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Retirement by Noodlehammer
Worm & Cyberpunk 2077 Xover Rated: M, English, [V, Skitter], Words: 181k+, Favs: 2k+, Follows: 2k+, Published: Jan 28 Updated: Jul 29
743Chapter 12: Psychos, Psychos Everywhere
Credit to Alvor for beta reading.
XXXXX
"Is it really okay for us to basically hand out a catalog of looted cyberware?" Taylor asked skeptically. "I would expect the corporations to have a problem with resales."
"They do." V nodded. "And if they could stop it they would, but there's no thread to follow here. I was already maintaining a couple of degrees of 'don't ask, don't tell' before. Rogue's connections make it a breeze, and even if they suspect that it's her behind it, it wouldn't be worth it to push the issue."
They had come to an agreement with the Queen of Fixers. The Beast Crew would forget about the pay for the Biotechnica gig in exchange for various favors and deals.
Among them was the help of Rogue's network to expand their cyberware hustle, with her only taking a miniscule 1% of the profits, just enough to claim that she had a stake in it.
"Well, as long as they understand that we don't do requests." Taylor shrugged.
That was one thing she had been very firm on. Taking from the Scavs was one thing, as was taking apart people they'd killed in self-defense or on a gig (if they were assholes), but she was not going to approve of them slipping into actively hunting cyberware just because someone was willing to pay a lot of money under the table for it. That would just make them Scavs as well.
"That's the best part – this is a strictly take it or leave it kind of deal. They can't even contact us directly, nor do they know where it's coming from." V grinned smugly.
She had good reason to be smug. The days of haggling over prices were behind them now. Doing that while also maintaining anonymity had been a huge pain in the ass.
Taylor had only been paying a middling amount of attention to the whole thing, but she could see how the entire process could just fade into another bit of Night City criminal backdrop. Oh, you want black market cyberware? Here's a catalog of what's available. Where does it come from? Nobody knows.
With the minions almost ready to call themselves a full-fledged mercenary crew, Taylor, V, and Jackie could theoretically retire and outsource most of the work, aside from actually using her bugs to track down Scav lairs.
But they weren't really interested in doing that just yet. Instead, the Beast Crew was focusing on other kinds of gigs.
The phone rang and Taylor picked up. "Regina, what can I do for you?"
Despite her initial concerns that the fixer would be disgruntled with them because of V's hard haggling for the gig in the badlands, Regina seemed to have simply adjusted the level of danger and pay she was offering them.
"Got a bit of a personal project I'd like some help with." The fixer began. "Most people think that once you go cyberpsycho there's no coming back, but I've heard some rumors that treatment is possible and I'd like to believe them. Problem is, getting a cyberpsycho to test treatment on isn't exactly easy. If you're up for it, I'd like you to track down and capture some for me, alive."
"That sounds like a problem, alright." V frowned as she chimed in, gingerly taking the phone from Taylor's hands even though it was on speaker. "Most cyberpsychos don't last long, and trying to take them alive is playing with fire."
"And what is this treatment even like?" Taylor added. "I'm not too keen on capturing people so they can be experimented on."
"Forcibly chroming them down, drugs, therapy in a low stress environment." Regina shrugged. "The treatment is untested, obviously, but I believe that an untested treatment is still better than a bullet to the brain."
Well, it was hard to argue with that.
"You got a point about cyberpsychos not lasting long, though." She admitted. "Most of the time, it's going to come down to if you're lucky enough to be in the area when one of them snaps, but I do have one potential candidate lined up that's managed to avoid being flatlined by MaxTac or someone else – Daryl Jackson. He's a veteran of the Unification War and later a member of 6th Street. I don't know what pushed him over the edge, but these days he's haunting the back alleys of Arroyo at night. According to what little intel I was able to dig up about him, he's been spending more and more time lost in flashbacks of the war and losing his grip on reality. Now it looks like he's completely gone and kills anyone he sees as a threat."
"You want us to hunt down what sounds like an urban warfare specialist that's probably stuffed to the gills with military spec cyberware?" V asked incredulously. "I thought you liked us, Reggie."
"I can't blame you if you don't want to go anywhere near this one, he's just the only active cyberpsycho I know about right now." Regina shrugged. "Treat this whole thing like bounty hunting. More dangerous cyberpsychos mean higher pay, but only if you bring them in alive. And you get the satisfaction of knowing you tried to help someone instead of just killing them to put down a problem. For Jackson, I'd be willing to pay you sixty thousand."
"Sixty thousand and Jackson's cyberware after you remove it." V haggled. "Or we could take him to Viktor's to be de-chromed before handing him off to you, if you prefer?"
And right here was probably the reason why Regina had called Taylor instead of V. Probably hoping to just get an agreement.
Taylor frowned, not sure if she approved of this. On the one hand, this felt a lot like scaving. On the other, Regina would probably sell the cyberpsycho's chrome herself to recoup any losses from her 'pet project'.
"Are you also going to pay for his replacement clone parts?" Regina retorted. "And we both know that Doctor Vektor doesn't have the facilities to safely restrain a cyberpsycho. I'll give you 40% of his cyberware sales, but any damage you do to his chrome comes out of your cut."
"We'll think about it." V said and cut the call, looking at Taylor. "You want to do this?"
Taylor pursed her lips and thought about it. Cyberpsychos were dangerous and would keep killing people until they were taken care of. It would be nice to know that they tried to help these people instead of just putting them down like rabid animals.
"With my bugs, I'd spot him long before he could spot us, and any surprises he set up wouldn't work either." She said slowly. "With our armor and the right preparation, we could reduce the risk and take him down before he even has a chance to respond."
"Sixty thousand eddies is a good amount of money for a few hours of work, and his cyberware is probably pretty expensive." V nodded along. "The reputation boost would be good, too."
She was giving practical reasons for why doing this would be worthwhile, because she had noticed that Taylor wanted to do it.
"Let's get Jackie's opinion before we decide." The bug master prevaricated.
XXXXX
Hunting cyberpsychos, especially former military types, was dangerous business. Back before they were the Beast Crew, Jackie would never have even considered it. Now he was confident that they could pull it off.
"I think I have him." Taylor reported, leaning back in her seat as they cruised leisurely through Arroyo. "Guy with a lot of chrome; all four limbs, gorilla arms, heavy dermal armor, sandevistan. He's a walking tank, and the building he's squatting in is booby-trapped to hell, but he doesn't have any heavy weapons."
Watching her rattle off this kind of intel from several blocks away never got old.
"That fits with the profile Regina gave us." V nodded. "You think we can get the jump on him?"
Because that was the only plan worth thinking about if they were trying to take him alive. If it came down to an actual fight, this cyberpsycho would be deadly. Especially because he wasn't just a raving lunatic like the Maelstrom borg – this one could still think. If anything, the fact that he thought he was back in the war would make him more dangerous in that regard.
"There's plenty of ambush spots in the area." Taylor said thoughtfully.
"Probably why he likes it." Jackie commented, getting nods from both girls.
"Too many." Taylor continued. "There's no telling which direction he'll go in if we flush him out of the building."
"So… we need bait." V concluded. "Cameras?"
"He seems to have ripped them out of the walls." Taylor revealed.
