Selling off the Dust I had collected from the world of RWBY was a bit of a death wish honestly if I could actually get a large amount of funds for it. Either it was worth a lot being a new magical substance and I would have all the assholes after me.
And if it wasn't worth too much. Well, it honestly wouldn't be worth selling it when I could rig it up into bombs and such. To say nothing about when I could learn dust casting to cast 'magic' or use it for dust forging.
So in order to get the money I needed for the Sandy I wanted, I had to get down and dirty. Hitting the bounty list as hard as I could!
"The Sandy's online auction is set this Saturday, with my Mantis Claws, Projectile Launch System's barrel, and Monowire being done on Sunday. I don't want to flake on Feixiao so I need to get... Literally two hundred thousand eddies at least to get the Sandy." I muttered as I synched myself back into my Cyberdeck while having some other thoughts.
Like how I was able to move my consciousness onto the Net so easily unlike other Netrunners who needed a massive setup like a special chair computer from the Matrix that would offload a lot of the mental weight of the netrunner... Or for other people that aren't in a huge organization that can afford the million dollar super gaming chairs.
They literally just toss their netrunners/themselves into a large tub filled with ice so the poor bastards wouldn't fry their brains as easily.
I didn't want to fuck around with the big names in the criminal world for the big bucks because of a simple reason... The big names were all Curse User's/Jujutsu Sorcerer's. And I really didn't want to see what would happen, when one of them sensed me in the Net.
As I was 'around' them and decided to punch me with cursed energy.
"So... More bottom feeders please. Give me all the pyscho's please." I muttered as I pulled at the NCPD's wanted Dead or Alive database and then with a raised eyebrow, I saw someone of interest to myself.
'Oh? A serial molester with some netrunner abilities who goes after old women in nursing homes after hacking into the nursing homes network to make him look like a caretaker? That's a good target to kill.' I thought as sure... He wasn't cannibal steve from my last hunt.
But the granny serial molester? Literally, no one would look at me sideways for reporting his ass dead.
And besides... It's not like taking someone in alive paid more, instead the horrible, beyond horrible Mega-Corps who ran the 'prisons' would end up just harvesting the bastard's organs to sell to the highest bidder due to how prisoners became state/corpo property.
Hence why I wasn't going to bother taking in people alive unless it paid a lot more for the hassle... "Actually... I literally don't see any bounties they want for people to be taken alive at the lower bounty numbers." I muttered through the NET which distorted my voice slightly.
But with the granny molester, last being seen... Two days ago entering a nursing home actually only a couple miles away on foot, I also found a couple of bounties in the same area with the duo being a pair of criminals who robbed people at shotgun point regularly and they were laying low in an abandoned hotel.
With all three bounties adding up to around forty thousand eddies due to the granny molester having a 'large' thirty thousand eddie bounty that was inflated by donations from the families of his victims. While the other duo was only worth ten thousand together.
So I got suited up, with a couple of Fire and Lightning Dust crystal 'grenades' being put in my pockets as I knew all from the books I had read that to get a violent reaction to the Dust, all I had to do was channel some aura/electricity to it.
But seeing as I didn't have a conduit to channel the dust like in a weapon, or something similar. I just literally hooked up some batteries to the dust crystal with the wires tied to the side so I could ignite the Dust and yeet that shit away from myself.
"Actually... Maybe I should order a motorcycle or something. I need a way around the city after all." I mused to myself after I found the granny molester after easily hacking into the caregiving facility.
As I needed to get to the facility to deal with the guy in person as frying him mentally with the shit cyberdeck he got out of a bargain bin would be... Messy and not something a bunch of old folks should see.
So with that in mind. I went to go look for electric motorcycles that didn't have any outward NET port's so nothing could hack into it. And the reason I went electric was simply because gas was literally vegan shit made from super genetically altered wheat and loud for literally no reason.
I spent a good thirty minutes looking for a bike in the five thousand eddies range that would be delivered to my home and after a good bit, I found one that suited my purposes and was street legal.
Then after another hour the motorcycle was picked up and sent over to me without any fuss and I just had to sign a bit of paperwork after checking it after it was pulled off the back of a truck for any issues.
"So you plan to just ride the bike around for fun? It doesn't have the right kind of mounts for big saddle cases and stuff." The guy asked curiously as he climbed into the truck after I gave him a tip for the fast delivery.
I shrugged and said with some amusement. "Hmm mostly for work you could say. Need a quick, quiet way around Night City and being able to drive through alley's will save me so much effort."
