Chapter 113

"Come on."

One word I said with the sandi already working at forty percent, good thing Becca had to run it behind Smasher, or Yerinobu, so I wasn't worried about her being late...

In the meantime, my sandi had reached one hundred percent power, and the helmet began to unfold from the hump. I started moving before the helmet covered my face, protecting it from the friction of the air.

Smasher tried to stand up, but the energy blade that became visible pierced his body, or rather not his body, it entered at an acute angle in the area of his neck, it was moving from top to bottom and it made him freeze.

But it's all happening too slowly for me. Although that SBshnik over there is moving at about my speed, just a little behind, apparently he hasn't had time to activate the sandi at full speed yet, but I...

Taking a step to the side, I simply bring my fist down on Yerinobu's head.

Chwiak...

My head bursts like an overripe watermelon that's been dropped on with a sledgehammer. Brains and blood flew around the room, but I didn't really care, because I noticed that he had a gun in a concealed holster, which was not exactly concealed, and that was what I decided to take possession of.

The gun was in my hand and I was already pointing it at Smasher, and once I was near him, and the energy blade that Becca had put in it wasn't enough, I pulled it out and put the gun to the hole left by it and put a full clip in it.

Covering myself with my blade from the Arasaki representative who attacked me...

Fuck...

I even had to crouch down a bit and shift, as he was clearly chromed many times stronger than me, and the blades with one of which he struck a blow, clearly not easy...

The helmet finally hid my face completely, and now I could exhale with relief and start working without regard for my health. Though I hadn't really given much thought to the fact that I needed to take care of it even without it. It wasn't the right situation.

Bestia started to slowly react to what was happening and pulled a gun out from under the table, and Becca wasn't lazy as it was and went around the club killing Arasaki's representatives. Smasher, on the other hand, started sparking and trying to move... what the fuck?!

I start towards my opponent and immediately throw a series of blows at him. Hmm, he's a little slower than I am...

But it doesn't give me much advantage, the difference in speed is not so great that I can do something at this expense. I would not have been able to do anything to that Japanese when I was still in the collision with Mystic, but now, after all my technique has become much better.

Stepping to the side and taking another hit on a sliding block, yes also pushing the opponent's blade into the Smasher...

Ha!

The blade penetrated the Borg's chest armor and got stuck, so the Jap had to drop the blade and now he has one blade and I have one blade.

I froze and watching as the energy blade came out of my opponent's abdomen then slashed upwards and burst out of his body near his throat, began to slowly lower the acceleration from the sandi...

"Ha..."

The acceleration is at about fifty percent and I look around and only after making sure everything is safe do I turn it off completely.

"T-t-t-t-t-you...

I shook my head looking at Smasher.

"You're a tenacious creature, aren't you?"

"This isn't the end."

"It's over, asshole..."

Bestia walked over to him and put the entire clip of her pistol precisely into Smasher's optics and even as he clearly stopped working she reloaded and emptied another clip into him.

"Is this the end?"

"Uh-huh...

I nodded at Bestia's question and calmly placed the gun on the table then looked towards Claire.

"Claire, would you be a dear and make us something to drink?"

"Yeah, me too..."

Becca stopped maintaining her invisibility and collapsed onto the couch, with me sitting next to her and Bestia sitting across from us.

"Go ahead... and call the cleaners..."

"Okay..."

Claire nodded.

"Good girl..."

I nodded at the bartender.

"I used to think she was only good as a bartender, but now. maybe you should take her on as your second-in-command. And in the future, maybe she'll be the new queen.

"Hmmm..."

Bestia looked at the girl thoughtfully.

"...so you got it all figured out?"

I grinned at the slightly confused question from the Queen of Postmortality, who outwardly remained completely unfazed.

"It was hard not to realize..."

I shook my head.

"...we usually have a slightly different tone of voice. So it wasn't hard to figure out that you had a problem. Although I'm sorry that I'm the cause of your problems."

"Forget it..."

Bestia shook her head and looked at Smasher. The dead Smasher.

"...that asshole's death was worth it..."

"Finally got your revenge?"

"Yeah..."

She covered her eyes.

"...for how many years it's been haunting me... haunted. And then finally."

"Okay, so what do we do now?"

"It's okay. We'll clean up the club and get back to business as usual. although you should probably lay low for a couple months. Of course, I have a lot of debtors and everyone will think that Yerinobu attacked my bar, as it was, but it won't save you from revenge from his relatives. By the way, what was that Swallow he was describing?"

"I have no idea..."

I shrugged while Bestia looked at me with interest. With a lot of interest and distrust.

"But seriously?"

"I'm serious. No, I ran into some guys two months ago who also demanded that I give them Swallow... I even thought it was really about the bird, but then I found out that's what they called some girl..."

"And what, no thoughts at all?"

