Chapter 44: A great cleansing!

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  ***

  A very jittery woman sat in front of me. Actually, no, ‘woman’ didn’t fit, poor girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Of course, when the Kais found out their toys would be taken away, they decided to stop wasting drugs on them.

  Withdrawal was a bitch and a half, especially cold turkey. That’s why I handed her a mask. “Here, puff this, it’ll help.”

  She must have been really desperate to inhale the thing right away without hesitation! Enforcers and volunteers did the same thing to dozens of others, dealing with the slaves the Kais sent our way after I threatened the living fuck out of them. Wanted to kill a few more looking at this girl…

  Just a few seconds later, the teenager started blinking in confusion. “Huh… I-I’m… Am I sober?”

  I smiled at her. “Yes, you are.”

  She kept blinking. “The… The withdrawal, is it going to get worse? How often do I need…” Quick one, survival focused.

  “You don’t. It’s a medical utility called Cleanse. You won’t have to go through withdrawal.”

  She looked at me, eyes narrowing, confusion not lasting nearly as long now that the Shiver withdrawal didn’t mess with her head. “How much do I owe? Are you my new owner?”

  I snorted. “Smart questions. You owe nothing.” The mention of ‘owner’ sent a pulse of murderous rage through me but I didn’t let it show.

  “Bullshit.” Probably a street kid, knew the rules. Free lunches rarely existed, aside from some charities which, yeah, didn’t seem to fit. The armored troop transports probably didn’t help our image.

  I’d kept my helmet off to be as non-threatening as possible, retracted into my armor’s discreet mode. I decided to reveal it. It helped demonstrate that I didn’t give a single fuck about ‘the rules’.

  “I’m a samurai, this thing wasn’t that expensive. There’s one for every slave we forced the Kais to give to us.” Her eyes turned into saucers!

  “You’re…” She took control of herself, street instincts coming back to her. With remarkable composure despite her racing heart, she probed “So, you f-forced the Kais to give me up?”

  I nodded. Felt pretty proud of it too! “I did. They fucked around. Dead people can’t find out. Those uninvolved wanted to make reparations. I was pretty fucking pissed and they didn’t know what to offer me, so, I chose you.”

  Her eyes narrowed and I raised my hands up. “Not like that! I told them I’d massacre a ton of them if they didn’t stop with the sex-slave stuff. That meant giving up all the people they kidnapped and enslaved. My husband used to be one of you guys. I don’t take that shit lightly.”

  “So, your husband was like me?” The girl asked, apprehension falling away.

  I nodded. “Yeah, this building used to be all Kai territory. We liberated ourselves, most of us used to live under their rule.”

  “Wait, are you Panda?” That put a smile on my face.

  “I am, didn’t know I was well known enough as a samurai to get…”

  “Oh, no no no, didn’t know you were a samurai, just heard some stories about how you and your gang kicked out the Kais! It made us feel a bit better, Tse, just something you talked about when none of them could hear. Like an urban legend sort of? The idea of those guys getting trashed, it just… felt good to know, catch?”

  I… didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, a part of me felt bad I couldn’t have eradicated the Kais years ago and destroyed all those brothels. Whatever hope I gave didn’t result in true liberation for anyone outside my floors… Until now!

  I didn’t have enough power for the whole city though… well, I kind of did? Couldn’t take on every gang. I cared most about my community and without focusing on them, I would’ve gotten killed. Hell, even now I barely had the resources for my people. It sucked but… maybe I could free all slaves in the city eventually? Probably too much to ask.

  Whatever, that’d be later ponderings. “Well, I’m glad I helped some people feel better! I much prefer helping you guys for real though.” My helmet already retracted so she could see my face and the widening smile.

  “So… What now?” She asked, apprehensive again.

  “Whatever you want.”

  She blinked a few times, lost and confused. “I… I got nothing, I can’t…”

  “I’ll give you a bunch of creds to start out. I made way too much money for a single person, and I’m glad to give you a bunch to make sure you can eat and stuff for a while after. That is if you want to leave.” Her eyebrows rose in interest.

