Chapter — 32

  The three siblings talked and laughed as the drinks were being delivered by drone, and they continued to order. They also had snacks — some sort of crunchy and chewy stick in many colors and flavors that could be sour, bitter, or spicy. Rei preferred the sour ones — like Miyo — while Ichiro liked his ones bitter.

  Miyo said it was because he liked "being macho."

  A few people came up to try to join them but got rebuffed without issue. Then Miyo took charge and dragged her inebriated siblings into the elevator, down onto the ground floor, and up the short step onto the dance floor.

  Rei danced a bit with both her siblings, reveling in the energy buzzing in the air from the crowd and the music. Rei found that [Athleticism] gave her enough control over her body that she'd become a natural at dancing, something that Miyo took great joy in.

  Rei didn't think she'd care even if she was terrible at it at that moment, though, as the alcohol flowing through her veins made her feel on top of the world.

  She found it a bit funny how much Ichiro seemed to struggle with his less-than-stellar cyberware — the moves he sometimes put on that would've likely looked great became a bit comical — but like her, he didn't care for what others thought.

  He was even tipsier than his sisters from the strength of the booze he'd downed in larger and larger gulps.

  Then, what Rei had foreseen came to pass, and the three siblings drifted apart between the scantily clad bodies pressing up against each other. Miyo was dragged into a sensual dance with a tall, gray-eyed man while Ichiro found Miyo's manager suddenly at his side and got swept away.

  Rei, though, didn't mind. She loved her siblings, but this night was about her, and she would enjoy it to the fullest.

  She moved between bodies — grinding against each other and moving to the beat — her feet taking her places she didn't know where. In a blur, faces passed as she found partner after partner to dance with, even coming across a girl with fully functional bioware cat ears that Rei was allowed to rub between giggles as they danced close.

  Then, without Rei even noticing it, she was face-to-face with a man as the strobe lights flashed down from above in rhythm with the heavy bass. His slightly labored breathing and perspiring skin came hot against her. His eyes were pools of teal and cyan, and their piercing quality captivated her.

  He was a bit taller, handsome, broad-shouldered, and muscular — but not in a burly way — with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline barely hidden beneath a short-trimmed beard. His nose was straight, and his lips were full. Those lips drew her attention almost as much as his eyes.

  The air between them seemed charged with unanswered passion — his breath that of mint and fruity alcohol — and as they danced, they subconsciously moved closer.

  Rei didn't even notice when her lips met his; she only knew that whatever she was, she wasn't lesbian.

  How long they ground against each other, making out like there was no tomorrow, Rei didn't know. She only knew that at some point, she dragged him off toward more private quarters provided by the nightclub, determined to finally have the last of her built-up stress released.

  ***

  Rei awoke with a groan, feeling filthy in a way she hadn't in... she couldn't even remember the last time she'd woken up feeling like that.

  Eyes still closed, she searched around with her hands for her plushie, finally grabbing something soft as she squeezed and tried to pull it closer to curl up around.

  There was a grunt, then, "Rei!" Miyo's voice was equal parts pained, amused, and scandalized.

  It made Rei's eyes snap open.

  Cheeks burning, she removed her hand from Miyo. "Fuck, sorry... Miyo? Wait, what am I doing in your bed?" Rei looked around, confused.

  "Aren't you cute," Miyo giggled before yawning.

  Rei blinked the fuzziness from her eyes and shook her head as if to clear it. It somewhat worked, and soon, recollections of the night before came back.

  She and her siblings having fun while drinking.

  Dancing together before splitting up.

  Many faces and... cat ears?

  Then, teal and cyan eyes.

  "Ah, that's right. I remember now."

  "Took you long enough," Miyo said, giggling again.

  Rei jabbed playfully at Miyo without turning her head away from the ceiling, hitting her bra again on accident. "Sorry," Rei grumbled, but Miyo didn't seem to care.

  "Sooo, how was he?" Miyo asked, full of curiosity as she curled up in the blankets and made herself into a burrito.

  Rei thought. "Good. Surprisingly so."

  "I thought I'd drunk too much when I caught a glimpse of you two together on the dance floor, and even suspected my own partner had slipped something into my drink when you shamelessly began dragging him toward the elevator."

  Rei tossed a pillow at Miyo's face, her sister defenseless as she was curled up too tightly. "Me? Shameless? Look in the mirror, sis," Rei scoffed.

  The less said about Miyo's shamelessness, the better.

  "But yeah, I can see what you mean," Rei continued as Miyo jerked her head like a brutish boar, trying to get the pillow off her face. "Ever since waking up from the coma, I've been somewhat confused?"

