The Protagonist System

Atlas had to cheat a little. Instead of going through the expensive and chemically intensive decontamination procedure for millions upon millions of gallons of water, Atlas created a tinkertech device that was essentially a high speed streamlined replicator with a singular function. It sucked in water and converted it to energy, then used that energy to create fresh clean water with no impurities.

That meant a few impervious spells were needed along the canyon walls and bottom to ensure it didn't pick up any silt or any other contaminates as well. Atlas didn't turn the thing on yet, though. He would have to work on the Coronado Dam first to fix that as well, not to mention creating a concrete canyon on the other side that avoided all the housing developments that had been created where the river used to flow.

Mind you, that also meant going across the city to the other side where the ocean was and altering those water entrances to fix the salt water coming into the canals spread across the city. The funny part about the whole thing was that neither system ever met or combined. Each fed into a different water distribution mechanism that had been mostly neglected for years.

Atlas and his sole escort flew back to the facility and landed in the maintenance hangar to have the AVs checked over and another escort went with Atlas as he used the cargo hauler to head to Arasaka Tower to handle the garbage collection there. He had thought about distributing the same garbage dumpsters he had spread across the city, then shrugged. This way allowed him to generate an accurate list for Veder to submit to his boss and the building's VI that only showed that building's garbage contents.

He returned to the facility after that and the escort teams thanked him for everything he was doing for them. Atlas laughed and told them that he lived in the city as well and couldn't stand by and let it continue to get worse, so he was going to help as much as he could. There wasn't much he could do about people's behavior; but, he sure could give everyone a much better environment to live in.

Word about that spread like wildfire throughout the facility and everyone that lived there was grateful to him. After being detained by Atlas Incorporated, their lives had only been improved. They cleaned themselves up, found or were given new jobs, and they performed their work better because they were genuinely happy.

Atlas went back to the office after such a long day and the woman he had hired was still there. He didn't bother asking her why she hadn't gone home after her normal shift, because she handed him a record of the sales she had done for the entire day and evening. He almost laughed that 4 people had shown up, well after they were supposed to be closed, and only bought a few parts and didn't want the installation, which was why she hadn't contacted him about it.

They both knew what that meant, espionage, and Atlas called for a ride for her. Delamain showed up a short time later to give her a ride back to the facility and Atlas thanked him and her for being there for him. Both left with a smile and Atlas locked everything up.

He went into the backroom and laid down on the surgical table and went to sleep. He had a lot more work to do tomorrow and wanted a few hours to unwind. He also had a date with Panam tomorrow night and looked forward to it, especially since she seemed to be genuinely flattered that someone wanted to have an actual relationship with her and didn't only want her body for sex.

*

I went home after work, thanks to Delamain, and I entered my apartment building. The night guard looked bored and I logged in, which didn't even gain his attention. I held in my chuckle and rode the elevator up to the top floor and entered my penthouse apartment.

Surprisingly, there were four sets of shoes by the door and I took my own off to set beside them. I walked through the living room and down the hallway to the master bedroom, opened the door, and saw them all reclining on the bed wearing various kinds of lingerie as they watched the large vidscreen on the wall.

“You didn't have to wait up for me.” I said and went to the closet to strip off and hung up my suit, then the gun and holster.

“We didn't have to, no.” Denise said and rubbed her thighs together. “We wanted to.”

I let out the chuckle I had held in and walked over to the bed in just my boxer shorts. “I need a quick shower...”

“YES!” Her third friend exclaimed and hopped up, grabbed my arm, and ran to the attached bathroom.

Her friends laughed at her being so excited and they all stripped off to join me for some nice clean fun. We eventually ended up back in the bed and I made sure to pamper the ones that wanted to be pampered and treated roughly those that wanted to be treated roughly.

There was some mixing and matching going on as well, since a little roughness was acceptable at certain times, and too much roughness without any pampering or tenderness would cheapen it. We all drifted off to sleep when we were all satisfied and I pretended to be first, just so Denise's friends could whisper a thank you to her for including them.

I would make them their favorite foods for breakfast for that, because they were genuinely grateful to her for it and appreciated that I wasn't ignoring them or trying to drive a wedge between Denise and her friends, like the other men that any of them had dated before.

