Meanwhile With the Other Champions IV

Aleksander Yurinov hadn't originally had that name. He'd been born Michael 'Mickey' Sullivan in Boston in nineteen-ninety. He'd lived in Southie growing up and fell in with a bad crowd. They'd been two-bit hoods, mostly, thinking they were badasses, that they'd be bigshots someday. Then Southie had started getting Gentrified and the tipping point had come in twenty-eleven. Mickey and his buddies had needed to up stakes, as the rent was starting to rise past what they could scrounge together. They'd moved out to Dorchester, where things were still the Wild West when it came to Crime, at least so they'd figured.

Of course, it hadn't taken Mickey long to get into some shit with some already-established gangs. One of his buddies had made the mistake of stealing the wrong guy's car and suddenly Mickey's whole gang had a target put on their asses by the Dominicans out in Blue Hill. They'd had to lam it out of Boston real quick. Mickey wound up in Providence after bouncing around the East Coast for a while, where he'd thought the Dominicans would be too busy trying to muscle out the Haitians to bother with him. If they were, it hadn't taken them long to find him and put a bullet in him. He'd wound up in Providence in twenty-sixteen and the Dominicans found him in twenty-nineteen.

They'd put a bullet in him and he'd apparently been in a coma for six years when the plug'd been pulled. That's when he'd found himself face-to-face with Flidais. Course, he'd thought it was a dream at the time. When a talking stag shows up and tells you they're giving you a bunch of superpowers and sending you out to another world to fight some other guys with superpowers that some other gods had sent out into the multiverse, what are you supposed to think? Either way, Mickey'd wound up in the body of a Russian guy in some Sci-Fi world. Even better, the Russian had been pretty damn connected. He'd been a Hatchetman for the Local Bratva, which went around calling itself the Organiskaya in this world. Either way, Mickey had figured the whole thing was some kind of game. When he'd summoned the Hybrid Robotic Armadillo-Bear, that's when he'd decided.

If this whole thing was some kind of game, he might as well play it to the hilt. It wasn't like any of these people were real at all, he could do what he wanted. Of course, working with the Organiskaya was interesting, so he'd keep doing it. Besides, it was everything he'd ever wanted to be. He was a bigshot here, after all, a ranking member of a major organization. That had been what he and his buddies had always wanted to be back in Boston, after all. Even if this place was just some dumb game world, it was nice to be in a game world where he had what he'd wanted plus superpowers to boot.

Of course, the Organiskaya had sent him in to do what Hatchetmen do eventually. That wasn't something Mickey'd had a whole lot of experience in doing back in his Old Life, but Superpowers covered for a lot, and he'd been here long enough to get told about this world by Flidais by the time he'd been sent out. The Deer God-Thing had visited him in his dreams a week after he arrived and straight up told him to look for someone going by V when they arrived in Night City a few months after he showed up. Apparently, he or she would be Mickey's, or Aleksander's now, as the Russian whose body he was piloting's name was, ticket to the next world in the Game. Given he had a few months to practice using his powers till this V person showed up, he figured that he'd be right as rain when they did.

So he'd taken the opportunity to get used to his powers, and to start getting used to going by Aleksander now that he had this Russki's body. This stuff, the Celestial Menagerie, was Bonkers, it hadn't taken him long to figure that out. Aleksander, as he'd now whole-heartedly embraced the new life he'd been given, could not only summon a Robot Hybrid Armadillo-Bear, but he could also grab some of its strength for himself. When he got his next summon, an Ankylosaurus, he'd been able to grab some of its toughness for himself as well, same for when he'd manifested the Imp Thing that his powers had told him was called a Salt Mephit, he could grab some of its agility and speed.

Effectively, that meant that not only could Aleksander summon badass monsters, but he could also become superhumanly strong, tough, agile, and quick to boot. When he'd been sent in to take out a bunch of Cartel Goons that had been poaching on the Organiskaya's Territory, Aleksander hadn't thought twice about it. The Organiskaya had sent him to a location, and he'd summoned his monsters, which he'd named Ursa for the Armadillo-Bear, Boris for the Ankylosaur, and Chort for the Mephit. He'd wiped the floor with the Cartel Goons, there hadn't been a single Cartel Goon left in that safehouse.

After grabbing some of the cash and synthcoke in the Safehouse for himself, he'd called in the cleaners and headed out to celebrate a job well done. The Organiskaya had been so pleased, in fact, they'd sent him out again and again to clean out safehouses full of Cartel Goons. Pretty soon, he'd added more minions to his collection, though he rarely had to use them. First, his menagerie had been joined by Sasha, a Giant Magical Spider his Powers insisted was called a Sword Spider. Next had come Tigre which was something his powers called a Mantessan Panthac, some kind of Alien big cat. Tigre had been followed by Leon, another Alien Big Cat his powers insisted was called a Nexu. That had been capped off with Milla, a woman made out of solid copper who was somehow Magically animate, a Copper Golem, according to his powers.

