And 2B delivered!
Seriously, she approached the problem thoroughly, sorted through every option, even the far-fetched ones, and when I saw motorcycle riding on the list — proposed as a way to trigger an adrenaline spike, develop reaction speed from fast riding, and other dubious methods (as 2B herself labeled them), but ones that needed testing — something clicked in my head!
By the way, the option of artificially raising adrenaline levels was on there too — purely pharmaceutical.
When I asked what adrenaline even had to do with anything, I was told…
“Something triggered your progress in that fight, and it clearly wasn’t performing techniques or any manipulation of life energy, just as your confidence in further growth from something similar is clearly not tied to those factors either.
Otherwise training with me would have been enough.
So I asked myself what mainly distinguishes our training sessions and fights, for you specifically…
I have here a list of all the chemical compounds a human organism should experience and release in dangerous situations, worked out and analyzed, and I lean toward adrenaline,” came the answer, pedantic as always.
Ahem, so, about that click in my head.
Why did an android who doesn’t understand or know the actual nature of the processes currently happening inside me turn out smarter than me?
Because I really am not assimilating the Jo-Lan style — sure, thanks to the resistances I inherited from Helltaker I’d assumed as much, but I’m assimilating Axel!
And motorcycle riding fits this character’s nature perfectly!
Meaning there’s a high chance that riding a motorcycle really could raise my assimilation percentage simply because it would become an additional point of overlap between our characters.
Especially if I end up enjoying it.
Which isn’t guaranteed, given that news headlines about crashed motorcyclists are literally flashing before my eyes.
And from Gennadiy’s memory too, no less!
Damn it…
that’s scarier than deciding to fight a villain stronger than me.
No!
Don’t you dare go soft!
Lucian, you already pulled it off once, you can do it again!
A motorcycle can’t be scarier than Rhino or Sledgehammer, can it?
Well…
actually it can.
Rhino’s slow, and not every one of Sledgehammer’s attacks is even a threat to an ordinary person.
But if you get up to speed on a motorcycle and something goes wrong, the odds of survival are far worse than against either of those two.
Yeah…
listening to myself, two Marvel villains apparently rank as a lower threat level than a motorcycle — clearly I need to work on my character.
“2B, you’re a genius!
And I’m an idiot,” I said, snapping out of my thoughts and voicing what had crossed my mind a moment earlier.
I shouldn’t really call myself an idiot.
I understand why it happened, but I should accuse myself of narrow-mindedness.
I’d gotten too caught up in the new power, the gacha, life energy, assimilations, plus after a string of incidents — like the attempted robbery, the ease with which the Punisher ended a thug’s life, right under my window, a shootout, and then a chase that ended up back at my house again — it all rather clearly shows that life in this world can end from the smallest stroke of bad luck.
So yes, while that gave me motivation to grow, I focused too much on the combat side of things, on physical development, and neglected everything else.
And yet Kagami gave me a love for burgers, and that gave me percentage points too, if you think about it.
And I understand I had good reasons to focus specifically on the combat side, but…
I overdid it, let’s settle on that.
“Did you notice a possibility for further progress in one of the options?” 2B grasped the point.
I keep saying she’s perfect, don’t I?
“Yes.
Now I just need to figure out where I can rent, or better yet buy, a motorcycle over the Christmas holidays.
As a teenager!
Ugh!” — yeah, my age definitely puts a number of restrictions on me.
Though it also gets me off the hook for plenty, if only by my own reasoning, since “hey, I’m a teenager” is a universal excuse in every era among every people!
Ahem…
no, my parents definitely spoiled me.
“That’s a solvable problem.
I can quickly find the right dealership and place an order under a fake identity, making you a couple of years older, and then wipe the tracks afterward.
However, I can’t help but express doubt regarding your choice.
As I understand it, you decided to test the adrenaline spike theory, but why specifically this method?
It could be quite injury-prone,” 2B said without hesitating for even a moment.
“Yes, but at least it’s not a fight, and it’s still one of the most effective ways to test it.
As for trying it with the pharmaceutical route…
it’s entirely possible there’s something at the psychological level involved too…
Wait!
Hold on right there!
You’re interfacing with the local internet?
And you have hacking skills?” — to say I got scared would be an understatement!
The worst had happened, an AI programmed to protect humanity had glimpsed what humanity gets up to.
Ultron already showed where that leads.
No!
I don’t want to die!
So…
hold on again.
She’s clearly been interfacing with all of this for more than just today.
And it only took Ultron a couple of hours to go off the rails.
And in our case, if anything’s changed over this time, it’s changed for the better.
I mean…
there’s no reason to worry, right?
Maybe I should start trusting this lady a bit more.
“Yes.
I’m not as good as 9S, who can hack an enemy robot right in the middle of combat within fractions of a second, even bypassing low- and mid-tier security.
But some capabilities, especially against primitive twentieth-century technology, my modules do allow me to pull off,” 2B replied to my question, chatting with me in the same calm tone as always, with no idea whatsoever what thoughts had just been racing through my head.
“You’re just so cute!
Stay that way forever!” — I was riding a wave of post-adrenaline euphoria, practically celebrating my second birth…
well, counting the absorption of Gennadiy’s knowledge and gaining the Gacha, my third birth, really.
That’s the more accurate way to put it, since I already had a second one.
That explains my subsequent behavior.