"No skill as a netrunner, then." V pondered. "But he's still bound to have military-grade ICE, even if it's a bit dated."
"You're thinking of launching a cyberattack and letting him track you?" Jackie guessed. "Ballsy."
"Not that ballsy when we have the cyberscorpion to deliver a shard with a daemon on it right into his neural port." V denied with a smirk.
The gizmo in question crawled up to her and presented its stinger so that she could attach the shard to it.
Once that was done, Taylor directed them to a good ambush spot and they set up traps for the cyberpsycho. As a final precaution, Taylor would be lurking nearby with her sniper rifle, ready to blow the cyberpsycho away.
"Get ready, cyberscorpion about to sting." Skitter reported with the cold monotone Jackie had come to expect on gigs.
"Ready." Slither confirmed.
"Ready, mamita." Jackie also confirmed in his own way.
There was a stifled laugh from V.
"… Did you just call me 'mommy'?" Taylor's tone was flat and unimpressed.
"Just testing your Spanish. You're getting pretty good at it." He complimented unrepentantly.
Hunting cyberpsychos was dangerous business. Had to break the tension somehow.
"I'm telling Misty." She threatened ominously. "And you're going to write me a two thousand word essay on why we do not horse around during combat situations. By hand."
V sounded like she was barely holding back cackles.
"You're making me do schoolwork?!" Jackie asked, aghast. He wasn't even sure if he could write by hand! "It's not a sex thing, just something we Latino boys say."
"Mhm, still not the time. Besides, it'll do you some good. Just think of how impressed Mama Welles will be to see her son doing something intellectual." She continued mercilessly.
And Mama would support this, Jackie knew. All these women in his life were pure evil.
"Should have saved it for after the gig." V pointed out cheekily. "Alright, let's try this again. Slither, ready."
"Stampede, ready." Jackie decided not to push his luck.
"Going for the sting." Skitter reported.
Moments later, there was a distant scream.
"Shutting him down, but he's fighting me. Get ready!." Slither reported.
She probably could have put him down fast with backdoor access from the cyberscorpion, but it would have cooked his brain. V was no T-bug and just didn't have the same kind of fine touch with netrunning. She might be a subtle snake in realspace, but in cyberspace, she was a hammer.
"He's coming." Skitter warned.
Jackie peeked out of the window of the building he was in, spotting the hugely borged up cyberpsycho sprinting towards them across the street.
"Okay, showtime." He said to prepare himself. V was up on the roof of the building with an escape route prepared if it all went to shit, but it was his job to make sure it didn't come to that. He was the first line of defense and he was going to make sure it was all they needed!
The cyberpsycho had to go in at the bottom floor if he wanted to get up to the roof, and there was only one set of stairs that he could take. That was where the trap was set.
Hidden behind corners and alcoves was a whole bunch of containment foam grenades – a niche and rarely used bit of tech. Taylor had been ridiculously pleased when she found out about those. Apparently, something very similar had existed on Earth Bet. These ones were allegedly not as good as the 'tinkertech' version she was used to, but they were good enough.
Not like they could use EMP grenades on a milspec borg – he'd definitely be shielded.
Taylor used teams of bugs to trigger them as soon as the cyberpsycho was in the middle. Jackie heard the pops and weird slurping sound as the foam expanded, as well as the crash of the borg hitting something, and burst out of the side room he'd been hiding in, activating his sandevistan as he went.
He didn't have his usual weapons for this, instead totting a net launcher. With a low 'thump', a heavy carbon fiber mesh flew out of it and fell over the partially-foamed big borg, tangling him up. The weighted ends magnetized and clicked together, making it impossible to just throw the net off. Then it tightened.
The cyberpsycho didn't like that much and twisted around. The foam was almost up to his waist and hampered his movements, forcing him to fire his assault rifle from an awkward position through one of the net holes. Most of the bullets missed, but Jackie did feel one or two hit his armor. He barely felt the hits, but dodged back into the room anyway. Getting close to that big borg fucker would be stupid.
"Almost got him…" Slither reported a minute later, over the borg's cursing and threats as he tried to force his way out of the foam and the net.
The cyberpsycho went quiet with an almost mournful moan.
"Alright, he's offline." She said, sighing with obvious relief. Even if things had gone just about perfectly, cyberpsychos were still scary.
Jackie peeked out carefully just to be sure and saw the big borg just lying there, slumped awkwardly in the foam that was keeping him upright. Seeing that there was no danger, he carefully approached and poured the dissolving solution over the borg's ankles, then clamped a pair of heavy duty manacles on them. He repeated the same on his hands, and only then dissolved the rest of the foam. The net stayed on.
"Hijo de puta, Regina better appreciate this." He exhaled, feeling the tension slowly leave him. "Not sure what makes her think she can save a guy like this, or why she'd want to."
"Maybe someone she knows went cyberpsycho." V suggested, appearing from upstairs. "None of our biz either way."
"I'll go bring the car around." Skitter said. "Can you two move him by yourselves?"
Jackie gave the downed borg a speculative look. He looked pretty heavy… but the Jackster was pretty fuckin' strong.
"I got him." He said confidently and went to pick the guy up.
He was heavy. And more importantly, he was awkward as fuck to carry. Still, Jackie managed to toss him over his shoulder and huff his way out of the building. V only had to keep a hand on the guy to make sure he didn't fall off.
In the meanwhile, she also called up Regina to report their success.
"Reggie, we've got your cyberpsycho." V said. "His OS might be a bit fucked, but he's otherwise fine."
"Impressive as ever, Beast Crew." Regina's tone was just a bit amused about their name, but Jackie didn't take it personally. Some people just didn't have any sense of style. "Sending you a drop off location. Sixty thousand eddies on delivery and 40% of his cyberware value after it gets sold, as promised. You take in any more live cyberpsychos, just bring them to me."
"Can you share any updates on how the treatment goes?" Taylor asked, opening the trunk for them.
"If you want." Regina was obviously surprised by the request but shrugged it off. "It isn't secret or anything – it's just that nobody cares."
"I just want to be sure I'm not delivering people to a fate worse than death." Taylor shrugged back.
"Fair enough. I'll keep you posted." The fixer said and cut the call.
"I think she likes you." V chuckled. "And not just because you've become her go-to recon specialist and assassin."
"They've got a lot in common." Jackie said sagely, stuffing the cyberpsycho into the large trunk. Man was he glad that V had insisted on big cars with lots of trunk space instead of flashy sports cars. "Regina used to be a media, you know? A real crusader for justice before she figured out that nobody gives a shit if all you do is talk about how fucked things are. Figures that she'd get along with a hero."
"I keep telling you I'm not a hero." Taylor took her helmet off to frown at them.
"Bullshit." Jackie and V chorused.
The bug master snorted at them, but didn't argue further. She'd learned by now that it was pointless.
"Wait, what happened to the cyberscorpion?" Jackie asked, realizing they'd never retrieved it.
"Our friend in the trunk crushed it in his hand." Taylor shrugged. "I've retrieved the parts to see if anything can be salvaged."
"We've got others and we can always make more." V dismissed it.
"Okay, preem." Jackie said and side-eyed Taylor for a bit. "You know I'm not going to write that essay, right, chica?"
