"We'll be arriving in Night City in two hours. What are your orders?"
"For now, don't make a big show of it. Arrange for V to see me this afternoon. I have other plans for the morning."
"Hai!"
Saburo Arasaka's aircraft soon arrived in Night City. However, to ensure his safety, no one knew his precise location.
The plane quickly landed at a private Arasaka airfield. As the hatch opened, a line of burly men in black suits disembarked with the uniformity of clones, taking up positions on either side.
No, it wasn't just their movements that were uniform—their faces were identical as well!
Bodyguards! Are these bodyguards?! They're actual clones! Yakuza clones!
"Welcome to Night City, Lord Saburo Arasaka. I am honored that you've chosen to meet with me first."
The provider of these Yakuza clones was, naturally, a certain biotech corporation—Yoroshi-san.
Saburo Arasaka wanted to be rid of the weak Ninja Soul within him. By a stroke of luck, he came to know this company—a corporation that was a front for a ninja organization!
They had also contributed a great deal to Night City's current prosperity.
The most significant of these contributions was their highly advanced human cloning technology, a practice officially forbidden.
Large batches of clones were periodically released, their memories programmed to be those of nomads or gang members, allowing them to quickly integrate into the life of Night City.
As mass-produced lives artificially accelerated to adulthood, their 'service life' was a mere three years, after which they would be 'scrapped' due to severe functional degradation.
However, most clones never even lived to see three years. This was Night City, where a single night of bloody conflict for a mercenary could claim numerous lives. The so-called death lottery was nothing but a joke.
The emergence of ninjas had made Night City even more brutal than a typical cyberpunk world. Natural population growth was no longer sufficient to meet such a high rate of attrition.
Thus, vast numbers of Yakuza clones were created, fitted with various cheap cybernetics, and sent into Night City's most high-risk sectors with the explicit purpose of dying.
"No need for formalities, Dr. Ashiki. Has there been any progress in the research on True Ninjas?"
Surrounded by his entourage, Saburo Arasaka descended from the plane. Though his body appeared ancient, his steps were firm and steady, betraying a hidden robustness.
Being possessed by a Ninja Soul had all but eliminated his chance of becoming a True Ninja, a fact he found unacceptable. In terms of combat prowess, a True Ninja was actually weaker than one created through possession by a Ninja Soul.
After all, Ninja Souls could contain the spirits of jōnin, or even Mythical-class ninjas. Compared to them, a self-trained True Ninja was indeed weak.
But Saburo Arasaka was not pursuing power. He already stood at the pinnacle of global authority. The technology of the cyberpunk era was enough for him to deal with anyone; not even ninjas could prevail against a fully mobilized technological army.
What he sought was the eternity that came with becoming a True Ninja.
"My deepest apologies. At present, there is no safe method to extract a Ninja Soul. However, such a power does exist. It is recorded in the Kojiki."
If that's the case, then this is worthless. Saburo Arasaka wasted no more time. He would have his subordinates handle the negotiations for his collaboration with Yoroshi-san. Arasaka did not lack for funds, and in Night City, its power was absolute.
He had no qualms about the various inhumane human experiments he desired. He only wanted the other party to produce results quickly—a method to strip this useless Ninja Soul from his body and allow him to become a True Ninja.
However, Dr. Ashiki had mentioned the Kojiki. That text again. It was as if all answers could be derived from it.
He had already reviewed the data on the Kojiki from V and had gained nothing from it, let alone deciphered anything. It was a matter of pure talent.
Some ninjas could glean almost any information from it, but most felt nothing at all. He, too, was one of those who could not interpret the Kojiki.
'It seems I'll have to rely on V, the one who found it and managed to decipher a portion of its contents.'
Saburo Arasaka thought to himself. V was clearly one of those rare few. He had already resolved to bring V into his camp, no matter the cost.
"Bring me the proposals for this afternoon. Also, give me all the information you have on V, especially regarding the Kojiki. How exactly did she find and interpret it?"
Arasaka's think tank had already gathered every piece of information on V, from her birth to the present day, sparing no detail. They even had records of what she ate each day.
This was the world of cyberpunk. In the hands of a megacorporation, something like privacy was a joke—especially when it concerned one of their own employees.
They analyzed V's personality, her ambitions, her desires and needs, and finally synthesized it all into several proposals for Saburo Arasaka.
He quickly noticed a turning point—an inflection point that had suddenly connected V to the world of 'ninjas'.
It was her sudden rescue of David and his mother after their car crash. In Night City, there was no such thing as baseless altruism. V's actions were clear: her intent was to save them.
As for the reason, he soon found it: a mysterious fixer known as X. No matter how hard Arasaka's netrunners searched, they couldn't find a single trace of her, aside from a few photos of her visiting the Afterlife.
A youthful, seemingly underage appearance. Her cyberware was of an unknown model; she looked like a full-body conversion with extensive mechanical structures, but nothing matched any known type.
Her netrunning skills were also terrifying to the extreme. Even facing Bartmoss back in the day hadn't been this difficult. Schwarzer left not a single trace on the Net; she was a complete ghost.
Yet she had hacked all of Night City, collecting intelligence and information on nearly everyone. If she wanted to, she could easily play Cyberpunk 2077 like it was Watch Dogs.
The computational power of a Machine Ex Machina was completely overwhelming. She had brute-forced all the data she wanted and then brute-forced the erasure of all her tracks. But through the relentless efforts of the netrunners, the ghost's trail was partially restored.
"She has no logic or objective. She's like a true ghost, roaming the Net without restraint, forcibly taking anything that piques her interest."
In the end, this was the conclusion they reached. Schwarzer made no attempt at concealment; she simply relied on her invincible processing power to indiscriminately slaughter all netrunners.
They soon realized that she was X. She was the one who had sent V to rescue David. She was the mastermind behind it all.
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