Title: Night City Tales: Dustdown v1.4
Tags: CPv3 scifi Cyberpunk
Blog Entry: I’d followed behind the other AV as it took off, studding into the AV’s navigational link. I didn’t know exactly where this little journey was going to take me, but I knew that I had Silver right under my nose now. When the time was right, I promised myself…and the snake. That time came when the AVs landed in front of a bunch of broken-down buildings and eleven men dismounted to form a security detail around the passengers of the AV I had driven. I stepped into the detail with them, and they were oblivious that I wasn’t one of them. I took up position behind Silver. What the hell was this place? It looked familiar. But then so do all the buildings in this shithole City now. Everything bleeds together. Everything bleeds. Starting to get a little iffy; maybe the pills did help and I just didn’t want to admit it. Nah. It was just the snake, trying to take over my consciousness again. None of the medtechs I had visited could figure out where the snake ends and I begin, so far. Maybe after I get paid. Unless I have to get more work done. There’s always more work that could be done. The less meat, the less fear. The less fear, the bigger edge. Twenty one flights of stairs…was the person responsible for programming the genius architect for this building a F-BOMBING Freemason or something? I’d remembered reading some of their tracts, handed out in the airports and CityZep stations by skinny little guys who liked to call themselves Wizards and DOOKIE like that. I also remembered introducing more than a few of the little freaks to the Big Guys before…that was fun…it always is. I usually slice them twenty one times, just to make my own point. Back to the DOOKIE at hand, though. The group marched past these big banks of computers surrounding the place where whoever it was awaited us. Video screens flashing discordant images of events happening worldwide lined the walls of the central area. Perched upon a beautifully-crafted divan was…fuck, what the hell is going on? It was Billy Silver! I only let the shock take me for a moment. Then I saw the Silver in front of me bending his elbows, drawing his hands up to the small of his back. Something taped there. “Now now, little shit, let’s not have you getting away again,” I whispered to Silver, pocketing the tiny knife at the small of his back. Then the bitch decided to pipe in. “Alpha, I have done as you asked. I have brought you Billy Silver. Now I would ask that you give me what it is that I seek.” So this was Silverblue Alpha. Okay, that explained a lot. “Very well,” came Alpha’s response, “you wish to be discorporated, and return to the Data Pools from whence we came, to not be troubled by human existence. Haunt them at your leisure, then.” Alpha withdrew a small pistol, and shot the FEMALE ANATOMY in the chest. I stepped back a bit from Silver. Something was going down. I was raising the assault rifle I carried, readying myself, when it happened almost too fast for my Russian neurovirus-enhanced reflexes to see. In a flash of motion, the little Drifter with the bitch and Silver grabbed his own guard and spun him in an impossibly fast arc. The Drifter was using the soldier’s gun against his comrades, forcing the man to fire his weapon. Three bursts, nine shots, rang out. Man by man, the soldiers fell. As the arc closed on me, I saw the little nip bastard’s eyes were closed. Fucking Zen bullshit. Then the bullet took me just below the chin, slicing through the fleshy part of my neck and speeding towards my spinal column. The impact left me flat on my back, but the bullet hadn’t done any permanent damage. Just stunned me for longer than I cared for. Other shots, louder and not coming from the assault rifle the soldiers carried, rang out as well and several windows shattered. Some F-BOMBER taking potshots. This was all some kinda setup that the bitch, the Zen-man and Silver had arranged. It took a second, but I sat up. The bullet had struck my reinforced spine and ricocheted, digging a furrow through the rest of the meat in the right side of my neck; nanorepair units were already plugging the holes. There’s my work when I get paid for this…no more Zen bullshit. The other eight soldiers lay on the ground, meat ruined by the bullets that had each neatly entered them and severed their spines on the way out. The Jap was spiralling across the nanocrete, dodging bullets, headed for the men by the divan. He thought his work was done with me. They always make that mistake. I am going to teach him a lesson he will soon forget, because he’ll be too dead to remember. Then I will take care of what’s left. He’s fast, but he’s just meat in the end. The crash of glass again, and I’m seeing some little blue-green critter fly in. I’d forgotten about those Drifters’ beasties. It dropped something long and slender into the waiting hands of the Drifter, and his dance towards the black-clad men continued. He unwrapped it, and it was a sword with two edges on either side of the hilt. I couldn’t help but think the fun was about to start. I got to my feet, pushed off and started running over. Shit, the little guy was really fast. Maybe even faster than me. He had three of the five dead, and the other Billy on his knees clutching the stump that had just held the little pistol as I clunked up. He was about to dice up one of the guys when I put out an arm to block the blade. The duo-katana’s blade splintered in a shower of carbo-glas. “Zen bullshit don’t work with me, fucker,” I growl at the nip. I pull off my helmet so that he can see just who he’s F-BOMBING with. I