Ghost in the City Cyberpunk Gamer SI

[Seras]

The next morning I decided I needed some friend time. So I went over to see Hiromi.

While I made it up to their floor, it took almost ten minutes after I hit the button for the doorbell before someone came to the door.

“Oh hello Hiromi’s mom.” I greeted her with a smile as she opened the door. A scowl set on her face.

“Hiromi is in class right now.” She said as if that explained everything.
“Wait. I thought they closed the academy while everything was going on?”

“They have. Hiromi is taking her class right now.” Hiromi’s mom explained getting annoyed and I realized what she was actually saying, Hiromi would be in the middle of her Group BD class… Thing.

“Oh gotcha… Umm do you know how long that is gonna take? Should I wait in my car, or go grab some lunch before coming back or something?”

The woman sighed before stepping aside to my surprise. “You can wait in her room, just don’t disturb her while she is in class. Hiromi will be happy to see you.” The woman offered, sounding kind of stilted as I slowly walked in. Hiromi’s mother took a few steps before slowing. “Hiromi hasn’t handled the security measures we implemented well… Your last visit was… Well taken.” The woman offered a little awkwardly before she seemed to breathe in and out, and then that solid stone face was back. “Remember, don't disrupt her class.”

“I won’t.” I agreed, a little surprised. I guess Hiromi’s parents did care… They were just corpo. Which had its own issues.

I walked into Hiromi’s room, and there she was resting on a big comfy looking chair, a BD wreath on her head actively in the middle of her session.

Cool.

I decided not to bother her, instead settling on another chair in front of her computer.

I waited for a while before I realized this was going to be boring. So I looked at the computer she was hooked up to.

Obviously her class wasn’t a normal BD, in the show it allowed multiple people to all take part in a class environment. So it would need a lot of processing power. The fact they could even do this remotely was… Impressive. But considering how many Arasaka executives went to the school, of course they would choose the option to keep their kids from being murdered or kidnapped.

Still.. It was right there… I popped the cord out of my neck and pushed it into the computer's access port.

Oh! That was some strong security! I guess Arasaka execs wouldn’t buy their daughter cheap stuff… I could do this without sending any alerts up, since it wasn’t like I was actually looking to break through. So I started poking the security, touching the ICE.

It was tough shit!

How fun! Without any need to worry about time or anything it was like opening a puzzle game while I waited.

*100 Intelligence XP Gained*

I smiled happily as the alerts for upgrades came in.

*100 Breach Protocol XP Gained.*

Both skills were being tested with this security. But long before I would have broken through especially with how slow I was taking it, Hiromi moved.

I looked over as she sat up groaning a bit as she stretched her arms as she was taking off her wreath. I held up my hand.

“Hey Hiromi!”

“EEEeee!” She squealed, arms jerking and sending her wreath up into the air. I pushed on the floor letting the chair I was on roll a bit as I held out a hand and snatched the wreath out of the air.

“Safe!”

“MOTOKO!?”

“Hiromi!” I greeted with a smile that had her blinking a bit as she looked around like she wasn’t sure what was going on.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to come visit! Your Mom let me in as long as I didn’t bother you while you were in your class. Have fun?”

“A-ah. No. It’s boring… But I’m glad you’re here.” She said instead with a smile that I returned.

“Anyway! Let me unplug out of this.” I told her my neck cord was stretched to its limits in order to save Hiromi's Wreath from the floor.

“Wait. Why are you plugged into my system?”

“Mostly because I was bored! But you have really good security! I was practicing breaking through the ICE, it’s really good shit by the way.” I told her as I rolled back to the system and unplugged.

“Wait. You were trying to break through my ICE!? Motoko! That! I have private stuff on that system!” She said face going a little red.

“Oh I wasn’t gonna look at anything Hiromi I promise. I’ve just been working on my Netrunning stuff recently, and I was curious what the ICE would be like. It was really advanced Arasaka stuff. It was cool… I didn’t mean to make a pun there.” I admitted, Hiromi rolling her eyes at me, but at least she wasn’t mad anymore.

“Nobody says Cool anymore Motoko. Were you watching old shows or something?”

“H-Hey Cool is cool! You can’t just replace Cool!”

“Preem so much better.” She said, but she was purposefully teasing me I could tell.

“Anyway! Want to play some games? Or watch some TV? I’m taking a cool down day after last night.”

“What happened last night?”

“Well Jun invited me to another Kamikaze raid-”

“Whaaa! How was it? Was it amazing?” Hiromi asked looking so much like a kid wanting a fun story.

I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “So I recently klepped this absolutely Preeeeem. Nekomata. Its previous owner came down with a case of ripped out throat, so I took her, and she is a dream. He might have been Maelstrom, but he did take care of his girl.”

“A Sniper Rifle? Do you even know how to shoot one?”
“Course I do! My arms make it super stable too! Anyway, So I-”

—--

“Jeez you’re out there doing so much stuff… I’m not even able to leave the house.” She sighed during the story Hiromi had cuddled up and was now looking up at me from my lap. “I… I’m sorry. You always tried to drag me into stuff, but I’m just a coward.”

“You’re not a coward Hiromi. If I had any sense I wouldn’t be running around with all the crazy shit going on.”

“But you are… You aren’t afraid.”

“I’m afraid sometimes! Just not like in the moment.” I told her being honest. “Besides fear is good. Fear is that little voice in your head telling you that you are being stupid. It just means you are smarter than me. Cause I don’t listen.” I told her, making fun of myself a bit to earn a chuckle from her.

“It still sounds so preem. So cool. You gonk.” She added poking me making me laugh as she used my slang.

I couldn’t help it! Even if everyone looked at me weird when I shouted cool.

“Well… Do you want to see?”

“Hmm?”
“I forgot to tell you, I made friends with some Mox a while back, saved him from getting jumped, but he offered me a job idea, and I thought it was a good idea. So I went to Viks and got a BD Recorder implant.”

“Motoko!” Hiromi jerked out of my lap. “You can’t! The Mox BD’s are-!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Hiromi’s reaction, it was just like Jun’s!

“No no Sorry sorry. Nox wants me to make BD recordings of my gigs!” I told her as I put my finger to her lips to keep her from exploding. “So I recorded the last couple of times I’ve been out. Including last night's raid… So do you want to see? I was planning on dropping a visit to the Mox’s BD editor today to drop off the recordings.. I don’t know how long it will take to edit them b-”

“Of course! I want them!” She assured me, Hiromi was sitting up now staring me in the face. “But Motoko. You should be more careful. The Mox aren't as nice as they like to make everyone think. How much are they even paying you for the Recordings?”

“Not much at first.”

“Ugh. Motoko! BD recordings are hot items! If you have an awesome recording you could sell it for a ton!”

“Hey! I’m not a complete gonk. Nox the guy that came up with the idea is our age, so I’m giving him a break to get started, but if it works out, you're right a lot of eddies will start flowing… Besides if he ever does fuck me over. I can always just hunt him down and kill him. I kinda do that for a living.” I remind her with a shit eating grin.

Hiromi looked at me for a minute before chuckling shaking her head. “You are such a gonk.”

—--

Hiromi and I hung out for a while after that until her next class was starting. I promised to see her again soon and headed out. This time I went to Lizzies.

The streets were more populated than usual, I noticed as I drove down the street. Every time I stopped at a red light, people were crossing the street. It felt more normal. Like the city was returning to what it had been before. Yet the NCPD were still missing. The effects of that meant I could visibly see crime as I drove down the streets.

Theft was everywhere.

Damaged buildings that had been looted, or in some cases tried to be looted only to end with dead thieves.

Night City took self defense seriously after all.

Pulling into Lizzies I wasn’t surprised to see the parking lot was packed. People were obviously still coming here, to a relatively safe place to get some distance from reality.

But I found a spot and walked through the few little groups of people hanging out, outside the bar.

Rita as usual was out front, her baseball bat at her side as she watched me walk up.

“Kid.”

“Hey Rita. Is Judy in?” I asked as I walked up to her. Honestly if I could not have to walk through the bar that would be best.

Rita’s eyes narrowed a bit at my question. Holding out her hand. “Why do you want to see Judy?”

“I’m dropping off some BD recordings to her. Part of Nox and I’s thing.” I told her honestly, this reaction was weird, and now I was a little curious about Rita’s weird reaction.

“Stay here.” She demanded nodding at another Mox who took her spot in front of the door to act as bouncer as she walked in.

Weird.

“Any idea what’s going on?” I ask the Mox who just kept staring at me without a word. “Good talk.” I snarked but decided to just back up a bit and wait. Finally Rita came back out and nodded for me to follow her.

Stepping away from the car I had been leaning against I followed with a quick jog to catch up.

“What’s going on? I’ve met Judy before, never had this much concern.”

Rita was silent as she walked me through the floor of Lizzies, and then into the back halls, leading me towards Judy’s underground lair.

“We had some Tyger Claws sniffing around for her. They always try to recruit good editors. They were a little aggressive about it the other night, so I’ve been ready to bust some kneecaps.” Rita finally said as we started down the stairs.

“Ah gotcha. That explains a lot.”

“Especially since you’re TC.” She said with a firm look.

“I’m really not… My brother is though.” I admitted as we wandered down but Rita didn’t respond any further just keeping an eye on me as she led me to Judy who was already free of her Wreath and waiting.

“Motoko.”

“Hey Judy. I got some recordings.” I greeted with a smile. “Rita said you had some trouble the other night? You okay?” I asked and she just kind waved her hand back and forth.

“I’m fine. Nothing Rita can’t handle, just some pushy bastards wanting access to my skills. Come sit here, I’ll pull the recordings.” She said as she pointed me at a chair and wandered over to her computer. Pulling a cord out with a connection port she rolled over to me as I settled into the chair.

“Alright go ahead and connect to this, and start the upload.” She says and I nod, pulling the cord out of my neck and slotting it into the port. Instantly the connection locked and I started transferring the files.

I had been recording at the start of all the gigs Wakako had given me, and the raid last night. So hopefully four missions would be enough, even if the Wakako gigs were pretty slow. I mean, I hadn’t even killed anyone!

“And four files? Four?” Judy asked, as she typed away at her system.

“Yeah! Three of them were acquisition gigs I got from Wakako. But don’t worry I asked her about recording them before I did. As long as a week passes before we release them we are all good. And the last one was… Well I was working with my brother Jun and the Tyger Claws. Maelstrom trap.” I offered, not wanting to side swipe her with the information I worked with the Tyger Claws.

“You’re TC?” Judy asked sort of tonelessly not looking at me.

“No. No, no I’m not!” I told her firmly. “My Brother is a member though. Well technically I’m a legacy. Both of my parents were in the Claws. But I didn’t join, I’m just a merc. I just back up my brother on Maelstrom raids.” I waved my hands a bit. “Mostly for payback for what they did to me.” I said kind of showing off my arms a bit. The chrome glinting in the dark studios light.

Judy didn’t respond but Rita kinda stepped closer and sat on the edge of the big chair Judy had sat me on.

“I’ve been forcibly chipped before… If you ever want to talk about it.” She offered suddenly and I blinked because Rita had never shown much interest in me before then. “Just don’t give me any reason to bust your skull in.” She offered and her words actually pulled Judy away from the computer to look in shock that I felt a bit as well.

Because Rita had just tried to be nice.

“I don’t plan too. I don’t have anything against the Mox.” I told her and she nodded a bit before rising up.

“Well Judy, you going to check the BD’s?”

“Yeah, I have some time, and Nox has bribed me to at least get the first few done first.”

“Bribe? Did that kid seriously sneak you some of that disgusting pure caffeine shit we banned?”

“Maybe!” Judy offered smiling, before she sort of glanced towards me. I was making her uncomfortable. She had a certain look on her face.

“Was it bad… The Tyger Claws that tried to recruit you?” I asked, I knew that look. It was fear. Judy had been freaked out.

I had never heard of Tyger Claws bothering Judy in the game, but… I guess it sorta makes sense. Tyger Claws were constantly trying to reclaim Mox business. In the game they owned Clouds, and if Judys crazy plan actually worked and you put Clouds under Mox control…

Well Tyger Claws didn’t react with grace. They sent a kill team.

“It’s nothing. Just they broke into my place. I’m sleeping here for a bit until a better security system is hooked up.” She explained and I frowned.

“Hey Judy. I know you don’t know me or anything, but we are… chooms? I guess? If the Claws ever snatched you. I promise. I’ll come find you, and kill any of them that get in my way. Okay Choom?”

My serious, honest, drama filled moment was broken by Rita snorting through her pretty plastic chrome nose.

“Sure kid. The Mox will have already hunted any fuckers down that dared, but I’m sure you’ll show up.” Rita offered joking, but it seemed to be the right thing to say because Rita was more relaxed than she had been before, and Judy wasn’t so tense either.

“So how long will it take to edit the BD? I uh… Have a choom that was interested in seeing them too.”

“Come back… around tomorrow? Yeah Tomorrow. These aren’t super long. But go on, both of you, I’ll need to focus on this.” Judy demanded waving us away which Rita was already standing to leave.

“Cool oh wait one more thing. When someone is in the BD, can they like… Not see my face? Or at least have trouble figuring out who I am? I just don’t want anyone to be sure who it is that is stealing from them, or killing them, or killing their friends, or-”

“Whoa whoa. Chill Choom. Your face would already be blocked by those Kiroshi of yours, but I’ll be adding a body filter in. Whoever is in the BD will feel like it’s them doing everything. It works way better on action BDs. Let everyone feel the motion and action through their own body, creates a deeper connection.”

Preem! You are amazing Judy. Thank you! I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then!” I chirped happily following the borg out of the room and up the stairs, but then she stopped me.

“Hey. I was serious before. I know what it’s like… If you ever want to talk to someone that went through it.” Rita said and it took me a moment to realize what she meant.

I couldn’t help but break out into a gentle smile. “Thanks Rita. I’m okay, well okay-ish. I’ll be okay.” I ramble at her earning a smile on the chromed up woman's face.

“Well the offer is open. It’s why we started the Mox in the first place. To help people.”

“Preem.” But I wasn’t really in need of someone to talk to. I was actually feeling loads better after the adaptation upgrade had opened up the floodgates.

Wait! I still had a perk!

I forgot!

I was smiling brightly as I followed Rita out and towards my car, I was gonna go home and pick a preem perk! Upgrades! Yay!

 

[Seras]

Judy Alvarez

Judy was glad that was over. Such an awkward conversation, and even worse she had been totally treating the kid like some TC hit squad.

Stupid Jude. Real stupid.

She was a good kid, even helped out Nox. Nox who was very annoying, but still had that bratty charm that made everyone like him…

Mostly. If they didn’t want to punch him.

But he was annoying, and that meant most people outside the Mox did fall more on the punching side of the spectrum. He tended to get beat up a little too often.

Still it was over, and she had four virtues to edit through and turn them into nice shiny Mox approved XBD’s. It was a bit… Well Judy didn’t think it was likely to work. What kind of gigs could a kid get up to that anyone would want to watch?

Judy was well aware of what normal XBD viewers were like. What they wanted.

Sick fucks.

But maybe this softcore XBD would be a hit among kids. Give them a look into the experience of working as a Merc, from a kids perspective.

She picked up the most recent one first. Motoko had said this was from last night. Tyger Claws assaulting Maelstrom.

“I’m not afraid of the Tyger Claws.” She said, strengthening herself as she slipped on her wreath, hands on the edit controls.

Time to work.

First she started the BD, and instantly she was there. She could hear and feel and taste. Nothing too strong yet thankfully. Some BD’s liked to start already mid… Act. Judy hated feeling it. Sex wasn’t exactly something she wanted to feel from certain perspectives.

Which was why she always started a BD with the senses layer turned down. Get a feel for the BD first before she edits it all down to make it smooth to experience.

“Alright, the Maelstrom trucks are a minute out. Get ready.”

Judy shivered as the irritation she was feeling instantly vanished in a rush of excitement. The BDs emotion layer hyping up her own.

The conversation continued but Judy only kept half an ear on it. Then Motoko started moving. Judy focused the feel of the girl moving an important element to the BD. Especially with all the edits she would make to replace the visual layer with the watcher.

Most users of the BD would focus on visual, humans were like that, but one of the big things that would throw someone out of a BD was odd feelings. So balancing it right was super important. Usually you had to throttle it way down. If you were scrolling someone fat, and you weren’t?

That sense of disconnect would be pretty intense.

Although some people scrolled BD’s like that on purpose. Everything was someone's fetish.

But this? Just through the motion, Judy could feel live muscle, shifting balance. Motoko wasn’t just some kid with a gun, she definitely worked out. It was pretty intense. Judy wasn’t exactly the type to hit the gym.

She left it playing without delving heavily into editing, just to see, when suddenly Motoko went from a walk to motion in an instant, a blitz up the side of a building that by the time Judy realized what was happening she had to pause the recording, take off the wreath and actually step away.

Judy didn’t really like heights, and the feeling of free climbing up a building made her stomach flip.

But it was so sure. No hesitation, no slipping, or stumbling just up the building like climbing a ladder.

No faster than a ladder.

Grabbing her secret stash of Mega Joult. Thank you Nox for slipping that in. She recaffeinated and felt ready to continue.

Slipping back into the BD she let it play. She was on the top of the building. The cold air was crisp, but Motoko’s breath was completely even, like she hadn’t just climbed a building. Hell her heart rate had barely gone up.

Judy made a note, she would need to adjust that feeling, actually maybe increase it, let people feel their heart beating without any disruption, let them feel how calm Motoko was?

Judy would have to test it both ways, but for now she let it continue.

A rifle pulled off her shoulder Judy felt her hands roam over it quickly. A single practiced action, and it was practiced, Judy knew the difference. It felt good. That would be nice. Motoko certainly had some gun experience.

Then… Then Motoko stalked. Judy suddenly realized the audio file was practically dead. Not a sound as Motoko stalked up to the edge.

She played through it a few times there. Just to see what she could catch, and she realized despite walking in boots, there was barely a sound coming from her steps.

Damn. She must have a really good Lynx Paw. Judy went ahead and brought some focus in the BD towards the lack of sound with each step. Letting people feel that surety of stepping without a sound.

Motoko kneeled, settled into the shadows and then brought up her… Nekomata? Yeah Judy was pretty sure that was the right name. Eyes slipped over the scope, and Judy nodded to herself, everything was so clear. Kiroshi made this so much easier. The visual file was actually higher density than a normal BD. Kiroshi were expensive after all.

Then Judy could hear it. A rumble of a truck that Motoko instantly picked up, her attention focused on the sound making it come in so clear. Judy wouldn’t need to play with it much.

Motoko took it all in without shifting an inch, she remained perfectly still. The cavalcade of Maelstrom. She was already picking out faces thanks to her scope and Kiroshi. And Judy made sure to focus on some of them, bring them into focus on the BD.

XBDs were all about murder after all. Even if Judy found it disgusting it was what people wanted.

She watched as the Maelstrom parked around, and noticed the information Motoko gathered about their NCPD record! Nice. Judy made sure to bring each one into sight, it would let the user get a look at the people that were about to die.

Then Judy felt it.

Motoko was smiling. BD’s recorded emotions. And since Judy hadn’t finished cleaning up the BD, she could feel exactly what Motoko was feeling. Exhilaration. A macabre happiness about the targets she was going to kill.

Motoko had been happy that she was going to kill these Maelstrom especially.

She continued letting that excitement flow through her. She would maybe have to heighten the excitement emotional layer a bit, it was pretty low. Building the tension a bit more could be good.

The Maelstrom stepped out, firing around, opening the shop only to be blown apart with a riot of noise.

Judy flinched, but Motoko didn’t. Perfectly calm at the sight and sudden assault. Not a twitch, not a bump in her heart rate.

Just control, and a focused excitement.

It was enough to make the differences all the more apparent. In a normal BD she would have smoothed it, maybe lowered the users surprise, or increase Motoko’s. Just to make sure it felt like a smooth transition.

But there was something about the complete calm that was… Noticeable. And Judy decided she was going to have to play with that. Maybe leave it as is.

Motoko’s attention shifted. Tyger Claws. Racing out towards the Maelstrom from behind.

Yet even as she registered that her scope was focused on the Maelstrom ready to shift.

Then it happened, a Maelstrom started to turn around, they had noticed the Tyger Claws.

Judy felt herself freeze. Outside the BD. Her throat opened in a silent gasp as everything changed.

The emotion file practically spazzed out.

Judy’s heart was racing outside of the BD.

Because in an instant she felt it. The supreme control over herself.

No, the control Motoko had over herself. Emotions distractions, all of it disappeared. There was only…

Purpose.

The rest of the BD went by in a blur of controlled focus. Every part of her body moved in tandem, every breath, every thought, all working towards the purpose of killing whoever Motoko needed dead.

By the time the BD ended Judy had stopped paying any attention to editing. Had stopped even remembering who she was.

Because for a while she wasn’t Judy experiencing a BD, she was Motoko. Every instinct, every movement felt so sure. So right. Perfect.

Judy pulled off the wreath and nearly chucked it away before controlling herself.

She couldn’t control herself like Motoko. Already the feeling of her own heartbeat speeding was so… Strange. Especially after feeling so in control. But Judy couldn’t. Her heart raced, her body twitched. It was wrong. All of these things could be controlled. She just… Had to learn how.

Judy had no idea.

“I need a break.” She said instantly standing up on wonky legs her stride was wrong. She could feel it, even if she wasn’t sure what she was doing wrong, but there was an awareness there, that she was moving wrong. Too slow, too heavy, too loud.

“Fuck me.” She whispered as she hit the bathroom and washed her face. That had been… Intense.

Judy felt her eyes go gold as she decided to make a call. “Rita. I need you down here if you got a minute… I want you to see this.”

—--

Finally!

No more distractions!

I settled down into the apartment with an armful of components I had needed, and set to work.

I had CAD. I had some knowledge, a full toolkit, and some peace and quiet.

Time to get to work!

The idea I had come up with while I was killing Maelstrom had been percolating in my head.

I needed a way to listen into conversations. If I was sneaking around, then being able to gather intel was a must. Luckily this was the future. Parabolic Microphones were outdated tech.

Long range microphones were easy enough to tech together.

Even I could do it!

