Brian axed his way into the back maintenance area of some high-class beauty salon conference hall or other from some alleyway. It was a pretty simple break-in. Just axe the door, and tell the hacked lock to unlock if it survived.
Apparently the front was a happening place, but he wasn't here for that. Up there, people trained Charisma, paid for special perks, made aesthetic changes, and high-level NPCs loitered with bodyguards whenever the game needed them to offer something that'd be a tough fight inbetween highway robbery and a whole mansion battle.
As opposed to the gaudy mess of cosmetics, showy clothes, and pretty wait-staff up front, the back was pretty utilitarian and chill. Mostly stacked shelves of storage areas in concrete, wood, and old paint. Presumably it was where NPCs would loiter on break since the styling was done near the front side, but with their work ethic it'd be rare to do much. Brian had unfortunately missed the memo about what was here to steal. Since most of the cosmetics and for-sale clothes were up front where they could be used, this was mostly raw materials and spare parts. Backup hair-dryers, lightbulbs, spare dye in popular colors, and...reference books? Into the sack they went anyway, terrible haul or not. He had the Strength for direct inventory space, but a bag of stuff outside that inventory could be used as a flail. And knocking somebody over made it real easy to axe 'em.
Back out the door, Brian skedaddled down a few blocks to where attention would probably fade. He clambered up an unsecured fire escape to avoid any random encounter blokes and checked out what he could fence. Most of it was this season's catalog and a jumble of stuff he didn't need.... Oh, there was a perk manual mixed in there. Just had to crack it open, read a few pages, and it'd slot right into his ability set. Worth a read before selling, even if he didn't use it.
"Charisma: Friendly Ribbing..." he read off slowly but surely. "Auto-announcing 'It's just a prank bro.' and similar lines allays suspicion from failed checks. You can choose to hit without damaging. This prevents a detected attack from aggroing anyone in the area and allows status effects to be applied selectively. Detected theft attempts and item knock-aways have to remove the item from the area or accessibility before being treated as hostile: NPCs treat it as playfully examining their stuff even if you pull it off them. Grappling and inappropriate touching declared non-damaging is interpreted as acceptable horseplay. Public indecency and littering are considered a cheap joke for laughs until you decide otherwise, and cleanup won't mind the work. Increases success on low-value checks, such as mooching consumables and low-value clothes."
With a soft 'bing' of enlightenment, Brian dropped the finished book back into his bag and smiled the smile of someone who can get away with shit. Suddenly he could test his Axe of Hacking out without a fight...
He climbed another fire escape floor and into the unlocked window of the local fence man, Buddy. Buddy was an overwhelmingly generic bloke of an NPC, almost average. Bland squarish face, bit too much brown hair to be balding, not quite fat enough to declare a dad bod, unambiguously adult but hard to tell the age of (in his thirties, allegedly). Today he was dressed up in a flimsy light blue button-down that had seen better days, jeans that were those better days but not that classy, and white socks that lived with apartment carpet. He was standing around drinking coffee as boring TV blared on about the crime wave leaderboards. The fence man gave Brian a blank smile because he'd been a repeat customer and not robbed him back.
Really, Buddy owned this building. Six-kinda-seven story mixed use, about half empty and the other half apartments, offices, and Buddy's Antiques. Would have been tall and out of place in ol' San Francisco but maybe not Paris, but here it didn't stick out too bad among the midline between rich plexes and middle class rows. And because he was such a good fence, most criminals didn't try a thing against him. Miles more for turning bulk stolen goods into cash across petty dealers or syndicate mooks? Boring. But if nobody else was here...
"Hey Buddy," Brian started, "Can I fence some stuff here 'stead of downstairs?"
"Sure, man." Buddy said, flicking up a videogamey exchange menu to demarcate ownership. Brian handed him the whole bag and the screen shifted accordingly. This prompted Buddy to put it on a cart in the next room and return with a stack of cash. Bit taller than usual, probably because of that skill book, but Brian pocketed it all the same into his real inventory.
Buddy didn't really have much more to say and so sat down on his couch, drinking the rest of his coffee and blankly watching TV. The crime leaderboards rolled over to a few top-value shootings, apparently a battle between an NPC syndicate that had popped up right in one of the PC-led syndicate territories. Gang violence as usual, huh.
Brian sat on the couch next to him, still meriting no comment. NPCs' talkativeness varied wildly, and Buddy tended to speak more when spoken to or near shop NPCs rather than ambiently. Well, now or never. Brian reached out, and...
"Haha," he found himself saying in the automatic sort of way guided perks bullshitted together as he brazenly tried to unbutton Buddy's shirt, "why'dya wear a shirt to this weather?"
Buddy gave an equally dumb autogenerated response "I guess it's getting hot in here." as it was not in fact hot in here, though maybe he was referring to the coffee. He just...let Brian pull it off, moving his arms and back a bit so it didn't get caught on anything. Brian could tell from a sense of ownership and abstraction that if he just ran off it'd be treated as a theft attempt. But, he could probably dunk it anywhere in the apartment and Buddy would either pick it up later or leave it be until shirt-wearing became relevant. Item unequipped.
