The Protagonist System

Denise was pulled off of me and cuddled by her third friend, which freed me up to stand up and tuck myself away. I pulled on my shirt and then managed to put the rest of my clothes in order. When I was done, you couldn't tell that I had just blown a load so spectacularly that it could have been an XBD on its own.

“I'd like to discuss cleaning my BD up for distribution.” I said to a still stunned Judy.

“My... office?” Judy asked and her mind was still kind of blown over the BD she had experienced and then seeing such a sight that she was mentally denying that she was envious of. Her eyes went to the two women cuddling on one side of me and to the two women snuggling on the other side. I'm not jealous! I'm not!

“Lead the way.” I said without letting amusement show on my face. and stepped around the women blocking my exit from the booth and then I turned back around and bent over to give each of them a tender and loving kiss on the lips.

Not jealous. Not jealous. Judy thought and stood as well, grabbed her cyberdeck and the box of BDs, the BD I had given to her, and she went to the door.

I was right behind her and she led me through the hallway between the rows of back rooms to the stairs down to the basement. She tried to not feel embarrassed at the sounds that some of the rooms were letting out, even though they were supposed to be soundproof. We arrived at her work room and entered the cluttered space that contained a reclining chair and a large video editing area with multiple monitors.

“That was quick.” A woman said as soon as she saw Judy. “Did you sell out already?”

“Huh? What?” Judy asked, surprised by the question, because she thought she had been gone for several hours. She stepped closer to the purple haired woman and I closed the door behind me.

“It's only been about 20 minutes.” The woman told her and very carefully pushed herself up from the bed and into a sitting position facing her, without jostling her broken arm.

Judy's brain kind of shorted out after hearing that, because she knew there was no possible way it had only been 20 minutes and thought she had spent at least three hours in the BD simulation. She had done a lot of things that shouldn't have been possible in so short a time.

However, I had to ignore that, because I recognized the other woman named Evelyn that had almost skewered me with her pink sword. “You're the one that tried to kill me for a banana.”

“WHAT?!?” Both Judy and Evelyn yelled, with Judy almost dropping her things as she whipped around to stare at me.

“I was wondering where you disappeared to after the real Arasaka security team showed up at my building to arrest you.” I said and then grinned. “How's the arm, by the way?”

“Fuck!” Evelyn shouted, because the only ones who knew about her broken arm had either been there or had seen her after she had been rescued. She tried to lunge out of bed, only to find out that she couldn't move, thanks to me using my powers. Her eyes widened when she realized her cybernetics were locked and she couldn't do anything, like call upstairs for help.

“You can't have her!” Judy shouted as well and threw the things she had in her hands at me.

Instead of dodging them, I stored them instead and they disappeared. She looked shocked that it hadn't worked to distract me; but, she still had to try and save her girlfriend from me.

I watched as she lunged for her workstation and grabbed one of her tools for pulling apart cyberdecks. It was a heavy one and she jumped towards me to bash my brains in. Her thoughts gave her intentions away that no one was taking the woman she loved away from her.

I stepped aside in a blur as Judy swung with all of her might at my head, which caused her to lose her balance. She stumbled forwards and her movements and momentum slammed her into the heavy door of her work space, bounced off with a pained sound, and fell backwards onto the floor as the tool fell from her hands.

“Are you crazy or just stupid?” I asked and pulled out some plastic zip ties, the same ones I had used back in the My Hero Acadamia world to secure villains, and slipped them over Judy's wrists and ankles. “Why would you attack me again and repeat the same mistake Evelyn made?”

“I can't lose her.” Judy said and tears came to her eyes. “I almost lost her the last time she met you...”

“Judy...” Evelyn whispered, her voice sad.

I stared at her and rummaged through her head, and mentally sighed. She actually agreed with me that Evelyn had been an idiot to attack me and that only suffering a broken arm had been the very best outcome that could have happened to her.

The Mox Gang had been hiding her here ever since it happened and were working on getting Evelyn a new hairstyle and some body sculpting that could conceal her identity. They hadn't done it yet because of all the chaos in the city and they had been waiting for a retaliation strike from the Tyger Claws, only for it to never come.