Namely — after saying that, I lunged at the girl, hugged her tightly, and planted a peck on her cheek, sending her into a stupor…
not one of embarrassment, no blush on her face at all, more one of incomprehension.
And also, there’s a chance the hormones are still talking, and I’m the one seeking contact with a girl I like, and Yorha simply can’t not appeal to any sane man, both in looks and character!
Interesting thought, I’ll mull it over at leisure.
But not now — don’t want to ruin my mood.
“Master, you…” “No comment,” I cut her off, embarrassed by my own impulse.
And immediately changed the subject, “let’s get back to motorcycles.
What’s the situation with options?” “Already transferring the available ones to your computer,” Yorha obediently switched gears, not dwelling on the topic or embarrassing me any further.
Have I mentioned she’s perfect?
After that came a long process of choosing a dealership and a motorcycle, and of course the gear to go with it — here I fully supported Yorha, who was worried about my safety.
But it all got sorted out in the end, and a taxi pulled up to the dealership, delivering to it one “Ricardo Milos” — luckily, in this world that particular fellow hadn’t yet “gone viral,” if he’d even show up at all, since Marvel by default isn’t an exact copy of Gennadiy’s Earth.
I figured it’d be funny to introduce myself that way and…
honestly, I’m even a little flattered by the comparison, given I used to be a scrawny little nerd.
There, I also learned the motorcycle had already been paid for — 2B had once again turned out smarter than her “master,” who’d only thought about cash, and only at the moment of walking into the dealership at that, having routed money from my father’s account (whose assets are sort of mine, but sort of not quite, unlike the ones left from my mother) around the restrictions, funneled through a “gray” bank, and paid from a freshly created account.
And here’s the question nagging at me — on one hand, this money already belongs to me, and in a couple of years I’d have full access to it anyway; right now I get a certain percentage disbursed every month.
So I didn’t technically do anything illegal, didn’t steal any money, didn’t break anything.
After all, you can’t steal from yourself, and the fact that such a lump sum went through at once just means I won’t touch its equivalent from the money legally disbursed to me from that account until the amount evens out.
But on the other hand, all these payment maneuvers of 2B’s…
realistically amount to a pretty solid “criminal charge,” don’t they?
So I guess I’m now a criminal without a crime?
Ahem, this, among other things, is part of why I decided to find myself a job — whose first paycheck unfortunately didn’t even come close to covering the cost of the motorcycle.
Maybe I should’ve bought something more modest?
No, something in me is downright indignant at any other option.
Anyway, after that, once all the paperwork was done and the plates issued (at this point one part of me sighed enviously — echoes of Gennadiy surfacing, remembering something from that life), I rode outside on my own two wheels.
And realized that all that protective gear could just be tossed, and my worries had been unfounded.
That feeling of freedom, speed, and a certain kind of joy rising up in my chest, the moment I rode even a little — impossible to compare to anything, impossible to describe, only to feel.
And I also realized…
there it was — love at first ride.
All those pads, shin guards, elbow guards, and other junk went straight into the nearest trash can and I well and truly took off.
The ride captivated me, I was practically drowning in thought to the music of the four-cylinder engine.
When you’re moving through the city — your head goes empty.
On one hand — empty, and on the other, there’s work going on.
You think about the traffic situation and about the bike.
About how the engine grumbles, how it responds when you squeeze the brake lever, how confidently the brand-new, still “unbroken-in” tires hold in the turns.
And every moment you’re praying the bike keeps running, that it doesn’t stall, that it doesn’t break down, that…
When you pull into a gas station, slot the nozzle into the tank, walk off toward the register, you can’t help turning back to look at the bike.
It stands there so picturesquely under the streetlights on this winter night.
Just standing there admiring it, slightly tilted, handlebars turned just a touch, catching little glints of light, the smell of gasoline, an endless magnetism to it.
Gas flows through the rubber hoses, into the tank, mixing with the old 95-octane.
You climb onto the bike with pride, put the helmet on with a broad gesture, start the engine with a light press.
And onward.
For the first time in these past days, I was free of everything.
The grief over my parents’ deaths, the fears for myself and my future, the tension, the not-knowing what my relatives were up to — all of it stayed behind.
Ahem…
anyway, when I got home the following day toward morning (well, noon), 2B was somewhat displeased.
She voiced all the indignation that had built up over my full day’s absence, but I was so relaxed and happy…
that I only reacted to the question “did it produce the desired result?” That’s when I felt ashamed.
I’d completely forgotten about the original goal, having thrown myself entirely into the ride itself.
Sheepishly, I checked the relevant gacha page.
[Axel Manning – 76%] “Yes, it worked,” I sighed in relief, not entirely sure whether it was that I’d simply enjoyed it so much myself, and the assimilation had latched onto some shared character trait and kept climbing nonstop from there, or whether some of Axel’s love for riding had genuinely rubbed off on me.
“Good, shall we go inside, then?” Yorha glanced at me with an unreadably indifferent look, letting me into the house.
“Yeah,” I only just now came back to my senses, walking the bike in behind me.
After that came the festive table…
or rather, its preparation.
Sure, New Year’s isn’t celebrated that heavily in America, but I just wanted to feel at least a bit of that festive atmosphere at the end of the year, which I’d lost a few months back when I was left all alone.
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There are chapters ahead.
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