by Logan Link
Encumbrance: 95% (105 lbs). Weight limit: 110 lbs
The game didn’t do the math for me but if I had a pen and paper I could probably figure out how much faster I could walk or run per hour if I dropped x number of items.
I mentally told myself to file this information for later.
We stopped in front of the strip club. “Can the Yakuza guys come to the strip club?” I asked Ruby.
“I don’t think so. We pay our protection dues to all the various factions. Even the Vory,” she explained.
This was narrative filler text, not actual game mechanical information I could use. I had to figure out if this meant I could kite enemies into the strip club, or if some strict law of the game specified which sorts of buildings an NPC could follow a wanted PC into.
The strip club was where all new characters spawned into. If I could kite a Yakuza army here and have them start shooting the place up, every noob would probably feel compelled to join in and return fire.
Then I wouldn’t have to worry about being singled out by the Yakuza. Everyone would be on their shit list. The game would practically have to reset all our reputations, or just deal with the fact that everyone would start shooting at Yakuza goons, and vice versa all over the Ionosphere District.
I grinned at Ruby, saying nothing.
She rolled her eyes and sighed loudly, pushing the doors to the strip club open and pulling me in.
The techno music of the club started to fill my head, pushing out more cunning, game-bending plans I was starting to form.
Ruby sighed again as she waved to attract Liana’s attention, practically pushing me forward to him.
“I don’t like it when he grins, girl. He’s your problem now,” she said.
7
“You just love getting in trouble, don’t you?” Liana asked, frowning at me. “I thought you were supposed to hang around and just do some low-level quests. Why can’t you be like the other baby Plexers, helping people do some good?”
“Wait, do some good? What sort of good?” I countered.
“You know, kill some rats, help an old lady cross the street to the Vory v Zakone gun store, do some protection work for the local corporations…” Ruby piped in, jutting her pretty face forward.
In real life Ruby would be a ten, but next to Liana, she would barely stand out. I guess this was due to the fact that the game had really designated Liana to be the face of the game for newbies, so I couldn’t find fault in the fact that she was just the hottest fucking woman I’ve ever seen – in a game where most women and men were a hundred times more attractive, probably exponentially more, than their real life players.
“Well, if it helps any, maybe I can spend some money at your club? You wouldn’t hate me so much then, right? And Ruby, maybe I can pay you for another round of what we just did earlier?” I exaggerated my wink to her, hoping Liana would get jealous somehow.
She didn’t fall for it. “You don’t have any money. Even I can see that.”
“I will in five seconds, if you show me the way to a merchant who I can sell some, uh, hard-fought, hard-won loot to.”
My inventory screen was open but kept to a low opacity. I could highlight all the items I had in the inventory screen, and get a rough estimate for their collective value.
3271cr
That much, huh? I figured I would keep at least one scoped rifle for myself, since I had points in that stat, and maybe an explosive or two. The game had already told me the sort of damage I could wreak with them. And I imagined most noobs didn’t have this kind of firepower.
“Maybe I can sell to the other players here? Is that okay?”
Liana stifled a laugh. “No soliciting.”
“My ass,” I countered. “Ruby literally came up to me when I logged on, asking if I wanted to fuck – only for you to cock-block me, missy.”
“You came on to me!” Ruby protested.
“Blah blah blah,” I shook my head. “I’m going to sell the guns to players here. There better be a decent Trade mode in this game.”
Liana shrugged and allowed me to hustle. If I could only gain XP from completing quests or killing enemies, I might as well hoard the world’s largest fortune from an early level.
“Hey, hey buddy,” I crouched down next to this one buff guy sitting on a low La-Z-Boy near the stage. “You just logged in?”
“Uh… what? Yeah. I just did,” he said. I could tell he was busier paying attention to the busty blonde with pigtails dancing on stage.
“You need weapons, bud. You need a good, solid, level two pistol. You’re level one, right? Fresh as snow. This weapon will give you a leg up over all the other level ones, you’ll be hitting them twice as hard. Weapons scale too, so you’ll be able to gain XP for them the more you use it. Sounds good?”
“Uh, yeah,” the buff guy said. “How much?”
I glanced at my inventory, deciding to pick a number roughly quadruple the PLEX-declared value. “This pistol shoots twelve rounds per cartridge and it’s yours for just 370 credits.”
“Shit, I only have a thousand right now.”
“Of course, but so what? You can loot people once you’ve killed them with your fancy new gun,” I told him.
He finally turned to look at me. “Hey, wait a second. You’re level one yourself. What’s stopping me from shooting you in the head with the gun you sold me, and taking your whole stock?”
I felt my insides turn to ice for a second, then I decided to play the badass. “Because, motherfucker, I have five Neo-Plastic Explosives keyed and ready to go. If you hurt me in any way, you’ll die in the resulting blast that’s so strong you’ll break your shitty VR headset.”
“Okay, okay, I was just asking. Fine. 370, right?”
“Nice doing business with you,” I grinned, handing him the weapon and walking quickly away once the transaction cleared. “Sucker,” I muttered under my breath.
