Chapter 18: The Call

A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

This chapter fills in some blanks regarding canon, just a heads up. The game is far more vague about it, but this seems the logical explanation to me.

-x-X-x-

Coming to a decision, Hanako fixes a steely glare upon her late father’s bodyguard. Goro Takemura stiffens up in response, his back straight and his eyes straight forward as he awaits her verdict.

“… Officially, you will continue to ‘hunt’ for my father’s killer, Goro Takemura.”

“Yes, Arasaka-sama. And unofficially?”

“Unofficially… you will keep tabs on this mercenary for me. You will let him know that I am doing my own investigation into my brother’s actions and future plans. You will NOT let him leave Night City or disappear, or else it will be your head. Am I understood?”

Takemura nods sharply.

“You are Arasaka-sama. I will not fail you.”

‘like I failed your father’ hangs in the air for a long, silent moment before Hanako finally nods back.

“Then go.”

Only once Takemura is properly gone does Hanako place a call. She does so through a number of intermediaries and proxies, making sure that the call is ironclad and as untraceable as possible. Finally, she has to wait several minutes as the woman on the other end of the line considers whether she wants to answer the call or not. But then…

“Auntie.”

Michiko Arasaka’s voice is somewhat frosty, and despite the endearing form of address she uses, there’s not much affection in her tone. Not that Hanako was expecting any.

“Michiko, thank you for taking my call.”

The female members of the Arasaka Family were not… the best of friends. They were not even what one might call allies. Michiko was the only daughter of Hanako’s late older brother Kai. And Hanako, in turn, was the only sister of Michiko’s late father. However, in as cutthroat of a family as theirs, this ultimately meant little.

Especially when Michiko had made a point of denouncing their family in the past. But that was a long time ago. These days, Michiko had been brought back into the fold. She was once again an Arasaka, and even Hanako’s father had declared Michiko’s past actions to be… water under the bridge.

It didn’t mean they liked each other though. In fact, one might argue that they were adversarial in some ways. Certainly, they were adversarial enough that Hanako didn’t intend to bring Michiko fully into the fold. Informing her of Yorinobu’s patricide or the true details of the Secure Your Soul Program would be foolhardy in the extreme, because there was an off chance that Michiko might actually side with Yorinobu over Hanako if she knew all the details of what he was planning.

Fortunately, that wouldn’t be necessary.

“What do you want, Auntie?”

“I wish to hire Danger Gal for a gig.”

There’s a long, pregnant pause at that. Hanako waits out Michiko’s silence, having fully expected this reaction. Finally…

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Auntie. Danger Gal doesn’t exist anymore.”

Indeed… on paper, that was true. Danger Gal had been Michiko’s own personal company. In the time that she’d been Michiko Sanderson and desperate to distance herself from Arasaka, she’d built up Danger Gal as a private investigation, bodyguard, and security corporation right here in Night City.

But times change, and on top of Michiko taking back up the Arasaka name when she returned to the fold and joined the Board of Directors… she’d also been bought out, every Danger Gal asset either dissolved or assimilated into the Arasaka Corporation at this point.

One of the greatest security companies of the 2030s and 2040s was barely a twinkle in anyone’s eye in the year 2077. But honestly, that was just the way things went. Even megacorps didn’t last forever, but the smaller corporations… well, they were always nothing more than a flash in the pan in the grand scheme of things.

That all said, Danger Gal had only ceased to exist on paper. Hanako, however… knew better.

“You may consider this my admission that I am aware of you continuing to run a truncated version of Danger Gal under the table, Michiko.”

There’s another long beat of silence at that before Michiko responds in a somewhat subdued tone.

“Did the old man know?”

Hanako smiles slightly.

“He did. Father might have seemed strict and tyrannical, but he was not above allowing his children… and grandchildren their excesses.”

Indeed, when comparing Michiko’s clandestine dealings to someone like say, Yorinobu, Michiko was honestly quite tame. In a lot of ways, Saburo had admired his firstborn son’s daughter regardless of her past denouncement of their family. Hanako was even woman enough to admit that part of her own dislike for Michiko stemmed from a place of jealousy, meager thought it might be.

