Why did he ask?  Well, it was for simple reasons: He wanted to know just how human Voice really was.  They say that cyberization dehumanizes you, to the point where being rather low on essence either means that you're cold and indifferent or even possibly insane.  The final fate of Miki was rather important when you consider that it was a machine who decided what the last rites were going to be.  Joe felt somewhat satisfied to know that Voice gave enough of a damn to bury her, even more so that she insisted on taking Diesel for a ride to Japan.  That said enough on the true motivations of their friendly decker.  In the words of some people maybe fifty years back: 'Seems legit'.

However, not all of them were sold on this, not even in the 'Frag, alright already...' kind of sense.  There was Steph, AKA Fashion, their Face.  Joe knew right off that this wasn't going to fly well with her, 'cause he knew [i]her[/i].  Intimately, you could say.  It was an on-and-off thing.  They were currently on, but this was probably going to jam it in the off position rather hard, especially since she was teetering on the cut-and-run option.  He and her didn't have any incredibly-deep attachments.  It was good fun, sack time, that kinda' thing.  Joe was willing to let that go if it helped her stay alive, and to him that meant talking her down so she didn't leave.

[color=8dc73f]"I'll give you some [i]practical[/i] bullshit, then.  Rule number one is that you never deal with a dragon, but the seldom-used Rule [i]1-A[/i] is that if the dragon ain't giving you much of a choice, you'd better [i]appease[/i] the dragon, or at least [i]pretend to[/i] so escape is possible."[/color]

He was appealing more to her Shadowrunning side, to their Face, so that their Face could reason this one out in her head.

[color=8dc73f]"You know megacorps, Fashion.  They see something they want, they'll throw [i]anything[/i] at it to get it.  They're throwing [i]us[/i] 'cause they've got leverage, and because they don't want whoever's there to know it was them.  They'll clamp down extra-hard on this, which means extra-hard on all of us if they don't get what they want.  Maybe they don't pay you any mind if it's just you leaving, but maybe they do.  This storm is big business.  They're breaching it and the dragon [i]wants[/i].  If nothing else, we got some unknowns here.  We'll need your experience to see who we're dealing with and figure out the right approach with the people involved.  That's [i]your[/i] sidearm, one we're not as gifted in, most of the time."[/color]

That was a bit of flattery at the end, there.  She was the Face for a reason, not simply because she hated killing.  She was more skilled at all the etiquitte of [i]dealing[/i] with corporate types and stuff, whereas the rest of 'em were somewhere between marginal to 'winging it'.  Even Joe's speech there was taking up a fair deal of thought process to keep the lady on the payroll, 'cause he thought she was otherwise gonna end up sadly dead somewhere.  He was leaving what he thought of the plan - Not bad, he guessed - on the backburner for now as he handled this.