"Boss, Kotarō was ambushed at the Fengmo family's ancestral manor. A fierce fight broke out, and he was defeated and taken."
"The attackers appear to be Iga ninjas—some of them were seen during the Tokugawa campaign."
"But they had additional corporate tech support behind them. We can't pin their coordinates, and no one has contacted the company yet…"
"Boss? Boss? Are you hearing this?"
"Sigh… Got it. Keep digging. Give me a minute alone."
Li Pan covered his face, sinking into that familiar spiral of "Why are my subordinates such walking disasters who can't handle the smallest task?"
Okay—this time, he couldn't really blame Kotarō. He'd gone after the mikoshi under wartime conditions because Li Pan asked him to. Isolated from the team, swarmed, captured—pretty normal outcome.
Not to mention Iga's reputation; once those corporate dogs got serious, even Li Pan couldn't play fair without flipping on the cheat codes. Even Eighteen hadn't detected the strike.
There had to be company-grade hackers backing the ambush. What surprised him was how fast the Iga strike team had partnered with other corporations—Takama Ga Hara's bones weren't even cold yet.
What truly bothered him was not knowing who held the mikoshi now. Without it, he couldn't finalize a deal with Amakusa. And that lunatic arsonist might just stir the pot out of spite and sink the fleet arrangement.
But Li Pan had no time for the "rescue Kotarō" routine right now; his shuttle had already arrived.
He popped the hatch and dropped down into the middlemen-and-cyberpunk stronghold—the "No Good Death" Bar.
He pushed the door open. Mercs and bounty hunters all turned to stare, hands on guns and vibroblades, eyes shining like they were looking at a walking moneybag.
After last night, Li Pan had become the prettiest boy in Night City—one hundred fifty billion on his head. Probably more views than an adult super-dream cam star.
The bar forbade gunplay, but a big bounty always finds a brave soul. A merc stood, blocked his path, flexed gorilla arms and artificial myofibers until he ballooned like a parade float.
The man kept charging, closing to within five feet, head down. Li Pan didn't bother with words. He raised a hand and slapped the merc across the face—cheekbone shattered—and the man collapsed, snoring like a baby.
The rest sank back into their seats.
Security hustled over with carbines.
"What are you looking at? He's drunk."
The guards glared and stepped aside.
Inside the soundproof booth, Vajra, the Iron Queen—or rather, the proxy combat shell she was driving—sat cross-legged on the sofa. Two burly bodyguards stood by, veterans with full military-grade implants.
The queen wore a skimpy V-cut camo bodysuit, bare arms and legs beaded with sweat. Her deep brown skin gleamed; heat steamed from the metallic joints of her augmentations. She'd clearly just finished a punishing workout and was cooling down with her SBS exosuit and custom implants off the frame.
Vajra didn't care about his gaze. "You actually wired the money straight in. Private gift. Not afraid I'll keep the cash and stiff you?"
Li Pan shrugged. "Pocket change. My time is worth billions per minute."
"Besides, a nuke goes for fifty million. If you're that hard up and want to raise the price, I'll throw in an extra warhead for you."
Her bodyguards bristled. Vajra grinned. "Typical TheM company dog—money to burn. Didn't even blink at the eight-figure tax."
"Then again, you commute by shuttle. Fuel's pocket change to you."
"If this deal works out, interested in giving me more business?"
"Which kind of business? Drinks and small talk?"
Li Pan's eyes flicked to her thighs.
Vajra snorted, neural accelerators humming as a blast of hot air rolled through the room. A mantis blade kissed the space before his eye.
"Not just drinks and talk. I'll join you on the battlefield. How about a merc like that?"
Li Pan tapped the blade aside with one finger. "Name your price—I'll wire it."
She withdrew the blade and handed him a chip. "Straightforward. I like that. You kept your word; I'll keep mine. Here are the nav-beacon star charts for the goods. Once you pick up the shipment and the business closes, come to me directly for whatever else you need."
He watched the—ahem—the Iron Queen walk past and out.
No time to waste. Li Pan left the bar, vaulted into his shuttle, and blasted off—leaving a crowd of cyberpunk mercs in technicals and RPGs gaping at his contrails.
"Stunned, huh? Daddy can fly!"
Ahem. He forwarded the cargo coordinates to Orange and Nana, ordering them to prep a run. Then Vajra's "fuel" quip clicked, and he checked the shuttle's consumption.
