Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
I like how you have Rebecca recognizing that Motoko is a freak of nature and not a normal person to judge oneself against.
Ghost in the City Cyberpunk Gamer SI
- Thread starter Seras
- Start date
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- Tags
- cyberpunk gamer self-insert
I like how you have Rebecca recognizing that Motoko is a freak of nature and not a normal person to judge oneself against.
I guess Becca will be sorely disappointed when she goes back to Maine and his crew and is stuck doing boring jobs on boring gigs again.
Then like a ray of sunshine, she will get The Call
Motoko: *Hey Becca, we're hitting a massive Raffen convoy and need someone to operate the rocket launcher, you in?*
Then like a ray of sunshine, she will get The Call
Motoko: *Hey Becca, we're hitting a massive Raffen convoy and need someone to operate the rocket launcher, you in?*
Chapter 157
Seras
Well-known member
This room was one I definitely remembered from the game. This was the Scavs rec room, the place they hung out. It also had crates of weapons and other supplies so they were ready for us here.
The lights from Ping gave us numbers, and locations so I didn’t have to call it out.
Six guys.
*Going to frag again. Rebecca you too.* I called as I found a position to post up before. Running into the room. Rebecca and I both stood next to one of the metal security blinds, and once she was ready with Jun and Malcolm both holding the entrance. I hacked the blinds and forced them open.
We both tossed. I made sure to toss my grenade in a different direction from Rebecca towards a different group of people.
Our synergy wasn’t great. I hadn’t thought to have us call out which group to target.
Despite my skill this was a new experience for me, just like it was for most of Section 9. We would have to do some team training soon.
The side thoughts were blown away with the explosions of two grenades, and the screams of agony from dying gonks.
Jun and Malcolm both charged. Malcolm I noticed as I turned to follow was hugging directly behind Jun. Using him as cover and rapid firing into groups that Jun wasn’t focused on.
Good work!
Rebecca and I came around a second later, and her smile was already stretching across her face as she let loose.
The Ajax roared and she caught two in a spray of bullets that weren’t fast enough to hide behind some crates in the middle of the room they were using as cover.
It wouldn’t work against me either.
I leapt straight up, my head nearly touching the ceiling as I raised my copperhead and just fired into them from above. More Scavs were killed, and I think our assault finally started breaking any hope the scavs had of winning. They started running, not many of them got far.
Not with everyone shooting into their fleeing backs.
Rebecca had climbed up on top of a crate and was laughing hysterically as she went full auto down the tunnel the Scavs were trying to flee down.
I just chased after them while firing. The copperhead tight to my shoulder as I raced forward firing at the fleeing gonks.
One dropped, I took a second to lower the barrel and confirm the kill by blowing out the back of his head. Then moved on. I could hear Rebecca struggling down from the crate behind me as Jun continued to beat a poor Scav into a pulp.
Even without looking I knew he was already dead.
*Jun focus up!*
But that was all the attention I was willing to give.
I turned the corner down the hall, and some of the scavs had been smart enough to turn to try and shoot me.
I juked and my Copperhead jerked in my grip as the silent rounds started tearing out of the barrel.
I felt a round wing me, and then another got me in the chest, but I was wearing armor.
They weren’t.
A second later the hallway was clear. None of them had escaped.
“Motoko!”
*Jun. Comms you gonk!* I yelled at him over the call and he slowed to a stop and seemed to regain some of his humanity as he saw me perfectly fine and glaring at him… Oh wait I was wearing the tech gogs with my helmet. He couldn’t see me glaring.
*Right… Right. You okay?*
*I’m fine. Check! Any injuries?*
*Nope I’m fine.*
*Didn’t get touched.* Malcolm and Rebecca both confirmed and then I looked at my gonk brother.
*Do I need to pull you out?*
*It’s just some scratches.* He denied.
Yeah the bullet hole in his arm was not a scratch.
But I noticed the old Kang Tao armor had actually caught a few rounds for him. Even if he had done everything he could to show off his plastic abs.
I rolled my eyes and tossed him a roll of bandages.
*Cover those.*
*I’m fine.* He tried to argue and I just cut him off.
*Do it or leave.*
He grumbled and after a minute did as he was told.
*Everyone gather back up. Let’s finish clearing this place. We aren’t done.*
*Awesome!* Rebecca cheered out as she ran down the hall. I quirked an eyebrow.
She now had a Saratoga strapped to her back.
*What?*
*Nothing.* I said, chuckling quietly as I focused up. We weren’t done.
—---
Ichinose
The stairs had not been easy to maneuver down, but he had done it. The Minotaur was staring into the doors of the elevator just waiting for someone to be stupid enough to come up.
*Anything up there Hiromi?*
*Nope, still clear.* She said and he relaxed a little. Controlling the Minotaur was an interesting experience. Despite the fact he was still just sitting in the driver's seat of his van it felt like he was actually far away.
Hiromi watching over him at least made this doable. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to get killed because he was focused on the Minotaur, but then again what kind of idiot would lose complete track of his surroundings without someone watching over them in a dangerous area?
The elevator shifted. He could ‘hear’ it through the Minotaurs pickups.
*Someone is using the elevator.* He called out both in the channel between Hiromi and him, and to Motoko’s squad.
God thinking about it in terms like that still caught him off guard. This whole thing. This wasn’t some group of gonk kids fucking around. This was a corp level op.
They were badasses.
*Not one of us. If anyone is in there, take them out.* Motoko answered back cooly, not a hint of the strain of being in combat in her voice.
Once again Ichi just had to shake his head. Motoko Kusanagi was an enigma, she had come back so different from the coma, and that had only grown with the time since. It was almost hard to remember what she used to be like.
But it was her almost clinical detachment when dealing with violence that still made him nervous.
Motoko the gonk that didn’t like alcohol, and would happily get into arguments about the best character in a movie with Malcolm. Would in a second transform into a killer. He had never understood the idea of a ‘cold blooded killer’ before. Every murder he had ever seen had been passionate acting out, or just gang stuff which was usually full of shouting and yelling.
Although he knew Jotaro had been the same, but seeing that look on Motoko’s face as she talked about murdering her enemies always made Ichi… Not nervous. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he was… Wary of her.
He watched the elevator doors open, and five scavs stepped out. These were the leaders. The netrunner among them told Ichi that. The fact they were escaping was rather telling as well.
He felt his HMG’s activate. The targeting software easily pinging all five.
“FUCK!” The Netrunner managed to scream as the group realized what it was that was standing in the shadows in front of them.
Then Ichi fired.
Yeah. This was the fun part.
They tried. One scav must have some training, he raised a Metel the clunky Techtronika revolver fired twice before he had so many holes in him that the pistol fell from his grip.
*Five Scavs took the elevator. They’re dead.* He called out and he could hear Hiromi cheer. He could imagine her pumping her fist at that.
*Confirmed.* Motoko offered back, once more calm and controlled despite the fact he could vaguely hear gunfire still coming from down below.
He settled in again. Motoko had this under control.
—--
I felt like I had no control over what was happening.
Jun was once more racing off. Malcolm was doing his best to stay with him using him as cover. Rebecca had gone completely gun crazy and was just firing full auto at everything that moved.
I was forced to run multiple positions and tasks.
That scav aiming at Jun’s back? Quickdraw the Burya fire twice.
Rebecca running out of ammo and struggling to reload with how many weapons she now had strapped to her?
Jump up and tackle her off the table she had found to give her some height. Cover her with my body so the return fire from the scavs hit me and not her. Land, and fire through the cover at the fucker that just shot me.
Reload Burya, ensure Rebecca was okay visually. Rise.
Fire into fucking dirty scavs until they die.
“Sorry.” I heard quietly as I looked back and saw Rebecca.
The fury was quenched and I was cool once more.
“It’s fine. We work as a team to watch out for each other. We all have things to learn.” Then because I was just holding my Burya I reached out a hand for her. She had landed on her ass after everything. “We aren’t done yet.”
She looked up at me, and smiled evilly. “Right!” And then I was hauling her back to her feet, and we went to town.
This last section of the Scav base was a fucking maze. Broken walls. Scaffolding. Large machines to hide around.
There weren’t that many Scavs down here, but they were all hiding in nooks and crannies to ambush us.
Thankfully Ping still worked, and between Jun and I we hunted them all down, pulling them out and murdering them mercilessly.
Especially after we checked the side rooms and found all the killing rooms.
Or rather the Scavs BD rooms. The horrific locals were something I expected, but it made Jun go real quiet and I could see him tighten his hands over and over. The view had Rebecca lose it too. Malcolm though was probably inured to seeing Scav holes. He just kept trying to kill them.
But finally we cleared the entire underground. Each corner was checked, and we went through the whole complex, including in rooms that I remember from the game had been ‘dead’ doors. Many of the side paths were full of gear or equipment, or just corpse storage.
But it was done.
*Looks like we are clear down here. Hiromi, Malcolm, let’s move onto the most important part. Looting.*
I got a laugh from Malcolm at my words, but Rebecca mostly gave me a funny look when I said the most important part.
Obviously Maine didn’t know how to make the real eddies. There was a lot of gear down here.
—--
Ichi and I switched places, although I didn’t have the Minotaur, I was just on overwatch upstairs, keeping an eye on things in case any random scavs returned.
To my amusement Jun had been roped in by Hiromi, and she was ordering him around as he lifted heavy stuff. While Malcolm and Ichi started going through rooms gathering up interesting pieces. Rebecca had also wanted to help, but her stature had gotten in the way and so she had finally given up and was heading up to the surface.
I was on the second floor of the broken down building looking over the power plants lot when she finally came up and then headed up to where I was hiding out.
“You’re up here right?” She asked as she came up and I reached up over my head, revealing my hiding place between some boxes cutting me entirely off from sight.
“Umm what are you doing?” She asked as she walked over and climbed up onto the boxes to look down on me.
“Overwatch!”
“Yeah I get that, but why are you hiding?”
“Because if I see anyone coming in and they don’t see me, that gives me a tactical advantage.”
“Right… Right.” She answered and then to my surprise she shimmied over the box and landed in my little hidey hole and rested against the box. “That was… Pretty crazy.”
“One of the biggest raids we’ve done for sure. Not the biggest, but one of them. Definitely the first one with our new equipment.” I offered, looking her over, happy to see she hadn’t taken any wounds. I had already checked over my armor poking fingers into little holes in the chest rig, and some random shrapnel I had picked up from ricochets somewhere.
“I wanted to say thanks.” She finally admitted after a minute of quiet. “You didn’t treat me like some random extra you were just bringing along, or give me some random gonk work. You just gave me a gun and expected me to use it.”
“Well yeah? You work with Maine and Sasha right?”
“Sometimes.” She said weakly, and that sometimes sounded more like. Never. Or not in the way she wanted.
“Well Section 9 is always looking to hire good shooters. Malcolm is shaping up well to be my backup but we could use another solid gun…. Not saying you have to stop working with Maine or anything! I just mean if you-”
“Yeah.. Listen. Motoko, you got something going here, that’s kinda wild. Not the sort of shit I expected from a teenager, even one that can walk into the Afterlife, but I get why Rogue has her eye on you now. You don’t… You keep bringing up Maine, and Maine is great. He has army training, and is an absolute beast, but he doesn’t… The planning you did? That’s way beyond his normal prep. You passed out equipment that blows away anything Maine and crew use. My brother is Maine's Techie. The gonk that makes sure they have whatever random tool they need, but he certainly doesn’t have a Minotaur.”
“That’s pretty recent, and sort of a surprise to us too.”