  “You mean, I can stay? I can… I can do a job! I can work hard! I’d prefer not doing…”

  That got a laugh out of me. “Yes, you can stay. Everyone in our territory –aside from some of the new folk from the upper floors who didn’t want to– counts as a Bear-Yakuza. You can be one as well. I should also mention, you’ll never have to sell your body ever again if you don’t want to. Fuck, you’ll never have to have sex if you don’t want to, in general. I’ll kill anyone that says otherwise, or Johnny will. He’s big on justice, the other samurai.” I paused for a second before rapidly clarifying something.

  “Uh, to be clear, even if you wanted, we don’t allow anyone in our red light district under eighteen! No one who doesn’t want to be there either. It’s always been that way. From our point of view, you’re still a teenager, you should still be doing, you know, teenager stuff. If you want to return to that profession, it will be your choice, no one’ll push you to it –if someone does, tell me– and you’ll have a fuckton more rights than before. Also, we have a bunch of treatments for ex-prostitutes if you’ve got health trouble, or sex trouble, etc… We also have a therapy AI, protector bought. You can book VR sessions for free!”

  Was I babbling? Okay, maybe, yeah. This was my first of the day, I had no fucking clue how to handle this! Crying? Sure, I could do hugs! However she just looked… calm. Could it be shock?

  The others in charge of handling this sort of meeting were almost all ex-prostitutes. They at least had a clue how to act! Plus, they also came here for medical treatment. Some of them were in really rough shape…

  This girl acted perfectly fine however! I sucked at people. Maybe survival instincts trumped everything and she’d break down later?

  “So, I can stay? How… Do I get a job? How will I… live, you know?”

  “Well, for one, you’ll get someplace to sleep and three meals a day, for free, at a bare minimum.” Her dubious as fuck look made me chuckle. “Look, you’re a kid. You have potential! We have learning programs, a school! Who knows what you’ll be great at, but I do believe you’ll be great at something. Giving you a better life, making you enjoy the community, taking care of you, that means you’ll be better disposed towards us.”

  I decided to appeal to her pragmatism. This girl didn’t trust in the better nature of people, which probably saved her life a couple times.

  “Once you become a fully fledged adult with a profession and talent, you won’t necessarily leave. You, becoming an engineer or something, would benefit all of us. It’s worth a lot more than a few meals and an already empty bed.”

  That speech came from a philosophy thing I found online on my ‘people research’. Something like ‘selfish altruism’? Helped sell the concept to people a lot. Never needed the ‘selfish’ part of the equation since helping people felt good and that’s how my parents raised me, but selfish people weren’t necessarily bad people. Knowing how to get them on board initially contributed to the gang’s success quite a bit!

  A few enforcers were like that. Raised to be selfish, but then they get the chance to help people and realise it’s pretty fucking awesome!

  “Here we take care of each other, because all of us are worth it. So are you for that matter! Also, you can ask on our intranet if a family or someone is willing to take you in, but I fully understand if you want to be alone. Plenty of parents lost people close to them, they might be open…” I cut off as Altany sent me a concerning warning.

  Louis, I believe I should alert you, there is a group of Kais attempting to enter the building through the underground.

  ***

  I’d asked Altany to stop every elevator on the first floor, right in front of me. I even made sure those were empty before the bastards arrived. Not a single fucking person would die due to these fucking cow cunts!

  Wrath roiled through my entire body while waiting. I kept everyone else back, militia included, the trashed as all goat fucking hell floor empty of anything that could be damaged. No one would be put in danger. “Open them.”

  All five doors slid to the sides at the same time, revealing some bewildered gangers. They raised their guns quickly though! Half of them wore good shit, the type of kevlar-backed ceramic helmets and chest-plates you kept for special missions. Flattering.

  My full ready-to-murder-entire-armies armor covered me head to toe, putting theirs to shame. From a very quick first glance, they had high powered rifles, even some that might get through my armor. Good shit, maybe even salvaged samurai tech!

  I wouldn’t inform them of that. “Fuck off.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  ‘Outline those that might get through my defenses’

  Blue outlines came to life around the red and yellow highlighted pieces of shit. I’d give the reds a shot today.

