Danmachi: the Great Devourer

C178: Martinez

Alt Title Teaser: Simulation

Date published: 1/19/2025.

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After the singular incident where Biotechnica approached their group nothing had happened. The others in the crew remained unaware of what Axel went through as it would have sparked unnecessary explanations. As such, on the third month of the split the group got back together to have a reunion party. 

During this whole getaway, Rebecca got her premium set up, that's right, she has gorilla arms now along with some leg mods to enhance her speed and stability. During the reunion, he gifted her a matching guts shotgun with emp capabilities. So now she can shoot explosions and lightning rounds with them. 

He took the time to secretly heal her and lessen the conflicting sensation of cyberpsychosis. His power doesnt allow him to fully cure it as from his understanding but he can delay it. Rebecca had undergone these enhancements before but during the original timeline Pilar had already been dead. So the fact that she still got them and her brother is alive. That means he must be confident she can handle it.

As for Cyberpsychosis, itself, that is plenty more complicated and not many know how it really works. Yet to Axel it's primarily a mental issue where a human has to manage their self identity and humanity and not allow the machine to take over. That is why most people who become borgs/mostly robotic struggle with this identity and can sometimes fall to the machine. 

Of course there are a few exceptions, such as the Animals who are already mostly insane and can't really get crazier except to become attack dogs within their own gang. Another exception is MaxTac (Maximum Force Tactical Division), a specialized group of police officers, the equivalent of a slaughter version of swat as it is widely recognized that those in mMxtac are all cyber psychos. The final example is Night City legend, Adam Smasher, A borg of a man who is Arasaka's deadliest errand boy. 

Axel is having Blythe and his wife Florence Nightingale investigate Cyberpsychosis, just in case he ever wants to distribute a cure to it. Though it depends if he or his children decide to stay much longer, afterall, he only plans to stay within the city for another 2 and a half years. With Sasha disappearing from Night city, the original flow of the world should continue.

As if knowing his thoughts, Maine stands up and makes an announcement, "I'd like to gather everyone together for a bit. You see, with Sasha disappearing we lack a high end hacker for the group. We don't know when she may return. Yes I know Lucy, you are making nova progress but you aren't quite on the level of Sasha was, especially with her also being our resident ninja." he explains the situation before informing everyone what his decision is, "To clear up at least one of our groups openings, im hunting for a new netrunner, well, either a netrunner or a ninja. I think Lucy and Axel together could reach close enough to Sasha's level." 

The reaction is noticeably mixed, Lucy and Pilar are slightly more vocal with their disagreement or annoyance. Lucy feels like this is a betrayal to Sasha who she treasures as a mentor while Pilar is complaining about the possible level of new netrunner/hacker. 

Axel's only reply to this news is, "Just make sure that they aren't a Corpo spy, like for Biotechnica to find out from us where Sasha is."

"But we don't know where Sasha is," He says, confused. 

"And we know that we don't know where Sasha is, but Biotechnica doesnt know this" His simple roundabout phrasing makes Maine nod his head as he will try to at least be careful for the first bit of time as everyone gets used to each other while working. 

As Maine posts a listing for a new netrunner as well as calls some old connections to see if there is anyone available quickly to work for his crew. While he and Dorio are doing that, Pilar returns to his room to tinker with guns and other tech. Rebecca is waiting for Axel and Lucy is about to get up when Axel extends a shard to her.

"What's this?" She questions with some suspicion still.

"Before Sasha left the night city she told me about this shard in her room. It contains the program she used to help her develop her 'ninja' skills. I've taken to tinkering with it a bit to give it a bit more difficulty, if you can complete it then i will give you a few gifts." He states and she whips around to take the shard from his hand. She then asks,

"Where is she?"

"I told everyone, we don't know where Sasha is" he reiterates his previous words to get the message across that the 'we' refers to the Maine crew and not Axel specifically. 

Lucy gets the message and marches off with the shard to check it for what exactly his tinkering did. As Rebecca and Axel are about to head out for some fun, Maine returns with a look. The type of look that says money is to be made. 

"Just got a call from a contact that they have some preem (high quality) tech for us. Pilar get back over here. You can come along Axel but behave yourself"

"Whaaaat! Me! Behave? preposterous" he responds with sarcasm as the 5 of them hop into Falcos car and drive off down south to Santo Domingo and more specifically the Arroyo district (1 of 2 districts). The car parks outside of a megabuilding, specifically H4. 

