I think I might've underestimated just how quickly I could obtain points.
Night City was rife with groups and individuals I had no qualms removing from the face of the planet. As such, when it came to the ease with which I could gather Soul Points, I was unperturbed on that front. However, ease was one thing. Speed was another.
Last night, after I looted the Maelstrom hideout and added arson to my growing list of crimes, I made two extra stops before returning home.
First, I went back to the place where it all began and found another group of scavs setting up what would be their base of operations. Needless to say, their eradication took even less time than that of their predecessors.
The other location I visited was also a scav den, one whose address I obtained from checking the computers I looted from the den I woke up in. And unlike that one, this one had no living victims.
All of the unfortunate people had been "scavenged," their ruined and desecrated corpses discarded in various ways. Some hung from hooks, others had been left on the cold tables they'd been butchered on and most were being eaten by a giant tub of acid.
I took all this in stride, my rage and frustration greatly tempered by the knowledge that the perpetrators would not do the same to anyone else and that I was no different from them. They butchered and killed for money. I did it for power.
We were no different.
So after clearing and looting that den also in record time, I returned home, showered, and threw myself into bed, very much looking forward to the next day.
The next day came much, much quicker than you'd think.
Ever since I took the serum, I hadn't slept more than 5 hours in one go. My nights had grown shorter and days longer, giving me ample time to work on whatever I was interested in.
This is why currently I sat in the comfort of my bed, a pair of underwear the only clothing article on my body as my contemplative gaze roamed inside the system.
...
Name: Warren Fless-Bishop
Race: Human
Form: Young Adult (17)
Body: 90
Mind: 90
Soul: 1
Senses: 90
Loaded Materials: Super-Soldier Serum, Spider-Sense Serum
Implants: Neuroport, Nanogroomers, Contraceptive Implant, Ballistic Coprocessor
Skills: None
Talent Ability 1: Tireless Body
Explanation: Your body rapidly eliminates the buildup of fatigue toxins in your muscles, making endurance a simple matter of available energy.
Talent Ability 2: Spider-Sense
Explanation: You are connected to the great web, allowing you to sense any incoming danger and intuit a path away from it.
Items: Arasaka Raijin Gorilla Arm, Katana(2), Militech Dropner 5X Cyberleg, Agents(7), Kiroshi Optics(6), Brennan Apollo 650 S…
Soul Points: 17,490
...
I was beginning to understand why so many gave in to a life of crime despite the risks that came with it. It was very, very lucrative. An investment with returns superseding the amount of resources and time allocated to it.
In just a single night, I'd earned a substantial amount of eddies in the form of weapons and implants, credchips, and the pay from Regina. To top it all off, the number of Soul Points, from a single glance and some mental calculations, were enough to manifest most of the designs in my backlog.
And all I did was exercise my strength and ignore the rights and freedoms of some people.
Survival of the fittest in its truest sense.
Blinking and shaking my head, I dismissed the depressing line of thought and brought up the designs I made about meshing cyberware with my body instead of cutting parts of it away. I had decided to rethink these ideas since there was no need to be a penny-pincher.
I selected one of the early designs named "Devil Fruit?" and brought it to the main workspace. There was a barebones drawing of pineapple shaped fruit the size of an avocado.
The idea in mind when I worked on this was to make a Paramecia that would turn me into a technology human. I dismissed it then because I didn't want to be made of technology all the time. Implants had all sorts of weaknesses.
Making myself into a walking collection of electronics in a universe where they could be co-opted and turned on me seemed like shooting myself in the foot with a HMG.
Now however, I wouldn't be lacking in Soul Points for the foreseeable future. Hence, I was going to polish this idea. I was going to make myself a technology human, but it was going to be an active ability instead of a passive and permanent one.
There wasn't much to do regarding the fruit's aesthetics. I just smoothed and rounded the main, edible part, enhanced its realism and added the appropriate colors. The meat of the time was spent on the definitions, making sure I put the right specifications and safeguards in place.
At the end of everything, this is what I got for my efforts:
Name: Tech Tech Fruit
Definitions:
1. Can transform any body part into technology powered by electricity.
2. Can only transform into a device after touching it once.
3. Transformed parts will have the strength of the base body overlaid with their own.
4. Can perfectly control implants and transformations.
5. Immunity to cyberpsychosis.
6. No weakness to water.
7. Tastes like chocolate.
With a light flicker of intent, I saved the design and almost winced when I saw the cost. Even after adding the conditions of physical contact, the miraculous fruit ended up taking 6851 points to materialize.
It was all good though. When I gazed at the dark blue fruit with blue neon lines criss crossing over it, my mind became awash with the possibilities. Without any hesitation, I bit into it, producing dull, cracking sounds.
