Friday Night Firefight: A Cyberpunk Isekai

Okay Deng. I’ll try.

I stayed on the concrete bench and ran through a list of everything that I owned. There was the burner phone I bought from the Kabuki Roundabout with money I earned during my gig with Deng, my Wraith boots that were starting to show some wear in the soles, pants that were too big, a shirt that was a biohazard with how much of my blood was staining it, and 537 eddies – 100 from Haru with the rest coming from what Choki had on him.

Clothes shopping first.

I found a flea market clothing stall near Kabuki and bought a bag, a pair of cargo pants that wouldn’t slip off me, and a shirt that wasn’t covered in my own blood. A quick trip over to one of the 24h/7 convenience stores that dotted Watson earned me an electric razor, soap, toothbrush, and toothpaste, a notepad and pen, and a pair of cheap underwear and socks that were wrapped in plastic. I stuffed all my purchases in my bag, bought some cheap takeout, and made my way to the No-Tell Motel.

A dingy room in the No-Tell set me back 50 eddies. The game hadn’t adequately prepared me for how truly disgusting the place was. My feet stuck to the carpet and various stains covered the walls and furniture which forced me to second guess sitting or standing too close to anything. But it was the cheapest option that offered a shower and a real bed.

After my shopping spree and the room rental, I was left with around 287 eddies with which to start my new life. But it was well worth it. Freshly showered and shaved, and with my extra three weeks of hair taken down to a buzzcut, I felt like a new man. I dressed in my clean clothes so I wouldn’t touch any of the disgusting stains all over the place and sat down with my notepad and pen.

Deng had been right about one thing. I had become far too comfortable with just hanging out at the alcove with Fred and Mor and the others. Things needed to change. I needed to change.

Being beaten and kidnapped by the Wraiths and then getting mugged by Dennis had tempered my expectations of becoming an unbeatable badass in Night City. I was no longer operating under the false assumption that I’d be running along walls or cutting bullets in half with a katana. How could I after being shown how weak and defenseless I was against a no-name like Dennis? The mugging and the beating and the being homeless had all pushed my brain into something like an energy saving mode. I just went along with the flow and had completely neglected the one major advantage I had over everyone else in Night City: I could tell the future.

Or at least, I was knowledgeable about future events. I knew that Yorinobu would steal the relic prototype and get in contact with Netwatch to sell it, that the VDB would pay Evelyn Parker to scroll a BD of Yorinobu’s suite to find where he was hiding the relic, and that Saburo would come to the city to be choked to death by his kid. I knew Adam Smasher would make his way back to Night City and set up a base on the Ebunike, that Anders Hellman would defect to Kang Tao, and that President Meyer’s plane would be shot down over Dogtown. And those were only the major events in the game that I knew about.

I knew all about the fixers in Night City, the jobs they’d pull, the targets they’d go after. But more importantly, I knew where all the free stuff scattered around the city was. There was a bike sitting in the garage by the All Foods, the Colby Butte in the badlands, the Rayfield Caliburn in the cave. I had spent several hundred hours in the Cyberpunk 2077 world, stretched across several save files, and was confident I could remember where most everything was.

I pulled out my notepad and started jotting everything down that I could remember. The more I wrote, the more my schemes slowly unraveled and all the money I thought I’d be making started to slip away. There was the bike in the garage by the All Foods – the garage was graffiti marked with a unicorn and the door code was 0214 (Valentine's Day) – and I always remembered to grab it after clearing out Maelstrom from the All Foods with Jackie. But it wouldn’t be there now. The nomad who stole it had grabbed it from a TC boss, and the Claws would hunt her down and she’d be betrayed by her boyfriend. But none of that had happened yet.

The ‘Hoon’ up in Northern Watson probably wasn’t just sitting around, gathering dust in a storage facility. The free Colby out in the badlands wouldn’t be there because it came from a commercial that was being filmed. The film crew gets ambushed by the Wraiths and they leave the Colby behind. That wouldn’t happen for another year or so. The Rayfield Caliburn might still be in the caverns. But the cavern tunnel was where Panam and V go to take out that Wraith leader. I was one man who had been beaten by Dennis, and the cavern tunnel was a well-defended Raffen base. There was no way I could claim the car right now.

All the free cars in Night City were a bust, so I jotted down everything else I knew about. Scavs? There was that one group that would kidnap Sandra Dorsett at the start of the game, and then all the ones who controlled the EC factory where you find Evelyn, and a whole bunch operating out of Pacifica and Dogtown. Nobody would care if I started clearing out Scav dens. But that brought up the same problems as with the Caliburn. I was one man, and it was already well established that I couldn’t win a fight against anyone truly dangerous. Dogtown was out of the question because it was packed with cyberpsychos. The NCPD side hustles would just see me picking fights with every gang in Night City. So, what was left?

