Progress day

--

Guess who's back again. :)

As you can tell I have come back and once more I am bored. So here is the deal.

You get:

Corrected and slightly enhanced old chapters.

Also new chapters, but I'm not sure how many could be. 1 or 100 maybe. You will never know. >:-)

I get:

stoned

--

POV Jack

A month has passed since me and Marie first arrived in this world. It has been quite a nice time, at least as nice as it can get in Night City. Currently it's morning and I'm still being used as a body pillow by Marie, though I have become used to it. In fact I have come to enjoy it very much not only because me and Marie have become lovers, but also due to her comfortable body temperature. She has a rather cool body temperature, which I as someone who tends to sweat during my sleep, appreciates very much. My sleep has never been better and when I wake up early enough, before 7:00, I get to see Marie's cute sleeping face. Sometimes I can even tell that she is dreaming about delicious food, due to her tendency of mumbling quietly and drooling a bit. She has become quite the foody.

As I continued to stare and appreciate her charm she started to stir awake. 'It seems it's already 7:00. I really envy her when it comes to her internal clock.' As I finished that thought I heard her tiredly mumble "Good morning." "Good morning, did you sleep well?" She nodded at me while retracting her arms and legs to let me go and to wipe her eyes with her hands. She did that as she yawned and asked tiredly "Did you sleep well?" "I sure did. I even had a wonderful dream." "Mmm. I also had a good dream. It was about delicious food. What did you dream about?" She got out of bed while putting on some clothes over her underwear as I couldn't help but appreciate her female anatomy and got reminded of my dream as I blushed a bit. I have been getting naughty dreams, with Marie as the main actress, ever since we started to sleep together. "It's a secret." She just stared at me, but eventually gave up getting anything out of me and just sighed. "One of these days I will figure out what kind of dream makes you quiet about it." 'She must never know.'

She has begun to ask me about my dreams for a week after she realized I also dream. It was quite funny how she at first thought that her data storage system was malfunctioning for a couple of days and sharing her worries after three days. It was very adorable and I hope I will soon be able to store that memory. As I was lost in thought I caught a whiff of the breakfast made by Marie. It smelled delicious as always. She has made breakfast every day for 3 weeks. She has picked up cooking as a hobby and has been enjoying it. I feel lucky that she came with lots of cooking recipes preinstalled from her days as Elizabeth.

After our breakfast, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, I went to my workshop after saying my thanks for the food. I was checking on my progress on the power armor and four other side projects. The power Armor was almost finished, since only the armor plates needed to be attached and tested and the necessary upgrades to the van for the armor have also been made. As for my other projects, they were basically finished and tested. Two of those projects were for the public gigs from the NCPD that Marie has begun to do for extra eddies. The first was a pair of omni-scanners in form of eyes with missing pupils and the second was as I call them digital optics jumbler or DOJ for short. They are in the form of pupils and basically attach to the omni-scanners. They have the function of protecting the identity of the wearer from all digital cameras and there is even a filter option since even cyberoptics will be affected by the DOJs.

"Hey, Marie! Could you come to me? I have some presents for you!" She came to me with a curious expression as she asked "Presents?" "Yep! Presents. Here come sit down and attach yourself to me so I can update your software and hardware." I offered her the seat next to me and prepared some tools for replacing her eyes. She raised an eye brow, but she did as told. She saw the new optics on my table and prepared herself for the update and upgrade. (sudo apt update/upgrade :D)

After we were finished with the update and upgrade she began to look around everywhere as if she were in an unfamiliar place. "The new hardware is quite interesting, Jack. I'm sure I can put it to good use!" I just chuckled "I'm glad you can. I would have been disappointed in my own capabilities if you couldn't. Anyways, it's time we make some customized configurations for you and test a bit more." For the configurations it was like an eyes exam. Me making a small change in the configurations and asking Marie if it's better or not and repeat until it's done.

