Skitterdoc 2077
- Thread starter SpiraSpira
- Start date
- Crossover
Since this is sort of a Worm fic (It has a version of Taylor anyway!) I thought I should say I recently found the absolutely perfect theme song for Squealer.
View: https://youtu.be/9BB3oB1qOVg
View: https://youtu.be/9BB3oB1qOVg
People sleep on full Body/Cool V. For my build, I have the legendary Biomonitor, Second Heart, the Cool perk that allows me to spend all my Cold Blood stacks to prevent death, and the Ninjutsu perk to reduce damage by a lot when I hit low health. This combined with all legendary clothing with max level Armadillo mods and 100% elemental damage resistance with full Cold Blood stacks. I literally am the damage sponge boss with multiple health bars. Sure, can't do the Sandevistan thing where the enemies are all dead before the first head hits the ground or hack them all from a city block away, but there's a certain catharsis in being damn near indestructible and wading through gunfire to break people with a single punch. But for whatever reason, that seems to be the least popular kind of build compared to Reflex/Intelligence focused builds.
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The opposite of stealth strategy. Immediately set off alarms so everyone comes to you.
Personally I'm more interested in cyberpunk Taylor in worm than worm with illogical alt trigger in cyberpunk. (Sorry but if you want to include the trigger event have it fit the trigger, maybe I'm just tired of the locker).
What Id really like is a Tattletale in cyberpunk. It's like harry Potter fics, Harry traveling somewhere else is so overused I'd love to see Hermione in marvel or something especially her going absolutely ham learning new stuff is more interesting than Harry Potter being an agent of death.
Lisa with her canon power could be really interesting to see in other worlds but unfortunately it's always Taylor.
That said I am enjoying the story and look forward to more. It'd be interesting if she goes to work for Trauma Team, as those guys have to be some of the biggest badasses if they actually live up to the corporate line of three minutes or less that put Delta Force and DevGru guys to shame as operators.
- Location
- Home
I can't help being predisposed towards killing things at a range. In fantasy rpgs I go greatsword, but in every single fps rpg I can't help going sniper builds
. Do you know what it's like to find yourself getting the anti material rifle in every single fallout new vegas run? It's hard to get tired of blowing people up 5 miles away.Bit of a derail.
Tattletale in Cyberpunk would be incredibly interesting. She'd either get shot in the head very rapidly or end up taking over the city.
- Location
- Dallas, TX
Save author fiat, little miss loud mouth McCantshutthefuckup would be dead in a week, if that. And that's assuming she freaked, ran into a building and squatted for a few days to get herself square enough to stop freaking. Her 1337 haxxor skills would get traced immediately, her verbal diarrhea would get her shot or ganged up in 5 seconds
Pretty much this. Tattletale's only saving grace is that outright murder is against the unwritten rules of cape culture on Earth Bet. Without that, her mouth and attitude would get her killed near instantly. Only reason she didn't die any number of times in canon is because she usually kept away from fights and the other Undersiders, usually Skitter, took care of most threats before it came to that. She can't even really claim to be a crack shot, not like other Thinkers or Skitter can with the rangefinding insect trick. My bet if she was put in Cyberpunk is she'd think she's hot shit and immediately get fried on Corpo ICE or they effortlessly track her back to wherever she is and gank her.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
While Cyberpunk!Taylor on bet is an interesting story, I'm much much much more invested in meditinker!Taylor in Night City, as with Worm the story is usually fairly predictable within certain archetypes (full hero taylor, wards taylor, lethal vigilante Taylor, reluctant/moral villain Taylor, rule following but solidly villainous Taylor, serial killer that eats people Taylor ect) while I have absolutely no idea where the Cyberpunk side could go. After reading up to the current update on your Fallout/Eclipse Phase fic I have full confidence on you doing both Cyberpunk and transgumanism fantastically.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
My headcanon about why he doesn't show up in 2077 is that V just knows better than to let that quack so much as look at her or his chrome. And V will go to Fingers or a literal Scav if you pick the right dialogue options.
The Kids Aren't Alright, Actually
I had settled on the treadmill after trying the other cardio machines, even though the elliptical machine was both better for your joints and theoretically more efficient in providing a workout. There was something simple and pure about just running that was very primal and struck a chord with me.
The treadmill made the ones I had seen in gyms back in Brockton Bay look like child's toys. Although it didn't have the advanced holographic systems that I knew were available, it did have what was, to me, a very fancy-looking wrap-around display that simulated any number of programs you could run through.
"Give me the downtown Paris program, please," I told the treadmill after getting on. The display switched to a photorealistic rendering of a first-person view of the Rue de Rivoli; this program circled the Louvre and then went southwest across the river Seine and continued down the Rue de Solferino some ways before stopping.
That wasn't the main reason I tended to select this program, though. Also rendered was an attractive man of European descent, wearing tight shorts and a shirt with no sleeves. He had a runner's build, and he was what the computer used to set the pace. You could make it a race using the variable speed mode, or he would run alongside or in front of you.
I made sure to set his speed so that he stayed in front of me at my normal long-range pace, as it was a pleasant distraction to look at him run away from me for the whole workout. I would either enjoy the view or read or watch media on the net, using my cyberdeck. I had begun reading some of the well-known books on the net, but most of the ones that really talked about hacking and weren't complete bullshit were a bit outdated, such as Rache Bartmoss's guide to the net. Another legendary hacker named Spider Murphy's biography on the dead legend was quite good, too. For a while, she wrote updated and edited versions of Bartmoss' famous guide every year, noting if anything changed significantly, so I was merely twenty-five years behind most newbies instead of forty-plus.