A word about engines and fuel.
Across the multiverse, the most common FTL tech is WARP jump via Hyperdrive—field distortion to fold space around the hull and sling along gravity lanes at 5×, 10×, even 500× light-speed.
Pros: point-and-jump, point-and-arrive, AI nav; with star charts and pre-checks of local gravity wells and space weather, accidents are rare.
Cons: you need charts—or spice and a navigator. And Hyperdrives require Warpcells for that massive, instantaneous energy spike to twist field geometry.
Regular batteries can't handle the load. Warpcells are proprietary, expensive, and prone to failure under sustained combat jumps—most ships killed mid-war are dead because a Warpcell hiccuped and the jump aborted.
So maintenance is everything: specialized coolant-repair slurry for the Warpcell pack—"Cellsoup." Not exactly "fuel," but definitely a consumable.
Right now, the company fleet's biggest shortage was Cellsoup. No soup, no jumps—big ships become fish on a cutting board.
The good news: Cellsoup is an industrial staple. Pricey, limited throughput, variable quality by supplier—but Takama Ga Hara, the local giant, can manufacture it. If you've got cash, you can buy.
And say what you will about Takama Ga Hara—they don't hit Warp 500; they wheeze at Warp 15 and accelerate like molasses. Still, they've cleared the Warpcell tech threshold and hold real patents. Materials and license ceilings keep them from the first tier, that's all.
There's more to consumption, of course.
FTL is for the jump. Ships also mount PPE—Pulsed Plasma Engines—for sub-light and orbital work.
PPEs arc-discharge a plasma, then use Lorentz acceleration in magnetic channels. Mature, reliable, fast-starting, wide throttle range, dirt-cheap solid propellants—ubiquitous in warships, drones, and high-end skimmers.
The catch? PPEs share a lineage with particle cannons and plasma throwers. With plans off the deep web, bad actors can mod them into plasma guns or EMP projectors.
Security now registers every sniper rifle; you bet they track PPEs. Capital-class PPEs are banned from re-entry. Smaller ones require permits, full-time positional tracking, and startup clearance.
Because of those regs, Li Pan's Solarbus Shuttle carried a third drive system—a so-called "old-school" fuel engine.
"Old" in name only; modern cycles rival PPE efficiency. Designs are complex, patents thick, fuel expensive. With environmental rules—never mind the constant acid rain—Earth vehicles tend toward metallic hydrogen and metallic nitrogen. And unlike PPEs, fuel engines don't meter consumption ion-by-ion; once you spin them up, you burn blocks.
Bottom line: after a short hop, a couple of takeoffs and landings, the shuttle had guzzled nearly forty thousand credits' worth of fuel at current prices.
"Oh, come on… my rideshare costs four hundred!"
Not sustainable.
"Go electric?" Sure—solar arrays plus mag-lev or antigrav. Great for bikes, cars, skimmers. A shuttle at this mass and range with full antigrav? Pure luxury—tens of millions just in lift systems.
So… no more commuting by shuttle. Keep it for emergencies, hero moments, flexing, or lobbing a warhead.
On autopilot, he slid into Night City Port, landing atop the newly purchased Whale-class—Eighteen. Flipping through a motorcycle magazine, he strode into the cockpit.
"Eighteen! Fill my tanks and give her a wax!"
"And where are we on Kotarō's location?"
Working overtime in the middle of the night to rescue staff—if the company wouldn't reimburse fuel, that'd be criminal.
In the CIC, Eighteen had spun up a new encrypted company channel: "Kotarō Rescue." Everyone joined.
A-Qi: "Boss, after the abduction they dove into the Sub-City. I launched drones, but they seeded heavy jammers. We need time to filter sources. No visual yet."
Eighteen pulled up district surveillance. On top of the Night City layout, graffiti-like overlays marked the storm drains and sewers.
"Tch. Pain in the— Where's the Divination Orb?"
A-Qi: "With Ashiya-kun. He and Rama are headed to the site. The scrying radius is only ten kilometers—no hit yet. We're holding the fort here."
0113007 cut in, dry as dust. "Why the fuss? He's just a temp, isn't he?"
Li Pan knew these cosmic types; he didn't bite. "Temp or not, 0791034 is also an apostle of the sealed demon. Round up, he's company combat power and property. We're at war—every person matters."