“Yeah but… Maine wouldn’t have kept it, if he got one. It would have just been sold off.” Rebecca added and then seemed to struggle with herself. “I’m not good at this kind of shit. I’m not saying it right… Maine cares for his crew, he’s protective yeah, but he doesn’t force them into high end armor. Doesn’t get Minotaurs for the non-shooters to be able to do something. That’s not normal. Like at all. It’s crazy… I like that kind of crazy.”
I looked at Rebecca’s red eyes and I understood. “It’ll take a bit for us to get a fresh set of armor. I’ll talk to Hiromi, we might be able to buy a set fresh. A bit of time on top of that, the ECM emitters will take some time to source again, but that’s not a huge issue. So give me some time, and the armor will be done.”
“Armor?”
“Your armor. Can’t continue to work with us without armor.” I added and Rebecca seemed sort of shocked at how casually I had just accepted her into the crew.
“That sounds expensive.”
“Nah, Section 9 will handle the expenses.” I assured her she wouldn’t have to pay for it, and that did something, because a second later she started laughing.
“You’re really fucking weird!”
“Thanks?”
—--
Despite expecting some massive Scav response. Nothing happened. Instead Rebecca and I switched off on overwatch to make sure nothing continued to happen, while Section 9 went to work.
Well besides Jun, One of the times he had come up I noticed he was still bleeding. I had ordered him to go to a ripper and get checked up, ignoring any and all of his arguments about it.
Then to my surprise as I helped haul some heavy crates up the stairs, Ichi wasn’t there and his van was gone, including the Minotaur.
“Where’s Ichi?”
“He went to get us more transport space.” Hiromi said. She was going through all the crates seemingly making lists of all the crap we were taking out.
I shrugged, figuring he would just come back with his normal truck empty, but instead an hour later he came pulling into the lot with the massive Behemoth.
“Huh. You didn’t sell it?” I asked Hiromi absolutely surprised to see that thing again.
“I set up a rental plan as part of an agreement with a SCSM stocking service. Apparently having something armored like the Behemoth heavily decreases injuries. I called it back in before we left. I had a feeling we would need all the space we could fit.” Hiromi said looking pleased with herself as Ichi came out of the cab with a proud look as well.
“You’ve been practicing.” I called out to Ichi and he smiled.
“I have! Hiromi has had me working with a SCSM company. They use the truck and in exchange don’t have to worry about getting shot at as much.”
I instantly looked at Hiromi who smiled even more slyly. “I might have also rented out Ichi.”
“You!” I called out before bursting into laughter. “You sneaky corpo!” I yelled out and chased at her.
“Hehehe!” She giggled back flashing a bright smile as she escaped my grabbing hands.
“Well you certainly drive it like you’ve got some experience now.” I called out as I gave up on the chase.
“Yeah it took a while.” Ichi agreed, then he looked over all the crates already stacking up. “I’ll lower the ramp, let’s start getting stocked up.”
I nodded in agreement, and soon we were working together hauling up the heavy crates into the truck.
“I’m still surprised you didn’t sell it. Aren’t these things difficult to get a hold of.”
“Yeah. Militech only sells it to big corps, or governments.” Hiromi agreed, nodding a moment later had her smile going sly. “Which is why I decided that Section 9 should keep it for ourselves. Something like this isn’t a vehicle we could just buy again later. Armored transports aren’t easy to get.”
“Well I can’t complain.” I shrugged. I mean, I hadn’t even noticed that Hiromi hadn’t sold it…
Was that another sign I was bad with money, or a hint that I had way too much money and should spend it?
Both. Probably both.
I traded out loading the truck with Rebecca every once in a while giving me a break to rest and watch over the lot, while she helped out.
And slowly we cleared out the entire place.
At least anything we actually wanted to take. Then long into the night. Ichi piled into the cab of the Behemoth, and we all slipped away into the night. Rebecca once more joined me in the Quadra as we followed along behind the truck.
The lights from Ping gave us numbers, and locations so I didn’t have to call it out.
Six guys.
*Going to frag again. Rebecca you too.* I called as I found a position to post up before. Running into the room. Rebecca and I both stood next to one of the metal security blinds, and once she was ready with Jun and Malcolm both holding the entrance. I hacked the blinds and forced them open.
We both tossed. I made sure to toss my grenade in a different direction from Rebecca towards a different group of people.
Our synergy wasn’t great. I hadn’t thought to have us call out which group to target.
Despite my skill this was a new experience for me, just like it was for most of Section 9. We would have to do some team training soon.
The side thoughts were blown away with the explosions of two grenades, and the screams of agony from dying gonks.
Jun and Malcolm both charged. Malcolm I noticed as I turned to follow was hugging directly behind Jun. Using him as cover and rapid firing into groups that Jun wasn’t focused on.
Good work!
Rebecca and I came around a second later, and her smile was already stretching across her face as she let loose.
The Ajax roared and she caught two in a spray of bullets that weren’t fast enough to hide behind some crates in the middle of the room they were using as cover.
It wouldn’t work against me either.
I leapt straight up, my head nearly touching the ceiling as I raised my copperhead and just fired into them from above. More Scavs were killed, and I think our assault finally started breaking any hope the scavs had of winning. They started running, not many of them got far.
Not with everyone shooting into their fleeing backs.
Rebecca had climbed up on top of a crate and was laughing hysterically as she went full auto down the tunnel the Scavs were trying to flee down.
I just chased after them while firing. The copperhead tight to my shoulder as I raced forward firing at the fleeing gonks.
One dropped, I took a second to lower the barrel and confirm the kill by blowing out the back of his head. Then moved on. I could hear Rebecca struggling down from the crate behind me as Jun continued to beat a poor Scav into a pulp.
Even without looking I knew he was already dead.
*Jun focus up!*
But that was all the attention I was willing to give.
I turned the corner down the hall, and some of the scavs had been smart enough to turn to try and shoot me.
I juked and my Copperhead jerked in my grip as the silent rounds started tearing out of the barrel.
I felt a round wing me, and then another got me in the chest, but I was wearing armor.
They weren’t.
A second later the hallway was clear. None of them had escaped.
“Motoko!”
*Jun. Comms you gonk!* I yelled at him over the call and he slowed to a stop and seemed to regain some of his humanity as he saw me perfectly fine and glaring at him… Oh wait I was wearing the tech gogs with my helmet. He couldn’t see me glaring.
*Right… Right. You okay?*
*I’m fine. Check! Any injuries?*
*Nope I’m fine.*
*Didn’t get touched.* Malcolm and Rebecca both confirmed and then I looked at my gonk brother.
*Do I need to pull you out?*
*It’s just some scratches.* He denied.
Yeah the bullet hole in his arm was not a scratch.
But I noticed the old Kang Tao armor had actually caught a few rounds for him. Even if he had done everything he could to show off his plastic abs.
I rolled my eyes and tossed him a roll of bandages.
*Cover those.*
*I’m fine.* He tried to argue and I just cut him off.
*Do it or leave.*
He grumbled and after a minute did as he was told.
*Everyone gather back up. Let’s finish clearing this place. We aren’t done.*
*Awesome!* Rebecca cheered out as she ran down the hall. I quirked an eyebrow.
She now had a Saratoga strapped to her back.
*What?*
*Nothing.* I said, chuckling quietly as I focused up. We weren’t done.
—---
Ichinose
The stairs had not been easy to maneuver down, but he had done it. The Minotaur was staring into the doors of the elevator just waiting for someone to be stupid enough to come up.
*Anything up there Hiromi?*
*Nope, still clear.* She said and he relaxed a little. Controlling the Minotaur was an interesting experience. Despite the fact he was still just sitting in the driver's seat of his van it felt like he was actually far away.
Hiromi watching over him at least made this doable. He didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to get killed because he was focused on the Minotaur, but then again what kind of idiot would lose complete track of his surroundings without someone watching over them in a dangerous area?
The elevator shifted. He could ‘hear’ it through the Minotaurs pickups.
*Someone is using the elevator.* He called out both in the channel between Hiromi and him, and to Motoko’s squad.
God thinking about it in terms like that still caught him off guard. This whole thing. This wasn’t some group of gonk kids fucking around. This was a corp level op.
They were badasses.
*Not one of us. If anyone is in there, take them out.* Motoko answered back cooly, not a hint of the strain of being in combat in her voice.
Once again Ichi just had to shake his head. Motoko Kusanagi was an enigma, she had come back so different from the coma, and that had only grown with the time since. It was almost hard to remember what she used to be like.
But it was her almost clinical detachment when dealing with violence that still made him nervous.
Motoko the gonk that didn’t like alcohol, and would happily get into arguments about the best character in a movie with Malcolm. Would in a second transform into a killer. He had never understood the idea of a ‘cold blooded killer’ before. Every murder he had ever seen had been passionate acting out, or just gang stuff which was usually full of shouting and yelling.
Although he knew Jotaro had been the same, but seeing that look on Motoko’s face as she talked about murdering her enemies always made Ichi… Not nervous. He wasn’t afraid of her, but he was… Wary of her.
He watched the elevator doors open, and five scavs stepped out. These were the leaders. The netrunner among them told Ichi that. The fact they were escaping was rather telling as well.
He felt his HMG’s activate. The targeting software easily pinging all five.
“FUCK!” The Netrunner managed to scream as the group realized what it was that was standing in the shadows in front of them.
Then Ichi fired.
Yeah. This was the fun part.
They tried. One scav must have some training, he raised a Metel the clunky Techtronika revolver fired twice before he had so many holes in him that the pistol fell from his grip.
*Five Scavs took the elevator. They’re dead.* He called out and he could hear Hiromi cheer. He could imagine her pumping her fist at that.
*Confirmed.* Motoko offered back, once more calm and controlled despite the fact he could vaguely hear gunfire still coming from down below.
He settled in again. Motoko had this under control.
—--
I felt like I had no control over what was happening.
Jun was once more racing off. Malcolm was doing his best to stay with him using him as cover. Rebecca had gone completely gun crazy and was just firing full auto at everything that moved.
I was forced to run multiple positions and tasks.
That scav aiming at Jun’s back? Quickdraw the Burya fire twice.
Rebecca running out of ammo and struggling to reload with how many weapons she now had strapped to her?
Jump up and tackle her off the table she had found to give her some height. Cover her with my body so the return fire from the scavs hit me and not her. Land, and fire through the cover at the fucker that just shot me.
Reload Burya, ensure Rebecca was okay visually. Rise.
Fire into fucking dirty scavs until they die.
“Sorry.” I heard quietly as I looked back and saw Rebecca.
The fury was quenched and I was cool once more.
“It’s fine. We work as a team to watch out for each other. We all have things to learn.” Then because I was just holding my Burya I reached out a hand for her. She had landed on her ass after everything. “We aren’t done yet.”
She looked up at me, and smiled evilly. “Right!” And then I was hauling her back to her feet, and we went to town.
This last section of the Scav base was a fucking maze. Broken walls. Scaffolding. Large machines to hide around.
There weren’t that many Scavs down here, but they were all hiding in nooks and crannies to ambush us.
Thankfully Ping still worked, and between Jun and I we hunted them all down, pulling them out and murdering them mercilessly.
Especially after we checked the side rooms and found all the killing rooms.
Or rather the Scavs BD rooms. The horrific locals were something I expected, but it made Jun go real quiet and I could see him tighten his hands over and over. The view had Rebecca lose it too. Malcolm though was probably inured to seeing Scav holes. He just kept trying to kill them.
But finally we cleared the entire underground. Each corner was checked, and we went through the whole complex, including in rooms that I remember from the game had been ‘dead’ doors. Many of the side paths were full of gear or equipment, or just corpse storage.
But it was done.
*Looks like we are clear down here. Hiromi, Malcolm, let’s move onto the most important part. Looting.*
I got a laugh from Malcolm at my words, but Rebecca mostly gave me a funny look when I said the most important part.