Axel has some anticipation building up as the 4 of them start heading up, walking past various people and literal piles of trash lounging around the shopping center & apartment building. Making their way up a few floors, Maine knocks on a specific door and from within a red headed woman wearing a casual yellow coat opens the door and ushers them in.

"Hey there Maine, Dorio, Pilar. Good to see you all again. I see you brought Rebecca around. And why is the child prodigy here?" The woman greets the members here but is confused on why Axel is here. 

Axel himself has his eyes wandering around the home, analyzing everything as he determines what type of upbringing her son has. Though he does sport a cheeky grin as he spots a certain new poster nearby that is quite the limited edition. 

"Good to see you too Gloria, especially nice to see that you haven't kicked the bucket yet. guh" Maine greets her back with his own flare of charm but in response Dorio elbows him in the gut. 

"Sorry about him, we only just got back together and he might not be fully sober yet."

"I'm sure, with that whole Biotechnica thing I heard you guys mention before. Is everything alright with that?" She simply chats with Maine and Dorio with Pilar occasionally giving a few words as he acts his usual quirky self.

Their conversations continue as the now named Red head woman, Gloria Martinez. She details how she got her hands on a piece of cyberware from a warehouse that was in the territory of Tiger claws and Animals had invaded to try to steal it. Yet now it ended up in her hands and she needed to offload it quickly and quietly.

Maine reassures her and that tells her that he will transfer the eddies in a bit but Glorio begins to slightly panic as she spots Axel hacking their holo screen that is holding a fairly expensive digital poster which belongs to her son as she gave it to him for his birthday, "Hey!!! What are you doing?" she questions in horror as the original poster begins to morph before her eyes. 

The original format was a crystallized scene of Axel slapping his challenger and knocking them. Yes it's from the fight a few months ago after his first 'augmentations'. The poster design was quickly decommissioned due to his opponent taking offense to it. As such most of them were thrown away while a few others had a specific glitch that allowed a slight modification of the head he was slapping to be changed to others.

The new showcased poster is a slide screen of various posters in different poses. The first is Axel standing in his boxing clothes with Gloria's son, David in similar clothing. Both are standing in a ring opposite of each other, a determined look on both faces and at the bottom of the poster is "To David Martinez, Number 10 fan". Tears begin to form on Gloria's face at the quality of the poster before her.

The second poster is an after-fight image with a bruised but grinning David, his arm held up by his mother in referee clothes with a dejected Axel next to them. Below it says, "And to Gloria Martinez, the best mother in this world". Maine and Dorio place their hands on Gloria's shoulder to act as support as she is star struck by the sight before her. 

The third poster which was technically the first based on order but the screen had already rotated before Gloria noticed. It showcases Axel and David back to back facing a 'camera' or just towards the viewer of the poster with the top saying, "A battle of Legends: The Titan versus the Greatest human", while the bottom has an customized autograph: "XOXO Axel Gram, Thanks Cyberdyne"

"I hope you like my little gift, I heard you've been working with Maine for a while. Let this be the reward of your devotion" He states as he heads to leave.

"Hey, where are you going?" Maine asks.

"Well, I was under the impression we should leave since I saw a slightly familiar kid on the cameras heading up here" He gives them a hint while pointing with his thumb at the poster he just made which is showing the '1st' poster again of them in the arena. With that hint, Maine and Dorio along with Rebecca give their goodbyes.

"Wait, how am I supposed to explain that this happened?" Gloria calls out as she is still nervous about how the original poster might be lost.

"Axel just leans back in through the door and states, "Just say that you were lucky with those little giveaways my coach made on my page, Here, this too" he throws a black item at her which she frantically catches as it almost slipped out of her hands and fell. 

When she got a good look at it, it was an old era camera with a single picture of Axel and Gloria together. She has some doubts about it but she has never met Axel before, so she has no clue how the picture got taken.

Maine and the others take their leave, Axel in between Maine and Dorio so when the Boy Wonder himself runs past them, he doesnt notice anything except Rebecca's own flashy skin.

Gloria only has a few moments of peace as she stares at the camera, still confused as they never made that peace pose together like it's shown. In fact, Axel had maintained his distance from her the entire time as she chatted with the others. 