The chocolate definition didn't only affect its taste. This was by design. I didn't want to eat something with the fleshy consistency of pineapple and the taste of cocoa and milk.
Despite one bite being enough to gain the ability in any devil fruit, I took a few more after chewing and swallowing the first. As I kept my ecstatic mouth and tongue busy, I examined the updates to the info sheet in the system.
Specifically, the loaded materials and the formerly sparse [Skills] section.
Loaded Materials: Super-Soldier Serum, Spider-Sense Serum, Tech-Tech Fruit
Skills
Name: Technokinetic Shapeshifting
Description: Allows for transformation of organic parts into technological components.
I cocked my eyebrow at the addition of the table. Why didn't the system do this for the [Talent Abilities]?
Suggesting that I'd somehow challenged its competence, the system sheet blinked out for a split-second.
Talents
Name: Tireless Body
Description: Your body rapidly eliminates the buildup of fatigue toxins in your muscles, making endurance a simple matter of available energy.
Name: Spider-Sense
Description: You are connected to the great web, allowing you to sense any incoming danger and intuit a path away from it.
'Much better,' I thought with a chuckle. There hadn't been much reason to explore the character sheet beyond the info it displayed. Now that I'd been made aware of this, I would certainly take advantage of it. But not now.
Licking my lips, I replaced the half-eaten chocolate fruit for the peculiar Gorilla Arm I looted from the second scav den. The impressive and clearly high-end limb spent a few seconds at most in the outside world as I looked it over from top to bottom.
Satisfied with the snapshots I had in both my organic and technological memories, I stowed it and held out my right arm. A simple flare of intent later, the brown of my skin disappeared as my arm turned into rippling and twisting mercury sludge.
That scene only lasted for a moment as the sludge took the shape of my arm once more. Though gone was the brown, muscled flesh rippling with faint but visible blood vessels. In its place was a matte black, technological version of it.
The perfect replica of the Gorilla Arm I just examined stopped at my shoulder, its size and artificial musculature matching the shape and positions of my real ones down to a T.
Faint clicking sounds reached my ears as I clenched and unclenched my black digits and twisted my wrist and hand to test the sensations. I felt nothing amiss. It was as though the piece of machinery was my actual arm… like I'd had it forever.
With careful motions, I raised it and wound the entire limb in a circular motion, my shoulder producing no protests like I imagined.
A big smile on my face, I clenched my fist and activated the implant's other ability apart from its main, obvious ones. Low chirping sounds filled the room as thin tendrils of electricity emanated from the pitch black knuckles and coiled over the overall fist.
Eager to take it a step further, I raised my other arm, clenched my other fist and transformed it too. Not a second later, I had two Gorilla Arms with electrifying fists. I threw a few mock punches, noting the light spread of ozone in the air.
Once I grew satisfied with that test, I returned my left arm to its normal state and focused on my still transformed right.
Focusing on the arm, specifically, the shiny and steely gray of the connective parts at the wrist, elbow and shoulder, I pictured the whole arm as that color and it rippled in response. The familiar mercurial sludge returned and vanished as fast it came, leaving me with a glossy chrome arm.
To say I was ecstatic was an understatement. This solved one of the issues regarding my plans in Night City.
Keeping my gaze fixed on the test arm, I seized this ability to make cosmetic changes to transformed parts and added thin lines and depressions to it. They went up its length and circled it like stacked concentric circles.
When that was done, I twisted the arm and looked it over, ensuring the changes were to my specifications before stopping on the shoulder. A simple thought and mental image later, a red star materialized on the topmost part of the arm before it quickly transitioned to black.
I had successfully replicated Bucky's Winter Soldier arm. There and then I decided my alter ego, the one who was going to move about the city cleaning it up, would be the Winter Soldier.
Attire was never a problem. Same for the weapons. What stood in the way of this becoming reality was the obvious cyberarm and my face. And I had just solved the first one. I had an idea on how to solve the second one, but bringing it to fruition would require some specialized abilities.
Supremely content with my new powers, I dismissed the arm transformation, went back into the system and duplicated the fruit, renaming the new file to Stealth-Stealth Fruit.
Unlike the tech fruit, I already had the definitions for this one, so the time it took to design and materialize it was even shorter. In less than 3 minutes, I held a crystal clear fruit that glinted like diamond.
Emboldened by the recent success and eager to get a new set of powers, I bit into the fresh creation. When the familiar coconut flavor hit my tongue, I closed my eyes and shook my head. I never imagined I'd enjoy food so much.
I filled my mouth with more bites to keep it busy and skipped the "checking the system" stage and went straight to testing. I held out my free arm and focused on the hand, picturing it disappearing.