I had the basic know-how in my head thanks to Engineering. The skill had flooded me with solutions and knowledge on not just how to tinker with something, but to have a needed idea and then what it would take to create it.

It was dense stuff. Technical Ability was knowledge about what exists… Sorta. Crafting, was being able to physically put something together. Engineering was knowing how to design something from the ground up. And a bit of fixing problems while crafting… But then again Crafting had solutions to engineering as well.

Or maybe I was wrong about all three! It was all so dense, and mixed together, it was difficult for my own head to split them into their own categories.

It all fit together. All three parts were sort of needed to create a whole. But the knowledge dumps were insane. Comprehensive education was rare in Night City, Especially outside of Corpo kids. Rarer still was an education that someone could take and then immediately be able to use.

Even with my low stat and skill points. I was probably more flexible than most Techies, a wider base, if not as deep. Yet.

So I started designing. I needed it to be small but functional. High range, good fidelity. With the ability to narrow down sounds.

Can’t have loud music stopping me from being able to listen in. Although that would be a later problem. Programming the damn thing came later. First was the engineering half. Design and create.

The microphone was fiddly, but other than a bit of sloppiness thanks to my manual dexterity still not being 100% perfect at times with the chrome. My transferred skills helped me get it working.

Then I set up a small transceiver, and went to work on the ear piece. Which I actually scratch built. Since anything I made would be cheaper than one from a store.

With that done I set the two pieces of tech to the same channel, and activated it.

Nothing.

“Fuck.”

—--

It took me four hours to figure out what went wrong.

The answer? Nothing. I was just a moron.

I was under a jammer! Of course my wireless connection didn’t work!

Realizing that wireless access like that was just asking to become useless under a jamming system, I tore it apart, and decided to go a little analog. With my 3D printer I created some wires that would connect the two parts, even created a small wire storage that would wind up the wire when I was done.

All done the entire piece of tech was small enough to hold in my hand, and be stored in one of my pouches. But with that, I was able to pull it out, stick the ear piece in my ear, and stretch out the wire along my arm. The mic easily attached to my fingers, and was small enough it wouldn’t get in the way if I needed to fight with it on.

I turned on the TV to a very low level and walked across the room, to the point I could barely hear it then I pointed the mic.

The voice of the news reporter came in clearly in my ear, only a static pop from time to time showing it wasn’t a direct audio, but a long range mic picking up a TV audio.

Done.

“I did it.” I couldn’t help but breathe out as I looked at my long distance microphone. I could listen into conversations now! But the alerts that I had ignored were my first stop.

*Engineering skill level up!*

Engineering 3, it had leveled up while I was working in CAD designing my new toy. Apparently my system liked it when I designed the ear piece from scratch as well. But there was more. So much more!

*Technical Attribute Leveled up!*

Technical Attribute was now level 4! And it had even leveled up mid build because I had a bunch of alerts for Crafting, ending with a level up!

*Crafting skill level up!*

Crafting 4.

My entire Tech tree had leveled up in one afternoon! Which just goes to show how little I had actually built… I would really need to fix that. Tech was too useful a thing, plus it was fun…

But Leveling up Engineering had reminded me!I still had an Engineering perk! Hell I had two perks! The Assault perk was still sitting there too!

I stretched and fell back onto the couch, instantly wincing and sitting up to move a piece of the wireless system that I had apparently dropped on the couch back to a table and then laid back down.

This was the life.

I had two perks to choose, Engineering and an Assault Perk. I opened up the Perk list to take a look.

Engineering first, since I had forgotten about it for so long. Since I didn’t really intend on going mad bomber, I ignored most of the grenade focused perks. I was looking for tech stuff.

And I found it. Like Crafting there were tons of perks here, but I ended up choosing the one I wanted the most.

Design Wizard: Your designs will always be beyond the average, you work faster, and more efficiently while designing.

I nodded as I selected it. Feeling the rush of the perk coming into play.

And instantly wished I had picked this before spending all afternoon working on my Directional Microphone. That would have made things a lot easier…

I shook it off. No point pouting at what I could do better. I would constantly be improving just take it as it is. I shook it all away and focused back on the menu.

It had been a while since I saw the assault perks. I ran through them again, my eye catching on Bullet Counting, but I didn’t really need that. My Kiroshi, and a Smart link would take care of that… When I got a Smart Link anyways.

But it was pointless. I didn't need it. Not for a Perk point.

Instead I looked for other Synergy Perks. Perks that would upgrade not just assault weapons, but potentially all of them. I had already taken Gun Nut, which was incredibly useful in order to keep myself from looking like an idiot by trying to shoot a gun that was still on safe.

Most of the perks were Assault skill focused. Accuracy with Rifles, SMG’s or Sniper Rifles.

Things that were useful, but that would come with just increased stats anyways…

But I was tempted to do the Sniper Rifle one.

‘Crack Shot: While wielding a Sniper Rifle, If you are in range you can work out a path for your bullet to reach its target.’

That sounded mildly terrifying.

But it wasn’t exactly what I was going for…

Yet.

No, instead I continued digging, Until I found it. The exact perk I wanted. Because it didn’t just deal with a specific series of guns. The name of it had made me pass over it at first.

‘Rifle Ace. Long rifles of all types are deadly in your experienced hands. Ready your long gun to fire in a blink.’

It was literally Quickdraw for long guns! I was kicking my feet into the air and laughing as I selected it. Instantly I felt the information flow. That surety of motion and knowledge that I KNEW the best way to do something.

It was amazing. I loved new perks and skill upgrades, that confusion, or amateur attempts at something simply washing away under absolute surety.

The natural anxiety that everyone feels. That ‘am I doing it right?’ feeling was gone.

I sighed in happiness, deciding to take a break from any grinding for the night. I put on some wacky future cartoons, and curled up on the couch.

 

[Seras]

The next morning I headed out to go see Judy. I did at least wait until afternoon, as I was pretty sure Judy wasn’t a morning person. She just gave me that vibe.

Pulling up into Lizzies I was greeted at the door by a different bouncer than usual. Rita wasn’t there. But I was waved through and I headed into the back and down the stairs.

I slipped into Judy's studio, only to find Judy mid BD.

I shrugged and grabbed a chair and settled in waiting for her to finish her editing. Or whatever she was doing. Unfortunately this was boring, and it wasn’t like I could go and hack into her system. Judy wasn’t Hiromi.

So I just waited. Minutes passed as I watched Judy sort of mumble to herself as she rested on the chair.

Finally she shifted, slipping the wreath up away from her eyes and letting her stretch a bit.

“Hey Judy.”

“EEEEEee!” She shrieked as I accidentally startled her.

I should probably stop doing that.

“Sorry Judy, you okay?” I asked after a moment as Judy was gasping for air and holding her heart.

“Don’t do that!” She hissed at me, hand clutched to her heart.

“Sorry! I just didn’t want to disturb you while you were working.”

She muttered a few expletives in spanish under her breath as she slowly rose up and took a few steps around as if gathering herself again.

“You are way too quiet. Those Lynx Paws of yours must be high end.” She finally said and I tilted my head.

“I don’t have a pair of Lynx Paws. I thought about getting them, they would definitely help me be sneaky, but I haven’t picked them up yet.”

“What? That’s not right, you’re already super quiet. What do you have that lets you do that?”

“Practice mostly.” I answered semi-truthfully, I even pulled up my boots and undid one to show my normal fleshy foot. “See.”

“Shit!” she blinked before shaking herself a bit. “What crazy corpo black ops training did you crawl out of? Half the stuff on the BD, I have no idea how you even do it. Really Motoko… It was eye opening. Where did you learn to move like that?”

I decided a lie was perfect here. Let people draw their own conclusions. “Well my Mom used to be a Netrunner, and my dad was a Solo. They worked together.” I decided to offer with a shrug, as if that explained everything.

Nailed it.

“Right… Crazy. Anyway. You here for the BDs?”

“Yeah! Did you finish them?”
“I did… I spent all night editing them. The side jobs were smooth, I actually thought they were pretty interesting. The Maelstrom one? It was preem work. Terrifying but preem. Took forever to edit the virtu, but it was good… You, uh… Do that a lot? Killing people?” She asked nonchalantly as she was busying herself with her system, leaning back and pushing some keys on a keyboard.

I hummed a bit. “Sometimes. Depends on the gig and the people. I’ve killed a lot of Maelstrom recently, but that’s more for personal reasons.” I replied, wiggling my hand a little to show what I meant.

“Right. Right. Preem.” She muttered, obviously uncomfortable with the thought.

“Not really your thing huh?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“I don’t like XBDs. There’s a reason I do BD work for the Mox, and not anyone else.” She mentions pushing a final key and looking over to me, her expression was still uncomfortable, but I could see her try to get over it.

I winced a bit. “Sorry. Should Nox and I find a different editor?”

“No, no nothing like that. It just makes me uncomfortable, but it ain’t the first time I scrolled some fucked up shit. This was less fucked up than most to be fair. Really it was the surprise at how it felt more than anything. You’re more deadly than you let on. You know?” She said quietly, looking me over as if… Well I guess she was comparing the me that was sitting in a chair in front of her, to the one she had seen in the BD.

I could only shrug and smile at that. “I try.”

“Yeah.” Judy said awkwardly before pulling herself together, she reached over and hit a button on a machine connected to her system, a short buzzing noise echoed out, and I blinked when I recognized it. A BD file producer.

As I watched a few BDs started clunking out, each of them wrapped in that stupid condom wrapper.

Four in total.

“Well here you go. The first of your BDs.” She said, swiping them up and offering them to me. I quickly grabbed each of them, gently looking them over. I couldn’t help but snort as the wrapper had Mox colors, and well… The packaging wasn’t really matching. But I knew how to be polite, and it was a Nox problem.

“Thanks Judy.”

“Hey don’t mention it. Nox is the one who bribed me to do this, so it’s not like you owe me anything.”

“Still thanks. I can’t wait to show these to my Choom Hiromi. I hope it cheers her up a bit.”

“XBDs would cheer her up?” Judy asked, sounding a little skeptical.

“Not that! Not exactly, but like. Seeing what I do because she’s been a little trapped and… it’s a long story.”

“Right, not my bizz. I-”

“JUDY! I’m here!” Nox suddenly called out as he ran down the steps, his hair a bit in disarray.

“Did you just get out of bed?” I couldn’t help but ask as I noticed the way his hair was everywhere and he looked half asleep.

“Yes! Hey Motoko, I was up all night waiting… but I’m here! Judy, you finished the BDs?”

“Yep, a while ago, they weren’t super long, not like a long session… Anyways. You need to make them though. You aren’t burning through my printer.”

“Aww. C’mon Jude, You know Suzie charges me!”

“It costs money to make BD’s Nox, you know that.”

“How much? I have some cash I can put in.” I offered, interrupting as Nox was going full puppy dog.

“Hey I can’t do that Motoko… You already put in enough eddies!”

“It’s not a big deal Nox.” I offered my eyes going blue as I threw a couple grand towards Nox. “There you go. That should be enough to get started right?”

“A-a-eh!” He choked a bit but Judy just snorted at his reaction.

“Just make sure you make more than you spend Nox.” She tells him as she pulls a shard out of her computer. “Here. These are the four files. Go on, I got some work to finish up… After my break.” She muttered rubbing her eyes a bit. I guess I had been proven wrong, Judy was a morning person, she just stayed up all night to be one.

“R-right. C’mon Motoko! Let’s go! I’ll show you how to make some BDs.”

I shrugged, willing to take a look.

The puppy-I mean, Nox led me upstairs chattering away at how he had already put some buyers together, and if sales went well, he knew some street kids that would sell them on his behalf.

Nox definitely had some ideas about spreading them around.

It was cute how excited he was about it.

He led me up and into one of the BD booths upstairs, where I did my best to ignore the music and the partying going on around me.

He put the shard into a machine along the wall, and with a few options selected, BDs began flowing out.

“I’ll start with like ten of each, spread it around, let some interest build up. I hope it’ll explode right out, but sometimes it takes a bit before buyers will start biting, word of mouth and stuff… That okay?” He asked over the blaring music and I threw him a thumbs up.

“Yeah nothing happens instantly. Just let me know. I don’t know when my next gig will be, but I’ll let you know once I have some more cool recordings.

“Great! Okay! All done.” He said the same backpack he had when I first rescued him was now full of BD wrappers.

“Do you… Want to come along? See the process?” He asked, sounding a little nervous. Was he worried about getting jumped again?

“Sorry I have some other stops to make, but if anyone causes you any trouble call me. I’ll come help.” I told him. While he smiled at my reply, it was a bit of a weak one.

“Right. I guess I’ll see you later?”
“Of course. Keep in touch Nox, let me know how the sales go! I’m super excited to hear about it.”

“I’ll… I’ll send texts every day, to uhh. Update you?”

“Preem!”

—--

Funnily enough, it was Hiromi that gave me the idea for my next grinding session.

Her Arasaka ICE had been a good whetstone to grind against for my overall Netrunning skills.

So I headed over to Yoko’s for my next adventure. The Netrunning Cafe was as busy as always, only one of the chairs was actually in use.

But as always Yoko was standing there already watching me behind her glasses as I entered.

“Oh? Back already?”

“I need some ICE. Preferably something pretty high end.” I told her and flashed her a smile.

“You already know what I deal in. Any information to trade?” Yoko’s question made me wince. I really didn’t have anything.

“I don’t suppose what I just asked for is something I can buy with Eddies?”

“Not unless you want some over the counter WET.” She said with a blank look behind her sunglasses.

“Wet?” I couldn’t help but ask. The way she said it was weird.

“ICE that’s melted. Already been solved. Useless.” She informed me and I nodded. That was good to know. It also gave me an idea.

“Actually… WET would be just fine. Do you have something that was solid before it was solved?”

Yoko seemed to take in my words with a sort of confused stare, before she shrugged.

“Sure Motoko, I have some old copies of everything, it’s sort of my thing. What do you want?”

“How much will…. Two grand get me?” I asked checking my account. Wakako had given me some good eddies for the gigs I had done plus bonuses. I could spend a little here. Splurge really.

“I’ll go get you a stack.” She replies laughing a little as she disappears into the back.

Cool!

—---

So I now had a ton of shards that had ICE programs.

But I needed something to run them on, and I had a good option…

But it involved going home.

I still had another repaired laptop in the apartment. But I hadn’t been back alone since…

So I took a deep breath and drove over. Sliding into my parking spot in the parking garage, and checking my guns. Making sure my Burya was loaded… I also grabbed my Carnage.

Just to make sure.

Then I walked up to the apartment fully loaded for war. It earned me a few looks, but I was just happy there were people around again. In fact!

I happily took a slight skip in my goal as the food cart guy that sold the tasty mystery meat balls on a stick was in his usual spot out the front door.

“Morning!” I greeted, as I passed over some eddies and got my usual order in return.

“Glad to see you’re alive, kid.” He offered with a nod, but that was all the words he offered and I wasn’t waiting around.

I headed inside. Passed the piled up trash, that was actually worse than normal. A few of the old asian guys that were playing chess just inside were back in their normal spots.

It was almost like before. Just without the protection of the NCPD ever arriving if something went wrong.

I took the stairs easily racing up the flights until I arrived home.

The door opened easily.

Home.

I took a deep breath and let it out.

I finished off my meat stick, placed my Carnage on the table and flopped onto the couch.

It was good to be home. The last time where we just grabbed stuff wasn’t the same thing.

Still I wasn’t here to relax.

I was here to grind.

I grabbed my Laptop, I had planned on selling this one, but using it as training was good too.

I installed one of the WET ICE from the pile of shards, and locked down the laptop.

Just because the ICE was solved, and wouldn’t stop any Netrunner that knew what they were doing, doesn’t mean it wasn’t still good security if they didn’t have the solution. It was like a lock that everyone had a key for. But if you chose not to use a key and instead tried to picklock it… Well it was still a lock.

Really it just meant I could pull out my cord and jack in, and start hammering the security.

It didn’t matter if the ICE noticed.

It didn’t matter if I failed, or succeeded.

If I failed, I just tried again. If I succeeded then I could just uninstal the ICE, chuck the shard in the trash, and grab a fresh one.

I wasn’t going to stay at home the whole day. So after just a couple hours of intense grinding, I locked everything down and decided to head back to the dojo. I couldn't let Jun start freaking out when I didn’t come back.

But I left with plenty of alerts.

*Intelligence Leveled up!*

Intelligence 6.

*Breach Protocol skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

*Breach Protocol skill level up!*

Breach Protocol leveled twice in just that amount of time. Since I was breaking ICE without worrying about alerting someone, or having some Black ICE catch me unaware, I was able to go all out. Uncaring about mistakes, or caution.

I learned a lot, even without the levels, but with them?

Breach Protocol 6. I was filled to the brim with knowledge about breaching system security. In a way I was at the point where I finally realized how little I knew about it.

I shook off the knowledge of the mountain I was staring up at when it came to the knowledge of the net, and instead focused on getting back to Jun.

I decided to keep the perk saved for now. Mostly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of it yet. A little time to think about it would do me some good.

—--

After a winding route back home, carefully making sure I wasn’t followed I made it back to the dojo apartments. Finding Jun already napping in his bedroom, I crashed on the couch and decided I would join him.

My brain was tired from all the Netrunning. I didn’t like puzzles, and Breaching systems was like the worlds most complicated puzzle game.

I just had to deal with it for now until I got good enough that the puzzles were all easy mode.

I set myself a sleep schedule for eight hours and activated it, passing out instantly.

I did not sleep for eight hours.

I startled awake.

Something was wrong.

I looked around, having grabbed my Burya off the living room table as I rose up. The TV was off, there weren't any noises. No intruders no movement…

But something had struck that chord in me to wake up. I blinked the tiredness out of my eyes, since I didn’t get my full eight hours I was groggy.

But then I heard it.

Sirens.

I ran to the window, but couldn’t see anything.

But I could hear them.

I turned on the TV, switched to the news and got my confirmation.

“-Are once more on the streets. A full deployment of all NCPD forces have been released onto the city to once more secure a peaceful Night City. The Curfew is in full effect. NCPD has asked us to remind all citizens, that the safest action they can take is to head home and lock their doors until NCPD once more secures any and all troublemakers in our fair city-”

I turned away from it then, opening Jun’s room to see him still passed out as I flipped on the lights.

“Wha!” He surged up and looked around confused.

“Jun! The NCPD are back. Listen!” I demanded and he blinked confused at me for a moment until he heard the sirens as well.

“Shit!” He cursed as he jumped out of bed and grabbed the first clothes he could find. Before rushing out of his room and towards the dojo.

Since I was wondering what the Tyger Claw response was. I decided to follow. Benefits of Jun being higher up in the gang I guess.

We both slipped into the dojo, only to discover it was surprisingly calm.

Jun looked around before finding Sensei.

“Sensei!”

“Kusanagi… Kusanagi.” He greeted us both but focused on Jun. “So you heard?”
“Motoko woke me. Are there any orders?”

“No.” The voice that responded wasn’t Sensei. Instead Fujimura, walked out from around the corner, if memory serves, there was an office over there. “We knew exactly when the NCPD would return. The word went out, and all contacts are going to ground tonight. The NCPD will not find the Tyger Claws in their sights. So stay off the streets.” He rumbled out a metal finger pointing, but not quite making contact with Jun’s chest.

“Understood Fujimura-Sama.”

I shrugged, fair enough. I wasn’t about to run out on the streets with the NCPD probably arresting anyone and everyone.

With that Jun started a conversation with Fujimura, that I didn’t care about, and I wandered off.

The dojo was quiet and Sensei just gave me a little nod showing he saw me, but he was speaking with Jun and Fujimura as well.

So I went back to the apartment. Settling back onto the couch and turning on the news.

Of course the news was filled with ‘positive’ situations happening throughout the city. It was all bullshit propaganda, but it did give me an idea of how fast NCPD was spreading across the city.

I couldn’t help but wonder how the return of law enforcement would affect Night City.

 

[Seras]

I did the smart thing after waking up the next day and stayed inside.

I was really lucky, without my ability to fall asleep at will, I definitely wouldn’t have managed to get much sleep. The constant NCPD sirens throughout the night meant when I finally did wake up, it was to a groggy Jun drinking some caffeinated drink he had grabbed out of a vending machine while watching the news.

Me though? After eight hours I was perky.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I chirped at him as I rose up and stretched.

“No.” He grunted as he took another sip as I sat up and stretched. Then I hopped out and cleaned up a bit before grabbing my new testing laptop.

I settled onto the couch cross legged right next to Jun as I slotted my cord in, and went to work on another set of ICE.

“What are you doing?” He eventually asked, distracting me a bit, but I kept myself from getting booted out of the Breach.

“Netrunning training! I’m getting used to breaching through ICE.” I told him with a smile, one eye on him, the other taken over by a screen displaying the ICE countermeasures.

“Huh.” He offered, turning back to the news and taking another sip of his drink.

Silly Jun. I would have to get him a pair of earmuffs or something, if he kept having trouble sleeping.

I was practically buzzing though. I really wanting to go out and do something, but knew it was a bad idea. So instead I fell back on what was my favorite activity when I was stuck inside.

Grinding!

Although…

“Hey Jun?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind if I mess with you a bit?” I asked only to have Jun slowly turn towards me, mouth still buried in the can.

“Whatever you are thinking… No.” He responded after a moment deadpan.

“Aww.” I whined at him. “You don’t even know what I was thinking.”

“And I know I wouldn’t enjoy it so no.”

“I just wanted to send my quick hacks at you for practice. You probably have better ICE than most people I would see on the street…. Right? You do have ICE right?”

“I have the ICE provided for me, and my ECM.”

Oh right. The tattoos were actually not just tattoos but a ECM system the Tyger Claws preferred.

“Preem.” I told him. “So can I quick hack you? It’s just Ping.”

“No.”

“You are boring when you are sleepy.” I grumbled at him, but went back to my Breaching…

Of course. He might not even notice… I looked towards him out of the corner of my eye and just before I managed to send the Quickhack his hand reached out and grabbed my face covering my eyes.

“Ow ow ow ow!” I hissed as he squeezed a bit.

“I said no.”

“I give! Surrender!” I whined not really wanting to start a fight with my laptop in my lap.

Plus Jun was obviously grumpy right now. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to mess with Grumpy Jun.

He let go and I sighed as he gave me a single look before turning back to the news.