Of course, he had swiftly found he could not keep more than three of these minions on the field at once, something that Aleksander disliked, but which his powers had told him would go away in time. He mostly stuck with Ursa, Boris, and Chort for missions. And there had been a lot of missions in the few months he had been in this world. Mostly, he had been sent against the Cartel, cleaning out safehouses and allowing the Organiskaya an easy path to claiming control over Cartel territory. He'd been given his last Cartel assignment shortly after he'd gone to see Old Lady Wakako, who was the Local Fixer in Japantown and connected with the Tyger Claws, a gang that the Organiskaya had recently allied to.

See, Aleksander had gotten the feeling that he should be putting out feelers for this V person, and who better to do that than the Lady whose business model ran on gossip and word of mouth? He'd been sent against the last of the Cartel Presence in Japantown, Hell, in Night City as far as he knew, shortly after he'd gotten that idea, but not before the next dream. It was weird, he'd been stuck inside the body of a version of V as she'd gone through a two-week period of her life that ended in her death. It had involved the heist of some kind of new Cybershard from Arasaka and the fallout of it all. When Aleksander woke up, he realized that he was effectively in a version of the world of a video game that had come out while he'd been in the Coma in his old life.

Regardless, he'd met with Wakako that same day, giving the Old Lady what information he had about V and paying her to keep a lookout. Four days or so after that, he'd gone to the last Cartel safehouse in Night City and utterly cleaned house. Aleksander wasn't going to deny that doing that had felt good, especially after being effectively killed in his last life by Dominicans. As far as he was concerned, though, this closed that chapter of his life. He was free to embrace his new life as Aleksander.

Of course, it wasn't long after that he'd been called into Wakako's Office and told that not only was V not alone, not only had she fallen in with Padre, Jackie Welles, and the Valentinos, but she was traveling with another real person. Someone who seemed to have some sort of super-inventor power. It had Wakako all kinds of scared since the guy had apparently managed to invent chrome that could make him fight like a Full Borg. It just made Aleksander excited to see what the Guy was made of.

Unfortunately, he'd been sidetracked. The Organiskaya had begun expanding into Kabuki and he'd been sent in to sort out a crew from Maelstrom that had tried extorting the black market vendors they'd sent into Allen Street. That hadn't been quite as easy as the stuff with the Cartels had been. For one thing, the Maelstrom had sent in a Full Borg, some woman named Jackknife who had an Old IEC Model Alpha-Class Full Body Conversion. No sooner had she shown up than he'd had to get creative since his go-to of hitting powerful opponents with Chort's Dehydration beam wasn't going to work on a Full Borg.

In the end, she'd almost taken him down. She'd used her super strength to match his own but played considerably dirtier, not afraid to go for the soft tissue. She had just managed to forcibly unsummon Chort, snatching the Mephit out of the air as he attempted to dive bomb her before smashing him down into the pavement hard enough to crater the ground and force Chort to unsummon himself in order to avoid instant death when the first hint of that had come through. Aleksander had rushed her from the side, but Chort's unsummoning back to wherever his minions went when they got unsummoned had drained him of the speed he needed to land a telling blow. She'd managed to turn in time to grab his wrists and pull him into a contest of strength.

Aleksander spat a pejorative for women in the Russian he had somehow learned just from inhabiting this body. That must have amused Jackknife because she let out a synthesized laugh at that.

"You have no idea, Meatbag." She snickered.

Then she smashed her linear frame-powered, metallic, knee right into Aleksander's crown jewels. Honestly, if he hadn't still been drawing on magical toughness from Boris, that would have done some pretty horrific damage. He was still drawing on that Magical toughness, though, so instead of smashing his grapes like the aforementioned fruit, all Jackknife's knee strike actually did was send him staggering backward with a groan of pain. Fortunately for Aleksander, Jackknife didn't press her attack, instead opting to stare at him.

"What? Don't tell me you had them surgically removed?" She questioned.

"Fuck your mother!" Spat Aleksander.

"Not without a dick you won't. Is that it? Are you some sort of Dickless wonder?" Queried Jackknife, mockingly.

"Not dickless, just tougher than usual." Scowled Aleksander.

"That's not tougher than usual, that's tougher than human. I wonder, can you bleed?" Asked Jackknife.

"Cyka Blyat!" Growled Aleksander.

"And now you're just repeating yourself. Oh well, I guess we'll find out soon enough." Sighed Jackknife.

Of course, Aleksander hadn't just been swearing and engaging Jackknife in Banter, he'd also been summoning Sasha. The Giant Spider had managed to crawl up onto the large ceiling of the abandoned warehouse that they were fighting in and that the Organiskaya had been using to move weapons through the black market with. Now the Giant Spider was preparing to strike, and Aleksander had just needed to stall while she got into position.

"You won't be laughing soon." Insisted Aleksander.

"I won't, huh? How is that?" Questioned Jackknife.

"Look up and you'll see." Smirked Aleksander.

"What?" Queried Jackknife.

