Fake It 'Til You Flatline: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Binged Cyberpunk Edgerunners recently, and that stared a whole stream of ideas. This is the first time I've tried something like this, and it's mostly a concept piece but if y'all enjoy it, who knows?

In other news, A Devil In The Dungeon has been mostly outlined and should return shortly so stay tuned for that!

There was a certain art to getting the shit beat out of you properly. Anyone could curl up into a ball and take their licks, usually accompanied by a little whimpering and more than a few tears, but it took a real man (or woman) to dish out as much as you took. Get your licks in while they’re working you over; that’s how it’s done.

I, unfortunately, was not a real woman, and was crying like a little bitch by the time the three thugs that cornered me in an alley outside my favorite convenience store stopped beating on me.

One last kick to my ribs made me curl in on myself. It was accompanied by a helpful little ping in my ear, and a wad of spit landing on my cheek. 

[100 Endurance Experience gained!] 

The notification flickered in my blurred vision before fading away. I stayed curled up, waiting for another blow, but none came. I looked up through tears at the three men standing around me. “You guys done already?”

The fattest one, a balding man named Tom, spat on me again. Or at least he tried to. It kinda just dripped out of his lips and landed on his boots. He tried to act tough anyway, saying, “We don’t have too much time to waste on you today. But if you don’t pay up soon, we’ll make time.”

“Told you I don’t got the eddies right now, Tommy," I climbed to my knees. “Think I'd try to stuff you fine gentlemen?”.

“Bullshit, you don't got it. We know you’re a corpo brat. Just call daddy and have him send some scratch.”

That was Hoss. He would have looked about as plain as his name if it wasn’t for the giant piece of metal sticking out of his face. Word around the street was he got his nose cut off fighting off a Tyger who was after his girl. In reality, the dipshit just didn’t want to chip in for a proper nose implant and lost it entirely. And since he wasted his money on faulty chrome, he was stuck with what basically amounted to a repurposed air fresher stuck in the middle of his face.

“Oh, I’d love to. Unfortunately, my parents are very dead.” I shot back, rubbing my bleeding nose. It crunched disturbingly and I quickly dropped my hand, scowling at him. “I don’t got an enny to give to you bozos.”

“Well you better find some.” Hoss spat, before walking off. The rest of his posse followed, leaving me there laying on the dirty alley floor that smelled faintly of piss. 

I sat there for a little while, waiting for my tears to dry, before dragging myself to my feet. My nose felt weird on my face so I reached up, jerking it back into the proper position before I had the time to think about it. Pain flashed through me and I stomped my foot.

“Motherfucker!” I cried out. The pain quickly faded to a dull throb that did nothing for my headache. I wiped the blood from my face, grimacing at the red streak on the back of my hand. “Blech. Now I'm gonna need more booze”

I dragged myself off the street and into the convenience store that I was trying to get to in the first place.  The drink aisle called my name, and soon enough I found myself carrying a case of beer to drown my sorrows in.

“Come on down to Night City, where the people are shit and the lights are pretty~” I sang softly as I filled a little basket with tons of booze. “We'll take what you got, then we'll take even more…”

“Preach, sister,” a woman muttered as she grabbed a can off a shelf near me. 

She cracked it open right there in the aisle and gulped it down before placing the empty can back on the shelf and walking off. I stared after her, nonplussed, then moved to the next aisle where they kept the soda.

After filling my basket, I made for the front of the store where a woman with vibrant green hair and tanned skin was manning the counter, and looking like she'd rather put two in her own head while she was at it.

“How can I help you–oh. Hey Nao.”

“‘Sup, Jules. How's life?” I asked as I set the booze on the counter. She glanced at it, then back to my winning smile. One emerald eyebrow slowly climbed up her forehead.

“Better than you, I'm guessing. You've got a little something right here.” She gestured to the side of her face, and I rubbed my cheek. My fingers came back flaked with blood. I rubbed at it until they were clean.

“Thanks.” 

“Mhmm. So, who beat the big bad merc’s ass this time?”

“Frank and his chooms. And for your information, I did not get my ass beat. I let them beat me up. Coulda taken care of ‘em all by myself but I just didn't feel like it.”

Jules looked unconvinced. “A beating is a beating is a beating. You look like ten pounds of shit. What happened to all those eddies you said you were gonna be rolling in?”

“They’re coming,” I assured. “I actually have a gig later tonight. Should be a good chunk of change. Enough to keep Richter off my ass, at least.”

