PRIVATE Cup of Noodles

[Catriona Devine]

What would you die for?

Catriona, once upon a time, might have hoped that she would have gone out in a blaze of principled glory, maybe somewhere at the forefront of a riot, raging against the franchising of their entire existence and sticking it to the profit-driven corpo hand strangling them all. At least, that was the fantasy, the most idealised vision of self that would die for something worthwhile. The reality was probably in the decline of flesh, ill health from an occupational hazard, and five years off of partial retirement. Maybe a car wreck, fast and clean if you were lucky. We're sorry, Miss Devine, there's been an accident.

She'd never fathomed she'd die for a cup of noodles.

A cup of noodles she didn't even get to fucking eat, the styrofoam cup now upturned on the ground, contents splattered everywhere like expelled guts. Not that it was the core issue of the day, no, that was the DR-5 Nova barrel that Devine was practically fellating.

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong fucking existence.

The 24/7 corner shop didn't seem like the best place on Northside to hit up, everything worth robbing behind heavy-duty shutters and the cashier (and the cash) in relative safety behind inches of bullet-proof plexiglass. Didn't stop Badger's boys—boosters with shit for brains and metal for flesh. For all their chaos and desire to get chromed up and shed humanity, all of Maelstrom's decapitated hydra heads with twitching circuits looked exactly the same. Rather thoughtfully, this clan sported white strips on the backs of their tattered leather jackets. It might have been cute, you know, if they weren't total fucking psychos.

There

were only two of them. Little and large. Low ranking judging by the fact that they hadn't traded the flesh of their noses for chrome just yet. The big one was rampaging down the cramped aisles, stimmed up and taking it out on the shelves with his ripper hand, leaving a trail of destruction and plastic packaging (plastic food, too) strewn in his wake. The smaller one Catriona was more intimate with, his arm around her neck and revolver in her mouth as he 'negotiated' with the cashier.

"Give us the deets, fuckface! Or I'll be paintin' your store with this fleshbag's brains!"

Fleshbag. Devine might have appreciated not being sexually objectified were she not fucking terrified. Through Nova-stifled whimpers, her eyes, wide and wavering, pleaded with the cashier to divulge whatever information they wanted so she wasn't Jackson Pollock'd over plexiglass.

"I don't know the guy," the man, an apathetic type weathered by Northside living and low-income working, replied with a shrug before folding his arms across his chest. Clearly, he felt safe enough on the other side of the thick plastic. "Think you've got your wires crossed, pal. Don't know nothing about nobody."

"Little birdie gave us YOUR name. Right after we pulled off his fucking wings!" For emphasis, the gun was thrust deeper into her mouth, practically touching her tonsils and causing Catriona's gag reflex to kick in alongside an instinctual fear warble. "Said you hired the punk to clear out the clan!"

"BURN IT DOWN!" The rampaging behemoth in the back unhelpfully bellowed, having made his way to the fridges as the soda cans faced his wrath.

"And I'm telling you, I don't know shit, chromedome. I just work here."

A hair-trigger temper pulled the revolver out of her mouth and pointed it directly at the plexi, firing off a deafening round that immediately impotently bounced off the surface before careening into an off-fixture display of screamsheets. The courage left her legs, and Catriona's body attempted to slump to the floor, only to be held up by the unyielding arm around her neck that squeezed in response.

Fuck fuck FUCK!

 

[Callum]

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​

Location: Northside, Elevated Position

The roof of the Biotechnica building offered a surprisingly contrasting view for an area that had been otherwise condemned to corporate interests. Juxtaposed with the unrestrained contempt the booster gangs had for anything not resembling synthetic skin molded around metal, the view was a nauseating amalgamation of neon lights and megabuildings with foothills of sprawling ghettos and colorful favelas. What commerce that remained was tethered to the economy of need for the Arasaka and NID dockworkers, leaving little resources for those inhabitants that had no means to escape the industrial tumor in Night City.

To the southeast, the silhouette of the corporate plaza stood riddled and plastered with vertical advertisement bars, corporate logos in gold, and red streams teasing out the not so nuanced plot to 3Mouths 1 Desire, starring Sasha Devon. Drive or be driven. The array was reminiscent of the romanticized old world, introducing a carnival coming to town with dancing beams of light. Except here, the shows danced across a user interface and the clowns carried iron and chrome.

Skewed by the cat's cradle of utility lines running from the Megabuilding WN1985 and connecting to one of the prominent skeletal antenna structures, the Maglev passed by to the sound of ungreased metal against metal. It was propped up by large struts of orange and gunmetal, weaving through the different classes and hierarchies of Night City like a cat prowling through trash. And it was currently obscuring my view.