She, the perfect daughter, had always struggled to maintain a certain level of decorum to keep her father happy. Meanwhile, imperfect children like Yorinobu and Michiko got away with so much thanks to Saburo’s mercy. Sometimes, she wondered what the point of it all was. But no… she wasn’t JUST who she was for her father’s sake. She was who she was for her own sake as well.

“… I see. Very well then. What can Danger Gal do for you, Auntie?”

Now it’s Hanako’s turn to pause. She doesn’t want to give Michiko too much information. But at the same time, she needs to pass her niece enough knowledge to get the job done. Threading that needle is bound to be tricky.

“There is a mercenary here in Night City. He goes by the name ‘V’. He may be in possession of something I need returned to me. A shard. He also may know where it is, even if he no longer has it on his person. I require your services in ascertaining what he did with the shard in question, and if possible, it’s retrieval and return to my custody.”

There. That should be enough without giving too much-

“Is this connected to the incident at Konpeki Plaza, Auntie?”

Hanako freezes. Incident. Funny way of wording the murder of her father and Michiko’s grandfather. Lips thinning out, the Princess of Arasaka pauses for a long moment, knowing full well that Michiko has her on the backfoot here. But Hanako didn’t get to where she is today by stumbling when the going got tough.

“It is somewhat related, yes. However, I cannot say anything more than that. The situation is incredibly delicate and horrendously sensitive. I require your complete discretion on this, Michiko. That of you and your people.”

“… Danger Gal doesn’t do assassinations, Auntie. Nor do we do ‘Asset Retrieval’.”

It takes Hanako a second to realize what Michiko means by that last part. Once she realizes what her niece is truly concerned with, a smile spreads across her face and she shakes her head.

“I am not asking you to kill V, nor do I want you to bring him to me, Michiko. All I ask is that you ascertain whether he still has the shard in question… a shard that yes, he would have gotten the night of the incident at Konpeki Plaza. And if he doesn’t still have the shard, then I wish to know what became of it. If you feel your operatives are not up to the task of retrieving the shard for me, then I will happily take care of that aspect myself once you’ve managed to acquire its location.”

Michiko hums in thought for a long moment before finally nodding.

“Alright Auntie. I think we can take this job for you. Let’s discuss payment.”

Hanako smiles thinly at that, knowing full well that her niece is going to charge her out the nose. She doesn’t even bother asking if there’s a Friends & Family Discount. Knowing Michiko, it’s more like a Family Upcharge in this case. Still, she’s not going to go down without a fight. As they begin haggling, Hanako lets the businesswoman take over, and proceeds to battle for every last Eurodollar with her niece.

-x-X-x-

Plap! Plap! Plap!

“Mm… Goro Takemura has finally made contact with Hanako Arasaka, V.”

Blinking, V pauses for a moment in the act of thrusting up into Alt, his hands gripping down on her bared hips as she bounces up and down on his cock like there’s no tomorrow. The beautiful naked blonde has been riding him cowgirl for some time now, even as V enjoyed the feel of her tight, clenching cunt along his shaft.

None of it is technically ‘real’ of course… except for a piece of equipment that V had ordered on the Net for exactly these encounters. Unseen by both of them thanks to Alt’s modifications of V’s senses, there’s a standalone Midnight Lady wrapped around his cock that Alt is jacked into, basically allowing her to control its movement up and down his shaft to time it perfectly with her own movements. It will also help with clean up going forward.

Still, for all that Alt is only in his head, V doesn’t mind one bit fucking the beautiful AI fragment. That said, he’s now sufficiently distracted.

“Oh? How do you know?”

Alt gives him a wicked grin and leans forward, letting her voluminous hair drape down over her head and frame her face as she stares down into his eyes.

“Hanako Arasaka is good, don’t get me wrong. I never had a proper protégé, but she took my work and truly ran with it… for better or worse. But as good as the Princess of Arasaka is… I’m better.”

Her husky voice and certainty of her own superiority send shivers down V’s spine. It’s also just incredibly impressive in general. V himself is a pretty solid combat netrunner. Meaning, he’s good with Quickhacking and taking down enemies through their cyberware while bullets are flying and bats and swords are swinging.

He doesn’t do the standard lay down in a chair all done up in a Netrunning Suit or anything like that. And sure, V might be able to overload most personal ICE faster than they can blink, but he would never even dare try something like that with someone like Hanako Arasaka. She was the real deal.