“Be careful with him. You know he's got connections to the corps. Could ruin your life if you're not careful.”

I chuckled as I grabbed my bags. “Babe, I'm already there. Ain't no shovel hard enough to let me dig deeper.”

“Try and say that when you're strapped to a Scav’s operating table.” She muttered. “You owe two hundred.”

I glanced at the terminal and interfaced with it. Two hundred eddies slid out of my bank account into the digital ether, and I was left even poorer than I was a minute ago.

“I'll be fine.” I promised, heading for the door. “Be seeing you.”

“I hope so.”

I stepped out the door onto a bustling main street. Following the flow of traffic, I slipped back into the alley I'd just got my ass handed to me in and cracked open a beer. The rest, I held against my chest. They disappeared in a flash of blue light, and a notification flashed in the corner of my vision.

[5 Health Items added to Inventory!]

“You’re the one good thing in my life right now,” I muttered lovingly to the tin can in my hand before downing the rest of it. The homeless man walking into the alley heard me whispering to an inanimate object and wisely decided to turn around and find somewhere else to pack it in for the night. In the meantime, I had finished my drink and tossed it away, resuming my merry trip back home.

Though my cheery demeanor might lead you, dear reader, to believe that my life always sucked, I am here to tell you that that isn’t so. Just a few short months ago, I was just like you. I graduated high school just in time for the world to shut down, managed to secure a minimum wage job that paid enough to make my parents happy, and coasted off that for a few years until things went back to normal and I could start working a real career. 

Life wasn’t great, but it didn’t blow chunks either. I had stuff to look forward to… like the newest season Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

I still remember it vividly, or rather, I didn’t remember it at all. There I was, waiting for the drop, passing the time by revisiting my most recent playthrough of the game. I’d been up all day, but I’d already prepared a copious amount of caffeine to get me to the premier. I was gonna binge it all in one sitting, like last time, so a lot of pre-gaming was had.

The clock hit three, Netflix updated, and I had the popcorn ready to go. I took a piss, told my roommates to fuck off, dimmed the lights, hit play, then…

I woke up here. In quite possibly the worst version of earth bar whatever Warhammer was cooking up. Night City, for all its charm, was not a place I ever wanted to see with my own eyes. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given much of a choice. 

Luckily, I wasn’t completely SOL. Whatever cosmic joke was being played on me came with a pretty funny punchline. 

Blue lines flickered across my vision, settling into multiple blocks of text that scrolled down my field of view yet somehow didn’t prevent me from seeing. 

Welcome to the System Ver 1.03!

Current User: Naoko AokoshiLevel: 3 (1,500 / 6,000)Currency: §233

Health: 138 / 144 Stamina: 80 / 80Cyberware Burden: 9Cyberpsychosis Threshold — High (40)

[Active Effects] (2)

Cheap Booze - Heal 50 Health over one minute

Broken Nose (Healing) - Sense of smell has been negatively impacted

[See More]

Fucking Gamer powers. Forget leveling the playing field; this made a whole new fucking game. Any reservation about my new life went right out the window once I saw the gift I’d been given. Who cared about how dangerous this place was if I could heal a broken nose with a pint of the good shit and shrug off bullets via exposure therapy? Give me a few years and I’d become cyber god!

You know, assuming I didn’t manage to fuck it up before then. Right now, things were not looking good. 

“Honey, I’m home!” I called out to the interior of my squalid apartment. It was a studio with a connected bath, and also completely and utterly empty apart from a mannequin standing near the window overlooking the alley next door. I gave it a friendly nod as I passed. “Evening, Frank. Enjoying the view?”

To my astonishment, Frank didn’t respond. He must have been mad at me.

“Well be that way. No drink for you,” I muttered, kicking back on the ratty couch and turning on the TV. The lady onscreen rattled off the latest death statistics in the city, and I listened with half an ear as they got to Kabuki. Twenty three dead in a shootout this morning. Not bad. Guess the Tygers were feeling nice today.

I reached forward and grabbed a beer off the table. Taking a swing, I grimaced at the taste of lukewarm pisswater. “Can’t find good hops anywhere, huh?”

I downed the rest without really tasting it and tossed the can into a corner with a dozen others. This place was already a trash heap, though only half of that was my fault. The body I’d been dropped into belonged to some corpo burnout.  Once upon a time, her parents had been bigwigs at some Arasaka subsidiary. They were killed ten years before I showed up, and she managed to burn through her inheritance in half that time.