Then I directed her attention towards my last side project, the fatigue suppressants for Gloria. "Scan that for me and tell me what it contains." Marie nodded slowly and stared at the injector. "It is an injector filled with mostly ATP and something similar to coconut water. I assume it's the fatigue suppressants Gloria requested?" I nodded, confirming her conclusion "Indeed, it is. It seems to be working. Has the new software made a file entry on it automatically for you?" "Yes, it has. It's quite good at… sorry. Barry is calling again. It seems like I got another gig for today." She said lazily. "Great Barry for me, will you?" "I already did. Anyways, I'll get going to finish this gig. Bye." We said our goodbyes and I began to prepare two welders for the armor plates, since David wanted to help me finish today. 'I should also prepare something like a dummy for the armor for testing. Let's go with plastics as a material.' With that I spent my time on working.

POV Marie

As I was driving to the gig-location sent to me by Barry, I started to ask myself 'How did they get the information about when and where this so called illegal XBD is going to be made? I wonder what the X before BD stands for? I better look it up.' After I looked it up I couldn't help but be shocked. "WHAT THE FUCK?! Who the hell would pay for something so terrifying! No wonder they are illegal!" When I was done calming myself I promised myself to never associate with anyone who is into this. "It's a good thing the people I know would never be interested in something like that. Next time I better not look up something like that again, otherwise I might need to start to forget certain things for my sanity."

A couple of minutes later I was near the location and decided to drive by it to scout a bit. I also used my new functions to scan for enemies outside and inside the building, which spared me the trouble of hacking into the cameras to get the number of enemies. 'I'm glad Jack gave me the new eyes. Now I don't have to hack into the cameras and slowly look around every time. Alright time to park the van somewhere safe. I don't want Jack to waste his time on something that was avoidable.' As I drove behind a building to park the van, I then noticed another vehicle following and also parking besides me. 'Hmm. Doesn't seem to be an enemy, but it seems to belong to a corpo, judging by the price tag of the vehicle. I better remain vigilant and keep my pistol ready.'

As I got out of the van with my hand on my holstered pistol I shouted at the man who also got out of the driver side of the vehicle. "Who are you and why were you following me?" I got no answer from the big guy. He instead went to the other side of the vehicle and opened the back passenger door. I saw a man step out, who was slim, middle-aged with gray hair. He wore a burgundy Neokitsch suit with black trim and yellow accents, black gloves, black shoes, and a white button-down shirt. His most striking feature were his four optical implants, of which three were located on the right side of his face.

"I believe introductions are in order. You may call me Faraday and you must be Marie, the little mercenary hustling for the gigs from the NCPD." I just stared at him trying to confirm whether I should just ignore him or talk to him. I decided to speak to him with a firm tone. "What do you want?" He remained calm and showed no reaction. "I am merely here to observe your performance in this gig. That's all you need to know." I decided not to waste my time questioning him any further since he seemed to be unwilling to divulge anymore information. I decided to start walking towards the gig and called Barry to answer some of my questions.

"Hey, Marie. Is the gig already finished? If so then that's a new rec-" I interrupted him so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings between us. "No, I just arrived. I just wanted to ask, whether anyone by the name of Faraday is involved in this gig?" He remained silent for a moment before answering. "I don't know, but I could ask my boss if he has any info on that. The only thing I know is that I was specifically asked to give you that gig, since we are friends." "I see. Could you ask your boss on who is involved in this gig?" He immediately replied. "Sure. Give me a moment."

As he made his way to his boss I started to contemplate. 'I have a sneaking suspicion that this gig isn't as simple as I thought.' I sighed and Barry came back with an answer. "It seems that the time and location of this illegal operation was given to us by the man you mentioned. Seems like trouble if you ask me. Are you sure you want to do this?" I thought about how to answer Barry and gave him a reply. "Honestly, I dislike that Faraday guy, but it seems he is my ticket to fixers with better paying gigs." He didn't immediately talk, but eventually said. "Then I hope you wont regret this." We hung up and I prepared myself for the gig before me.

"From what I have seen from those …eh gonks, I think this will at most take 10 to 15 minutes. I hope the netrunners wont run away again, while screaming something about my scary ice or something. I don't even carry ice with me. At least they usually die with a single headshot."