got dressed, then snuck out. It was half past five in the morning, and truth be told, I was still damned tired, but... well, it was time to move on.

I had a world to save and such, right? Or at least one city. The Breach went down on the fifth of June. It lasted at least three days, because I'd died on the seventh real late into the night.

It was currently... I checked my augs. Shit.

It was Saturday, the 28th of September.

Doubleshit. I had a driving test yesterday, and I was supposed to pick up some cyberware from somewhere. Urgh.

The test was a dud, of course, but the rest didn't have to be. Sighing, I walked out of Ojou's apartment complex and made my way over to my bike. The moment I was sitting on it I almost started a new Save. It would make the most sense if I wanted a stable place to return to later.

Only...

I rubbed at my chin, then decided against it. I'd Reload to the point before I had a very nice evening with Fran later. Heh. One more trist before I started my 'real' week in earnest.

So, what did I need to do first?

I considered it before turning my bike on and driving out of the parking garage. The first thing would probably be picking up that cyberware. Had the place even been raided? I pulled out my phone at a red light and checked and... yeah, it had. No casualties this time, and fewer arrests, not including the doc. Cool.

Driving across the city before six was a trip. No traffic. Or almost none. I drove past a few cops and some folk out in the middle of the night, but it was surprisingly quiet and pleasant. I made it to the place where I'd asked him to drop things off, went in, searched the washroom, and grinned as I found a box hidden within. Popping it open revealed a small case which held a nice pair of cochlear implants. There was a small silvery brand on the side, and a serial number. Atyacus model F1R3. Exactly what I'd asked for.

Nice!

I'd need to find someone reputable to do the install on these, but they were a good first step.

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Maybe I'd ask Fran for a referral for more cyberware? The gear she had seemed very subtle, but it was unmistakable Orchid Lux brand stuff. She had probably spent enough on the bit of cyberware she had to buy a brand new car. Like, a nice one.

Orchid Lux had a whole thing about luxury and privacy. If I could get an appointment in, then... well, no, could I even afford their stuff?

I checked their site and winced. Their top of the line new eyewear was ninety grand. Damn. I mean, that came with a lifetime warranty, and the installation, and it was supposed to be like, a cut above just about anything else on the market.

The next company down in terms of quality was seventy grand, and they were generally about three or four percent worse. But like... yeah, I kinda wanted that top-shelf stuff.

If I was going to bring it with me into countless loops, then it made sense to want the best.

Ah... oh well. For now, I had something else to look into.

My goal was to spend this next week with my head down, keeping to myself, but doing that would only give me so much information to bring back with me.

From the last time I'd done a week-long loop, I discovered that there was a breach today. Not in the city, but way outside of it.

It was supposed to happen around noon-ish, and was about two hours by car past the edge of the city. Hmm...

I kicked my bike into gear and rode towards the edge of the city, tossing the implants out towards a trash can on the way. I didn't intend to do anything with them this loop, so no point in keeping them for now.

I gassed up my bike, bought a pair of small red gas canisters, filled those as well, and then squeezed them into my saddlebags. Then I grabbed snacks for the road, because... why not?

Once that was done, I punched in the approximate location of the breach into my GPS, and headed out.

Last long-loop, the story had broken at night, and I hadn't gotten as many details as I might have wanted. What I did know was that the breach was next to a small town called Podunky, and it took three hours for a fast-response team to arrive and start securing the area. The breach was estimated to be a low-C high D.

Probably more than I could handle on my own, to be honest, but like... why not check it out? I didn't intend to solo it.

Online talk about it had been kind of conspiratorial. Some people from Podunky blamed some small corp for the whole mess. It would be worth checking out to see if that held up at all.

The upsides for this were simple enough:

Clearing a near-C-Rank portal would mean a lot of magical energy.

Doing so as Deadline would paint me as more of a hero, if only to a small community.

Money! I wanted it, and the stuff in a portal might be worth it.

The downsides:

It would eat up a Saturday.

I wasn't ready to face a C-rank dungeon solo. That one dungeon I'd done with Becky had been a mid-D and it was almost too tough for me.

It was far from home.

And finally, something that I couldn't really place in either side:

The first team to show up to help was from the Storm Chasers, and they didn't exactly like me very much.

So yeah, overall, kind of a complicated situation, but I think the pros outweighed the cons. Plus, what would Fran think when she discovered that I'd snuck out and rushed to the defence of some poor, helpless town?

... I was entirely ready to admit that I was a little messed up in the head if I was risking life and limb just to impress this one woman, but like... that wasn't too uncommon or unusual, was it?

The moment I rode out of Fortress ENE's southern end, I gave my bike as much gas as it would take and... well, it moved a little faster. Maybe I could get a second bike to use as Deadline? Something with a few hundred more CC, because this bike was fun, but it wasn't dangerously fun.

And what was the point of cheating death if I couldn't go fast?

***