What sucked the most was that she blew it in the stupidest ways possible. I would have been fine if I had a nice car or some chrome to sell to make some eddies, but no. Instead of showing off like every other nepo baby, she decided to throw all of her cash into parties and drugs and gamble away the rest of it. When I showed up, she was literally living on the street. I had made some headway in fixing that, but my current situation wasn’t much better. 

A call flashed in my vision, the I.D taking the form of a moth with wings outspread in front of a magnifying glass. I answered it on the second ring. “Hey, what’s up? We ready to go?”

A weedy voice scoffed. “Don’t know what you mean by “we”. I’m the one doing all the work here. But yeah, I’ve got the info if you’re still up to getting shot at while you run around like an idiot.”

I slipped off the couch, heading to my closet. “So getting shot at isn’t considered work anymore? Better tell all those military folks to pack it up and get a real job, then.” 

“It would make my job a hell of a lot easier,” Milo muttered as I opened the wardrobe. I shucked off my shirt, leaving me in just a sports’ bra, and grabbed my bright yellow jacket, slipping it over my shoulders. “Bit of a problem, though. The place is locked down tighter than we thought. I won’t be able to help you much once you’re in. They basically have no subnet to speak of.”

“Aww, so I won’t have you yammering in my ear the whole time? That’s a shame. I don’t know what I’d do without my best friend in the whole world Milo Salinger insulting me every second of the op.” I slipped a holster around my and closed the wardrobe, heading across the room. 

“I am fully capable of locking you inside your disgusting apartment until you die of old age, Aokoshi. I still have access to the local net. Do not test me.”

I winked at the camera above the door before I slipped into the bathroom. “Just as long as you don’t spy on me in the shower, you can do whatever you want, babe. They can’t evict me if I can’t leave.”

“Disgusting…” Milo sneered as I closed the door behind me. Out of his digital view, I reached into my inventory and retrieved my gun.

“Hello baby,” I muttered to the bright yellow Nue. Fully customized with an extended magazine, muzzle break, and personalized frame, this bad bow was the most expensive thing I owned. I could probably pay up on rent for a whole year if I sold it, but it was my baby. No way was I letting some gun nut get their hands on it.

Racking the slide, I gave the barrel a kiss and slid it into my holster before glancing in the mirror, giving myself a once over. A spot of blood still remained from my scuffle and I wiped it away, revealing the silver EMP threading underneath my eyes. The lines ran from the corner of my eyes to my hairline by my ears. Wetting my hand, I ran a finger along them, tracing them onto my shaved head, then slipped my hand back through my mohawk. 

Shaking it out until it was wild as I usually liked it, I gave the mirror a wink. “Lookin’ good.”

“Can you hurry the hell up? I actually have things to do today.”

“Alright, alright,” I sighed. “You’re in a pissier mood than usual. Did your output stand you up?”

“He’s fine,” came the clipped response. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Hey, we’re chooms, aren’t we?”

A snort. “Barely. I tolerate you so long as you keep making eddies. When you inevitably crash and burn, I might call a cab to dispose of your remains properly.”

“I’ll hold you to that, best buddy.” I chuckled. “Now send me the location and let’s get this done.”

“On its way.”

As Milo hung up, I received a set of coordinated and a reminder not to fuck up. Stepping out of my apartment, I pulled up my System, reading the latest notification.

[New Quest!]

Poking A Sleeping Tyger – The Tyger Claws took something they shouldn’t have and you’re being paid to get it back.

Objective: Retrieve the data shard from the Tyger Claw hideout.

Rewards: §2,000, Lootables, Increased Rep

Penalties on failure: Rep Loss, Possible death.

I barely blinked an eye at the penalty. Death was pretty much guaranteed in these situations if I fucked up bad enough. Besides, there were worse things that could happen to you in Night City.

What I was more interested in was that middle reward. Tyger Claws packed quite a bit of heat, which meant a lot more shit to sell. The best part was, I didn’t even have to lug around a backpack to grab it all. I could just shove all that shit in my inventory and call it a day. 

“This is gonna be an easy payday,” I muttered as I headed out.

Turns out, Milo hadn’t been kidding when he said that the hideout was locked down tight. There were at least ten Claws holed up in one tiny warehouse, with not a lot of room for activities thanks to the gutted cars cluttering the floors around them. From the roof, I had a good view over the main floor and frowned at what I was picking up.