She stared back with that unreadable blank face of hers, then turned away without answering.
"Taylor?"
"Huh, I got a message." V interjected, sounding a little confused. "It's from an old coworker."
"From Arasaka?" Jackie asked, forgetting about the essay thing. "I thought you were dead to 'em?"
"Not from Arasaka, just Frank." She replied, reading through the text. "Looks like he saw the writing on the wall when Abernathy killed Jenkins and purged the department. He prepped a dead drop with all of her dirty laundry that he was able to dig up in case she did it to him, too. For some reason, he set it up for me to find as a posthumous fuck you to Abernathy. I guess he figured I'd be holding a grudge over my termination. If this is legit, of course."
"So, there's free dirt on a big shot corpo just waiting for us to find it?" Jackie hummed.
"Do we care?" Taylor asked. "I thought you said that Arasaka wasn't going to bother with you anymore."
"It shouldn't." V pursed her lips. "Yeah, I'm a loose end, but most of what I knew was damaging to Jenkins more than the corp itself, and he's dead. If Abernathy was a normal corpo she'd just gloat about the fact that I've been reduced to being 'street trash'."
"But she ain't normal?" Jackie guessed.
"Heh, nope." V snorted. "Abernathy is a true psychopath, not just the regular kind of corpo that everyone calls psychopaths. To a brain as fucked as hers, she's the only 'real' person in the world so of course everything is about her. She decided that I was going to die, so my survival is a personal insult."
"I've known a few of those types." Jackie nodded. "Scary fuckers. You look into their eyes and it's like there's nothing there. Even worse than cyberpsychos."
"Plenty of capes turned out like that, too." Taylor also nodded. "So, we might have to kill this bitch?"
"I love it when you talk dirty to me, baby." V replied throatily, chuckling when the younger woman rolled her eyes with a smile. "But yeah, I'd like to at least have some intel on Abernathy. If this is legit."
"You think it might not be?" He asked.
"Frank never really struck me as much of a long-term planner."
XXXXX
V wasn't particularly surprised when Taylor reported that there was someone lurking around the dead drop. She was even less surprised when she went to pick up the supposed datashard and opened the case to see nothing.
"Really, Frank? This is your grand plan?" She said aloud and stood up, turning around.
As expected, the supposed dead man was there and not looking too great. At work, Frank kept an immaculately trimmed beard and styled hair. Now his beard was starting to look shaggy and his hair had turned into a rat's nest atop his head. He was still wearing his corpo suit, but it was torn and stained.
"It's the only way." Frank said, his hand shaking as he pointed a gun at her. "If I bring you to Abernathy, she'll take me back."
A gunshot rang out, knocking the gun out of his hand. Frank flinched violently and crouched on the ground, arms covering his head.
"As you might have guessed, your plan has a few holes in it." V told him as if nothing had happened, kicking the gun under the dumpster. "The first of them being the assumption that I'd go do a suspicious pickup without anyone to cover my magnificent ass."
Taylor and Jackie approached, the former's Tyranny lightly smoking. They were still wearing their armor and the bulky overcoats covering them, making them both look pretty intimidating.
Frank looked around and the fight visibly went out of him as he slumped in defeat. "Fuck."
"Fuck is right, pendejo." Jackie agreed.
"Go on then, put me out of my misery." Frank somehow managed to slump further.
"You thought doing this would make you 'Abernathy's boy' like I was 'Jenkins' girl'?" V forced a chuckle, recalling what her reputation had been. Moron had no idea what he'd been trying to get himself into. Abernathy was a sadist and had a penchant for breaking her toys, although V had only learned that bit from Jenkins' datashard that he gave her for the assassination, to be fair. But she had known that the woman was bad news even before that.
"I needed something to get my life back!" Frank said desperately. "Things had just barely settled down after Jenkins was taken out, but then you resurfaced and started building a reputation. We tried to keep word from reaching Abernathy, but it was only a matter of time. When she heard about you… she completely freaked, started accusing everyone of being a traitor. She called for a purge of the whole department. All of it; field agents, analysts, assistants, technicians, even the damn cleaning staff. We had to scatter like roaches."
And probably only survived because there was nobody left to tie up loose ends.
"Ah, too bad. If I'd been able to stick it out for another few months, you might have been calling me 'Director V' by now." V said whimsically.
That had been the plan. Play Jenkins and Abernathy against each other, because both of them were psychopaths cut from the same cloth. They would have inevitably created a big enough mess that the higher ups would have to get rid of them, and she would have been one of the top contenders for a big promotion.
But Jenkins lost his cool too early. And he'd made her do the legwork instead of hiring independent mercenaries like a sensible person. Everyone knew that she was his right-hand woman, which was exactly why V had been so sure that he would have kept her out of any plans against Abernathy. She could have hired mercenaries that were just competent enough to cause a horrendous mess and get both of them in trouble, but Jenkins had wanted Abernathy to know that it was him who had killed her, so he insisted that V do it personally.
That was the problem with psychopaths – they could be very cunning, but their 'ruthless pragmatism' only looked like cold logic. As soon as their pride was prickled they lashed out like petulant children.
If it were otherwise, Jenkins wouldn't have been insulted that the stupid little girl he was fucking had started thinking she had a claim on him. He would have foreseen the issue and been kind as he turned her down, earning himself a loyal right hand woman. Instead, he had been dismissively cruel and made an enemy without ever realizing it.
He had never learned that V was the one who had leaked the information that Abernathy used to smear his name when they were moving to Night City from Osaka, ensuring that he was passed over for the promotion he wanted. He had never learned that she was the one sabotaging him whenever she could get away with it and blaming it on Abernathy. To be fair, she hadn't needed to do much to paint Abernathy as the enemy, because she really was one.
"You don't seem all that broken up about it." Frank noted with some confusion.
"I found something much better." V said and winked at Taylor, to make it clear what she was talking about.
And she wasn't even lying. Being Director of Operations in Night City might have been nice, but she'd still ultimately have been working for Arasaka's benefit instead of her own. And then there was the personal angle. V still got a pleasant squirmy feeling in her gut whenever she saw the tattoo on Taylor's chest, the tattoo that was made just for her.
"Skitter." Frank murmured as he turned to look towards the bug master, clearly recognizing her from some report or other.
"One thing has been bothering me, though." V said pensively. "Who ratted me out?"
"I think it was your assistant?" He replied uncertainly. "I heard there was some altercation between him and Abernathy and that he committed suicide."
"Carter?" She said in surprise. "Huh. Wouldn't have expected it of him, he was always a bit too nice for Arasaka."
That was one of the reasons why she took him on as an her assistant. After Jackie forced his friendship on her without her consent, she'd been having a lot more difficulty tolerating the general evil around the company. Seeing that naive gonk cluelessly going about his job and knowing that he'd get himself killed if he didn't have someone to look out for him made her take him on to protect him.
And he'd betrayed her. That was irony for you.
Then again, he might have actually thought he was doing the right thing by reporting the assassination attempt. Carter had been just enough of a dumbass for something like that to be plausible.
Frank decided not to comment on that. "So, are you going to kill me or not?"