She looked up in time to see Sasha pounce from the rafters, which was precisely when two more things happened. The first was that the Contingent Summoning he'd had Milla under since engaging in the test of strength with Jackknife went off, summoning the Copper Golem into existence next to Aleksander. The second was that Aleksander willed Sasha and Milla to Exchange Places using that particular part of his powers that allowed him to switch around his Summons' positioning. Now, instead of a large, but not too impactful Giant Spider falling from the rafters, it was instead five-point-six tons of magically animated copper.

"Son of a bitch!" Spat Jackknife, just as Milla struck out at her from above with a falling punch.

A clanging noise rang out from Magic Copper Fist meeting alloy cyberskull as Milla slammed Jackknife into the cement of the warehouse floor, causing a massive crater about ten feet wide in the pavement and denting Jackknife's Cyberskull. Sparks were flying from smashed-in optics as the Full Borg flicked her wrist and popped out a set of Wolvers Cyberblades from her knuckles before trying desperately to shank the Golem on top of her. It didn't work, predictably, though she managed to scratch grooves into Milla's body, solid copper was just too much for those blades. Then Jackknife tried to throw Milla off of her. That didn't work either. Her Linear Frame only really let her lift half a ton, not five-point-six of them.

Aleksander stalked forward, grabbing Jackknife's flailing, bladed, Cyberarm at the wrist, putting his boot on her Shoulder, and yanking, all while Milla had her knee on Jackknife's torso, keeping her pinned. With the superhuman strength he had gotten from Ursa, Aleksander's pulling caused the Cyberarm to groan.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Asked Jackknife.

Aleksander didn't respond, just pulled harder. The groaning of Jackknife's Cyberarm got louder and more insistent, as Jackknife began to panic.

"Wait, Stop! We won't fuck with you guys again! I promise, just stop pulling!" Begged Jackknife.

"Too late!" Snarled Aleksander as Jackknife's Cyberarm gave way in a shower of fluids, sparks, and torn metal.

"A shame, I thought from your pleading I might have gotten something vital. No matter, I'll just keep ripping until I do." Spat Aleksander.

Jackknife's Screams as Aleksander literally ripped her to pieces echoed through the neighborhood. Suffice it to say, Maelstrom didn't fuck with the Organiskaya again. That, plus the job he did against the Cartels made Aleksander the Organiskaya's top Hatchetman. When their Tyger Claw Allies called on the Organiskaya to push all the Animals and Scavengers out of Japantown, it was Aleksander at the forefront of that operation. That kept him very busy for the next couple of weeks as he tore into the Animals and the Scavengers. When the Valentinos finally pushed Sixth Street out of Night City, he'd been sent in to grab what he could from Sixth Street's former territory in Northern Vista Del Ray before the Valentinos could get it, alongside a guy from the Tyger Claws, Takeda Ken, who had some fancy new Wetware and some sort of electric sword. Ken was good, but he wasn't as good as Aleksander, not when you factored in what Aleksander could do with his minions.

Regardless, Aleksander had been kept busy, so busy that he almost didn't have time to drop by Viktor Vektor's Clinic in Little China to see if he couldn't catch V and his new target while they were there. Almost. As it was, he had to postpone a couple of days, but he was glad he did, just so he could drop in and see his fellow contestant. The conversation they'd had, though had been disappointing. The Guy thought these were real people, apparently. He hadn't yet cottoned on to the fact that the two of them were the only real people here. Everyone else was an NPC, literally, even.

He'd show the guy, Ernesto, what the truth really was before everything was all said and done. Aleksander swore he would. He'd make Ernesto acknowledge that this was all bullshit before the end, that none of these people were real people, that nothing but them and the contest that the Gods had going on mattered at all. Then, when he'd finally admitted the truth, Aleksander would kill him. He still had a Contest to win, after all. For now, though, he would continue to run operations for the Organiskaya. Doing that would put him into active conflict with Ernesto sooner or later. There really was no need to rush this.

Besides, if Aleksander was any judge, things would presumably, only get harder after he won here and he wanted to savor easy mode against an idiot like Ernesto while he could. . .

XXXX

AN: All right, so here's the last of the other Champion Interludes. Here we see Aleksander Yurinov, Champion of Flidais. Notably, he's the only other one of the Champions whose Patron bothered to send him to another world with a Fresh ID. He also, unfortunately, was kind of psycho even before getting sent into a world that seems fictional. Accordingly, he's decided that nobody on Cyberpunk Earth is real aside from himself and Big E.

He arguably only works for the Organiskaya still because being a high-ranking member of a major organization was all he ever wanted back on Earth. That and his goals align with theirs for the time being. He's not a good person, and unlike Yumi who also wasn't a good person prior to getting her powers, he's not exactly stable, either.

At any rate, in the next chapter, we'll be back with Big E for the fight with the Animals at Lizzie's. I'll also have character sheets for everyone out before then, including Big E, Aleksander, and all the Champions we saw in interludes, along with Images of the Champions from the Interludes as well.

Stay tuned. . .