Getting in and out unseen was not going to happen. There were too many of them and the floor was too open to slink around. I glanced towards the small room along the far wall—probably some kind of office. My System pinged my objective in there. That’s where the shard was.

“Makes this easy, then,” I said, reaching into my inventory and pulling out an incendiary grenade I’d klepped on my last gig. I popped the pin and tossed it through the skylight. It landed in the middle of the warehouse with a clink, rolling to the foot of one of the gangers.

“The hell—” the man got out, before he was consumed by the explosion and subsequent inferno. Four more Claws were crowded around close enough to get caught in the blast and went down screaming. 

[50 Explosives Experience Gained!]

As the place descended into chaos, I leapt down from the skylight, landing directly on top of another Claw. I put my Nue to the back of his skull and blew his brains all over the concrete, before turning and pressing the barrel to his friend’s jaw, popping him as well.

It was usually like this. Once a gig got going and the fighting started, a flip switched in my head and suddenly I was a lot more competent, and a lot more fine with killing. If this were my old body, I’d be a nervous wreck, shaking hands, full body twitched, that sort of thing. Here though, I felt as calm as if I was taking an enthusiastic walk.

That calm allowed me to avoid a hail of bullets as one of the Claws turned a submachine gun on me and let loose. I dove behind one of the cars, listening to the bullets ping off of its chassis. Glancing to the side, I found another Claw bearing down on me with a machete. I stared at him, my cyberdeck spooling up a quickhack and beaming it into his brain. His cyberware glitched out, sending him sprawling, and I two-tapped him in the head.

“Do you know who you’re messing with!?” Someone screamed, and I rewarded him by popping over the hood and sending a few shots his way before ducking back down. Only one of them hit, but I was out of ammo and in desperate need of a reload.

“I’m just asset retrieval, buddy!” I called back as I loaded the mag and racked the slide. “You should check who you’re stealing from next time!”

I popped over the car, zeroing in on him and firing twice. The first shot missed, while the second blew his head like a watermelon. “Or not.”

[Handguns Skill Leveled Up!]

“You’re dead, bitch!” I pivoted and fired twice at the hulking Claw who came around the car. My aim was perfect and both shots hit him in the face, but the guy was chromed the fuck up and ate both shots. He pointed an arm at me and flesh unfolded with a loud click, revealing two barrels. I barely managed to roll to the side as a shotgun blast turned the concrete beside me into gravel. A bullet or a piece of shrapnel caught me in the side and I grunted as my health dipped.

More bullets flew as I dove behind the car I had thrown the first grenade near. Fire smoldered and burnt flesh and Realskinn filled my nostrils, and I suddenly wished my nose was still broken. 

I pressed a hand to my abdomen and it came back bloody. Growling, I pulled another grenade out of my inventory, chucking it over the car without even looking, then another for good measure. I heard a scream and then a loud bang, then nothing. I waited for a second before lurching up and pointing my gun over the hood of the car, only to blink as I realized that nobody was left alive. Even that big bastard was dead—or well, dying. He was unconscious and losing a lot of blood and I doubted the guy sprang for Trauma Team’s platinum package.

“Huh.” I said as I took in the carnage. “Looks like stealth is for pussies. Guess I owe Kieth an apology.”

Those grenades were pretty damn expensive, though. I went around, grabbing whatever I could salvage from the bodies before getting to the main objective. There was one last Claw hanging out in there, cowering underneath a desk. I kept an eye on him but he didn’t pull a gun on me as I rooted through their shit, so I let him be. 

A few minutes later, I was rolling down the road in my shitty Quadra, my invisible pockets full as I hummed along to the only good radio station in the entire city. Night City stretched before me in a haze of neon, and I quickly found myself pulling up to a small bar on the edge of the city limits, bordering the badlands.

I knew who I was there for as soon as I stepped inside. Corpo’s had this sort of air to them. It was easy to pick them out in a crowd of your normal, everyday citizens. That the guy was dressed in a suit and had a chromed up bodyguard standing over him like a mama hen also helped.

I didn’t have a clue which corp he worked for and I knew better than to ask. Biz was biz, after all.

“Think this is yours.” I said as I placed the shard on the table. He looked over his glasses at me, an expression of mild disgust on his face which only slightly lessened when he saw the shard.