V had the impression that he would do it himself if she spared him, he just looked that broken. They had never been friends, so she wouldn't be sad about it. Honestly, it was kind of pathetic. Frank had been so attached to his lifestyle that he went to pieces as soon as it was yanked away. A lot of corpos were like that. V might have been like that if her life had gone slightly differently.
But letting him just die would be a waste, even if he was pathetic right now. Frank had also been a field operative and had useful skills.
"How about you come work for us instead of dying like a little bitch?"
"Huh?!" Frank exclaimed, baffled.
Taylor didn't react in any way, but Jackie reeled back in surprise. "Is that really a good idea, hermana? He tried to serve you up to Arasaka just to suck up to this Abernathy bitch."
V smiled in amusement. "I must be going soft, because I kind of want to take in this lost little puppy and see if he can outgrow the box Arasaka put him in. So what do you say, Frank? Want to see what kind of boss I'd have been if things went differently?"
Frank looked up at her with surprise, confusion, and then finally, resolution. He stood up and gave a slow nod. "Alright, guess I've got nothing left to lose anyway."
"Great!" V smiled brightly, then the smile turned just a little bit demonic. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to know of any other recently dismissed former Arasaka personnel I could get in contact with?"
Because one woman's trash might be another woman's treasure. If Abernathy was so keen on replacing the entire Special Operations department with her sycophants, then V had no problem scooping up as many useful people as she could find. Not everyone would have skills that translated to mercenary work well, but there were bound to be at least a few.
They parted ways after that, giving Frank a thousand eddies in cash to tide him over and as an advance on his first paycheck. Then they drove off and left him to his own devices.
"We're assuming that he's going to try screwing us over, right?" Taylor asked.
"Of course." V nodded.
Anything else would be unforgivably stupid.
XXXXX
A few days later, Frank got in touch with V, claiming that he'd found another ex-Arasaka employee that would like to take her up on her offer.
The requested meeting spot was in Heywood, the Wellsprings subdistrict. The shoreline, at night.
It might look like it favored them, since it was in their home district, but Wellsprings was the more affluent part of Heywood and awfully close to the city center. A suspicious mind would start to wonder if he was planning a betrayal or something.
Of course, there was no need for a suspicious mind here – Taylor easily sniffed out that that was exactly what was happening. They'd taken the minions along, so she had to make a show of scouting around before she reported it, but the end result was the same.
"Frank is down at the waterfront with a corpo that's tried to make himself look disheveled, but he's too clean. Female corpo with two borgs in a car hiding in a garage nearby." She said.
"Abernathy came for this personally?" V's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but then she nodded. "No, that makes sense. Things haven't been going her way lately and she'd want to savor a win up close. And she's the only one in the department who would have the authority to take two Arasaka cyberninjas into the field. The borgs, they have mantis blades, legs made for speed and agility, Kerenzikov units, and glowing red optics?"
"Not sure about the legs, but yes on the rest of it." Taylor confirmed. The Kerenzikov was harder to detect than a Sandevistan, but the gap could be plugged with deduction. At that level of augmentation, speedware was practically mandatory unless you were a netrunner.
"Definitely Arasaka cyberninjas." V nodded to herself again. "And the fake recruit is probably a field agent as well. With Frank, that's four enemies, plus Abernathy herself."
"Is the bitch any good or just a chair-warmer?" Jackie asked.
"I'm not sure." V frowned. "I know she had a permanent bodyguard detail made up of four Special Operations agents, but I guess she got rid of those, too. And you need to have at least some field experience to be promoted as high as she was in the department."
"She has a sword with her." Taylor informed.
"Okay, that's five enemies, then." The Latino nodded. "Think we can take em, or do we drive away?"
"We can take 'em!" Miguel piped up. "There's seven of us, and we got R0n1n on the link if they got a netrunner."
All four of the brats were practically vibrating with eagerness at the idea of taking on a bunch of corpos. Unfortunately, they were in that dangerous area where they were too green to know when they were in over their heads, but with just enough success under their belts to be feeling a bit cocky.
"The ninjas would go through you like a blender." Taylor brutally burst their bubble.
"Did we really gear up like this just to walk away?" Alejandro clearly didn't like the idea.
"If it's the smart thing to do, then yes, we will." She told him firmly.
"Problem is, if we do walk away, Abernathy will still be hanging over our heads for however long it takes the board of directors to get fed up with her." V said thoughtfully. "This is pretty much guaranteed to be an off-the-books operation. If she disappears here, then there won't be any trace. Since she took out two cyberninjas, the corp will probably know that she didn't defect, but they'll gladly wash their hands of her because of the mess she's been making."
Jackie made a considering sound in his throat. "How bad are these 'saka ninjas?"
"Like Taylor said, they're blenders. But they focus on speed and don't have as much armor as you'd expect from a borg." V explained. "If we can get the drop on them, we can kill or cripple them before they get started."
"You want to play the distraction." Taylor's eye bored into her girlfriend. "Go out there and act like you're buying into their shit, let Abernathy make a move and monologue at you, then we take them from the back."
It was an obvious plan, and a dangerous one.
"I'd take Jackie with me as my bodyguard, but the numbers advantage would still make her overconfident." V nodded. "If I know Abernathy, she'll want to dramatically appear on top of the stairs so that she can talk down to me and gloat. Then, once she walks down, you can approach and you'd have the high ground. We can kill all the others, but Abernathy has a Trauma Team: Platinum subscription for certain. We'll need to stick a jammer in her neural port."
They had looted plenty of those from their Scav hunts and they always carried a few just in case.
"Why not just kill her and delta?" Veronica asked.
"Because if we can take her alive and interrogate her, we can drain her for everything she's worth." V smiled like a shark.
"And a high up corpo like that will be worth a lot, eh?" Jackie's own grin was looking pretty eager as well. "It's about time that puta gives something back to the community."
"What if she doesn't talk?" Johnny asked.
"They always talk." Taylor said coldly, instinctively shunting into the swarm for a moment.
It wasn't the first time they'd taken a prisoner to interrogate, and the second level basement back home was now also an interrogation room. It was amazing how quick people were to start talking under the threat of being eaten by the swarm.
Not something she relished in doing, but sometimes it was necessary. Besides, they hadn't needed to resort to actual torture yet.
"Will we be getting a cut of the take from that?" R0n1n's voice came from the car's speaker.
"Of course." Taylor said before anyone else could say anything. "But I better not see you blowing it all on stupid shit if it turns out to be a lot of money."
"Yes. Ma'am!" All four of the brats chorused fearfully under her glare.
V took over the explanation, clearly amused. "You minions will be getting 15% of the total take, and R0n1n will get 5% for himself."
It took them a moment to calculate before Johnny whined. "Why does he get more than us?"
Veronica immediately smacked him one. "Because netrunning is more valuable than shooting guns!" Then she turned towards Taylor. "We appreciate it, Ma'am. We know that you don't really need us for this and could have kept everything for yourselves."
"It'll be a valuable experience for you." She said, but didn't dispute what the girl said.
"When you say 'total take', do you mean just liquid assets or also loot?" R0n1n spoke up again.