The guy gave me a raised eyebrow and said carefully. "Well, you be careful driving through alley's. The street's are owned by the city, but the alley's are owned by the gangs and curses." He quoted the typical Night City warning earning a nod from me.
The delivery driver then left with myself sighing as I used my thumb to play with the portal and spatial ring on my ring finger. "Alright... Time to get to work." I grunted as I got onto the bike and brought it to life after flipping a couple of switches making it hum as I pulled out of the driveway.
After a moment of thought I headed straight for the caretaking facility and it didn't take me long to drive there, only like twenty minutes as I navigated traffic carefully as I was actually driving manually unlike most people having auto-driving cars.
The caretaking facility was... Old and although clearly somewhat cared for. It was clear why the granny molester had chosen this place as his new haunt as its security system consisted of only a keycard scanner and a dozen cameras hooked up to a central system that was literally some thirty years old.
The key card scanner was even hooked up to the building's net system so it looked only took a glance with my Kiyoshi eyes to make it blink as I quick hacked it open and I walked into the building calmly with my hand in my pocket around my Doordashed autopistol.
The nurse at the front entry point gave a dull scowl as she saw me walk in and she asked bluntly. "What the hell are you doing here? We are paid up on our dues to the Los Aztecas."
Recognizing the name of a smaller Mexican/Native American-focused gang, I looked at the nurse and said flatly. "I am literally white... Why are you thinking I am banging with them?"
And she shrugged before saying equally flatly. "Easier to get people to pay with a pretty face I guess."
I just sighed my whole flow ruined and I shook my head. "No, just... No, I am here to deal with a wanted criminal, I will pull him out without making much of a scene. So don't worry about me." I spoke even as I made sure to scramble the recordings made of my face and to darken the camera's view so they couldn't see what I was going to do.
And the nurse held out at a hand making me blink as she said blandly. "Oh yeah... The granny molester, well if you wanna shoot him out back I won't tell the police if you grease my palm a bit you get me?"
And I just looked at her before saying calmly. "You know the guy has been molesting your patients and did nothing about it?"
She just shrugged and said honestly. "He paid me fifteen thousand eddies to look the other way. That's literally what I make in like four months so I wasn't going to ruin a good thing."
I scowled and then I just shrugged and her uncaring eye's widening as I grabbed her hair with my synthetic Gorilla Arm's and with a loud crunching noise I smashed her face into her mechanical keyboard shattering it and her face at the same time.
"Piece of shit. Be glad there isn't a bounty on you." I spat as I pulled her up, and smashed her head again making her make a gagging noise as she choked on broken teeth and blood filling her throat.
I threw her backward into her chair so hard it fell backward with her head hitting the probably dirty carpet ground with a muffled thud and I mentally tagged her Net accounts for activity so if she tried to report this... Well I would happily rip her apart on the NET.
And with that, I headed towards the right side of the building as I already knew exactly where my target was and I saw him coming out of a room in hospital scrubs...
Besides knowing he was my target, I also knew he was fucking insane as no one walks out of a nursing room smelling of piss with a wide grin so as he turned to me as I came down the hallway. He just blinked in surprise seeing someone new.
"Oh are you here to see one of the tenants here?" He asked in a friendly way.
And even as he used his own shit cyberdeck and synthetic eye's to try to pick up my identity I just stomped on the ground with my synthetic limbs with aura enhancement launched me forward faster than he could react.
I slammed a knee into his chest, specifically his solar plexus with a loud cracking noise as my mechanical knee broke his very organic rib cage violently with him falling to the ground and curling up.
"Piece of shit." I spat as I tore a trio of large black garbage bags out of the cleaning cart that was off to the side I shoved him into the trash bags and gave him a couple kicks to keep him gagging on the broken ribs poking into his lungs.
Before I dragged him out of the building directly through the front door and into the alleyway next door to the caregiving facility.
With the two people who saw me carrying the bag just thinking I had a really awkwardly filled giant trash bag that was jostling around a bit.
Then in the 'privacy' of the alleyway, I checked the silencer of my auto pistol and then I tucked my ear into my shoulder with my other hand covering my ear as I sprayed the clip of the auto pistol into the squirming trash bag with a loud series of zipping noises.
[+30,000$] Went to my account after I sent the pictures of the wanted target along with a notice that his corpse would be in the garbage so that it wouldn't be in the way or sight of the elderly at the facility.
"Well... If he was able to pay off the nurse to get some 'fun' so easily. He probably has a sizable pot of money hidden away in his accounts." I mused as I kneeled down and pulled out my neural port cable and attached it directly to the base of his neck to interact with his cyberdeck.