The guys had wanted to keep them for themselves and didn't want anyone else interfering in their lives, which usually meant the group of friends was diminished for as long as they were seeing someone. If two of them were, their group splintered and usually lost the coherency they had when gathered together. The missing pieces of their friendship really stood out when they weren't there.

Now with me in the picture, I hadn't changed their usual schedule, except after recommending Denise have her friends change their work times to match hers and they could spend even more time together.

That had given me the change to become a part of their group without disrupting it too much, and then I had also agreed to go clubbing with them whenever and wherever they went, rather than only go out with Denise and no one else. It had earned me a lot of brownie points in their eyes. That I was also fun to hang out with and drank and danced with them, pretty much won them over.

Of course, I hadn't planned for them to stay with me in my apartment all the time; but, I wasn't going to object or complain about it. If they wanted to stay over, they could. It also let Denise indulge a bit more and explore things a bit more than she usually would, because her friends knew exactly where she was and what she was doing without having to interrogate her for the details, since they were right there with her.

*

“Sir, we have a serious problem.” One of the underlings said during the early morning emergency meeting at PetroChem.

Normally such an early meeting wouldn't be allowed, since the corporate executives needed all the beauty sleep they could get. However, they had all seen the news the night before about the Coronado Dam being cleaned up and they were sure the morning's news was going to be just as damning.

“Of course we do. Did you see the footage the scout brought back? His AVs have military grade weapons and they're fast!” One of the executives pointed and a vidscreen showed the escort ship whip around like it was on a swivel and wasn't a heavy piece of machinery using hover technology.

“I meant the PR disaster, sir.” The underling said. “It's a PetroChem dam and we weren't the ones to clean the place up.”

One of the other executives barked a laugh. “Have you seen the backlash against Atlas Inc.? Everyone's treating it like the plague!”

“No one's buying their products, not even the riffraff on the street.” Another exec added. “We don't even need to put out a statement about this, do we?”

“Sir, he reclaimed the AV garbage scow that crashed and contaminated the reservoir decades ago. If he checks the service records and finds out it was intentional sabotage by us to ensure we gained the salvage rights and the government contracts for maintaining the landfill and garbage collection...”

One of the executives waved him away. “The current board isn't responsible for the actions of a past board.” He said, even though it was his own father that had been on the board then. “All we need to concern ourselves with is if Atlas Inc. is going to be successful in what he's doing.”

“What exactly is he doing at the Laguna Dam?” Another executive asked as the footage played again. “Is that... no, it can't be.” He hit a few buttons and split the display and sent a mental inquiry over his implant to display the information he had just discovered. “It's a decontamination station.”

A few of them let out curses.

“We can't let him break into the water production market. Our own desalinization plants on the ocean side and in the attached canals are barely breaking even as it is.” An executive informed them. “If the city gains access to an entire reservoir of clean water, we'll drop into the red by the end of the month and we can't recoup the losses, even if we shut them down temporarily 'for maintenance' to drive up the price of water.”

“What do you suggest we do? Attack him?” Another executive asked with a scoff. “He'd come down on us with his fleet of AVs in retaliation.”

“Would he?” Another asked. “What if we made it look like a gang matter, or the Wraiths claiming territory? That area is their usual haunting grounds, after all.”

The others whispered back and forth to discuss it.

“It could be viable.” One said. “How soon can you get a team together?”

“We already have assets in place. A cheap merc job will cover up the operation and will send the Atlas Inc. gonks in the wrong direction.” Another executive said. “No one will ever suspect it was us.”

Another whispered conversation later, they all nodded.

“Do it. Preferably by tonight or tomorrow and no later than Friday.” One of the executives said. “We can't let that thing start operating, because everyone will suspect we had something to do with it when it explodes spectacularly and doesn't impact water prices across the city.”

“Yes, sir. I'll have it done as soon as possible.” The executive that proposed it said and left the meeting room to get to work. He would need to contact his Fixer and get the word out to the others.

A cheap job for a corporation was actually a very high paying job for everyone else, which he would use to full advantage. Faking a Wraith group wearing Nomad clothes and using makeshift vehicles was child's play for a seasoned executive like himself. He had been doing PetroChem's dirty work for years and had profited heavily from it.

*

The mayor was enjoying his expensive morning coffee in his office when he decided to check his messages. He dismissed a lot of them as pointless, since he had been asleep at the time and they weren't important to him. Surprisingly, he did not miss the notice PetroChem had sent to him about Atlas Incorporated performing heavy industrial modifications on the city's previous reservoir.

