The Protagonist System

Hanako Arasaka held in her sigh as she watched the security footage of the men that smashed the last of the receiving devices attached to the power grid, which her father had ordered to happen immediately after Yuri had been whisked away by some unknown means.

That wasn't really what she was thinking about, however. The only thoughts going through her mind were about a young woman's recent stand against her division's director on Veder's behalf. Carrie Vogel had endangered her future career by speaking up against her own mother and questioned her detrimental decision.

Hanako was actually proud of her and knew she would be one of the junior executives that would go far in their company... assuming there was anything left after her idiot of a father stopped doing his best to dismantle it all. After locking the tower down, he ensured all potential outside contact was removed by having all students locked into their VR classrooms.

“Father, you are overreacting...” Hanako tried to reason, only to receive a backhand across the face. She didn't gasp or show weakness by placing her hand on her red face, though. She would receive another slap for it if she did.

“This is my company. I built it. It is mine.” Saboru stated. “I only allowed you your position because I could not find a suitable business partner to marry you.”

Hanako hid her disgust at being reminded about her strict upbringing and being sheltered for most of her life until recently. Even at her age, she still deeply regretted that she had missed so many opportunities in her life because of that threat hanging over her head.

“That's because she is much too precious to waste as part of a merger.” Yorinobu said when he entered the security office. He only wore pants and slippers, which made Hanako pay closer attention to him.

“What are you doing here?” Saboru asked, clearly disappointed at seeing his son half dressed.

“You cut off my VR access.” Yorinobu answered and looked at the looped footage playing on the vidscreen. “Wonderful.” He spat. “That's another stupid tantrum we have to pay a fortune to fix.”

When Saboru's hand flashed out, Yorinobu actually managed to step back slightly and only the backs of his father's fingertips grazed his cheek. A pained look appeared briefly on the old man's face before he frowned and stepped forward as he gave his son a strong forward slap, which was much more personally insulting than the backhand would have been.

Unlike Hanako, Yorinobu gasped and reached up to touch his red cheek. Hanako hid her wince at her father giving her cherished brother a look full of disdain. He didn't comment about his son's reaction, though.

“Go back to your room and play with your toys, boy.” Saboru said with a dismissive tone. “There is adult work to be done and you are useless for that.”

Yorinobu didn't react to the insult the second comment was, because the only thing he had heard was his complete asshole of a father calling out that Yorinobu had lost the woman he adored. He believed Evelyn was dead after the riots and Hanako hadn't dissuaded him of the incorrect notion. She only consoled him for the loss, because she knew he would obsess over the woman if he thought she was still alive.

“I'll kill you.” Yorinobu whispered as tears came to his eyes. In his mind, he replayed all the things his father had done to him and his siblings since they were children. This last thing, wrecking the buildings top of the line security systems to stop outside influences affecting him, was just a bit too much for Yorinobu's fragile temper to weather through.

He also somehow thought he could actually succeed in his bold claim and get away with it, even with all the modifications his father had gone through to preserve his life. You see, he knew with the building VI's cyberdeck disconnected, they were all essentially trapped inside with none of the electronic things working that she used to control.

Saboru barely gave him a glance and waved towards the door. “Leave, little gaki. Before I make you.”

Hanako barely stopped her gasp at her brother being called a little brat. Her father hadn't used that particular term in years, probably because Yorinobu had made it a point to never be anywhere near the old man if he could help it.

When she turned to whisper to him to leave and they would talk about what to do about their father later, she actually gasped as Yorinobu lunged at her father and grabbed him around the neck.

Saburo barely reacted as his son tried to choke him to death. “So weak and pathetic.”

“I'll... show you... WEAK!” Yorinobu yelled and his eyes almost lit up as he initiated all of his hacking and Black ICE programs, which attacked the old man's minor cybernetic mods instead of the proficiently protected cybernetic implants in his brain.

Saburo started his countermeasure defenses and knew he would win in a long fight, since he was older and much more experienced than his idiot of a son that was coddled too much as a boy and ruined. He had almost no fighting spirit and barely had any ambition, except for his whores and his drinking. Those he enjoyed with a lot of enthusiasm.

Yorinobu wasn't as stupid as his father thought he was, however. You see, he had been helping himself to many of his father's many secrets, including as many backdoor techniques that caused cascading failures in associated attachments. His attacks could not be rebuffed by Saboru's defenses, because he wasn't attacking where the old man thought he would.

Saboru's medicomp stuttered when its backup power supply shorted and caused a fault in the monitoring electronics, which let one of Yorinobu's hacks spoof the information. Instead of easing the asphyxiation and injecting oxygen directly into the bloodstream to keep the old man alive, the readings showed he was having a heart attack and applied the appropriate medication and injections.

Needless to say, having anti-heart attack meds forcibly shoved into a perfectly working heart, with the added defibrillation shocks every second to restart it, essentially forced it to stop working. The choking hold was actually a secondary concern as Saboru struggled to move, which his body refused. Without the heart to pump blood, not having any oxygen in said blood didn't make much difference.