"Loot will be included." V replied. This had actually been a point of debate on the crew, and the former corpo had argued to keep the profits from selling loot for themselves, but Taylor and Jackie saw no reason to be greedy, so they had outvoted her. "I can't give you even a rough estimate of how much it will add up to, but it's bound to be a significant amount. Enough that you can start thinking of making a plan for augmentation."
"Maybe." Taylor cut in, silencing their eager response. "Veronica, at least, still has some growing to do before she can get any serious augmentations."
"Man…" The former corpo brat whined as her team laughed at her.
"What about the badges?" Miguel spoke up next. "If we start a shootout here, they'll be on our ass in minutes."
"You really trained these kids well." Jackie said, sounding impressed. "I wasn't half as thoughtful at their age."
"She's very proud of them, keeps telling me how well they're doing." V cooed, clearly delighting in causing embarrassment.
"Skitter's Critters won't let you down, Ma'am!" Veronica exclaimed.
"Skitter's Critters?" Taylor blinked, this being the first she was hearing about this. She was flatly ignoring Jackie and V's huge grins.
The sixteen-year-old girl suddenly turned bashful. "Well, uh, we wanted a team name the same as you have, and you were the one doing most of our training, so we thought…"
Even Taylor wasn't socially obtuse enough to miss the nervously hopeful tone in the trailed off sentence.
"I'm flattered, and you can call yourselves that if you want." She said, giving them her best smile. "But getting back to the task at hand. If we do this, then we have to do it quick. No drawn out firefights – either we finish it in a matter of seconds or we cut our losses and disengage."
"Alright, Jack, you ready to act big and tough?" V asked.
"What do you mean 'act'?" Jackie made an offended scoff and put on his bull helmet.
Taylor felt a moment of hesitation before having a 'fuck it' moment and roughly grabbing her girlfriend around the neck, pulling her in for a kiss. She ignored the cheers and whoops from the newly christened Skitter's Critters.
"You're not allowed to die." She commanded, pulling her shock baton away from where it was holstered and holding it forward. "Take this."
She would need something to deal with the sword, just in case.
"Yes, Ma'am." V smiled brightly and took the offered weapon.
"Come on, Critters, we need to hide."
The five of them filed out of the car, she in her Skitter armor and the brats in more generic gear, all of it covered by bulky full length black synleather coats. Since they were all teenagers, it made them look like a bunch of posers trying too hard to look cool, especially when they were all wearing sunglasses… at three in the morning.
But anyone who saw them just snorted and shook their head, instead of getting curious about the squad of heavily armed and armored mercenaries.
With her powers, it wasn't hard to find a nice hiding spot around a hundred meters away from where the action would be going down. Once they were in place, she buzzed a small bug behind V's ear to tell her they were ready.
V and Jackie drove the car up close to the stairs leading down to the waterfront and then casually approached Frank and the 'recruit'. Moments after being spotted, Abernathy received a message and rolled out of the garage. As they approached the waterfront, the cyberninjas made a quick circuit of the area to check for ambushes, but didn't range far enough to find them.
Once that was done, Taylor inched closer, mostly putting on a show for the minions so that they didn't start wondering about her scouting skills.
Now assured that everything was going as planned, Abernathy took a final moment to straighten out her suit and walked forward with deliberately loud clicks of her low office heels, naked sword held out at her side like she was a movie villain.
God, V had been right. The dramatic bitch really did want to savor this.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't Jenkins' little pet." Abernathy drawled, slowly taking one step at a time, flanked by the silent cyberninjas.
Taylor used hand signs to signal that they should move and the five of them advanced with the careful, silent tread she had taught them. The kids all took submachine guns from their coats, while she shucked the coat entirely and left it on the hood of their car as she passed.
"Really, Frank? Again?" V ignored the woman and turned to the traitor.
"Sorry, V, but Arasaka just has more to offer than you." He shrugged unapologetically, drawing his gun and aiming it at her.
"You idiot, all you've done is prove you can't be trusted. Now you're going to die no matter how this goes." V snorted at him.
She and Jackie slowly shuffled away from Frank and the fake recruit. It looked like simple desire to get space from enemies, but in truth it was so that friendly fire was less likely.
"There is only one way that this will go." Abernathy interjected harshly, clearly not appreciating being ignored. She pointed her sword towards V threateningly. "With you coming with me, either with or without your hands."
She wanted to take V alive? Judging by what her girlfriend knew about the woman, it wasn't for anything good.
Taylor was by now nearly at the waterfront. She signaled the kids to go one way while she went another. Their side had Frank and the fake recruit, while hers had a better angle on the cyberninjas and Abernathy.
She held her left hand and started a five second countdown with her fingers, then the Atlas with her right. Little bugs buzzed behind V and Jackie's ears to let them synchronize.
"No, I don't think I will." V replied coolly, just moments before it all went down.
Taylor rose up out of cover half a second early and aimed the Atlas at one of the cyberninjas lower backs. The tungsten tip punched through the armor there, and then the explosive charge went off, blowing a gaping crater into the borg's guts. The angle was such that V and Jackie were safely out of the line of fire.
Skitter's Critters had already started rising just before she fired, saw Frank and his accomplice already turning their guns in her direction, and unloaded. Submachine guns might not be the most powerful guns out there, but four of them could fire a lot of bullets and neither of the two targets were heavily armored.
The other cyberninja reacted with enhanced speed, but Jackie already had his Sandevistan active and he knew what was coming. Instead of trying to pull a gun or anything like that, the big Latino just threw himself forward and grabbed the cyberninja in a bear hug. He did get his back sliced by the mantis blades, but the angle was awkward and it didn't leave more than small scratches on the armor.
Then he hurled the borg with a yell of effort, sending him flying. And quite far at that.
Abernathy, meanwhile, had only taken a moment to turn around in shock, but that was a moment that V had been waiting for. She slapped aside the sword and stabbed her former boss in the gut with the shock baton, discharging it at max power.
Taylor saw that Jackie had drawn his gold-plated machete and gone to town on the still-alive-but-mostly-legless cyberninja, and V was busy manhandling Abernathy so that she could shove the jammer into her neural port, so she focused on the one he had sent flying.
She had stowed the Atlas and drawn the Tyranny immediately after firing it, and was already unloading and moving forward. She vaulted over the railing, dropping eight or so feet, and rushed forward while firing the last few bullets in the Tyranny's magazine, stowing that as well on the way.
Very impressively, the cyberninja managed to control himself in the air enough to either dodge most of the shots or protect any vulnerable bits, tanking the bullets with either his deployed mantis blades or the most heavily armored parts of his arms and legs.
Taylor straightened out her hands to deploy the claws in her gauntlets and moved forward with clear intent. The borg looked between her and Abernathy, and she could visibly see him deciding that he couldn't make it before she got to him.
She was already in the zone, the synaptic accelerators using the adrenaline rush of combat to put her in a state of heightened perception. Time seemed to slow down and all distractions faded away. The range of her power seemed to shrink, but its focus deepened. Taylor could almost feel the buzz of electricity in his limbs and hear the creak of metal and plastic. And she could definitely feel the motion of them as he bent his legs to lunge at her.
It was like she had all the time in the world to consider her actions and pick the best possible response, even though it was happening extremely fast.
