A Day-Off Mission

"How boring."

Karl sat at the Afterlife bar, complaining to Jack's mom, Mrs. Welles, "I can't get any gigs, Mrs. Welles. We're going to starve if this keeps up."

"Don't be so anxious, Karl."

Mrs. Welles smiled and offered a plate of fries, "Isn't it nice to have some free time? Try my latest fries."

"Oh, the ones you said you sprinkled with seasoned salt!"

Oliver and Jack, watching Karl go from listless to energized in a second because of the fries, couldn't help but feel a little helpless.

Their little team had been together for a week, and they'd taken on five odd jobs during that time. They had a deeper understanding of Karl's personality. If Oliver and Jack had to give an evaluation of Karl now, they would unhesitatingly use a Chinese word Karl taught them to describe him.

"Looking for trouble."

It wasn't that Karl liked to make trouble or cause incidents, but Oliver and Jack understood it literally. If you had to say, it was that Karl couldn't sit still. After completing a mission, he wanted to do the next one. He didn't know how to rest and relax at all.

Other mercenaries would take a job, and if the reward was generous, they would rest for ten days or half a month before reluctantly being interested in taking another job. But Karl was different. He was already considering how to take the next job while he was on the previous one. He was like a mission machine.

It wasn't that Oliver and Jack thought Karl was being a busybody. Thanks to Karl's crazy mission-taking, Oliver and Jack's skills had grown a lot, and their wallets were getting thicker day by day. This was naturally quite pleasing, but people are not machines after all. They also need necessary rest, otherwise they wouldn't have dragged Karl to the bar for a drink today.

"Stop frowning and have a drink."

Watching Karl happily eat fries, Oliver raised a glass to Jack.

"Anyway, according to Karl, once our reputation is big enough to take Fixer jobs, he will be picky about what he does. At worst, we'll just hold on until then."

"It's not that I dislike having a lot of jobs. We're mercenaries, after all. It's naturally better to have jobs than to not have them. I'm just wondering, can the small-time jobs we're doing really make us famous one day and get the Fixers to notice us?"

"You want to do big jobs, Jack, like the first one?"

"People always need something to look forward to. If every job could bring in thirty or forty thousand eddies, it would be worth dying for."

The children of Heywood always casually talked about death. Usually, only Karl would complain about this when they were out on missions, but today was different.

"Jack!"

Mrs. Welles glared over.

"Oh, sorry, Mom."

Jack realized that he shouldn't have said those words in front of his mom and quickly apologized. He said such things out of habit when he was with Karl and Oliver, and he hadn't changed it in time.

"You should say that kind of thing less often, Jack."

As Oliver said this, he received an unexpected call from his sister.

Originally, when his sister contacted him, she said that she would be back in Night City in two days, but then she kept saying that she was delayed by something, delaying it until now. She had finally returned and wanted to meet her brother.

"I'll take off then."

After saying goodbye to Karl, Jack, and Mrs. Welles, Oliver left first. After being kicked out of the Sixth Street Gang, he couldn't return to Santo Domingo if he didn't want to cause trouble, but his sister could come to Watson District. He planned to pick up his sister and take her out to eat.

Not long after Oliver left, Jack also had something to do. His current girlfriend, who was also Old Vic's landlady, Misty, wanted to hang out with him. After sending Karl a private message to explain, Jack also made up a random reason to his mom and left. His mom preferred Jack's ex-girlfriend to his current girlfriend, and Jack didn't want his mom to know that he was going on a date.

In a short period of time, the three-person team, who rarely had a day off, was left with only Karl at the bar eating fries.

What could he do?

Two teammates went to accompany their sister and girlfriend, what could he do?

Oh well.

He should just go home and continue learning hacking knowledge or watching braindances. At least that stuff has proven to have a real learning effect.

"Thanks for the treat, Mrs. Welles."

After finishing the fries and leaving the Afterlife bar to stroll through the streets of Heywood, Karl suddenly realized a rather important thing.

Oliver, who drove them here, was gone. How was he going to get back to Watson District?

Subway?

But he's never taken it before, he's not familiar with it.

Forget it.

Take a cab.

Just as Karl was about to call a taxi, he received a call.

Yo-ho, an acquaintance. Isn't this the Corpo Dog who said he would only use the phone once? How come he's using it again?

A Corpo Dog is still a Corpo Dog, but he still had to answer the phone, after all, the other party was generous with money.

"Beep."

"I have a job. I need someone to be my bodyguard and accompany me to a negotiation. Fifty thousand eddies, one person. If you want to take it, meet me at the Silent Motel in Watson District in one hour."

He hung up after speaking, not giving Karl a chance to say more. Very arrogant.

Alright.

It's fifty thousand eddies, after all. Arrogance is arrogance. It doesn't matter. He's the client. He just needs to do the work.

Karl thought about it and decided not to bother Oliver and Jack, who both had things to do. They rarely had a day off to be with their family and girlfriend. He shouldn't send them a message saying that he was going to do a mission and make them worry. Otherwise, according to their personalities, they might abandon what they were doing now and secretly come to cover him.

This was a good opportunity to try out the cyberware he had just modified at Old Vic's yesterday.

In the past few days, Karl had spent all the money he made from missions, except for the money he spent on braindances and hacking studies, on yesterday's modifications.

Feeling the strange sensation in both arms, Karl shook his arms and pressed the Arasaka Corporation-made tech pistol 'JKE-X 2 Kenshin' on his waist.

A tech pistol is a type of pistol that uses electromagnetic energy to propel all-metal bullets to extreme speeds to penetrate cover or walls. Ordinary Subdermal Armor is as fragile as paper in front of it. This was the pistol that Karl had bought at a great price after learning from his previous encounters. Now was the time for it and his arm modifications to work together.