Outside of the shop, everything looked the same as before. A cyberpunk dystopian mess full of technological miracles and pervy holograms. I peered about warily for signs that someone had tracked me here, or some random encounter had been brought up to surprise me, but the only figure anywhere near me was a man in a thick tan trench coat.

One who caught my eye, then flashed me.

He had one of those wrinkled old man bodies, despite the gruff youth of his face. Sagging pecs, large belly, the sort of figure that haunted you at saunas all the world over.

“What the heck, dude?” I asked, refusing to look down further than I already had.

“Behold my spectacle,” he answered. Then he started walking forward. 

It was such a bizarre juxtaposition from the cute soulless nano-automaton inside the shop to this horrid thing outside that I just didn’t have the words. I did have a new plasma blaster though. And things didn’t ever get as unarmored as they were right now.

I fired. Screw him and whatever surprise Deus Ex had programmed into him. The blast tore through his center, dropping him to the ground with an audible squish.

I heard the door open behind me. Hina Owari popped out, looking over the scene.

“Grandpa?” she asked.

A notification popped up.

-1000 reputation rating with Hina Owari. Hina Owari is hostile.

Oh crap. 

I ducked instinctively, narrowly avoiding the hard laser blast that had been leveled for my head. I really didn’t want to fight her. Though I was glad that I’d never decided to call her up some lonely night to date her. Lady was way too easily triggered.

“You killed my grandpa, you bastard!” she wailed. I dodged left while she fired right, I leveled a blaster at her and she pin-wheeled out of harm’s way, my blazing globule burning and cracking a crater into the side of her establishment.

Hairy little Yonda waggled out from behind her, carrying a tiny blaster. Battle had been joined.

“Sorry. I didn’t know!” I yelled back. She growled and ran back toward the door, scooping up Yonda on the way and throwing him into the shop. I fired three shots, missing each one of them by just a hair’s breadth.

The lady was fast.

Managing one last shot at me, one that managed to scorch my should for 17 points of fricking damage, the door slid open and then shut hard behind her.

My next blast burned across it and fizzled out. There was definitely some sort of shield there. If she had it locked up tight, I wasn’t going to get in.

What a day.

What an encounter!

I looked up into the sky, trying to piece together the previous events in a way that made sense. Had Deus Ex just tried to shoehorn me into a romance, then blow it up in my face?

That was a much more clever AI than I was used to if that was the case. This thing was state of the art.

And if that hadn’t been the case, what the hell had just happened?

The door popped open and Hina was there holding a missile launcher. One armed with a missile. A missile that had lots of nuclear stickers pasted over it.

“I’d love to see you dodge this,” she snarled. I did the only thing I could think to do. I shot at the warhead.

I don’t know if Hina had bullet-time or what, but she shrieked and fell backwards, the door closing in front of her and sealing her back into her store. And I decided that might be a good time to leave. After all, there were surely plenty of non-crazy weapon stores in the sea.

The good news was that the blaster worked. Against naked crazy old men anyways. I figured I’d head back to base and get the gang together. Maybe try to call the lady up and see if I couldn’t reason her down from her sudden homicidal tendencies. 

A card popped into my inventory, along with a notification that I had received 50 xps for the encounter.

I didn’t want them. They felt dirty. But it wasn’t like I had any choice in the matter. I ducked behind a different shop, hiding in an alleyway to inspect my newest card.

LUCK OF THE IRISH

Level 1(Common)(1CP)

+1% chance to succeed at any given roll of skill. This does not stack with the learn skill.

If the Four-Leaf-Clover were such a great giver of fortunes, perhaps it was best to be avoided.

To say it wasn’t good was an understatement. This skill was so bad that it was mocking itself. Having this card equipped would be essentially the same as having nothing equipped at at.

I sighed. Did it matter right now? I still had a lot of open slots, so I begrudgingly learned the card, rolling a 59% and then slotting it as active bloody 8(24).

I rolled out over the strip, whipping my head left and right, constantly checking to see if any one of the many enemies I’d made today just happened to be tailing me. The market was fine, though. 

Their outskirts were not. Arrayed at the entrance to the market sector, standing proudly in scrap metal armor and skins of tempered leather, were people that I hadn’t seen before but knew I didn’t want to meet. Their eyes scanned over the crowd and I knew without a doubt that they were searching for me. I sent a message out.

“Hey, Eric Joel. You doing anything right now?” I asked.

There was a short delay, just a few seconds, before he responded.

“Not really. What’s up boss?”

I ducked and hunched a bit before responding. “I’m in a bit of trouble. Messed up some, really screwed up a contact, and now there’s some thugs looking around the place. There aren't any markers or pop-ups saying it all and I'm not sure how I know, but I’ve got a feeling they’re after me.”

“Pop-ups? Did you try talking to them?” Joel asked. I shook my head, realized he couldn’t see me, looked over at the thugs, and this time shook my head in dismay.

What had I been thinking going here all on my own?

