Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
As much as I may have wanted to tinker the day away, the realities of life were as always cruel and uncaring, and I had a full workday to go through before getting to the good stuff.
Not that I particularly minded as I programmed a subroutine to search around for extra useful tidbits about melee weapons for me while I worked.
'Just imagine how much easier compiling information would be with an internal assistant...' I thought as I methodically inserted carbon tubes into the opened up neck bones of my current patient, and as soon as the thought occurred I had to forcefully stop my hand from twitching.
Yeah no. An actually useful assistant would need to be low AI at least, and that sounded incredibly retarded.
One mistake with an AI and boom, you are no longer dealing with an intelligent minion there to give you all the answers you needed, but its self-evolving data abomination of a cousin, composed of all the worst things the whole of humanity could comprehend.
And as if that wasn't enough, said cousin had an almost absolute tendency towards patricide.
'Still though.' I considered as I began stapling the man's throat back together 'Just because something is incredibly fucking dangerous, it shouldn't stop me from using it. If I am intelligent about it I could probably make some kind of dumbed down shackled version that would still be useful enough for my needs with enough effort...'
"Dammit." I sighed, my hands and dendrites not wavering for a second "So much for not taking stupid risks."
I'll just add it to the list and hopefully tomorrow's me won't be as eager to compete for the next Darwin award.
Wisely, I decided to drag my focus away from highly suicidal projects and fully immersed myself into helping my Tyger Claw associates free themselves from the weakness of their flesh.
I'd expected the orders from the gang to start slowing down after the first rush of rumors but the gang war made sure I had as much work as I wanted to do at any given moment, even if the increase in volume came from the lower ranked gangoons who lost bits of themselves in the fighting and needed replacements.
Most of them couldn't afford me, but still did well enough that they were rewarded with a session under my knife instead of going to a subpar ripper by their bosses.
Jugo and his higher ups still paid through the nose for all of it, but it was nowhere near the earnings I'd get from the truly wealthy clients looking for quality of life upgrades.
It was a bit funny, in a morbid sort of sense, how a liver powerful enough to filter suicidal levels of drinking netted me around forty times as much as subdermal armoring that could stop mid to high caliber rounds consistently did.
Even for the Tygers, luxury still won out over their 'warrior's pride' in the end.
But I wasn't complaining.
The money was flowing into my accounts, and if I kept to even half of my current work flow consistently I'd have enough starting capital to get things moving as soon as next year.
Not to mention all the scans I was gathering would inevitably come in useful with the cyberpsichosis investigation.
Combat was a constant source of trauma, and prolonged combat doubly so, which meant I got to watch in real time how cyberized Tyger Claws changed under the pressure.
And how much quicker would that happen with an AI helper?
I could almost see it...
But now was not the time for daydreaming.
I was already in negotiations with, Regina, Rogue and now Wakako about expanding my business to fresh high profile clients and currently haggling over the Fixers' commissions for the 'recommendation' they could give their mercs.
Both Rogue and Wakako had seen the results of my work but they were old hands at the business and were naturally trying to rob me for all I was worth while still appearing somewhat on my side in the process.
Which was just not happening, so any kind of agreement was taking its sweet ass time.
Once they realized I would simply keep going and rely on my growing reputation instead, they'd fold easily enough.
Regina on the other hand was far more reasonable about things and quickly accepted taking a small cut for introductions, both because we had proper rapport with each other and she was trying to keep me in the cyberpsychosis project as best as she could.
She knew I wouldn't chicken out just like that, but extra motivation was never a bad thing.
Unfortunately, Regina also had the least number of truly wealthy clients so while helpful, I could not depend only on her with my expansion.
'And speaking of expansion...' I frowned as I looked my clinic over 'Things are definitely going to get too chaotic for just me to deal with.' Even just the scheduling sounded like a massive fucking nightmare.
I'll be needing that assistant sooner rather than later, it seemed.
But how the fuck does one find someone trustworthy enough for the job in Night City?
Finding competence was after all incredibly easy, one only needed to take a look at the ex Scav Regina had saddled me with to know that much.
But trust?
Might as well look for fairy dust at that point.
'A touch too cynical, even for me.' I mentally chided myself, knowing for a fact there were trustworthy people around, they were just understandably outnumbered.