“Fine. See if I ever act as a Netrunner for you. You’ll be like ‘Motoko! My beautiful and genius little sister, please save me by hacking into this evil mainframe!’ And I’ll just be like ‘No way you jerky faced older brother! You didn’t believe in your glorious and slightly eccentric little sister!’”

“I would never say that. More like Annoying brat.” Jun replied and that I couldn’t allow that. So I kicked him which unfortunately was a mistake.

Grumpy Jun had no chill.

“Okay if I offer a cease fire can I at least reach my laptop?” I mumbled into the couch from beneath Jun.

The jerk had literally sat on me, and knocked my laptop out of my lap in the scuffle. So I wasn’t even able to grind!

Trapped beneath my stupid heavy brother who was definitely eating too many burritos.

The fatty.

I managed to swivel my head a bit and catch his eye. Then I realized to my horror what I was seeing. Those weren’t my Nii-chans eyes. They were the eyes of a Cyberpsycho.

Jun was too far gone.

“No.” He told me smiling the look of a monster as he reached down and continued to poke my face.

I couldn’t even retaliate! He had managed to pin both my arms while I was still playing around!

“My Vengeance… Will be legendary.” I told him but he didn’t seem to mind.

A few minutes of my pleading getting nowhere, we were both interrupted by the door to the apartment opening.

My inability to grab a gun and do anything was the only reason I wasn’t pointing my Lexington at whoever walked in without knocking.

“Akari. The door was closed.” Jun said grumpily as he glared towards the door which is when Alari appeared in my view.

First she looked at Jun, then down to me, then back up at Jun.

Then she sat.

The bitch sat on my struggling legs.

“Vengeance.” I mumbled into the couch because I couldn’t even kick or wiggle with two heavy borg asses on me.

“Now now Jun boy, you should really knock on the door before entering my apartment. Got any more of those?” She asked, pointing towards the can of soda Jun was drinking.

“Akari.” Jun growled out.

“Oh fine. You are as always boring. Far too serious. But getting better since your cute little sister came around. How is she by the way? Not too flat?” She asked, but the fact I could see her wave her hands over her own plastic tits told me she was making a double joke.

“At least mine are real!” I hissed. “OW!” I yelped as she took a sharp nail and poked the bottom of my foot that was trapped under her plastic ass.

“Oh I’m sorry I thought I heard a-”

“Akari. Don’t stab my sister.” Jun said, sounding totally done with this as he stood up.

Freeing me.

“C’mon Jun b-” That was as far as Akari got, now freed I rose up, arching backwards, my knees digging into the couch as I slammed a bit into Akari’s side grabbing her shoulder wrapping my arm around hers and then flexing to literally toss her over my shoulder and off the couch.

Her absolutely shocked yelped was glorious as she went flying and landed off the couch in a massive thud.

“That’s for calling me flat.” I huffed a bit as I rolled a bit to get onto my feet. The Borg woman laying on her back staring up at me with a dropped jaw.

“Yeah Motoko does that.” Jun called out as he grabbed a soda and we both heard the hiss as it popped open.

Then he just started drinking.

“Don’t mind me. Carry on.” He offered waving his hand.

Asshole.

Akari though, instead of getting up and going on the assault, just started laughing.

“You really are a fearless little thing aren’t you? Last time I nearly went off on someone they started running away every time I met them from then on. Look at you, willing to literally throw me around? Jun, your cute little Imouto is gonna either get herself killed, or become a monster.”

“I’ll be a monster!”

“More like get me killed.” Jun and I said at the same time.

I just snorted at Jun being a jerk as Akari rose up chuckling still. “It’s kinda nice to be treated like a normal person again. Just be careful little Imouto.” Akari said and she was suddenly beside me her arm over my shoulders. “You might set me off some day.” She whispered into my ear.

“Akari!”

“Fine, fine. I’ll leave her alone. You big overprotective brother you. Fujimura-Sama is calling everyone in.” She said and Jun quickly put his can down.

“When’s the meeting?”

“Now?” She asked, sounding innocent, but Jun sighed as he instantly rushed for his room. Hurriedly getting dressed and ready.

“You should come too little Imouto. This isn’t a war meeting, so they are likely shutting down our little headquarters. The excuse of the gangwar keeping the dojo closed isn’t going to fly much longer.” She offered poking my nose with her thin claw like chrome.

Seriously Akari had this thing, where she had to be constantly poking or prodding, or stabbing someone.

“Sure.” I said shrugging as I slipped out from her claws and started getting dressed, if not as quickly as Jun.

A few minutes later I was following after Jun as he stalked to the dojo, trying to pretend he was put together, and not grumpy, running on barely any sleep.

Akari as usual, being annoying, but not to me this time.

Inside the dojo the main room was full.

The entire Kamikaze group were here, most were sitting seiza around as Fujimura stalked around. A few couldn’t sit that way thanks to wounds, or simply how their legs worked. But otherwise that was the room. The only one that wasn’t was Sensei.

He stood against the far wall. I decided to do like him, resting up against the wall, and not joining the group.

I didn’t want to let them think I was one of theirs anymore than they already did.

“NCPD have already done much of our job for us. Maelstrom has been pushed back. They were caught unaware by the return of the cops.” Fujimura called out suddenly as Jun slipped into a spot, Akari settling in nearby. There were nodding heads and sharp grins from the group at that.

“There has already been communication from the Maelstrom leader Brick.” He called out but this time only a few of the Kamikaze looked pleased. Jun most of all was now frowning.

“Yes. That means there will likely be an end to this war with Maelstrom.” Fujimura called out and I could see Jun’s tension ratcheting up.

“That does not mean we will stop killing them of course.” Fujimura added his eyes happened to be passing over Jun. “But the full out assault to push back the Maelstrom is over. We won. There will still be plenty of blood for those of you with grudges. But it does mean that the Kamikaze will no longer act as a fast response unit. You will all return home. Duties will come slower, and in smaller groups. You bled for your people. Kamikaze!” He said something at the end.

Something in japanese, that I just couldn’t figure out.

Stupid America brain. I only knew two languages, English and bad English.

But all of the Kamikaze offered a bow, as Fujimura did the same. Huh.

The rest of the little Cyberpsycho party was pretty boring. Fujimura went around to the group, some of them were told they would be returning to previous jobs as there was no reason to keep the entire Kamikaze group together during a peace time.

Jun wasn’t one of them.

Instead he was told the Dojo apartment could be his if he liked, but otherwise, he was free to return home.

The Jammer wasn’t needed anymore, and everything was going to sort of…

Go back to normal? If anything could go back to normal. If I thought I was feeling a little confused about all the changes that were happening. Jun looked like someone had tugged the rug out from under him down a massive flight of stairs.

He was just kinda… Staring into the distance.

I walked over since the borgs were milling around or wandering out of the room, and plopped next to Jun. I didn’t say anything. I didn't need to. He was feeling lost. His goal pulled out from under him. It’s okay Jun. We can figure out what to do next.

Together.

—---

I followed Jun around for the next while as he finally stood up and headed back to the apartment. Once he was inside he made to move back to his room but I finally spoke up.

“Jun!” I called out loudly enough to startle him.

“Motoko?”

“Take your time. Get some sleep, and don’t worry. We will figure everything out. I’ll be here when you are ready to talk.” I told him before walking over and flopping on the couch. He watched me for a minute before snorting, and then turning and walking back inside his room.

“Idiot.” He said as he entered his room, but I let that pass.

I was totally going to wake him up in a day or two by jumping on him. Let him get settled and not think about the revenge that was coming.

Until then I had some grinding to do. I really wanted another point in intelligence. It was time for the system to properly acknowledge my brain!

I spent the rest of the day grinding out alerts, but it was coming in a lot slower, plus Jun kept interrupting me with watching the TV which kept drawing my attention away from my grind.

—--

Another afternoon passed with me grinding away trying to get enough Intelligence alerts.

When suddenly my head started beeping.

I was getting messages. I looked at the small list of messages, some from Hiromi, mostly just talking about how boring her classes were.

But I got a few from Nox, and one from Judy as well!

*Nox: Got some clients lined up. No sales yet, like you said, but I’m putting out feelers!*

*Nox: Managed to snag a few more kids interested in your gigs, haven’t gotten any responses back yet!*

*Nox: Hey! Haven’t heard from you, that Jammer again? Gave someone a sneak peak, interest was super high! Even managed to get him on the line all four BDs.*

*Nox: Big day today! Word is getting around! The NCPD coming back is making things hard though. Might be slow sales at first. Since it’ll be dangerous to get around. Shame. If we could have the BDs on the market now all the people stuck at home would have something to check out. Haven’t heard from you…*

I nodded along at Nox’s messages. I would have to send him a text letting him know the jammer was down… Well for once I might want to hold off on that just yet, he was a Mox. So I continued on reading the other messages.

*Judy: Motoko, I feel like I was a bit bitchy last time we talked. Just wanted to make sure you know, you are welcome with the Mox. Regardless of your TC connections. I was just freaking out a bit.*

Oh. That was kinda sweet of Judy. I didn’t really feel that I couldn’t. I mean she had just been threatened by the TC with kidnapping. I’d be a little uncomfortable too.

As I was browsing through the sudden deluge of messages, Jun came out of his room. “Jammer is down.” He said suddenly as he walked past the couch towards the fridge pulling out a drink and hammering it down.

“Yeah, I just got a ton of texts. I’ll have to call Hiromi!”

“Do it after, pack up first. We're… going home.” He said and I actually whooped as I jumped off the couch. It would be sorta nice to return to normality, that and the jammer was such a massive pain in the ass!

I hurriedly gathered up everything, arms overflowing with my treasures, as I raced it down to the car.

It took a few trips.

With that Jun slipped onto his Kusanagi, my Quadra ended up being stuffed with junk that Jun had gathered since he left since he couldn’t carry it on his motorcycle.

Then we raced home.

Well Jun did. I followed the traffic laws, and at the first red light that Jun blew through I lost him.

Seriously Jun. I don’t care if your butt is made of metal, you are on a motorcycle, drive safely!

Finally I reached home.

I parked out on the curb, where Jun was waiting. I stayed with the car to make sure nothing got klepped as Jun ran up and down the stairs toting everything inside.

Then I parked in the garage and headed inside.

Home.

The streets were crazy busy, I couldn’t help but notice as I crossed the street, even more than usual. It’s like with the NCPD returning everything that hadn’t wanted to leave their homes were now on the sidewalks. That and I supposed with the curfew no one wanted to be caught outside after dark when the NCPD were feeling more trigger happy than normal.

I walked through the throng of people, some heading towards the Cherry Blossom Market, some to other shops down the street, and some just hanging out.

It was nice. The tense atmosphere of the city was gone, returned to this constant mishmash of people.

I ran up the stairs and entered the apartment to hear Jun shuffling around in his room. I peeked in and saw him going through a backpack of stuff. Slowly taking it out looking it over, running his fingers over the items and then putting them somewhere around the room.

It felt like a personal moment so I went ninja and slipped into my room without him noticing.

Ninja skills were useful for something other than on gigs!

Inside I shut the door and looked around. My bags and stuff were in a pile at the entrance.

I walked inside. It felt… Odd to be here. This had been my room since I woke up here in Night City. It wasn’t quite nostalgic, but it felt good to be here. I decided not to unpack anything yet, instead I walked over and flopped onto the bed.

I lay there for a bit just sort of taking in the familiar ceiling.

 

[Seras]

When I finally felt like doing something again I opened up my menu and made a call.

*Ringing*

*Hey hey! Motoko!*

*Hey Hiromi! How are you? With the NCPD back on the streets, did your parents lift the lockdown?*

*Ugh. Not just yet. But school is opening next week with normal classes so they have to by then. How about you? How are the TC reacting?*

*Not sure about most of them, but Kamikaze are spreading back out, the secret headquarters they were using is emptying out. Jun and I are actually back home.*

*Whoa, Nova. So it really is over then?*

*Looks like at least the gang war is over. Not the killing. Lot of the Kamikaze still looked ready to go hunt more Maelstrom… Jun among them, but it’s okay. I think everything is getting better with him. He seems more stable now.*

*That’s great! I know you were worried, but I knew Jun would be okay! He is too cute to Cyberpsycho.* She said and I could tell she was teasing me.

*Gag me with a spoon, Hiromi.* Her giggles were my only response for a while until finally they ended with her going quiet for a bit.

*So hey. Choom. Choomer. Choomiest?* Hiromi suddenly asked, sounding a little quiet.

*What do you need Hiromi?* I answered, trying to keep from laughing at her words.

*My bike is still wrecked… Can’t exactly drive it right now, and I’m gonna wait a bit to give an excuse to the ‘rents so they don’t freak on me… Mind giving me a ride to class and back?*

*Huh. You want your Street Punk Merc friend drive you right up to Arasaka Tower? I’m down.* I answered after a pause, making her laugh back at me.

*Thanks Choom. Just for a day or two? I can tell my parents I crashed after that, and get my bike fixed up.*

*No worries. I’ll act as a chauffeur. Will M’lady need anything dry cleaned as well? Or perhaps someone assassinated?* I asked, trying to sound as snooty as I could which caused Hiromi to break into giggles.

*You’re such a gonk!*

*Speaking of damaged vehicles though. I should probably take my Quadra into the shop.*

*Wait what? Why? What happened?*

*Didn’t I tell you? That night I hit the Maelstrom, the damn gonks side swiped me.*

*Oh that’s right… Is the damage bad? I know you were pretty pissed about it.*

*It’s not terrible, the car is armored, paint and dents mostly, I’ll just need t-* I stopped.

Wait.

Fuckin hold on a second.

I could fix it. Mechanic work was well within the bounds of all the knowledge dumps I had been getting from the System.

*Toko? Helloooo?*

*I’m here! I just realized I actually do know how to fix it. I think… I think I’ll go fix up my car. It’ll be a nice little grind session.* I said without thinking.

*Grind? Why would you need to grind your car?*

*Oh! Uhhh. No? No, grind like doing a task and keeping at it until it’s done.* I added, making up an excuse. Thank you Slang being so common in Night City.

*Alright. Let me know how it goes… Do you think you could fix my bike? I mean-*

*Probably! I’ll have to look it over, but I can do that for my choom!* Plus! If I could repair it that means more grinding! Motoko you’re a genius!

*Preem. If I don’t have to make an excuse for my ‘rents that would be best. They are fully up my ass still. How has it been out there? Is it… Better?*

*People are everywhere! More than usual, all the people that were hiding are out on the streets now. The TC knew the NCPD were coming and hid away, and so Maelstrom got hit hard, they are making peace even.*

*Wait! Maelstrom and Tyger Claws are making peace!? Why didn’t you tell me!*

*I just did though?*

*Ugh. Motoko!*

*Sorry! I didn’t think about it. Yeah the Kamikaze leader told everyone, apparently there is going to be an end to the TC-Strom war. At least officially.*

*Wow. That’s huge! I actually… I actually should let my ‘rents know. That might be useful to them. Listen, call me later? If not, see you Monday?*

*Sure! Chat with me later Hiromi!*

The call clicked off and I nodded, already jumping to my feet. I had some grinding to do!

I grabbed my toolbox from where Jun had dumped it on the floor of my bedroom, and rushed back out.

“Going out to the parking garage! Call me if you need me!” I called out to Jun who was now in the kitchen going through the fridge, and I was off clanking down the stairs as I carried the toolbox I ran across the street, although my head was swiveling, and my right hand free in order to quickdraw if I needed.

Not going to make that mistake again. Burya was in its holster and ready to go if needed.

But nothing happened. I ran into the garage and reached the car.

The side of my Quadra was still suffering from a nasty dent all along the side. The paint utterly ripped off.

Fucking Maelstrom.

But I knelt down, popping my tool box open. With a deftness I grabbed the needed tools, Instantly my hands went to work humming lightly as I slowly worked out the dents in the armored side. Honestly the fact it was armored made my job harder, but it just needed more force to even out, and the few places that some internal circuitry was crushed I simply spent a few minutes scanning and then remaking a replacement, a bit of testing to make sure it worked and I was set.

I hadn’t even known that one of my rear lights was out! That was so dangerous! What if someone rear ended me!

Well it was fixed now. I stood up, sure the paint was more trashed than it had been before, but with a few going over of a magnetic tool that let me smooth out the plate. It was done.

Now to check on all the spots that had been hit… And probably a carwash, I forgot about the whole blowing someone's head off on the hood. The bits of gore still stuck on the hood was a little gnarly…

I probably should have taken that to a carwash before this… Ew.

I almost turned and walked all the way back inside when I remembered.

My eyes turned gold.

*Motoko? What’s wrong?* Jun responded nearly instantly.

*Nothing! Nothing. I’m okay. Just calling to let you know, I’m gonna need to hit a carwash… I uh. Forgot to clean up my poor Quadra after everything.*

*Oh… Thank you for telling me. Drive safe.*

*Will do!*

I slipped out into the heavy traffic of the city, easily winding a safe path through the city, enjoying the quiet ride.

Then I realized it didn’t have to be quiet. I turned on the radio, and instantly started nodding along to Body Heat Radio.

Listen… It had some good songs as long as that Pon pon shit wasn’t playing… Wait, wasn't the song literally Ponpon shit? I meant Ponpon shit, shit. Because I hate that song. Luckily I don’t think it has been released yet. Body Heat was a pretty solid choice when I wasn’t in the mood for Samurai.

Anyway I found a nice carwash, went through and did my best to pretend there wasn’t a massive wave of red bloody water flowing off my car as I went through.

The one attendant that was sitting behind a bullet proof glass was doing his best not to notice. So I pretended it wasn’t happening too.

Best for everyone.

—---

As I went through the car wash I had some time to think about what else I needed to do, which reminded me of a promise I had made.

But then I realized I had no idea where to go.

So I made a call.

*Motoko?* Ichi’s voice answered after a few moments, and he sounded sleepy.

*Ichi! Heya choom. How’s things? Did I wake you? Sorry about that. Also can you slip me Malcolms address? I want to stop by and check on him.*

*Oh yeah, you did say you were gonna do that… Sure Motoko.” He mumbled obviously groggy enough my rapid fire took him a minute to parse.

I got a text from Ichi a moment later.

*Thanks Choom… Maybe tonight we can all meet up again? I can probably get Hiromi free too. Omaeda too maybe? Are you working tonight?*

The line was quiet for a minute.

*Y-yeah… If you… If Malcolm is willing. I’m down. It’ll be nice… To just… Hang out again.*

*These last few weeks were rough on you huh Ichi?* I couldn’t help but ask. While he had said he wasn’t working with Malcolm anymore. The way he spoke…

They had a fight. Definitely.

*Heh. I guess I could say the same to you. If you can get Hiromi and Malcolm that would be great… Ho-oh Club?*

*Ugh. That place gives me a headache, but I get it. Sure we can hang there.* I answered, it was ‘our’ spot I guess… Actually I had no idea. Had we hung out there before the coma? Or just after?

*Alright… I’m gonna crash for a few more hours.*

*Sounds good! Cya!*

I hung up and started up the engine. Malcolm wasn’t too far. Made sense. We were all in the same area. Street kids that grew up together.

I drove out into the streets, following the path to Malcolms address.

The small apartment complex a couple blocks north of the Cherry Blossom Market. It took me a while to find a good parking spot, but it didn’t take me long to slip inside and find apartment J24.

I rapped my chrome knuckles on the door. Waiting, I could hear something.

The door was suddenly pulled open, a large man with a tired expression and holding a Tactician in his arms was there. Whatever he was trying to say was cut off mid sentence when he noticed me.

“We are- oh… hello?”

“Hello. I’m Motoko, is Malcolm in?” I chirped trying to look cute and innocent.

Despite being fully armed.

“Yeah… One second.” He turned away from the door. “MALCOLM!” He yelled and I could hear a yelp and a bit of cursing.

“WHAT!?”

“DOOR!” The man yelled back and I was laughing a bit at how… normal it seemed. Doesn’t matter if it's the 2000's, or 2070’s parents and teenagers really don’t change.

I heard a bit of grumbling as things were knocked around before Malcolm suddenly jogged into view. A BD wreath around his neck he was about to yell at his pops when he noticed me.

“Motoko?”

“Hey Malcolm!” I waved a bit and Malcolm’s father looked from me to his son.

“Well don’t be a gonk invite the girl in.” The old man rumbled before walking into the house.

“D-Dad! It’s not like that!”

I just laughed. His dad seemed pretty happy, so I guess Malcolm wasn’t bringing cute girls home very often.

“Motoko? What are you doing here?”

“Stuff got crazy, you know? With everything… I figured it was a good idea to see all the chooms. How you doing Malcolm?” I asked and my question seemed to really confuse him for a minute.

“I’m… Alright?”

“I’m glad.” I nodded to myself for a few moments, the silence between us lengthening.

“Moron! Invite the girl in!” The loud call from behind Malcolm caused him to jump before he turned back inside.

“Dad! Shut up!” Malcolm instantly called back but after a moment he sighed. “Want to come in?”

“Sure!” I chirped following Malcolm inside his apartment, we ended up settled on his couch where he had obviously just been watching a BD.

“Anything good?” I prompted miming towards my neck.

“Wha? Oh. The Wreath, yeah some neat stuff. I uh. Haven’t had much of a taste for intense BD’s since… Everything.”

“Ichi told me a bit, about what happened, I mean.”

“Course Ichi couldn’t keep his trap shut.” Malcolm grumbled.

“It’s not like that. I asked. You okay?”

“Fine.” He said, indicating he was anything but fine. “What happened to you? New chrome?” He asked indicating my forearms there were obviously no longer flesh.

“I got kidnapped by the Maelstrom, and they cut my arms off.” I answered, and then I sighed. “It was kind of a thing.”

“Fuck.” He said face going a little pale at my casual reveal.

“Yeah.” I agreed with him as he shifted a bit, from being hunched over and defensive.

“You… You okay?”

“Surprisingly, I’m doing pretty good. I uh… Tried to pretend I was fine at first. But all that did was make me angry. So I focused on that, and… Yeah. I’m doing better. It still sucks.” I answered with a shrug. “What about you?”

“Better than that. I still got all my meat.”

“Don’t need to compare bad things choom. Serious. Talk to me?”

Malcolm went quiet for a while playing with the wreath which he slowly took off from around his neck and placed on the table.