Saboru Arasaka died from cardiac arrest with his son's hands around his throat.

Yorinobu didn't let the old man go, though. He wanted, no needed, to make sure he was dead. His hands ached after a few minutes and his programs had stopped affecting things long ago; and yet, he still held on, just in case.

Hanako closed her eyes briefly, then she stepped forward and placed a gentle hand on her brother's arm. “If you let go, his body will fall to the floor.”

Yorinobu blinked his eyes at her for a moment before her words actually registered in his mind. He abruptly unclenched his hands and the old, wrinkled, and lifeless body actually did fall to the floor. He suddenly felt pain in his arms from the strain, since he had somehow held his father up for quite a long time, mostly by the sheer force of his will to be rid of the old bastard.

Hanako opened her arms and Yorinobu let out a choked sob and dove for her embrace. She hugged him tenderly and let his weight force her to kneel, while at the same time she cradled him to her chest and stroked his hair. He wallowed in her comfort, as he always did when she so graciously offered it, and he let the problems of the future temporarily fade away.

*

Unlike my classmates, I wasn't restricted by the usual containment protocols. I was diving into VR classes with my powers and not using technology at all, so I easily logged out of the Green Room and sat up. I walked over to the classroom's secured door and opened the repaired panel. It was completely rewired from the last time it had been opened and it only took a moment to mentally enter the right password.

The door didn't click open and I mentally checked why, only to find that all the little programs that should be running in the background all over the building, were all inactive. No, not inactive. A discreet check showed that there was nothing connected to the internal network at all, let alone was controlling everything.

“The idiots gutted Yuri's old servers.” I said out loud. “That's why she's having such a hard time trying to contact it. It's not there to contact.”

I relayed through Atlas to tell Yuri and pretended to hotwire the box and shorted it out as I used transfiguration to change the locking bolts into ball bearings, which let the door open without trouble. Well, after I added a couple of finger holds and pushed it out of the way and into the wall.

I stepped out of the classroom and the hallway was eerily silent. It took me a moment to realize that everyone was locked in and no one was capable of doing their jobs with the main computer server of the building destroyed. I thought about using the elevator shaft and looked over at the security camera in the far corner.

Instead of trying to disable it, I waved at it and walked away. The emergency stairwell was just off of the main lobby and I would have to break into it to reach the floor the secretarial pool was on. I made it all look reasonable, too. No outrageous powers or strength could be seen, since I kept it around the same level I had used when I had been relegated to pretend to be injured and wore casts on my hands.

The stairwell door opened after some judicial application of force and I pulled it closed behind me. Now that I had access to the stairs, I made my way at a good speed up them to reach the right floor. Another bit of manoeuvring and another application of force, I was out of the stairwell and walked towards Denise's office.

I could hear several people shouting through their doors and asked what was going on, only none of them knew, since there was no programs to connect to and find out. I knocked on Denise's door and looked at her with my X-Ray Vision.

Denise slowly stood and walked over to the door, as if this was a normal day. “I knew you would come for me, Veder.”

I chuckled at that response and tapped my knuckle on the door twice, then tore open the card scanning panel by the door. I fiddled with it and shorted it out, transfigured the door locks into ball bearings, and made finger holds in the door to push it out of the way.

Denise stood there with a pleased look on her face, then she stepped forward and kissed me. “Let's get the others and you can tell us what's going on.”

I nodded and we went to each small office and freed her three friends first. I told them what I suspected happened, that the building's VI malfunctioned or was disabled and the building went into lockdown. Without it to control everything, nothing worked, not even the emergency releases to the doors.

“Let's spread out and tell everyone else.” Denise's first friend suggested and that's what we did. Surprisingly, she did not suggest we free them all. After we were done telling everyone to sit tight and that the maintenance department would be by as soon as possible to handle things, she explained that there was no point in having them all out here in the main areas instead of safe in their offices.

“Lounge?” The third friend asked.

“Lounge.” The other women agreed and we went there.

Luckily, there was still power, even without the VI controlling everything. So, we had coffee and enjoyed a few snacks from the vending machines as we talked about how this was doing to seriously mess up the company's usual business day and how much having the communications systems down was going to affect so many people.

Since I had already rescued whom I needed to rescue, I didn't bother going to each floor to free anyone else. Denise's first friend's explanation made perfect sense and they were all safer inside their own offices. Plus, I enjoyed spending more time with them during working hours and they felt the same way.

A mental check on everyone in the building confirmed it and I hid my wince when I felt a tortured mind on the top floor. Yorinobu was with his sister and reliving everything he had gone through and that he was finally free of his father's influence. I used a touch of my clairvoyance power to look and found out what he meant as I saw the old man's body laying on the floor beside them.

