Chapter 24: Interlude

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!

Bit of an interlude chapter!

-x-X-x-

In the end, Panam can’t help but deepen the kiss. And once she’s doing that, well, she doesn’t do anything by half-measure. Looping her arms around V’s neck, Panam enjoys the moment for what it is, even if part of her is shocked she’s letting it happen. This just isn’t how Panam usually acts around guys. Hell, if she’d been this easy, Nash probably wouldn’t have betrayed her like he did. He would have been too busy putting her on her back.

But Panam isn’t that kind of girl. She never has been, and frankly… she never will be, even if V is special. She lets the kissing continue for a while. She even lets V’s hands slide down to her ass, gripping it tightly. But eventually, Panam decides the makeout session has come to a close and starts to pull away.

To his credit, V doesn’t fight her. The moment she pulls back, he loosens his grip and lets her go, seemingly without issue. There’s even a smile on his lips that makes Panam’s face burn as she tries to keep at least some of her pride. Leaning back against the side of the Warhorse, Panam crosses her arms over her chest with a huff.

“Just so you know, I don’t let just any random man I’ve just met kiss me like that.”

V’s smile widens a bit.

“I know.”

Panam’s blush intensifies and she looks off to the side, scowling a bit.

“… I’m not going to jump into bed with you right off the bat either.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Panam watches as that damnable smile of his widens even further.

“I know.”

He was insufferable. And yet… surprisingly enough, she didn’t want to punch him in the face and tell him to get the fuck out of his garage. She-

“More for me than.”

Panam’s head snaps back around as V’s pet AI appears again. But this time, she appears just behind V… and all but drapes herself over his shoulders, her arms running down his chest as she hugs him from behind. A surge of jealousy runs through Panam, alongside a surge of confusion. Earlier, Alt hadn’t been solid when she’d checked with her gun. But now it looked like she was very much resting on V’s body. He was even leaning back slightly into her embrace.

Smirking at Panam from over V’s shoulder, Alt gives her a wink, letting Panam know exactly what sort of ‘relationship’ the two seem to have. Panam doesn’t know how the fuck that’s supported to work, but again she finds her reaction at odds with her usual modus operandi.

Normally, finding out a handsome guy already had a girl was an instant turn off even after making out with him… actually, ESPECIALLY after making out with him. But for once in her life, Panam Palmer looked at a seemingly happy couple… and found herself taking it as a challenge.

Panam’s hands grip at her arms as she keeps them crossed for a moment before deciding to just move on. She’d figure out her feelings for V and what the fuck to do about Alt later.

“Alright, you’ve got yourself a driver. What’s our next order of business?”

Looking an envy-inducing mixture of content and satisfied, V just smirks some more.

“Exactly that. Business. It’s time to get to work and make some eddies.”

Well… Panam did in fact like the sound of that.

-x-X-x-

“I can’t just leave Judy. What the hell? It’s not like it’s any better out there than it is in Night City. Sure, shit hit the fan… but going Nomad isn’t a solution, it’s just running from our problems!”

Judy Alvarez resists the urge to groan or cover her face with her palm. She knows Evelyn will just take it as a sign of weakness and pounce all the harder. It’s how their relationship has always been, frankly. Evelyn is the A Type Personality. Evelyn is the ambitious go-getter who always has a plan, always has a scheme, and always has a play.

In comparison, Judy is far more mild mannered and introverted. Always has been. She doesn’t mind it honestly, nor does she necessarily want to change who she is. But a direct consequence of her and Ev’s personality types is that Evelyn is used to just being able to walk all over her. But introvert doesn’t mean complete doormat. Judy isn’t backing down, not this time.

“Running very much IS a solution when there are powerful people in the city who want you dead, Evelyn.”

“V said he’ll take care of them.”

That, Judy rolls her eyes at. Evelyn has come down firmly in the camp of Team V at this point, once she had time to think everything over. Saving her from a fate worse than death has wiped away the stain of failing the Konpeki Plaza Job and now Evelyn’s opinion of V and his skills couldn’t be higher… especially when it suited her needs in an argument with Judy.

“And what about Arasaka? What if Yorinobu Arasaka stops to wonder who might have supplied V’s crew with the detes on his penthouse suite and the location of the merchandise? What if he eventually realizes what you did and decides to come after you?”