I decided to sell pretty much my entire stock this way, hustling from one noob to another. By the time I was done, I had gained close to 11,000 credits – much more than what the game had told me they were worth.
Nobody seemed to figure out that they were scammed, but that suited me just fine. “Whew.”
The game told me I had gained XP from these trades – this was Social Ability mastery. Excellent.
Liana stood in front of me, looking unpleased. “I should have just let you sell those items to me.”
“What, so you could give me a terrible rate?”
“Those newbies were happily spending their money here, on my drinks, on my girls!”
I paused, looking at the gorgeous Liana. “Do you really want to just be a strip club girl forever? Why don’t you join me?”
“What?” Liana frowned. “Join you?”
“You know, my squad. This noob zone is too easy for us. We deserve to be in Ultra City, with everyone else. Big leagues, baby girl. Let’s do it. Join my squad, I promise I have a plan to ditch the noob zone, and we’ll be out of here in no time. In hours, in fact. You’ll be on a flight out from here before anyone’s even noticed you’re gone.”
Liana paused for a second. I could tell she wasn’t supposed to consider these interactions, nor was she even programmed to handle them dynamically. Yet I found her smiling. “You’re on, baby PLEXer. Let’s get out of this place.”
8
When Liana accepted to join my squad, the game blinked a notification over the status bar — Liana has joined your squad. Level 6 Runner-Gunner — but the game also quickly` informed me of something significantly more menacing, flashing in red:
Yakuza faction reputation: -300. You are a Wanted man. This faction has now issued a bounty against you. Current bounty: 1000cr
It seemed like the notification for the bounty arrived for everyone, since everyone started to look up and turn in my direction.
“Fuck,” I said, just as Liana called out telling me to run.
Gunfire followed me as I ran deeper into the club backrooms,
away from the noobs I had just armed. Ruby showed up too, grabbing me by the elbow. “There’s a bounty on me as well!”
“Uh, it’s going to be way better if you stayed by my side, Rubes,” I told her, flinging a squad invite her way.
I swear to God, the look of pure fury she gave me could have burned me alive there and then. But of course she still accepted the squad invite. She had to.
We backed into a wall near the fire exit, a position that gave us a relative amount of cover from the army of noob pursuers who were now happily shooting away, all hoping to make a thousand credits by killing me.
“I probably shouldn’t have sold these noobs my guns, right?” I told Liana.
She ignored me — probably better that way. Now that we were expecting combat, she equipped a double-barreled shotgun. It looked fucking old-school, I loved it.
“How many rounds can you fire on that thing before you need to reload?” I tested.
“Two, duh,” Liana replied.
I had to equip a weapon too. I had sold most of the low-level pistols, but I still had a scoped rifle and a submachine gun. I couldn’t use the scoped rifle because of level requirements, though, so I was left with the SMG. It was the same energy bolt gun I had used against the Yakuza goons, and the kills I had racked up with it meant it was almost halfway to leveling up.
Of course, players have significantly higher HP than most NPC baddies, so I had to consider that there was probably no way I could face off twenty enemy players who all now had guns.
I equipped the Neo-Plastic Explosive.
“Which one of you fuckers wants to die in the most painful way possible?” I asked, lifting the small package-sized explosive over my head so everyone packed into the corridor leading to where we were could see.
“Shit,” I could pretty much collectively hear from the group of noobs.
“If I let go, you’re all dead,” I announced, hoping I could bluff them into thinking there actually was a dead man’s switch mechanism to this bomb. “Back off. Back off right now unless you want to feel your body rupture and melt.”
I established more distance between me and the guys. They all slowly started to back off, lowering their weapons. “That’s much better.”
Hissing to my squad mates while still facing the noobs and threatening them with my throwable explosive, I said, “Let’s leave. Right now!”
The bounty just blinked an extra 100 credits. I didn’t know why the Yakuza guys had to be such dicks about this whole gun shop robbery…
“Back off!” I warned again. The group threatening us inched back again, eyeing me suspiciously.
They knew that the further back they were the less likely they would be caught in an explosion — but I was still well within pistol range. All they had to do was pull the trigger.
So with my back pressed against the door, I grinned briefly and flung the explosives at them. “Suckers!”
There was a boom, but I wasn’t around to enjoy it, because I had kicked the door behind me, exiting the strip club instance and loading the overworld.
Must have caused some serious damage because the game informed me I just gained a shit-ton of XP:
You hit GreenKiller2019 for 340 damage. Critical hit! You killed GreenKiller2019
You hit BigBowls for 340 damage. Critical hit! You killed BigBowls
…
And so on!
You have gained 1,584 XP. XP to level up: 2,096/2,500
Returning to Ruby and Liana, I glanced around the corridor. “Okay, that was hairy. Serves me right for doing some seriously dumb things. Good to have you two in my squad, though!”
“You know that I would have been obligated to shoot everyone in that club dead because you’re in my squad, but if I could, I would want to shoot you too, right?” Liana sassily told me.
“Hey, that’s okay. I’ll probably even let you, sometime. Now, uh… where’s a safe place to go while we’re still in an active Alert State and there’s a bounty out for us?”
“For you and Ruby,” Liana pointed out. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll probably take advantage of that in my plan, yes, but first I need to know where we can go.”