“Not much to say. Sam was cool. Older kid. Like Ichi, well liked by the Claws. We got some fire from some random Maelstrom gonk. I just remember being terrified. I was in the back of the truck with Sam, Ichi up front. Driving away as fast as we can and suddenly… Bullet Holes through the sides of the truck. I screamed, and when it was over Sam was dying. Nothing I could do.”

Malcolms eyes were growing wet by the end of his story.

“Ever had someone you know flatline like that?” I asked, as Malcolm had grown silent at the end.

“No. It scared me Motoko. Not something you have to deal with.” He grumbled wiping his eyes.

“I get scared too Malcolm.” I said as gently as I could.

“Motoko. I’ve seen you after you flatlined a scav den solo. You don’t have a scared bone in your body.”

“Not true. Not true at all.” I mumbled towards the end. I just wasn’t afraid of the same things everyone else was…

How could I? I had already died once. Once you know what’s on the other side, how can you be afraid?

But I was afraid of things still. Just not death.

“Listen. I want all of us to get together tonight. You, Ichi, Hiromi, Omaeda if he wants. All of us at the club… A lot has happened. But we are still chooms. We still ran together. Please come?” Malcolm looked up, our eyes met and we sat for a while as he thought.

“Sure.”

I smiled and threw out a fist, which unfortunately took a moment for him to get before he scoffed and bumped my fist. “You are so weird.”

I pouted at him, and we both got a chuckle at that.

Malcolm and I hung out for a while. Just kind of getting to know each other. He was more lowkey than he ever had been before, but at the same time as we talked, I started seeing that same energy that he had before.

I guess he just needed a friend.

I guess we all did.

—--

“So can Hiromi come?” I asked Hiromi’s mother who had answered the door.

The Corpo woman was looking at me like I was some crazy person coming up to the door to borrow sugar or something weird.

I guess I probably shouldn’t have opened with ‘Can Hiromi come out to play?’

Fuckin’ brain. Why do you do this to me?

The woman finally spoke, interrupting my silent meltdown.

“You want to take Hiromi to that club, went to with all of her other… Street friends?”

“Yeah! Now that the NCPD is back, and it’s safer… We all went through a lot. Hiromi too! So I figured it would be nice to have all of us gather back up again. A reunion, a… A chance to be with our chooms.”

“The streets are still dangerous.”

“Nothing will touch her.” I said suddenly. Feeling cold flowing through me. “I’ll kill anyone stupid enough to think they can even make the attempt.” I promised.

“Motoko!” Hiromi called out suddenly as she ran past her mom and jumped me in a hug.

“Hiromi!” I cheered back as we hugged for a moment.

“Save me! I’m bored… Moooom. Don’t be weird with Motoko, you should have said she was here.” Hiromi turned on her mother, scowling.

“Motoko was asking if you could leave tonight to go visit that club of yours.” The woman interrupted Hiromi. “Do you wish to go?”

“Wa-! Yes! Please!”

“Very well. Motoko, will be your bodyguard for the night. Don’t leave her side. I expect that is an acceptable requirement Motoko?” The woman asked to my surprise.

“Of course.”

“Then you may go.” The older woman said simply turning around and heading back inside like the matter was finished.

“Does your mom actually like me?” I couldn’t help but whisper to Hiromi, because it almost felt like that.

“Not sure. I think Mom thinks someone well armed is a good thing for me? I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t say they like you. More like they want to use you.” Hiromi muttered a little irritated at the end.

“Eh, whatever! Let’s go!” I urged her on and Hiromi actually smiled as she grabbed me and pulled me inside. She needed to get ready to head outside.

As she was in the bathroom doing her hair a bit, although not into her usual mohawk, I remembered I had something!

“Oh Hiromi! I have the BDs from my gigs. I’ll leave them here on your desk.”

“Wha!” She called out as she poked her head through the bathroom bead curtain.

Stupid bead curtain.

“You got them! I want to see! Right now!”

“We don’t have time.” I told her. It was already getting late, and we were supposed to meet Ichi and Malcolm soon.

“Uuuugh!” She whined but spun back into the bathroom. To finish up.

It was just lucky her makeup was mostly cyberware neon lights, so I didn’t have to wait long as she finished.

 

[Seras]

The Quadra purred as I pulled up to the Ho-oh Club.

I almost preferred Lizzies…

No, I actually don’t. I sighed to myself why did my chooms all want to hang out in sleazy clubs and bars?

Well at least they were BD clubs, and not… Clouds.

As I stepped out Hiromi happily bounced out a moment after as she had been in full energy since we left her apartment. I noticed the damage to the club had been fully repaired, in fact there were now more concrete barricades blocking part of the tunnel entrance to the club.

I guess Shobo or whatever his name is, had done some work increasing the defenses of the club.

As we entered, the place was actually pretty packed. Plenty of Tyger Claws hanging around drinking and having a good time, alongside some civvies.

I guess the gang war ending was spreading around, and now everyone wanted to blow off some steam.

“Is Ichi or Malcolm here yet?” I asked Hiromi and she shrugged looking towards our normal table that was occupied by some random people.

“Let’s check the bar?” I asked, and she was already walking that way as I kept up. The bartender nodded to the two of us, ready to take our orders.

No one cared about serving alcohol to minors in Night City. Especially not a gang hangout like this.

“Hey, we’re looking for Ichi. Has he come in yet?” I asked the bartender but got a shaken head.

“Haven’t seen him girls. You want something to drink?”

“Yeees!” Hiromi instantly jumped and started ordering something extremely alcoholic. I just ordered something fizzy.

“I’ll text him.” I tell her as she is already happily watching her drink be made.

*At Ho-oh.*

Then since I didn’t get an immediate response I settled into the stool at the bar besides Hiromi who was already happily chattering with a few of the Tyger Claws sitting at the bar.

Hiromi is gonna Hiromi I guess.

A few minutes later I got an update from Ichi.

*Ichi: Runnin’ a little late. Malcolm and I had it out a bit. Be there soon.*

I blinked.

“Ichi says he’ll be here soon.” I told Hiromi who turned away from the Tyger Claw guy she was chattering at that was visibly getting irritated at her chatter.

“Preem! Bout time we’ve been here forever already Toko!” Hiromi whined at me, and she purposefully made her voice annoying as she leaned into me.

And that I guess was just enough. The Tyger Claw sitting beside Hiromi that she had been annoying for the last few minutes pounded a fist into the table.

“Will you shut the fuck up you punk! You’ve been blabbering away! Fuckin’ punk brats thinking they are hard shit ruining my buzz!” He snapped, rising up. His buddy on his other side was also standing up.

Which is when I slipped past Hiromi, stepping in front of her.

I didn’t say anything, just making sure that I was between Hiromi and this gonk.

“Hey fuck off yourself then you gonk!” Hiromi instantly replied. I guess her previous scare wasn’t affecting her at the moment. Made sense. This was our club too. She had been going here for a while.

While she and the gonk got into it, I stayed between them. My increased vision took it all in. The two gonks, the Tyger Claws in the club all looking quite ready to jump into a fight. I noticed a few of the old timers, the ones that had been coming here before the war look over, and look like they were going to get involved, only to sit down as the emotions of the club turned against us.

This wasn’t the same club Hiromi and I were used to. The Tyger Claws were more on edge.

I guess the war hadn’t been easy on them.

It wasn’t just Hiromi that was getting looked at angrily. Hiromi wasn’t as decked out as she usually was, a lot of her TC gear left at home. She was almost… Dressing down from her usual. But I wasn’t wearing anything that marked me as Tyger Claw.

I didn’t even have my Katana on me.

This could get dicey.

Diplomacy, or shock and awe? I considered my options. Even as Hiromi kept barking back at the guy, obviously getting pissed at how he was acting like she was an outsider. She was even making fun of the guys dick at this point. Which definitely wasn’t going to calm things down.

This was gonna go bad swiftly. I could see how everyone was reacting. Hiromi was definitely playing with fire.

But fuck them. Hiromi and I weren’t TC, but she had done plenty of jobs with Ichi, who was. And I? Well I did fight with the Kamikaze… Even if I definitely 100% wasn’t one of them! At all!

The first guy grabbed a beer bottle. But not to take a drink. He grabbed it around the top, ready to smash it into what must be in his eyes, a pair of punks.

Eh.

I was no good at diplomacy anyways.

I waited. Just staring. Ready.

And the idiot set me up perfectly.

With one hand still holding the bottle, he reached out and grabbed at the collar of my jacket. Probably trying to throw me to the side so he could smash Hiromi with the bottle.

I looked at his hand holding me up, practically hauling me off my feet. Then back at him.

Then my hands moved.

Street Brawler wasn’t something I used much but I had spent a good chunk of time grinding it. Hadn’t had much need for it, as getting close was only my goal from stealth.

But it was very satisfying when I pulled an Alita.

I had always wanted to do that.

One of my arms gripped his forearm twisting just so as my fingers dug in, weakening his grip and letting me pull in closer.

Putting his neck into reach.

My grip was instant and unrelenting, and then since I now had him by two points it was child's play to shift him. I might not be very heavy, but my Chrome arms gave me plenty of torque.

The bar rocked as I went ahead and doinked his head off the bar. Which unfortunately didn’t break, the noise echoed through the bar.

And then… Well I guess it was time for a bar fight.

His buddy swung at me, but I was a master of improvised weapons!

I stole the beer bottle his buddy had been holding, and ducked his fist. A moment later he had a bottle smash into his face.

Then with a smile of pure happiness on my face, I simply fell into the rhythm.

Because more and more Tyger Claws were coming at me. The fights were perfectly clear. My emotions, despite raging inside, kept completely in check with Cold Blood.

Not that I wasn’t utterly enjoying myself. I always wanted to be in a bar fight.

But I didn’t make it unscathed.

A chair was smashed into me.

I took a few punches from a martial artist Claw.

Some crazy gonk smashed a bottle into my arms which peppered me with little bits of glass.

But as much as they gave, I returned.

Chair gonk was smashed in the face with a flying bottle that I stole from Hiromi as she was standing on the bar cursing everyone one out and to my utter delight was double fisting her middle fingers to the entire room.

Stirring up shit in the middle of an outnumbered bar fight? That was my crazy bitch alright.

Martial artist fucker knew how to fight, and he was even better than me. His longer arms and legs also helped. But he managed to slip in and started beating on me. Cold Blood fully active was the only reason I wasn’t crying out in pain as he managed to slam a few good fists into my face.

But a Martial Artist wasn’t always a good Street Brawler. So when I grabbed a stool, I threw off his assault, and then it was my turn.

“I don’t want no trouble!” I yelled out happily, purposefully playing up the chinese accent, and not sounding at all like that was true. While screaming that out I used the stool to keep catching his fists until I managed to tangle him up just right and smash the flat rim into his nose sending him to the ground.

Bottle guy got his neck grabbed after smashing the bottle on my arms, because he got too close and a flying knee broke his face.

I felt a grin on my face, as I was getting alerts for not just body, but a full level up from Street Brawler!

Street Brawler 6! Just for a bar fight? I would have to do this more often!

But then one of the gonks ruined it.

He pulled iron.

The room went still as the bastard drew his pistol with a japanese shout at me.

Everyone was waiting to see what would happen.

Everything went still, but I wasn’t intimidated. The unkept fucked up rusted piece of shit Lexington wasn’t the piece that was going to flatline me not today, not ever.

So I reached up, put a thumb to my nostril and blew out a glob of blood before speaking. “Careful. I’m armed too.” I warned him as I gently opened my jacket with my left hand showing the Burya in its holster. “Don’t turn this into a gunfight.”

“Bitch! You think you can come in here! Fuck with us!? I’ll sell you on the street as a whore! I’ll turn you into a fuck-”

“Enough.” The voice cut through despite the man yelling and every Tyger Claw in the bar stiffened, as Jotaro walked into the bar proper from the back. “What exactly is happening here?” He demanded looking around, first towards his guy that had his gun out, then towards me.

Listen it wasn’t my fault I was surrounded by groaning Tyger Claw men, they shouldn’t have started it.

“Listen, I don't want no trouble.” I offered despite my own brain telling me to just stay quiet.

But dammit I never got a chance to make such perfect Jackie Chan references before, so I guess my mouth was going to take its chances. It was also pulling into a smirk at the words. Seeing the gunman lowering his weapon, waiting for Jotaro to say something, I took a few steps back and settled against the bar. Hiromi was looking at me in shock from over the bar.

She had totally bailed over at the gunman pulling his pistol. Smart girl.

I threw her a smile and turned back to the boss.

He looked pissed. I flashed him a smile when he turned to look at me.

What can I say? A fight actually put me in a good mood. At least until the dumbass decided to pull a gun. I was still ready to quickdraw my Burya in an instant if he decided to raise that pistol back up.

“Clean this mess up. All of you. Does this look like a fighting pit?” Jotaro demanded and he was definitely pissed, his eyes kept flashing to the non Tyger Claw people that were cowering in the corners trying to avoid getting dragged into a gunfight.

Ah I guess, he wasn’t happy about potentially losing customers over this.

Only after all the Tyger Claws started cleaning things up and returning the club to order did he stalk over towards me.

“And you? Do you think you can walk into my club, and cause such a commotion?” He said only after fully entering my personal space, his voice a hissed whisper.

“Listen choom. This guy decided to start the fight, I’m on the job protecting my client, so this is his fault not mine.” I tell him idly poking my boot at the poor gonk whose face now decorated the bar.

Jotaro’s eyes narrowed. “It is… Kusanagi? Is it not? I remember the face. Do you think that what you have done here will go without punishment? Do you think this sort of disrespect will be tolerated?” The man was pissed. I could see it in his eyes. The hatred and wrath.

“Disrespect?” I questioned coldly, wondering what the hell he was talking about.

“That’s right. My club! This place is under my control, nothing happens here without my permission.” He reaches out and snags my jaw.

And puts himself at about four seconds away from losing the hand. I was gonna start collecting Tyger Claw fuckheads hands if this kept up.

“And I didn’t give you permission to beat my men, to damage my club. I think this will cost y-”

“Motoko! Oh! Shobo-sama!” Ichi suddenly called out as he rushed over having probably seen someone looming over me, but not realizing it was his boss. Malcolm just behind him looked confused at the whole situation.

Funnily enough both boys looked a little ruffled too. Like they had just been in a fight.

Fucking gonks.

“Hey Ichi. Hey Malcolm.” I mumbled out a bit, the gonk still had my chin in his hand.

“Ichinose. You’re choom here, caused a commotion in my club.” Jotaro said, trying to sound calm and collected, but there was an edge to his voice. This guy was crazy, I realized.

Ichi hesitated for a moment as Jotaro looked at him, as if he wasn’t sure what to say.

I didn’t hesitate.

“Perhaps you should remind your people not to pick fights with teenagers then. It might end up embarrassing for them.” I said pointedly. I didn’t like the way Jotaro was looking at me and Hiromi.

It was making my trigger finger itch.

“Motoko! Be polite to Shobo-Sama! You know he is important to the Tyger Claws! Even if you are with the Kamikaze you shouldn’t pick fights.” Ichi suddenly said almost too quickly to be natural.

That was weird.

I wasn’t a member of Kamikaze… I wasn’t! But Ichi knew that. I had told him that last time. And the way he said it, it was like…

“Kamikaze?” Jotaro asked, and he finally let go of my chin. While I was trying to figure out what was going on, Ichi managed to snatch the initiative.

“Indeed Shobo-Sama. Motoko works with the Kamikaze. I saw her assisting them in an assault just a few nights ago. Her brother Jun is also a member. You may have heard of him. They have started calling him the Oni?” Ichi offered loudly, something about the way he was talking…

“Stupid name.” I muttered, my mouth as always free to do as it liked as I thought.

But Jotaro must have heard the name, because suddenly he was standing up straight, and acting affable.

“I see, I see! Then this isn’t just someone causing trouble, but an honored member of the Kamikaze. I see. I will ensure my men learn not to pick fights with our honored warriors.” He said chuckling fakely.

He wasn’t happy though. His eyes never stopped glaring at me, even as he started calling out to everyone to clean everything up, in his own words. “The show is over! Let’s return to celebrating!”

Ichi hovered beside me as I kept my eyes on the man, who was walking around a bit settling things back to normal. Malcolm settled into a stool that he picked up beside the bar, looking to Hiromi who only gave him a shrug.

“Motoko!” Ichi whispered into my ear. “What are you thinking! Do you want to end up flatlined!?”

Ah. I see. Ichi was actually afraid of his boss. He didn’t just not want to piss him off for his job or something.

No, that was real fear. That was why he threw the Kamikaze name around.

“I wasn’t in any danger. If it came down to a gunfight, I would be alright.” I assured him, but I couldn’t help but wonder why he was so afraid. Jotaro was probably one of the least dangerous guys in the club, he didn’t have the movement of a fighter. “What was the deal there? Your boss seemed pretty… Unstable there, and you’re scared of him.” I asked, whispering quietly.

“Shobo-sama is extremely talented in managing businesses, but he has a dangerous reputation for a reason.” Ichi whispered to me.

I turned to look at Hiromi who was still hanging out on the other side of the bar looking a little spooked at the sudden bar brawl turning almost gun fight. I flashed her a smile and a thumbs up, which earned me a whispered “Gonk” in return.

But she did crawl back over the bar and settle into a chair next to Ichi Malcolm and I. Malcolm was doing a great job actually. Despite everything settling down his head was looking around the room, and I could see the way his hand kept close to the pistol hidden in his jacket.

“Doesn’t strike me as the dangerous type… Not exactly a fighter.” I mentioned, Jotaro was soft. He didn’t have any of the muscles, or movement of a fight. I could tell. Every inch of him was the rich man used to sending others to die.

“Shobo-sama can be plenty dangerous. He is very useful to the Tyger Claws. Every business he takes over starts making massive profits… He gets away with a lot because of it.” Ichi answered before he sighed and took a seat at the bar flicking a finger at the bartender who obviously recognized him.

The bartender had returned now that everything had calmed down. The moment the fight started, he had rushed for the back.

Smart guy.

He dropped off a bottle of beer for Ichi, and then started passing a few more to Hiromi and Malcolm. I refused one that he offered me, and instead just ordered another fizzy drink.

My first one was laying on the floor.

Hiromi kind of fussed over me, trying to put a wet cloth up to my nose that had been bleeding a bit, but I was waving her away.

I’d be fine with a shower and a nap.

But then the four of us all sort of become aware of each other.

“It’s been a while since we have all been together.” I mentioned, with a chuckle and my declaration had the whole group sort of relax.

“Yeah no shit! To the four of us!” Hiromi offered, instantly raising up her bottle which the boys hesitated but it was with a resigned air that they brought their bottles up. My can clinked among them.

“It’s been a hell of a time for all of us.” I started realizing what we all needed. “Did you know I got my arms chopped off? It sucked. How about you Hiromi?” I immediately pinned the next target for sharing.

It took her a moment as she was mid swig making her choke a bit as I threw the attention at her.

“Wha-? Motoko!”

“C’mon choom. Share! You’ll feel better after. We’ve all been through some real shit.”

“What? Motoko I… Nothing happened to me!”

“C’mon Hiromi. You told me. How long have we all been friends? I mean. I only remember so much, but we are all chooms.”

“You have to be kidding.” She hissed at me, her eyes shooting from me to Malcolm and Ichi, who were looking on confused. “I’m not telling them!”

“Why not? Chooms are chooms even through the hard times Hiromi. If they don’t respect you… No if they make fun of you, or treat you badly, because of something bad that happened, then at least you know they aren’t your chooms. Better to know, then to find out at a worse time. C’mon everyone… This whole thing, the war? It’s been rough on all of us.”

I looked to Malcolm, then Ichi.

“When I got chipped with these arms, I went totally crazy. All I wanted to do was kill Maelstrom. I was so angry, and hurt, and all I could think about was taking out that pain on the ones that hurt me… but I don’t live for them. I live for me. To have good days. To have bad days. But they are mine.”

I opened my mouth, but I didn’t have anything else to share. I just… I just wanted to share with my friends?

“Fine! Fuckin gonk with your stupid smile!” Hiromi almost roared, drawing some attention but we were far enough away from everyone that no one could overhear as she slammed back the last of the beer chugging it down. “I ran out one night. My ‘rents been keeping me locked up, but I went out anyways to prove how hard I was… I ended up crashing my bike practically pissing my pants, and hiding in the trash… I wasn’t even the one being shot at. But I realized I’m just a poser. Motoko… She already told me to just be me. So there. I’m not brave enough to run out there when shit gets real.”

She immediately looked like she wanted to take another swig of beer but she was empty. I let everyone process what she said. Then before anyone could say anything, I elbowed Ichi.

He looked to me.

Then over my shoulder. To Malcolm.

“I ran trucks. It sucked. People died. I, I caused people to die, because I wasn’t fast enough, or smart enough… It made me cold. Because if I cared? Then I wouldn’t be able to keep doing it. I ended up causing a fight with my best choom because I was… Because I was scared and angry, and lashing out, and… I couldn’t be there for him when he needed me. I… I’m sorry Malcolm. What I said. Really… I wish I had been there for you choom.”

Malcolm had an utterly hilarious expression on his face as it looked like he was holding back tears.

“I went out with my best choom. We were gonna make eddies, prove our rep. But shit got real. Getting shot at? That ain't something anyone is ready for. A guy that was guiding us got flatlined. Died in my arms. I… I tried to get my choom to go to the hospital, to a ripper… But he was already dead, and… Ichi you were right. He was already dead. I knew that. I just couldn’t accept it. I freaked on you when you refused.”

The two chooms were both teary eyed and then suddenly I was pushed aside a bit as two guys hugged it out, back slapping each other and hiding tears.

Adorable.

Once they were settled I had moved over to let them sit together as they knocked back the beers. I decided to break the tension.

“I killed a guy with a knife in my teeth. It was after they cut off my hands. They threw me into this pit and forced me to fight to the death… But I did it with a knife in my teeth. It was preem.” I told them out of nowhere, earning shocked looks from the group.

“Yeah? Well I ran over this Maelstrom borg with the truck, Malcolm was there.”