  Finally getting the pillow away and regaining sightlines on her sister, Miyo snorted, adding to her growing boar impersonation in Rei's head. "It would be strange if you weren't confused, but that even your sexuality seems to have gone from curved to straight in all that confusion baffled me enough that I didn't even properly enjoy my prey for a couple of hours."

  "Don't call them prey, you vixen. But no, I'm not straight. I'm sure of that. Hmm. Squiggly?"

  Miyo broke into raucous laughter. "Squiggly?!"

  Rei shrugged, grinning. "Well, you said curved and straight, and what's neither but kind of both? Squiggly!"

  Miyo was practically wheezing by that point, and Rei threw another pillow in retaliation.

  "Fine, fine. You win," Miyo said after having calmed down and removed the pillow again by thrashing her head about.

  "So uncouth," Rei said with mock, haughty disdain, looking down with her nose in the air.

  Miyo snorted, realized what she'd done as Rei's nose went even higher, and then detangled herself from her covers and brought Rei down in a tickle fight.

  Rei had no chance of winning. Miyo remembered all the chinks in her armor, while Rei had no idea how to counterattack.

  She soon pleaded mercy.

  Rei panted lightly as she came down from having laughed herself out of breath, and Miyo laid to her side, asking, "So you had fun with... what was his name?" Rei shook her head, having either somehow forgotten or never heard it in the first place.

  "As I said, absolutely shameless, not even knowing the name of the poor man you stole the heart of. What has become of my sweat, innocent Imouto? Is the world ending?" Miyo said dramatically, the back of her hand covering her eyes in despair.

  Rei raised the pillow threateningly, and Miyo desisted while giggling. As she stopped laughing, though, her smile became kind and caring. "Alright, who cares what his name was, but you at least had fun last night?"

  Rei beamed, moving closer to give Miyo a hug. "Yes, it was absolutely perfect. Everything from start to finish. Thank you both for the perfect birthday."

  "We had just as much fun, you know?" Miyo said as they separated.

  "Yeah, but still. Thanks. I've not been in the perfect headspace with everything I have going on, and I really needed this."

  ***

  After her talk with Miyo, Rei borrowed her showers before dressing in the basic clothes she usually wore — her new party clothes packed into a bag that her elder sister offered. She then set off toward her own apartment.

  On her way, she texted Ichiro, having no idea where he'd ended up the night before. Soon enough, she got a response saying he was sleeping at someone else's place.

  I swear if he's with Sally...

  Just thinking the name felt weird in that context.

  Back in her own apartment, Rei washed her new clothes in her mist washer. The sweat and other sticky things one picks up at such a place came off quickly, leaving the high-quality synthetic fabrics and leather looking as good as new.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She then crashed into her own couch — avoiding the sticky spot she'd been unable to entirely remove — as she went through her cyberware, checking that everything was as it should be.

  She'd been inebriated to a spectacular degree — which had more likely than not resulted in whatever barrier that prevented her from fully coming into her dual sexuality tearing apart when confronted with such raw lust and passion all around.

  Rei might not have realized what types of guys she liked — and actually physically recognized that she was attracted to the opposite sex — without meeting that specific man when she did.

  Had a woman Rei took a fancy to come before him with an equal spark of passion forming between them, the night might have gone differently. Still, Rei was more than satisfied with how things had gone. It had been nothing more than a fling, a one-time stress release and indulgence.

  As I said to Miyo, it was something I needed, but now it's time to get back to work. I'll raise [Body] to 10 and then shift all my focus toward leveling my skills, especially [Melee Mastery] and [Ranged Mastery].

  Rei finished checking over her cyberware and found nothing amiss, and she felt relieved. She'd constantly had her parallel thought keeping watch on her and her cyberware's condition during the night, even if it had been difficult with the alcohol.

  Only because there was an attraction between her and another didn't mean she was perfectly safe, after all.

  Her partner had looked physically fit to the degree that it was evident he frequented the gym, and no overt cyberware had been present, yet she'd never tried breaching his cyberware as she'd had the nebulous feeling it wouldn't have gone unnoticed.

  She could only attribute this feeling to her instincts, but it was hard to judge.

  This meant getting involved had been a risk, but what was life without the occasional risk now and then? She'd also spotted no deception from him but only genuine emotion — if singularly focused. It had been good enough for her to take the plunge.

  Smacking her cheeks to snap out of her reminiscence, Rei got to her feet and moved to the food storage, where she kept backup supplies.

  She'd eat and then start the pattern she'd established during the last two weeks. Rei hadn't forgotten what all this work was for.

