404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon -

"Tell me, Oshima, do you know what humanity's great evil is?"

"Ambition and glory?"

"No."

Kazuo paused. The word no didn't slam like a door—it slid out of him like a scalpel.

"Incompetence and stupidity. Both qualities you have shown me twice."

"Sir, I can explain—"

"Do explain. Enlighten me. Tell me something useful."

Kazuo's voice was calm, measured, and clipped. Each syllable was deliberate, precise, like everything else he did. But the tremble in his left hand betrayed him. He gripped a steel pen like it were a tanto, cold and ready to plunge. The pen didn't move.

His secretary, however, did.

Oshima stood a respectful metre away, head slightly bowed, tablet in hand. He scrolled through the feed with stiff fingers, avoiding eye contact. His lips moved once in hesitation before he spoke.

"The crew failed to retrieve the case. We've removed video logs and retrieved footage of the attack to minimise noise. Gina J was compromised. Still alive—barely. Neural trauma, suspected electrical damage. Unresponsive. Likely a vegetable."

Kazuo's eyelid twitched. That meant rage.

"And the case?"

"Gone," Oshima said, not bothering to cushion the blow. "We believe it was extracted before the strike team arrived. Possibly by the rogue element."

Kazuo exhaled slowly through his nose. "The boy."

"Yes, sir. The masked one. Alias is spreading across the net—Tetsu no yūrei. The Iron Ghost. Crude, but it's catching."

Kazuo clicked his tongue. "Like it's a game."

"I understand your frustration, sir."

"No," Kazuo said, correcting him coldly. "You don't. If you understood, we wouldn't be standing here talking about failures."

He stood from his seat, the motion fluid, predator-smooth. His office, located in one of Arasaka's lesser-known auxiliary towers, overlooked a jagged sector of Night City. The skyline bristled with neon scars and steel bones. The glass was polarised; outside, the smog churned like grey surf beneath burning lights.

Kazuo walked behind the desk, shoes silent against synthetic marble. He didn't need height to be imposing—his aura did the work. It was a practised thing, this menace. Efficient. Controlled.

"I authorised that case's termination weeks ago," he said, his tone flat. "Shredded. Deleted. Erased from the logistics pool."

"And yet it survived," Oshima said quietly, careful to phrase it as an observation, not a challenge.

Kazuo turned, eyes narrowing. "And yet it survived," he repeated, rolling the words like grit between his teeth.

Oshima swallowed. "The project may have had an undocumented backup. There's chatter suggesting the Yūrei intercepted the operatives pings. Someone on the inside might've helped. A tech, or maybe a contractor."

"Names?"

"Nothing solid yet. Some speculation, no confirmation. We're running backtraces now, but the Ghost knows how to cover his trail."

Kazuo turned away from him and gazed out the window, arms folded behind his back. From this height, the city looked like a hive of broken things trying to hum in harmony. He hated it. Every inch. Every blinking ad drone and rusting neon halo. This wasn't a kingdom—it was a landfill of ambition.

"When I was a boy," Kazuo said, "my father told me Arasaka never loses. That failure is only what the enemy tastes. Never us."

Oshima stood silent.

"I believed him," Kazuo continued. "And then I saw how many in this company mistake fear for loyalty. Fear can be powerful, yes. But it makes fools brittle. And brittleness is weakness."

He turned slowly, pen still in his hand.

"Are you brittle, Oshima?"

Oshima blinked, then straightened. "No, sir."

"We'll see." Kazuo moved back to his chair and sat, folding his hands. "This Ghost—he's resourceful. Clever. Dangerous. He's not some chrome junkie with a flair for drama. He's a problem."

"Understood."

Kazuo looked down at his pen, then back up. "I want a list of everyone who touched the case in the last six months. Everyone. From janitors to execs. If a coffee boy looked at it, I want his retinal logs. If a dog barked near the server room, I want its vet records."

"Yes, sir."

"Find me the hole," Kazuo said softly. "Before the Ghost crawls through it again."

He paused, then smiled faintly, sharp and humourless.

"And Oshima?"

"Yes?"

"If you fail me a third time… incompetence will no longer be your worst sin."

Oshima bowed slightly. "Understood, sir."

He left quietly, his footsteps muffled by the office's noise-dampening carpet.

Kazuo watched him go, then turned back to the city. Somewhere down there, behind a mask and a name stolen from urban legends, was a boy who had no right to win—and yet had.

Kazuo clenched the pen once, hard enough to bend the steel. 

Oshima would be replaced. 

[]

"Cola? Seriously?" V asked, watching Victor take another sip from the battered metal can, its label faded and peeling.

Victor, seated on a rusted chair made from old arcade parts and jury-rigged hydraulics, tilted the can up again, letting the flat drink trickle down his throat like it were some forgotten tonic of the gods.

"You have an issue?" he inquired, unamused.

"It's just… of all the drinks. You're in a dead city, plotting vengeance, patching yourself up in some Frankenstein arcade of doom, and you're sipping cola like some corpo on break." V smirked. "Ain't even got fizz left."

Victor glanced at her, then down at the can. "It tastes the same. Water doesn't."

V blinked. "Huh?"

"Here, water's dirty, filtered through rust and plastic, tasting of metal and slow death. But this…" He lifted the can again. "Cola is consistent. Same synthetic syrup, same bite, same lie."

V sat down across from him on a crate. "Damn. You always wax philosophical about junk food, or is this a post-near-death thing?"

"I nearly died twice this week," Victor said flatly. "I'm owed."