“Oh yeah! When you did that I was hanging off the back and as we drove by I was flipping the Borg off, and telling him to suck my-”

“That’s so not fair… All I did was trick that gonk Tomaru into loading up an XBD in the middle of class.” She grumbled, but instantly both of the boys were on her.

“Deets!”

“C’mon Hiromi! I want to hear about you burning this corpo gonk!”

“I’m interested as well.” I told her with a smile.

 

[Seras]

Hours later I was driving a much drunker Hiromi home.

A night out had been… Nice. We all ended up sharing the stories of what happened to us over the past weeks. We all shared the good and the bad, and in the end?

We actually felt like Chooms.

It was really nice.

Pulling up to Hiromi’s apartment, it took a bit of cajoling to get the drunk girl out of the car, and eventually I was forced to princess carry her as she kept falling and giggling.

Did I mention she was drunk?

It was a little awkward knocking on the door to her apartment, waiting for someone to answer.

Her mother didn’t say a word, just an unhappy glare as I carried her almost snoring daughter into the apartment. After a minute of settling her on her bed, making sure she was laying on her side and finding a trash can that would work as a bucket, I hurried out of the dark apartment under the heavy eyes of the corpo woman.

But I was safe!

I escaped back out to the city where there weren't angry corpo mom glares.

Instead there was freedom.

I mean sure freedom sounded like NCPD sirens, which still hadn’t entirely let up. The NCPD were practically leaving the sirens going through the night just to make sure their presence was felt.

But I shook that feeling away. Time to go home.

I was humming when I got home. Never Fade Away drifting in the air as I walked into the apartment and threw up a hand to say hello to Jun who was sitting on the couch when he leapt from the couch startling me.

“Motoko! What happened!? Are you okay? Who did this? I’ll kill them!”

“Wha?” I asked before blinking, reaching up to my nose.

Riiiight.

Bar fight. I forgot. Sure the pain was there, but it was so little, I wasn’t even paying attention to it. Considering how high my Cold Blood skill was, It wasn’t even enough I needed to really use the skill to not feel it. And a nights sleep would set me right…

Fuck.

“Uhh. You should see the other guy?”

Much to my shock this did not set my brother at ease.

“Who did this?” He demanded in a growl holding onto my shoulders.

“Some gonks at the club. Hiromi annoyed them by talking or something, and they decided to start a fight. It’s okay Jun, really. It was kinda fun honestly. Besides. I won.” I inform him ending in a bright smile as I manage to shake off his hands a bit so I could flex my arm.

Not that I had any natural muscle, there, but the image was important.

“The club? Ho-oh?”

“Yeah. Some TC Gonks.”

“They touched you? You!?” He growled and I realized Jun was actually getting pretty pissed, like Psycho level angry, not his usual hotheadedness.

So I reached up and grabbed his face between my hands.

“Hey! Jun. Come on, come back. Everyone is fine. Deep breaths Jun-Nii. Deep breaths.” I ordered, and while he instantly looked to fight, I didn’t let him.

Chrome hands were stronk.

“Jun-Nii? You back with me?”

He let out a long breath out of his mouth that came out more of a hiss than anything else.

“I never left!” He snapped back, but I could tell he was back. His eyes were seeing me and not anyone else.

“Right!” I chirped at him as I let go, getting glared at all the while.

“They should not have touched you! Not a Tyger Claw!”

“I kinda beat their ass Jun… Plus it was fun.”
“Tsk. Ho-oh Club? That means… Jotaro Shobo? That is the man in charge there?”

“Yeah good memory. Hiromi and I had a bit of a run in with him after the bar fight. He was super mad. Talking about ‘punishment’ and stuff. Ichi showed up then, and name dropped the Kamikaze… I’d rather him not spread around that I worked with them, but it made Mr. White suit back off.”

“The Devil of Kabuki, said he would punish you? I’ll kill him.” Jun growled, his fists clenching and unclenching as he must have imagined murdering the Devi-

“Devil of Kabuki?” I asked before I felt it.

Realization.

Jotaro Shobo. The Devil of Kabuki.

The Devil of Kabuki. Jotaro Shobo.

“That disgusting Mother Fuck-” I cut myself off as my own hands clenched and I had to rely on Cold Blood to keep from punching walls and cursing up a storm.

I remembered that fucker now!

I had only done that quest once. But I remember! The Mox had wanted him dead, because he was a monster. That motherfucker kidnapped people only to torture them to make XBDs!

I made XBDs as well, but I murdered people that deserved it. Not kidnapped people that hadn’t done anything. Not people just down on their luck nabbed by assholes like Jotaro Shobo.

“You know of him?” Jun suddenly asked, pulling me out of my rapid fire thoughts as I stopped my pacing in the living room.

“Yeah. I’ve heard of the Devil of Kabuki before! And the fucked up shit he does.” I muttered. All the times I had met Jotaro Shobo sliding into my realization.

Of course I remembered the Ho-oh club now. I had thought the name was familiar. It was where you go to kill the Devil of Kabuki. A job that… Regina? the fixer gives you on behalf of the Mox.

Jotaro had no problem kidnapping even Moxes to scroll XBDs of.

Jotaro Shobo?

Jotaro Shobo was a dead man walking.

The decision was made. All I had to do was figure out how I wanted to get it done? Loud or quiet?

No, I took a breath. I would need some advice on this. This would be complicated. Very very complicated, my connections with the TC was useful at times, and at others it was a noose.

So I shook the disgust at myself for talking to that man, and not knowing away. I was in the moment.

“It’s okay Jun.” I told him, Jun having been hovering around as I went off in my own head at the realization of who I had been interacting with.

“Doesn’t seem okay. Motoko? Imouto?” Jun asked, his face worried and I could see the stiff way he held his hands as if wanting to grab me, but not sure if he should.

“Really Jun-Nii. I’m okay. I think I’ll probably go talk to Wakako tomorrow about it. Might get some advice. But… I guess I just wasn’t really ready… To actually been hanging around someone like that, and I hadn’t even noticed.”

Of course. The truth was worse than that.

I had forgotten.

Jotaro Shobo was a monster, but only a side quest. A little gig you could do, that unless you actually paid attention, you wouldn’t even need to hear the guys name.

How many horrible people, monsters, or evil things happened in the game that I wasn’t remembering?

I brushed past Jun and headed into my room. I had taken to mostly sleeping on the couch surrounded by parts and pieces of my tinkering or my laptops to grind with, but what I needed now was no distractions.

I sighed once the door closed behind me. I started stripping weapons settled on a dresser, their holsters ready to be buckled on when I got dressed, as I slipped out of my Leotard, out of my armored clothing that made me feel like a badass, and into something comfy.

Then I sat on the bed and laid back. “What else did I forget?” So rather than sleep. Rather than spend a night grinding, I started thinking back to the game. To the anime.

To everything I hadn’t been thinking about as I’d been either having too much fun grinding, or too murderous to think about.

Jotaro was just one mission. Were there any other gigs that I should remember? So I started thinking back.

The first thing that popped into my head?

“That fucking sick fuck!” I gasped remembering the farm. River and his stupid quest. The creepy fuckin cartoon that I swore if I ever had to watch again I was gonna uninstall the damn game.

The creepy bastard and his farm… Fuck. I don’t remember the name of the farm. I would have to jump onto the map I had installed, and see if I can’t find it. Hopefully it will actually be listed.

I took a deep breath and let it out.

Okay. That was one thing that needed to be dealt with, maybe even sooner than Jotaro.

What else?

Wait. That Scav Ripper… Shit. I can’t remember what his name was, but he shouldn’t be hard to find. He had an open Ripper shop. Hopefully he is already set up, and I’ll go and put an end to his bullshit, anyone willing to pretend to be a doctor only to rip them apart for pieces for scavs deserved a messy death.

Maybe even get some more Scav den data from it.

That made me think of Fingers.

He was disgusting, and I definitely felt like putting a bullet in his head, but he wasn’t scaving people. Just being a disgusting molesting fuck.

But the Joytoys that go to him, do it because he was ‘cheap’ thanks to what he did…

I would have to talk to Vik. He would know best. Would killing Fingers actually be a net good?

Fuck. This is why I said I wasn’t a hero. I don’t like these kinds of complex good and evil choices. I hated Good and Evil alignment choices in games.

I guess… I guess it was good that I didn’t have one.

I couldn’t think of anything else directly relevant at the moment. Except for Edgerunners… Faraday was on my list too. That four eyed fucker needed to get put in the dirt, but he was dangerous. He had plenty of guards.

That was enough for now. I had my targets.

I should sleep. Let the night pass and be ready the next day.

But that kidnapping fuck was out there. Right now.

I pulled up my map. Farms in the badlands, it took an hour to narrow down my options. Unfortunately it had been way too long since I had actually played 2077.

I didn’t remember which farm it was and despite most of them closing down, there were still a few of them around the city.

So I had a list. I would just hit all of them until I found it.

I should sleep. I could do it. Just a push of a button and I would be out for eight hours.

But my knee was bouncing. My fingers tapping. Every piece of me wanted to get up and go kill that creepy fuck.

Fuck it.

I wasn’t some hero, but I wasn’t going to let that bastard live for another day if I could help it. Making me watch that creepy cartoon in the game was enough to earn his death certificate, even without the kidnapping and creepy shit he does.

I got up and started packing my equipment back on. I stepped out as I zipped the leotard back up to see Jun was still up watching TV with a half eaten burrito in his hand.

“I thought you went to bed?” He asked, noticing I was arming back up. I even had my Nekomata over my back.

“I was. But something came up. Don’t wait up for me. I might not come back in before morning. Might take a while to find him.” I say as I finish strapping everything on and walk over to Jun to give him a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later-”

The hand gripping the back of my Jacket kept me from walking.

“Not a chance. It’s late, what are you doing?”

“Gotta kill a guy. Gonna take a while to hunt him down first.” I answered truthfully which unfortunately didn’t earn me my release.

“Details. Now.” He said standing up to block my way.

“Fine! I got some info on a serial killer. Some crazy fuck that kidnaps kids does weird shit to them. I know… Generally where he is. Gonna need to hit a few locations to find him, but I’m going to assassinate him, and rescue anyone he has kidnapped.”

Jun blinked at my response. My reveal obviously surprised him as he seemed to mull it over.

“Fine. I’m coming too.”

I sighed. I really didn’t need Jun and his big stompy feet following me around.

“Juuuuun!” Whined at him irritated at him trying to interfere in my mur-assasination.

It’s an assassination. One is a job, the other is mental sickness.

“No. It’s late, and I know I can’t talk you out of leaving.” He said standing up and looming over me. “Since I know how you are, I’m coming with. Someone to watch your back.”

“Fine. I’ll wait for you to get ready. It’s gonna be more of a stealth job you know? The guy has like a ton of mines and turrets defending his farm last I heard.”

He looked at me for a moment and then he slapped the back of my head!

“If that is the case you definitely need someone there to watch your back. Imouto. You can rely on me. You have other chooms as well. Stop trying to take on everything alone.” He added as I gaped at him as he walked off.

“I can handle myself just fine!” I called out to him, but he ignored me as he headed into his room to grab his gear.

I stood there at the door a little huffy rubbing the back of my head. Jerk. Stupidface!

A few minutes later Jun walked out, yawning a bit as he was now kitted up in his Kamikaze gear, facemask included.

I rolled my eyes and headed down. Jun following after. Jun kept yawning so I actually stopped at a vending machine and bought a couple of drinks stuffing a few into his arms, making sure they were the type he liked before heading to the garage.

He didn’t say anything but he was giving me an amused smirk as he followed after.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.” He replied instantly, but he was still smirking.

Jerk!

We reached the car, but Jun was walking over towards his Kusanagi. “Jun! C’mon.” I pointed at my car as I set the cans down on the roof for a moment as I opened the door and started arranging my Nekomata.

“I’ll just follow you.” He said side eyeing me.

“Not a chance. We are leaving the city. Unless you want to drive your Kusanagi through the badlands?” I asked, and I saw him wince a little.

NC streets could be bad enough with potholes, and general debris, but the roads out of the city were… Rough.

The Nomads drove their cars with offroad tires, and alterations for a reason.

Like my Quadra.

“C’mon.”

“Just… Drive slowly.” He demanded, as he relented and moved to the passenger seat.

“I always drive safely!”

—--

Driving out of the city was easy enough. It wasn’t like many people drove out of Night City in the middle of the night.

If only Jun would stop trying to change the radio.

“Jun if you change my radio to that garbage one more time, I’m gonna start driving fast just to end this torture.” I told him out of the corner of his eye.

Jun wasn’t a fan of ‘oldies’ which. Samurai were. Technically.

I mean they were over fifty years old. Of course kids that grew up in NC thought the music was for old people.

They just had no taste! The original sounds? Johnny might be a real piece of shit, but he had some monster vocals and Guitar work.

“Ugh. Why do you listen to this scop. It’s terrible.” He grumbled at me.

“As someone who listens to Us Cracks, you have no right to talk about my music preferences.”

“Us Cracks are at least modern.”

I groaned as the argument went around again.

But I finally had an actual distraction.

“Heads up.” I said suddenly turning off the engine. The headlights had already been turned off as we left the city.

My Kiroshi could see just fine and there wasn’t exactly a lot of traffic.

Jun sat up from where he had been slouching in the seat.

“What is it?”

“First of the potential targets. Poppy Farm. Be careful. If this is it, the crazy fucker put up mines.”

“You already told me.” he said, rolling his eyes. “I won’t forget a warning about landmines Motoko.”
I nodded but I was narrowing my eyes.

The road went right past the only structure around.

I frowned as I noticed the fires highlighting the massive graffiti covering the front.

‘Wraiths’

Not exactly what I was looking for. “This isn’t it.” I admitted as we cruised down the road without a sound. No mines. No defenses.

But Wraiths.

A couple of Wraith vehicles parked around, a barrel on fire lighting up the exterior. A few milling around drinking beers.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Not this farm… Still tempted to clear them out though.” I admitted. They were obviously winding down, sitting around drinking or sleeping.

They wouldn’t know what hit them.

“Starting a firefight for what? Imouto… As I learned. You need to bank the fire of your bloodlust.” He said, surprising me.

The car finally came to a stop, still invisible to the Wraiths in the night but I looked away from the farm to Jun.

“Okay, who told you that? That didn’t sound like you at all.” I demanded and to my delight he actually looked a little embarrassed.

“Sensei.”

I snorted before chuckling at him, Jun was soon pouting at me.

“Alright. Alright. I guess… I guess we can just ignore them.” I said, sighing a bit. Fuckin Wraiths.

“I didn’t say that.” Jun offered after a few moments and I blinked at him, as he smirked at me. “I simply wanted to be sure you weren’t rushing into a fight for nothing. What do you hope to gain?”

Numbers?

No, I couldn't exactly tell him that. Plus..

He was right. Morgan's Solo Guide. That book I never even finished reading way back when. I had taken some of the words to heart, made my rules, only to forget them when I got kidnapped.

I wasn’t some psycho, killing for fun.

I was a merc. A Solo. Someone that did what she did for a reason, and what reasons do I have for killing a bunch of Wraiths?

“I know a Nomad. We clear this camp, we can let him know. Probably make some good eddies for the sale of the Wraith cars. That plus we get any weapons, and eddies the Wraith have on them.”

“And what is the risk?”

I blinked.

Risk? From a bunch of sleeping Wraiths in the middle of the night?

“Jun you are vastly overestimating those gonks, or underestimating me. I could probably kill every wraith in that camp without them ever knowing I was there.”

His quirked eyebrow told me he didn’t believe me.

I felt an actual smile stretching my lips.

“I bet you complete control over the radio, I can do it.” I offered which surprised him for a moment but then he chuffed out a laugh.

“If you can’t. I control the radio not just on this trip, but from now on.”

I winced. If I messed up and had to listen to the Us Cracks and the Pon Pon Shit or something? I might actually go Cyberpsycho…

But proving I was a badass and winning a bet against Jun? Totally worth the risk.

“Deal. Just stay here. Unless you hear gunshots. Shouldn’t take me long.” I told him, then I looked forward and blinked as I activated the BD recorder. Might as well get another benefit from this little side quest.

Then I slipped out of the car and into the darkness of the dusty desert road. Cactus and bushes surrounded me, and I could hear the sound of a radio in the distance. My blood turned to ice as I crept forward.

My eyes let me see just fine, but it was because of that, that I knew I had to be even better.

If even one Wraith had good optics and noticed me creeping along?

Jun would win our bet!

Plus they would shoot at me. That too I guess.

But as I moved in closer and closer stalking amongst the bushes and cactus, I knew this would work.

These guys were even more confident than the Maelstrom had been. After all, The Raffen were the predators of the Badlands. As much as the Nomads liked to talk big and tough, the Raffen were feeding on the Nomads, not the other way around.

So I crept in. My eyes flashing in scans looking for any defenses, only to find nothing.

Not even cameras. Just nothing.

Just a few Raffen outside, and probably more inside.

So I crept closer every inch of my body working in tandem to keep me out of sight. To keep me quiet. Until I was in the shadows of the barn.

I slipped inside.

No one noticed. No one even heard my footsteps as I slipped around the open barn doors and I was inside. The lights inside were old. Most didn’t work.

A perfect environment for my work.

I went to the far back of the barn. Just to check for any security.

Nothing. Just a few of the old barn stables filled with tents, or sleeping bags. This was obviously not the Raffens' home. Just a place to spend the night despite the giant painted on Wraiths outside the barn.

Their vehicles were also inside. I went around to each of them just to make sure they were all empty.

All but one.

The poor Raffen sleeping in his back seat didn’t notice me as I poked my head over the side door to stare at him for a moment. His door was locked.

His security wasn’t good enough to stop me. I didn’t even bother closing the door when I was done just pulling him mostly out of the car so he wouldn’t bleed on the interior.

Then it was time.

The poor Raffen were split up. Sleeping or hanging around drinking and whiling the night away. It made sense. It was getting late.

A glance at my integrated clock in my Kiroshi, something I didn’t tend to think about, showed the time.

2:07AM

A good time.

The second guy lost his life to a knife through the throat while he was sleeping in his little sleeping bag.

The next I killed by cutting through his tent rather than trying to unzip it. He died just as quickly.

I didn’t feel much as I slowly cleaved through the sleeping Raffen.

They weren’t even a threat as the sleeping men died one after another.

Six sleepers in total.

3000 xp.

Then I had to deal with the three outside.

I considered how to do it. They were split apart, but all chatting with each other.

Difficult.

I could grab my gun, but that wasn’t how I wanted to run this.

So I turned back inside and searched a few of the corpses for what I wanted.

I smiled as I found plenty of what I needed.

Then I stood up from the shadows.

I loved stealth. I loved sneaking around, but there was something truly freeing about walking openly out of the barn up to the first guy who was sitting down on some old garbage.

One of his buddies noticed me as I walked up to him and let my knife slam into his throat and out.

My other hand was already moving. The knife I had looted whistled through the air. Hitting…

Mostly where I wanted. It was a little off.

I really needed to up my Reflexes some more.

On the other hand, even as one man died, and the other gasped as a blade appeared in his chest I was pulling a third blade from my waist.

With a little flourish I lined it up even as the third Raffen tried to react. Tried to rise up and draw her rifle sitting at his side.

The whistling blade put an end to that, as she fell crying out breathlessly. I swiftly threw another blade, this one actually landed where I wanted. Her throat suddenly blocked by a solid piece of metal put an end to her as she writhed on the floor dying.

I had checked every inch of the inside of the farm, and I hadn’t seen any of them wandering around in the night so I was fairly confident I was done.

My eyes turned gold.

*Motoko?*

I reached down and slipped my blade into the second Raffens throat, he was bleeding out on the ground a knife in his chest, lung pierced, but I put him out of his misery as I answered Jun.

*All Clear Jun-nii! Come on over, let’s loot up.* I told him before dropping the call. I could hear my Quadra’s engine start up a few moments later as the car rumbled off the road and towards the farm.

Perfect.

Loot. XP. And I could send a message to Scorpion. Maybe the Aldecaldos could use a few more cars? I peeked into the barn noticing there were a few Raffen vehicles now ownerless.

 

[Seras]

“Damn.” Jun whispered behind me as I turned away from the barn to see him already walking amongst the corpses. With a motion he tugged free the knife in the Raffens throat. Bringing it up to his face he looked it over. “I remember. When you were practicing that.” He said sounding a little off.

“I uh… spent some time on it. It’s a useful skill.” I lied. I really hadn’t done much knife throwing since I played with it so long ago, but the instincts, the experience, the muscle memory was all part of Ninjutsu.

I could practically feel the blade still between my fingers. The motion I had made to throw it. I hadn’t even thought about it. Just did what I knew was right.

“Well. You cleared them out alright.”

“Go ahead and look around Jun, might find something you want. I’m gonna call Scorpion.”

“Scorpion?” Jun asked but I ignored his question as I turned away from him, took a few steps away and felt my eyes turn gold again.

I felt my foot tapping away for a while as Scorpion didn’t pick up at the first ring, or the second, or the tenth.

Finally the call connected, and a grumpy voice came over the line.

*Fuckin’ hell. What!? Do you have any idea what time it is!* Scorpion cursed and grumbled on the line but I smiled.

*Hey Scorpion, you still need a car?* I asked ignoring his complaints, I was trying to do him a favor after all.

*What?*

I rolled my eyes at his question, the man must have been asleep he was really being slow to catch on.

*Wait Motoko? Why are you calling so late?*

*C’mon Scorpion keep up. Do you still need a car? Or rather any of the Aldecaldos? I have… Six? Raffen Vehicles that are now ownerless. You or your family want them?*

*What?* I snorted, at least this time it was a what of surprise, and not just pure confusion. I let the call stay silent for a minute.

*Fuck you hit another Raffen Camp?* He asked blearily, obviously struggling to think.

*More like a pit stop. I was searching for someone else, and ran into them. So you want the vehicles? I’ll give you a good deal for them.*

*Fuck. Yeah. Hold on. Give me… Give me a minute. I need to wake up.* He grumbled a bit and the line went silent, as he must be paying attention to something other than the call.

While I waited I turned towards the bodies and started looting them. Each of them men of course had a weapon, rifles or shotguns seemed to be the preference.