The door slams open as a voice rings out, "I'm home." the boy calls out as he soon spots his mom just standing around in the middle of their living room.

"Are you alright mom? Did work let you out early?" He asks which finally snaps her out of her as she finally takes the time to think of the proper story. 

"Uh, yes, I wanted to finish my shift but I got a call about something great, so I let out early, ill be heading back in a half hour. But that is besides the point, come here my dear boy, come and see what you mom got for you" She gives a minor explanation as her own team had all gotten sick while cleaning up the bloodbath from the fight between Tiger claws and Animals so they called in a special cleaning machine and that takes time so she is technically on her break now. 

Gloria pulls her son's, David's, hand, allowing him to see the changes to his poster. He was originally confused as his first thought was that she modified the expensive poster for some reason but as he keeps reading and sees the various changes, his mouth hangs open in shock.

"What! How did you get this? Custom made, for you AND me…but why am I listed as tenth? The Titan? That's not one of his regular titles, maybe turtle, if its based on his previous records. Still this is some Preem work" He goes on a bit of a rant as his inner fan boy rears his head. 

David became a fan as he considered Axel before he got implants to be a role model that even a down and out boy from Santo Domingo can do anything. He joined many discussions defending Axel after his recent fights with him finally having implants. Many were saying that his new strength is only possible through his implants but he was on the opposing side that the strength was completely natural but he couldn't properly release it or a variety of other reasons since an physicist had already joined the discussion and explained how much force is needed to injure that boxer like that.

To that point, Seeing the 'Thanks CyberDyne' at the back to back poster really hits him hard as that was his nickname on the discussion board site. His arm trembles from held back energy and he can nearly feel his nerves exploding in excitement as the mother and son celebrate a bit. It is only much later that Gloria finds a chip hidden inside the old age camera given to her.

The chip led to a premiere betting site for his fights. It also had a few files specifying times and his future opponents along with another message, "I don't plan to just give you money but that doesnt mean you cant have insider knowledge so you can cheat. Go crazy with this. Maybe get a coworker or two in on this and fine them for the info. Just don't overextend, I don't wish to see your corpse on the news" Gloria holds the camera tightly to her chest as she considers this the second best day of her life, right after the day she gave birth to David.

Back with the Maine Crew, Falco is driving them back to the safe house as Rebecca asks Axel a question, "Axel, how did you make those posters so fast? And where did you get that Camera?" She interrogates him and he reveals that he got a cyberdeck implant so using that, he accessed the mega buildings cameras to find any possible clues on who their contact would be.

From there He took in the photos and copied them, editing them the whole time they were driving there. Axel's explanation makes enough sense but takes so long they get back to the safe house and they forget about the analog camera he made with his powers and inserted a fake picture.

From there the group continued their regular operations like before the whole Corpo crisis. Eventually the group got a new Netrunner, Kiwi. Axel mentally complained about his fruitless warning of not hiring Corpo spies. Though Kiwi is technically a spy for Faraday, who is a spy/narc for Militech and soon to be Arasaka. So Kiwi is technically a spy for a rat bastard.

In the months that follow Axel has few interactions with her as Lucy keeps bothering him about the stealth training chip, asking for any sort of tip or hint on how to get past his 'Supernatural ' difficulty one and two as well as the 'god mode' difficulty. All three of which feature digital renditions of magically enhanced guards in increasing difficulty. 

As for why he set up this little program, it's because unlike her destiny, the challenges she faces here are not fatal and won't leave her completely alone.

He has preplanned rewards that would change her fate but he would only give the rewards one time. Not as in one at a time but depending on where she gives up is all that she will get from him. So if she completes only the first supernatural difficulty then she will only get a single reward even if she later goes on to complete the second and final challenge. Like a homework assignment, once she submits it, she cant change it when the time runs out, which in this case is the moment she turns it in.

He has made this clear to her in the training, so she is unlikely to approach him until she reaches her mental and physical limits. Since the bd also has a bit of time dilation added to it through the program, she has a natural advantage on completing them, now it's just up to her willpower. 

Day by day passes and it's a new year, 2076, one step closer to him leaving this world for the next. 

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Alt Title: Gift to Gloria, Lucy's training challenge, timeline correction.

Word count: 2924

Drop a comment if you wanna judge my writing or the story. I'll try to respond, especially if you're confused or anything.