She slowed her approach to give herself more stability and leaned sideways to avoid the mantis blade swinging at her exposed head as he flew past. He was off-balance, the damage caused by the bullets making his limbs less responsive or lowering his range of motion.
And he was living on borrowed time, but she wasn't the one that would finish him.
The cyberninja was quick to turn around and press the attack, trying to slice her up. He was faster than her, but every attack was telegraphed. Wide swings that she saw coming a mile away or quick ones that were easy to slap aside, it didn't matter. All she had to do was keep her balance and use minimalistic movements to evade him. He couldn't surprise her or catch her off guard, his attempts to use the peripheral vision blocked by her sunglasses just slowed him down, and his footwork betrayed him whenever he tried to change the distance between them to something that favored him.
Taylor hesitated to compare the rush she was experiencing to a drug high, but it wouldn't surprise her if there were a lot of similarities. This situation might have been possible to handle without going into melee with either of the cyberninjas, but she saw the opportunity and wanted to test herself against an enemy that was similar to Mad Mantis. To see how much she had improved.
As she deflected another slice by nudging his arm out of the way, the answer was a lot. This time, she wasn't desperately trying to fend off a storm of blows. This time, she could perfectly judge exactly how deep and fast he was intending to attack, and at what angle. This time, she was fast and strong enough to fully leverage the information her bugs were giving her, and could process it faster.
The cyberninja was growing frustrated and sloppy as his initial flurry of attacks failed. He risked a gamble.
With a spinning backhand that was meant more for opening up space than striking her, he tried to rush past. But Taylor had read the positioning of his feet and the movements of his eyes. As he tried to propel himself towards V, she set her own feet into a firmer stance and reached out to grab his arm underneath the mantis blade, sinking the claws of her gauntlets into the material for a better grip. Then she turned his own momentum into a spin and hurled him into the exact opposite direction of where he wanted to go. His cybernetics were lightweight and built for speed, so he simply didn't have the mass to barrel through.
Feeling uncommonly cocky, Taylor silently waggled her finger in a 'nuh uh uh' gesture and waited. She felt a subvocal growl of frustration in his throat with her bugs and tracked the tension in his limbs. He was planning another lunge, she could easily visualize his path and speed just from the angle and contained power in his body.
"Almost there…!" V hissed to herself, voice tense with concentration.
Ah, Taylor was almost disappointed, but this was what she had been waiting for. As the cyberninja lunged, holding his mantis blades in front of him so that she would be forced to either dodge or take the attack head on, she was already moving. Timing things perfectly, she casually tripped him as he rushed past, still targeting V.
The combination of speed and sudden interrupt to his stride had him eating shit magnificently. And then the hacks from V and R0n1n got through his ICE, forcing his cybernatics to short circuit. V didn't waste the opportunity and stuck one of her Serpent's Fangs into the back of his neck. The curved blade cut through the thin armor and deposited its neurotoxin payload pretty much right into his brain.
"That was so fucking nova!" Veronica yelled after a moment of silence.
Taylor snapped out of the near-trance she had been in and ran back the way she came, jumping eight feet up and vaulting over the railing.
"Pick up all the bodies, on the double!" She snapped out the order, already running for the car and slipping back into the coat as she sat behind the wheel. Now that shots had been fired, they were on the clock.
She felt them all rush to obey and was pleased. There would be no hiding the fact that a big fight had happened here, but the police was too overwhelmed by the sheer number of violent crimes happening in Night City to really investigate anything but the most high profile ones. Since Abernathy was not likely to have logged her personal vendetta anywhere at Arasaka, there would be no lead to follow and this would be waved off as just another random shootout. Even their car was just a generic van, newly purchased with cash for cheap, and would be disposed of afterwards. They had refused to take chances when it came to tangling with Arasaka.
Taylor backed it up to the stairs and popped open the trunk just as V, Jackie, and the kids came huffing up with the bodies and weapons. They unceremoniously dumped them in, with only the unresponsive Abernathy getting the 'honor' of being dumped on the back seats.
Out of sight, her bugs swarmed in and carried off the bullet casings, dumping them into the water.
"Stampede, the corpo wheels." V called out, tossing a keyshard in Jackie's direction.
He caught the shard and was already moving. "You got it, hermana."
The Valentinos would be happy to take the car apart for them and sell it for parts, and Jackie would be sure to take out any items of interest that were inside it.
Driving off, she used her power to pay attention to what was going on around them. Cameras, gawkers, police drones, squad cars, and so on. She wasn't a driving specialist, but her bug clairvoyance was incredibly useful for knowing when to take a turn, when to hide under a bridge or duck into an alley, when to punch it and when to slow down, and so on. With how fast they had been, it was easy to dodge the badges and get out of the area unnoticed.
"That. Was. Fucking. Awesome!" Johnny practically buzzed with energy. "We fucked those corpos up!"
"You did good." Taylor said. She had been worried that they would do something stupid despite her doing everything she could to make it clear how easy it was to get killed.
"Could we take some of their 'ware?" Miguel asked. "Those cyberninjas had to have some good stuff, right?"
"First it all has to get scrubbed for tracking devices or software traps." V cut in. "But you'll be at the top of the list once it's cleared. And with a discount, of course."
The brats cheered and Taylor let them have their moment. Viktor would ultimately have the last word on what was safe to chip in anyway.
Instead, she eyeballed the sword that V was cradling. "You any good with blades, Slither?"
"I know the basics." The older woman replied. "Why? You thinking of taking up the sword?"
"Maybe." Taylor hummed in response. The three main forms of combat in Night City were guns, hacks, and blades. She was already pretty good with guns and wasn't going to touch netrunning, so blades were really the only option for further progress. There was no apocalypse looming over her head, but it still felt wrong to stagnate. Swords were usually paired with speedware to make them viable against guns, but her fight against the cyberninja just now had showed her that she was fast enough to do some damage with one.
"You would be nova with a sword, Ma'am." Veronica offered.
"We'll have to get you a piece of shit katana to practice with, then." V smirked, gesturing slightly with Abernathy's sword. "This one would be wasted on an unskilled gonk."
"Does it have to be a katana?" She asked.
"What else would you want?" V asked back, honestly confused. The kids were similarly confused.
It was so genuine that it made Taylor falter. "Aren't straight swords better for thrusting?"
"I guess?" V was still confused. "But you use a sword for cutting, and a katana is the best for that."
She'd never had any issue cutting with a straight-edged knife, so that logic seemed a bit dubious. Still, she decided not to argue the matter when she knew so little about swords.
But in the back of her mind was the sneaking suspicion that the cultural dominance of the katana in Night City had nothing whatsoever to do with its utility.
XXXXX
Susan woke up with a gasp and a clink of chains. She was upright, held that way by a chain that held her shackled hands bound to the ceiling. She was also naked.
The room was dark. But as her top of the line cyberoptics stopped glitching, she was able to see just fine.
In front of her sat the traitor, V, straddling a chair and smirking at her, one hand holding a gun. The bodies of her men were laid out carelessly on the floor, no doubt in some crude attempt at intimidation. Same as the nudity.
Still, this was a really bad situation she was in.
"Wakey, wakey, Susan." The traitor sing-songed. "It's time to answer some questions."
