Matuscarantos

  The sound of a firefight, was close. Ryll startled, but I gave her a a gentle pat. The ruckus was probably the Voodoo Boys and Animals going at it. So just an average day of Gang violence in Pacifica.

  I poked through the items left behind. A Liberty pistol, a short Pelican double barreled shotty, and a stubby rectangur machete. Eh.

  Dolrs to doughnuts, my emergency gauss pistol is an order of magnitude better than the Liberty. I squeezed a round at the nearby wall, not worried that the sound would attract undue attention. Then I pulled my left side gauss pistol and shot the same wall. The difference in the damage was very noticeable. The hole caused by the Liberty was about the half the size of a dime. the one caused by the gauss pistol was the size of a nickel, despite the round being smaller.

  Yup, this Gangbanger gear was trash.

  I threw down the abandoned weapons and the clothing, which I wasn't even going to bother looking at. That left a data shard, which could be useful. Without an Agent with a shard reader, or getting chipped I'd never know. I hate mysteries though. Hmm. I pocketed the shard, and offered up the pile on the ground.

  [ You have received 1000 in script. ]

  Not much. Considering a liter of what I would consider barely drinkable water would run about 99, this was a drop in the ocean. I took a moment to look at the bills. They felt fully like pstic not the rag paper that was used in dolrs, and were extremely colorful. To me the bill looked a bit like futuristic Monopoly money.

  My devious brain had some questions about the System. Since previous attempts are asking direct questions had been ignored, it was time to run a few experiments.

  I pce 10 gold coins on the ground, and offered them up.

  [ Money is cheap, the System rejects this offering. ]

  Interesting, well gold is worth a pretty Ennie. I just needed to find a pawn shop that didn't ask questions, which in Night City, was most of them.

  The next experiment concerned stat points. I had two worlds, and maybe more, full of enemies. Stats point would be something, I was rolling in someday. But could I offer them up? And what would I get if I could?

  "I offer unto the System, one point of my physical stat." I had my doubts that saying anything was needed, but whatever it was my System and I'd speak to it how I wanted.

  [ Your offering is acceptable. ]

  I might have screamed. Ryll fluttered away looking everywhere for enemies, but I was too locked up in a rictus of agony to calm her. I gulped air trying to say something, when everything stopped hurting.

  "Ow, that fucking hurt!"

  Then I held up my hands to Ryll, making calming noises at her. She nded on my shoulder, growling and coiled her tail around my neck.

  I felt something wet on my cheeks, I reached up to wipe it away. Blood, I was leaking my purple blood out of my eyes. Maybe I don't offer too many stat points in the future.

  [ You many choose between...

  A Basic Profession Orb

  or

  An Advanced Item Drop ]

  [ A new factor is in py ]

  [ Csses, Professions, and Item rewards are affected by the World you are in at the time. ]

  At least it warned me before I picked. I was eyeballin' the Profession Orb hard, but I had no idea how Professions would be handled here. As far as I knew, Csses and Professions were one and the same in this World for the most part.

  A Rocker, melts off faces from the stage. And wages war against the Corpos in the streets.

  A Techie, repairs things, and uses Bots, Drones and Vehicles to get the job done.

  A Runner, is a hacker sniffing out secrets, and frying lite ICed gonk's ports.

  Hell, a Solo is by definition, a Professional Merc.

  No, now I had to know. I took the Profession Orb.

  [ You have gained the Profession: Salesman. ]

  I'd gained the ability, Winning Smile 1, and the skill, Barter 1.

  I stared at my new profession on the status screen, at a loss for words. My head tilted as I thought about it, rolled it around in my noodle a bit. I literally had no clue how this profession was going to work. Did I have to sale things, or was any form of barter and trading good enough to advance?

  "It could be useful... maybe." More money coming in, could always be leveraged for useful resources, and be an insuting factor against some of the everyday bullshit in this beautiful nightmare of a city.

  Well, there was one more experiment I'd thought of trying, but given how the st one had gone, I was reluctant to do it. Yeah, I think I'll wait on it, at least until I had a base set up. It was never a good idea to be vulnerable out in the open in Night City.

  The Probes' appearance was not likely to raise too much of a stir, that said, the less attention the better until we get established. The good news was that the City wouldn't care in the slightest if I, ahem, appropriate a building or two here in Pacifica. It was pretty much considered a lost cause.

  Let's see. I looked around trying to spot anything that looked familiar from the game. It was different, very different, but I started putting two and two together. One of the problems was that in the game, it was an easy minute or two jog from the north side of this beach, to it southern point. That was not the case here.

  There was a long pier maybe 100 yards to the north. The futuristic beach houses continued south, following the coast for a perhaps a mile, where I could make out another pier, a Rollercoaster and a little further south a Ferris wheel.

  I was pondering just making due here, taking over a few beach houses and having the Probes scrape everything. However I knew the Voodoo Boys had a base just to the east of here. And they'd never stop bothering me, if I set up shop that close to them. Until we wiped them out, or they overwhelmed us.

  On the other hand, There were several garages and warehouses, next to the the southern pier, that would be easy to take. Better yet, it would be easy to remain overlooked, at first. Sure, the Grand Imperial mall was nearby, but the Animals that might be there weren't the best at patrolling the area.

  That Mall was also part of my burgeoning pns. It would be an excellent source of harvestable resources. And if we had to zero a few dozen members of the Animals gang, so be it. I doubt anyone would shed a tear over it.