  Everyone aimed at me but I held back for now. “Where are our fucking joytoys!?” One of the red assholes asked.

  “None of your fucking business, slaver.” Not my best comeback but I felt very murderous at the moment, which made concentrating a bit hard.

  “You tell me right now or…”

  “Or fucking what? You’re going to shoot me? Have you seen this fucking armor? Even that gun would only slow me down. You’re not getting your fucking ‘toys’ back, so fuck off or shoot me and die. Your pick.” I said ‘toy’ with as much disgust and contempt as possible, my tone promising a very quick and violent death.

  “Come on, just smoke him!” One of the younger, stupider members egged him on. A few more ‘corpo pig’ and ‘pussy’ comments followed. Dude had some idea of just how incredibly fucked he was, but peer pressure could make people very stupid.

  After some encouragement, the guy did shoot me! Altany gave me an idea of where the muzzle pointed to at all times, so I knew exactly where to deploy the right plate. He used some super weird, probably samurai derived, gun with armor penetrating darts.

  It ‘thunked’ into my reinforcements and actually stuck in there! Impressive gun. It fired semi-auto and the dumbass kept shooting. He changed his aim and I positioned plates just right, without raising a finger.

  I had to send a message. It would go out with the last survivor. None of the other blue outline people were dumb enough to open fire, but a bunch of others did! They accomplished a whole lot of nothing. I had to anchor myself and fight hard to stay in place, those were some high powered rifles!

  Some used extreme-velocity hardened small projectiles of all kinds, others went for discarding DLC coating bullets and a few even had anti-material rifles! Special occasion weapons, really. They probably only had a few magazines for each. All of them were sent to kill me.

  The few projectiles that didn’t get deflected transferred an impressive amount of energy, but my feet stayed well planted. Thanks ground spikes!

  The Kais had to know they’d be dead if I wanted. They had to understand to prevent the prolapsing pig’s assholes fucking around and hurting people. The fuckers who didn’t get it?

  I let them empty their weapons then simply nodded. “Everyone else, drop you guns. You idiots, I gave you a chance.” Then, my Tunneler rose.

  Every single boost fired up at one hundred percent! This would be a display, just like my statue impression. I equipped my railgun with grape shot before coming to this impromptu meeting. Together with my shotgun, I used them to kill those pieces of shit as quickly as possible and tried to make it look effortless.

  My railgun went from left to right as I went from right to left. Aim assist module helped to get those perfect headshots for the added badass factor. I struck a balance between high velocity shots that’d get one hit kills through the high quality armor while keeping a high rate of fire. It got impressive results!

  Of course, after the impromptu executions, a bunch of them got mad or stupider or whatever, trying to do what the fucker failed at! Three blue outlines aimed for me. Only one got a few shots to hit my stomach.

  One of the beauties of memory alloy and super nanites? Not allowing the enemy to see they succeeded. The projectiles didn’t penetrate through the nanograin alloy, they pushed armor cards in and ricocheted in the opening the impacts created. I repaired the damage almost instantly. Twenty nine idiots came to kill me and enslave the people I’d liberated.

  At the end, there were only six left. The floor was covered in bodies and blood. I called drones to scrub those elevators. “Well, smarter morons, leave you guns and fuck off. If you come by again, I’m not giving you a second chance. Consider this your very, very lucky fucking day, you disgusting fucking assholes…” I said before turning my back on them. It was an insult, displaying what I thought of the threat they posed.

  “Wait!” One of them shouted. I turned around, gun up, desperately wanting to shoot the cunt, but held back. Three of them stayed behind, the others fleeing in elevators. “Wait! Please, just… I’m sorry, we didn’t come to get ‘em back or some fucko shit like that, ‘is jus’... we thought… We have partners that… Please, jus’… Let us see ‘em? Had no chance of seeing ‘em again if they were on your lands and thought we could jus’ escape with ‘em, catch? In the chaos and stuff since we can’t come normally and…” The girl stopped talking, clearly intimidated. Good.