Bestia was beginning to doubt that I knew anything, though I'm sure she'd be checking up on me more than once. But hopefully it won't come down to the scouts sent to Aldecaldo. Speaking of Aldecaldo.

"How are you girls doing?"

I addressed that question to the girls who were still in the clan. I didn't doubt their abilities, but it wasn't the safest thing to confront Arasaki's operatives or security officers.

"It's okay... They tried to take a shot at the clan, but we're the ones who decide... There's a lot of types here, but there's no one comparable to Smasher."

Panam answered me in a completely calm voice with not the slightest bit of excitement in it. Not even the slightest bit.

"It's not as bad as they make it out to be."

"А?"

Kiwi joined the conversation, and the other girls asked the same question, and it sounded remarkably synchronized. Maybe we should put them on the Synchronized Akane team... I was worried about Smasher and Yerinobu, as well as the nameless bodyguard, and all sorts of stupid things came into my head.

"Yeah, I said get to work, and Smasher was a piece of shit. I don't know, maybe we got lucky and Becca hit something really important with her first invisible punch, or maybe he was just a publicized lowlife... I don't know now. But we took him down."

"Will you be in the clan soon?"

This question was asked by Lucy.

"I think so. I'll talk to Bestia and get ready."

"Roger that, we'll try to get it done by your--

Panam decided to end the conversation for everyone, but I was not happy with that. It was not the fact that the conversation was over, but the fact that they had decided to try to make things quicker. I don't want them taking any unnecessary risks. That's what I warned them about.

"Now, you just don't take any chances out there... Remember everything you learned from the training chips and what you've reinforced in virtuality."

"Well, we're not children..."

"So, Judy."

And that outraged expression belonged to her.

"...there's no need to be so innocent about it. I know you well enough to know that you're quite capable of taking unnecessary risks. That's why I'm warning you not to do it."

My voice was completely serious.

"Don't worry..."

Triss intervened in our conversation, but I wouldn't have seen her image even if all the images had been deployed, because she could only hear and communicate with us by means of her visor. She could only hear and communicate with us through her visor, which she also used as an aiming device.

"...It'll be okay, I'll watch your girls."

"Eh..."

I sighed and shook my head even in reality.

"I'm definitely going gray with these. Thank you, Triss. I'm relying on you to be the most responsible."

"Hey! Actually, she's not the only one who can watch your girls..."

"Ian, you keep an eye on your boyfriend..."

Triss allowed herself to add a drop of sneer to her voice.

"Triss..."

The black-haired woman's voice had a slight, barely perceptible, and I'd say friendly threat. But I didn't care, so I went back to the real world.

"What? Checking up on the Klan?"

"Uh-huh...

I nodded my head a couple times and frowned slightly.

"What?"

I shook my head at Bestia's question and activated my optics in various modes and looked around. What caught my attention? What made me tense up?

Five minutes and.

"You lively bitch!"

There was indignation as well as admiration in my voice.

"Uh... Uh, David?"

"Bestia, can you believe that asshole's still alive!"

I jabbed my finger obscenely in Smasher's direction.

"What?!"

Shock and disbelief at my words. Although there was so little of the latter that I could ignore it.

"That's the state I'm in right now..."

I shook my head.

"It's kind of in a power-saving state right now. I wouldn't have realized what was going on at all if I hadn't noticed the micro movement of the brush...

I nodded at my hand.

"If he was dead, the energy would just be there and not going anywhere, and here, whether it was you shooting him in the head or me and Becca. but we did damage something, so not all the energy that's being channeled to preserve his identity--

I poked his left shoulder a couple times.

"...in this place, it's being used up, it's leaking into other systems, which is what's causing this twitching."

"Hmm. what do we do?"

I looked at Bestia.

"Well, uh. that's your enemy. You want to call a tech, have him retrieve the data vault that backs up Smasher's identity and memory..."

"You think it's backed up?"

"Well, considering Arasaka has been advertising those chips lately..."

Bestia's eyes widened with shock.

"Do you think they have the technology for full-blown consciousness transfer?

"It's more like a full-fledged preservation of consciousness, and then a copy of that consciousness can be injected into the Borg, who will be convinced that he is the original. So be careful, you might get another Smasher...

"To you, too..."

There was a slight sneer in Bestia's voice, but her tone quickly turned serious.

"...can you help me put him to rest for good? I want to make sure that at least that part of his personality, if Arasaka really cared to preserve it on some medium, would be completely destroyed."

"No problem..."

I shrugged, and Becca grinned happily, and over the next ten minutes we turned Smasher's body into a burning piece of metal, damaging everything from the backup data stores, which, as it turned out, had five of them hidden in his body, to the backup power supplies. So when the cleaners arrived, we were already sure that this particular Borg was dead and wouldn't cause us any problems.