Obviously Maine didn’t know how to make the real eddies. There was a lot of gear down here.
—--
Ichi and I switched places, although I didn’t have the Minotaur, I was just on overwatch upstairs, keeping an eye on things in case any random scavs returned.
To my amusement Jun had been roped in by Hiromi, and she was ordering him around as he lifted heavy stuff. While Malcolm and Ichi started going through rooms gathering up interesting pieces. Rebecca had also wanted to help, but her stature had gotten in the way and so she had finally given up and was heading up to the surface.
I was on the second floor of the broken down building looking over the power plants lot when she finally came up and then headed up to where I was hiding out.
“You’re up here right?” She asked as she came up and I reached up over my head, revealing my hiding place between some boxes cutting me entirely off from sight.
“Umm what are you doing?” She asked as she walked over and climbed up onto the boxes to look down on me.
“Overwatch!”
“Yeah I get that, but why are you hiding?”
“Because if I see anyone coming in and they don’t see me, that gives me a tactical advantage.”
“Right… Right.” She answered and then to my surprise she shimmied over the box and landed in my little hidey hole and rested against the box. “That was… Pretty crazy.”
“One of the biggest raids we’ve done for sure. Not the biggest, but one of them. Definitely the first one with our new equipment.” I offered, looking her over, happy to see she hadn’t taken any wounds. I had already checked over my armor poking fingers into little holes in the chest rig, and some random shrapnel I had picked up from ricochets somewhere.
“I wanted to say thanks.” She finally admitted after a minute of quiet. “You didn’t treat me like some random extra you were just bringing along, or give me some random gonk work. You just gave me a gun and expected me to use it.”
“Well yeah? You work with Maine and Sasha right?”
“Sometimes.” She said weakly, and that sometimes sounded more like. Never. Or not in the way she wanted.
“Well Section 9 is always looking to hire good shooters. Malcolm is shaping up well to be my backup but we could use another solid gun…. Not saying you have to stop working with Maine or anything! I just mean if you-”
“Yeah.. Listen. Motoko, you got something going here, that’s kinda wild. Not the sort of shit I expected from a teenager, even one that can walk into the Afterlife, but I get why Rogue has her eye on you now. You don’t… You keep bringing up Maine, and Maine is great. He has army training, and is an absolute beast, but he doesn’t… The planning you did? That’s way beyond his normal prep. You passed out equipment that blows away anything Maine and crew use. My brother is Maine's Techie. The gonk that makes sure they have whatever random tool they need, but he certainly doesn’t have a Minotaur.”
“That’s pretty recent, and sort of a surprise to us too.”
“Yeah but… Maine wouldn’t have kept it, if he got one. It would have just been sold off.” Rebecca added and then seemed to struggle with herself. “I’m not good at this kind of shit. I’m not saying it right… Maine cares for his crew, he’s protective yeah, but he doesn’t force them into high end armor. Doesn’t get Minotaurs for the non-shooters to be able to do something. That’s not normal. Like at all. It’s crazy… I like that kind of crazy.”
I looked at Rebecca’s red eyes and I understood. “It’ll take a bit for us to get a fresh set of armor. I’ll talk to Hiromi, we might be able to buy a set fresh. A bit of time on top of that, the ECM emitters will take some time to source again, but that’s not a huge issue. So give me some time, and the armor will be done.”
“Armor?”
“Your armor. Can’t continue to work with us without armor.” I added and Rebecca seemed sort of shocked at how casually I had just accepted her into the crew.
“That sounds expensive.”
“Nah, Section 9 will handle the expenses.” I assured her she wouldn’t have to pay for it, and that did something, because a second later she started laughing.
“You’re really fucking weird!”
“Thanks?”
—--
Despite expecting some massive Scav response. Nothing happened. Instead Rebecca and I switched off on overwatch to make sure nothing continued to happen, while Section 9 went to work.
Well besides Jun, One of the times he had come up I noticed he was still bleeding. I had ordered him to go to a ripper and get checked up, ignoring any and all of his arguments about it.
Then to my surprise as I helped haul some heavy crates up the stairs, Ichi wasn’t there and his van was gone, including the Minotaur.
“Where’s Ichi?”
“He went to get us more transport space.” Hiromi said. She was going through all the crates seemingly making lists of all the crap we were taking out.
I shrugged, figuring he would just come back with his normal truck empty, but instead an hour later he came pulling into the lot with the massive Behemoth.
“Huh. You didn’t sell it?” I asked Hiromi absolutely surprised to see that thing again.
“I set up a rental plan as part of an agreement with a SCSM stocking service. Apparently having something armored like the Behemoth heavily decreases injuries. I called it back in before we left. I had a feeling we would need all the space we could fit.” Hiromi said looking pleased with herself as Ichi came out of the cab with a proud look as well.
“You’ve been practicing.” I called out to Ichi and he smiled.
“I have! Hiromi has had me working with a SCSM company. They use the truck and in exchange don’t have to worry about getting shot at as much.”
I instantly looked at Hiromi who smiled even more slyly. “I might have also rented out Ichi.”
“You!” I called out before bursting into laughter. “You sneaky corpo!” I yelled out and chased at her.
“Hehehe!” She giggled back flashing a bright smile as she escaped my grabbing hands.
“Well you certainly drive it like you’ve got some experience now.” I called out as I gave up on the chase.
“Yeah it took a while.” Ichi agreed, then he looked over all the crates already stacking up. “I’ll lower the ramp, let’s start getting stocked up.”
I nodded in agreement, and soon we were working together hauling up the heavy crates into the truck.
“I’m still surprised you didn’t sell it. Aren’t these things difficult to get a hold of.”
“Yeah. Militech only sells it to big corps, or governments.” Hiromi agreed, nodding a moment later had her smile going sly. “Which is why I decided that Section 9 should keep it for ourselves. Something like this isn’t a vehicle we could just buy again later. Armored transports aren’t easy to get.”
“Well I can’t complain.” I shrugged. I mean, I hadn’t even noticed that Hiromi hadn’t sold it…
Was that another sign I was bad with money, or a hint that I had way too much money and should spend it?
Both. Probably both.
I traded out loading the truck with Rebecca every once in a while giving me a break to rest and watch over the lot, while she helped out.
And slowly we cleared out the entire place.
At least anything we actually wanted to take. Then long into the night. Ichi piled into the cab of the Behemoth, and we all slipped away into the night. Rebecca once more joined me in the Quadra as we followed along behind the truck.
>has minotaur
>doesn't sell it like a normal edgerunner
>has Behemoth
>keeps it
>meets a gang of gonk kids
>takes over
I see it now. Hiromi isn't some aspiring corpo princess, an ambitious child on a fast track to success. Being a corpo squeezing money out of everything is just an excuse.
What she is a hoarder :V
>doesn't sell it like a normal edgerunner
>has Behemoth
>keeps it
>meets a gang of gonk kids
>takes over
I see it now. Hiromi isn't some aspiring corpo princess, an ambitious child on a fast track to success. Being a corpo squeezing money out of everything is just an excuse.
What she is a hoarder :V
xachariahxx
Well-known member
I was thinking about Motoko's team being effective and why other crews/gangs don't do this. If body armor and nice guns were so effective, why wouldn't they be passed out like candy by crews? I'm generally not a fan of "everybody is stupid but the main character" in stories.
And I realize that it's Motoko's isekai status coming into play again. She knows Rebecca and saw her life to the end. She knows she's ride or die, and skilled. Same with Jackie, V, Lucy, David, etc.. Other crews would have to spend time vetting people, and be uncertain if they have any potential, or if they're plants, or if they'll do one gig then run away with equipment and training. It's not that other crews are just dummies, but that Motoko can recruit her with certainty and invest in her and know she'll get that investment returned. That's why it's viable for her to do this, but nobody else can do it effectively.
Future knowledge = Super Human Resources powers. Too OP.
And I realize that it's Motoko's isekai status coming into play again. She knows Rebecca and saw her life to the end. She knows she's ride or die, and skilled. Same with Jackie, V, Lucy, David, etc.. Other crews would have to spend time vetting people, and be uncertain if they have any potential, or if they're plants, or if they'll do one gig then run away with equipment and training. It's not that other crews are just dummies, but that Motoko can recruit her with certainty and invest in her and know she'll get that investment returned. That's why it's viable for her to do this, but nobody else can do it effectively.
Future knowledge = Super Human Resources powers. Too OP.
Culture / showmanship / status thing. Like with Jun not wanting to hide his tats. Proper corpo and military units use proper body armor, gang members are more about showing off.
As for how realistic this is, there was literally an african warlord called General Butt Naked, who was fighting in a civil war and committing war crimes while literally butt-naked, and so were his child-soldiers.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
They didn't fight any other armed forces really, They basically just roamed the countryside committing the most heinous war crimes imaginable on defenseless villages.
The Unicorn
Well-known member
[/QUOTE]
Several reasons
1)Good body armor is very expensive. Most people who get ahold of body armor like Motoko's crew did either have to sell it to buy stuff they need more or use it until its damaged and then can't afford to have it fixed.
2)While armor is good, image is also very important, Motoko's armor is great because it's high quality armor modified by one of if not the best armorer in the world. Pretty much no one could afford that.
3)The setting has a number of cybernetic armor options, if not for Motokoi and Hiromi's style they might have gone that way instead.
4)Visible armor is a very aggressive statement there are times that's a bad idea.
5)There are other people who get armor, it's just that due to the above they're pretty rare, and generally the very top of the proffesion, i.e not the sort who;d talk to a group of teenagers
True, but the rest of Motoko's skills are equally overpowered and what made it possible for her to offer such armor.
Chapter 158
Seras
Well-known member
“Jun? You’re home already?”
“I told you it was just scratches.” He grumbled at me. I had dropped off Rebecca at home after we stored the Behemoth for the night. All of us too tired to want to unpack everything just to pack it all back up again.
Hiromi had apparently made a deal with the SCSM company for a garage to store it. Which we could use as a space for our loot. So it was secure enough.
Now I was home ready for a shower but Jun was already on the couch.
I walked over and inspected him and narrowed my eyes at the very obvious bandages on his chest.
“Yes I’m sure scratches bleed even after being checked over by a ripper.” I said snidely, noticing red on the white bandages.
“It’s fine.” He grumbled looking me over. “You?”
“Nothing went through. Armor worked like it was supposed to.” I assured him. Although I had gotten a few scratches, a Maxdoc had cleared that up.
Satisfied my brother had actually gotten his medical attention I wandered into the bathroom to take a shower.
This whole situation had gone really well. Even if the fact Sasha had survived was setting in. What was going to change from that one act?
Maines crew had made an enemy of Biotechnica. I had no idea how much, or if they would be able to let everything cool off, but Kiwi and Lucy might never be hired by Maine now.
This was… Going to be an interesting situation.
Also, the most important thing. We were only a few months away from a very important point. The start of Edgerunners.
I would need to figure out what to do about what's his face. The original owner of David's Sandevistan. The fact was, I wanted it. That wasn’t some run of the mill street sandy that I could pick up. That thing was absolutely top of the line.
And I wasn’t David, I wasn’t going to lose my mind to chrome and overuse and turn the biggest advantage into a weakness.
But until then…
I looked down at my body as the water flowed over me. Muscles and chrome, but I was flawless. No scars, or markings. Vik and my sleep healing had taken care of me.
I looked at my alerts. Plenty of killing had been done. Plenty of XP.
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
On it went.
Fourteen kills directly to me. That wasn’t a lot, and yet it was all at the same time.