I looked over at Evelyn and her thoughts were playing across her face, so I didn't have to rummage through her head. I still did, just to see if her motivations were the same as what I remembered hearing about. They were, as was her worsening depression over losing access to Yorinobu Arasaka and what she thought was her best chance to break into the corpo scene.

The worst part about it was that Judy knew her lover was losing her emotional battle and there was nothing she could do about it. How would she ever make Evelyn's dream of becoming a highly ranked and well known corpo come true after everything that had happened?

I walked over to Judy's setup and sat down and needed a few minutes to think about things. I could easily turn the both of them in to the NCPD for what happened, or I could turn them over to the Arasaka Corporation for the same thing. Then again, I knew Hanako had been desperately trying to wean her brother off of the joytoy he adored and had kept Evelyn being alive a secret.

I also knew that Evelyn has suicidal thoughts about her situation and she was putting on a false front to stop her girlfriend from worrying about her, not realizing that Judy easily saw through it and went along with it, just because she didn't know what else to do about it or how to help her.

Nearly everyone in Night City had a sad story to tell, so this was just one more in a long line of them. The only difference was, this one was right in front of me and I knew that if I didn't do anything, both of their futures were going to be bleak.

I mentally cursed at myself for being so softhearted and sighed out loud. Both women stopped their whispered conversation and looked over at me. They saw the resigned look on my face and wondered what I was going to do.

“What do you want the name of your entertainment company to be?” I asked them and took out the portable cyberdeck, the box of BDs, and placed my BD on top of them.

“WHAT?!?” Both of them gasped.

“I'll arrange to have Evelyn changed to a new look and make her a new ID. She can even keep her first name, just so she'll never mess up.” I told them and they looked shocked. “I have connections with Atlas Incorporated and City Hall.”

“What are you... are you crazy?” Judy asked me.

“A little.” I said and looked at Evelyn. “You'll become the CEO of a Braindance Company that produces high end BDs that cater to all walks of life and I'll give Judy a library that you can dole out at a moderate pace to give your company a meteoric rise in the entertainment industry. Money, fame, notoriety... it can all be yours.”

“Wh-why?” Evelyn asked with tears in her eyes.

“Because.” I said and didn't say anything else. I took out a small switchblade knife and tossed it to Judy. Her bindings were almost immediately cut and discarded. She didn't rub her wrists as she stood and looked at the small knife in her hand.

“Judy?” Evelyn asked and her lover turned to her. “Would you mind if... if I... take your name? I can't become the CEO of Alvarez Entertainment without it.”

Judy caught her breath at the offer and almost stumbled as she dropped the switchblade and walked over to her bed, then she knelt and gave Evelyn a look full of longing, then she put her arms around her and gave her a tender kiss, just like the ones I had given to Denise and her friends. Evelyn made a needy sound and used her good arm to hug Judy back.

While they were busy, I used my hack into City Hall to register another business and paid the appropriate bribe, since it wasn't going to be put under the Atlas Incorporated umbrella. That would also distance it from the stigma any company had under the Atlas Incorporated name.

I also opened an account with the same bank I used and deposited a million eurodollars into it for operating capital and to buy supplies. If they wanted to rent another space, I was sure they would ask if I knew a good place to use. It wasn't like I didn't have a lot of free space on the huge space station being built up in orbit.

I would need to spend some of my spare time making a few BDs of my various adventures and they should pour in the eddies like water down a waterfall. When Judy's top came off, I stood and walked over to the door of her work area. Neither woman noticed me as they started going at it, making out and pawing at each other, so I left before they remembered I was there.

I went back to the room Denise and her friends were in and created a tray of drinks. I entered the room and saw the four of them lazily chatting about work tomorrow and how they had so much to do to make up for missing the entire day today. I set the tray down and I was warmly welcomed back into the booth and joined their conversation.

I felt satisfaction, both as Atlas and as Veder, as our intermixing lives had created a whole that seemed to be complete.

Night City only had a few other things to handle, like the gangs in Pacifica that had kept to themselves and weren't causing trouble, even though they had no reason to keep to themselves. Letting bygones be bygones seemed to be what they were doing, so they would be left alone until they caused something, then Atlas would step in to take care of things.