I finished connecting the nerves of my twenty third patient for the day with his new limb, sending a slight jolt through his system perfectly calculated to wake him up as his eyes snapped open.
The young man who got his lower right arm chopped off by a cut-o-matic earlier today looked up at his fresh new limb of blackened titanium with wonder and began wiggling his fingers, somehow forgetting I was even there.
"This feels... perfect." He exhaled.
"Slow down there Skywalker." I snorted "You can admire my work later, I need to run some scans now that you are awake just to make sure everything is perfect."
His face reddened but he quickly nodded and offered me the arm, quickly getting his guarantee of quality alongside a free scan of the rest of his body, something I offered to all of my customers no matter their wealth.
It cost me nothing, and it never hurt to give the customers time to plan out their next improvement.
Still though, seeing the man's soul leave his body as he looked the scan over and saw a nasty lump in his nether regions almost made me regret it.
Just... Yikes.
With a frantic kind of strength, the man stood from the chair and grabbed me by the shoulders and looked up at me with eyes full of mania "You can fix it, right doc?!" Only the fact I was ten times his weight stopped him from waving me around like a stick.
"Of course." I said calmly, my Artifex reaching for his cybernetic arm while I removed the other manually "But nothing is free."
"Right." He caught himself, fiery determination in his eyes "I'll be back!"
"You do that." I drawled and watched him march off.
'Poor fucker.' I shook my head and looked down on my list for the day.
And would you look at that, that seemed to be it-
Or it would have been if not for a familiar set of steps deciding to interrupt me.
Senko looked like death warmed over as she walked into my clinic, not particularly tired or unwell but there was a certain weight with each step that made it clear she was not happy about something.
She had been avoiding me for a while, but honestly after ripping one of her chooms' heads off, no matter how understandably, I wasn't going to blame her.
Still, some points must be made.
"Gangoon-chan!" I greeted as cheerfully as ever "What brings you to my humble temple of chrome?" I spread my arms and then my voice flickered low "Without an appointment?"
But whatever was weighing her down proved to be more potent than any fear she may have had of me as she simply sighed "Jugo-sama promoted me to Lieutenant, the previous one got blown up by a 'strommer Cyberpsycho."
I blinked "...Congratulations?"
"Thanks." She said, with all the enthusiasm of a corpse "It was just what I needed."
Well, that just about took all the fun out of it "Guessing good old Jugo wasn't taking no for an answer?"
"Hahhh..." She sighed "if only it were that simple."
"What, don't tell me they would go all 'You insult the Captain's honor by refusing his generosity, fall on your sword now!' on you if you said no?" I deadpanned with crossed arms.
Judging by the look she gave me that might just be word for word what would happen.
I began uselessly rubbing the sides of my head "Fucking... really?"
She seemed to find some morbid humor in it at least, as she huffed and rolled her eyes.
"Why join the shitshow at all then?" I asked "Sounds like a good way to die."
"And why did you start working with Jugo-sama?" She countered.
Eddies. It was always eddies.
"Touche." I Inclined my head "But as flattering as it would be for you to come to me for the comfort of our deep friendship-"
Her deadpan said it all.
"-I'm sure there is a much greater reason for you coming here." I smiled eagerly and began rubbing my hands "Dear old Jugo might be a dick but he takes care of his own, so I'm guessing you got a nice fat bonus with your promotion. Enough for a few improvements perhaps?"
"Yeah, pretty much." She nodded tiredly "Not dying to every random Maelstrommer would be great."
"Fear not, dear Gangoon-chan." I grinned, my Mechadendrites uncoiling behind me "When I'm done with you, even their bosses will not be able to touch you."
With a flourish, I produced a tablet and offered it to her "Here is The Catalogue™. Take as much time as you need. I'll go get the scalpels ready."
Her eyes snapped up to me as she failed to contain a terrified shiver, but she quickly looked down again and began gawking over the massive list on offer, a list with a few entries usually reserved for the friends and family.
What can I say? She grew on me.
Like a stray cat.
--
The suite of upgrades she ended up choosing was a respectable mix of defense and offence, the usual bone replacement and subdermal armoring alongside a Biomonitor and Autoinjector for survivability, and one of my less straining Kerenzikov's for good old butchery.
Once more, I will never understand what in the fuck made the corps make the baseline Keren a permanent modification.
