Cyberpunk: STRAY

Downtown, Corpo Plaza, Night City

The apartment smelled like stale cigarette smoke and cheap bourbon. Aurore wasn't trying to impress anyone—not that she ever did.

Vincent knocked her door, then stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. She was leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, a fresh cigarette between her lips. Her cybernetic eye flickered slightly, scanning him as he approached.

"So," she exhaled a stream of smoke, voice flat, "I take it you're not dead."

Vincent smirked, tossing his coat onto a chair. "Not yet."

She didn't return the smile.

"I heard," she continued, tapping ash into an overflowing tray. "Jago's still breathing. Hansen's not. And you? You're out here making moves. Trying to get yourself killed.."

Vincent didn't answer immediately. He knew where this was going.

Aurore took another drag, studying him. "Tell me, Vincent. What exactly is the the point of doing all this? For what?"

He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I told you already. I get Jago out of the picture. Then, we move in."

"We?" she scoffed. "Nah. Don't lump me into your mess."

Vincent frowned. "You're already in it."

She shook her head. "I was in it. But you keep pushing. Keep making enemies out of people we can't afford to piss off."

Vincent didn't respond.

"Ito caught up with you, didn't he?" she pressed.

Vincent leaned against the counter, mirroring her posture. "Yeah."

"And?"

"And I cut a deal."

Aurore's jaw tightened. "You what?"

"It's leverage," Vincent said calmly. "I told them what they wanted to hear. Now, I get to use them against Jago."

Aurore let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "You think you can play Arasaka? Jesus, Vincent." She ran a hand through her hair, pacing now. "This isn't some back-alley hustle. You're dealing with people who erase problems. And you, mon cheri, are making yourself a very big problem."

Vincent shrugged. "I know, I won't fuck up this time.."

"No. That's why you're reckless." She turned, jabbing a finger at him. "You always do this. You think you've got it under control, but you don't. You keep pushing, and one day, you're gonna push too far."

Vincent exhaled, slow and measured. "If I don't make a move now, I lose my only shot."

"At what?" Aurore snapped. "Power? Control? A name for yourself?"

Vincent stared at her. "Freedom."

She scoffed, shaking her head. "You don't get it, do you? There's no freedom in Night City. Not in fucking Fiji or anywhere in the world..There's only people on top and people getting crushed underneath."

Vincent met her gaze. "And which one are you?"

Aurore's lips pressed into a thin line.

Silence stretched between them.

She shook her head again, grabbing her coat. "I'm done."

Vincent's eyes narrowed. "What?"

"I said I'm done," she repeated, pulling on her gloves. "I've seen enough people get burned trying to pull shit like this. I'm not sticking around to watch it happen to you. I'm sorry mon chou..."

Vincent clenched his jaw. He hadn't expected her to back him up, but he hadn't expected her to walk away either.

"Fine," he said.

Aurore hesitated—just for a second. Then she turned and walked out the door.

Vincent stood there, listening to the sound of her boots fading down the hallway.

He let out a breath.

Didn't matter.

He could make this work on his own...or so he thought..

Dogtown, Eden Plaza

Jago never saw it coming.

He thought he was untouchable, that the power vacuum left in Hansen's wake had made him the new king of Dogtown. Arasaka backed him, smoothed the rough edges, and gave him the resources to run the district the way they needed it—efficient, brutal, profitable. He had men, guns, intel, and the best cyberware their black-budget operatives could supply.

But Vincent played a different game.

He didn't need to shoot Jago. Didn't need to challenge him head-on. He just had to make sure the right people saw him as more trouble than he was worth.

It started with whispers. A few key leaks about Jago double-dipping—skimming off Arasaka's cut, taking side deals, making his own power plays. Ito Sakamoto, Arasaka's counter-intelligence officer, received the "anonymous" tip. Just enough proof to make him paranoid.

Then came the setup.

Vincent arranged a meet. Not directly, of course—he used an intermediary, someone desperate enough to take a job without asking too many questions. The message? A potential alliance. A deal that could secure Jago's reign and expand his control beyond Dogtown. The meeting place was in a deep slum near Kress Street, an abandoned high-rise deep in the district, a place where no one would hear the gunfire when things went south.

And things did go south.

Jago arrived with his top lieutenants except Chester Bennett who's out of the the picture since Hansen was killed, all wired, all paranoid. He wasn't stupid—he came prepared. Drones overhead, snipers positioned in the shadows, a small army watching his back. But none of it mattered.

Because Vincent never planned to be there.

Instead, the moment Jago stepped inside, his comms fried. A perfectly timed electromagnetic pulse, just subtle enough to knock out short-range signals. His men panicked. And in that moment of confusion, Arasaka's strike team moved in.

Sakamoto's orders were simple—eliminate Jago, make it look like a gang execution, and send a message to the rest of Dogtown's warlords.

It was over in less than a minute.