He skimmed satellite imagery of the Fengmo manor and Eighteen's reconstructed telemetry. The Iga team's effect… wasn't that scary. Maybe three Tengu-class on site; he could handle that solo.
"Eighteen, any Iga bases in the city?"
An office tower lit up on the map, with a live projection of the "overtime" staff—plus their IDs.
Heh. Who'd expect a room full of bland office drones to be wanted ninja killers with five-figure bounties?
"This is Iga's Night City office—just a contract desk. CCTV shows nothing suspicious. Kotarō's not here."
"I don't care. Every mutt thinks they can chase my bounty and snatch my people? If I don't flip their house today, tomorrow they'll be reaching for my head!
Hit them! We'll trade prisoners after! Eighteen, spin up with me!"
Eighteen: "Aye-aye~~"
0113007 hurried to interrupt. "Wait! Manager, you're going yourself again? Better to wait till morning—my first batch of bio-soldier embryos will be mature—"
Li Pan waved him off. "You mind your lab. I'll mop up this small fry."
"Eighteen, what's ready for war?"
Eighteen: "Flea-class and Spider-class ground drones are searching the Sub-City. Navy heavy drones are mid-upgrade—anti-corrosion coats drying. I've got one full space-air UAV squadron: eighty medium frames. Modules updated, systems green. Ready to arm on your order."
Li Pan flicked through the list:
"Cyaneus" interceptor, "Falcon" multirole, "Fregata" anti-ship striker, "Canus" stealth bomber, "Petrel" electronic support—five types, each at a full sixteen-craft flight.
Yo—Takama Ga Hara was being generous. All export-grade mediums. That's almost an air brigade.
Don't be fooled by the foreign branding—these were built locally by Muramasa Industries and Shibata Heavy.
Example: "Spider" becomes "Araneida" on export—same airframe. Standardized modular military tech meant constant swaps of Grade-4 legacy modules for newer Grade-5 suites. Even "Spider" had iterated dozens of times.
Export lines like "Araneida" were built to order for off-world fleets—latest blueprints, updated gravity/OS parameters, fresher materials. They tended to outperform older domestic batches.
To ease field logistics, overlapping roles used common, swappable interfaces.
Cyaneus and Falcon, Fregata and Canus could cross-fit to a degree—keeping combat power up under attrition.
Li Pan placed his order. "It's a commercial office, lots of civilians nearby—no nukes or JDAM-class heavies. Conventional loadouts only. Give me a Petrel flight, a Falcon flight for fire support, and—eh, let's splurge—one Cyaneus flight for overwatch."
Eighteen: "On it!"
Three flights—twelve medium UAVs—armed, launched.
"Medium," in this context, meant wingspans over fifteen meters, MTOW over a hundred tons, payloads north of fifty.
"Spider" counted as light—infantry armor killer. These mediums were built for ships, forts, and army groups. "Heavies" served against star-warships—station turrets or jump-capable torpedo drones.
He skipped the skimmer. In SBS armor, he climbed into an orbital-drop infantry pod, which a robotic spar latched beneath a Cyaneus wing. The flight went supersonic.
With the Whale-class Eighteen as central controller and a net of spy sats feeding data, Li Pan had total situational awareness from inside his airborne coffin.
Five minutes later, twelve mediums crossed the Night City ADIZ in stealth and hovered over the Iga Office.
Operation start.
Petrel lit up quadruple ECM. It hacked the district's signal hub—CCTV black.
Falcon dove in a tightening spiral; in fifteen seconds a gun run expended a base load, ballistic math threading between load-bearing walls to erase the target floors.
Cyaneus dropped the assault pod like a torpedo—bullseye through the office façade.
"Drop your weapons and you live!"
Li Pan sprang from the pod, dual LMGs leveled.
The office was a wind-ripped ruin—cyberlimbs, brick, and rebar everywhere. Flesh shredded into confetti by cannon fragments.
A man-crow hybrid twitched in a pool of blood, nose crooked, eyes misaligned, bubble-foaming. His body had split like a zipper, skull and spine peeled back from a torso blossomed open by shrapnel.
A Great Tengu, transformed in time. He'd survived four shells—not because he was strong, but because Li Pan had marked him to keep him alive.
"Hattori Hanzō?"
Retinal scan confirmed the ID.
Li Pan stamped his face. "Take him."
.
.
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⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
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