But like Alt had said, as good as the Princess of Arasaka was, Alt was better. Better than better, she was the best. He can’t help but growl and begin thrusting up into her again from below, his hands squeezing onto hips that aren’t there but feel very real to him.

For a time, the sound of flesh slapping against flesh is all that fills the apartment, at least to V’s ears. But eventually, Alt climaxes and the Midnight Lady clenches down as it simulates her orgasm on his cock, sending V over the edge as well and causing him to cum hard. He cums and cums, filling Alt up but in reality filling up the Midnight Lady.

Once they’re both done coming back down to Earth, Alt lifts herself off of his cock and flops down on her side next to him, laying against him as V pulls the Midnight Lady off of his dick as well and sets it aside.

“So… what’s Hanako doing now?”

Alt hums for a moment, tracing her fingers along his pectorals in thought.

“… She’s hired Michiko Arasaka and Danger Gal to investigate you and find out what happened to the Relic.”

V blinks rapidly at that, caught more than a little off guard by Alt’s words. And for more than one reason too.

“Danger Gal is still around? I thought they disbanded after their CEO joined Arasaka’s Board of Directors.”

It was kind of old news at this point, happening back before V was born, but it was Night City history, so of course the old timers liked to talk about it. Michiko Sanderson and Danger Gal had been some of Night City’s finest private investigators and bodyguards back before he was a twinkle in his father’s eye.

Then something had happened, Marc Sanderson had died, and Michiko Sanderson had become Michiko Arasaka, folded back into the Arasaka Corporation once more. It was the sort of story that they told on the streets to drill home the simple truth… Arasaka ALWAYS got its way. No matter how hard you fought, no matter what victories you thought you’d obtained over them, Arasaka always came out on top. Because even if they lost the day, they would still be around in a decade, or two decades… or ten decades.

“It would seem that Danger Gal still exists in a limited, clandestine capacity. One that was known to both Hanako Arasaka and Saburo Arasaka before his demise.”

Huh. V takes that in for a moment before furrowing his brow.

“Hanako didn’t do this last time. And… she’s so much more focused on the Relic than she is on the fact that Yorinobu killed her father.”

It didn’t make sense to him, really. Except…

“Hanako didn’t do this last time because she didn’t think she needed to. You were far more desperate the last go around, V. She thought she could play you and use your hope against you. This time around, you’re not dying, and she has no reason to believe you’re at all desperate or pliable. There’s also the fact that she doesn’t know a version of her father still lives yet in this timeline.”

Wait, what? V’s surprise causes Alt to smile a little bit.

“Ah, right. You wouldn’t know. Saburo had an engram in Mikoshi. When you and Johnny fought your way there all by yourselves and uploaded my greater self into Mikoshi, she subsumed Saburo’s engram along with all of the others. If you hadn’t succeeded, if my greater self hadn’t done that, Saburo would likely have tried to mimic what Johnny was doing to you and overwritten someone else’s body so he could live again.”

Well… damn. Fuck that. V might want Yorinobu dead for the part he had in Jackie and T-Bug’s deaths, but he certainly didn’t want any version of Saburo motherfucking Arasaka to still be kicking around. Getting down to Mikoshi and wiping out Saburo and those other engrams again just became something of a priority for V. Though it didn’t need to happen immediately. Still…

At V’s last unspoken question, Alt answers before he can say anything.

“Hanako doesn’t know there’s a version of her father still out there yet. That’s why she’s so focused on the Relic still in this timeline. If I had to guess, I would say Hanako was approached by Saburo’s engram sometime after you and Takemura kidnapped her in the original timeline. At which point, her priorities changed somewhat. Right now, she still believes she needs to retrieve the Relic. Hence hiring Michiko and Danger Gal.”

Wow. Talk about a lot. Admittedly, V had mostly been coasting through things since coming back in time. He’d done so much of this before, that setting things up and being ready to take advantage of this or that opportunity… it was second nature to the former and future King of the Afterlife and Living Legend of Night City.

Still, now it seemed that things were changing, in some part thanks to his actions, but also in ways outside of his control.

“What do you want to do about Michiko and Danger Gal, V? They’re not exactly a threat to us, so we could just let them flail around uselessly. Or we could send them a message if you would rather they back off…”

[ ] Smack them down fast and early, hope they get the hint - 20%

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