I adjusted the zoom on my Kiroshi optics, scoping out the shuttered Tom's Diner, El Dorado Pawn Shop, and cracked brownie asphalt accentuated by tufts of grass where the parking lines used to be. Broken down vehicles, painted in the orange glow of sodium bulb street lights, were points of congregation for vagrants and targets for Maelstrom and its various incestuous clans. Which was the very same for the small FoodScape that had set up at the corner of Martin Street, beneath the glowing red billboard for Combaticab and in the shadow of a steel smoke stack, billowing fire into the metal sky.

The gig had sold itself. New store owner needed to shore up some issues regarding an overlay enthusiastic band of boosters that I had started affectionately referring to as White Stripes. I couldn't be bothered to keep up with the actual names, clans within gangs were snuffed out as quickly as they sprung up. But by all accounts, they seemed to be fervently addled by rampant abuse of Black Lace, which made them problematic for direct engagement. Hard to take down an idiot who could eat a Satara round and complain to the chef on the meager serving size.

When it was all said and done, the job hadn't been clean. Not that I minded when it came to these assholes but at the end of the day, a loose thread can unravel a sweater. And recognizing that this small corner shop had the chance to circle back to Vista Del Rey meant that it needed to be handled. And just as I was thinking things were getting quiet enough to abandon this operation for now, several Chavillion's pulled up to the sound of rubber squealing, like rats rushing a piece of cheese.

Spoiler: Text Chat

​

Normally, the shop owner was a cool cucumber but with what he was seeing come through the sliding glass doors, I wouldn't blame him if panic reared its head. Two enforcers in the building and juiced to the gills, four more outside, spread evenly across three clumsily parked vehicles. Two Decurions and one Jefferson, all tagged in the red Maelstrom cybernetic skulls along the side panels and hood. Fuck, might as well have been targets. As I laid down to obscure my position, I pulled my hood up, extended the rifle tripod, and set the sights to interface with the neural smart link. Pretty soon I'd know whether these hoppers preferred to piss sitting down but in the meantime, I popped off a single round to the gas cap on the Jefferson.

That did the job. The idiot contingent security detail of four hopheaded pin cushions, sporting pulsars with barrels previously aimed towards the sky, scurried like roaches after seeing light for the first time and took cover behind their vehicles. I found that interesting, considering the sputter of fire now ejecting from the back of the Jefferson. It had been a second since I took a dive into the innards of a whip, but last I recalled, that's where the fuel tank lived.

---

 

[Catriona Devine]

"Here's how it's gonna go, gonk," the revolver-toting maniac threatened, haphazardly waving his iron about like an extension of his own dick, "you're gonna fucking spill the deets on your little pal, or we're gonna start cuttin' parts off this cunt."

Oh, there it was, with the cunt rhetoric. Quite frankly, she preferred fleshbag, but perhaps more pressingly, Catriona preferred having all her parts attached. It was one thing to have your brains blown out for a cup of instant ramen from a roach-infested convenience store but another thing entirely to get chopped up for it. She blanched, ears still ringing and ready to hurl fear-drenched bile onto the floor, and once more implored the shop owner with pleading eyes and frantic, unintelligible squawks.

"FRONT ROW FUCKIN' SEATS!" Hollered ripper-hand as he crashed up the aisle like a man-made disaster, ramming into the plexiglass at full tilt before bouncing off it like the slug before. Devine swore she saw the whole set-up budge an inch; by the bulge in his eyes, it looked like the shopkeeper saw it, too. Tweedle-Death and Tweedle-Destruction seemed oblivious. Fuck, she was almost tempted to tell them to keep ramming it if they wanted their man, if only out of self-preservation. This bastard wasn't going to save her.

"Then we're gonna block the exits and-"

"BURN IT FUCKIN' DOOOOOWN!"

FWOOOOOM!

As if the bolthead had managed to manifest combustion through the sheer frenzy of his will, a very sudden and thunderous explosion flared outside, shattering the windows and glass door of the shop (and going to show that they spent all the security budget on the inside and skimped on the tempered glass for outside).

Everybody inside was caught completely unawares; the shop owner heroically ducked behind his counter, the smaller thug leapt back with Catriona in tow (fuck!) and began blasting mindlessly into the street, and the big guy charged outside like a pyromaniac bull, his chainripper arm revving in the cacophony of sound as alarms started to blare. In three terrifying minutes, her manner of death had changed once again, from revolver mouthwash to Northside chainsaw massacre to collateral damage in a firefight. Fan-fucking-tastic.

 

[Callum]

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​

Location: Northside, Elevated Position

The Jefferson made a sound like someone sneezing as the fire whiffed into the bullet hole, sucked back into the engine as the vehicle ran idle. I readjusted the zoom on the Nekomata as the smart link connected and the gestalt overlay populated with tidbits of information about each one of the would-be assailants. Name, profession, bounty if they had one, worth of the bounty, and specific crimes committed. It essentially stopped just short of giving a mothers maiden name. Though at this point, I'd be surprised if their mom wasn't a chromed out drone enforcer flying around on whatever the fuck magic kept those things in the air.