  "Alright, let's get started."

  We went down the beach, having the Probes harvesting any trash or loose items as we pass them. We weren't in a hurry, and judging by the light of the gray sky, we had a while until nighttime.

  Arriving at the first garage, I tested the door. Locked. Well no worries.

  I ordered a Probe, to disassemble the door. While the rest started py the musical resource cube game, stacking everything they'd harvested on the way.

  Once the door was converted into a mineral cube, I did a quick visual peek style inspection of the internal yout. I ended up quickly pulling my head back, as a turret tried to remove it from my shoulders. Losing track of me, the turret ceased fire. Wait that was wrong, the garage with the Runner in it should have been further south. Fuck, these differences were going to get me killed. I needed to be more cautious.

  Ryll was trembling in fear, both because she felt mine, and because she would have been hit too. That made me feel terrible, it made me angry, and worse, the cmmy hands of fear clenched my heart. Not for me, but for my little dragonling.

  I needed to be smarter about this, I had excellent robots to hand. Let them take the risks.

  I sent two Probes in to deal with the turret. The first Probe's shield faltered and it took some heavy damage, but the second Probe's particle beam brought the turret out in one zap.

  When they came back, the first Probe was sparking and smoking from several holes. Its hovering was more of a drunken wobble. I felt a stir of pity, for a robot. Maybe I was getting soft.

  "Repair him."

  One of the Probes that had stayed with me, got to work patching up their fellow Probe.

  I ordered one Probe to go back in there, and strip the pce down to the bare walls. The others were assigned to harvesting nearby piles of trash and unattended items smaller than a TV.

  Meanwhile. I spent time pying with Ryll, and teaching her tricks, to help soothe over her near brush with death. To think, she was only two days old, and I already couldn't possibly imagine life without her. Rather, I certainly could, but the dread it caused was best avoided.

  I shook my head, smiling at her. There was that weird cramp in my face again.

  It was probably time to feed her again. I pulled out a fish and checked it over, it still seemed okay, for a fish. Since she had done well enough with a whole fish st time, I simply id the fish down for her.

  She tore into it with a furious passion. I guess she really loved fish. Not that she has had anything else yet. We'll have to correct that soon. In fact, there were a few vending machines just a few yards away. If the delivery drones had been keeping them filled over here, it would be something different for both of us.

  I shrugged, time to see if Cyberpunk food, was as bad as I'd imagined, all those years ago.

  One machine was NiCo, in all its fvors. I wasn't really interested in that. The next machine was Real Water, Sparkling and ft, maybe I should try it to see what the floor was like. Sure I feed a 100 bill into the machine and buy a can of the ft water. The 12 ounce can was supposed to cost 34 but the machine gave it to me for 30. It spat out 70.

  I'm going to presume that was my Barter skill at work, until I had more data.

  I used the tab to open the can and took a sip. Utterly tasteless. They distilled it completely then. That meant it wouldn't be all you needed. I'll have to look into that ter.

  The next vending machine was XXL Burritos, in normal, hot, and double. Normal and hot were 5, and the double was 9. Next to that was a SCOP Dog machine. Yum, Single Celled Organic Proteins, or really ultimately bugs, just what I've always wanted. Well, at least it wasn't Kibble, or Soya. Not that I wouldn't have killed people for access to those foods on my old Earth.

  I recalled some of the things I'd eaten just to survive one more day, and shrugged, bugs were fine. Give me all the bugs.

  I got the SCOP dog with ketchup and mustard fvored paste. The bun was guaranteed to be 70% real wheat. Very comforting, Corpo Overlords. It was supposed to be 8 and I got it for 6. These savings would really add up in time.

  I admit my memories of real food were more than thirty years old at this point, but this really didn't taste anything like a real hot dog. I sighed in disappointment, and kept eating, because I did not waste food. I think I'll stick with vanil fvor pudding rations, though maybe things like the retively new market of cloned meats and fruits would taste better. Yeah, I'm not going to bet on that.

  Ryll had long since finished her fish and waddled over, looking intensely at me and then at my hot dog. I shrugged, and offered the rest to her.

  "Easy Little Lady, I don't know if you'll like it."

  She gobbled it down like it was amazing. Sprite Darters probably ate insects in the wild, right? So it made sense, in a way. I smirked down at her licking her chops. At least I could keep her fed easily enough.

  I bought her another SCOP dog, this one with nothing on it. It was beled as 5 but I got it for 4. I tore pieces off to give to her while I walked back over to check on the Probes.

  They'd done an amazing job, the garage was completely empty. I could now see it was about 60' x 60', and the ceiling was about 12'. I think it is wide enough in here if just barely, but it certainly wasn't tall enough.

  I got the Probe that'd just stripped the pce down to start digging up the floor to about 50'.

  The damaged Probe was back in good shape, and had already joined in the hunt for more resources. The pile was quite rge, though looking a bit lean on vespene.

  So, I took a walk with Ryll wrapped around my neck, already napping off her meal.

  The sun was getting a bit low, where had the time gone?

  I watched a boat crossing the water about a mile out, and I could see the isnd we'd started on. There were a lot of isnds out there that I don't recall seeing.

  Once we got the Pylon and a Cannon setup going, I needed to hunt down some answers. What year was it? If we were in the event of the games, what did I want to do about.

  Hold it! Hold it, if it was early enough to be during or before Edgerunner's events...

  "Hahahahahaha!"

  Oh, I knew just what I wanted to do.

  Matuscarantos