“Ah… you managed to get it, good. I wouldn’t want this to fall into the wrong hands.” He gingerly picked up the piece of metal and plastic and handed it to his bodyguard. Who then crushed it between his meaty fingers.

Coulda just burned the whole place down if that was the goal, I thought, a little annoyed as bits of circuitry fell to the ground.

The suit looked me up and down. “And the ones who took it? I assume by the look of you that you taught them a lesson.”

I glanced down at my bloody abdomen and shrugged. “More or less.”

“Good. Maybe they’ll think twice before stealing from me.” He stood, leaving his drink untouched on the table. “Pay the woman.”

His bodyguard nodded and a moment later, a good chunk of change slid into my bank account. I tried not to grin like an idiot, saying, “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“I advise you use some of that money to get yourself cleaned up.” The suit gave me one more once over then shook his head and walked out of the bar, muttering something about stinking. His bodyguard had the courtesy of giving me a nod before leaving standing there like an idiot.

“What a nice guy.” I said, grabbing his drink and downing the whole thing. I almost immediately spat it up, smacking my chest and coughing. “Fuck, that’s strong. The hell do they mix their drinks with here?”

Stepping outside, I lit up a cigarette and leaned against my car as I made a call. A moment later, Milo’s icon appeared in my vision.

“Job’s done.”

Milo’s voice was annoyed as he answered. “Yes, I assumed as much given that the warehouse is currency in the midst of burning itself down to the foundation. Did you have to make that much noise? The Claws aren’t gonna be happy about this.”

I rolled my eyes as I opened my inventory. “It’ll be fine, choom. Gangs get hit by mercs all the time. Doubt they’ll come crawling after some no-name who killed a few of their dudes. Nobody even knows who I am.”

“That won’t stay the case forever if you keep shaking things up like this.” He sighed. “Whatever. Do you have my cut?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me, transferring a little over a third of what I’d earned. “Sure, here you go. Thanks for helping me find the place. I would have been wandering around for days if not for you.”

That wasn’t really true. My System pointed out most objectives as long as I knew the general area, but having an actual netrunner who didn’t just toss quickhacks around in your back pocket was usually very useful. 

“I know. See you next job.”

His icon disappeared as he hung up, and I scrolled through my inventory as I finished the rest of my cigarette. I’d grabbed some good stuff, at least half of it in actual working condition. I’d get a pretty penny for all of this loot.

[Quest Complete!]

Milestone Complete! A new Perk is available!

Another two thousand eddies found themselves snug in my account, and I backed out of my inventory into the main menu, then navigated to stats. My stat sheet spread out across my vision in vibrant blue.

Welcome to the System Ver 1.03!

User: Naoko AokoshiLevel: 3 (2,500 / 6,000)Currency: §8,662

Health: 144 / 144Stamina: 80 / 80Cyberware Burden: 9Cyberpsychosis Threshold — High (40)

[Active Quests] (0)

ATTRIBUTES

BODY: 3REF: 5TECH: 4INT: 6COOL: 4Unspent Attribute Points: 0

Installed Implants:

Arasaka Lowlight Optics 100% (1)

Neural Port 100% (1.5)

Cyberdeck 100% (6.5)

Cyberware Capacity: 40Acclimation: 100%Active Cyberware Effects: None

SKILLS

[Click To Expand]

PERKS

Click to see [Perks]

Available Perks 2

Active Perks 1

[Active]

Punching Bag: You’re used to taking a hit. (Attacks meant to stun only succeed half the time.)

[Available] (2)

Boogeyman: They say people aren’t scared of the dark, they’re scared of what’s in the dark. That’s you. (When in low-light environments, stealth checks are much easier.)

Pyrotechnician: Anybody can blow things up, but it takes a special kind of psycho to blow things up right. (Grenade radius increases by half when two or more enemies are in range.)

Unspent Perk Points: 1

“Oh hell yeah,” I muttered, immediately using my only perk point on that. I could instantly feel something different, like knowledge being uploaded into my brain, and I knew without even checking that the next time I threw a grenade, it would do a lot more damage. 

I got back in my car and prepared for the long drive back to NC. I made sure to send my rent to Richter, my landlord, so he didn’t hound my ass anymore for it. That took around a third of what I'd earned, but that was fine because I still had all those guns to sell. Gigs could pay pretty well, but the real scratch came from all the shit you took off your enemies.

“Maybe now I’ll be able to dig myself out of this hole,” I laughed as my car rumbled to life.