Almost immediately, I lost my hand, a flat stump left in its absence. Everything above the wrist was gone. Well… not actually gone, just rendered undetectable in the visible and a handful of other spectrums.
A simple desire to see my invisible hand later, it returned, though this time it was composed of glass, a clear sign it was still invisible, but no longer to me. Pleased with what I'd seen so far, I pressed my glass hand down on the bed and channeled the ability into it.
The glassiness spread into the piece of furniture, radiating from my position like a stone tossed into a lake. Soon, I was sitting on thin air. At least… that's what it'd look like to any other observer. The bed and the circular area around it had been rendered invisible, its glassy form similar to my hand.
It seemed without specifying the shape of the cloaking field, it would default to a sphere.
Ignoring the slight but fading dissonance of sitting on "empty air" I spun around to examine the edges of the field. I noted the various points they went past the bed and concentrated on drawing them in.
The field heeded my intent and shrunk, stopping right at the bed's borders. When it reached that point, I sent another command and this time the sphere straightened and bent at a few points, turning into a rectangle that matched the bed's dimension's perfectly.
Nodding to myself, I retracted the field and returned my hand and the smooth, indigo sheets to the visible spectrum.
Invisibility test over. Now for the inaudibility. What use was being a ghost if my actions could be heard?
With the goals I had in mind, a way for me to move about unobstructed and undetected was paramount.
That's why I added the ability to generate a sound nullification field in addition to the cloaking one. The former was based on Silencer's, real name Honor Guest's ability while the inspiration for the latter was Fantastic 4's Sue Storm.
And while I had a good idea of how both their abilities worked, I was having trouble coming up with a test that would allow me to observe the sound nullification effects up in my bedroom. I needed to go outside.
That's meant later.
Throwing my legs over the side of the bed, I came to a stop and brought up the system. So far I had solved the stealth issue hindering my plan.
The tracking issue had been one third-solved with the tech fruit, the other parts being the installation of a cyberdeck and the creation and assimilation of Bartmoss' template.
For the former I just had to convince Vik it'd be my last implant in a long while and for the former, I just had to repair any damages to the infamous netrunner's corpse, materialize the mimic template chip, and stick it into his chipware socket.
That left traversal.
I needed a quick and easy way to move about the city. On that front, I'd thought about using muscle and bone lace and modifying some tendon and ligament enhancements. This would have allowed me to leap tremendous heights, but I wasn't going with that plan anymore.
I had something better in mind.
While I'd still be using the muscle and bone bioware, the connective tissue enhancement was unnecessary. I had points to spare and a wealth of ideas to draw from.
Going back to my first ever creation, I copied the vial, filled it with a red substance and named the file Evolution Serum (Heroes).
Name: Evolution Serum(Heroes)
Definitions:
Upon ingestion, grants Nathan Petrelli's ability of flight.
Maximum speed Mach 1.
After testing and finding out the serum would cost 3000 points, I added the second definition and reduced it a little over 1000. There were other things I needed to create after all. And Mach 1 seemed sufficient for my needs.
Zero hesitation coloring my actions, I summoned the vial, uncapped it and downed the red, tasteless substance. I dismissed the empty piece of glass with a wave of my hand and stood up. From what I remember, the serum granted the power immediately upon ingestion.
Doing what I'd done many times before, I let my intent do the work and imagined a force pulling me up. In that instant, I felt an invisible pull pry me upwards and separate me from the ground, my bare feet losing the smooth sensation of the polished floor.
I let out a hearty laugh and spread my arms to stabilize myself as though I were in zero gravity.
I could fly. I could really fly.
...
Later in the day...
As I sat in the waiting area of the Night City Medical Center, my mind went over the wealth of knowledge on the latest chip I'd added to the collection in the back of my head.
Creating Bartmoss's template chip had gone off without a hitch, the memory/reflex hybrid showing and ingraining in me what made the prodigious netrunner one of the best if not the best in the trade.
I reclined in the seat with my eyes directed at the pure white ceiling, my attention worlds away as I picked up basic programming and technical knowledge. If I had a cyberdeck right now, I was pretty sure the assimilation speed of the programming skills would be much faster.
Alas, I wanted to get this visit over and done with, so I held off going to Vik's with my souped up cyberdeck.
Putting my eagerness and the knowledge exploration aside, I sat up straight and moved my gaze over to where an elevator just dinged. Out of it stepped a man with skin darker than my own, his no nonsense gaze making a short sweep and stopping right on me.
If I hadn't said it already, this was supposed to be a simple visit. Why then did this clearly military man's features tickle my familiarity bone? And why was Spider-Sense telling me to be on guard?
What the hell was going on?