Of course, once the space station was finished, it would give me the vantage point to start looking over the various problems the rest of the world had, like contaminated water, the wastelands spread all over, and a strained ecosystem that needed a severe boost. The other gangs in other cities and any abusive corporations would eventually be dealt with as well.

For now, I would live my life and would enjoy myself. I would graduate in a couple of months and things would really start picking up. I should probably buy the building the penthouse apartment was in, just so I wouldn't have to move if I ever quit my job as Veder, not that I intended to.

Arthur Jenkins was a bit too gung-ho and brash to stay as the Counter-Intelligence Director for long, since his ambition far outweighed his talent. As soon as he relieved me of garbage duty, he was going to be quite surprised when I blackmailed him into retiring with all the dirt I had dug up on him from his own records.

The thought made me smile and I leaned over to give Denise a kiss, then I thanked her. She didn't ask me why, she just accepted it and kissed me back.

*

My reintegrated self appeared in the grey space between worlds and received the memories of my dimensional clone for the rest of my life spent there. What I noticed right away was there was no welcoming message, no congratulations on all the work I had done, and no Karma Point total shown for how much the future of the people of the Cyberpunk 2076 world had changed for the better.

Fate's little blue box appeared. You are the master of your own fate.

“I'm the master of you, you mean?” I asked and she didn't answer. “What's my Karma Point total?”

The box changed and showed an infinity symbol.

“That could mean I have so many it's incalculable, or it means I have nothing.” I stated, just to see if there would be any reaction. There was none. So, I concentrated on it and the infinity symbol changed to a 10 to the power of a million zeroes that broke through the little text box and shot off into the distance.

After another moment of concentration, the numbers changed and became a 1. A bit more thinking led to the numbers becoming 5,000 and two options appeared below it, with the writing passing out of the broken text box like the numbers had.

1. Relive your lives as they were, or change what you want, for the better for you or for the better for everyone else.

2. Become the same protagonist in the next reality over and step back into those worlds, fully protected and without the other you knowing about it.

Son of a bitch. I thought and read both options again, and then again. After a lot of thinking about it, the first one's restrictions kind of made sense. If things went too well for me, others in my life seemed to suffer. If things went badly for me and it was my life that was wrecked or ruined in some way, then things went well for everyone else.

The second option, though... that had possibilities. I had done something similar several times already, only they were in worlds where I had either been killed prematurely or was forced to leave, which I thought let me slip back into the protagonist's role of those stories and I could continue living those lives like I should have been able to originally.

When my eyes went back to that first option, I sighed. That was why it had been such a mess when I did manage to go back. When I tried to fix things, it just made everything worse, probably because I was the protagonist and everything I did affected the story, both the good and the bad.

But, now that I knew about it, the second option was definitely looking more and more appealing. I had made many, many mistakes over my various lifetimes and there was so much to try and fix. What to do first, though? If what I did wasn't known by the original me there, then how would my actions change anything? Or would they?

How would I know if they did? I had the memories of my dimensional clones and they haven't been altered in any way after this revelation, which meant they still happened that way. Was that a limiting factor in the scale of what I could change? Only what the original me didn't know about or saw?

The presence of my reading buddy appeared next to me and they hugged me. I hugged them back and nuzzled their neck, with the decades of affection I had with Denise and her friends prevalent in my mind. They let out a little giggle and my clothes faded away, so I decided to take a break from my existential crisis and had some fun with her.

After quite a long time, and a lot of giggling on her part as she teased me and made things a lot more entertaining, I knew what to do first to test this new aspect of my powers.

“Thank you.” I said and kissed her passionately.

She let out a happy moan and then faded away.

“Right, I need to do some prep work first.” I said and the gift shop appeared around me. I bought a few essential things, like new books, a few toys and games, some new t-shirts, and a particular something that I was sure would earn me a little recognition when it was needed.

After I gathered what I wanted, I dressed in normal clothes, jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt that I had worn in the Worm universe. I tucked my other purchases into my inventory, including the expensive special one, and chose the right world, the appropriate time to appear, and what my physical appearance was going to be.

With everything ready, I initiated the procedure to take me to the world next door to the one I was aiming for and then I would step back into the one I had left a very long time ago. With a little luck, and the assurance I was protected by my powers, the original me would never know I was there.