I looked through the growing pile of weapons with an interested eye. I certainly didn’t need much else, but it was always nice to see if there was something interesting among the chaff. I didn’t find anything I wanted to add to my growing armory, but I did find a few pieces of interest. Optics, or little mods that I quickly uninstalled on the weapons and chucked into the Quadra’s trunk.

I could have some fun with some of that!

*Motoko. You there?*

*Course Scorpion, feel a bit more awake?*

*Yeah at least I’m alive. You said you had six vehicles?*

I didn’t respond right away, instead looking into the barn and taking a picture of the vehicles all parked. Then sent that.

*Yep.*

*Holy… Preem. Very Preem. Motoko, you know we don’t have the cash reserves for all of them, but I, well I’m still stuck on my bike, I wouldn’t mind an actual roof over my head.*

*That’s fine, listen if you can come pick them up, we can count it as an IOU. I don’t really want to try and hold these until other Raffen decide to come find out where their buddies are, and I don’t have the desire to try and sell them to a bunch of gonks. Pay me what you can, and maybe we can barter out some other stuff, but I know you're reliable so I gave you a call.*

The line went silent at my offer for a long while. Long enough I started to wonder if I had lost connection.

*Scorpion?*

*Yeah. Yeah I’m here. Fuck Choom. I don’t know what to say.*

*Say you’ll come take these off my hands and pay me what you can later.* I told him with a laugh which I got an almost strangled sound in turn.

*Alright. I’ll get the Aldecaldos together. We’ll come take them off your hands, won’t be difficult to get them repainted and keyed to us. Listen. Kid, I still owe you one. A big one, and this… I’ll pay you back somehow. I promise.*

*Don’t stress so much Choom. Getting these out of the hands of Raffen is already a lot. Listen I gotta run. I’ll send you the coordinates, but I’m in the middle of something. Don’t have time to hang around.*

*Yeah of course. I’ll… I’ll keep in touch. Don’t hesitate to come by if you ever need something.*

“Motoko. Are we going to be waiting around all night?” Jun asked, interrupting, and I threw him a one moment gesture at him.

*I gotta run. Stay safe Scorpion.*

*You too kid.*

I nodded, as I finally disconnected.

“Okay. Ready to go? Loot anything good?” I asked him but Jun just shook his head.

“I just klepped some Eddie shards. They didn’t have anything I wanted.”

“Preem! Follow me then I want to find that serial killer fuck before he can target anyone else.”

I jogged over to the car pointedly ignoring Juns eyebrow as he looked around at the dead bodies around him.

—--

We drove to another farm nearby only for another miss.

While I drove I was looking over my stat screen. Since there was no traffic out in the badlands it was easy enough to split my attention.

4500 XP from the Raffen. None of them were big guys, so I only got 500xp a head.

Still that leveled me up again.

*Level up achieved!*

*One Stat Point Gained.*

*One Skill Point Gained.*

Level 9.

Of course as much as I wanted to start spamming stats again. I knew the rule. So the stat point was immediately dropped into adaptation for my arms. I twitched a little as the point went through. A coolness in my chest that I realized had actually been impacting my breathing as I tried to naturally shy away from the cold, eased. I inhaled, and exhaled. Feeling.

Better.

One more step.

But what was I gonna do with all these skill points? I had four of them saved at this point, and that was a lot.

But I didn’t really need to spend it on anything. Most of my skills were getting close to the stat cap, or they were something I would grind once I had some better tools.

Looking at you Quickhack. One of these days I was gonna get an upgrade to my Netdeck and get some actual toys.

In the end I just pushed it away. I would think about it when I wasn’t mid hunt for a serial killer.

“Okay we are coming up on the next potential place. Keep your eyes open.” I told Jun, who had been yawning for a while.

Poor Jun was sleepy.

We were coming close to three in the morning after all.

Lights off I turned off my engine as we started coasting down the empty road.

I had been forced to head back into the city and go out a different exit just to get to this point. Edgewood Farm.

The name was sort of foggy-familiar. So I was really hoping this was it. As we approached I noticed the large gate surrounding the area, and while that didn’t ring any bells in my head, as we coasted past the entrance. I saw it.

Mines.

“Jun.”

“I saw it. This the place?”

“Yeah.” I muttered as I let the car keep drifting down the way a bit farther from the farm house and barn so that when I braked it was as quiet as could be.

“Alright we gotta be careful.”

“No kidding. How are you going to get around the mines?”

“Slowly.” I told him with a laugh. We both stepped out of the car and headed towards the gate. I crept up to the edge of the locked gate waving Jun back as I started scanning.

First I needed to turn off those cameras. A security camera was over the entrance to the farm house. I started breaching in through the Quickhack, but noticed the problem pretty quickly. This psycho was a netrunner. Or at least good enough that his defenses weren’t easy to break through.

I pulled back. I wasn’t breaking into the cameras defenses without setting off an alert, and that was something I didn’t want to happen.

“Motoko?” Jun whispered and I shook my head. “Defenses on his stuff is tight. Give me a minute.” I told him as I thought. I could try to get around to the camera to breach it directly, I could try to sneak into the little house, but no telling what he had set up there…

And I would be in direct view of the camera.

So what can I do?

Wait.

I don’t need to do this silent. He was one guy in the middle of nowhere…

I just needed to draw him out.

“Jun I’m going to draw him out and then just headshot this fucker. Once he is down, we can get through his defenses at our own pace.”

“Okay. I’m with you.” He said and I threw him a thumbs up as I hurried back to the car. I had left my Nekomata inside. Quickly pulling her free I rushed back to the entrance.

I might not be able to break into the camera, but I could get a mine to go off.

Once I settled back in I grabbed a rock, and with a smirk hucked it over the wall right towards a Mine I had already spotted.

The explosion was deafening in the silent night.

A moment later two turrets popped out of the ground near the barn. I wanted to whistle but kept silent as they started searching around. Automatic lights also activated lighting up the farm.

But then silence. I could feel Jun getting jittery behind me as I just waited for it. I was backed up just enough that the camera couldn’t spot me, or the barrel of the Nekomata as I kept it pointed at the front door of the little farmhouse.

He had to be here. It was so early in the morning.

Then a few minutes later the door opened.

Well I didn’t remember the guy from the game, but he was in the right place at the right time.

He stepped out onto the porch. Looking around grumpily. He was looking towards the smoking hole where the mine used to be when I took the shot.

The sharp retort of my rail gun broke the night, and the mans body flopped.

“I hope you’re right.” Jun said from behind me.

But I already knew I was.

*750 XP Gained.*

The only time I gained 750 was for people that weren’t borged out, but were still dangerous in some way. Netrunner, bosses of men.

And now Serial Killers.

I stepped out and took aim. The HMG turrets each took two shots as they buzzed around trying to locate what was shooting at them before they came apart.

“Alright stay close Jun. I’m gonna hack these mines as we go.”

I opened the gate by pulling it open… With Juns stupid gorilla strength helping out, and then the minefield. My eyes shifted as I scanned the first mine. Working on it’s ICE to try and break through.

I didn’t in fact break through.

I was glaring a few minutes later when I realized that military ICE designed for land mines probably wasn’t off the shelf ICE.

“Motoko?”

“Just… Just stand back.” I grumbled pulling out the Lexington in my back holster. While I couldn’t break through the ICE, I wasn’t worried about someone coming out to check any more. I started firing, blowing a path through the mines.

Thankfully the entrance of the barn didn’t have any mines right out front even if it was locked down. There just weren't any ways to actually get in. “Wait here.” I told Jun as I turned around and headed for the farmhouse.

He definitely had a way in from inside. I passed the dead body without a glance. I started searching, nothing on the first floor, just old trash and a living room. Upstairs though? A bedroom, with a big computer system. I accessed it without any trouble. The security ignored. The system was already unlocked and opened from being in use.

But there wasn’t an access point. Just lots of emails, both to his victims and a saved folder full of saved pictures from the news and other media about the Meat Man.

Fuckin’ sick. I guess this guy had a nickname to the media.

So I stopped looking through his personal computer. There had to be something more. With a bit of exploration I found a switch behind the computer desk.

As I pressed it, A hidden door opened. Leading to another little secure room. Including the barn access controls. A few moments later I could hear the doors rolling up outside, and I wasn’t going to stick around inside.

I rushed out, Jun nowhere to be seen as I rushed to the barn keeping an eye out for mines.

There was Jun, inside standing next to a…

Well it was a person with that creepy gas mask on. Only this mask wasn’t to keep the gas out. It was meant to pump oxygen and other chemicals to cows. Only now it was worn by some teens and it wasn’t oxygen they were inhaling.

I took a few moments checking the system before I realized I would need to shut down the entire system from the source in order to unhook the two people inside.

“Stay with them, be ready to pull that tube off when I tell you!” I called out to Jun as I rushed towards the back finding the control room, idly putting a fist into the TV that had that fucking cartoon playing.

It only took a moment to find the right switch and the whirr and noise of the air system suddenly quieted. “Do it now!”

Rushing back out onto the main barn Jun was pulling the mask off one of the people. I hit the other. A few seconds and I had the boy inside free.

He didn’t make a sound as I pulled the mask from his face, checking his pulse…

Slowly I felt it. A weak beating.

“That one alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay I’m going to call NCPD.” I told him, earning a hesitating nod from Jun.

I dialed the number and a few moments I was put to a recorded message, and not even a person.

That was so NCPD I couldn’t believe it.

I went through the menu needing to select three options and pay a 10 eddie bill, before the line connected.

“NCPD what is your emergency?”

“I have two young men that have been kidnapped and pumped full of some kind of drug by a psycho. This guys definitely a serial killer. These two are alive, but I doubt they are his only victims.”

“Estimated wait time for a patrol vehicle is… Fourty-five minutes to your current location. Thank yo-”

“Hold on! These kids might be dead in fourty-five minutes! Look at this!” I backed up and took a picture before sending it down the line.

“Miss, we don't accept pictures. Nor will NCPD alter our deployment speed. Another 10 Eddies will be deducted from your account for the lengthened call. Thank you fo-”

“This is the Meat Man. The Serial killer. Don’t sit there and tell me no one is interested in that!”

The line was quiet for a moment. “Please hold.”

I blinked.

Well that was easy.

A minute or so later the call was answered.

“This is Detective Stints. If this is a game, I’ll bash your skull in.”

That was… Certainly an introduction.

“It’s not. I have two people that were kidnapped and drugged, and a dead psycho serial killer that is probably your Meat man. At the least he had practically every news article mentioning him saved to his personal computer. I just need an ambulance to come get these people before they die.”

“You tried to send a picture. Send it to me now.”

I didn’t just send that. I sent that picture another about the location including the mines and the dead body.

The line was quiet for a few minutes.

“I’ll be on my way. A patrol car will be there soon. Stick around. I’ll have questions.”

“Sure. Just make sure they know about the mines. I’ll clear up as many of them I can. But this guy was crazy.”

“I’ll make sure the patrol car knows.”

The line ended.

“Chatty guy isn’t he?” I muttered but at least I got something.

“NCPD is actually showing up? I didn’t expect that.” Jun muttered as he caught up with me.

“Yeah… You ever heard of the Meat Man?”

Jun blinked and then frowned. “Yeah, a little. Urban myth?”

“I think this guy was him, at least he seemed very interested in what the news said about him.”

“I’m glad you put a bullet in him.” Jun said simply with a nod and to my surprise he reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “You did good. But we should probably get out of here before the cops show up.”

“You can if you want. But I’m staying. To make sure.”

Jun let out a sigh and nodded settling in to wait.

The next twenty minutes were mostly spent doing three things. Checking on the two people that still hadn’t woken up but at least were still breathing. Long silences.

And explosions.

I was trying to disable the damn Mines, by breaching them and wasn’t getting too far. They actually kept exploding on me, but at least as I tried I was getting rid of them, and of course I was getting the wrong XP alerts.

*100 Engineering XP Gained.*

I was doing the Quick Hack Breach, but getting Engineering XP.

Dammit system! I need a manual! Where is my Prima Official Guide!?

I shook it off and kept working, at least I was getting something, and Engineering was awesome. Then we heard it. The roar of a car coming down the road. “Jun I’ll flag them down.”

“No.” Jun said suddenly grabbing me and holding me back. “Just let them work at their own pace. NCPD don’t like people walking up to them.” He told me holding me back as he rested against the Barn wall.

“Fine.” I agreed it made sense…

I guess.

The gate was already open and the flashing lights of the car suddenly turned in, but stopped before coming close. Two officers stepped out both waving flashlights, one with a pistol in his off hand, and the other carrying a Copperhead. The assault rifle had a powerful flashlight on the end and he was waving it around, but kept an eye on Jun and I.

Both men were like startled cats, looking at every step.

I guess the warning about mines had gone through… That and the many craters that now littered the yard.

Finally both officers got close enough and lit Jun and I up, despite both of us being under a light.

“No sudden moves. Put your hands up!” One roared and I felt Jun obey begrudgingly, and I quickly followed after. The two officers approached and actually forcefully put us both on our knees and started handcuffing us both.

I could feel Jun muscles tense beside me, but I just turned and gave him a smile which had him relax.

“Evening Officers.” I mentioned despite grunting around the harsh hands handcuffing my hands behind my back. “The two-”

“Quiet!” The guy handcuffing me snapped, and I was thankful that he didn’t actually strike me like he motioned too.

Not because I was worried about him hurting me. Funnily enough I actually knew ways to break free of Handcuffs. Ninjutsu as always being the MVP.

No, I was worried Jun would have ripped the cuffs off and started beating the cops to death.

A few moments later we were both ‘secured’ by the officers and the one with the handgun went into the barn to look around.

He came out a minute later cursing and the two officers pulled away to speak in rushed whispers to each other.

Although at least in the end the grabbed their radio and started sending messages along.

“Told you we should have left.” Jun whispered side eyeing me.

“It’s fine. Just a… Okay they are idiots, but hopefully this will all go well once the detective gets here.” I said, voice filled with hope.

Things did not in fact get better when Stints did show up.

 

[Seras]

It had been almost an hour and a lot had happened. Three more patrol cars had arrived, an EMT ambulance. The guys inside were wearing that high visibility Jacket like Gloria and David.

It was kinda cool to see, but I was getting annoyed. The cops hadn’t uncuffed us yet, but they had put all of our weapons to the side, but had left them together. No signs at least I was going to lose my iron.

Finally Detective Stints arrived, conversing with the other officers, and doing general police stuff but ignoring us.

Jerk.

I mean my wrists couldn’t get sore anymore, but this was still not the most comfortable position. Plus I was bored. So bored. Omega bored.

Jun had literally fallen asleep.

Hours passed. The sun was rising up before Stints finally seemed to wrap up the hurried exploration of the farm house the NCPD were doing.

I was so ready to break out and leave by then. Hours of just sitting there!

But finally Detective Stints walked over to me.

“I don’t suppose you can uncuff me now? It’s been an hour.” I said before he could say anything but the man just chuckled.

“Maybe I shouldn’t? Hauling the Oni of Japantown in would be a good deed. Plus… Motoko Kusanagi. Mostly on record for petty theft, a bit of Breaking and Entering. Grand Theft Auto…”

“Wait, I stole a car? That’s pretty nova!” I muttered the last bit to myself. Old Motoko had definitely been a hellion.

“But I’ll give it to you. Everything we’ve pulled out of here confirms this was the Meat Man. Even found DNA from some of his confirmed victims. So congratulations kid. You killed a confirmed bounty target.”

“I’ve actually killed a couple of those before. This is just the first one I’ve ever actually called the NCPD with… Well, other than the scavs.” I muttered but while that earned an eyebrow Stints didn’t say anything more about it instead moving on.

“Go ahead and uncuff them.”
“Sir?”

“They may be lowlives, but they took out the real scum today.” Stints offered and I was frowning a bit.

I wasn’t a lowlife! Just because I killed and stole for a living…

I guess that's fair. Still a jerk thing to say!

A few moments later after Jun was startled awake we were uncuffed, although all the officers still looked twitchy as Jun and I recovered our weapons.

“Kid.” Stints called out as I finished sliding my Burya back into the holster.

“Yeah?”

“You did okay tonight. Not the best way to go about it, but at least this piece of shit is off the streets. Think about where you want to be in the future. NCPD could use someone with the skill to find the Meat Man.”

I opened my mouth, closed it and then decided to say it anyway.

“Thanks but no thanks. I don’t think I’ll ever be on the side of the law.”

“Figured. But I tried anyway. Go on. You and your brother get lost. Oh and kid?” His eyes turned gold, and to my surprise I got a text from the NCPD confirming a Bounty assignment.

A couple thousand eddies were available to be claimed.

“Good work.”

—--

Jun slept most of the way home. The sun was fully up when we got there and Jun crawled into his bed like a zombie only seconds after entering the apartment.

I, on the other hand, had a date.

Once Jun was tucked in, I headed back out. Stopping only to fill up the tank of my car which as always was a monstrously large amount of eddies. I drove over to pick up HIromi.

I was just on time, as I was pulling into Hiromi’s garage, I got a text from her.

*Hiromi: You didn’t forget right? Motoko? Choom?*

I chuckled as I drove around the garage until I came to where Hiromi parked her bike. Finding her already waiting down there sitting on it and looking nervous.

Her face changing to a happy smile was all I needed as I parked in front of her popping the passenger door. “You called for a ride?”

“Yeeees!” Hiromi cheered as she leapt into my passenger seat with a laugh. She settled in, but I was frowning at her after a moment.

“Seatbelt.” I reminded her, earning a roll of her eyes but she did realize I was being serious and put it on.

“Okay seriously Motoko. That BD was absolutely Preem! The first three were okay, interesting I guess. I mean it was weird doing things, but knowing you were the one that did them you know? But the Maelstrom BD? Eeee I was so excited! You were so in control! Motoko! You're so cool!” She said, winking at me as she said Cool.

I puffed my cheeks at her because I knew she was only saying that to tease me.

“I’m glad you liked it. I did some work last night, but hopefully I can get another Gig soon and get some more.”

“Oooh Yeah, definitely pass them my way.” Then to my surprise Hironi settled back into the Quadras seat and went quiet for a bit. “You really are fearless.” She offered quietly. I noticed she was also doing everything but looking at me.

“You don’t… You don’t need to compare yourself to me, Hiromi. I’m scared a lot too. Didn’t I tell you? After that first gig with Ichi after I killed those Tino thugs, I hid in the apartment. Jun had to force me outside with a ramen bribe. I was scared of going outside again.”

“You got over it. You go out and do amazing gigs and-”

“And you are super smart, You make friends everywhere you go, and you go to Arasaka Academy, so you’ll be some super important Corpo Executive someday. I’ll be doing gigs for you soon, so Hiromi just… Be happy? Okay? If you aren’t I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you get to be happy. Just…”

“You are such a gonk.” She whispered laughing a bit and I smiled as her smile was back. “Fine. I’ll be happy if that is what you want.” She said, laughing at me, but I was just glad she was back to normal.

Sad Hiromi is a no-no.

“Aww. This sucks.” Hiromi said instantly doing a 360 on her previous mood.

Mood Whiplash her name is Hiromi.

I was pulling into the front of Arasaka tower and Hiromi was glaring at the stand of people gathering up and heading inside.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want to deal with Tomaru.” She sighed as I pulled into a space in front of the building. There were actually a lot of vehicles stopping and going along the bit of circular road. Although rarely did I see parents, usually, it looked like Taxi services, or personal drivers, dropping off the kids. My vehicle actually stood out quite a lot from the array of high end expensive executive cars.

Not that I cared.

“Will you be okay?” I asked as Hiromi was pouting but she looked at me and laughed.

“Tomaru is a gonk, but I can handle him. No worries.” Then as I was parked she turned in her seat and threw a hug around my shoulders. “Thanks for the ride Motoko. See you later this afternoon?”

“Yep. Gotta pick you up after all.” I agreed and she was smiling as she nodded, stepping out of the car and sending me a wave as she walked backwards.

Then as Hiromi started walking amongst the array of students I saw it.

A yellow beat up Thorton.. Galena? I think the name was. The exact kind of car you would never see someone drive to Arasaka Tower.

But there it was. And I knew who was in it. I remained parked for a minute as I watched it pull up as David Martinez stepped out.

He was… About the same as he looked in the anime. Same hair. Same uniform. No Jacket of course.

“-Love you Mijo!” Gloria Martinez called out from the drivers seat waving at her son like it was his first day of school. Which I could see was causing David to start growing red in a blush, and worse causing the other students to glare at him.

But there they were.

A part of me. The one that loved anime and wanted to dress up as my favorite characters…

Okay a large part of me…

Okay like 99% of me.

Wanted to rush out and introduce myself. To become friends with David, and meet Gloria.

But another part of me made me realize that I had my own life to live. My own family, and chooms.

I might just try to help both of them out, because I did feel for Gloria. Working so hard to make a future for her son. But there was no point in getting involved right now. I already had an idea of when I would be needed.

So I pulled out after checking my mirrors and drove out into the city towards home.

I had a chunk of time before Hiromi was out of school after all, and I really needed to have a conversation with someone that I… Well trust was stretching it.

—--

Wakako’s Pachinko parlor was the same as always. I still had no idea why she chose such a chaotic place for her office.

But I walked right in, and as usual Wakako was waiting for me.

“Girl. Sit.” She demanded which I did, almost rolling my eyes as the older woman took control of the situation instantly.

“I’m not here for a gig… Well I mean I might accept one if you have it, but Wakako. I need some advice, from someone that I can… Trust.” I admitted which only earned a quirked eyebrow from the Dragon Lady.

I rolled my eyes at her dramatics. “I know trust is probably a stupid word. But you have a use for me. So at least I know you won’t just burn me without a good reason.”

“Accurate, enough. I do not offer such things for free.”

“Well maybe you will when you hear what is happening. I’m planning on killing Jotaro Shobo.” I said and that caused a reaction as Wakako’s eyes widened just a bit before smoothing out.

“That… Is a dangerous statement.”
“Yeah hence why I’m chatting with you and not just ganking him without anyone knowing… I’m not a Tyger Claw, but Jun is, my family was. Killing one of their golden boys won’t go over well. What can I do to make sure this doesn’t blow up in my face?”

The woman took a moment to grab a cigarette and light it, taking a long drag before speaking again.

“You need this man dead. Why?”

