Chapter Text
The dimly lit bar reeked of cigarette smoke, and spilt beer. Aside from the sounds of boisterous laughter and slurred words that attempted to flirt, the bass of the music was the thing that was rattling Rogue’s skull. A job hadn’t gone particularly well, and the merc that she had leased out for it had landed themselves in the hospital. Fucking gonk thought that they could take on a couple Animals and not get their bones broken in the process. So, not only was one of her mercs down for the count, she also had to deal with the fallout of the client who was more than pissed that their job didn’t get done. The job was supposed to net her two thou, but she was going to be lucky to even see anything.
She sighed heavily as her hand knotted into her dark brown hair, still tipped with teal though it was beginning to fade for good. Her elbow was planted on the bar in front of her while her fingers idly spun the glass of tequila around. The condensation coated her fingers, slipping against the glass with every turn of it.
Round, and round, and round, as she went through every detail of the job that was laid out, and every possibility of outcome. To say she was disappointed would be an understatement. She was disappointed when her son came home from school with a D in math when he was younger. She was disappointed when the bar didn’t have her preferred tequila. She was disappointed when she hit all the red lights in the city instead of the green.
What she was feeling was closer to devastation. A feeling that sat deep in her chest that she was never going to accomplish the things that she wanted to set out to do. Failure had seemed to follow her at every turn, and curve, and swerve, and it began to make her think that it was simply inescapable. She had failed Johnny, she had failed Santiago, in some ways she felt like she had failed her one and only son, and now she was failing at her try at being a Fixer.
A Fixer cooped up in a no-name bar trying to drink those failures away. Hardly anybody knew her name or came to her with high stakes jobs. Doomed to count eddies that went towards rent to her shitty apartment, instead of going towards what she really wanted.
The Afterlife.
A bar that was newly for sale after the previous owner had bit a bullet during a poker game gone wrong. Asking price was more than she usually made in a year, but she had hoped that her life would go on an upswing and somehow she’d scrounge up enough eddies to buy it out. Then, and maybe really only then, she’d be able to actually make it as a Fixer. Someone that people finally took seriously instead of the merc who let Johnny fucking Silverhand die, and pissed off Arasaka. She barely got out of the corpos clutches as it was, the only thing saving her essentially their exile from the NUSA, but she still often found herself looking over her shoulder in the fear that somehow they’d want revenge for what they had done that night.
She gulped down what remained of her tequila, hazy eyes scanning over the crowd at the bar as she wondered what her next steps were. She had to clean up this mess with her latest fucking job, and then after that it was just a waiting game. Waiting for the next rich asshole with too much money to tell her what they needed done.
Rich people never wanted to get their hands fucking dirty. Always had to have plebs to do it for them.
Her holo began to ring with an unknown avatar. What appeared to be an uppercase ‘B’ made out of ivy, the background of it all simply black. A heavy sigh escaped from her lips, knowing that a business call that was made after eight at night usually meant that they wanted somebody dead. As if people in Night City weren’t killed in broad daylight every single day, apparently in the eyes of the rich, murderers could only work at night.
She slapped a twenty down on the bar, pushing herself from the stool to begin to walk out before answering the call.
“Rogue here.” Her husky voice answered hardly above the sound of the music before she pushed herself through the front door of the bar into the humid night air. Her holo feed blipped into vision, a man who was probably only a couple years older than her appearing on the other end. A fitted blue suit was the first thing she noticed, immediately pegging him as a corpo by the set of his shoulders and the grin he had on his face.
“Miss Rogue, very nice to finally catch you.” His voice had a lilt in it that made her skin crawl, knowing that if he was corpo he was probably used to commanding the attention of a room. A voice that demanded that you pay attention to it, or see the unsavoury side.
“I’m not familiar with your name, unfortunately.” She began her walk towards her car, resisting the urge to make a face when he chuckled.
“How rude of me. My name is Michael Beauregard. I’m the CFO over at Biotechnica’s Restorative Division. I was told that you could perhaps help me in a-” he paused with a thoughtful look on his face, obviously deciding what best words to use to draw her in, “well, it’s a rather delicate matter.”
“You heard right.” She leaned against the hood of her car, gaze flickering from side to side to ensure that no unsavoury ears were about to hear the conversation she was about to have.
“Wonderful!” He cleared his throat, cedar brown hair falling into his eyes which he quickly swept away, “Tensions are beginning to mount in the corporate world, and I am beginning to fear what that might mean for my family, and I. Of course, me and Catherine have had our own corporate appointed protection for years, but our daughter doesn’t have any such thing.”
A pause between the two of them in which Rogue didn’t speak in the hopes that he would continue without prompting. A couple seconds ticked by before he began again.
“My hope is that we would be able to hire one of your…what do you call them?...Mercenaries? As something like a bodyguard for our daughter.”
“A bodyguard position?” Rogue nodded, “That shouldn’t be any problem, sir. I could compile a list tonight, and send it to you by tomorrow?”
“Sir? Please, just call me Michael.” He chuckled again, “But yes. That’d be wonderful. We’re not entirely sure what we’re looking for, so we trust your judgement in bringing us the best possible candidates. Could you bring it to our apartment tomorrow, and then we can discuss payment and such?”
Rogue shifted on her feet, her lips in a hard straight line at the idea of strolling into some corpo’s house. She had no idea what might be in store, or if this was even a legit business deal. For all she knew this could be a trap, and she would be leaving it in a body bag.
“Rogue?” He prompted again, “Did I lose you?”
“No, no si-Micheal.” She cleared her throat, “Send me the address, and time, and you’ll see me then.”
“Wonderful!” He clapped his hands together, another grin on his face, “Pleasure speaking with you, Rogue. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone without waiting for a goodbye, leaving Rogue to the silence of the parking lot she was standing in. Her fingers tapped against the hood of her car as she thought, pursing her lips as she once again began running through every possibility and outcome of the situation at hand. If worse came to worse, if it was some type of trap, she was a capable mercenary herself that she may be able to fight her way out of it. A couple of guns were still stashed away in her apartment, but that was the entire matter of if they’d let her bring one into the apartment. If she didn’t have her guns, she wasn’t sure if she could punch her way out of it. She wasn’t old and decrepit by any means, but she had certainly been feeling the ache in her wrists more lately when handling her weapons.
Or, best case scenario: it was a real job.
She’d march into the apartment to the promise of thousands of eddies, and maybe, maybe, this would be the job to finally get her some traction in her Fixer career. After the failure of her most recent one, it felt like it was the ultimatum that was going to decide whether she made it as a Fixer or not. If anything, she was going to have to come up with a preem plan for the Beauregard’s, and even if they didn’t end up hiring one of her mercs, maybe they could get the word out to their other corporate friends?
She had about a dozen mercs that would answer to her, well eleven now that one of them was holed away up in the hospital, and she wasn’t even sure who would be suited best for a job like this.
The car door slammed shut behind her as she slid into her car, hands squeezing her steering wheel while thoughts raced through her mind. This was it. This was going to be the job that made her, or broke her. And only tomorrow would give her the answer of which.