It was interesting reading the original version Bartmoss wrote and then the updates every year. In those days, and thanks to Bartmoss, the net was fragmented. A lot of the information Spider Murphy added was interesting ways to get physical access to various regional subnets, VPNs and company intranets, and how to prevent yourself from being murdered by crazy AIs, which mostly broke down into "stay away from the old net if you know what's good for you." The last version was written a year after NetWatch created the Blackwall, and the various regional nets had barely begun the process of reconnection, so even the last version of the guide wasn't that useful, even if it was very interesting. Ms Spider Murphy's updates tended to have information that was local to Night City that still might be a little bit useful today, such as how Night City's regional net was structured.
Today was my first day of class, but I made sure not to disrupt my routine too much. Since I didn't sleep very much since inventing my sleep inducer, I intended to maintain my workout schedule as much as possible, even while going to school and then when working.
The attractive-looking computer man looked back at me with a pleasantly expectant look on his face. I got ready and then nodded at him. That's all it took for him to start running and the treadmill to come to life as I followed behind, letting my mind drift while thinking about my future.
It might be a bit more difficult to keep working out every day like this while working. Working hours were longer here, which made sense since there wasn't any kind of wage or hour regulations. A normal workday in Night City varied somewhat but averaged about ten hours a day, not including your lunch. Twelve-hour days weren't uncommon, at all, either.
The workdays for paramedics were a bit different. Most ambulance services had a one-day on, one-day off schedule. Theoretically, on your twenty-four-hour shift, you were expected to get rest as you could while waiting between calls. R.E.O. Meatwagon had a twelve-hour shift schedule, but not only did that company have a very poor reputation, but they were floundering, with the expectation that they may go out of business any time.
Allegedly R.E.O. Meatwagon had a habit of physically interdicting their competition with force, generally other ground ambulances, in order to secure paying patients. It wasn't surprising, but in Night City, the 911 EMS service was privatised, although there were certain standardisation requirements.
Whether or not that was true or not, what was definitely true, as far as I could tell, was a group of private ambulance services banded together and hired a team of mercenaries to riddle the CEO of R.E.O. full of bullets when he was coming home from work. And then, for good measure, they ran the R.E.O Meatwagon ambulance that responded to try to save his life off the road.
Although it was listed as an unsolved crime, even the tamest sites she read on the net had nothing but schadenfreude for the plight of that man and his company.
The final payment from Militech cleared into my account a couple of days ago, and my balance sheet was sitting at a very healthy one hundred-and-twenty-two thousand eurodollars and some change. That sounded like a lot, and for many in the city, it was. My dad, as a Major in the Militech armed forces, made a little more than one hundred thousand a year, which was well on the upper middle class realm in this city.
However, one semester of actual medical school in the NCU Health Science Centre costs sixty-seven thousand dollars, not including room and board. Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself, but I definitely wanted to get actual's doctors' credentials.
In many ways, the mostly complete destruction of the system of colleges and Universities was very bad for the average citizen. At one point, Academia was almost totally beholden to funding from the government, and the government here in the world of Night City was barely functional. They weren't funding research, not at colleges anyway, nor did they provide guaranteed student loans to anyone.
In one way, it was kind of beneficial for me, though. The new, more corporate structure of higher education got rid of a lot of extraneous frivolities. You didn't need a four-year degree to attend medical school, for example. So long as you could find one to admit you, all you needed was a high-school diploma, or in her case, an equivalent. The payment was at least one year in advance and non-refundable if you flunked out, though.
The thought of going to med school under my own power, not having to sign a long-term loyalty contract to any specific corporation, appealed a lot to me, but I wasn't sure how it might be possible. Even if I lucked out and got a job at Trauma Team straight out of school, I definitely wouldn't make enough to save over three hundred thousand eurodollars in any reasonable time frame. I would have to moonlight, somehow, or accept having a corporation pay my way.
The program was only about a twenty-five-minute run and it came to an end with a short cool-down period, after which I hopped off the treadmill, being careful to wipe it off carefully. I didn't really sweat very much, especially when I was using a treadmill, but it was polite.
Although this gym wasn't very high-end, in some respects, anyone coming to it was slightly better off than average. The actual poor of the city didn't have enough money or time to care about their health, certainly not enough to spend time in a gym. Gyms were for people who didn't get exercise through the labour of their bodies, and even with the advent of automated production technologies, much labour, especially the less compensated, in the world was still very physical.
The classes I took in Militech called it "The Formula", and it was pretty cold-hearted. If you could replace a worker with a machine, you only did so if the total cost of the machine, including financing and maintenance, divided by the machine's expected service life, was less than the total compensation of the worker.
You'd think that this would drive tons of workers out of jobs, and in some cases, it did, but the truth was that a lot of times, a human worker was cheaper than a high-tech articulating robotic manipulator controlled by machine learning, so really there were a lot of low-end jobs that entailed strenuous physical labour.
The woman who was grinning at me, waiting to use the machine, was someone who looked like she had never really seen any of that herself. She was of partial European and partial Chinese descent, very pretty in the way models were, and I didn't know her name, much less anything about her. She tended to work out at around the same time I did, early in the morning, and we had become something like gym buddies. She also preferred the treadmill and elliptical machines.
"I see you chose the Paris program again. I have to admit, that guy does have a perfect ass," she said with a slight Chinese accent. It was so slight, just enough to give a hint of exoticness to her tone that I suspected that she could probably speak with no accent at all if she wanted to.
I lied furiously, "That isn't why I picked that program! It's because of the Louvre!"
"Yeah, his ass should be in there. It's a work of art, alright," she said as she hopped up onto the machine. She glanced at me, "You know, everyone can see you're strapped when you run in here in those sweats. Why do you carry a piece to the gym?" Her gym outfit exposed a lot more skin than mine, but I seemed to be a bit of the odd one out there.