7000 XP.
I hadn’t gotten any direct level ups, Assault was unfortunately already maxed, but I did get a Quick Hack alert. So that was one more step closer to a level.
But as I looked away from the alerts and back to my body…
I think it’s time to get some more chrome. I’ve been doing a lot of prep chrome. My Titanium bones were great, but I wanted something with a bit more….
Flash.
The idea stuck with me, as I finished the shower. Undecided. I could probably get some Gorilla arms mods for my Condor. They were already a bit full though. The EMP and Armor took up a lot of room.
I walked out of the bathroom clothed and drying my hair, and then decided since I couldn’t figure it out on my own I was gonna ask the chrome head.
“Hey Jun?”
“Motoko?”
“I’m trying to figure out what chrome I should get next. Any suggestions?”
“Extra heart?”
“I do want one, but I’m thinking more flash. All of my chrome feels like just…”
“Ah I see. Get a Sandy. It’ll make you killer.” He said without missing a beat.
“I kinda have one lined up, but it’ll be a few months before I can get it.” I answered honestly. Admitting it aloud made it more real.
I was going to take ‘Davids’ Sandy from him. He would never chip it in. In exchange I would make sure Gloria survived. I’m sure he would trade the chrome for his mother alive and well.
“If you have to wait so long, just chip in a sandy now, get used to it, and upgrade later. You have the eddies.” He said it like it was that simple.
“I just… I don’t want to chip in some scop Sandy Jun. The one I have my eye on is like… Super top of the line. I just have to wait a bit.”
“Dummy.” He said and to my surprise reached out and tapped me on top of my head. “Speedware is useful shit. The only reason I don’t have one is because I stopped chipping in new chrome for a while to get used to everything. But you… You’re fine. Go chip in a Sandy, get used to it, for when you chip in something real nova.”
“But that’ll…” I stopped. How do I explain the idea of how I understood adaptation, and Humanity loss by Cyberware without explaining it’s all a game.
“Motoko? You handle chrome better than anyone I’ve ever seen.” He said, his eyes locked on me. “You’ve been a little skittish about it. I get that. But you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Besides, Hiromi already sent me a quote on what we made today. You can get plenty of good chrome with just your cut of today's profits. Hell, it’s more than I make normally by a long shot.” He said almost laughing. “Who’d have thought little Hiromi would some day be bossing me around on a gig?”
I blinked at the almost wistful tone before Jun looked to me and smiled.
“Spend the eddies. Get an upgrade. At least it’ll increase your chances of surviving until you get your hands on the Sandy you really want. Upgrades are normal, they won’t hurt.”
I blinked and realized that… I really should be upgrading my chrome. I had a lot of eddies just sitting in my account. And a lot of chrome that could use an upgrade. My Cyberdeck was a midline at best for instance.
An upgrade to my Cyberdeck would do a lot in making me even scarier.
But I also wanted to spend more money on tech stuff… No, I realized. I had eddies. I had a ton of eddies. That was just an excuse. I was letting my fear control me. I was afraid of chrome in a way. Sure I was feeling much much better about it now, but the kidnapping still haunted me.
I hated that idea.
I breathed in and out. Being wise about chrome wasn’t bad though. Balance. I just needed balance.
“I’m going to bed. I’ll probably be working with Hiromi all day tomorrow to sell the loot.” I said instead, rising up.
“Nice! I’m looking forward to my cut! Going to buy an upgrade for my ride. But you should set it up Motoko. Call your ripper, Vik. Give him time to find some chrome. Go on. Go to bed.”
I just rolled my eyes at Jun’s stupid Mizuchi.
“I’ll send a message to Vik.” I decided, even sending him a message about what I was looking for and a request for a checkup and new install.
“Good night Motoko… And hey. This gig you pulled off today? I was impressed. Super impressed. You didn’t even need me, you could have done it without me… It was a relief.”
I scoffed even as I felt my cheeks heat up. “Section 9 is amazing! Of course we don’t need a gonk like you! Even if you were a big help and it was cool how you worked with us, when you weren’t charging ahead and getting shot at! Maybe Section 9 will offer more gigs to you in the future… If you get some armor!” I yelled and then stomped away into my room. Jun was laughing.
I checked on Tachikoma before I went to bed. Its walking process was starting to really come together. It was moving at a much faster rate now. Much more confidently.
“Good job.” I told it despite not being able to hear me, and did some quick pruning of the process before slipping into bed.
—---
The next day was a barrage of running around. Thankfully since Ichi could drive the Behemoth. I was mostly the bodyguard. Keeping Hiromi safe as she sold equipment all over the city. The eddies flowed in as we dropped off piece after piece.
While we drove around, I spent some time going over the gig with everyone. With the BD recorder I could even review things I had seen.
Talking to Malcolm about when he tripped. Telling him to remind me sometime for some practice with walking through a dark space with a rifle in hands.
Ichi mostly got a slap on the back.
Hiromi too.
Jun I just sent a picture of him getting shot with a quick caption. ‘Don’t be the idiot that runs ahead.’
He didn’t respond with anything useful. Just a glare emoji.
Rebecca didn’t have time to talk so we would have to go over everything another time, unfortunately it also meant Rebecca wasn’t able to join us.
When we finally called it a night, we took some time to celebrate. Hitting a diner and ordering all the food we could eat.
“Seriously! That guy was such scop. I’m pretty sure he was a Scav himself!” I grumbled out but Hiromi just laughed.
“You just didn’t like how he was flirting with me!” Hiromi said with a bit too much eagerness, and I shuddered.
“Of course I was upset! The guy was like thirty. He was gross Hiromi. You shouldn’t have led him on.”
“It let me fleece him for another two grand. So…”
“It’s gross. I’ll have to give that guy a late night visit sometime soon.” I said feeling rather murderous. Fucking sicko.
“Don’t you dare! He was buying a lot of the equipment! We’ll keep feeding him more of our loot! For the eddies!”
“Don’t worry about it Motoko. He’ll do something stupid some day either get himself killed, or we will flatline him.” Ichi cut in. “I would put money on him trying to steal from us someday.”
“He wouldn’t! The equipment we are selling is super cheap! He wo-”
“He totally will.” I agreed. The guy was skeevy.
“Yep.” Ichi agreed, I raised my drink to him and he did the same.
“Ugh.” Hiromi just huffed and Ichi and I started laughing.
“So what are you spending your eddies on Ichi? Any chrome?” I asked mostly as a segway, but I was interested in his answer as well.
“Ah, well I got the smart link, and that wasn’t too bad. Even if using the Minotaur meant I didn’t get to use it much. But I do like the Yukimura. Since I’ve been wearing it, just seeing it on my hip has settled a lot of friction.” He said laughing, slapping the holster on his side that carried his smart gun.
“Heh. At least some gonks are smart enough not to mess with the guy that has homing bullets.” I giggled and he nodded in turn.
“But for what I’m going to do with these eddies… I don’t know. Maybe some Subdermal, or Skinweave?”
“You should reach out to Vik then, see what he has on offer. He’ll take care of you.”
“Sure, maybe I’ll reach out. How about you?” He asked and that was the topic I wanted to bring up, mostly because I was kinda nervous.
“I’d planned on holding off for a while longer. I have a chance at a really high end Sandy that will open up in a few months, but… I think I’m going to chip in a lower quality Sandy with Vik tomorrow.”
“Whoa! Really?” Hiromi asked, looked excited. “That would be preem Motoko! Sandy are expensive chrome, but they’re great!”
“Yeah. I was gonna hold off until I got something really top of the line, but…” Powergaming vs. realistic upgrades.
The powergamer in me said not to upgrade until I could get the best. But I wanted to be safe, and strong enough to protect myself and my chooms.
“So yeah. I’ll go in tomorrow morning. Vik got back to me that he found something that I’ll like.”
“Nice! I want to see! As soon as you are done!” Hiromi demanded, and I waved her off.
“Maybe. I’ll probably head home after and sleep it off or something. But I’ll show you once I feel better.”
“Deal!” She agreed, smiling while Ichi nodded in tandem.
“How about you Hiromi? Anything in mind for your eddies?”
“Most of it is going into payroll unfortunately. But I’ll be making a nice profit that will go into private accounts.” Hiromi said but Ichi and I just looked at each other.
“Coooorppppoooo.” We both teased and Hiromi instantly went red and slapped at both of us.
—--
The next morning I got ready and headed to Viks.
There was a bit of anxiety there. Because I wouldn’t be chipping in the ‘best’ of something. Just what I could get my hands on, with a bit of work, and that wasn’t something I really appreciated, but…
Upgrades. A few upgrades now could make future gigs easier, make me more eddies, and more XP.
It was for the best. That old gamer mentality of not upgrading to anything until I either had to, or until I had all the stat points to make use of the best stuff was holding me back.
But this wasn’t a game.
“Hey Misty!” I called out as I entered her Esoterica and she looked up and smiled brightly at me, making my day instantly better as she waved me down.
“Motoko, I saw you actually scheduled an appointment looking for more chrome today. That’s unusual. Something happen?” She asked kindly, waving me over as she was sitting behind her little reception.
“Not exactly. I just had the idea the other night and wanted to warn Vik.”
“Well he appreciates it, and as his sometimes secretary I appreciate it too.” She said teasing.
“Heh. He’s got you taking calls for him now too?” I asked, teasing back and she shrugged. “Sort of. Just as an emergency thing. Sometimes he isn’t around, so if someone is calling for emergency help well… If he isn’t around to answer, I’ll be able to warn them from showing up.”
“Right. That makes sense. Did Vik mention what he got for me?”
“He did. Vik has contacts all over, and you have the eddies to actually pay.” She winked at me then. “He always goes above and beyond for the best customers.”
“Vik’s the best ripper. Of course I have to treat him right.” I answered back and we both smiled.
“Go on. I know you want to see what he was able to wrangle up for you.” She said waving a hand at the back and I did just that waving goodbye as I hurried into the alley then down the stairs.
“Vik!”
“Hey Kid, ‘bout time, I was wondering if you would keep me waiting, come in, let me show you what I picked up for you this morning. Called in a favor with some old rippers I knew to get the deets and had to do a bit of trading, but I got it.”
Then he pulled out a plastic bag, and there it was.
A tiny little chip that was actually the Sandevistan.
“They always look so small.”
“Heh. Well big things come in small packages kid. This is a Dynalar Sandevistan. It’s not the best of the best. QianT usually hold that mantle, Militech can be top of the line if you can snatch their good stuff, at least they put up a fight. The Falcon is a preem piece of chrome.” He chattered as he started prepping everything, but I was struggling to tear my eyes off it.
A Sandevistan. Speedware. The piece of chrome that every likely was the most important piece of chrome I would get.
It was a midline Sandy. Like Vik said this wasn’t a Falcon. Or… Whatever the fuck Davids Sandy was.
Well whatever it was, I would find out eventually. For now? This would do. This would do nicely.
“Alright Vik. I’m Ready.”
“Heh. Nice that you are mentally, but you aren’t ready just yet, come take a look at this as well. I need to ask if this is the right fit for you.” He said pulling out a second plastic package. The plastic was obviously not original the sort of thing I had seen in Scav shops for how they store cyberware to keep it clean.
And he dropped it on the table it took me a second… “A neural link?” I asked confused at the sight of it.
“Your neural link is a civilian version.” Vik answers and then points at the second piece of cyberware in a plastic bag. It wasn’t massive. At least not that massive, but I instantly realized it wasn’t just nothing either.
“That looks a bit high end.”
“Heh, caught that huh? Yeah. Your Sandevistan isn’t anything special, not that it was easy to get my hands on, they don’t come cheap. But you already got a Cyberdeck, and I bet you wanted to keep it right?”
