Outrun - Chapter 478 - Chrome (Patreon)

“Hehehe.” A stupid laugh woke me up. Servos whined softly, making my silver fox ears flinch upright. Before I could even open my eyes, I felt a calloused hand running along my side in short strokes. My eyes opened half-lidded as I enjoyed the comforting feeling.

Mira stood just over me, casually petting me in my fox form. I was taking Bear’s suggestion to stay like this as much as possible to heart. If I had a chance of becoming a full-fledged Magus for free, I’d be an idiot to miss the opportunity. Unfortunately, that was exactly how the fluff fanatic herself found me.

“Aw, did I wake the little cutey up?” Mira’s eyes sparkled—wait, no, that was just the halo over her head pulsing erraticly. She dropped her head like she was going to press her face into my fur. I immediately stopped her with a paw to the cheek. 

“Yip?” My silver tail slid away from where I’d been using it as a pillow. What time was it? A yawn split my snout wide open as my eyes squeezed shut.  

“So cute. Damn, I wish I was a Magus so bad.” Mira grabbed my paw in her hand. The servos of her Shift ExoCore groaned as she held me captive and pressed her thumb against the delicate beans of my paw. My claws stretched out around her thumb, drawing another silly laugh out of her.

I tugged my paw out of her hand and stood up. She backed away as my fur melted back into skin and clothes. In a mere second, I was back to human form and sitting on the table. “You couldn’t let me sleep longer?”

”Sorry, sorry.” Her smile suggested that she was not, in fact, sorry, nor did she feel any guilt for messing with the sleeping fox. “What made you decide to be like that?”

“I don’t have a bed down here,” I lied. The runner chairs were actually super comfortable to sleep on. Being a fox had its advantages, though. Namely, I could curl up just about anywhere and fall asleep. 

“You can do better than that.” She patted my shoulder encouragingly.

”Ugh… Bear requested that I spend as much time as a fox sprite as possible.” I let the truth slip. The guy had even sent me an actual request too. From the way it was worded, it seemed the two of them had sent it together. 

| Request - Fox Form Fun

Spend every waking moment in the superior form of a fox.

Try to get in touch with your inner chaos gremlin.

Do what Fox would do.

Bring Bear alcohol.

Reward: Free Check Up With Mister Bear!, 100 EF |

I… didn’t know quite what to think about it. I most definitely did not have an inner chaos gremlin. Anyone who said otherwise was obviously lying, and should be sued for slander. An inner kobold, on the other hand…

“So you're sleeping as a fox now? Sleepover!” Mira cheered, and flopped down into one of my rolly chairs. She spun around in front of me lightly. 

“It was just more comfortable to be like that, and I wasn’t doing anything anyway.” I was waiting on a foundry to finish up, and my exhaustion finally caught up with me. 

“As long as you’re like that, you can sleep in my arms whenever you want.” Mira had a fanatical look in her eyes that sent shivers down my spine. Something told me this next month was going to be incredibly tough. On top of traveling, having to be a fox would mean I never had a moment of peace. 

“Only when I’m a fox?” I poked her muscular arms with my boot, stopping her from spinning around more. “I’m hurt, Mira.”

”Eh, well…” She looked me over and flicked a lock of golden hair over her shoulder. “I guess I could let you sleep in my arms as a human too. You’ll just have to ditch all your heavy ass equipment.”

”Right, like that’s going to happen.” And my equipment wasn’t that heavy. I’d been slimming everything down lately. I was even thinking about finally ditching my bag. 

“It should. You’re going to develop back problems at this rate.” She smirked at me. “Nael won’t be able to fix a broken spine.”

“I helped him do that a couple days ago, actually.” I summoned out Crow’s Canteen of Chaos, and tipped my head back to take a deep drink of water. Compared to the filtered and city water, it was so very refreshing. After I drank my fill, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and offered the canteen to Mira. “Want some?” 

“Is it booze?” Mira accepted the canteen from me, and held it carefully in her hand. She sniffed at the canteen, and actually looked a little disappointed that it was just water. She pulled up her shirt and wiped off the lip of the Remnant. 

”Who do you think I am?” It was probably for the best that I never told her about all the stuff I had in there. There was a surprising amount of alcohol considering I usually collected at least a few drops every time I was around the stuff. 

“Just surprised those guys haven’t driven you to drink yet is all.” Mira shrugged and took a drink. After a moment, she imitated me and drank down as much of the water as she could. “Ahhh… I forgot how good this stuff was.”

“Right?” I accepted the canteen back from her and banished it into the shadows. She was definitely talking about the eidolons. “And I wouldn’t drink because of them.”

”That’s a relief—“

”I’d go straight to hard drugs.” The eidolons probably wouldn’t actually drive me to substance abuse other than my own dopamine every time I leveled something up. 

“At least use designer stuff.” Mira sighed heavily. “You have the rayn to afford it now.”

“It was a joke, Mira.” I didn’t have the time to think, let alone fall into substance abuse. The time I could be high was much better spent working on some tech, hanging out with my friends, or literally anything else.

“Sure, sure.” She didn’t look like she believed me, though shifted the topic. “Whatcha working on now?”

”Chrome.” I hopped off my table and moved over to one of my Foundries. It’d finished while I took a nap, printing out the last part I needed for my chrome. It was an improved killswitch for my Neural System Interface. 

This time, instead of a physical switch, it was one that could be flicked with my Kinetic ability. There were several additional failsafes to ensure it would only be my ability and not, say, being struck by lighting. If I was ever paralyzed while my chrome was glitching out, I could shut it all off with just a flex of my mind. Not to mention having an exposed switch on my neck was kinda dangerous. 

“Getting new chrome before we leave doesn’t sound too smart, Shiro.” Mira immediately called me out as I got to work finalizing my newest NSI. 