I considered that question. Something from a series of Earth Aleph books that my mom liked before she died came to mind, and I quoted, "Because the night is dark and full of terrors. I'm surprised that you don't too. I'd expect you to get hassled a lot more than me." Because she was so pretty and I was just a string bean, I left unsaid.
That caused her to laugh as she began the exact same Paris program, waggling her eyes at me as she chose it, "That's funny, kid. I might consider it if I was leaving the building, but... there's not a single person who would give me a hard time in this building. I figured you knew, but I work upstairs at Clouds."
I raised my eyebrows at that and gave her another inspection, then blushed a bit as I realised what she meant. She was a doll, which was a type of prostitute. They used special cybernetics, allowing their entire body to be taken over by computer-controlled expert systems that would act out a client's fantasy perfectly, with the doll themselves not remembering a thing about what happened.
At first, when I heard about Clouds, I was aghast. I expected the grossest and most weird fetishes imaginable to be the only reason such a system existed. And considering I had tons of psychiatric data at my beck and call, including detailed information on almost every paraphilia known, I was expecting the worst. Maybe that was the case in some places that used doll hardware, but the Clouds net site emphasised and seemed to market itself to a high-end clientele, especially those with crippling social anxiety, and it was priced accordingly.
In any case, it definitely explained why the woman felt safe in this building. The Clouds was owned, lock stock and barrel, by the Tyger Claws. I didn't think anyone who messed with their "talent" had a very long life expectancy.
The woman, seeing me blush, laughed even harder, "I thought that was obvious, that you couldn't tell either means you were extra sheltered or my attempt to seem classy worked."
Well, maybe a little bit of both. She did seem classy, but she did have that sort of aura you'd expect from an expensive courtesan or geisha, now that I thought about it.
I didn't stick around much longer, we would usually make small-talk if we were both in the two treadmills, but I wasn't going to stick around just to watch her run just to be sociable. I didn't use the showers in the gym, either, which I felt a little bad about considering I had to go up nineteen floors in an elevator, although I wiped myself with towels so I wasn't incredibly sweaty or stinky before going back upstairs and using my own shower, where I couldn't easily be snuck up on.
I hadn't seen the ass-slapper since my revenge a couple of weeks ago, but my schedule was a bit different, too. Even before today, I spent most of my day on campus.
I had had to get off on the NCART stop in Japantown for the past week, just like what Mr Jin had warned me about. Thankfully, it wasn't a long walk to campus, but I had been coming over an hour early.
However, this time I almost got shot for my trouble. I knew something was a little wrong immediately after I stepped on the street because a large group of Tyger Claws were looming, looking simultaneously dangerous and anxious.
A man that looked to be their leader, wearing a jacket with a stylised Asian dragon printed on it, said as I carefully navigated past them, "...the kids are almost here; when they get here fucking shoot them if you have a gun, chop their fucking heads off if you don't."
He spoke in Japanese, but my implants included an auto-translate function, rendering subtitles in English either in front of me or in front of the speaker, depending on how many people were talking.
Were they going to kill kids?
I started to wonder what I could do, which I already knew was absolutely nothing. I couldn't fight a half dozen, obviously heavily cybernetically augmented, gang members, that was for sure. Especially not ones that controlled the building I lived in, the selfish part of my brain added.
I started walking faster, hoping to perhaps warn these kids to take another street. All of the Tyger Claws seemed to be staring down the street, expecting their prey to arrive from that direction, which was coincidentally also the same direction I wanted to go, towards Downtown.
However, instead of a bunch of kids, a large white-panelled van roared from a side street, fishtailing after taking a ninety-degree turn at high speed. The side door was open, revealing a bunch of definite adults levelling automatic weapons in the direction of the Tyger Claws... which was also incidentally also my direction.
Great. I'm going to be turned into swiss cheese by the crossfire, I thought and leapt aside, hitting the deck, rolling and hiding behind a Data Term. I felt good about my cover, Data Term net terminals were ubiquitous, and all of them were bulletproof, as some gangs in parts of the city, especially Pacifica, used them as target practice, just for fun. Alt-Taylor's memories suggested you'd need an anti-material rifle to have a hope of doing more than scratching them.
The two belligerents opened fire almost simultaneously, and the Tyger Claws seemed to have a better aim, but the van had the benefit of being a moving target shooting at a stationary one. I heard a couple of stray rounds ping off the Data Term shielding me. The sound was a cacophony, and I watched as the van came to a stop, crashing into a parked car as the driver was shot. A bunch of combatants leapt out of the disabled vehicle to be met by the Tyger Claw forces.
The Tyger Claws were outnumbered by two to one, it must have been a clown car in that van, but the fight was going more or less evenly and getting a lot closer to my position of concealment, with one Tyger Claw fighter taking a knife wound and slumping right next to me. That was, up until a bright red motorcycle took the same turn at the van, also at high speed. Instead of fishtailing, however, the rider did some ridiculous spinning manoeuvre and came to a stop, leaping off the bike before the machine even came to a complete stop, doing a front flip before landing in the middle of the melee with a katana.
Brave, but I think he would have been better served by hanging back and picking off the highly cybered enemy gang members at long range. Or at least I thought that until I just saw him vanish, and then right after, the heads of the six remaining men departed their bodies, blood flying everywhere.
I gagged and threw up, aiming away from the downed Tyger Claw as a sign of respect. I was already a bit queasy seeing people get shot more or less right in front of me, but watching six people get decapitated by some fucking speedster was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The downed Tyger Claw next to me saw me throw up, specifically saw me move out of my way so I wouldn't hit him with any of it and gave me a rueful nod of appreciation. He glanced down at his chest, winced and was about to yank the small little knife that was sticking out of it, but I suddenly found myself saying firmly, moving my hand to intercept his, "Stop!"