“A couple reasons.” I admitted. “He threatened me. Before I even realized who he was, or what lows he would stoop too. He might have backed up because of my Kamikaze connections… Although I’m still not a member, people need to stop saying that.”

“Of course.” Wakako offered waving her hand to keep me going, but her voice was full sarcasm.

“But honestly I don’t like the fact he kidnaps people. Tortures them for BDs and his own sick pleasure. So I’m going to kill him.”

“There are many people doing such dirty jobs. He is not alone, most don’t have the connections that scum has. So why choose him?”

“Because I’ve had conversations with him in the past, and never even realized what he was. It… Pisses me off.” I admit truthfully hands clenching. “He’s a monster Wakako, and at one point he said he was interested in me, wanted me to work for him. The very idea disgusts me.”

“Troublesome. Certainly troublesome. I would suggest as someone who has a small desire to keep you alive for my benefit, that you ignore this. Let it go.”

“I knew you would say that. But…”

“But you will not listen, yes. In that case I would suggest you never speak of this conversation with me again, forget it ever happened, for I will. And perhaps find another Fixer who already has a gig to assassinate a certain Tyger Claw.” Wakako tells me taking a drag and giving me a strong look.

“Can I even do that… I wouldn’t want to offend you Wakako. You’re my Fixer… I’m supposed to keep some loyalty to you… Right?”

She looks at me and just scoffs. “Says the girl that has joined her brother on gigs left right and center.”

“Jun needed me to watch his back…”

“Girl your brother has quite the rep all on his own. But still… We have no contract saying you only work for me, even if I would prefer to keep it that way. If you must do this, have a fixer ready to protect you from the backlash. Let them take the blame while you disappear like smoke.”

I nodded slowly. “Do you happen to know?”

“Now you ask me to tell you what Fixer you should go to while betraying me? Truly child you offend me at every turn.” She said but the fact she was actually chuckled meant she was just messing with me.

Right? Please be right.

“There is a Fixer in Watson. Jones. Find a way to get in contact with her, and perhaps you can find an ally in this foolishness. We never spoke of this.”

“Thank you Wakako. I owe you one.”

“Far more than one.” She whispered in her grandma-catty way.

Okay so all I had to do was somehow get in contact with Regina Jones.

Great.

—---

It turns out getting in touch with a Fixer wasn’t as easy as I expected. I mean, it’s not like I knew where Regina’s HQ was. Or even if I did, how I would get in touch with her.

I couldn’t just walk into the Afterlife and get in contact either. I wasn’t famous enough for that, the bouncer would never let me in. Plus the Afterlife was Rogues HQ. Doubt she would even let Regina in.

So for now. For just a bit while I figured this out. The hunt for Jotaro Shobo’s life was on the backburner.

But his day would come. Instead what I needed was…

Well contacts. People. Friends!

And I had just the group that owed me a favor.

*Hey Scorpion, how’s things? You have any issue picking up the vehicles?* I sent out a text as I walked back to the car. The sounds of Jig-Jig street all around me. The joytoys were working, and the johns were active around the area, despite it being early afternoon.

Night City was certainly special.

Suddenly I got a call. Scorpion was reaching out.

*Hey Scorpion!* I chirped into the line, which made the dichotomy even funnier as the guy sounded utterly dead.

*Hey Kid, no issues, we got to the site and klepped everything in the middle of the night. Saul thought it might be a trap at first, so it took even longer than it should have, but we got everything moved to the camp. Already have most of the cars repainted. We uh… Owe you. Big time.*

*Nah, you did me a favor. I had no idea what to do with all that crap. I’m at least glad to get it out of the Raffens hands.* I told him as I walked down the street, I thought about going home, but since I was out and about, I stepped across the street and down the steps into Cherry Blossom Market.

Ramen sounded good.

*Yeah well that’s not how Saul is seeing it. Listen Motoko… You saved my ass before, and we didn’t do what we should have. I mean, I haven’t even kept in touch. Why don’t you come out to the camp. We are having a barbeque, and Saul wants to meet you. Gotta discuss your pay.* Scorpion said although he ended by breaking out into a jaw popping yawn.

Poor guy. He must be exhausted what with being woken up in the middle of the night, forced into a long distance drive to the Raffen camp, looting it up and then driving home.

I was just lucky that I didn’t really get sleepy like that anymore.

*Barbeque?* I ended up asking, because that sounded fucking amazing. Even if I was settling into the noodle bar and ordering lunch.

*Well it’s not real meat, but trust me, we know how to make the taste authentic. Kid… Motoko… You should come. We owe you big, let us at least give back a little, you are making Saul freak out about owing so much to some merc he’s never met. Come on by, let us throw you a party. Hell, you might get some job offers, we don’t usually hire kids for gigs, but you have a bit of a reputation among the Aldecaldos now.*

*Well I am always looking for more work… I can’t make it tonight. I have to help out a choom in a few hours and then I don’t think I’ll even have time to reach your camp before nightfall.*

*Yeah we are pretty out here.*

*So let me know another day? You kinda had me at barbeque.* I admitted with a smile as I waved down the waiter for a bowl of Ramen. Food in Night City was kinda lacking.

*Tomorrow then. I’ll let Saul know. Motoko. For last night. Thanks, I’ll make sure we pay you back for all of it. You’ve made a lot of friends with the Aldecaldos over this.*

*It was nothing… Really. But I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.*

*I’ll send the camp's coordinates. Cya then kid.*

*I’m not a-*

“He hung up.” I grumbled, but I was smiling a bit too. “I guess I’ll have to tell Jun not to wait up for me tomorrow.”

 

[Seras]

I wasted some time at the Ramen bar eating and watching the news on the TV there, but eventually I paid and slipped out, heading home, actually walking back to the apartment just to enjoy being able to go outside again.

Jeez it made me remember just how long it had been since I was able to just go on the street for a walk.

Since the kidnapping.

As I walked through the horde of people walking through the market I felt paranoia slowly amping up. It wasn’t like I was far from where it had happened. The crowd was thick. I would have trouble escaping if someone attacked me. I had my Burya, but what if I didn’t bring enough ammo? What if I didn’t have enough Max-Doc’s?

What if?

But no.

I wasn’t going to live like that. Morgan Blackhand had mentioned paranoia was a good thing for a solo. There was literally a segment in his guide about constantly moving, sleeping in different locations, and never falling into habits that someone could use against you.

Good advice, but also a good way to spend your entire life living in utter fear. Or sleeping in cardboard boxes in alleys just to throw people off your trail.

No thanks.

I let a drop of cold blood wash away the paranoia. I was in control of myself, and I wasn’t about to let my fear control my life like that. I would just have to get so amazing in everything that I could build a doom fortress or something.

Seriously Morgan, your advice is good, but also kind spastic.

So instead I pushed my shoulders back, my head up and started stalking. I wasn’t tall enough to cause the crowd to break around me, and while I was armed, so was everyone else, but it made me feel better. Made me confident as I walked home.

No Maelstrom jumped out of the shadows to attack me, no one even noticed me.

It made me scoff at my own paranoia.

I made it home without anything happening. A reminder that in the grand scheme of things I wasn’t some super important character.

I was just Motoko, and I wasn’t that important. Yet.

I raced up the stairs of the apartment enjoying how easy it was to run up the four flights of stairs. As I slipped into the apartment I could hear the quiet snoring of Jun still coming from his room.

Silly Jun. But I guess I had literally kept him up all night on my hunt for that killer.

I made sure to keep quiet as I settled in. I had a few hours until Hiromi was free from school, so I set an alarm in my hud and grabbed my ICE laptop.

Let’s do some casual grinding while I wait.

—--

I was waiting in front of the Arasaka building when Hiromi came out. Sure I had gotten some weird looks, and Arasaka security looked like they were keeping a close eye on my all black ride, but I didn’t care.

I wasn’t doing anything nefarious.

Finally the crowd of teenagers headed out, almost all of them heading to private vehicles, a few of the truly rich didn’t even leave the front of the building instead getting into AV’s and disappearing into the sky of Night City. A place only the ultra rich and powerful were welcome to.

Hiromi though stalked out of the building practically stomping on her way out. Her direct path towards my car was interesting as some people had to literally get out of the way as she stomped up to the car and flopped in.

“I hate morons.” She said practically growling as I nodded along with her. Hiromi was super mad, I wasn’t about to start poking her until she was ready. I pulled out into traffic and started heading for her home. A minute later she finally spoke.

“That fuckin gonk Tomaru. He pulled some shit, tried his stupid power play shit again. Fucker.” Hiromi ranted glaring out the window as I just nodded along.

“Want me to kill him?”

The silence in the car stretched on for a moment before Hiromi chuckled. “No. It would certainly make my life easier.” She admitted actually breaking through her anger and chuckling a bit. “Sorry, I should have said thanks for picking me up Choom.”

“It’s fine. School is the worst!” I offered earning a snort from Hiromi.

“Motoko you literally never went to school. I bet everything you know about school comes from some cartoon or something.” Hiromi teased, and the fact I couldn’t just argue against that, my ‘amnesia’ and past life made anything I could say come out wrong.

So I just flushed and tried to ignore the way Hiromi’s smile was turning shark like.

“When we stop at your place, how about I work on your bike? I can probably fix it up tonight.” I interrupted whatever teasing Hiromi was about to do, trying to avoid my chooms assault.

“Fiiiine. I’ll let you change the subject. That would be great, do you like, need anything?”

“Nah. I have my toolbox in the trunk, should be everything I need. Hang out with me while I do it?”

“Definitely!”

—--

Hiromi’s Kusanagi was in rough shape. She hadn’t damaged the frame or anything, Kusanagi, even the stupid Mizuchi with all the modifications going into it, that she owned. Most of it was just panel damage, although one of the magnetic brake calipers on the front wheel was bent a bit. I ended up needing to disassemble the front brake array, and with a bit of work with my auto fab and a bit of time I had a new brake caliper re-attached and the front wheel spinning as it should instead of grinding and stuck.

“You’re way better at this than I thought.” Hiromi muttered beside me. We had been out here for a few hours and Hiromi had gone from standing around, to sitting to lazily laying against her bike after I had put it on its side to fix the brakes.

“I’ve been practicing with tinkering and stuff! Did I show you my gadget?” I asked perking up a bit when Hiromi shook her head. Despite my hands full with one of her side panels actively undenting the piece of metal, I reached into my hip pouch and pulled out my distance mic.

“What is it?” Hiromi asked curiously as I passed it over, she figured out the earpiece quickly enough but I had to reach over and tug on the actual microphone before she realized the wires were set into a little assembly.

I tugged it out and let it go watching as it was pulled back inside. A moment of fiddling and she had it extended out. The microphone I had to instruct her to tie around her finger with the little strap on the end.

“Point it at me.” I said as my hands continued on their task of fixing the dented plate. Only once she did so did I start humming quietly, purposefully keeping the tone low.

“Oh! It’s a directional mic!” Hiromi chirped, figuring it out. After all, for her this wasn’t some weird tech that is rarely used, it’s tuesday, it’s normal. I’ve seen plenty of TV shows, and even cartoons mention gadgets like this all the time. Hiromi had grown up in a world where technology was easily accessible, and practically skewed towards corporate espionage.

“Yeah. I ran into a problem at one of my gigs, the Maelstrom were having a conversation and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. That right there is step one on fixing the problem. I uh… Still need to go into some programming for it. I want it to be able to focus on a conversation and ignore music or something.”

“Hmm. Arasaka has a Cyberware that does that.” Hiromi said tapping at her lips.

“I suppose I could find a piece and see what the programming is like, but I kinda want to do this all on my own. To see just what I can do… You know?”

Hiromi just gave me a smile as I admitted this was more of a challenge to myself than something I needed right then. “I’m sure it’ll be great Motoko. It’s way more than I could make already. You’re making me look bad over here.” She told me poking me with her shoe as she teased me.

“Eh. It’s just time and work. You have school, and ‘rents, and stuff to deal with.”

“Yeah cause you don’t have Gigs, Jun, and all sorts of crazy stuff you are doing. I’m waaaay lazy compared to you.”

I just huffed. “Maybe, but you’re still my best choom. I wouldn’t want anyone else at my side.” I told her flashing a smile before going back to my work.

I never noticed her flush at my compliment.

“Done!” I called out suddenly as I pulled the newly repaired side panel off the floor looking it over. The paint was still ruined, but that was a much easier fix than the massive dents in the thing.

“Really? Already?”

“Sure. Easy peasy. Help me re-install it?” I prompted Hiromi who jumped to help, and with her helping to hold it in place, I was able to use a small power tool to put it back together and pull her bike back onto its wheels.

“Ugh. Done!” I grunted as the bike was righted. “Want to give it a drive around the block?”

“Yeees! C’mon Motoko!” Hiromi said, jumping onto the bike and patting behind her.

“Nooo way Choom.” I denied holding my arms up in an X. “I have to clean up my tools, and I don’t want to be anywhere near you driving if I can help it.”

“Moootooookooooo!” Hiromi whined at me eyes wet and lip puffy. Hiromi used Puppy Dog Face. It’s super effective.

“Fiiine.” I grumbled, taking a minute to grab my tool box and load it into the Quadra to make sure it was secure, before climbing in behind Hiromi.

The screech of wheels going way too fast had me gripping my choom a bit tight but thankfully Hiromi didn’t complain.

Despite just needing a ride around the block to make sure everything was working, Hiromi headed out into the city seemingly just happy to have her freedom again.

While stopped at a red light, which I will admit I’m shocked Hiromi actually stopped at. The first two times Hiromi had just blown through them without a care.

Maybe it was my screaming in her ear the entire time? If someone had been standing at the crosswalk as we passed by they would have been treated to my doppler effect scream as she raced through.

Seriously my heart was pounding more right now than it did when I was in a fight for my life!

Hiromi: More dangerous than a gun fight!

While paused at the light I finally pulled away from the death grip I had on my choom. “Where are we going?” I finally asked, for the first time since we started racing through the streets I could actually hear a response.

“Nowhere! I just wanted to get out… You know? Stuck at home for so long I just needed to go!” She called back and I nodded. Before stilling.

“Hey Hiromi? What are you doing tomorrow night? I know you have school and stuff, but I had an offer from some Nomads I’m friends with to go to a barbeque. Want to come?” I offered. If Hiromi needed to get out, away from her apartment that she had been trapped in for weeks…

Then the badlands were super far away!

“Wha? Nomads!? Motoko? What are you talking about?”

“Oh last night I was hunting down-Green Light!” I called out startling Hiromi, when I realized we had both been distracted and hadn’t noticed the light change, grumbling she started off, but instead of rushing down the street she found a parking spot and settled in even hitting the kick stand so we were properly parked.

“Now say that again?” She demanded and I nodded.

“Last night I was hunting down this serial killer guy. Total creep factor. Anyway, one of the farms Jun and I hit had a bunch of Raffen… I mean they were right there? So I took them out.” I shrugged Miming a stabbing motion to get my point across. it really had been an easy spot of murder. The Raffen had literally been asleep on the job.

“Shit! You went out on a gig last night? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you just now.” I offered rolling my eyes.

“Ugh! You’re still a gonk. But c’mon deets!”

“Nuh-uh. I recorded it, you can see it for yourself… Eventually. I’ll need to see Judy and drop them off… Anyway, all the Raffen had a bunch of wheels. So I called up some Aldecaldos buddies, remember Scorpion? I told you about him when I went and did that gig? I called him and they picked them up, but the Aldecaldos boss feels he owes me one, and I got an invite to a barbeque and a meeting… So want to come?”

“Shit Motoko, your life is so crazy. You bet I’m in! One hundred percent!”

“Cool… Umm will your ‘rents be okay with that? We’ll likely be gone all night… Maybe all day even?”

“I’ll convince them… I can just tell them it’s an in for me with the nomads as a work connection or something.” She mumbled the last bit, starting to nibble on her bottom lip as she thought about it.

“Cool.” I said smiling. Honestly it was a long drive out to the Aldecaldos camp. It would be nice to have a travel buddy!

Hiromi was practically buzzing after, swiftly shaking off her thoughts of convincing her parents, and instead taking us back into the streets.

Hiromi! Red means stop!

—--

After Hiromi finally got the need to drive around out of her system we headed home. She needed to try and convince her parents to let her leave the city, and I wanted to go see Judy and Nox.

I did have the Raffen assault to offer up now, although I wasn’t going to share the one where I killed the Meat Man. I wasn’t sure how many people would end up knowing about his death, and while I wasn’t exactly worried about people knowing it was me that did it, there really wasn’t much on that gig worth keeping, especially since I had failed to hack the mines…

It wasn’t like I was going to destroy that recording just because it showed me try and fail to hack the mines over and over!

It was because it was boring! Definitely!

Sliding into a parking spot at Lizzies I was really surprised when as I walked up to the door Rita actually walked out and matched my pace, to my surprise she threw an arm over my shoulder and was giving me a smile.

“Hey kid.”

“Oh, Uh hey Rita!”

“Wanna talk with you. Come with?” She asked, and it was definitely a question she wasn’t pushing me along, or anything just giving me a minute to decide.

“Sure? I just needed to drop off something with Judy, but I’m not in a rush.”

“Preem. C’mon Kid.” She said smiling as she guided me inside. Nobody really paid us any attention other than the door bouncer that was replacing Rita, who just gave Rita a quirked eyebrow before sliding into her position. Then Rita walked me into Lizzies, towards the back, and into one of the private booths.

I might have been a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing if Rita was chattering away about something Judy had done a month or so ago when she had tried to spend three days working while staying awake drinking her crazy caffeine soda.

Apparently Judy had a bit of a wild side after three days without sleep.

“So that’s why we don’t let her have those things anymore. Replacing the tables cost a pretty penny. Suzie wasn’t happy about it, but Judy is too good at what she does to really punish.” Rita ended the story causing both of us to laugh at Judy’s antics.

“So what’s going on Rita?” I asked breaking up the funny stories.

“Well kid… No, I should do this right. Motoko, I wanted to make sure… Listen. I’m not great at this sort of thing. There’s a reason I’m the bouncer and not one of the touchy feely types… I watched that BD you had Judy do, she showed it to me that night, and I just wanted to say…” Rita to my surprise looked uncomfortable as she sort of toyed with her bangs.

“Rita?”

“If you ever need to talk to someone? If you just want to hang out, with someone that gets it? That understands? I’m here. The Mox are here. We aren’t… Well Judy and some of the older girls try to keep the spirit alive, but we don’t go out and try to help people as much as we used to, but I still… Fuck I’m rambling.” The older woman said, sighing as she looked around and found a bottle of… Something alcoholic laying around the booth. She took a second to check it and then popped the glass stopper and took a swish of it down.

I just kept staring because I had no idea what was going on.

“Okay I can do this. C’mon Rita.” She said pepping herself up before she focused on me again.

“Listen, Motoko… This stuff. Killing, chrome, Night City, it’s not easy, but if you need something. I’m… I get it. I went through similar shit when I was a kid too. Forced chrome, fighting, killing because if I didn’t I would be the one dead. The whole reason we all came together as the Mox was to help people like us. If you need help getting away from the TC, if you just… Want to stop killing or being chipped. I’ll be here, someone to talk to, or back you up if you need it. Fuck I’m not good at being the sponsor.” She muttered, turning away from me, and it was only because of how she had shifted that I saw the bits of her face that wasn’t chrome was actually blushing.

How cute!

“Thanks Rita.” I said I couldn’t help it, I was smiling at her obvious distress because it really showed how much this meant to her. “I mean, I don’t really think I’m in any trouble. I mostly just work with the TC to watch my brother, and other than these arms, which was Maelstrom. I barely have any other chrome. But I get it… Thank you. For reaching out? It’s really sweet.”

“Don’t call me sweet.” Rita groaned, the top of her face flushed as she did her best to look away from me the bottle of alcohol clutched in her hands as if it was a lifeline.

“But you are! I’m not in any trouble, honest. The gigs I take the people I kill, it’s my choice, and I kiiiinda, like it.” I admitted as I settled onto the couch beside her so we could chat easier. “I found I have a talent for it, and it’s… Exciting. Thrilling even!”

“Oh… Fuck. Ugh. I’m such a gonk. Stupid Rita, Real stupid.” She muttered to herself, but I wasn’t about to let Rita who was being an absolute sweetheart trying to help me escape what she must have thought was some Tyger Claw work force. I guess if you saw me killing Maelstrom at the side of TC when I kept saying I wasn’t with them, it could be interpreted that way.

I reached out before she could berate herself anymore and pulled her into a hug. My arms wrapping around her own as I practically pinned her arms to her sides to give her the strongest hug I could.

I nearly giggled as she went still for a moment. “Thanks Rita. Really. It’s nice to know that one more person in this city is looking out for me… Honestly not enough people do that.”

“It’s what the Mox are supposed to do.” She said quietly, sounding a little uncomfortable at the contact. So I pulled away.

“I mean, there is a reason I think the Mox are the best gang in the city.”

“We used to be even better.” She muttered but shook it away as she finally seemed to focus on me. “You’re a real monster kid. That BD, some of the stuff I saw, that wasn’t normal. Wasn’t something you see on a teenager, even the ones with a history like me… You sure you’re okay someone isn’t forcing you?”

“Yeah. I’m okay. I promise. Well I mean. I’m still recovering from the whole Maelstrom kidnapping, but I’m feeling a lot better.”

She frowned, nodding a bit at my response before seeming to come to a decision. “I know what it’s like to be forcefully chipped. I lost my arms the same way. Motoko, do you… Do you do anything creative with your hands?” She asked suddenly and I stilled before nodding.

“Yeah? I started tinkering. I even made a distance microphone the other day! From scratch!” I said pulling it out and showing Rita. Once more showing off my baby!

She smiled, but shook her head a bit. “Not what I meant exactly. Sorry I’m not great at this, I mean like… Spiritually creative? Art? Or something? After I got out, after I realized I was stuck with these arms. I didn’t handle it well. Took me a long time to get over that they were a piece of me and not just some monster attached to my meat. I started… Just don’t tell anyone okay? I started sculpting, it's something I did as a kid, and I came back to it. I make little figurines… Animals, just things that can’t talk back, or push boundaries. Every time I see them now, I’m reminded that they were created with these hands of mine. That my arms aren’t just weapons. That they can do good things too. So just… It helps me… Try finding something, anything. Whatever suits you, and maybe… Maybe it will help?”