“I’m just redesigning a few things.” It was just for my NSI and cyber eye, though. Changing them shouldn’t affect me as much as getting a whole new Neural Link running along my skeleton might. I thought about making better chrome, but I wasn’t suicidal enough to do that right before I left the country and lost access to a reliable medek. 

My new Neural System Interface, I was thinking NSukuyomi 1.0, was an overall improvement compared to the one currently in my neck. Outside of the kill switch being better, it’d offer vastly superior performance all the way around. Instead of just 32 Neural Capacity, it’d be capable of supporting chrome up to 190. It was just shy of basic mil-grade stuff at around 225. 

I wasn’t planning on using all of that, but it’d certainly be useful once I wanted to get chipped with something else. My Neural System Interface had always held me back, in a sense. It was really about time I made something better. Not to mention market stuff would fry in my neck if I got it chipped thanks to my Electrogenesis. 

The NSukuyomi also had built-in Universal Translation Suite and HUD augments. The translation suite would let me understand any language as long as I had it cataloged. It was a pretty common type of chrome, so there were plenty of resources on the net to basically work with any language that wasn’t dead and even some dead ones.

I brushed my thumb over a set of four chip slots on the side of the NSI. I’d also incorporated my first ever chip slot. Usually I didn’t like them since anyone could plug malware into my neck if I was unconscious, but I needed a chip slot to load with language catalogs. The chip slot was the biggest problem under Weakness Wrangler, but I couldn’t do much about it. 

“You going to have Nael shove that thing into your neck?” Mira asked. She leaned forward to watch me do my final checks. 

”Yeah.” It’d replace my current NSI, which was something I’d slapped together back… was that really since before I met Saint? Had it been that long since I upgraded my chrome? 

My eye also had to go. I’d put a ton of features into it, but that just caused the chrome to be bloated and consume way too much Neural Capacity for what it offered. I was going to keep the night vision and zoom, but it was going to be pretty barebones otherwise. 

I wanted to do some kind of trajectory analyzer like the optics I had in the DNBR, but quite frankly I ran out of time. I’d have to go klep a bunch of data for that kind of thing, though. Heists were something I unfortunately didn't have time for.

I finished my checks, and carefully set the NSI in a heavy duty chrome crate we’d swiped from Medtech when we hijacked that Medevac. “I’m going to give him the prints for it too so he can make more of them.”

”Are you sure that’s wise?” Mira asked. “Having advanced chrome will just paint a target on his back if anyone finds out.”

”Mira, it’s not advanced chrome that he’s making in the back.” I shook my head and patted the NSI. “It’s experimental tech donated by Cold Moon Solutions to gather market data.”

”That… probably won’t make much of a difference?”

”It makes more of one than you’d think.” I wasn’t super invested in corporations or anything, but I’d been carefully learning where I could. Labels had real power, especially amongst those in charge that got all of their info from sheets of paper and memos.  

“I’ll take your word for it.” Mira scratched at the back of her head, though looked totally unconvinced. 

“Want to come?” I asked without really thinking about it. After a moment, I shook my head and picked up the chrome crate. Who the hell would want to come watch their best friend get ripped open?

”Sure.” Mira slid out of her chair and moved over to me. She casually took the heavy duty crate out of my hands like it was nothing, and nodded to me. “I need to talk to Nael anyway.”

”What about?" Was she having issues with her chrome again? I used Hidden Hands to tap her back as she led the way toward the lift, sweeping through her body with Technical Expertise. 

Everything looked like it did last time I checked her out. Tornado was making mil-grade chrome at the end of the day, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that it was still in good shape… Now that I thought about it, was scanning her like that considered invasive? I… I probably should try to ask for permission next time.

”Oh, you know… gotta refill my medicine.” She shrugged and avoided the topic. “Why’d you call me, anyway?”

”I needed help.” Though I wasn’t expecting her until tomorrow. Depending on how my surgery went, we could probably go today? “I gotta clear out my Aether bunker before we leave. I also need a bodyguard tomorrow.”

My bunker was full of shit. It was nice sometimes, but I didn’t want to have to dig through stuff when we were in Lathvin. Not to mention I needed more space in my bunker to store a Foundry and a bunch of other machinery. Just because we were going to another country didn’t mean I wanted to be cut off. 

“Oh?” She lifted a golden eyebrow as her halo pulsed with interest. ”What for?” 

“Well, I’m a corpo now, aren’t I?” I waved at myself. I was probably the furthest away from corpo I could be, but that’d have to change. I had a very important meeting with not only Sentinel, but also an old friend in the Viento Cartel tomorrow. I wanted to look the part. 

As for why Mira? She looked damn intimidating in that power armor I made her. Not to mention I finally just finished upgrading it all to Gravitite. Having her behind me would make me look important, and hopefully drive home that I wasn’t to be messed with.

“I don’t think a corporation of just the CEO and a part-time Netrunner counts, Shiro.” Mira hummed softly as she shifted her grip on the box of chrome. 

“Maybe not. As far as anyone else knows, though, I’ve got a whole team of engineers and R&D guys behind me.” That’s what I told Sentinel, anyway. Luna had done a damn good job making it seem true, and I’d been leveraging the training from Shoemaker recently to make my ‘employees’ as real as possible. 

I rubbed at my eyes, and leaned against the side of the lift. There was still too much to do. We were leaving in less than a week, though. I hadn’t even gotten around to learning runes in Owl’s Repository of Knowledge, but that’d have to wait till we got back. Our time till we set off to save Luna’s brother was steadily ticking away.

— — —

AN: I’m going to try and limit myself to just two more chapters until we enter the Lathvin arc. The story’s gotten a little windy and lost recently. I’m planing on using Lathvin to reset that, hopefully.