He looked more confused than upset, but that crazily dangerous man with the sword that must have some kind of high-end reflex boostware was suddenly looming over the both of us and asked both menacingly and curiously, "What are you doing, girl?"
Should I not have said anything? I didn't know, but I was already in this mess, so I decided to say confidently, "Saving his life, I guess. That knife knicked his aorta, but it's currently blocking the bleeding like a cork; if he pulls it out or moves around a lot like he is doing now, he will die very quickly."
That caused the downed Tyger Claw to freeze. The man looked down at his compatriot as if gauging the accuracy of my words from his vast experience of stabbing people in the chest. In fact, that seemed to be exactly what he was doing, and he probably did have enough experience. Finally, the man nodded and shrugged, "Does look a little close. Are you a med-tech or doctor, girl? Yuki, you better lay back down on your back and be very still till we get some help for you." The latter, he said in Japanese to the man, who nodded rapidly and did as he was told.
I grimaced, "This is supposed to be my first day in class at the HSC Paramedic course."
That caused him to grin, "Well, apologies about the unpleasantness in your commute. We have a few med-techs coming, but they're five minutes away. Mind taking a look at my men?"
He worded it as a request, but it didn't sound optional at all. Actually, it made me feel somewhat better about him. Perhaps it was the influence of Alt-Taylor's memories, but a man doing whatever he had to save the lives of the men under his command felt like a virtue.
I nodded and stood up, and he walked with me about ten metres to where a few of the Tyger Claws were laid out on the ground. He casually kicked one of the dead enemies who were in our way, causing the dead man to roll over. When that happened, I saw on the back of the dead man's leather jacket text that read "NIGHTKIDS," along with a stylised representation of a cartoon Dracula.
That made me want to do a comically cinematic face-slap. These were the "kids" that one man was talking about, I guess. God, I was so fucking stupid sometimes. The Tyger Claws may be a murderous street gang, but why had I thought they'd mow down a bunch of girl scouts out selling cookies? I should have done an about-face and gone straight back into the NCART terminal.
Two of the Tyger Claws were shot in the head, and the man said rather sadly, "I guess these two are a lost cause."
Well, that was definitely true for one of them. He was dead as dead could be.
The other, though, although it looked bad, was a lot more minor and a different story. The world was so violent that they had a very accurate way of predicting the survivability of a penetrating wound to the brain, and I stopped to do a quick assessment, which surprised my escort.
"He stands a good chance of surviving if you can get him to a trauma centre in less than an hour," I said, sighing. "But I don't know what kind of deficiencies he might have after recovering." I actually did, he would have trouble with his long-term memory and speech, but both of those could be mitigated with speciality implants designed to help those with traumatic brain injuries. I definitely didn't want to seem like I could detect that just by a quick, mostly visual inspection, though.
My proclamation caused the leader to raise his eyebrows in surprise and possibly suspicion, "Are you sure? People don't often survive getting shot in the head like that."
Actually, the truth was that they survived that all the time. Even people trying to kill themselves often survive shooting themselves in the head, but I didn't out and out correct the man with a katana and super speed and no compunctions about killing people in job lots, but I did qualify, "Over ninety per cent sure, yes."
He nodded, smiling a little, "That's good. His wife is pregnant." I thought that was a rough break; he might be recovering for some time. He said in Japanese to one of his men, "Sanjuro and Yuki are priority one, take them together, straight to Watson, don't stop for anything when Monotori arrives."
The rest of the Tyger Claws were only minorly injured, although I could detect one had taken shrapnel from an exploding high-velocity flechette ricocheting off something in his neck.
"It isn't a cut; it is an entry would of a small piece of metal. It might be fine, or you might get a neck massage and suddenly die someday. Or you might keel over dead in an hour if you keep rubbing at it. I'd recommend you get an x-ray at a hospital," I told him churlishly after he said he was fine.
"Really? That could happen?" asked the decapitator.
I sighed, "Most wounds I have read about similar to this actually never progress to that stage, but I can't tell exactly where the piece of shrapnel is." I could, of course, and it was true he wasn't actually in any real danger. But saying get a pair of tweezers to get it out seemed wrong.
The last man he had me look at was one of the "kids." The only survivor. His left leg was shredded beyond any saving, absent immediate nanomedical intervention. I frown, "I'd rather not help you, even indirectly, torture this man." I finally say quietly. There was probably only one reason they wanted him to survive, and it didn't bode very well for him.
I wasn't that sympathetic to him, as he and his friends almost killed me, but I had some morals, at least. Besides, they had already done the correct thing in applying a tourniquet, anyway.
That caused the man to grin at me and say, "I'm not really used to having people tell me no, you know. How refreshing! You know what, Taylor, I like you. My name is Yukimura. Yukimura Kato. People I like can call me Kato."
Because, of course, he knew my name. Well, I suppose that was why I was paying fifteen per cent of my rent in protection money so that I was easily identifiable to them.
Was this some kind of weird samurai thing? I like you; then he was going to stab me? You have the heart of a samurai, so die!
"Well, Kato, it is nice to meet you, I guess..." I said, lying through my teeth.
Kato laughed at me, "You know, you're not a great liar, Taylor. Go on; I won't keep you anymore."
I just nodded and proceeded with prudent haste towards downtown. That entire battle, including the first aid on the Tyger Claws, had only taken ten minutes, and although my hands were covered in blood, I managed to keep most of it off my outfit.