Anyone with even a lick of solid grey matter in their cranium should understand that speeding perception up to such and extent on a permanent basis was plain old stupid and more often than not resulted in something approximating a self-lobotomy by the user after enough time.
So I refused the basic design on principle and made one that could induce an enhanced 'zone' state on demand. Much simpler and more efficient that way.
Before good sense could win out I tossed the design in the folder of my next Cyberdeck's blueprints. Mixing the two sounded beyond ridiculous and once lodged into my head, the idea refused to leave me.
But that was a long term project. I had something much more important to work on right now!
-----
Despair.
Despair is all I felt as I looked down at the culmination of two days of brainstorming, overthinking, and trying and failing to convince myself I could stop the inevitable.
How foolish of me.
First I tried doubling down on the bat idea, going for a big ass hammer with the same EMP gimmick.
And it proved almost as redundant as its prototype, only beating it because of the extra reach and more focused weight but somehow ending up even more unwieldy for a cybernetically paced fight. I could probably crush a mech with the damn thing, but that wasn't the point.
I could do that with my mind too, and therefore hammers were redundant.
My next option was an axe. An axe felt right, it felt proper.
But once more cold logic won out against the choice.
No matter how preem it would look, once you buried an axe into someone or something you'd have to waste precious moments yanking it out, and the blade surface was too small for my tastes, demanding precision and leverage that sometimes just couldn't be found in melee combat.
Or at least not quickly enough.
At one point, my thoughts drifted up to that one patient who lost his arm to a Budget Arms cut-o-matic and I ended up following that line of logic and built what I dubbed a chain-axe, and with some added tinkering and improvements the weapon proved itself solid and perfectly serviceable for what I needed.
Rapid armor-shredding cuts and the disabling of cyberware with a constant cycling EMP charge.
A proper can opener.
Really, the fact it took me so long to come up with the idea while having the same god damn weapon in my mouth was baffling. Or it would be if it was no so utterly embarrassing instead.
But no matter how much I wished otherwise, the inevitable realization dawned.
There was no real reason to keep it axe shaped when another shape provided far more reach and effective blade surface.
"The fucking Tygers have infected me." I cursed, looking down at the six foot long chain sword in my right hand, its spiked knuckle duster-esque saber guard perfectly fitted to house my fingers and keep my grip solid no matter what.
The 'blade' of the weapon, if it could even be called that, was housed under a solid block of metal painted black and red with a stylized golden eye placed above the guard, open only on one end and composed of hundreds upon hundreds of razor sharp ultra-hardened titanium teeth that would instantly shred through anything they touched.
Well, so long as it wasn't made from a super dense material anyway.
I flicked the mental switch and the machine of death came alive, briefly roaring as the power from my secondary reactor surged through it before settling into a more constant relaxed 'purr'.
The blade could function on its own for prolonged periods of time, but I made sure I could still charge it wherever I was through a simple connection cable in my hand.
Looking up to my usual testing dummies, I made a wide, purposefully misaligned, swing with the weapon.
And I was thoroughly satisfied by the result.
The block of metal, despite being just as dense as the teeth of the sword, separated cleanly and I scanned only the most minor of dents in said teeth, imperceptible to the human eye.
Good. They were purpose-built to be replaceable, but having to replace them constantly would have been irritating.
Still, that wasn't all the weapon could offer and I flicked another mental switch, drawing far more power from my generator and making the previous startup roar a constant as concentrated, violent electricity began dancing along the length of the blade and teeth, ready to latch onto any piece of electronics it touched and fry it from inside out.
That the human nervous system technically counted as an electronic was just a happy little coincidence.
I flicked the power off and the monster quietened down.
It was perfect. Just as whippy as the katana but also carrying a heft the other weapon lacked, about an infinity times more effective against armor, and it could suffer far more abuse than the strip of metal.
"Oh well." I shrugged, twirling the war crime around like a kid who had just found The Stick "Fuck it, I surrender. Cool swords are cool."
-------
The Magos has already repossessed your mineral stores.
14 glorious chapters await for those wise enough to seek them upon the forbidden Patreon (at patreon .com/ Rastislav156)
If you want to discuss the story or just meme about join my discord server: https://discord .gg/fE4nB3CzDP (link should work for a week. refreshed as of 24.12.25)