I instantly reached up to the back of my neck. There in the neural link that I had woken up with in this world in a small port that near my chipslots was my current Cyberdeck.
A cyberdeck that I knew was taking up a lot of the hardware of my neural link to run.
The neural link may be the most integral cyberware that existed. It was the piece of tech that connected the brain and nervous system to cyberware.
The basic civilian one wasn’t really capable of much. It wouldn’t limit a cyberdeck at my level, but Sandevistan, Cyberdecks, and many other powerful pieces of chrome all needed space in a neural link.
Hell, the Sandevistan David had chipped in, had needed the massive spinal neural link, or at least had come with it just to help handle the power that little chip could push out.
This one wasn’t nearly as big, but looking it over. The chrome gleaming in the muddy light of Vik’s shop. I came to a realization.
I licked my lips.
“I want it.”
“You sure? This might be the one I had access to, but I can find something different. This is a big step for you-”
“I want it. It’s perfect. Hell there is only one other neural link I can think of that I want more, and that’s coming along with that Sandy I’ve been hunting. Vik. Chip it.” I confirmed, absolutely sure.
This was going to be huge, but with adaptation, and my own desire for the chrome. I was confident this was perfect for me.
“Alright kid. In that case, I’m all set up. Take a seat.”
I nodded and did just that, settling into the chair.
“I’ll call Misty down as well once we are done. Not too good at haircuts.” He joked and I just laughed, as I rolled over showing the back of my neck.
A few moments later I was asleep.
“I told you it was just scratches.” He grumbled at me. I had dropped off Rebecca at home after we stored the Behemoth for the night. All of us too tired to want to unpack everything just to pack it all back up again.
Hiromi had apparently made a deal with the SCSM company for a garage to store it. Which we could use as a space for our loot. So it was secure enough.
Now I was home ready for a shower but Jun was already on the couch.
I walked over and inspected him and narrowed my eyes at the very obvious bandages on his chest.
“Yes I’m sure scratches bleed even after being checked over by a ripper.” I said snidely, noticing red on the white bandages.
“It’s fine.” He grumbled looking me over. “You?”
“Nothing went through. Armor worked like it was supposed to.” I assured him. Although I had gotten a few scratches, a Maxdoc had cleared that up.
Satisfied my brother had actually gotten his medical attention I wandered into the bathroom to take a shower.
This whole situation had gone really well. Even if the fact Sasha had survived was setting in. What was going to change from that one act?
Maines crew had made an enemy of Biotechnica. I had no idea how much, or if they would be able to let everything cool off, but Kiwi and Lucy might never be hired by Maine now.
This was… Going to be an interesting situation.
Also, the most important thing. We were only a few months away from a very important point. The start of Edgerunners.
I would need to figure out what to do about what's his face. The original owner of David's Sandevistan. The fact was, I wanted it. That wasn’t some run of the mill street sandy that I could pick up. That thing was absolutely top of the line.
And I wasn’t David, I wasn’t going to lose my mind to chrome and overuse and turn the biggest advantage into a weakness.
But until then…
I looked down at my body as the water flowed over me. Muscles and chrome, but I was flawless. No scars, or markings. Vik and my sleep healing had taken care of me.
I looked at my alerts. Plenty of killing had been done. Plenty of XP.
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
*500 XP Gained.*
On it went.
Fourteen kills directly to me. That wasn’t a lot, and yet it was all at the same time.
7000 XP.
I hadn’t gotten any direct level ups, Assault was unfortunately already maxed, but I did get a Quick Hack alert. So that was one more step closer to a level.
But as I looked away from the alerts and back to my body…
I think it’s time to get some more chrome. I’ve been doing a lot of prep chrome. My Titanium bones were great, but I wanted something with a bit more….
Flash.
The idea stuck with me, as I finished the shower. Undecided. I could probably get some Gorilla arms mods for my Condor. They were already a bit full though. The EMP and Armor took up a lot of room.
I walked out of the bathroom clothed and drying my hair, and then decided since I couldn’t figure it out on my own I was gonna ask the chrome head.
“Hey Jun?”
“Motoko?”
“I’m trying to figure out what chrome I should get next. Any suggestions?”
“Extra heart?”
“I do want one, but I’m thinking more flash. All of my chrome feels like just…”
“Ah I see. Get a Sandy. It’ll make you killer.” He said without missing a beat.
“I kinda have one lined up, but it’ll be a few months before I can get it.” I answered honestly. Admitting it aloud made it more real.
I was going to take ‘Davids’ Sandy from him. He would never chip it in. In exchange I would make sure Gloria survived. I’m sure he would trade the chrome for his mother alive and well.
“If you have to wait so long, just chip in a sandy now, get used to it, and upgrade later. You have the eddies.” He said it like it was that simple.
“I just… I don’t want to chip in some scop Sandy Jun. The one I have my eye on is like… Super top of the line. I just have to wait a bit.”
“Dummy.” He said and to my surprise reached out and tapped me on top of my head. “Speedware is useful shit. The only reason I don’t have one is because I stopped chipping in new chrome for a while to get used to everything. But you… You’re fine. Go chip in a Sandy, get used to it, for when you chip in something real nova.”
“But that’ll…” I stopped. How do I explain the idea of how I understood adaptation, and Humanity loss by Cyberware without explaining it’s all a game.
“Motoko? You handle chrome better than anyone I’ve ever seen.” He said, his eyes locked on me. “You’ve been a little skittish about it. I get that. But you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Besides, Hiromi already sent me a quote on what we made today. You can get plenty of good chrome with just your cut of today's profits. Hell, it’s more than I make normally by a long shot.” He said almost laughing. “Who’d have thought little Hiromi would some day be bossing me around on a gig?”
I blinked at the almost wistful tone before Jun looked to me and smiled.
“Spend the eddies. Get an upgrade. At least it’ll increase your chances of surviving until you get your hands on the Sandy you really want. Upgrades are normal, they won’t hurt.”
I blinked and realized that… I really should be upgrading my chrome. I had a lot of eddies just sitting in my account. And a lot of chrome that could use an upgrade. My Cyberdeck was a midline at best for instance.
An upgrade to my Cyberdeck would do a lot in making me even scarier.
But I also wanted to spend more money on tech stuff… No, I realized. I had eddies. I had a ton of eddies. That was just an excuse. I was letting my fear control me. I was afraid of chrome in a way. Sure I was feeling much much better about it now, but the kidnapping still haunted me.
I hated that idea.
I breathed in and out. Being wise about chrome wasn’t bad though. Balance. I just needed balance.
“I’m going to bed. I’ll probably be working with Hiromi all day tomorrow to sell the loot.” I said instead, rising up.
“Nice! I’m looking forward to my cut! Going to buy an upgrade for my ride. But you should set it up Motoko. Call your ripper, Vik. Give him time to find some chrome. Go on. Go to bed.”
I just rolled my eyes at Jun’s stupid Mizuchi.
“I’ll send a message to Vik.” I decided, even sending him a message about what I was looking for and a request for a checkup and new install.
“Good night Motoko… And hey. This gig you pulled off today? I was impressed. Super impressed. You didn’t even need me, you could have done it without me… It was a relief.”
I scoffed even as I felt my cheeks heat up. “Section 9 is amazing! Of course we don’t need a gonk like you! Even if you were a big help and it was cool how you worked with us, when you weren’t charging ahead and getting shot at! Maybe Section 9 will offer more gigs to you in the future… If you get some armor!” I yelled and then stomped away into my room. Jun was laughing.
I checked on Tachikoma before I went to bed. Its walking process was starting to really come together. It was moving at a much faster rate now. Much more confidently.
“Good job.” I told it despite not being able to hear me, and did some quick pruning of the process before slipping into bed.
—---
The next day was a barrage of running around. Thankfully since Ichi could drive the Behemoth. I was mostly the bodyguard. Keeping Hiromi safe as she sold equipment all over the city. The eddies flowed in as we dropped off piece after piece.
While we drove around, I spent some time going over the gig with everyone. With the BD recorder I could even review things I had seen.
Talking to Malcolm about when he tripped. Telling him to remind me sometime for some practice with walking through a dark space with a rifle in hands.
Ichi mostly got a slap on the back.
Hiromi too.
Jun I just sent a picture of him getting shot with a quick caption. ‘Don’t be the idiot that runs ahead.’
He didn’t respond with anything useful. Just a glare emoji.
Rebecca didn’t have time to talk so we would have to go over everything another time, unfortunately it also meant Rebecca wasn’t able to join us.
When we finally called it a night, we took some time to celebrate. Hitting a diner and ordering all the food we could eat.
“Seriously! That guy was such scop. I’m pretty sure he was a Scav himself!” I grumbled out but Hiromi just laughed.
“You just didn’t like how he was flirting with me!” Hiromi said with a bit too much eagerness, and I shuddered.
“Of course I was upset! The guy was like thirty. He was gross Hiromi. You shouldn’t have led him on.”
“It let me fleece him for another two grand. So…”
“It’s gross. I’ll have to give that guy a late night visit sometime soon.” I said feeling rather murderous. Fucking sicko.
“Don’t you dare! He was buying a lot of the equipment! We’ll keep feeding him more of our loot! For the eddies!”
“Don’t worry about it Motoko. He’ll do something stupid some day either get himself killed, or we will flatline him.” Ichi cut in. “I would put money on him trying to steal from us someday.”
“He wouldn’t! The equipment we are selling is super cheap! He wo-”
“He totally will.” I agreed. The guy was skeevy.
“Yep.” Ichi agreed, I raised my drink to him and he did the same.
“Ugh.” Hiromi just huffed and Ichi and I started laughing.
“So what are you spending your eddies on Ichi? Any chrome?” I asked mostly as a segway, but I was interested in his answer as well.
“Ah, well I got the smart link, and that wasn’t too bad. Even if using the Minotaur meant I didn’t get to use it much. But I do like the Yukimura. Since I’ve been wearing it, just seeing it on my hip has settled a lot of friction.” He said laughing, slapping the holster on his side that carried his smart gun.
“Heh. At least some gonks are smart enough not to mess with the guy that has homing bullets.” I giggled and he nodded in turn.
“But for what I’m going to do with these eddies… I don’t know. Maybe some Subdermal, or Skinweave?”
“You should reach out to Vik then, see what he has on offer. He’ll take care of you.”
“Sure, maybe I’ll reach out. How about you?” He asked and that was the topic I wanted to bring up, mostly because I was kinda nervous.
“I’d planned on holding off for a while longer. I have a chance at a really high end Sandy that will open up in a few months, but… I think I’m going to chip in a lower quality Sandy with Vik tomorrow.”
“Whoa! Really?” Hiromi asked, looked excited. “That would be preem Motoko! Sandy are expensive chrome, but they’re great!”
“Yeah. I was gonna hold off until I got something really top of the line, but…” Powergaming vs. realistic upgrades.
The powergamer in me said not to upgrade until I could get the best. But I wanted to be safe, and strong enough to protect myself and my chooms.
“So yeah. I’ll go in tomorrow morning. Vik got back to me that he found something that I’ll like.”
“Nice! I want to see! As soon as you are done!” Hiromi demanded, and I waved her off.
“Maybe. I’ll probably head home after and sleep it off or something. But I’ll show you once I feel better.”
“Deal!” She agreed, smiling while Ichi nodded in tandem.
“How about you Hiromi? Anything in mind for your eddies?”
“Most of it is going into payroll unfortunately. But I’ll be making a nice profit that will go into private accounts.” Hiromi said but Ichi and I just looked at each other.
“Coooorppppoooo.” We both teased and Hiromi instantly went red and slapped at both of us.
—--
The next morning I got ready and headed to Viks.