In the future there’d have to be some sort of buddy-system in place to ensure that we weren’t isolated and caught out then terminated one-by-one.

I brought up my minimap, turning it about, looking for avenues of escape. The market was a somewhat walled-in section of territory, an area marked as Neutral Ground but that system demarcation didn’t seem to mean much if I was steadily pissing off everyone inside it.

Deus Ex might as well have marked it, “Everything here hates Dirk Stone”.

“Boss, you want me to head out there with Patches? You know, just in case your golden tongue don’t get the right reaction?”

I hunch-shuffled through the crowd away from the gate, cramming myself into an alley before I responded.

“Yeah. But hang on a sec. I need to check a couple of things out.”

I focused back onto my map. Four obvious exits. Probably a hundred secret ones. 

I backed out of the mini-map and rolled over into my roster. An idea was forming. One of the two birds and one stone sort.

Yep. There they were. Dragon Dees Nuts. Turtle Juice. Phil McCrackin. BluntMachete . GhostFaceGangsta . I’d given them time to adapt and they’d decided to keep their names.

A huge middle finger.

I’d warned them what would happen if they didn’t change them. I didn’t need clowns messing up my organization when actual life was on the line.

“Eric Joel, I’m sending you a list of guys to grab and arm. Use the gear from the common crafting bin. And yes, bring Patches. I want to level him up, and I think this fight is going to give us lots of experience.”

Yeah. An idea was forming. A surprise attack. I could even get that crazy oh grandpa NPC in on it if I played my cards right. 

I went back to my minimap and started marking locations. The weapons shop wasn’t too far away. I could wave my arms around, get their attention, run 3 kilometers over to crazy lady then go knock on her door and let her pop out with whatever crazy weapon she had at hand.

The shop was closer to base, so if I timed it right I could have Eric Joel, Patches and those griefers hanging out in the area. I marked a closed-alleyway, leaving a purple beacon in its wake, then shared it over to Eric.

“Hey, head on over to the location I just sent you. Give the griefers the best damage dealers you can find in the crafting bin. And running out only after you hear fighting. I’ve got an idea that is equal parts extra firepower and hilarious.”

“Got it, Boss,” Eric Joel returned. I peeked out of the alleyway, my fingertips over its lip, and saw that the gangsters, whoever they were, had gotten bored of waiting and were now wading through the crowd.

Right in my direction.

That metagaming dick, I thought, cursing the AI under my breath. It was the sort of thing my brother used to do when we were kids growing up together. We’d settle down for a game and anytime I did something smart he’d just make up new enemies, new things, new rules . . . and launch them at me.

We had it out when I got older, and I left him lying there on his side gasping, ribs bruised and a wrist sprained. And I was going to wreck the AI in the same way when I could get to it. Gaming with real lives at stake was one thing, but this was quite the other.

This was my trigger.

I shook my head. Cheaters. Probably the only good thing about this nanocalypse was that there’d be less of them when I won the day.

One of the men pointed, a big burly dude clad in an open leather jacket over-topped with spiky metal shoulder pads, a mohawk screaming kick-me-in-the-dick flaming from the top of his otherwise shaven head. And on my minimap, red dots popped up, populating my screen even as it zoomed in closer.

“You there! The Boss is looking for ya,” he yelled, slobber flying comically from his mouth in web-thin streams. The dude was disgusting.

“Says to take you in alive . . .”

The man turned to his buds and shared a chuckle.

“. . . if possible.”

I pulled my blaster and in the same motion I fired a blast directly into his head, his mohawk helping me to triangulate my shot on the fly. It exploded into thick, juicy gore.

Critical hit! X2 damage. Unarmored target! X3 damage. 

No wonder dude was done in a single shot. I pivoted and spun, taking to my heels in the direction of the shop. Shots rang out behind me, but I saved activating any active card powers for the big fight. As it was they didn’t seem to be too good at aiming for a zig-zagging humanoid target anyways.

A credit to me or a credit to the game stats, I couldn’t say. But it worked. I wove my way through the rapidly thinning crowds of the market, going right, then left, a bit of razzle-dazzle just for the heck of it.

A laugh escaped my lips. This was awesome.

Behind me, the clink and clank of the gangster pursuit lessened in noise and intensity. I stopped and took a good look back. They were exhausted, walking now rather than running.

It made sense. Wearing several pounds of metal wasn’t at all a way to chase someone. Even on a cool breezy morning like this one.

“I’m right here!” I yelled.

They turned to look and I loosed a couple of shots. It was mostly a symbolic attack though — at this range there was little chance to hit. Still, the plasma globules spattered and hissing, one to each side of the group.

The enemy gangsters perked up a bit, picking it up and stepping it to a jog.

We worked our way through, cat and mouse, their battle prowess uncertain, their speed and endurance miserable, but their numbers still too many for just the one of me. Still, every clink and clank filled me with confidence. And then, feeling just slightly winded, we were there. 

Hina Owari’s weapons shop.