  ***

  It finally happened, huh?

  Rei finished the last of her deadlifts and cleaned up, doing her usual [Parkour] training on the way home. She also ate as much as she could on the way and brought with her extra for afterward.

  Back in her flat, she sat down on her bed and initiated the recalibration, experiencing the — by then — familiar out-of-body feeling as nanites replicated and spread further into her flesh, bones, tendons, and nerves.

  She had nearly been back to a BMI she felt pleased with, but all went away again, leaving her ripped and corded. It would probably be the last time for quite a while, though, so she wasn't overly disappointed.

  Hopefully.

  Wolfing down the supplies she'd stored up during the past days, she marveled at how food almost seemed to vanish as it entered her stomach — the nanites doing their part in resupplying her starving cells.

  After finally feeling temporarily full, Rei leaned back on the couch with Mr. Nibbles in her lap as she browsed the available perks for [Body].

  As she'd suspected, a few more had been unlocked, but none interested her, and going through those that had always been unlocked didn't change her mind about her selection. Nearly all perks were great, but there was one thing that severely hampered Rei in fights that a single perk seemed the solution to: [Thermal Venting]

  If the information that trickled into her when she focused on it were to be believed, it would help remove excess heat from her body somehow. It was perfect since she lacked any external gear that could cool her during heavy loads on her cyberdeck.

  More perks also seemed locked behind that single one, and Rei was curious what those could be about. That, however, was a consideration for another time.

  Rei chose.

  「Perk Points: [Body 1 → 0, Ego 1]」

  She didn't usually physically feel the nanomachines inside her body, as they were too small. This time was different.

  Rei was immensely glad that she'd eaten so much before accepting the perk, as immediately after she did, the nanites started replicating themselves anew.

  It wasn't painless like usual, though.

  Even with [Pain Tolerance], Rei had to grit her teeth, as the nanites didn't stop at merely consuming the food but also went for her flesh. Miniscule furrows were being carved from deep inside her body all the way out to just beneath her skin. As they consumed her flesh, they replicated further from the resource, extending like millions of tiny tendrils from her bones to just beneath the surface.

  It was pure agony as the nanites scraped against the tiniest of nerves in their path, the minuscule structures thickening along more prominent veins carrying her blood.

  Then it was finished without ceremony, and Rei's clenched jaw relaxed as she blinked half-formed tears out of her eyes.

  That... wasn't what I was expecting.

  Rei didn't know what she had been expecting, but as she moved her arms, she was surprised at not even physically feeling the nanite structure within her nor seeing them beneath her skin. She could still somewhat tell they were there mentally, though, due to her ever-growing connections to the System and its nanites. It was easier to mentally latch onto them than the rest of her nanites, which were more nebulous in concept — being dispersed throughout her whole body more uniformly.

  Rei pondered more deeply on it.

  The perk is for venting heat from my body, and how would it do that without some way to carry that heat outward? Its purpose is nothing like [Self-Repair], which uses the nanites already infusing my body to repair flesh and other composites in my cyberware.

  The newly created structure was nothing like firm metal, as the nanites moved and adjusted inside her flesh as her muscles flexed. However, how well it would carry the heat outward was unknown, and Rei had to test it out herself.

  She opened her status sheet to take a look at its new addition.

  「Takeda Rei:

  Level: 4 [1650 / 5000 Experience]

  Body: 10

  Mind: 13

  Ego: 10

  Perks:

  [Merciless]

  [Parallel Thoughts #1]

  [Self-Repair]

  [Obscure Mind]

  [Thermal Venting]

  Skills:

  [Strong Will, Level 9]

  [Deception, Level 6]

  [Athleticism, Level 9]

  [Cybernetic Adaptation, Level 4]

  [Breach, Level 11]

  [Splice, Level 11]

  [Data Analytics, Level 12]

  [Programming, Level 13]

  [Parkour, Level 8]

  [Pain Tolerance, Level 7]

  [Melee Mastery, Level 4]

  [First Aid, Level 1]

  [Stealth, Level 4]

  [Ranged Mastery, Level 1]

  [Seduction, Level 2]

  Implants: [...]

  Perk Points: Ego 1

  Skill Points: 4」

  The new perk sat there in conjunction with her increased experience, increased [Body], and the level gained in both [Parkour] and [Athleticism]. Her other skills or attributes hadn't leveled in the days she'd primarily focused on physical exercise, but she thought she'd made progress that would eventually show itself.

  There were also two other changes, but Rei didn't know how to feel about them.