"And why would I tell you anything?" Susan scoffed contemptuously. She knew that she wasn't negotiating from a position of strength right now, but refused to show weakness regardless. She had already tried to call for help, but the room she was in was unfortunately shielded and blocked all transmissions.
"It would make your fate a lot less unpleasant." V stated matter-of-factly, waving her gun around a bit.
Before Susan could say anything back, bugs poured into the room. So many fucking bugs. The sounds of their scuttling and chittering made her skin crawl with disgust. They covered the bodies of her men and began to feast. She couldn't stop a shudder at the sounds of flesh being torn by a million tiny jaws.
"What the fuck is this?!" Susan did her best to sneer, but couldn't stop an edge of panic from leaking into her tone. She'd never liked bugs.
"I'm sure you've had some reports about my partner, Skitter." V said casually, and the woman in question stepped out of a cloud of bugs. They were crawling all over her, her hair writhing with them. "But you have no idea what she truly is, my Goddess of the Swarm."
"SuSAn." Skitter stated, but the words didn't come from her unmoving mouth. They came from the walls and the ceiling and the floor.
The bugs were now forming a perfect circle around Susan's feet. A circle that was shrinking. The urge to pull herself up by the chain just so that she wasn't touching the ground was almost overwhelming, but she could also see the bugs crawling over the ceiling, approaching where the chain was bolted in. The bolt itself was thick and sturdy, and didn't move a micrometer at her pulling on it.
"Call them off!" Susan demanded, not needing her biomon readout to know that her heart rate was rising dangerously high.
She had no idea how this was possible. Was it just some trick? An AI? No, that didn't make sense, an AI wouldn't be able control insects. Nothing should be able to control insects. Pheromones?
Did V actually find something… unnatural? A scan revealed nothing special about Skitter, aside from the fact that she was not connected to the net. The sheer number of bugs crawling over her was actually interfering with the scan.
"HUNGRY!" The swarm suddenly roared, though 'Skitter', if there even was such a person, didn't so much as twitch. She, it, just stared at her with blank, dead eyes. A spider pushed its way out from between her unmoving lips.
"You see, Susan, I belong to her." V said calmly, clearly accustomed to what was surrounding them. "She was there when you cut me off and left me to die, waiting for me to wake up. She garbed me in silk from her spiders and let me live here, at her temple. I've dedicated my life to her."
Had the stupid girl seriously found religion on the streets? Started worshiping some kind of eldritch hive mind?
"Whatever she's promised you, I can give more!" Susan shouted at Skitter. "Money, power, all the meat you could want, from all over the world!"
But to her dismay, Skitter didn't reply. Instead, the circle of bugs narrowed. There was now barely a few inches of space between them and her feet. A glance at the corpses of her men revealed that they had been stripped bare, the only thing left being their cyberware and augmented bones. Their empty skulls stared at her, spotlessly clean.
"You tried to steal from her." V continued. A huge, hairy spider crawled over her shoulder and nuzzled against her cheek like an affectionate dog. Bugs flowed over her feet and crawled up her legs, but she didn't react. "Tried to take me away. She's not very happy about that."
The bugs circled even closer. Susan had to stand on her toes to avoid them now, but that only bought her a few seconds. One of them touched her toe and her nerve broke. She started kicking them away, but it didn't help much and the bugs started crawling up her legs.
She pulled herself up by the chain and frantically flung her feet around to shake them off, but a glance upwards showed a new horror. The bugs were crawling down the chain, almost at her hands. She felt their tiny jaws gnawing at her skin. They were going to eat her alive. It might take them a while to get through her reinforced skin, but they didn't seem deterred.
"I'M SORRY!" Susan shouted at Skitter, panicking. "I DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS YOURS!"
"She doesn't really care for apologies, but I can make it quick." V offered, gesturing with the gun in her hands. "Your body would still be a feast for the swarm, but your soul – such as it is – would be safe."
Normally, Susan would scoff at a statement like that, but she was having to rapidly rethink how much she really knew of the world.
The bugs were now crawling down her arms and building a tower of themselves to reach her legs. Their multitude of tiny legs touching her skin sent shudders of disgust surging through her body. She was on the verge of hyperventilating despite her synth-lungs, and her hormone regulators were being overwhelmed.
"I can be more useful alive." She rushed to say.
"I don't trust you, and even if I could, I don't control the swarm." V shook her head. "You either talk and get a clean death or I walk out and let her have all of you."
Feeling wriggling worms dropping on her hands from above made her choice for her. "Fine, I'll tell you everything!"
"First, I want to know if Arasaka is going to be a problem. Was this strictly a personal grudge or did you make it a company thing?" V asked.
"It was just me! The company doesn't know anything about you! They don't even know you used to be one of us!" Susan quickly answered, unable to keep holding herself up and forced to set her legs down on the bug-infested floor.
It would have been stupid to let potential enemies know that there was someone they could work with against her. Once she got rid of Jenkins, she'd purged everything about him. Some people would still remember him, but the digital traces were minimal. There would be no coming back.
"Oh, that's excellent." V smiled, pleased. If she could, Susan would have slapped her for talking so slowly. There were worms in her hair! She could feel the disgusting things wriggling over her scalp!
"How about the latest gossip around the office? What's the big thing these days?"
"I'm sure you've heard by now that Yorinobu Arasaka is in Night City." She didn't even think of holding back. "But what you don't know is that he sent away his entire security detail, except for Smasher. Nobody has any idea why, but it might be huge."
"Oh? That's definitely something to keep an eye out for." V agreed. "Alright, let's move on. Tell me about any assets you have under false identities, secret stashes, and so on. Send over your bank account credentials, too, all of them. That should be enough to compensate me for my wrongful and completely unjust termination."
Susan desperately expelled air from her nose to force away the spider that was prodding at her nostril with its skinny legs. She shut her eyes tightly to keep out the ones trying to force themselves under her eyelids, but she couldn't do anything about the ones at her ears or moving towards her groin.
With a sense of horror, she realized that the girl introduced as Skitter was probably nothing more than a skinsuit full of bugs. They would do the same to Susan, eat her from the inside out. V had said something about eating her soul… would she still be alive, but nothing more than another host for the swarm, until they hollowed her out completely?
She started talking, fast, crossing her legs and clenching her ass as tightly as possible to keep the bugs from violating her. The gun in V's hand was no longer looking like a threat, but a sweet escape. She cracked open her eyelids just enough to connect to V and send over her banking credentials.
"Thank you, Susan." V beamed at her brightly, in a way that made her want to flay her alive. "As promised, a clean death by gunshot."
The last thing she saw was the muzzle flash.
XXXXX
"Laying it on a bit thick there, weren't you?" Taylor snorted at her as they left the basement.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." V replied primly. "I didn't speak a single lie."
"Of course, you just misrepresented the truth." The parahuman rolled her eyes.
"No, you really are my Goddess of the Swarm." V agreed, draping herself over her girlfriend's back. Her arms fondled and groped, and she nibbled at the shell of Taylor's ear, whispering. "And I'm feeling in a worshipful mood."
"V, come on, I'm using my powers to strip the flesh from your former boss right now."
That was not the turn off that Taylor thought it should be. Plus, V had pointedly been working against the perception of her powers being disgusting. They were not.