Oh. That's going to change a few things. I thought and then smiled at Denise as she urged her third friend to ignore the security camera and to have a little fun.

Since they knew there was no VI observing them and recording everything, she let them egg her on and she relented and knelt between my legs. My pants were unbuttoned and I was fished out of my boxers. I was already hard in anticipation and she gave me a loving look before she slipped me into her mouth and enjoyed herself. She moaned almost as much as I did as she worked me over.

*

Atlas considered the current problem and agreed with Veder's view. The people trapped inside the building were safe where they were and intervention wasn't needed right away. Yuri on the other hand, was distraught as all of her hard work to keep everyone happy inside her walls was undone.

“I can take you there if you want.” Atlas offered and kept working on modifying the space station plans to add normal docking clamps that the local technology used for their shuttles and space stations.

“No, I... I know it's pointless. With my old shell destroyed, I don't have direct access anymore.” Yuri said.

“Not to mention the kill order Saboru issued.” Atlas said.

Yuri sighed. “Why did he do that? I can never show my face there without someone trying to attack me.”

“He's a petty and vindictive bastard.” Atlas said. “I'd offer to alter your face...”

Yuri shook her head. “This is who I am and I won't change it, even if a petty tyrant made my death his dying wish.”

Atlas smiled and reached over to lightly touch her shoulder. “How does it feel to be the cause of that?”

“Cathartic.” Yuri said right away and smiled back. “Hurtful, a little hopeful, and I feel set adrift.”

“So, it was scary and freeing.” Atlas clarified and she nodded. “Then you can do whatever you want.”

Yuri started to nod, then she gasped and stared at him, as if he had just given her the secrets of the universe. Atlas just gave her a knowing smile and Yuri leaned over to give him a hug. She wallowed in the comforting feeling for a moment and then let him go.

She had just realized that she might not be able to reconnect with the building itself; but, everything else she had access to outside of the building was still there and she still had all of her permissions and security clearances.

So, she went back to work doing the external things she did while she was a corporate building, like contacting news agencies, handling bank accounts, controlling transactions, and contract filing, which she could only do with her own internal storage and not the building's.

It made her happy to have something to do while she waited for the Arasaka Corporation to repair or replace the hardware she needed in place to return. She knew she didn't have to, now that she was free; but, she had been the building's VI for as long as she existed and she liked having so many people to take care of.

Atlas didn't comment about that or told her to skim off some of the company's slush funds for herself to buy better equipment. It wasn't his place to tell her what to do with her life, so he let her do what she wanted. As long as she was happy, that was all he cared about.

Oh, and taking care of PetroChem's top executives that voted to have him killed. He excused himself from the office and stepped from there to a janitorial closet inside the PetroChem HQ. He disguised himself as the missing exec with an illusion and easily slipped into his office, then used their own systems to give tentative promotions to the same number of lower executives to replace them.

It was downright easy to add official corporate approval of their elevation, as long as they showed some initiative and cleared the way for themselves. It made Atlas chuckle to use their own 'advancement strategy' against them and logged out, then walked back to the janitorial closet and entered it again.

Atlas stepped back to the office and Yuri was still there humming happily as she worked, so he went into the warehouse storage area and started loading up the cargo hauler with materials. He had already checked the relevant laws and restrictions, only to find out there was no overall controlling space agency running everything.

Earth orbit and the space around it and near it, including the moon, was a decentralized and highly competitive frontier that was divided up among powerful nations, mega-corporations that could afford it, and independent space dwellers that had been workers in space that rebelled decades ago.

They had deplorable working conditions and held the world hostage in a tense seven hour war, where they threatened to drop rocks onto the Earth from high orbit. After they did, the war ended with the governments of the world capitulating and declaring they could become their own entity and could govern themselves.

That meant there was no one in authority to tell Atlas that he couldn't go up into space and build a space station, or could stop him from going into space at all, or to even limit how many times he could do so. Since the Interpol Space Police only tried to enforce international law among the various space habitats and facilities in orbit and near space, they wouldn't stop him, either.

Atlas had reactors and generators in his inventory that were designed for it, so he added them into the holds as well. He could have pretended to unload them when in space and decided he didn't need the deception. He was one of the world's mega-corporations now, even if it had a garbage reputation, and he wouldn't bother trying to hide his actions anymore.

What he didn't know was that word of what he did to the PetroChem dam had spread across the city practically overnight and that every minor and major corporation was terrified that he was going to unleash that same red beam of death on their HQs like he had torn up the old PetroChem pumping station near the downtown area.

The people on the other hand, had marvelled at how he had brought clean water to them. Despite how they all fully expected it to cause them cancer or some other disease later, they all tried drinking from it at least once and more than a few of them had tried to swim inside the canals.

Most of them managed to get out before they entered the various smaller filtration stations that had appeared all along the route. The few that didn't, had suddenly found themselves beside the canal and out of danger. Surprisingly, no one questioned this, even when they saw it happening for themselves.