Jago's cybernetics malfunctioned as soon as he tried to activate his defenses. A single high-caliber round from an Arasaka marksman punched through his skull, his chrome enhancements worthless in the face of precision. His body hit the floor before he even had a chance to fire back.

The mercs that survived? They ran.

By the time the smoke cleared, Jago's empire collapsed with him. His men turned on each other, and Dogtown became a free-for-all once more.

Jago's death didn't go unnoticed.

The next morning, the NCPD informats had a presence in Dogtown—rare, but not unheard of. The FIA (Federal Intelligence Agency) had boots on the ground too, and that was unheard of. They didn't usually care about the warlord politics of Dogtown, but now they do because of the situation the NUSA had with president Myers in Dogtown, now Jago's sudden execution raised even more red flags.

The scene was messy but deliberate—Arasaka made sure of that. The strike team erased their footprints, but too much blood in the streets always brought questions.

FIA Agent Melissa Cartwright, the top of the shelf FIA agent, led the investigation. Blonde, sharp-eyed, and cold as ice, she had spent years dissecting corporate warfare in Night City, and this had Arasaka's fingerprints all over it.

First they infiltrated Dogtown's now weakened security because of the another power vacuum left by Jago's death which is not far from the death of the previous Colonel Kurt Hansen.

Now an Arasaka plant, the new Colonel of Dogtown, previously out of the picture lieutenant colonel Chester Bennett, a former lapdog and sidekick of Kurt Hansen going way back to their times in the army in charge..

Melissa and her partner Leon infiltrated into Dogtown easily, somehow got a recorded BD data from a data broker in the net, they arrived to the assumed kill site of Jago, near Eden Plaza..

"Looks like a gang hit," her partner Leon, a high ranking FIA detective muttered, scanning the now cleaned up scene.

Cartwright shook her head. "No. This was precise. Too clean. Gangs don't drop a power player like Jago without a bigger plan. Someone played him."

She was a militech loyalist and the NUSA's one of the bests, an absolute brilliant agent sent after Agent Reed's failure with Song bird betraying them and the third party Merc that got away with her.

Her eyes drifted to the security feeds—most were wiped, but she found one fragment, a few seconds of footage from a distant drone. It showed a lone figure walking away from the area moments 48 hours before the ambush.

The resolution was shit, but she could make out a few details. Young, slight build, small, moving with purpose, had a hologram mask on.

Not an Arasaka operative. Not one of Jago's men.

"Who do we have here...?" she muttered, zooming in.

The system couldn't run a facial match, but she already had a gut feeling.

Whoever had set this up wasn't done yet.

And she intended to find out exactly who they were...

Kabuki, Watson

The aftermath hit fast for Vincent...

Jago was dead.

Not in a blaze of glory, not in some grand final showdown—just a bullet in the right place, at the right time, delivered by someone who had no idea they were just another pawn in a bigger game.

Vincent had orchestrated it. Pulled the strings, set the pieces in motion, and let the inevitable play out. The result? Arasaka thought they had won. Ito Sakamoto thought he had gotten what he wanted. And Vincent? He was still breathing. That should've been enough.

But as he stood outside Lizzie's Bar, staring at the neon glow bleeding onto the sidewalk, he realized something.

It didn't feel like a win.

The bottle in his hand was half-empty. Bourbon. Something cheap, something that burned going down.

He had never been much of a drinker. Had always seen it as a distraction, a weakness. But tonight, he needed the numbness.

"You look like shit," Rita's voice cut through the low hum of the city.

Vincent huffed a tired laugh, taking another sip. "I feel worse."

She leaned against the railing beside him, arms crossed. "So? You gonna tell me what happened, or do I gotta guess?"

Vincent tilted his head back, exhaling through his nose. "Jago's dead."

Rita didn't look surprised. "Figured that was coming."

"Yeah. Well." He swirled the bottle, watching the liquid slosh around. "I was the one who put him down."

Rita was silent for a moment. "You pull the trigger?"

Vincent shook his head. "Didn't have to."

She exhaled, looking up at the flickering pink and blue neon. "And that's what's eating you, huh?"

Vincent didn't answer right away. "It should've felt cleaner. It should've felt like... I don't know. A step forward."

"And instead?"

"It feels like a line I can't uncross."

Rita didn't say anything. Just let the words hang between them.

The city pulsed around them. Gangers loitered nearby, corpo suits passed through like they owned the place, and the low bass synth pop chrome music from inside Lizzie's vibrated through the concrete.

"Do you regret it?" she finally asked.

Vincent considered that. The smart answer would've been no. The Vincent from a year ago would've said no. But the truth?

"I don't know."

Rita nodded, like she expected that answer. "That's the thing about this city. You do what you gotta do. Then you live with it."

Vincent scoffed, taking another drink. "And if you can't?"

She shrugged. "Then the city eats you alive chico.."

They stood there in silence for a while, watching the world move on like nothing had happened.

Vincent wasn't sure if he had won this round or just postponed the inevitable. But one thing was certain.

There was no going back...