"I know." She growled lustily, lightly biting on the ear and tugging on it. One of her hands slipped between Taylor's legs. "I want you to make love to me with your powers."
"What?!" Taylor had been relaxing into the seduction, but now she stiffened up in surprise.
"I want you to make love to me with your powers." V dutifully repeated, moving on to sucking on her girlfriend's neck. "Cover me in bugs and use them to tickle all my sensitive spots."
At the start of their relationship, she wouldn't have been able to take something like that, but a lot had changed since then. And Taylor would know that all of her was beautiful and loved, including her powers. They weren't just a tool for causing terror, as incredibly useful as they were for that.
"That would be gross." She protested.
"Not if it's you." V countered, not letting up her assault on the neck. "Pleeeeease?"
Humanity was pretty fucked in the head. There was a reason why there was a market for XBDs from the perspective of victims of rape and torture. V had never been into that kind of sick crap, but she was more than willing to experience a little visceral thrill directly.
"You're actually serious about this?" Taylor asked, grabbing her hands to still them.
"Completely." V confirmed. "Don't worry, I'll tap out if I can't take it, but I really want to know what it feels like."
"I guess we can try it, but don't say I didn't warn you."
A couple of minutes later, they had kissed and groped their way to the bed, losing clothes along the way. V had connected to the system and dimmed the lights to something appropriately romantic and Taylor had used teams of bugs to put away the discarded clothing.
Now she was laying under the bug master, who was once more sporting an uncertain expression.
"You're really sure about this?" Taylor asked again.
"Yes!" V assured, striking a pose with her most enticing expression. "Thrill me."
Bug poured out from every shadowed corner and quickly climbed on top of the bed. V saw them coming and couldn't stop her heart from pounding with apprehension. There was just something so unnatural about this kind of insect behavior that it slipped past any kind of logic or reasoning.
Of course, Taylor noticed and the bugs stopped. She stared down with hair hanging around her face, silently asking if this was really what she wanted one more time.
"Bet you can't make me pussy out." V taunted.
Something changed then. Taylor's expression took on a dangerous edge. The bugs retreated and their mistress rolled off the bed.
V was just about to apologize and ask what she did wrong when she saw her girlfriend reach for the restraints that they'd added once for playtime and then never bothered removing.
The cuffs were solid titanium padded with a thick layer of soft synleather. Instead of a chain or commercial rope, there was one woven of spider silk imbued with carbon nanotubes, which connected the cuffs to a sliding clamp on the titanium bed frame. There was no getting out of them by force.
V watched with interest as her girlfriend silently bound all four of her limbs and adjusted the restraints so that she was spread eagle across the bed. The spider silk cords were pulled taut and had pretty much no give in them. She could barely bend her elbows or knees, and her legs were pulled up so high that a woman of lesser flexibility would be in pain.
"You really think this is necessary?" She taunted, smirking. "I won't be trying to escape."
"We'll see." Taylor replied.
Mysterious and ominous. And most importantly, confident. V was so proud.
"Do your worst, then." She chuckled, feeling herself moisten up with aroused anticipation.
The bugs came again, and V had to admit that being helpless made the instinctive fear worse. Still, she continued to challenge Taylor with her expression, goading her on.
"Aah!" She cried out in surprise and tried to jerk away when a single little fly landed on the sole of her foot and buzzed its wings on it. The sensation was incredibly ticklish.
But she couldn't jerk away, because she was completely immobilized. The best she could do was turn her ankle joint around in an attempt to dislodge the fly. It would have worked if it was a normal fly, which this one obviously wasn't.
More buzzing little bugs came to torment her poor feet, and V found herself gritting her teeth at the tickling.
"This isn't what I had in mind!" She gritted out, trying desperately not to burst into ridiculous giggles and helpless laughter.
"Hmm? Didn't you say you wanted me to tickle all your sensitive spots? To do my worst?" Taylor asked in a carefully bored tone, lounging cross-legged on the nearby computer chair. "Are you giving up?"
V wished that she was able to properly appreciate her girlfriend's confident demeanor – that was an attitude that she never would have been able to pull off even a month ago without shunting into the swarm and forcing it.
Alas, she was being tickled horribly. And worse yet, she had said that. She may not have meant it like this, but she had said it. And now Taylor had changed the tone. V could either play along or pussy out, as she had so smugly claimed Taylor could not make her do earlier.
"No, you'll never break me, you dastardly villain. No matter how sexy you are." She declared, leaning into things even further.
Taylor's lips twitched in amusement, and then the bugs came back, attacking the soles of her feet with their little buzzing and fluttering wings. Then they went for her equally exposed armpits, her nipples, the inside of her thighs, her sides, her belly button, and any other sensitive location they could find. V couldn't hold it in any more and started helplessly laughing and wiggling in a futile effort to escape the ticklish torment. Then the bugs started using their tiny little jaws, never hard enough to do any damage to her reinforced skin, but hard enough to be felt. There were so many…
She'd long since given up on stoicism and was now just trying to breathe through her laughs and squeals. This was actually pretty effective as a method of torture. They should see about incorporating it into their interrogation strategy.
The relentless tickling slowly petered out, and she saw a particular bug flying right over her, clearly intending to get her attention. It had black wings and an orange head. As soon as her eyes focused on it, the beetle spiraled down and landed on her nose.
Thanks to her Kiroshi optics, she was easily able to bring it into focus and zoom in close, seeing that the beetle's wings were soft and leathery, covered with very fine hairs. It was about fifteen milimeters long.
"The downy leather-winged beetle, a good friend to gardeners everywhere." Taylor said. "Did you know that beetle wings can beat up to a thousand times per second?"
V had not known that, but she had a feeling that she did know where this was going.
"Are you going to cultivate my garden?" She asked teasingly, getting her breath back.
Taylor just smiled and the beetle flew off, landing on her pubic mound. It positioned itself right next to her clitoris and V subconsciously tensed in preparation.
And then it buzzed.
V squealed and reflexively threw up her pelvis in response. She had never thought of her clit as a ticklish spot, but this was pure torture! The contact wasn't enough to really be stimulating, but the bundle of nerves was more than sensitive enough to feel the fine hairs brushing over it at such a ridiculous speed.
She didn't notice Taylor getting up from the chair until the younger woman was already standing at the side of the bed, looking down at her.
V's eyes were drawn to the tattoo on her chest, as it often was. The cutesy snake coiled around a cartoon heart. Its head was laid in the 'valley' of the heart, with its huge golden eyes looking out affectionately. Its forked tongue was hanging out of its mouth, giving the snake a rather adorably derpy look.
There was a brief reprieve from the tickling as the bug master spoke. "I could bring in more if you think you can take it… or you could pussy out."
V was sure that if she still had tear ducts, they would be leaking like crazy. "I already told you to do your worst."
"Stubborn." Taylor muttered. Then she reverse- straddled V's face. "But I might as well get some use out of you in the meanwhile."
That was the kind of assertive attitude that V wanted to encourage, so she made sure to apply her tongue vigorously. More beetles flew over strategic positions on her body, this time relying more on quality than quantity.
It was going to be a long, torturous morning, but the important part was that Taylor was too busy playing with her to think of her powers as disgusting.
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