  It had taken nearly a full day before she checked her status sheet after the night of her birthday party, and when she'd spotted the increase to [Ego] and her new skill, she'd been stumped and just a tiny bit mortified.

  When she'd gotten the skill or found the time to recalibrate [Ego] was a mystery, as she couldn't remember either. She'd also leveled the skill once, which was... well, it was something. [Athleticism] had also gained one level from the night, but she attributed it to a normal result of dancing and not that kind of dancing. Certainly not.

  Rei closed the status sheet visible in her mind's eye and shook the knowledge supplied [Seduction] — and what it meant she'd most likely done — out of her head, focusing on her next step.

  Now, how do I test the new perk?..

  Not having anything close by that would pose a significant challenge and needing to avoid a life-death situation while testing things out, she opted for overloading her cyberdeck with a self-replicating algorithm performing equations. It wasn't hard to program compared to everything else she'd been working on, and soon enough, instance after instance, the algorithm sprouted and took up processing power, quickly heating the cybernetic implant up as it calculated fruitlessly.

  Prepared to shut the process down should she start overheating, Rei was pleasantly surprised as time passed.

  She felt hot but not nearly close to a debilitating or dangerous degree.

  Her skin was the warmest, as the heat was carried out from her blood and into the nanite structure before ending up there, where it dissipated into the air. Where she had clothes, the heat grew a lot worse, as the synthetic fabrics kept the heat in, yet it wasn't to a searing degree.

  If I get an even more powerful cyberdeck in the future and tax it to its limit, will there be a heat haze surrounding me when I do?

  If there was, Rei would most likely have to replace all her skin with synthetic variants, as there was no way something like that wouldn't scald her skin off.

  What was most impressive, though, was that she wasn't already drenched in sweat. The nanites had completely supplanted her natural thermal regulation — or at least thermal heat dispersal — with their new structure, carrying the heat out without the need for dissipating salty water.

  My future exercising at the gym sure will be more pleasant due to this.

  Rei hated looking and feeling like a drenched cat after each workout.

  Rei shut the algorithms down, her cyberdeck returning to idling as the excess heat swiftly left her. Her new perk had been a rousing success, and Rei was extremely pleased with her choice.

  No longer would she kill herself when battling ICE or other Magi in the heat of battle or under time constraints. It was her best pick so far after [Merciless] and [Self-Repair]. Sure, [Parallel Thoughts #1] was great and made her even better at everything she did when multitasking, but it wasn't as impactful after she'd gotten used to it. [Obscure Mind] was even less exciting, though it was arguably the most important perk of them all.

  Sighing in contentment, Rei rose, placed Mr. Nibbles in the blanket nest she'd made for him in the bed, and then opened the map in her agent.

  She had new tasks ahead of her now. She would still exercise her mind to raise the attribute during her downtime, but she needed to raise her physical combat skills more urgently.

  Rei could do it at a shooting range and perhaps — if she was feeling up to it — at a combat arena. She needed the credits for winning such fights badly as there hadn't been time to acquire funds through less legal means.

  The issue will be how to prevent The Pistons from recognizing me if any footage makes it to the public mesh.

  Should I simply dye my hair?

  ***

  "Speak."

  Meira trembled slightly as she sweated, kneeling. "Yes, lord. We still haven't found the target or anyone matching the descriptions of her accomplice who interceded on her behalf at AC #2032. He was spotted entering an autonomous cab four minutes after they left the complex, but he was alone then."

  "Where was this, and who did the cab belong to?"

  As if you don't already know the answers, Meira thought before terror seized her that it had slipped into her mind in the lord's presence.

  "Speak." The lord simply said, the vertical line on their faceplate brightening slightly in warning.

  "Yes, lord. It was close to the intersection between street #164 and road #157. The cab belonged to the SpeDest Transport, a smaller corporation that-"

  "I'm familiar with it," the lord interrupted.

  Meira remained kneeling, her trembling increasing as the seconds passed without the lord speaking — merely the vertical golden line on their faceplate brightening or dimming sporadically.

  Eventually, though, they spoke. "This has gone on for too long and taken too many resources. With the daemon removing the tracking scripts from Fangs before I could mitigate the damage, that avenue of approach has likewise failed. The target needs to be acquired, but I've already spent too much time on it.

  "As our preparations are nearing their end, I have other tasks before me. Change is nigh, but The Pistons will continue the hunt no matter what happens. Insubordination will be punished harshly. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, lord."

  "Good. Now begone. May you prove more competent than your predecessor."

  Meira continued to suppress her desire to gag at the stench of decomposing flesh as she left. It had grown so strong that it had even begun spreading to the corridor outside the office previously belonging to her old leader.