I duck into the first public bathroom on campus and use a liberal amount of hot water and soap to clean off my hands. Things could have gone better, but surviving my first small-scale gang battle when I was directly in between the two groups fighting was something to be proud of.
Should I have kept my big mouth shut and let that guy Yuki yank a knife out of his chest like a "gonk"? Probably not. It felt like the wrong thing to do. Besides, I didn't really demonstrate much skill beyond what any med-tech could do, after all. Even diagnosing the man with the GSW to the head wasn't that unusual. Gunshots to the head were so common that even basic med-techs generally knew, or at least had on their implants, the penetrating brain injury survival score test. The injuries in this battle were remarkably fatal; beyond the one guy with the knife in his chest, I didn't actually have to do anything.
After I finished washing my hands, I went into one of the stalls and threw up again.
The treadmill made the ones I had seen in gyms back in Brockton Bay look like child's toys. Although it didn't have the advanced holographic systems that I knew were available, it did have what was, to me, a very fancy-looking wrap-around display that simulated any number of programs you could run through.
"Give me the downtown Paris program, please," I told the treadmill after getting on. The display switched to a photorealistic rendering of a first-person view of the Rue de Rivoli; this program circled the Louvre and then went southwest across the river Seine and continued down the Rue de Solferino some ways before stopping.
That wasn't the main reason I tended to select this program, though. Also rendered was an attractive man of European descent, wearing tight shorts and a shirt with no sleeves. He had a runner's build, and he was what the computer used to set the pace. You could make it a race using the variable speed mode, or he would run alongside or in front of you.
I made sure to set his speed so that he stayed in front of me at my normal long-range pace, as it was a pleasant distraction to look at him run away from me for the whole workout. I would either enjoy the view or read or watch media on the net, using my cyberdeck. I had begun reading some of the well-known books on the net, but most of the ones that really talked about hacking and weren't complete bullshit were a bit outdated, such as Rache Bartmoss's guide to the net. Another legendary hacker named Spider Murphy's biography on the dead legend was quite good, too. For a while, she wrote updated and edited versions of Bartmoss' famous guide every year, noting if anything changed significantly, so I was merely twenty-five years behind most newbies instead of forty-plus.
It was interesting reading the original version Bartmoss wrote and then the updates every year. In those days, and thanks to Bartmoss, the net was fragmented. A lot of the information Spider Murphy added was interesting ways to get physical access to various regional subnets, VPNs and company intranets, and how to prevent yourself from being murdered by crazy AIs, which mostly broke down into "stay away from the old net if you know what's good for you." The last version was written a year after NetWatch created the Blackwall, and the various regional nets had barely begun the process of reconnection, so even the last version of the guide wasn't that useful, even if it was very interesting. Ms Spider Murphy's updates tended to have information that was local to Night City that still might be a little bit useful today, such as how Night City's regional net was structured.
Today was my first day of class, but I made sure not to disrupt my routine too much. Since I didn't sleep very much since inventing my sleep inducer, I intended to maintain my workout schedule as much as possible, even while going to school and then when working.
The attractive-looking computer man looked back at me with a pleasantly expectant look on his face. I got ready and then nodded at him. That's all it took for him to start running and the treadmill to come to life as I followed behind, letting my mind drift while thinking about my future.
It might be a bit more difficult to keep working out every day like this while working. Working hours were longer here, which made sense since there wasn't any kind of wage or hour regulations. A normal workday in Night City varied somewhat but averaged about ten hours a day, not including your lunch. Twelve-hour days weren't uncommon, at all, either.
The workdays for paramedics were a bit different. Most ambulance services had a one-day on, one-day off schedule. Theoretically, on your twenty-four-hour shift, you were expected to get rest as you could while waiting between calls. R.E.O. Meatwagon had a twelve-hour shift schedule, but not only did that company have a very poor reputation, but they were floundering, with the expectation that they may go out of business any time.
Allegedly R.E.O. Meatwagon had a habit of physically interdicting their competition with force, generally other ground ambulances, in order to secure paying patients. It wasn't surprising, but in Night City, the 911 EMS service was privatised, although there were certain standardisation requirements.
Whether or not that was true or not, what was definitely true, as far as I could tell, was a group of private ambulance services banded together and hired a team of mercenaries to riddle the CEO of R.E.O. full of bullets when he was coming home from work. And then, for good measure, they ran the R.E.O Meatwagon ambulance that responded to try to save his life off the road.
Although it was listed as an unsolved crime, even the tamest sites she read on the net had nothing but schadenfreude for the plight of that man and his company.
The final payment from Militech cleared into my account a couple of days ago, and my balance sheet was sitting at a very healthy one hundred-and-twenty-two thousand eurodollars and some change. That sounded like a lot, and for many in the city, it was. My dad, as a Major in the Militech armed forces, made a little more than one hundred thousand a year, which was well on the upper middle class realm in this city.
However, one semester of actual medical school in the NCU Health Science Centre costs sixty-seven thousand dollars, not including room and board. Perhaps I was getting ahead of myself, but I definitely wanted to get actual's doctors' credentials.
In many ways, the mostly complete destruction of the system of colleges and Universities was very bad for the average citizen. At one point, Academia was almost totally beholden to funding from the government, and the government here in the world of Night City was barely functional. They weren't funding research, not at colleges anyway, nor did they provide guaranteed student loans to anyone.
In one way, it was kind of beneficial for me, though. The new, more corporate structure of higher education got rid of a lot of extraneous frivolities. You didn't need a four-year degree to attend medical school, for example. So long as you could find one to admit you, all you needed was a high-school diploma, or in her case, an equivalent. The payment was at least one year in advance and non-refundable if you flunked out, though.