There was a bit of anxiety there. Because I wouldn’t be chipping in the ‘best’ of something. Just what I could get my hands on, with a bit of work, and that wasn’t something I really appreciated, but…
Upgrades. A few upgrades now could make future gigs easier, make me more eddies, and more XP.
It was for the best. That old gamer mentality of not upgrading to anything until I either had to, or until I had all the stat points to make use of the best stuff was holding me back.
But this wasn’t a game.
“Hey Misty!” I called out as I entered her Esoterica and she looked up and smiled brightly at me, making my day instantly better as she waved me down.
“Motoko, I saw you actually scheduled an appointment looking for more chrome today. That’s unusual. Something happen?” She asked kindly, waving me over as she was sitting behind her little reception.
“Not exactly. I just had the idea the other night and wanted to warn Vik.”
“Well he appreciates it, and as his sometimes secretary I appreciate it too.” She said teasing.
“Heh. He’s got you taking calls for him now too?” I asked, teasing back and she shrugged. “Sort of. Just as an emergency thing. Sometimes he isn’t around, so if someone is calling for emergency help well… If he isn’t around to answer, I’ll be able to warn them from showing up.”
“Right. That makes sense. Did Vik mention what he got for me?”
“He did. Vik has contacts all over, and you have the eddies to actually pay.” She winked at me then. “He always goes above and beyond for the best customers.”
“Vik’s the best ripper. Of course I have to treat him right.” I answered back and we both smiled.
“Go on. I know you want to see what he was able to wrangle up for you.” She said waving a hand at the back and I did just that waving goodbye as I hurried into the alley then down the stairs.
“Vik!”
“Hey Kid, ‘bout time, I was wondering if you would keep me waiting, come in, let me show you what I picked up for you this morning. Called in a favor with some old rippers I knew to get the deets and had to do a bit of trading, but I got it.”
Then he pulled out a plastic bag, and there it was.
A tiny little chip that was actually the Sandevistan.
“They always look so small.”
“Heh. Well big things come in small packages kid. This is a Dynalar Sandevistan. It’s not the best of the best. QianT usually hold that mantle, Militech can be top of the line if you can snatch their good stuff, at least they put up a fight. The Falcon is a preem piece of chrome.” He chattered as he started prepping everything, but I was struggling to tear my eyes off it.
A Sandevistan. Speedware. The piece of chrome that every likely was the most important piece of chrome I would get.
It was a midline Sandy. Like Vik said this wasn’t a Falcon. Or… Whatever the fuck Davids Sandy was.
Well whatever it was, I would find out eventually. For now? This would do. This would do nicely.
“Alright Vik. I’m Ready.”
“Heh. Nice that you are mentally, but you aren’t ready just yet, come take a look at this as well. I need to ask if this is the right fit for you.” He said pulling out a second plastic package. The plastic was obviously not original the sort of thing I had seen in Scav shops for how they store cyberware to keep it clean.
And he dropped it on the table it took me a second… “A neural link?” I asked confused at the sight of it.
“Your neural link is a civilian version.” Vik answers and then points at the second piece of cyberware in a plastic bag. It wasn’t massive. At least not that massive, but I instantly realized it wasn’t just nothing either.
“That looks a bit high end.”
“Heh, caught that huh? Yeah. Your Sandevistan isn’t anything special, not that it was easy to get my hands on, they don’t come cheap. But you already got a Cyberdeck, and I bet you wanted to keep it right?”
I instantly reached up to the back of my neck. There in the neural link that I had woken up with in this world in a small port that near my chipslots was my current Cyberdeck.
A cyberdeck that I knew was taking up a lot of the hardware of my neural link to run.
The neural link may be the most integral cyberware that existed. It was the piece of tech that connected the brain and nervous system to cyberware.
The basic civilian one wasn’t really capable of much. It wouldn’t limit a cyberdeck at my level, but Sandevistan, Cyberdecks, and many other powerful pieces of chrome all needed space in a neural link.
Hell, the Sandevistan David had chipped in, had needed the massive spinal neural link, or at least had come with it just to help handle the power that little chip could push out.
This one wasn’t nearly as big, but looking it over. The chrome gleaming in the muddy light of Vik’s shop. I came to a realization.
I licked my lips.
“I want it.”
“You sure? This might be the one I had access to, but I can find something different. This is a big step for you-”
“I want it. It’s perfect. Hell there is only one other neural link I can think of that I want more, and that’s coming along with that Sandy I’ve been hunting. Vik. Chip it.” I confirmed, absolutely sure.
This was going to be huge, but with adaptation, and my own desire for the chrome. I was confident this was perfect for me.
“Alright kid. In that case, I’m all set up. Take a seat.”
I nodded and did just that, settling into the chair.
“I’ll call Misty down as well once we are done. Not too good at haircuts.” He joked and I just laughed, as I rolled over showing the back of my neck.
A few moments later I was asleep.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
The chrome Motoko needs are complete leg replacements and the cloak.
What she needs is to throw out all of her useless internal organs and instal a HMG in her chest instead.
Seras
Well-known member
I do want Motoko to do some more leg chrome to enhance her jump ability.
Hmmm. I can't say I hate the idea. XD
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
That and you really need cybernetic limbs to truly get the most out of a Sandy. Just because your brain can move at super speeds doesn't mean your meat can.
Yesss, expand the anime cosplay with the absolute classics
No wait, Motoko too smol and cute.
Jun is big with lots of internal space being wasted on organs, get the HMG installed in him.
xachariahxx
Well-known member
It actually seems to work as time acceleration.
Which sounds crazy until you realize they've got anti-gravity drives. So despite CP2077 mostly being on street level, they've still got some tech that messes with the fundamentals of space time.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
In Edgerunners the reason David was getting so fucked up by his sandy early on was because his body was still mostly organic and couldn't handle moving at those sort of speeds.
Chapter 159
Seras
Well-known member
“It’s not too bad.. Right?”
“I think it suits you.” Misty assured me. It was a full twenty hours after I went under the knife. Vik had done a lot of work, and after eight hours I felt… Perfect.
My neck was a little weird, but that was something adaptation would help with.
I looked in the little hand held mirror and what gazed back at me, was something more than human.
The Neural Link Vik had chipped into me was an Arasaka brand. So the chrome was the usual black with little red ports for everything.
I knew Hiromi would love it. But it wasn’t just a few chip slots hidden beneath the flesh that had long grown over it.
This was heavy duty chrome, and I didn’t like hiding my chrome.
So the entire back of my neck, from just above where my Occipital bun as Vik had called it, but it was just the bump on the back of my head. Everything below that was chrome to just above my shoulder blades. I even had some cool chrome stretching into the sides of my throat giving me a bit of flash there.
And now Misty was cleaning up my hair on the back of my head, and there it was.
The largest chunk of myself other than my arms, that wasn’t natural, something I wouldn’t be hidden away beneath my boots like my ankles.
And I low key fucking loved it.
“Vik did a great job. It looks amazing.” I said… Okay so maybe it was more like high key I loved it.
“Hehe, it really suits you. You always carried that Neo-Mil look. Well it looks even more so now.”
I felt myself smiling even wider as I turned the mirror so I could see Misty.
“Thanks Misty.”
“Of course. You’ll make sure to take all the drugs Vik gave you in exchange.”
I kept myself from laughing too hard as Misty was cutting my hair a bit but I flashed her a smile. “Sure you bet.”
“Good. You’re one of the patients that actually listen to all the recovery instructions. You have no idea how hard it is to get a bunch of gonks to take their medicine correctly.”
I giggled all the louder as Misty ranted, happily telling me horror stories of idiots not listening to Viks orders and coming back with their body rejecting chrome or worse.
“All done… It looks about the same as before, but from the back… Well it definitely stands out… In a good way!”
“Hold the mirror?” I asked her and she nodded as I walked over to a wall mirror and with Misty’s help was able to actually see it.
Heh. I’m really glad that Vik or whoever owned it previously got rid of the Arasaka symbol on the back, instead of looking tacky, my chrome looked… Sinister.
Cool.
“Remember to follow Viks instructions!” Misty demanded, and I nodded in agreement, the feeling felt weird as my neck no longer moved in the same way.
But I would get used to it.
Finally Misty let me free, and I would follow Viks instructions, only the actual instructions he had given me. We hadn’t wanted to tell Misty that I had already healed post surgery, so Vik had given me different instructions before I had left.
I walked out and breathed in the Night City air. People walked past me, in a blur of neon and suspicion clad faces.
But I didn’t care. Because today? I had just done something amazing. Time to go home. Despite the heal, I was still ordered to go very easy on my Cyberdeck, and not to even think about using my Sandy.
Even if the urge was there.
—--
“You’re staring.”
“Of course I am. My little sister got a nova upgrade.” Jun agreed as he had intercepted me as I got home.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I said, flushing a little at the attention.
“I have the day off. Show me.” He demanded but it was with a gentle smile and I huffed and did just that. Settling onto the couch.
“It’s an Arasaka Neural Link, an ODA apparently. The Sandy’s a Dynalar. Just a Mk.2.”
“Nova. That’s good chrome.” Jun confirmed as he spun around me so he could get a better look.
“He did a good job on the install, I can barely see the wounds.” I nodded slightly at that. He had done an amazing job, but the real reason there weren’t any wounds was because I had slept eight hours after the install.
“Anyway, I haven’t used it yet of course. I need to give it some time for everything to settle in. Docs orders. So I’ll be working on stuff around the house… Do you need anything done… Armor for instance.” I hinted and Jun just happily ignored me as he patted me on the shoulder.
“Nah don’t worry about it. That armor just got in the way. It was interesting, but not for me-Ow! Motoko!”
“I’m sorry I just happened to hit you right where you got shot the other day! Oops! Wow too bad you weren’t wearing the armor properly or it would have blocked that bullet and only given you a bruise!” I hissed at him, and while Jun looked like he was about to pick me up and throw me, he hesitated, glancing up at my neck.
I reached up and rubbed my neck too and that put a damper on it. Jun wasn’t going to rough house while I was healing.
“I wish you would wear more armor.” I told him seriously. “Look at how effective it was for us. I got shot a few times in that fight Jun, but it didn’t even slow me down.”
He didn’t say anything in turn at my turn towards the serious. Instead just patting me on the head. “Don’t forget to call Hiromi. She’ll freak.”
“Hehe! I’ll do that now. Maybe she wants to spend the night?” I wondered and jumped off the couch to run to my room to make the call.
—--
“That kinda tickles.”
“It’s so cool. Arasaka brand and everything! I’m so proud.” Hiromi said faux sniffling as she continued to poke at the back of my neck. I rolled my eyes.
“It’s not the best link on the market, just the one that I have.” I tried to argue, but Hiromi just ignored me. Happy that I had some Araska chrome. Honestly we sort of matched. Her own Neural link wasn’t the heavy duty one that I had, but she did have a strip of black chrome hidden under her hair along the back of her neck. Her chip ports were set into it.
“There is a problem though.” I grumbled.
“What? What happened? Something wrong? Bad chrome!? I’ll kill that old man ripper of yours!”
“No! What? Hiromi, chill choom. Vik is amazing. No, I used to have my Personal link cords on the back of my neck remember?”
“Oh yeah, you picked that weird install. They still there?”
“Yeah, but the ODA’s have a slightly different link design. Here see?” I said as I reached behind my head and felt around until I found it, then showed it to Hiromi.
The ODA had a lot of modularity despite being Arasaka branded. Not something you would expect from them, but it was actually sort of one of their trademarks. Other than the black and red design.
The personal link cord wasn’t in quite the same spot as it used to be. It now detached from a recess along the right or left side of the neural link. Meaning it was more on the side of my neck behind my ears, than it used to be directly behind on the back.