That’s when I remembered a small item people had stumbled upon and wrote about long after the game had gone through numerous patches. I pulled out my Agent and launched one of the library apps connected to the city NET and typed in: Arasaka Tower 3D Arcade Cabinet.

A quick bit of reading and my good cheer returned. During the time of the RED – the period after Johnny nuked Arasaka tower – a video game company released a game called Arasaka Tower 3D. In the game the player – in the guise of Johnny Silverhand – stormed through Arasaka Tower and took down a host of ‘saka ninjas before finally planting a nuke. It was kind of like early versions of Doom or Castle Wolfenstein.

Supposedly, only five of the cabinets were ever released due to backlash aimed at the video game company for attempting to profit off a Night City tragedy that had claimed thousands of lives. Normally, that wouldn’t have been enough to stop the wheels of capitalism from turning in NC, but both Arasaka and Universal Music – who somehow managed to gain ownership over Johnny Silverhand’s likeness following his death – threatened to sue the video game company if they made and shipped new cabinets.

What few cabinets were made became instant collector’s items. I found a site that claimed that when they went up for auction, they’d sell for a minimum of 15,000 eddies. After reading that I punched the air in excitement and started mentally spending the money. It wasn’t ‘break the bank’ money, but it was more than enough to keep me off the streets for the foreseeable future.

I knew of an Arasaka Tower cabinet inside an old, abandoned church out by the Biotechnica fields. I just needed to figure out who to sell it to. A quick search with my Agent showed me a couple arcades scattered across Night City. It was doubtful that any of them would be willing to make a deal with me though. I tried thinking back to the game to remember who dealt with old arcade cabinets and only three people came to mind. The first was a guy out in Dogtown who would soon rat out his son to the NCPD. He ran an arcade in the middle of Dogtown and was obsessed with old video game cabinets. He’d know exactly how valuable the cabinet was. But I neither liked the guy nor thought he had enough money to buy the cabinet from me, so he was out.

The second person I thought about was Wakako. She’d definitely have the money to pay me. Her pachinko parlor over in Japantown housed a couple arcade cabinets. I remembered spending a few hours trying to get the high score on Trauma Team at her place, only to come up short by about 50,000 points. She could pay for the cabinet, plus it would probably go a long way towards helping my long-term prospects in the city if I built a good relationship with her now. But something in the back of my mind told me to stay away from her. The fact that she helped Fingers sell Evelyn to the Scavs, combined with the thought of trying to negotiate a fair price for the cabinet from her, made me hesitant to venture over to Westbrook.

That left one person: the lady who ran the netrunner café in the Kabuki Roundabout. I knew she had a collection of arcade cabinets, a store that might have enough eddies to let her buy the cabinet, and connections to some of the seedy underbelly of Night City – as evidenced by her friendship with T-Bug and her work with Mr. Hands in the Phantom Liberty DLC. Even if she didn’t have enough money to outright buy the cabinet from me, there was always the possibility of a trade. Plus, she could introduce me to some powerful people.

I left the No-Tell feeling as excited about my future as the first time I stepped foot in Night City. That feeling quickly fled and I checked around myself to make sure Dennis wasn’t hiding in the shadows, ready to pounce. The last time I had been excited about my future, Dennis had ambushed me, smashed me upside my head, and stolen all my cash. But a quick glance around told me that there was no Dennis, just the normal Night City people going about their day.

One NCART ride and several bus transfers later, I was in the outskirts of the city headed towards the old, abandoned church by the Biotechnica fields. It was easy enough to find the place, and I piled a few cinder blocks on top of each other when I got to the church so I could peer through the dirty windows. Several servers were organized around the room, a laptop was attached to a pedestal, and the Arasaka Tower cabinet sat up against one wall. I jumped and punched the air in excitement and snapped a photo of the cabinet with my Agent before heading back towards the city.

Two hours later and I was in the Kabuki Roundabout, standing in front of the netrunner café with a smile on my face about all the money I was about to earn. I stepped into the café and stood in front of the counter where a middle-aged Asian woman was fiddling with a tablet.

With a heavy sigh she looked up. “Can I help you?”

“Yes. My name is Noah, and I was hoping to make a deal.”