The thought of going to med school under my own power, not having to sign a long-term loyalty contract to any specific corporation, appealed a lot to me, but I wasn't sure how it might be possible. Even if I lucked out and got a job at Trauma Team straight out of school, I definitely wouldn't make enough to save over three hundred thousand eurodollars in any reasonable time frame. I would have to moonlight, somehow, or accept having a corporation pay my way.
The program was only about a twenty-five-minute run and it came to an end with a short cool-down period, after which I hopped off the treadmill, being careful to wipe it off carefully. I didn't really sweat very much, especially when I was using a treadmill, but it was polite.
Although this gym wasn't very high-end, in some respects, anyone coming to it was slightly better off than average. The actual poor of the city didn't have enough money or time to care about their health, certainly not enough to spend time in a gym. Gyms were for people who didn't get exercise through the labour of their bodies, and even with the advent of automated production technologies, much labour, especially the less compensated, in the world was still very physical.
The classes I took in Militech called it "The Formula", and it was pretty cold-hearted. If you could replace a worker with a machine, you only did so if the total cost of the machine, including financing and maintenance, divided by the machine's expected service life, was less than the total compensation of the worker.
You'd think that this would drive tons of workers out of jobs, and in some cases, it did, but the truth was that a lot of times, a human worker was cheaper than a high-tech articulating robotic manipulator controlled by machine learning, so really there were a lot of low-end jobs that entailed strenuous physical labour.
The woman who was grinning at me, waiting to use the machine, was someone who looked like she had never really seen any of that herself. She was of partial European and partial Chinese descent, very pretty in the way models were, and I didn't know her name, much less anything about her. She tended to work out at around the same time I did, early in the morning, and we had become something like gym buddies. She also preferred the treadmill and elliptical machines.
"I see you chose the Paris program again. I have to admit, that guy does have a perfect ass," she said with a slight Chinese accent. It was so slight, just enough to give a hint of exoticness to her tone that I suspected that she could probably speak with no accent at all if she wanted to.
I lied furiously, "That isn't why I picked that program! It's because of the Louvre!"
"Yeah, his ass should be in there. It's a work of art, alright," she said as she hopped up onto the machine. She glanced at me, "You know, everyone can see you're strapped when you run in here in those sweats. Why do you carry a piece to the gym?" Her gym outfit exposed a lot more skin than mine, but I seemed to be a bit of the odd one out there.
I considered that question. Something from a series of Earth Aleph books that my mom liked before she died came to mind, and I quoted, "Because the night is dark and full of terrors. I'm surprised that you don't too. I'd expect you to get hassled a lot more than me." Because she was so pretty and I was just a string bean, I left unsaid.
That caused her to laugh as she began the exact same Paris program, waggling her eyes at me as she chose it, "That's funny, kid. I might consider it if I was leaving the building, but... there's not a single person who would give me a hard time in this building. I figured you knew, but I work upstairs at Clouds."
I raised my eyebrows at that and gave her another inspection, then blushed a bit as I realised what she meant. She was a doll, which was a type of prostitute. They used special cybernetics, allowing their entire body to be taken over by computer-controlled expert systems that would act out a client's fantasy perfectly, with the doll themselves not remembering a thing about what happened.
At first, when I heard about Clouds, I was aghast. I expected the grossest and most weird fetishes imaginable to be the only reason such a system existed. And considering I had tons of psychiatric data at my beck and call, including detailed information on almost every paraphilia known, I was expecting the worst. Maybe that was the case in some places that used doll hardware, but the Clouds net site emphasised and seemed to market itself to a high-end clientele, especially those with crippling social anxiety, and it was priced accordingly.
In any case, it definitely explained why the woman felt safe in this building. The Clouds was owned, lock stock and barrel, by the Tyger Claws. I didn't think anyone who messed with their "talent" had a very long life expectancy.
The woman, seeing me blush, laughed even harder, "I thought that was obvious, that you couldn't tell either means you were extra sheltered or my attempt to seem classy worked."
Well, maybe a little bit of both. She did seem classy, but she did have that sort of aura you'd expect from an expensive courtesan or geisha, now that I thought about it.
I didn't stick around much longer, we would usually make small-talk if we were both in the two treadmills, but I wasn't going to stick around just to watch her run just to be sociable. I didn't use the showers in the gym, either, which I felt a little bad about considering I had to go up nineteen floors in an elevator, although I wiped myself with towels so I wasn't incredibly sweaty or stinky before going back upstairs and using my own shower, where I couldn't easily be snuck up on.
I hadn't seen the ass-slapper since my revenge a couple of weeks ago, but my schedule was a bit different, too. Even before today, I spent most of my day on campus.
I had had to get off on the NCART stop in Japantown for the past week, just like what Mr Jin had warned me about. Thankfully, it wasn't a long walk to campus, but I had been coming over an hour early.
However, this time I almost got shot for my trouble. I knew something was a little wrong immediately after I stepped on the street because a large group of Tyger Claws were looming, looking simultaneously dangerous and anxious.
A man that looked to be their leader, wearing a jacket with a stylised Asian dragon printed on it, said as I carefully navigated past them, "...the kids are almost here; when they get here fucking shoot them if you have a gun, chop their fucking heads off if you don't."
He spoke in Japanese, but my implants included an auto-translate function, rendering subtitles in English either in front of me or in front of the speaker, depending on how many people were talking.
Were they going to kill kids?
I started to wonder what I could do, which I already knew was absolutely nothing. I couldn't fight a half dozen, obviously heavily cybernetically augmented, gang members, that was for sure. Especially not ones that controlled the building I lived in, the selfish part of my brain added.
I started walking faster, hoping to perhaps warn these kids to take another street. All of the Tyger Claws seemed to be staring down the street, expecting their prey to arrive from that direction, which was coincidentally also the same direction I wanted to go, towards Downtown.