“There’s a hotel I like to use when I need to lay low,” Liana considered. “It’s only a few blocks away. Let’s go there.”
We were on. With a bounty that had now somehow gained an extra 3,000 credits — probably from angry noobs who were dead and were now respawning after I had killed them — I suspected this was going to take awhile.
No better way to while away the hours than in the company of beautiful women…
“This way,” Liana said, leading us both.
I kept my weapon equipped. “It would be a good idea to take a path that avoids any Yakuza-owned spots, by the way.”
“Right, you’re right,” Liana said. “Recalculating route.”
We followed back alleys, moving quickly with our heads down to avoid catching anybody’s attention: the only people in these cyberpunk back alleys were junkies and beggars, along with the odd armored security personnel. I fixed my gaze at them to make sure they didn’t belong to the Yakuza.
Thankfully not. The armored guys are all mega-corporation security forces. Probably should think twice about fucking with any of those guys…
“Here,” Liana said, stopping in front of a stairwell. “Try not to shoot anyone inside here.”
“Not until our Alert State goes away, at least,” I remarked. “No Japanese mob dudes in here, I hope?”
“This is definitely not a Kobayashi joint, don’t worry,” Liana said. “Hey, Tommy. Need a room.”
I caught up behind Liana at the counter to see a bearded guy at reception, speaking to us from behind a thick glass wall with a serious-looking metal grille. “Liana! Wow, I haven’t seen you in years. I thought you stopped working the streets.”
“I… did. I just want a room. Doesn’t matter what kind, preferably one with no windows. And with access to your security feed.”
Tommy looked like he was happy to keep flirting with her, but saw that both Ruby and I were armed. “You’re not thinking about robbing this place or anything, right? You know we’re backed by the mega-corps?”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Okay, good. Room 106. That’s going to be 1,000 credits per night. Neo-Yen only, I don’t take Rubles 2.0,” he hastily added. “There’s only one big king-sized bed there. Sorry.”
“That’s not a problem. You’re a sweetheart, Tommy,” she said. He handed her a keycard and sat back as Liana ushered us along the narrow hotel corridor, the place looking miserable and cramped.
It was narrow enough that you wouldn’t be able to get two people standing shoulder to shoulder there: there wasn’t enough width.
Appropriately, the hotel room door slid left to right rather than swinging outward, where there wouldn’t have been enough room.
“Okay, we’re safe,” I said cheerily. “Want to watch some TV?”
Ruby groaned. “No thanks.”
Liana picked a towel up. “I’ll take a shower.”
Ruby and I sat alone, quietly. I was busy watching the Alert State on my PLEX. It blinked, without necessarily having a timer, but I knew that it was bound to lower at some stage. I didn’t know how bad these things were, but there was surely no way that an Alert State could lead to enemies finding me in a place as hidden as this.
But I was happy to relax. I already had a good plan to ditch the noob zone — I even had a decent-sized squad of hot as fuck babes.
“Hey, how many people can you have in a squad?” I asked Ruby.
“Six,” she said. “Including yourself.”
“A dirty half-dozen, love it,” I grinned.
Liana exited the bathroom, steam following her as the doors slid open and shut. She had her hair down, and was focusing on holding her little towel up.
“You know, we’re squad mates now,” I said. “You don’t have to be shy about that sort of stu
ff. You can be naked around me…”
Ruby playfully punched me in the shoulder. “Perv.”
“Admirer of beauty, okay?” I countered.
Liana raised an eyebrow… and dropped her towel.
I was in awe of how fucking amazing hot she was. This was a woman unlike any other. If Ruby had big, perky breasts, Liana was more lithe, with slightly less exaggerated porn star features — Ruby might have been the sex vixen, but Liana was the sexy actress you dreamt you could fuck.
My jaw dropped as quickly as her towel fell from her body.
“You’re right,” Liana said, striding over to me. Her seeming irritation at me had now just disappeared, and sultriness flooded her voice and attitude. “We’re squad mates. We can do anything together. Not just you and me: all three of us.”
“Fuck,” I gulped, sitting myself down on the large bed, the only real piece of furniture in the otherwise stark room.
“Mmm hmmm,” Ruby echoed. “That sounds like fun.”
Oh, yes, I could see it now. Ruby gained her [PASSIONATE FRENZY] state again. Liana was a little harder to read, but her eyes flashed raw desire.
“If I’m going to be stuck in a room for a whole night while I wait for you to lose that dumbass Alert State,” Liana breathed in my ear, pressing her bare breasts to my chest as she began to sit on my lap, “I might as well have a lot of pleasure to wait it out.”
“Squad pleasure,” Ruby added.
“That’s right. I’m not forgetting you, darling.”
I was starting to get dizzy hard from all the arousal here. This was really tempting. I didn’t even have to say anything. Liana was happy to take charge, probably letting go of her frustrations from all day — probably her whole time as a game character bound to the strip club — by playing with me.
“Ruby, I want you to rest his head and back on your lap while I ride him,” Liana said.
The redhead vixen immediately obliged, moving to position me as Liana coaxed my hard-on out of my pants.