She laughed—a little too loud, like she wasn't used to doing it much. "Alright, fair. Still, you've got weird taste."

"You wear a jacket with a glowing tiger on the back and consider breaking into my workshop an acceptable greeting. Don't speak to me about taste."

"It's a panther," she corrected with mock offence.

She had gotten the new jacket after her new payday, the change of attire noticed by the always observant Victor. 

Victor didn't smile, but his eyes flicked upward. She caught it.

"That's your idea of a laugh, huh?" she said. "Eyebrow twitch."

He didn't answer. Instead, he leaned forward, setting the can down beside his current project—a hastily repurposed explosive device that looked suspiciously like a fire extinguisher fused with old engine parts.

"You done?" he asked.

"With what?"

"Staring."

"You're making another bomb in an arcade that smells like ozone and rat piss," V said, shrugging. "Course I'm staring."

Victor returned to soldering. "It's not a bomb. It's thermite. Directed burn. Purpose-built."

"Like the last one? Oh, well, excuse me, Doctor." She put air quotes around the title.

His hands didn't pause. "That's not a title you get to throw around lightly."

"So you gave it to yourself?"

Victor stopped then, turning to meet her eyes.

"No," he said. "I earned it. I have numerous doctrines under me."

"Sure, from Doctor Doom University, right?" 

Victor paused mid-solder, not looking at her.

"I rebuilt that university," he said. "After they cast me out. Reclaimed it. Renamed it."

V raised an eyebrow. "Wait, seriously?"

"I funded every lab. Expanded the physics wing. Tripled their patents in five years."

He glanced up at her, eyes cool. "Doctor Doom University exists. And it is accredited."

V opened her mouth, then shut it again. For once, she had nothing.

"You still pissed?" she asked.

"At what?"

"You know what."

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he powered up a small plasma cutter, its glow casting sharp lines across his half-bandaged face.

"Anger is useful," he finally said. "When directed."

"That's a yes?"

"That's not your concern."

She watched him a little longer. Then, without warning, he reached over and plucked a small wire from his desk.

"What are you doing?" he snapped, eyes narrowing.

"Helping."

"You don't know what that connects to."

She grinned. "Doesn't matter. Looks like you had too much going on in this corner anyway."

Victor snatched it back, inspecting the slight solder mark. "This was part of the failsafe loop."

"Was."

He stared at her.

"You're welcome," she said sweetly.

Victor sighed through his nose. "Why are you really here?"

"Because," she said, standing and stretching. "You gave me a heads-up. You didn't have to. You're still bleeding through your bandages, and you look like someone cut you out of a blast zone. You didn't call me for help—hell, you never would. But you're not alone anymore."

"I didn't ask for company."

"Yeah, well." She tapped the rim of the cola can with her boot. "You're welcome anyway."

Victor leaned back, letting the chair creak. His body still ached. The bandage on his shoulder stuck where it shouldn't. He needed at least two more hours of chemical stabilisation and a full resync on his prosthetic joints. But she wasn't wrong.

He hadn't called her. But she came anyway.

"You're still a child," he muttered.

"And you're still a dick," she shot back.

Neither of them looked at each other for a moment.

Then Victor picked up the can and raised it slightly in her direction. 

In truth, he despised the drink.

Flat sugar water in a world of flat promises. But it was a symbol of control, of familiarity, of a time before everything burned. Doom did not mourn, not outwardly. But he remembered. He remembered what it was to sit at a table as a ruler. To raise a glass among men who feared him and scholars who praised him.

Now, only the fizz was missing.

"To consistency," he said.

V smirked, barely. "To chaos."

They tapped the cans together with a quiet clink and drank.

She didn't know why she said that.Maybe because it sounded cool, maybe because it fit. Or maybe because that's all Night City ever offered—chaos dressed up as freedom.

She'd seen corpos fall, legends burn, whole districts light up in blood and chrome... and yet here was this guy. Techie. Corpo. Solo. Martial artist. Rat. Idiot. A Walking contradiction.

He talked like an emperor, moved like a wounded wolf, and built bombs in an arcade that smelled like dead pixels and regret.

Somehow, that made her feel a little less alone.

For a while, they just sat there. No words. The soft buzz of a cooling unit filled the room, the occasional crackle of old electronics in the background. It was the kind of silence that didn't press — it just settled.

V leaned back on her elbows, eyes scanning the cluttered table. "You ever gonna clean this mess up?"

Victor glanced at the scattered tools, loose wiring, half-assembled optics. "It's ordered. Just not your kind of order."

She snorted, then sipped again. "Right."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"You know," she said, not looking at him, "you're less of a dick when you're half dead."

Victor didn't look up from the datapad he was reprogramming. "And you're quieter when you're chewing."

V gave him a side-eye but kept eating anyway.

A bit of fizz escaped from her can. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, then nudged her foot into his lightly.

Victor didn't react much. But he didn't pull away either.

"Just sayin'," she muttered after a while. "This? It's not the worst way to kill a night."

Victor's hand paused over the keyboard, just for a second. Then he resumed typing.

"I've had worse," he said simply.

That was enough.

They didn't need to fill the silence. They didn't need to explain anything. Two misfits holed up in an abandoned arcade, sharing cold cola and broken gadgets. It wasn't peace, not really — but it was a pause. And in Night City, that was rare.

Eventually, V leaned back and closed her eyes for a minute, letting herself just exist.

Victor worked quietly beside her, focused, unbothered.

There was nothing to prove tonight.

And for once, that was enough.