“Tehee!” Hiromi giggled as she popped the personal link out of my neck and then put it back in a few times.
“That kinda tickles Hiromi.” I told her and that just made her giggle more and keep doing it until I swiped her hands away.
“It looks nova Motoko! And with a Sandy our work is going to be even smoother!” Hiromi said with glee kicking her legs as she raised them off the floor.
“It’ll definitely increase safety. It’ll be nice not to be pushed back by every speedware user now.”
“Heh. And that one TC girl you spar with! You’ll be able to beat her ass now! Which you should! Definitely beat her ass!”
“Oh, yeah Hayato. I haven’t talked to her recently. I’ll have to reach out. She’ll be a great test for using the Sandy in a fight… My sandy.” I repeated, because it bore repeating. I had a sandy now.
Sandevistan. One of my own.
It wasn’t Davids OP as fuck secret black project sandy, but it was fine.
“Yep! Well in that case, I’ll focus on the BD stuff for a while. Not like we can go on gigs while you are still recovering from your chrome.” HIromi added shrugging.
“Oh yeah. I still have the BD from the Power Plant. Think I should delete it?” I asked. Things had gotten a bit serious on the gig. And it could be dangerous to have it come back to us.
“Wait.. You made a BD of that?”
“Yeah of course I did. I always turn my BD tuner on before doing something. I just delete it if it’s boring or in the case of the Badlands gig… Well if things get crazy.”
“Definitely! Oh oh! I have a good idea! It’ll be perfect! Gimme! Gimme!”
“Wha-hold on Hiromi, I’ll need to take it to Judy to get fixed up.”
“I know! That’s why give it to me, I’ll take it! I have an idea.”
“Okay sure!” I said laughing as Hiromi was practically reaching for my chip slots like she could just pull it from my head. I quickly flashed a shard and after a moment of it saving I handed her the raw BD.
“Perfect! Hehehehe!” She cackled as she rose to her feet, like full on maniacal laughter.
“I really don’t think I want to know what your idea is.”
“Don’t worry! It’s perfect!” Then before I could say anything else, she ran out of the apartment.
“Was that Hiromi?” Jun asked, poking his head out of his room looking confused. I just sent him a look of confusion in turn. “Wasn’t she spending the night?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
—--
I flopped on my bed just after Hiromi left. With any sort of heavy work taken off the field, I didn’t have much to do. Sure David had chipped in his Sandy then used it right away, but he also fucked himself up enough to pass out doing that, and was a fucking gonk.
I was going to follow my doctor's orders to take it easy for a few days, even with my instant heal.
I looked over and Tachikoma was steadily working.
The programming was clearing up. The program had learned what it was trying to learn, and so actual improvement was going pretty quick. I purposefully pulled up the data on my laptop and didn’t link in to go ahead and do more pruning.
Getting rid of incorrect data, or repeats, cleaning it up and making it streamlined. But it was getting to be time to add more into the program.
So I walked over and picked up a chunk of steel, and placed it in front of the Tachikoma.
A moment later the small addition to its programming I had added started up.
It moved to the sphere and stopped… Then it rammed it.
But steel was heavy.
Nope little guy. If you want to learn how to pick things up you need to do better than that.
Setting the program to run I ended up just laying on my bed staring at the ceiling for a while.
My neck… Well it felt kinda stiff. Like I wanted to stretch it, but I couldn’t.
The negative side to chrome. But I relaxed. I would put in some adaptation and be good to go.
And in exchange for this discomfort… A Sandy.
Which I couldn’t use yet…
“Jun! I’m going to sleep for a while!” I yelled out from my bed without getting up.
“Okay! Sleep well!” Jun called back. Cool.
Another eight hours would make the time until Sandy usage go down a lot.
So I closed my eyes and drifted off.
I awoke instantly and blinked. The light in the room was off, not that there wasn’t enough light from my printers and laptop. So I rose up and blinked.
“That… Isn't quite it little guy.” I muttered staring at the Tachikoma that had failed at lifting the block… It was using its little grippers on the block and was just… Sort of jerking itself forward and back. But the block wasn’t going anywhere, because it was using the extension I had built into the grippers… Kinda cute though. I stood up and moved to the computer. Oh yeah, that was a glitch alright.
A few moments later I sent the update and the Tachikoma stopped and then with a bit of prodding on my behalf through code, it finally managed to lift the block. Then it started walking and dropped it.
“Ganbatte, Tachikoma-chan.” I whispered to my drone and looked at the screen. I really should sit down and put in some actual work on the Tachikoma interface…
Just thinking about it instantly brought ideas to my mind thanks to inspired programmer… And it was like 2 am so I might as well get something done.
I shrugged and even if I couldn’t program with my cyberdeck, I could still do it the old way.
I started typing, getting lost in the synergy between the VI I was creating from the Tachikoma, and a program to manually control them.
I would need to get the Minotaur interface tomorrow to look that one over as well. I could copy some of the program…
Where was the Minotaur anyways? Last I saw it, Ichi had… Ichi! That little sneak! I realized that Ichi had definitely stolen the Minotaur away from me! Well we would see about that.
I knew where he lived!
—--
Ichinose
Ichi woke up to his alarm blaring.
Sighing into his pillow he blinked up his agent and then shut it down. He sighed into his pillow as he mustered up the energy to get up. Slowly he rose, eyes blinking, one of the benefits of optics, is that he didn’t feel like he could barely see anything when he first woke up, everything was clear from the light coming in from his open window.
Which was weird, Ichi never left his window open. Something he had learned as a kid. He narrowed his eyes at it, and reached over to flip the switch, closing it back down. Nodding at that, he rose unsteadily to his feet, and took a few moments to stretch and groan.
He didn’t want to get up this early, but Hiromi had dragged him into that SCSM job, and well…
It wasn’t about the pay so much, but it was a good experience. Ichi really liked driving through the city, seeing new places, and meeting people.
Malcolm might talk up his massively overpriced supercar, but he was also the idiot that could barely ever drive his car anywhere.
Ichi drove through the whole city whenever he wanted.
As he slipped into the bathroom he made the call to his new ‘partner.’ even if the guy liked to try and get Ichi to call him boss.
Max was the guy that ran the SCSM shop. He was alright, but since Hiromi was technically Ichi’s boss, it gave him a lot of leeway.
*Hey kid! You coming in today or not? You caused a real issue yesterday!*
*Hey Max, yeah I’m getting ready to come in. I’ll have the Behemoth. Won’t have full capacity though.*
*Fuck. How much room do I got?*
*About seventy percent, maybe eighty.*
Ichi ignored the cursing coming over the line, quickly washing up his hair and then once he was soap free stepping out, and grabbing a towel, quickly drying off he checked his mirror, doing a bit of work on his hair to even it all.
*Fine. But we’ll have to haul ass to get a full route done in that case! I expect you in soon kid!*
*It’ll be about thirty minutes Max.” Ichi refuted the man's demands casually, pretty used to him now. It was kinda cool to be a teenager able to tell grown men to fuck off. It wasn’t like Max had any other trucks with the same amount of armor, or capacity. And Hiromi had made it clear to the man that Ichi was the one in charge of the truck, full stop.
Not that Ichi went out of his way to piss him off. The extra storage area and secure holding for the truck was worth a lot on its own.
He stepped out of the bathroom, glad he had his own private one since this was an older style home pushing the beads out of the way he made two steps and then stopped cold.
“M-Motoko?” He asked, because there sitting on his bed, with her feet up was Motoko. Along with his Yukimura in her lap, that she was fiddling with.
“Ichi.” She greeted back calmly and Ichi felt a bit of discomfort, because Motoko was acting weird.
For one she was literally in his room.
“Motoko? What’s going on?” He asked a little awkwardly, making sure his towel was properly tightened around his waist. Dangit Motoko he just got out of the shower! Had Grandma let her in!?
She rose with a predator's grace, something she had started to show more and more lately, and almost languidly stalked him across the room.
Ichi felt his back hit the cold wall as she stalked him right into a dead end, and then she grabbed his hand and put his Yukimura into his palm.
“You should really have more weapons on hand Ichi, I was able to take your pistol while you slept and you didn’t even notice.” She said almost jokingly and he relaxed a bit about to make a joke before asking her to get the hell out but suddenly her palms slammed into the wall beside his head.
Oh.
Oh no.
“Ichi?”
“Y-yeah?”
“Where’s my Minotaur?” She said with sinister intent and all Ichi could do was swallow, the emotions running through him in that moment complicated and unknowable.
“I uh… Can show you?”
“Perfect, get dressed.” She agreed back to happy Motoko as she walked out of his room.
Ichi slumped nearly sliding down the wall.
What the fuck?
“I think it suits you.” Misty assured me. It was a full twenty hours after I went under the knife. Vik had done a lot of work, and after eight hours I felt… Perfect.
My neck was a little weird, but that was something adaptation would help with.
I looked in the little hand held mirror and what gazed back at me, was something more than human.
The Neural Link Vik had chipped into me was an Arasaka brand. So the chrome was the usual black with little red ports for everything.
I knew Hiromi would love it. But it wasn’t just a few chip slots hidden beneath the flesh that had long grown over it.
This was heavy duty chrome, and I didn’t like hiding my chrome.
So the entire back of my neck, from just above where my Occipital bun as Vik had called it, but it was just the bump on the back of my head. Everything below that was chrome to just above my shoulder blades. I even had some cool chrome stretching into the sides of my throat giving me a bit of flash there.
And now Misty was cleaning up my hair on the back of my head, and there it was.
The largest chunk of myself other than my arms, that wasn’t natural, something I wouldn’t be hidden away beneath my boots like my ankles.
And I low key fucking loved it.
“Vik did a great job. It looks amazing.” I said… Okay so maybe it was more like high key I loved it.
“Hehe, it really suits you. You always carried that Neo-Mil look. Well it looks even more so now.”
I felt myself smiling even wider as I turned the mirror so I could see Misty.
“Thanks Misty.”
“Of course. You’ll make sure to take all the drugs Vik gave you in exchange.”
I kept myself from laughing too hard as Misty was cutting my hair a bit but I flashed her a smile. “Sure you bet.”
“Good. You’re one of the patients that actually listen to all the recovery instructions. You have no idea how hard it is to get a bunch of gonks to take their medicine correctly.”
I giggled all the louder as Misty ranted, happily telling me horror stories of idiots not listening to Viks orders and coming back with their body rejecting chrome or worse.
“All done… It looks about the same as before, but from the back… Well it definitely stands out… In a good way!”
“Hold the mirror?” I asked her and she nodded as I walked over to a wall mirror and with Misty’s help was able to actually see it.
Heh. I’m really glad that Vik or whoever owned it previously got rid of the Arasaka symbol on the back, instead of looking tacky, my chrome looked… Sinister.
Cool.
“Remember to follow Viks instructions!” Misty demanded, and I nodded in agreement, the feeling felt weird as my neck no longer moved in the same way.
But I would get used to it.
Finally Misty let me free, and I would follow Viks instructions, only the actual instructions he had given me. We hadn’t wanted to tell Misty that I had already healed post surgery, so Vik had given me different instructions before I had left.
I walked out and breathed in the Night City air. People walked past me, in a blur of neon and suspicion clad faces.
But I didn’t care. Because today? I had just done something amazing. Time to go home. Despite the heal, I was still ordered to go very easy on my Cyberdeck, and not to even think about using my Sandy.
Even if the urge was there.
—--
“You’re staring.”
“Of course I am. My little sister got a nova upgrade.” Jun agreed as he had intercepted me as I got home.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I said, flushing a little at the attention.
“I have the day off. Show me.” He demanded but it was with a gentle smile and I huffed and did just that. Settling onto the couch.