“Let me stop you right there Noah.” She stressed my name with disbelief. “We’re not that kind of store. No matter what you heard about the Roundabout, not all of us have illegal connections. We can’t all get you XBDs or illegally modified cyberdecks.” She turned back to her tablet and shifted her body in a way that said ‘we’re done here.’

“What I’m selling isn’t illegal. I noticed – “

“Not interested,” she interrupted. “Try someone else.”

“But I’m – “

She huffed and finally turned back towards me. “Look. I can tell this is your first op and you want to do well. Whoever trained you really dropped the ball though. You got that naïve innocence look down pat, but you throw off way too many red flags. You need to leave.”

All my self-confidence fled the café and I chased after it. What was that all about? I knew she had worked with T-Bug. I knew she was a netrunner who was skilled enough to work with Mr. Hands and hack into the NCPD database to get details about a Max-Tec convoy. I knew she sold quickhacks out of her café. I couldn’t understand why she was denying who she was and kicking me out of her store so quickly. And what was that about this being my first op or throwing off red flags? I never had any problems when dealing with Roundabout vendors before. Whenever Fred and I came up here, the vendors would fall all over themselves to buy what we were selling.

I walked around the top ring of the Roundabout, trying to understand what went wrong. Maybe this lady just didn’t like dealing with strangers. I called up Frank, the vendor I had the most interactions with in the Roundabout. After letting him know I was standing outside the netrunner café, trying to close a deal with the owner who had no interest in talking with me, he said he’d try and put in a good word and that I should go back in.

I made my way back to the netrunner café and once again took up a spot just inside the entrance, waiting for the owner to get off a call. I could tell she was chatting with Frank because her eyes were glowing gold and she was looking at me with suspicion. She eventually hung up and then motioned me forward.

“You know Frank? He said you’re a homeless kid in the neighborhood who sells him goods.”

I nodded, but before I could start my spiel she interrupted me.

“You don’t look homeless.”

“My circumstances recently changed and I’m hoping to keep it that way. I’ve got something you might be interested in.”

“Why not just deal with Frank?”

I handed her my Agent with the snapshot of the arcade cabinet already pulled up. “Frank wouldn’t appreciate this,” I said with a nod towards the cabinets pushed up against one wall of her café.

She grabbed my Agent with a look of disinterest on her face that quickly morphed into surprise as she focused on the picture. She looked at it for a couple seconds before placing my Agent back on the counter.

“And what makes you think I have enough eddies for this? This is a specialty store. If you’ve really dealt with Frank before, you should know what I sell and what I deal in.”

Mor had told me a little bit about this place once when he joined me at the Roundabout. Frank bought broken down appliances that he could fix up, Ibada bought most everything, and there were a few other vendors who specialized in BDs or random collectibles that we might find in the trash. There were a couple clothing vendors who mostly refused to deal with us because anything we brought them would often be filled with holes or covered in stains, and there were some vendors who specialized in handheld electronics that were always interested in random tidbits that nobody else cared about.

Almost every vendor in Kabuki Roundabout was willing to do business with Fred, Mor and I. But there was one notable exception. The netrunner cafes. They were basically useless to us. They primarily dealt with either programs or information; neither of which was readily available to people who dug through the trash as a job. And even if we did have something they might be interested in, they mostly bartered with information, equipment, or favors.

“I’m aware, and I know you’re slightly limited in what you can offer me.”

She scoffed at that before saying “5,000 eddies.”

“5,000 eddies sounds great,” I said nodding my head. “And the rest can be in the form of trade.”

She tsked and shook her head before asking, “And what is it you’re looking for?”

“I want a cyberdeck and I’m hoping you also can give me advice on what I should pack it with. Also…I’d like to know why you didn’t want to deal with me before.”

“That’s easy. I don’t like dealing with ghosts. You never know who they are working for.” Seeing as I had no clue what she was talking about she sighed and placed her tablet on the counter in front of her. “When you came into my store you were scanned. You don’t have an NCPD file or a SIN or CIN, or any electronic presence at all. That means nobody knows who you are.”

Understanding hit me. “Wait, you’re not the first person to tell me this. If I don’t have an NCPD file…how difficult is it going to be for me to move around the city?”

“You won’t be able to rent an apartment,” she said. “And people like me won’t want to deal with you. The NCPD will pick you up off the street because you’re a curiosity. It’s a pain. I’m not going to pry into why you don’t have a file because that’s none of my business. I’m just telling you that it’s going to cause some problems.”

“Well…how do I get a file? Is it just a matter of filling out some paperwork or something?”

She paused and gave me a once over. “You need a shoemaker.”