However, instead of a bunch of kids, a large white-panelled van roared from a side street, fishtailing after taking a ninety-degree turn at high speed. The side door was open, revealing a bunch of definite adults levelling automatic weapons in the direction of the Tyger Claws... which was also incidentally also my direction.
Great. I'm going to be turned into swiss cheese by the crossfire, I thought and leapt aside, hitting the deck, rolling and hiding behind a Data Term. I felt good about my cover, Data Term net terminals were ubiquitous, and all of them were bulletproof, as some gangs in parts of the city, especially Pacifica, used them as target practice, just for fun. Alt-Taylor's memories suggested you'd need an anti-material rifle to have a hope of doing more than scratching them.
The two belligerents opened fire almost simultaneously, and the Tyger Claws seemed to have a better aim, but the van had the benefit of being a moving target shooting at a stationary one. I heard a couple of stray rounds ping off the Data Term shielding me. The sound was a cacophony, and I watched as the van came to a stop, crashing into a parked car as the driver was shot. A bunch of combatants leapt out of the disabled vehicle to be met by the Tyger Claw forces.
The Tyger Claws were outnumbered by two to one, it must have been a clown car in that van, but the fight was going more or less evenly and getting a lot closer to my position of concealment, with one Tyger Claw fighter taking a knife wound and slumping right next to me. That was, up until a bright red motorcycle took the same turn at the van, also at high speed. Instead of fishtailing, however, the rider did some ridiculous spinning manoeuvre and came to a stop, leaping off the bike before the machine even came to a complete stop, doing a front flip before landing in the middle of the melee with a katana.
Brave, but I think he would have been better served by hanging back and picking off the highly cybered enemy gang members at long range. Or at least I thought that until I just saw him vanish, and then right after, the heads of the six remaining men departed their bodies, blood flying everywhere.
I gagged and threw up, aiming away from the downed Tyger Claw as a sign of respect. I was already a bit queasy seeing people get shot more or less right in front of me, but watching six people get decapitated by some fucking speedster was the straw that broke the camel's back.
The downed Tyger Claw next to me saw me throw up, specifically saw me move out of my way so I wouldn't hit him with any of it and gave me a rueful nod of appreciation. He glanced down at his chest, winced and was about to yank the small little knife that was sticking out of it, but I suddenly found myself saying firmly, moving my hand to intercept his, "Stop!"
He looked more confused than upset, but that crazily dangerous man with the sword that must have some kind of high-end reflex boostware was suddenly looming over the both of us and asked both menacingly and curiously, "What are you doing, girl?"
Should I not have said anything? I didn't know, but I was already in this mess, so I decided to say confidently, "Saving his life, I guess. That knife knicked his aorta, but it's currently blocking the bleeding like a cork; if he pulls it out or moves around a lot like he is doing now, he will die very quickly."
That caused the downed Tyger Claw to freeze. The man looked down at his compatriot as if gauging the accuracy of my words from his vast experience of stabbing people in the chest. In fact, that seemed to be exactly what he was doing, and he probably did have enough experience. Finally, the man nodded and shrugged, "Does look a little close. Are you a med-tech or doctor, girl? Yuki, you better lay back down on your back and be very still till we get some help for you." The latter, he said in Japanese to the man, who nodded rapidly and did as he was told.
I grimaced, "This is supposed to be my first day in class at the HSC Paramedic course."
That caused him to grin, "Well, apologies about the unpleasantness in your commute. We have a few med-techs coming, but they're five minutes away. Mind taking a look at my men?"
He worded it as a request, but it didn't sound optional at all. Actually, it made me feel somewhat better about him. Perhaps it was the influence of Alt-Taylor's memories, but a man doing whatever he had to save the lives of the men under his command felt like a virtue.
I nodded and stood up, and he walked with me about ten metres to where a few of the Tyger Claws were laid out on the ground. He casually kicked one of the dead enemies who were in our way, causing the dead man to roll over. When that happened, I saw on the back of the dead man's leather jacket text that read "NIGHTKIDS," along with a stylised representation of a cartoon Dracula.
That made me want to do a comically cinematic face-slap. These were the "kids" that one man was talking about, I guess. God, I was so fucking stupid sometimes. The Tyger Claws may be a murderous street gang, but why had I thought they'd mow down a bunch of girl scouts out selling cookies? I should have done an about-face and gone straight back into the NCART terminal.
Two of the Tyger Claws were shot in the head, and the man said rather sadly, "I guess these two are a lost cause."
Well, that was definitely true for one of them. He was dead as dead could be.
The other, though, although it looked bad, was a lot more minor and a different story. The world was so violent that they had a very accurate way of predicting the survivability of a penetrating wound to the brain, and I stopped to do a quick assessment, which surprised my escort.
"He stands a good chance of surviving if you can get him to a trauma centre in less than an hour," I said, sighing. "But I don't know what kind of deficiencies he might have after recovering." I actually did, he would have trouble with his long-term memory and speech, but both of those could be mitigated with speciality implants designed to help those with traumatic brain injuries. I definitely didn't want to seem like I could detect that just by a quick, mostly visual inspection, though.
My proclamation caused the leader to raise his eyebrows in surprise and possibly suspicion, "Are you sure? People don't often survive getting shot in the head like that."
Actually, the truth was that they survived that all the time. Even people trying to kill themselves often survive shooting themselves in the head, but I didn't out and out correct the man with a katana and super speed and no compunctions about killing people in job lots, but I did qualify, "Over ninety per cent sure, yes."