“It’s an Arasaka Neural Link, an ODA apparently. The Sandy’s a Dynalar. Just a Mk.2.”
“Nova. That’s good chrome.” Jun confirmed as he spun around me so he could get a better look.
“He did a good job on the install, I can barely see the wounds.” I nodded slightly at that. He had done an amazing job, but the real reason there weren’t any wounds was because I had slept eight hours after the install.
“Anyway, I haven’t used it yet of course. I need to give it some time for everything to settle in. Docs orders. So I’ll be working on stuff around the house… Do you need anything done… Armor for instance.” I hinted and Jun just happily ignored me as he patted me on the shoulder.
“Nah don’t worry about it. That armor just got in the way. It was interesting, but not for me-Ow! Motoko!”
“I’m sorry I just happened to hit you right where you got shot the other day! Oops! Wow too bad you weren’t wearing the armor properly or it would have blocked that bullet and only given you a bruise!” I hissed at him, and while Jun looked like he was about to pick me up and throw me, he hesitated, glancing up at my neck.
I reached up and rubbed my neck too and that put a damper on it. Jun wasn’t going to rough house while I was healing.
“I wish you would wear more armor.” I told him seriously. “Look at how effective it was for us. I got shot a few times in that fight Jun, but it didn’t even slow me down.”
He didn’t say anything in turn at my turn towards the serious. Instead just patting me on the head. “Don’t forget to call Hiromi. She’ll freak.”
“Hehe! I’ll do that now. Maybe she wants to spend the night?” I wondered and jumped off the couch to run to my room to make the call.
—--
“That kinda tickles.”
“It’s so cool. Arasaka brand and everything! I’m so proud.” Hiromi said faux sniffling as she continued to poke at the back of my neck. I rolled my eyes.
“It’s not the best link on the market, just the one that I have.” I tried to argue, but Hiromi just ignored me. Happy that I had some Araska chrome. Honestly we sort of matched. Her own Neural link wasn’t the heavy duty one that I had, but she did have a strip of black chrome hidden under her hair along the back of her neck. Her chip ports were set into it.
“There is a problem though.” I grumbled.
“What? What happened? Something wrong? Bad chrome!? I’ll kill that old man ripper of yours!”
“No! What? Hiromi, chill choom. Vik is amazing. No, I used to have my Personal link cords on the back of my neck remember?”
“Oh yeah, you picked that weird install. They still there?”
“Yeah, but the ODA’s have a slightly different link design. Here see?” I said as I reached behind my head and felt around until I found it, then showed it to Hiromi.
The ODA had a lot of modularity despite being Arasaka branded. Not something you would expect from them, but it was actually sort of one of their trademarks. Other than the black and red design.
The personal link cord wasn’t in quite the same spot as it used to be. It now detached from a recess along the right or left side of the neural link. Meaning it was more on the side of my neck behind my ears, than it used to be directly behind on the back.
“Tehee!” Hiromi giggled as she popped the personal link out of my neck and then put it back in a few times.
“That kinda tickles Hiromi.” I told her and that just made her giggle more and keep doing it until I swiped her hands away.
“It looks nova Motoko! And with a Sandy our work is going to be even smoother!” Hiromi said with glee kicking her legs as she raised them off the floor.
“It’ll definitely increase safety. It’ll be nice not to be pushed back by every speedware user now.”
“Heh. And that one TC girl you spar with! You’ll be able to beat her ass now! Which you should! Definitely beat her ass!”
“Oh, yeah Hayato. I haven’t talked to her recently. I’ll have to reach out. She’ll be a great test for using the Sandy in a fight… My sandy.” I repeated, because it bore repeating. I had a sandy now.
Sandevistan. One of my own.
It wasn’t Davids OP as fuck secret black project sandy, but it was fine.
“Yep! Well in that case, I’ll focus on the BD stuff for a while. Not like we can go on gigs while you are still recovering from your chrome.” HIromi added shrugging.
“Oh yeah. I still have the BD from the Power Plant. Think I should delete it?” I asked. Things had gotten a bit serious on the gig. And it could be dangerous to have it come back to us.
“Wait.. You made a BD of that?”
“Yeah of course I did. I always turn my BD tuner on before doing something. I just delete it if it’s boring or in the case of the Badlands gig… Well if things get crazy.”
“Definitely! Oh oh! I have a good idea! It’ll be perfect! Gimme! Gimme!”
“Wha-hold on Hiromi, I’ll need to take it to Judy to get fixed up.”
“I know! That’s why give it to me, I’ll take it! I have an idea.”
“Okay sure!” I said laughing as Hiromi was practically reaching for my chip slots like she could just pull it from my head. I quickly flashed a shard and after a moment of it saving I handed her the raw BD.
“Perfect! Hehehehe!” She cackled as she rose to her feet, like full on maniacal laughter.
“I really don’t think I want to know what your idea is.”
“Don’t worry! It’s perfect!” Then before I could say anything else, she ran out of the apartment.
“Was that Hiromi?” Jun asked, poking his head out of his room looking confused. I just sent him a look of confusion in turn. “Wasn’t she spending the night?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
—--
I flopped on my bed just after Hiromi left. With any sort of heavy work taken off the field, I didn’t have much to do. Sure David had chipped in his Sandy then used it right away, but he also fucked himself up enough to pass out doing that, and was a fucking gonk.
I was going to follow my doctor's orders to take it easy for a few days, even with my instant heal.
I looked over and Tachikoma was steadily working.
The programming was clearing up. The program had learned what it was trying to learn, and so actual improvement was going pretty quick. I purposefully pulled up the data on my laptop and didn’t link in to go ahead and do more pruning.
Getting rid of incorrect data, or repeats, cleaning it up and making it streamlined. But it was getting to be time to add more into the program.
So I walked over and picked up a chunk of steel, and placed it in front of the Tachikoma.
A moment later the small addition to its programming I had added started up.
It moved to the sphere and stopped… Then it rammed it.
But steel was heavy.
Nope little guy. If you want to learn how to pick things up you need to do better than that.
Setting the program to run I ended up just laying on my bed staring at the ceiling for a while.
My neck… Well it felt kinda stiff. Like I wanted to stretch it, but I couldn’t.
The negative side to chrome. But I relaxed. I would put in some adaptation and be good to go.
And in exchange for this discomfort… A Sandy.
Which I couldn’t use yet…
“Jun! I’m going to sleep for a while!” I yelled out from my bed without getting up.
“Okay! Sleep well!” Jun called back. Cool.
Another eight hours would make the time until Sandy usage go down a lot.
So I closed my eyes and drifted off.
I awoke instantly and blinked. The light in the room was off, not that there wasn’t enough light from my printers and laptop. So I rose up and blinked.
“That… Isn't quite it little guy.” I muttered staring at the Tachikoma that had failed at lifting the block… It was using its little grippers on the block and was just… Sort of jerking itself forward and back. But the block wasn’t going anywhere, because it was using the extension I had built into the grippers… Kinda cute though. I stood up and moved to the computer. Oh yeah, that was a glitch alright.
A few moments later I sent the update and the Tachikoma stopped and then with a bit of prodding on my behalf through code, it finally managed to lift the block. Then it started walking and dropped it.
“Ganbatte, Tachikoma-chan.” I whispered to my drone and looked at the screen. I really should sit down and put in some actual work on the Tachikoma interface…
Just thinking about it instantly brought ideas to my mind thanks to inspired programmer… And it was like 2 am so I might as well get something done.
I shrugged and even if I couldn’t program with my cyberdeck, I could still do it the old way.
I started typing, getting lost in the synergy between the VI I was creating from the Tachikoma, and a program to manually control them.
I would need to get the Minotaur interface tomorrow to look that one over as well. I could copy some of the program…
Where was the Minotaur anyways? Last I saw it, Ichi had… Ichi! That little sneak! I realized that Ichi had definitely stolen the Minotaur away from me! Well we would see about that.
I knew where he lived!
—--
Ichinose
Ichi woke up to his alarm blaring.
Sighing into his pillow he blinked up his agent and then shut it down. He sighed into his pillow as he mustered up the energy to get up. Slowly he rose, eyes blinking, one of the benefits of optics, is that he didn’t feel like he could barely see anything when he first woke up, everything was clear from the light coming in from his open window.
Which was weird, Ichi never left his window open. Something he had learned as a kid. He narrowed his eyes at it, and reached over to flip the switch, closing it back down. Nodding at that, he rose unsteadily to his feet, and took a few moments to stretch and groan.
He didn’t want to get up this early, but Hiromi had dragged him into that SCSM job, and well…
It wasn’t about the pay so much, but it was a good experience. Ichi really liked driving through the city, seeing new places, and meeting people.
Malcolm might talk up his massively overpriced supercar, but he was also the idiot that could barely ever drive his car anywhere.
Ichi drove through the whole city whenever he wanted.
As he slipped into the bathroom he made the call to his new ‘partner.’ even if the guy liked to try and get Ichi to call him boss.
Max was the guy that ran the SCSM shop. He was alright, but since Hiromi was technically Ichi’s boss, it gave him a lot of leeway.
*Hey kid! You coming in today or not? You caused a real issue yesterday!*
*Hey Max, yeah I’m getting ready to come in. I’ll have the Behemoth. Won’t have full capacity though.*
*Fuck. How much room do I got?*
*About seventy percent, maybe eighty.*
Ichi ignored the cursing coming over the line, quickly washing up his hair and then once he was soap free stepping out, and grabbing a towel, quickly drying off he checked his mirror, doing a bit of work on his hair to even it all.
*Fine. But we’ll have to haul ass to get a full route done in that case! I expect you in soon kid!*
*It’ll be about thirty minutes Max.” Ichi refuted the man's demands casually, pretty used to him now. It was kinda cool to be a teenager able to tell grown men to fuck off. It wasn’t like Max had any other trucks with the same amount of armor, or capacity. And Hiromi had made it clear to the man that Ichi was the one in charge of the truck, full stop.
Not that Ichi went out of his way to piss him off. The extra storage area and secure holding for the truck was worth a lot on its own.
He stepped out of the bathroom, glad he had his own private one since this was an older style home pushing the beads out of the way he made two steps and then stopped cold.
“M-Motoko?” He asked, because there sitting on his bed, with her feet up was Motoko. Along with his Yukimura in her lap, that she was fiddling with.
“Ichi.” She greeted back calmly and Ichi felt a bit of discomfort, because Motoko was acting weird.
For one she was literally in his room.
“Motoko? What’s going on?” He asked a little awkwardly, making sure his towel was properly tightened around his waist. Dangit Motoko he just got out of the shower! Had Grandma let her in!?
She rose with a predator's grace, something she had started to show more and more lately, and almost languidly stalked him across the room.
Ichi felt his back hit the cold wall as she stalked him right into a dead end, and then she grabbed his hand and put his Yukimura into his palm.
“You should really have more weapons on hand Ichi, I was able to take your pistol while you slept and you didn’t even notice.” She said almost jokingly and he relaxed a bit about to make a joke before asking her to get the hell out but suddenly her palms slammed into the wall beside his head.
Oh.
Oh no.
“Ichi?”
“Y-yeah?”
“Where’s my Minotaur?” She said with sinister intent and all Ichi could do was swallow, the emotions running through him in that moment complicated and unknowable.
“I uh… Can show you?”
“Perfect, get dressed.” She agreed back to happy Motoko as she walked out of his room.
Ichi slumped nearly sliding down the wall.
What the fuck?
Blasterbot
Well-known member
Only got a little bit of creepy stalker energy there. Hiromi is gonna be jelly.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
A murder machine like Motoko just randomly showing up to your house would be kinda scary ngl.