And like I suspected, his ICE was as thick as a fucking layer of condensation on a bottle of cold water left out in the heat so I quickly broke through it and I realized all too quickly where he had gotten his... Suprisingly ample funds. He was obviously siphoning and stealing money from his victims.
As I could see the shitty Daemons that he had could hack into low-level accounts that were especially vulnerable to physical attacks via the guy jacking himself into his victim via a neural cable into their own neural ports.
"Well... Two hundred thousand eddies is a fucking payday to say the least." I muttered as I siphoned out the money and although it left a bad taste in my mouth. There wasn't really any good way for me to get the money back to the people he stole it from.
But now with two hundred and forty thousand Eddies in hand... I should have enough money if that Apogee Sandevistan didn't go for more than literally five times the normal 'price' of other military-level Sandevistan's.
"Now... I should get this last bounty and then hell. Maybe I will go do some shopping back in RWBY, I need to get some books on Dust Casting so I can be a 'wizard'." I muttered as I got back onto my bike.
The bike hummed to life and as I got back onto the road I froze as from a side alleyway a large monster twisted beyond simple description slammed into the building on the other side and screeched in pained madness.
'A curse!' I thought mentally before I reached into my jacket and as the other car's around me peeled off to flee from the curse that was staggering back on it's dozens of misshapen feet. I primed the lightning dust crystal and just yeeted it at the curse as I drove past it.
A massively loud and violent crackling noise rang out as the lightning dust crystal exploded so violently and I just zoomed away as there was no value in me going after some random curse. Not to mention, with my lack of ability to manifest any cursed energy made dealing with them a bad idea.
Thankfully I didn't need to do anything else as the curse either being fried by the lightning or just going after someone else. Didn't follow me and I was able to drive the next half a dozen miles to my next bounty without too much issue.
Once I got to the abandoned hotel building that was abandoned due to too many people dying there, after overdosing... And literal piles of dead prostitutes making a large mess of things.
I jacked into the old Net cables on the side of the building so I could easily hack into the hotels 'security' system. Though more like I just rode the connections to find the room that was drawing power off the system and then I did my NET walk to sink transport myself through the end of the landline cable in the room into the room itself.
"Ugh that fucking fat corpo really fucked us over. Our bounty is going to jump up at least another twenty K!" I heard one of them groan as he was seemingly cleaning a shotgun, but with how spotty my vision was during my NET run's without a bunch of tech and camera's I couldn't 'see' that well.
And the reason I could hear them at all was because they were both apparently Maelstrom goons with much of their body having been upgraded/mutilated by the horribly large number of implants they had.
Seeing their large face plate with eye ports I did what I normally do to dumbasses without ICE and I slammed my fingers into their eye/face plate ports where I then downloaded my own personal daemons I had created.
Which killed people by disabling safety features, making their implants overheat, and discharging all their internal data into the user's neural implants making their brains overrun with data.
Once I fried their eye plates and hopefully their brains I exited the NET and after a moment I could hear loud yet sharp silenced shotguns going off in succession as they shot in all directions.
"Hmm... I need to get proof of the kill." I grunted as I climbed up the stairs with my aura at the ready to be pelted by high-caliber pellets and then a muffled scream rang out as another shot went off that blasted a bowling ball hole in the wall.
Then I looked through the large hole that densely packed shotgun round put through the wall and I shot through the hole towards the sparking and struggling forms I saw through a higher head-high hole.
The high-caliber auto pistol hit the two men a couple of times making them whig out and then I saw a flicker of lights and my instincts screamed at me as he screamed. "Die you fucking shit stain!" He screamed as I dove to the side.
And the damned wall exploded outwards as a powerful explosion went off and I realized all too quickly that the bastard had set off a hand grenade thinking I was inside the room with them.
'Ok... Don't run up on people with Deamons that make their minds overflow with information.' I thought a groan of pain as I pushed a thin metal plank of off of my that slapped into my aura with too much force.
I took a deep breath and I then pushed open the remnains of the door allowing me to see the carnage of the blown up room that had several licks of flames within it.
"Gotta put out the fire first obviously." I grunted as I went and did just as I kicked the sparking flames to make sure a far larger mess wasn't made. And then I took a picture of the two... Very dead dudes who had killed themselves with that grenade.
And honestly, with how common grenades were in the cyberpunk game. I shoudn't be suprised someone had one. Especially when they were criminals.