The car knocking that followed seemed to be lost on the White Stripes as they ducked behind their vehicles, firing off shots towards the pedestrians at a Bliss Exotica storefront, flashing screens that interlaced a 15% discount on a sun drenched vacation to Somalia with animal themed sextoy cyberware. The residents ducked and took cover in a Levantine Cuisine cafe just around the corner as the stray bullets sunk deep into the flashing glass, sending it shattering to the ground as the audio looped over on itself. Be be be, the elephant you want to be.

And just like that, I was back in the Red Peaks, celebrating a memorialization for the Aldecados founding and base between Los Angeles and Mexico City. Only difference here is that instead of sipping beers by the fire to the sound of cohetones rocketing into the sky and the slow strum of an out-of-tune guitar, I got glass and burning petrol and the pleasure of knowing that with one car down, the next two were likely on the chopping block. And caught in the explosion, I saw two of the enforcers go down like wilted grass, splayed over the burning hood of the Jefferson like hood ornaments. The other two were knocked back like tumbleweeds against ramshackle fencing, caught in a strong gust of sandstorm wind, and smacked against the concrete wall that framed the now broken glass of the storefront.

Gunfire whizzed out through the store front as the cyberbear sized human crashed through the threshold, knocking the burning Jefferson out of his way and sending the dead White Stripes flopping and bouncing across the cracked asphalt. Deflated bouncing balls, coming to a sliding stop with two new brushstrokes of red to direct traffic where not to go.

Fuck me.

I clicked the rifle and held my hand over the exhaust port. Blue steam ejected from the square hole, big enough to fit a half eaten sandwich in, and fogged up the electro plating on my hand. Any 'ganic material caught in the exhaust would have felt the brunt of that scalding steam, which was fortunate for me. Helped conceal the stupid ass LED light they placed in there to frame the ejection.

As the smart link reconnected, I felt a sensation run through my arm that wasn't too far off from the feeling of licking an alkaline battery. I cracked off another shot. This time I held the trigger down to boost the charge before aiming it squarely at the chest of the brute that was crashing across the street, evidently wielding an arm-rigged chainsaw. I could get hung up on the better part of day sorting out the logistics of that but settled for the simplest answer. I wasn't dealing with a particularly smart enemy.

The shot hit with the full stopping power of the rifle, splattering the ground with blood spatter and flecks of synthetic skin. To the rifle's credit, it gave the charging bull something to think about but as it stood, thinking didn't really seem like a top priority. More of a growling and screaming sort but by the looks of it, he at least felt the sting. And where steam and smoke lifted from the bullet hole as the behemoth took a moment to breath in deep and recollect his berserk, skin was peeled back and torn to reveal circuitry, nano-plating, and subdermal armor. This wasn't just some random goon, this was someone's favorite. And he was pissed and likely a missed dose away from fledgling cyberpsychosis.

Had to respect the game.

"I'll FUCKIN KILL EVERYONE HERE!" He howled as he turned his attention to the previous pedestrians, likely now caught somewhere between cowering in fear at the Mediterranean cafe and the sudden hankering for Hamras eezybeef shawarma. He took off charging towards the grouping of dilapidated stores to the cadence of the Foodscape alarm sirens as another began to walk out of the store, holding someone by the throat. That must have been the customer that the shop owner was referring to, someone caught in the crossfire between booster gangs and gigs.

I reached into my jacket and extracted a small hand-held device. Formed and molded for grip, I depressed the thumb and middle finger as the counter started clicking down from five. A quick toss in the trajectory of the running White Stripe, the grenade would hopefully land right in his path and shut down any nanite recovery and stamina boosters for long enough to bring him down. I kept aim at the hostage situation but as it stood, there was no way that the little one would have missed the glowing blue arc cast by the tossed EMP grenade. I had one shot left before a reload but the chance of collateral was high.

---

 

[Catriona Devine]

In her less humble moments, Catriona considered herself to be a graceful creature of limitless empathy; however, she couldn't even begin to understand the emotional drive that would lead a person to walk towards where the explosion had come from. Nor did she particularly want to find out.

Not that she had much of a choice, as her feet stumbled over broken glass in the thug's chokehold, half-deafened from the revolver's song.

"It's a good fucking day to die!" The booster gleefully announced to the outside world, his feral laughter scraping together like jagged sheet metal as his trigger finger kept hammering away despite having emptied the chamber in a frenzy of fire.