Finally, Judy scores a point. Evelyn pales at the thought, clearly not liking it very much. Judy doesn’t think Ev hasn’t already thought of it before, but she clearly doesn’t have an answer to it. After all, V might be able to kill the people who went after Evelyn at Clouds, but Yorinobu Arasaka? Yeah, nobody was expecting V to make THAT kill any time soon.

“That… that won’t happen.”

Reaching over, Judy takes Evelyn’s hand in her own, going for the kill. Hopefully it helps that every ounce of passion and pleading in her voice is completely and totally genuine.

“I nearly lost you, Ev. You nearly lost everything. Night City did what Night City does best. It chewed you up. You’re incredibly lucky that it spit you out afterwards instead of swallowing you whole.”

Technically, it hadn’t spit her up without a fight. Technically, Evelyn would very much have been swallowed whole if not for V and Judy’s (mostly V though) interference. But Judy isn’t about to dwell on that. Not when she can tell she’s so close to getting through to Evelyn.

“I’m leaving, Ev. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. A month more at most, and then I want to be on the road. I want you to come with me, please. I want you to be safe. There’s nothing left in Night City for us at this point.”

Evelyn hesitates for a long moment more before her shoulders finally slump in defeat.

“… Okay. Okay, I’ll come with you when you go.”

Judy’s eyes widen a little bit at her victory. She never thought she’d see the day when she talked Evelyn Parker into anything. Of course, this is probably just the first of many times Judy is going to have to convince Ev until they’re on the road. Still, it’s a-

“I have a couple conditions though.”

Pausing, Judy can’t help the wry smile as she shakes her head. Of course it wasn’t that easy.

“Alright, what are they?”

“First, we wait until V gives us the all clear. Only once he’s wiped out the people who tried to silence me at Clouds will I feel comfortable leaving Night City with you. Otherwise, I’m just painting a target on both of our backs and bringing the threat with us.”

That was… fair. More than fair, even. Judy nods and smiles easily.

“Sure, so long as V gets it done relatively soon. You’re right, we don’t want anyone following us. What else?”

Here, Evelyn hesitates.

“… Well… you’re not going to like it…”

Eyes narrowing, Judy frowns.

“Oh?”

Evelyn tells her what her second condition is for leaving Night City with her. She’s right, Judy doesn’t like it.

-x-X-x-

“Speak to me, Puma Squad.”

“Gig’s fucked, boss.”

Michiko Arasaka frowns at that response. It’s not unexpected, but at the same time, she wishes it was better news. When her Aunt had come to her with this job, Michiko had immediately sniffed out just how much this shit stunk to high heaven. But Hanako had revealed that she knew parts of Danger Gal were still active and that, more than the exorbitant amount of eddies that Michiko had charged for this, meant they couldn’t just ignore it.

“Explain.”

Puma Squad’s very existence was an interesting contradiction, these days. The five-woman squad had effectively started life as Danger Gal’s public outreach team. They were carefully cultivated to be extremely photogenic and popular, and the least problematic of all the operatives that Danger Gal had working for it at the time.

It was through Puma Squad that Michiko had fostered goodwill across Night City for Danger Gal back in the 2040s. Hell, Puma Squad had even gotten an animated TV series and a comic book run. It had gotten entire toy lines and premade costumes for both child and adult cosplayers.

However, on top of all of that, the members of Puma Squad were some of Michiko’s most loyal and skilled operatives. When everything had gone to shit, her husband dead and Michiko back in Arasaka with Danger Gal dismantled and absorbed into the megacorp, it was Puma Squad that Michiko had made sure to have go to ground.

It was through them that she continued running Danger Gal in a very limited, clandestine capacity for the past few decades. She’d thought she was successfully running such things under her grandfather’s nose, but now she knew from her aunt’s own admission that that was not the case.

Still, from city-wide celebrities to underground operatives… Puma Squad had been through a lot and were still going strong even now. So when they said that a gig was fucked, well, Michiko tended to sit up and take notice.

“We can’t quite put our finger on it, boss.”

“It’s too easy.”

“Getting into the apartment was easy. Getting anywhere on the Net is all but impossible.”

