38. Cooperation

"Want a can, Carl?"

Sitting in a booth at the Afterlife bar, Blanca sipped her drink leisurely. Seeing Carl approach, she pointed to an unopened can of Bimbo Monkey on the table as a gesture.

"I'll pass on the Bimbo Monkey. High-fructose corn syrup drinks just taste cloyingly sweet to me."

Carl casually took a seat on the sofa, glanced at the drinks placed on the table before Blanca, and picked one out for himself.

"I'll just stick to sweet tea."

This beverage, with a flavor reminiscent of iced lemon tea, was one of the few familiar tastes of his distant hometown that Carl could still find in Night City.

Watching Carl open his sweet tea and take a sip, Blanca finished off the rest of her own drink. Only after emptying the can did she lean back against the sofa with a relaxed, lazy posture.

"You've really made a name for yourself in the city lately."

"I know. My friends filled me in the moment I woke up."

Carl didn't quite understand why his employer was rambling on about these irrelevant things. He was here to take on a gig, not to make small talk. Why couldn't things just be like before? Tell him the payout, where to go, what needs to be eliminated, and he'd get it done; the employer would pay up—easy, clear, and simple.

"Then do you know who the pilot of that ACPA was?"

The pilot?

Carl had to admit that Blanca's topic successfully piqued his interest.

"You know something about it?"

"How could I not? What do you think gave me the free time to sit here and sip a drink leisurely while waiting for you today? I just got promoted, filling the management position left vacant by this whole incident."

"So, this really was the work of you folks at Militech?"

"Naturally, it seems you had already guessed it..."

Blanca wasn't surprised. After all, the corporations capable of quietly smuggling an ACPA into Night City could be counted on one hand.

However, there was one detail in Carl's statement that she felt the need to correct:

"Don't go pinning this entirely on me, though. I knew nothing about it beforehand. I don't have the guts to mess with the Arasaka family's eldest granddaughter. This whole affair was pulled off by a faction within Militech dissatisfied with Michiko Arasaka, conspiring with the young Turks inside Arasaka."

"The young Turks?"

Carl frowned slightly. He remembered Arasaka Haruko calling this a trial. Could these so-called young Turks be the unexpected variable in this operation?

After all, judging by Haruko's attitude, the appearance of the ACPA had vastly exceeded her expectations. The only ones capable of pulling wool over the eyes of an Arasaka high-born were insiders within Arasaka itself.

"Ever heard of Yorinobu Arasaka?"

"Yorinobu Arasaka..."

Carl paused to recall, and the intelligence concerning him surfaced in his mind.

[Yorinobu Arasaka]: Heir to the Arasaka Corporation, the youngest and only surviving son of Arasaka patriarch Saburo Arasaka.

"The infamous heir to the Arasaka Corporation? I'm familiar with him, at least by reputation."

"The young faction within Arasaka led by him is referred to by insiders as the Hawks. Their operational style is extremely aggressive. Their core philosophy is to leverage conflict to secure greater profits, and they are particularly enthusiastic about instigating a war between Arasaka and Militech. Make sense?"

Listening to Blanca, Carl gave a slight nod. "Got it."

The situation was now considerably clearer and simpler.

"So they wanted to use the assassination of Arasaka Haruko to trigger a conflict between Arasaka and Militech?"

"To be precise, their target wasn't actually Arasaka's eldest granddaughter, but her mother, Michiko Arasaka."

Michiko Arasaka was the daughter born to Yorinobu's older brother, Kei Arasaka, and a Japanese-American woman. Having been born and raised in America, she identified more as an American. Although she eventually returned to the Arasaka family fold, within the corporation she belonged to the faction leaning toward Militech. This evidently provoked the dissatisfaction of both the young Turks and the warmongering faction within Militech.

The enemy of my enemy is a friend. Following this line of reasoning, the previously baffling events finally made sense.

Arasaka patriarch Saburo Arasaka had harbored doubts about Haruko's bloodline because she was the child of his mother, Michiko, and a pure-blooded American. Later, for reasons unknown, Haruko was subjected to some sort of 'Bushido'-style blood purity test orchestrated by Saburo. During this process, interested parties within both Arasaka and Militech who wanted to target Michiko meddled behind the scenes, smuggling in the heavy-duty nightmare that was the ACPA.

And then, Carl had gotten the beating of his life.

Damn it, what kind of messed-up situation was this?

Seeing that Carl had grasped the situation, Blanca continued, "The reason I'm telling you all this in such detail is that there's still a bit of cleanup work left for you to handle... Let's steer back to the topic we strayed from. You asked earlier—do you know who the pilot was?"

"Right now, all I know is that he was one of your Militech guys."

"Well, you need to know a bit more now... His callsign was Ten. His real name was scrubbed the moment he joined Militech. He was the most brilliant pilot our company has trained in years."

"So?"

"Meaning there's a whole squad of pilots who might not be quite as brilliant as him, but are still exceptionally skilled. And those guys are utterly humiliated by Ten's death. They can't go after Adam Smasher because Smasher is currently on Arasaka's payroll. So, to wash away this disgrace, they've all set their sights on you."

"Set their sights on me?"

Why did this feel so much like, 'If I can't beat Adam Smasher, surely I can take down a street-level mercenary like you'?

"If they've set their sights on me, let them come. One comes, I slaughter one. It's not like they can air-drop another ACPA in, right?"

"That's probably out of the question. Just this single unit was enough for Arasaka and our company to point fingers and shift blame onto each other. But powered exoskeletons of that caliber are still within the realm of possibility."

Exoskeletons...

"Are these guys all out of work with nothing better to do, just itching to throw their lives away? Does Militech not have any actual missions for them?"

"The R&D personnel at Militech are intensely interested in their combat data... The director over there is more than willing to use you as a live-fire testing subject to compare the ACPA against exoskeletons."

Blanca said, a smirk playing on her lips. "And that, Carl, is why I'm here. I plan to team up with you to wipe out this bunch of ACPA elites."

"Reason?"

Carl stared at Blanca's smile. "I recall you saying just now that you're now a manager in this department?"

"These guys were subordinates of the previous manager who just took a permanent swim at the bottom of the bay. I don't trust keeping them around."

In other words, had she trusted them, the ones sent to deal with Carl would have been Blanca's own subordinates.

"As expected, you really are a qualified corporate rat."

"So, partnership?"

"A partnership is fine... But I want a payout. You're getting the better end of the deal here, you know. All you have to do is provide intel and wait for me to do the heavy lifting, while I'm out here risking my life."

"You're also saving your own skin, aren't you... But I knew you'd say that."

Knowing Carl's temperament all too well by now, Blanca held up two fingers.

"I can use my clearance to get you two Militech cyberware pieces completely free of backdoors. How about that?"

"Pleasure doing business with you."

Carl shook Blanca's hand without a moment's hesitation.