He nodded, smiling a little, "That's good. His wife is pregnant." I thought that was a rough break; he might be recovering for some time. He said in Japanese to one of his men, "Sanjuro and Yuki are priority one, take them together, straight to Watson, don't stop for anything when Monotori arrives."
The rest of the Tyger Claws were only minorly injured, although I could detect one had taken shrapnel from an exploding high-velocity flechette ricocheting off something in his neck.
"It isn't a cut; it is an entry would of a small piece of metal. It might be fine, or you might get a neck massage and suddenly die someday. Or you might keel over dead in an hour if you keep rubbing at it. I'd recommend you get an x-ray at a hospital," I told him churlishly after he said he was fine.
"Really? That could happen?" asked the decapitator.
I sighed, "Most wounds I have read about similar to this actually never progress to that stage, but I can't tell exactly where the piece of shrapnel is." I could, of course, and it was true he wasn't actually in any real danger. But saying get a pair of tweezers to get it out seemed wrong.
The last man he had me look at was one of the "kids." The only survivor. His left leg was shredded beyond any saving, absent immediate nanomedical intervention. I frown, "I'd rather not help you, even indirectly, torture this man." I finally say quietly. There was probably only one reason they wanted him to survive, and it didn't bode very well for him.
I wasn't that sympathetic to him, as he and his friends almost killed me, but I had some morals, at least. Besides, they had already done the correct thing in applying a tourniquet, anyway.
That caused the man to grin at me and say, "I'm not really used to having people tell me no, you know. How refreshing! You know what, Taylor, I like you. My name is Yukimura. Yukimura Kato. People I like can call me Kato."
Because, of course, he knew my name. Well, I suppose that was why I was paying fifteen per cent of my rent in protection money so that I was easily identifiable to them.
Was this some kind of weird samurai thing? I like you; then he was going to stab me? You have the heart of a samurai, so die!
"Well, Kato, it is nice to meet you, I guess..." I said, lying through my teeth.
Kato laughed at me, "You know, you're not a great liar, Taylor. Go on; I won't keep you anymore."
I just nodded and proceeded with prudent haste towards downtown. That entire battle, including the first aid on the Tyger Claws, had only taken ten minutes, and although my hands were covered in blood, I managed to keep most of it off my outfit.
I duck into the first public bathroom on campus and use a liberal amount of hot water and soap to clean off my hands. Things could have gone better, but surviving my first small-scale gang battle when I was directly in between the two groups fighting was something to be proud of.
Should I have kept my big mouth shut and let that guy Yuki yank a knife out of his chest like a "gonk"? Probably not. It felt like the wrong thing to do. Besides, I didn't really demonstrate much skill beyond what any med-tech could do, after all. Even diagnosing the man with the GSW to the head wasn't that unusual. Gunshots to the head were so common that even basic med-techs generally knew, or at least had on their implants, the penetrating brain injury survival score test. The injuries in this battle were remarkably fatal; beyond the one guy with the knife in his chest, I didn't actually have to do anything.
After I finished washing my hands, I went into one of the stalls and threw up again.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
This could either end well for medi!Taylor or really poorly, but seeing as she just saved the lives of the people who own the megaplex she lives in, I'd say it'll end well.
Called it lol, even got the Taylor's need to HALP down too, good chapter max can't wait for Taylor to explain to her professor she had to do a practice exam on way in lol
Although a lot of people would say Taylor Hebert's most prominent qualities are "escalation" or perhaps just "suffering" but I feel Taylor has 3 main more fundamental qualities that tend to lead to all that, namely:
1. She hates bullies, and in some respects sees the world and people as a black/white bully or victim type of mentality. (This can be pretty bad sometimes since once she settles on whether you're a bully or victim in her head, she finds it difficult to change this opinion even in light of new evidence.)
2. She wants to help people. Specifically, she wants to help victims.
3. She doesn't back down.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Thus the reign of the Queen of Escalation is secured, for all who dare challenge her right to this title soon find themselves smited by superior force"
- Location
- Internet
There is a bit more to it, but this is pretty on point.
The last big quality she has is a sort of lack of ability to trust those in positions of power. Her father, the school, the teachers. Them and more really soured Taylor's ability to step back and have faith that someone might help her or act for her betterment. As canon developed, this sort of turned into a self-perpetuating paranoid loop, and Taylor developed the mindset that if she didn't hardline what she wanted to happen, then it wouldn't. She became really "I can't trust someone else to do this the right way, so I need to do it myself" and it really sabotaged a lot of her interactions.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
Literally the only competition that isn't a suspect for that so-called crime is Trauma Team, because if you try to pull that shit on their ground vehicles(do they actually have those?) they will just open up with a rocket launcher.
Hell, it could be some random who loved someone his policies got killed.
In 2020 source material R.E.O. Meatwagon would attack Trauma Team, but I thought that was a bit unbelievable because Meatwagon was always supposed to be the cheap version of TT. The whole reason they were called Meatwagon was that one of their main businesses was picking up corpses to take their implants, like Scavengers.Literally the only competition that isn't a suspect for that so-called crime is Trauma Team, because if you try to pull that shit on their ground vehicles(do they actually have those?) they will just open up with a rocket launcher.
So I wanted to give this seedy impression but I didn't think that they honestly could attack TT and not have been ganked, and now I don't think TT has ground ambulances. But they do have hospitals at least one large trauma centre in Watson, so it maybe they do.
Nice chapter. Also it looked like Warp Dancer sandy or cheaper one but with same 10% time dilatation. I wonder what TinkerTaylor can do with one? Variable time dilatation with on\off switch instead of fixed bursts of speed and dynamic cooldowns... Sorry need to run and tinker something.
Seems pretty clear that would only be to save money for med school. She is already thinking about how to freelance to earn enough