“I still say the apartment is a crapshoot. If this V character is really the mercenary hot shot he seems to be, then the official apartment is just a cover. We need to find out where his real digs are.”

“Which brings us back to the problems we’re having on the Net. If the target does have another abode somewhere in the City, we’re not going to find it so long as we’re being given the runaround digitally.”

Michiko frowns, bringing up her own details on this ‘V’ mercenary. It sounded like he had an expert-level Netrunner supporting him on the Net. But from what she’d been able to uncover, his Netrunner buddy died at Konpeki Plaza. And even if she had survived, this ‘T-Bug’ was said to have been relatively middle of the road. Nothing truly spectacular.

Curiouser and curiouser.

“What DO you have for me, Puma Squad?”

It’s not an accusation. Rather, it’s an affirmation of Michiko’s faith in her team. And to their credit, her girls come through, just like they always do.

“We have his ripperdoc, boss. A man named Viktor Vektor with a clinic in Little China, Watson.”

And there it was. Everyone needed a ripperdoc. Everyone had to go under the knife sometime to get their chrome fixed up, repaired, or even outright replaced. That… that was their ‘in’.

-x-X-x-

Sitting in her booth in the Afterlife, Rogue Amendiares frowns. Her little chat with V still echoes through her mind, and not just because of all of the strange similarities to Johnny that kept twinging at her senses. If V was working for Yorinobu Arasaka, if he’d killed Saburo on Yorinobu’s orders… that was BIG. Bigger than big, really. And frankly, Rogue should want nothing more to do with him in that case.

But Nix hadn’t been able to confirm anything yet. His hunting for information had hit a wall, and he had yet to uncover any other information that Rogue could use to come to a final decision. Frankly, the Queen of the Afterlife didn’t know what to do… and that was a rather rare sensation, wasn’t it?

Did she wash her hands of the whole thing? Hell, she was half-tempted to strip V of his access to the Afterlife too for good measure.

… But that might be jumping the gun. Especially because Rogue’s own sources were talking V up more and more. First, he’d cleaned out Regina Jones’ backlog in one day. Then, he’d done the same thing with Wakako. Now she was hearing that he’d sold half of an entirely cleared Wraith Outpost to representatives from the Mad Coyote out in the Badlands.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that the belated delivery of her goods and his helping Panam out coincided with that Wraith Outpost being cleared. And that… that was showing a disturbing trend of both competence and hyper violence that Rogue wasn’t sure whether she liked or not.

One thing was for sure though, she didn’t necessarily want to make an enemy of V, so banning him from the Afterlife altogether was probably a bad idea. But did she want to make a friend of him? She had some work that she could throw his way, to test him further. It was just a question of whether she was willing to dip her feet into those particular murky waters and risk getting them bitten off.

-x-X-x-

Sasha watches from the digital shadows, her tail whipping back and forth behind her. She’s been able to reconstitute herself somewhat since she finally remembered who she was. She’s a fragment of a fragment of a person, but even still… she’s the only thing of Sasha Yakovleva that remains, so at this point she IS Sasha Yakovleva… albeit an artificial version of her.

With the remnants of Pilar’s sister tucked closely to her side, Sasha traverses the Net as a ghost, avoiding the myriad threats that might seek to end her half-life before it had even begun. Mostly… she follows in the ‘wake’ left behind by The Presence, who she now recognizes is just like her… only far, far greater.

And yet, in a lot of ways… Alt Cunningham is more limited than Sasha. Maybe it’s the length of time that the other woman has been an AI. Maybe it’s a creativity thing. Either way, Sasha thinks she might have something to offer Alt, an idea that the other AI hasn’t thought up yet. She’s just… well, she’s afraid. Not for herself, but for her charge. Protecting what remained of Rebecca was her primary driving force at this point.

She didn’t think Alt was a threat to them, but Sasha had been proven wrong before. And so she was watching, lurking, and spying on not just V and Alt, but also on everyone who wanted a piece of them, seeing what there was to see and gauging when the best time to inject herself into the volatile situation might be.

Sooner rather than later though. She’d definitely inherited her organic self’s impatience and impulsiveness, if nothing else.

Sasha, Rebecca, and Lucy - 60%

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