  I looked at her assessingly, a pretty typical ganger, French-Canadian looking with brown hair and eyes. Punk outfit, karate belt at her waist. Two girls and one guy. I felt like shooting them but…

  They weren’t violent, all unarmed and begging for help…

  “God fucking damn it…” I muttered with my mic off before sighing. I’d been an enforcer for those cunts, hadn’t I? Quite a few of my enforcers came from them. Hell, most of us in that category had been working normally way before the revolt because we often didn’t have other options. I couldn’t judge those assholes too hard, could I? I’d met Robin before we started planning anything… “Fuck. Fuck! Ape plowing god forsaken fucking…”

  My mic turned back on with a thought. “Fine. You’re staying confined until I talk to those supposed partners of yours. IF, and that’s a big IF, they want to, they come to you. I’m not letting you gather intel on the place and our new defenses. If they don’t want to talk to you, you’re going to fuck off the fucking moment I tell you or face severe consequences. If they have bad things to say, you might not get the mother fucking chance. Are we crystal fucking clear!?” A bunch of nods accompanied that. Little, hesitant, terrified nods. Good.

  “If you think they’ll have bad things to say about you, I highly suggest you fuck off right the fuck now. Any takers?” Headshakes all around. Fuck. Alright, alright! We were fucking doing this. Might avoid future trouble, who knew? Fucking fuck… This’d fucking be a fucked up fucking clusterfuck for fuck’s sake…

  ***

  Thank the mesh for alloy muscles that no longer ached from too much tension, jeez. As I walked towards a group of liberated joytoys in high spirits, I spotted her. The bi– woman who spoke for the romantics had given me a real name, which might be a good sign? Fuck me if I wasn’t really fucking conflicted…

  Was I about to traumatize this poor girl? “Hey, hum, Francine?” I asked the rather pretty young blond. Legal at least, probably would’ve killed any fucker that pointed out a minor. “You got a few minutes?”

  The free woman had been in high spirits, clearly liking the feeling of being clean, sober and not hungry! It put a smile on my face for a second.

  I loved helping people. It made me happy. Nothing very complex about it, really. Seeing the ex-joytoys smiling, laughing, some of them excited, some crying with relief, etc… It did beautiful things with my heart.

  I hoped this wouldn’t add to that woman’s massive trauma count.

  I’d really make that AI therapist worth the points, Jesus…

  “Sure new boss! Be right back guys!” She extricated herself politely and I then brought her to an empty apartment. It seemed to make her nervous, and I understood why given what she was used to, but I didn’t want to scare the others.

  “So, hum… Francine. Some Kais came to steal you guys back and I handled them, don’t worry! Nothing to worry about! It’s just, I have some of them bound tight, confined, disarmed and under guard.”

  The woman’s face had gone through a gamut of emotions, including fear, worry, confusion, anger and… fuck, I sucked at faces. A bunch of emotions, whatever!

  “Hum… ok, boss? Do you want some intel or something?” She asked, apprehensive.

  “No, no, it’s just… One of them said she knew you, calls herself Rox, she asked to see you and if you want you can go see her and stuff and… anyway up to you! You have all the authority over this situation! You want me to kill her, she’s dead, I mean, seriously, all the authority!”

  That… started off not so terrible, but devolved into babbling when her eyes grew moist. Fuck fuck fuck I should’ve talked to Robin what the fuck’s wrong with me I trau…

  “Rox is here? She came for me?” She said, a tear escaping down her face. That… was… fuck I sucked at people shit fuck shit what the fuck argh!

  “Hum… yes? Do you… Do you want to see her or kill her?” Super not sure either way.

  Her eyes widened and she raised her hands towards me in panic. “See here, boss! See her! She’s my girlfriend!” I sighed. Oh thank hell’s lords I didn’t traumatize her…

  ***

  “Rox!”

  “Francine!”

  The hug after their exuberant greetings was a bit one sided with Rox’s hands tied behind her back. Two militia members stood in the concrete room’s corners with big guns, keeping an eye on her. I aimed for paranoia and it felt fucking reasonable.

  “Oh my gosh oh my gosh I can’t believe you came for me! Oh gosh you risked so much!” Francine acted quite a bit more… bubbly than I expected.