However, since it was the previous reservoir, the mayor knew that it was heavily contaminated and had hundreds of thousands of tons of commercial and industrial garbage inside. That would take a very long time to clean up and work through, even at the pace Atlas Incorporated had shown as they cleaned up the city.

The smaller piles in alleyways that had been cleaned up had nothing on the miles and miles of garbage in the landfill and outside the city. If he went even further into the badlands, all he would find was the original dump up in the mountains that had been slowly washing down during the occasional rains they had every few years. It had spread garbage and debris throughout the dried up riverbeds and tributaries that eventually reached the new reservoir.

The mayor chuckled as he thought about the Laguna Bend Reservoir. There had been a small settlement there before the second dam had been built to cut off the contamination the trash hauler had spilled into the old reservoir when it crashed. With the new dam, all that water had gathered and flooded the entire area and covered everything.

It was a shame the updated highway and overpass had also been flooded and ruined at the time; but, there was nothing to be done about that. The city needed that water... and then realized it was also contaminated by all the garbage from their previous dumping grounds and the garbage and things in Laguna Bend before it was flooded.

After years of neglect and more garbage and other things being dumped into it, the reservoir had become a muddy contaminated mess that the city council ignored as a failed experiment. The worst part about it was the damn thing was so full that it barely suffered much evaporation, except around the edges, and that just seemed to remove any clean water that was there and it was replaced with dirt and garbage with the rains that came every few years.

The mayor checked to see if there was any notation about a bribe and he growled when there wasn't one, not even from PetroChem for snitching on their competition. Well, that just wouldn't do. He had gone on too long without a proper payoff and he would make this known at the next city council meeting.

The last message he saw was the illegal vehicle registry and the required bribe to be sent in. He nodded at the system working properly and replied it was handled, paid the fine and the bribe to clear up the 'mistake', and went about his day.

*

I made the girls breakfast and made sure they were given the appropriate attention, then walked them downstairs to where a Delamain limo waited for them. I kissed them goodbye and said I'd see them that afternoon, then went back inside. Once I was in my apartment, I remembered my BD and what I wanted to do with it.

It took me a moment to remember one of my interactions as Atlas and who he had met when he had rescued the hostages from the Wraiths and Scavs in that small trailer park. He had met the leader of the Mox Gang named Susie Q and it was amicable, except when he had first stopped there and met that green and purple haired woman that was hostile for no reason.

Susie had said she was the best Braindance Technician and editor in the city, Judy Alvarez, so I figured she would be the best one to give my BD and XBD to. She would know what to do with it, especially what markets would be the easiest to enter and have the quickest turnover. She might even have a few suggestions about what to change to make it more appealing to the masses.

In any case, I had to get changed for school and went to the bedroom to do so. I thought about doing what I had the day before, then chuckled. I doubted Hanako would call me up to her apartment again after what had happened the day before, so I would have to bring it with me. I'd also have to show up early enough to let the guard take his cut and the girls would be really happy that I wasn't going to ignore their desire for delicious food.

Was I spoiling them? Probably. Was I going to stop? No. Why would I? It was easy to stay on their good side this way and I also didn't have to worry about Kei trying to twist things into making it about sex, not when I was sharing the food with everyone and not only her and her friends.

*

That afternoon, Dexter Deshawn felt honored that a major corporation still considered him one of the main fixers of the city. He promised the world to the corpo without even asking what the mission was and accepted the hefty payment that he automatically took 20% off of the top for the handling fee.

The small briefing he was given was all he relayed into the message that he sent to the low level mercs he knew and sat back to wallow in how good it felt to still be a top dog in the fight. The mercs were more than willing to take such an easy job, because they had previously raided a Wraith Nomad clan on the outskirts of Night City for some easy bounty cash and had claimed two of their vehicles for themselves and sold the others to another fixer named Dakota.

It didn't take much work to dirty them up again to look like they belonged back out in the badlands and they changed their usual armor pieces for the mismatched scraps Nomads usually had. None of them mentioned how easy it was for them to fake it and became Nomads for the duration of the job. They didn't even bother to scope out the site to see what they were up against, because the Fixer had said it was a cakewalk and they would get the huge payout after the job was done.