Brian looked incredulously down at the shirt he was holding, before tossing it onto an unused nearby chair. He'd heard about abilities like this, though. Charisma types who'd charm the shirts off people's backs a lot more literally and keep 'em too, so this wasn't the best on offer. Thieves who could dexterity check armor off people unnoticed. Smarts with nudifiers.
Okay, nother detectable theft check. How about a menu-based auto-grab this time? He leaned forward, invisibly highlighted through Buddy's inventory, equipment section, and...
"Got yer undies." he said, suddenly finding himself twirling tighty-whiteys that he dropped aside.
"It's called going commando?" Buddy said, shifting a bit on the couch as if flaunting hips and failing, making a snide grin before going back to TV commercials. NPC dialog logic was not the best, but he tried.
Brian got down and yanked Buddy's pants off with a cry of "Pants'd!" and Buddy's shrug at an exposed but unimpressive flaccid cock. Brian just left the pants on the floor. Wow, this perk was really working as advertised in the theft department....but how about attacks?
The axe materialized in his hand. Buddy, apathetic, simply leaned over a bit to get a better look at the TV instead of the axe murderer.
With a hefting of the +3 Axe of Hacking, and a loud "Can I AXE you a question?", it was embedded in Buddy's head, phased partially through damagelessly. A thin line of control meant the axe was still equipped to Brian for a medium retrieval distance, and an attributes menu popped up accordingly as Buddy was now hacked into. Since the axed-into look was kinda unsettling and Buddy might claim items left in him unattended, Brian returned his favored axe to inventory.
"What's up?" Buddy auto-responded, bemusedly and at full health, undamaged save for being hacked into.
"Uh...Care for a bout of roughhousing?" Brian managed to chain together. "Testing a new perk and all that."
"Go ahead, go ahead, I won't bite." Buddy said amicably. NPCs were really chill about the whole game mechanics thing.
Brian sat back down on the couch, data panel swiveling for his availability. Messing with Buddy's HP wasn't advisable...but how about something else? He scrolled through menus, looking around for something that wouldn't cause issues, and found current arousal level. He mentally slid the meter up on that, and...so went up Buddy's dick. Huh. Buddy pretty much ignored Brian and started stroking himself. Guess it wasn't public indecency if he was in his own home...but a quick check of privacy values revealed that Buddy's were just that low anyway. It hadn't come up because normally he wore clothes. Brian's new perk had apparently suppressed Buddy's little willingness to care anyway. Buggy little bloke, huh. Well, he could change the values around that later if he wanted.
Rather than a charisma check to engage sexual activity, a grab attack intended to be non-damaging. That being grabbing Buddy's dick a bit too roughly and then relying on damagelessness to not have just punched the guy in the nuts. The mechanical nuance was subtle, but a set of context values notified 'Roughhousing (NoDmg Brawl Animations)' through the hack.
"Raring to go for a round, huh?" Buddy said, gently bapping Brian back with a few weak punches that didn't hurt and barely pushed him back. "Maybe a round of wrestling!"
Brian mentally unequipped his own clothing, a vague flash of light dematerializing it as Buddy proceeded to lightly push him over onto the couch. Some grinding and pushing of insufficient force led to Buddy's boner frotting Brian in a scene more silly than sexual. A bit of lightweight fun Brian hadn't had in a while got him up himself. He got bored and decided to max Buddy's arousal and hold it there for a bit, spraying hot cum over the both of them. Buddy shuddered and thrusted a lot more realistically than he had been going, until Brian felt it was making a mess and let him stop, but took it in a lot of stride.
"Woo, I think I've gotten dirty." Buddy said, ignoring the details of how that'd happened. "I'm gonna go take a shower."
As Buddy got up to head for the bathroom, Brian decided to join him. Buddy showered off and more or less ignored the guy whose boner was poking him from behind after a cheesy "Guess I am just happy to see you!" auto-generated line was parried with "At least it's not a gun." There wasn't any particular resistance to fucking him, or cumming inside, and by the time Buddy got out of the shower to go put some clothes on Brian had gotten some ideas.
Buddy had been a fruitful experiment, but one that was about as high-profile as Brian had been willing to go. This big trick was weaponry and perks from upper mid-level stores. The Smarts perks that made it tenable were way more likely to show up in a hacker build that conventionally hit the gym, likely to pick up a cheap Hacking weapon as a backup anyway. The Charisma trick to use it more freely than he'd been thinking of was store stock, if they'd had an ally with money or broke in themselves. Really, Brian was punching above his weight class via this two-shot kill bug as it was. It was entirely reasonable that the bigger syndicates had some way around him, somebody smart or charismatic and not just in terms of game skills. So maybe not worth changing such a high profile target.
Brian hopped out Buddy's window and went down the fire escape, thinking about areas of the city. Most of the major markets were crawling with players and NPC shootouts. Where's somewhere low-attention...