crack my knuckles and they don’t make a sound. “Ready to meet the Big Boys?” I ask, pulling off the leather pilots’ gloves. I pop my rippers and my wolvers, and step in swinging. The nip ducked beneath the swing of the wolvers over his head. He was fast, but he was flesh. Flesh is weak. He’d get tired sooner or later; I wouldn’t, because I don’t. “Heh, you’re good, bitch. Fast, too. Let’s see you F-BOMBING dodge this one!” I said as the snake screamed for release. I feint a strike with the rippers, and the snake comes out to play. It digs into his shoulder. Blood flows, bone crunches. Time for more Zen bullshit I think, rolling my eyes when the Drifter closes his eyes again. Lightning: Heron's cry, Stabs the darkness, Ryukku-San’s voice said somewhere in his mind, quoting Basho. He moves around me, as quick as a greased up pig. He screams something, and that F-BOMBING bird-thing lands on my head, plucking at my eyes. It manages to pull one out before I bat it away. Then I feel the sword sink into my back, close to the spine, and the nip’s pulling with all of his might on the blade, tearing through my synthetic flesh and reinforced bone. He’s trying to sever my spine. I let him think it works, fall to the ground. Gotta get an angle. Guy’s a little too fast. It works; he turns away. A sudden crash of glass to my right, and a hulking form which gleams under the pulsing grey static light of the now-dead monitors lining the walls stalks towards us. I rise up behind him again, hearing the sound of one of the two Silvers starting to shout a warning. But it’s too late for the little meatbag. I push the wolvers through the nip’s back and then through his front As he sluggishly tries to move, I lift him up to let the wolvers rip in deeper. He’s gouting blood, spattering the nanocrete with his life. He gasps, and I lean into him. “Meditate on that you Zen-spouting meatbag fuck!” The duo-katana clatters to the floor. I throw him away, off my wolvers, and turn to Silver. I see the duo-katana on the floor, and decide to pick it up, consider its edge. I look to silver. “Your F-BOMBING BACK-SIDE is mine!” I cry out to him, grinning wildly. His head’s awaiting a good old-fashioned decapitation. Not as fun as defenestration, of course, but not much is. I shift in mid-swing, thinking about how nice it will be to see his head split open. Then, just as the sword is about to slice into Silver’s skull, a massive vibrating sword blade stopped the duo-katana in its tracks. “Wanna dance, motherfucker?” a new voice speaks. I look to the new player. He’s about seven F-BOMBING feet tall, and long limbed. Jesus, the F-BOMBING sword in his hands is almost as long as he is tall. His chrome skin is smooth and seamless, not at all like the armored plates of my own cyber; eyes are cool seamless orbs of chrome, staring into me. I hate Cee-Metals, they all think they are better than us real ‘borgs. I’ll show him. I grin, stepping in closer. The snake lashes out at him, headed straight for his chest. The biopod’s in there somewhere. But the big chrome-skinned guy moves quicker than I thought he would; one hand moves from the hilt of the sword and catches the snake before its strike can land. “Oh, I am so wise to your little tricks, bitch” the Cee says, grinning, and then he loops the sword around one-handed. I step back, feeling the pulling of the snake’s anchors deep within me, and the sword connects with the segmented titanium plating of the snake’s outer shell. And slices through it like it was nothing. Pain; I cut in the editors quickly. The snake still screams somewhere in my head as it flops around on the floor, blades still whirring. Can’t have this shit, not when I am so close to my prize. The snake can be fixed. I pull out the first digit of my razor-studded left thumb, and engage the slice n’ dice. I swing the monowire at Silver, towards his neck. His head, they had told me. But the big sword intersects, and the monowire is severed. My thumb-tip flies away. Why the F-BOMB do all these retards want to protect this meatbag? I’m getting more than a little frustrated now. I thrust the wolvers at the Cee’s midsection, and the sword’s thick vibrating blade slides between the first two. The Cee twists his blade, and the two wolver blades are sliced free of their mounts. I reach over the blade with my left hand, rippers flashing. Okay, he bleeds, I notice, as the rippers tear into his chest. He staggers back, and loops the heavy sword around again. I duck under it, come at him again. The rippers tear off most of his chromed cheek. I dance back, laughing. The sword is swinging around again, towards my right shoulder. I barely manage to move out of the way, the sword’s powered tip digging a deep furrow in the metal of my arm. This is getting out of control now. Gotta end it. I ready my groin-gun, the one-shot wonder. Then the vibrating sword catches me above the knee. It slices through, and into the other, and through it, and I topple to the ground. Shit, my legs are gone. I roll from the blade seeking me out again; it buries itself deep in the nanocrete. The Cee pulls it free with some effort. As he turns back to me, lifting the sword high above his head, I let my love show. The groin-gun fires off its payload. The Cee falls back. In the resulting flash of the minigrenade’s blinding explosion, I’m sure that most of his F-BOMBING head is gone. I lift myself on my hands and the stumps of my knees, and begin to crawl towards Silver, who just sits there looking at me. Time to finish the job I’ve started. Time to die, Billy Silver. I smile at him, death’s messenger.
VIEW FULL VERSION: Link