  “Of course I did…” Ok, that was just cute, even I had to admit.

  “Oh! Oh, boss, this is my girlfriend, Rox, we met and she wasn’t a… ‘client’. We were planning to get out but I had to quit the shiver and we had to get money to live our lives and I had nothing and we were in the process when you freed all of us thank you so much for that especially that cleanse stuff oh the withdrawal for shiver was horrible and then I had to take more and whatever but now I’m clean oh my god this is amazing!”

  God, that might have been the longest nonstop sentence I ever heard! Fucking hell. Alright, going better than I thought. “Hum… Hi, nice to meet you in less… violent circumstances.”

  My helmet was still on, but the eyes on it conveyed emotion well. I still felt very, very suspicious, and I’d still be paranoid around the girl, but we could have a civil conversation. Right? Yeah, we could do this. I turned off my mic “Altany… Help?” I didn’t really know what to ask…

  Rox, aka Roxanne Dubois. Born in a megabuilding in Kai territory. Appears to have avoided the brothels, met Francine during one of her breaks. Mostly wanted for theft, only a few murders listed with her bounties. Those were of other gang members. Full fledged member of the Cobra Kais. Appears, from all I can find, to harbor romantic feelings for Francine. I do believe she is in a situation similar to when you met Robin, but without the resources or social acumen to act. It appears she saved a lot of credits in preparation, given her social status. I suggest giving her a chance.

  I sighed. The harder path was often the right one. I still wished it was a lot fucking easier…

  “Oh my god, sweetie, did you get in a fight to get here I’m so sorry I don’t want you to get hurt please tell…”

  Rox interrupted her fondly, a happy, contented smile on her face at seeing her girlfriend so well. “Don’t worry, well, nah, it’s a’ight to worry. I came here the worst way possible, is true true, but also the only way I had. I’m… I’m real sorry mister Panda. I acted desperate, but that don’t excuse that fucko shit. Don’t make it right. I behaved like a cunty fucko and that just ain’t right, one hundred true true.”

  Megabuilding slang varied enormously from building to building. At the bottom, accents got a bit weird sometimes, especially for illiterate people who grew up around gangs. Hers was thick, but I could still understand the heartfelt apology. She felt worried, desperate, wanted to see her girlfriend who got ripped away from her. Probably didn’t know how she’d be treated, especially with all the bullshit rumors probably circulating before the extraction.

  Fuck. Al-fucking-right! I could fucking forgive that… “It… It ain’t nada, but if your lady says you a’ight, you get a flip. Just one, but you get a flip.” I learned a few accents through my years down here. Hers wasn’t one of those, but if you chose the right sound, it usually meant fine communication.

  ‘Flip’ for coin flip, aka ‘chance’, became pretty common around… five years back? Should still be relevant-ish, right? I thought I heard Rachael use it… Fuck, was I getting old?

  I also decided that’s as far as I’d go. Pulling out ‘flip’ took too much effort for my liking. I’d still thicken my accent because, well, it wouldn’t be hard. Might even help with communication!

  “Look, if you want to stay here, you full cut with the Kais, no middle, bridge fires, ya feel me?” Violent nod of agreement. Good. “Gotta clear the air, if someone reaches about if you found your lady, I might allow kais if full cut too, but only and catch me when I say only if the partner agrees before they arrive, crystal?” Other violent nod in agreement. Good.

  Fuck this’d be a mess. Altany would need to monitor communications to check for abusive behaviors and coercion, shit… I’d throw Robin at the problem. Solved!

  “Wait, what do you mean worst way? What happened, are you alright? Did you get hurt? Did something bad happen?” Francine inspected Rox all over, worrying herself silly.

  “Nah, nah, I’m a’ight, a bunch of the fuckers decided to take their toys back. I followed ‘cause I wanted to see you but the others… Yeah, they dead. Very, very dead.” Rox shuffled a bit, hands still tied behind her back. I sighed and decided to unbind her.

  “Oh, ok. I heard about Panda being like a big protective papa bear that…” I tuned out the rest, groaning with my mic off.

  I was never escaping the fucking bear thing, was I?