All at once, the smell of burning fuel and the sensation of heat hit her face, the cyberware around her throat squeezing and shifting as her captor awkwardly attempted to reload while refusing to let her go. The sarcastic, cool, idealised version of herself might have quipped, made a snappy suggestion about how it might have been easier to fill 'er up without having a blonde on his arm, but Catriona was decidedly not that girl and instead shrieked a garbled rush of words:

"Ohmygodpleaseletmego!"

"Fuck! I love the sound of screaming MEAT!"

In callous disregard for his rampaging behemoth of a friend (or because of the aforementioned passion for the screaming meat), the booster didn't offer his friend a heads-up on the electric blue streak heading his way. It erupted into a brilliant tech-killing void, rendering the man mountain who had sold his flesh for circuits useless. Servos seizing, optics blind, cyberorgans shitting the proverbial bucket. Did it kill him? Hard to say; how much of him was living in the first place?

There was a time and place to wax philosophical; the 'Borg of Theseus would have to wait.

The little booster, having more of an idea of which direction he was supposed to be shooting at, pivoted, still attempting a one-handed revolver reload with Devine in tow. However, before those meaty rounds found new housing, Catriona flailed. Deliberately? Or the terror twitches? Who could say? No matter the cause, her hand swatted the gun from his grip, and it clattered to the concrete.

"Fucking cunt!"

Then, the arm around her neck squeezed.

 

[Callum]

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​

Location: Northside, Top of Biotechnica Building (not for long)

The tricky thing about bargain bin EMP grenades, stripped from the carcasses of gang members down Vista Del Rey, is that you never know the journey they took to get to you. And with that journey, what sort of habits they might have picked up along the way. In this case, the manner in which they express themselves. If you read the label in the box, it should be a standard five second countdown on the ticking LED before it erupts, showering a 200 ft radius with an orbital dome of beach blue that disrupts all electronics that it touches. But some of them decide to detonate on impact, others take a bit of a break after the time allotted to go off. And sometimes, they roll around like an angry infant, erupting as a bouncing Betty and sending that shimmering ring and dome out at head level.

I didn't get the chance to see which way it went on account of my focus being fixed on the booster and woman he had taken hostage. But out of the periphery, I saw the blue light envelop the shopping area with several bursts of white and blue that crawled up over the concrete bannisters lining the top of Biotechnica building and framed the inner metal of the maglev struts above. The sound of the running behemoth hadn't been too far from what I imagined a collection service sounded like, coming for its due and knocking the front door down with a Militech full body conversion. But that stopped. So either it worked or the booster had been at least momentarily distracted by a rolling canister having a tantrum.

I refocused my attention on the situation at hand, taking advantage of the momentary reprieve afforded by the grenade. The two tumbleweeds were still caught in the concrete fencing and as far as I could see, signs of consciousness or life were distant considerations. Which meant I could focus and give this last one the appropriate level of concentration. And there was a sense of urgency. Not just for the wellbeing of the bob and long legs, but also for any backup that might be running down Martin Street.

I took a deep breath and weighed the odds. The interface was digitizing decent ratios on taking out the assailant while minimizing the chance of injury to the hostage. It was better odds than the general daily expectation in Night City so when the distraction occurred, I took my chance and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet cut through the boosters head so cleanly that I hadn't registered the hit at first. As I worked to reset my aim from the recoil, I wasn't certain who I had actually tagged. With a quick crack back to center, I watched the boosters head pop like a overeager bottle of Champaradise. Where his scalp was, the bullet had carved out a gore entrenched wide bottom canoe spurting bits of static from the severed circuitry once hidden beneath his synthskin. It was like looking at a grotesque half-eaten bowl of vibrating metallic japchae.

I watched as he spasmed, left foot tap dancing to some unknown electro funk pop rhythm on the asphalt. His arm tightened around the young woman's slender neck as his body went as firm as an upright cadaver. With his mouth wide open and what remained of his face drifting skyward, eyes suddenly vacant of any real notion of life, he had a striking resemblance to a hodgepodge between Edwards Munch's Scream depiction and a Rowdy Dog squeaky chicken chew toy.

I didn't waste any time. Holding the empty Nekomata in one hand, I stood and jumped over the ledge of the building as the arm servos kicked on. My metallic fingers reached out to the steam support gantry and clenched down on rusted steel. The metal cage, housing large diameter insulated steam pipes across the road and down the building snapped from the weight almost instantly. Feeling the crumpled steel in my hand, I kept hold as the structure pulled away from the building with each bolt that was forced from the concrete, taking chunks of material with it. Gave me the feeling like I was unzipping a giant pair of pants.

The ground rushed towards me as the berserk operating system bucked for just a blip. I hit the pavement with a clumsy roll as the whole steam bank came crashing down behind me in a crumpled mess of steel and fiberglass, buffeted in pulsating spouts of white hot steam. I didn't take time to check the big guy, instead opting to run headlong towards the lady and her expiring captor.​

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