She went quiet after that looking extremely uncomfortable, which is saying something when most of her face was chrome.

Wow. Rita was really trying hard to help. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, so I just did what felt natural, I reached out and grabbed her hand. And gave her a squeeze.

It was a quiet minute between us. Two women that had been assaulted and ripped apart. I felt myself eventually falling into a goofy smile as I took in Rita and what she had tried to do.

Eventually with no more words said we split apart, Rita obviously having hit her maximum amount of emotional baggage for the day. I went to drop off the Raffen BD with Judy who took it with some interest.

But I didn’t stick around. I’ll admit I hadn’t thought about it.

Rita was right though. Everything I did since I got the system revolved around getting stronger for combat, for murder. Even my tech interests. It was like I was reacting to the fear of living in Night City. Trying to get strong enough to protect myself.

But did I actually have any hobbies that didn’t involve grinding? Did I do anything for fun that wasn’t just the feedback loop towards combat?

I ended up sitting in the Quadra for a while just staring out at the people walking by as I was forced to consider the fact that I might have, just been a little teensy tiny bit too obsessed with this whole Merc thing.

What exactly did Motoko Kusanagi do for her mental wellbeing, other than rely on Cold Blood? What hobbies did she have that didn’t involve fighting?

This would need further thought.

 

[Seras]

I spent the rest of the day resting. No grinding, no plotting. Just hanging out at the apartment and watching TV, or even reading a few shard books. I finally finished another chapter in the Solo’s guide, but decided to put that to the side soon enough because it too felt a little too much like training still.

I had never been a particularly focused person in my last life. I wasn’t dedicated to self improvement, I liked TV shows, and games, and movies far too much for that.

So why was it that I barely did any of my favorite things in this life? Was it a good thing? Some people would say yes.

But I wasn’t sure it was healthy for me. The closest thing I had done creatively had been working with tech, but that was just another aspect of grinding to grow stronger.

Every aspect of my life was rotating around improving my ability to kill… Was that right? It didn’t bother me exactly. I liked it. I liked fighting, and I loved being better than others at killing. Anyone who played nearly any video game could attest how great it felt to be strong.

But was that all I wanted out of this second life? Was all the freedom I had thanks to my growing skills, only meant to create paths towards more killing more death?

No.

I realized that my life wasn’t just this. As much as I enjoyed it, I shouldn’t exist solely as a merc. I mean this wasn’t a game, even if I was a gamer. Did I want to spend the rest of my life as nothing but a killer for hire?

No.

I had just been having so much fun I hyper focused!

Oops!

So I took the rest of the afternoon to watch future TV shows, some of which were at least interesting, and some awful. I didn’t really like TV in the future. I didn’t really like the books… But I also hadn’t really searched for things I would like. It’s like watching daytime TV and thinking that was all that was on the TV.

As I explored the different channels and read, I was texting with Hiromi who confirmed she had gotten permission to skip school to come along to the Aldecaldo BBQ!

Road trip with the best choom is a go.

—--

“Finally!” I groaned as I pulled out from Hiromi’s garage the next morning. I had been running late as Jun had gotten all protective when I told him what I was up to.

It had taken me a few minutes to remember I was fourteen, and heading out to the badlands to party with a bunch of nomads.

So okay, when you put it like that Jun had a point.

But when I explained it was mostly about what we had done that night, and that I certainly would shoot anyone that tried something, plus Hiromi was coming. He had finally loosened up and I had managed to escape his clutches.

Hiromi hadn’t taken long to flop into the car, her bag of snacks she was bringing along dropped onto my own bag of goodies once she settled in.

“Wooo!” She screamed out the window as we headed out onto the city streets, “Freedom!”

“Don’t be too happy yet, choom. We have a long drive to get there.”

“It’ll be a lot shorter if you let me drive.” She grumbled at me, and I just chuckled.

She had no idea.

I drove safely, and followed all the laws within the city, but as soon as we started hitting dirt?

Well I waited for Hiromi to be slightly distracted, with nothing on the road in front of me, when I suddenly floored it.

Her jerking reaction to my sudden acceleration was great, her mouth full of some chips, or some snack food meant her shocked gasped sent her into a coughing fit as I tore down the road.

“Motoko!” She said in delight when she finally got herself back under control, and seeing me absolutely flooring it over the desert road.

“Hiromi!” I chirped back, completely at ease despite going so fast.

“You’re going fast!”

“So I am.” I said smiling which had her giggling in delight.

“So there is a troublemaker in there!”

“I’m not in the city, and there is no longer a posted speed limit. Of course I’ll drive how I want.” I said simply but my firm tone was ruined by my lips fighting back more smiles.

“You are such a gonk. You should just drive like this from now on.”

“Nah. Jun made me promise not to drive fast in the city, I apparently scared him the last time I did it.”

“Aww I wanted to see that.” She said laughing, and I just shrugged as I noticed my turn off. With a casual press of the clutch, shifting slightly, and then pressing on the break I was in a perfectly controlled drift.

Hiromi couldn’t enjoy the look as she wasn’t wearing her seat belt properly, despite my multiple warnings to stop taking it off. So she soon found her face pressed up against the passenger window for a few moments until I finished the drift and was heading straight down the new road.

“Wha… Wha?” She muttered looking delightfully confused at her new situation.

“I told you to put your seat belt on. Hold on.” I said as I was coming up to the next street I needed to turn onto.

This time Hiromi was actually able to realize what was happening.

I ended up pouting from then on, because she didn’t scare like Jun instead whooping and hollering in delight every time I drifted,

It wasn’t fair! I wanted to mess with her!

—---

I pulled up to the Aldecaldos camp going a much more sedate speed. Despite Hiromi’s badgering to speed up again. I didn’t want to come in too hot with the nomads. I pulled up to the camp and parked off the road near where a few of their cars were parked including a few familiar and freshly painted cars.

I stepped out, Hiromi following me a moment later. Her head was practically on a swivel as she took in the new location.

“Be cool Hiromi.” I reminded her as I walked up to a familiar face who was walking up to greet me.

“Motoko!”

“Scorpion!” I greeted right back smiling as the older man laughed and to my surprise instantly invaded my personal space pulling me into a hug and literally spinning me around.

“Nice to see you too Scorpion.” I mumbled a little dazed as he set me down.

“I still owed you that from when you pulled my ass out of the Raffen nest. Who’s your friend?” he asked, pulling away a bit giving me some space.

“I’m Hiromi! Motoko’s best Choom!” She said suddenly at my side and grabbed my arm.

“Hey, nice to meet you. Any friend of Motoko is one of mine.” He said with a smile before turning and waving me on. “C’mon I bet you’re hungry the drive out from the city takes forever. Let’s get some food in those bellies. Saul is distracted right now, so it’s the best time to meet everyone.” Scorpion offered with a laugh as he guided us deeper into the camp.

A few minutes later with a plate full of barbeque ribs, that were definitely not actual meat, but was tasty. And something that looked sort of like pulled pork, but wasn’t. I was sitting around a table with a few nomads all tossing around stories of their own run-ins with the Raffen, made me realize how nice it all was.

I get it. I understand the reason Nomads live like this. Out on the plains and deserts of America. The freedom was only part of it. The other part was the connection you feel with everyone. These people weren’t all blood related, but they were all family. All lived together, got along, and knew each other's jokes.

There was an actual connection between them. something that was missing from Night City.

It was nice.

“And then she sits in the closet and waits for the guy to ‘finish’ up if you know what I mean.” Hiromi’s voice suddenly pulled me away from hearing about other Raffen raids over the years.

“Hiromi! Don’t tell people about that!” I called out as I quickly put down the pretty tasty BBQ I was eating to yell at my choom.

“Motoko you literally recorded it. You can’t complain about people talking about it.” She offered looking to Scorpion who was sitting beside her, and who she was telling the story about.

I don’t know how but the two had swiftly started swapping stories. Mostly about me, and seemed to be getting along.

“You really hid in the closet?” Scorpion asked, looking half a second away from bursting into laughter.

“It was the only other door in the room. They didn’t catch me or anything. And he was fast… At least.” I grumbled a bit but Scorpion was already chuckling.

“You said this was a BD. Where can I get a copy. I gotta see this.”

“Motoko gave me my set, but it’s the Mox right?” Hiromi asked and I sort of twisted my hand.

“Honestly, I’m not sure it’s officially a Mox thing. Nox is the guy selling the BD’s. It was his idea and well, he is a Mox, but I’m not sure how official it all is. If you really want a copy, I can figure something out?”

“Eh. I’ve been to Lizzies before… I mean-”

“Oooh. When did this happen Scorpion?” A voice called out and I looked up only to be forced to fall into Cold Blood to keep myself from gasping in delight.

Panam!

I watched in delight as she threw an arm over Scorpions shoulder and teased him about having visited the BD bar when in the city.

She glanced over Hiromi and me with a curious look, before it suddenly struck her. “Oh! You’re the one that cleared up the Raffen! And saved Scorpion.” She said, a teasing in drawl added on the end, but I could tell it was to tease Scorpion, not because she didn’t care.

“I’m Motoko, this is Hiromi my Choom. Yeah. That’s me.” I added smiling at the older woman. What else could I do? Panam was cool.

And we wore similar outfits! She had a leotard and jeans on too! She was obviously a woman of excellent taste!

“Then I guess I owe you one. Name’s Panam. You saved Scorpion, so you’re owed one in my book.” She said reaching over and pushing Scorpion a bit on the shoulder earning a slapping hand in return, a few moments of nearly siblings squabbling went on much to my delight.

Yeah, I guess I kinda liked the Nomads. It was cozy.

Then, a voice cut through all the chatter. “So this is her.” The man was instantly recognizable to me. Saul. The head of the Aldecaldos. Or at least this group fo them. The man in charge.

“Saul! Yeah this is Motoko.” Scorpion called out pushing Panams hand away where she had been messing with him. “Motoko, this is Saul, Leader of the Aldecaldos.” He introduced me and I nodded, grabbing a napkin and wiping away as much of the barbeque sauce around my mouth as I could.

Thanks Aldecaldos, couldn’t have introduced me to your leader until after I was two hands deep into a plate of barbeque huh?

“Nice to meet you.” I added once I was cleaned up.

“Walk with me.” He suddenly said and while he didn’t quite start walking away he made it obvious it was more command than request.

I kept a smile on my face even if I wasn’t the biggest fan of being ordered around. I let it go. Just couldn’t take it personally. Saul was used to getting his way, that’s all. Besides, I wanted to know what he was thinking.

Nomads didn’t usually welcome people into their camp like this, at least as far as I could pick up. It’s not like most people in Night City even gave more than a passing thought to the Nomads. They were a different breed as far as Night City residents were concerned.

I rose up waving off Hiromi, as she was rising to stand up as well, “Scorpion keep Hiromi company okay?” I asked and he gave me a nod and the table seemed to relax as Scorpion started up another story to Hiromi who looked conflicted but settled down.

I followed after Saul as he started walking through the camp, not really seeming to head anywhere in particular, just walking around.

“Twice now you’ve done us a favor, and that I can’t just ignore.” He finally said as we came to a quiet part of the camp, empty tents and places where people slept setup all around. “Not a fan of outsiders doing us favors. Always leads to some sort of trouble. But I also can’t just let it go. You saved Scorpion. Even if he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to, he is one of us.”

“I was just hired for a job.” I demurred, but Saul just ignored it.

“You don’t know, but the Wraiths have been in a frenzy since then. Twice now we’ve been raided. You saved Scorpion, but threw the Wraiths into a frenzy. Now you did it again. You helped us, gave us access to new vehicles, but the fact is, you also made living out here more dangerous. With so many cars lost the Raffen will seek out new ones. See the problem?”

“I guess I understand what you are saying. Poking the Raffen means they try to poke back.”

“Exactly.” He stopped walking, turning to me. Which was annoying as the guy was pretty tall. And I was only fourteen.

“I appreciate your help. I do. You did us a favor with good intentions, but good intentions can still cause us problems.”

“The Wraiths really that big of a deal? I’ve killed a bunch of them by now. How many more do they have?”

“Hundreds. Thousands.” He answered simply to my surprise. “You city folk think the Raffen are just another street gang, but they are worse than that. They hunt anyone on the roads. Doesn’t matter who. The Wraiths circling Night City are more than a thousand strong. My clan only has five hundred and some extra.”

I blinked at that. Those numbers were crazy. The camp here only had what, maybe a hundred?” Seeing my confusion and looking around he scoffed.

“We don’t all stay together at once. Too many mouths to feed in one camp. Split up it’s easier to keep everyone fed, but makes us easier prey.”

“So why not gather all together and wipe out the Wraiths?” I asked the question that had been bugging me for a while. The Aldecaldos were a massive group, even if they were spread out across America.

“They have backing kid. You think the corporations aren’t more than happy to have a bunch of sociopaths like the Wraiths willing to hunt people for them? You noticed all the equipment they had at the camp you rescued Scorpion from didn’t you? Ever wonder where they got all the expensive sensor gear for their camp? Millitech, Arasaka, Kang Tao or any of the others. Any corp that wants a competitor to have some trouble, to have shipments suddenly stop arriving through the badlands.” Saul grunted scratching at his beard for a moment.

“I see. The Corps use them as deniable forces, hit their enemies… it’s not like the Raffen are considered a threat to anyone outside the badlands.”

“Exactly, but that’s not what we are here for.” He looked to me his green eyes dark. “The Clan owes you a debt. I don’t like owing debts to outsiders. Twice now you’ve helped us. I can’t pay you for the vehicles not fully. Not in eddies.” He said bluntly.

“Okay? So what can you do? Honestly. I’m not bothered about it… I don’t much like the Raffen so just hurting them was good enough for me.”

“Well I am. We pay our debts. Always. I’ve been forced to think about what we can do. What we can afford to offer in exchange for the cars… Damn Scorpion for being so stupid to take them without asking.” He cursed suddenly to my surprise the man looked…

Stressed.

“Saul?”

“Not your fault kid. Not Scorpions either. He was right to do it. This is my problem. The vehicles were needed, but now I’m stuck trying to figure out how to pay for them.” He grumbled, looking down at me with a look in his eyes that expressed his frustration.

Yeah Saul wasn’t having a good day.

“Okay so let’s push eddies off the table. Again, I only called up Scorpion because I knew he needed a ride. And that he could get the vehicles out of Wraith hands. You guys did me a favor that night.”

“Hardly. Wraiths are a nomad problem. Not exactly something Street Kids have any issues with.”

“They shot me. So Yeah. I have an issue with them. Getting shot makes me testy.” I countered instantly, a little heated. “But fuck it. You don’t have eddies? Fine. I’m not really hurting for eddies anyways. Merc work pays well. So what do you have? You want to pay me back? What can you offer?”

“Membership.” He said suddenly, surprising me. “You’re young. Gotta know how shit it is in the City. Join our Clan. Become an Aldecaldos Nomad. We’d welcome you. It might take a while to adjust, but you’ve proven yourself to my people. You’d fit in here.”

“I can’t.” I refused instantly, shaking my head.. “I have family in Night City, friends. As nice as it sounds to wander the desert, living life as it comes, it’s not for me. I’m a city girl.”

“Well I expected as much.” He said with a shrug. “But still. You’re welcome here. That offers some benefits. You might not realize it, but most of us have military experience. You want to be a merc? Then you’ll need knowledge, stuff you can’t just get on the street. We can help. Will help. We have stuff we make that can be useful to someone looking for a fight.” He tilted his head over and led me to a truck, which when he opened up I understood what he was saying.

“That’s a lot of guns.”

He nodded, having flicked on the lights to the moving truck, showing me the inside was literally an armory. “We keep well armed. Even have things you can’t find easily in the cities.” He said, pointing out a beautiful Techtronika SPT32 Grad.

It was an anti-material Sniper Rifle.

I want one. I want one sooo bad. Bitches love cannons!

Instantly I walked over to it, it was resting on a bench tool strewn around. Someone was tinkering. No, I noticed as my eyes scanned it down. Someone had already tinkered. This wasn’t just any Grad. It was the fucking Overwatch.

I instantly hyper focused on the Suppressor attached to the end of the thing. I didn’t remember the exact name of the nomad, but one of them had managed to get a Suppressor working on the AT rifle.

“Okay who did this, and where are they, because they need to teach me.” I told Saul as I started taking scans and checking over the Overwatch.

“Mitch. He made that during the war. Saved his hide a few times from the stories he tells. Not for sale.”

“Don’t want it. You wanted to pay me back? Then, I’ll consider it a fair trade, if you have Mitch teach me about his work on this baby.” It old him, my hands already feeling over the suppressor as my eyes scanned it down.

“Huh. Bit of a tinker are you?”

“Yeah! Just a bit.” I mumbled. Looking over the Overwatch. Normally a suppressor was either screwed into the barrel, or an attachment you would hook over the edge of a muzzle break and lock in.

This one? There was no separate attachment. The entire barrel was a custom job, suppressor included. Which was crazy. Suppressors didn’t last forever. So Mitch would have to replace the entire barrel pretty consistently.

Unless he figured something interesting out.

“I’ll talk to him, see if he’s willing. But that alone doesn’t square us. So let’s talk.”

I would be happy with a few of the shinies that were hanging around the armory, but as my eyes scanned the inside of the place, something caught my eye.

“That.” I demanded with a pointed finger.

“Hmm? What? Kid. What would you even use one of those for? We don’t even use them.”

“Those of the words of a man who has never created a situation to shoot a rocket launcher before. That’s the deal.” I said hungrily looking over the stack of boxes that had “Techtronika T40 Uragan” Stamped on the side. I recognized the name. They were rocket launchers.

10 shot homing rocket launchers.

Why didn't I have a 10 shot homing Rocket Launcher!?

Saul let out a sigh and shrugged.

“Fine. But if anyone ever asks you didn’t get them from us.”

“Deal.”

I didn’t have any real use for a Rocket Launcher, but being able to say “Hey I have a Rocket Launcher.” Is all the reason I could ever need!

 

[Seras]

It took a while to get everything sorted with Saul. First I got my Uragan of course, but I also got dragged around to talk to Mitch, and a few other Nomads regarding some of the stuff I wanted to know.

Mitch had been a bit grumpy about having to give away the knowledge of how to craft his baby, the Overwatch. Which really just meant the Suppressor. Turns out the reason it worked was a little trick with some crazy nanite goop that he had come across and fiddled with during the war. The inside of the Suppressor was literally a nanite swarm.

Fucking cool.

He did relent to give me the blueprints for how to make the stuff myself in a shard, but only after I promised to never tell anyone else.

Works for me. It’s not like I wanted someone else to have a silenced AT rifle.

With that done, and everything packed up in the trunk of the Quadra I went looking for my Choom.

“Hey Hiromi.” I greeted as I settled down onto the wooden stump beside her.

I had found her sitting around a firepit where all the nomads were hanging out, a few were even singing along to songs a cowboy was strumming out.

It was homey, and Hiromi was obviously having fun.

“Motoko! Done doing business?”

“For now! Saul finally pushed enough stuff at me, that he isn’t feeling bad about a debt anymore. But we are welcome to hang around. What’s this?” I asked as I took the seat next to her.

“Oh Daniel over here isn’t bad with a guitar and nomad karaoke is hilarious.” She tells me, the last part in a whisper. Grinning in delight as the singing continues, some weird country sounding tune that was very Cyberpunk being belted out at the top of the group of singers lungs. They were obviously drunk, and having the time of their life.

“Preem.” I said with a laugh as the voice cracks were making me giggle along with Hiromi.

“Hey don’t poke fun, unless you are willing to do it too.” Scorpion said, over Hiromi’s head. He was sitting on Hiromi's other side, laying back and seemingly enjoying the atmosphere.

“No way. I don’t sing.” I denied instantly crossing my arms in an X.

But this of course only threw blood into the water.

Scorpion and Hiromi both turned to me with a sinister grin.

“Don’t even think about it.” I grumbled. But that only made it worse. A few moments later I was being pushed into the ‘singing’ spot and watched over by my betraying chooms.

“C’mon! I don’t even know the lyrics to these songs!” I grumbled, but that only made Hiromi giggle all the louder.

“But you know the Samurai songs! Hey hey! Mark play Chippin’ In! Motoko knows the lyrics!” Hiromi called out, but I was trying to smother her.

“No I don’t!” I hissed, but then cheers went up around the fire as the intro to Chippin’ in started up.

“Fuck.”

“That’s not the lyrics!” Scorpion cheered and I felt myself flush a bit. Fine! I went cold, which thankfully cleared out the embarrassment. Mostly.

“C-can you feel it!” I belted out the first words to the song only stumbling a little on the words as the drunk Nomads cheered. Mark the guitar player wasn’t perfect, but he did a pretty good job of keeping up with the tempo of the song, and I had listened to the songs pretty often while driving around Night City. Or just on the radio while I was tinkering, or grinding.

So fine. Yeah I know the lyrics! What of it!?

When the song finally came to an end everyone was cheering Hiromi laughing in delight as she hugged my side and the Nomads were just having a great time. I blew out a heavy breath making Hiromi giggle even more.

“You’re so bad it’s great!”

“So embarrassing.” I uttered now that I let go of the cold blood.

“Now now kids, be nice. Relax kid this is just meant to be fun, you should hear Saul trying to sing to his favorites, man is completely tone deaf too… Anyway you a Samurai fan?” Mark asked from his stump.

“I mean… I guess?”

“Well hell let’s do another then, not often I get to play the classics. You aren’t Silverhand, but I’m not Eurodyne. Just have fun with it.” Mark the guitar player said, strumming a few notes and smiling up at me.

“No, no I think I’m done playing Rockerboy right now.” I grumbled which had Hiromi pouting. But the nomads laughed along and soon another song was playing.

Which gave me a bit of time to check on my menu. I had gotten a beep of an alert coming in while I sang, and that was…

Weird.

What the hell was leveling up?

Then I opened it and nearly choked on my tongue.

*Rockerboy Experience Gained.*

*Skill not unlocked, no XP gained.*

*Rockerboy Unlocked.*

What the fuck? Rockerboy!? I was blinking away my shock trying to process when I remembered. In the TTRPG, Rockerboy was one of the classes, like how Solo, or Netrunner were a few of the others.

I guess… It made sense. 2077, had streamlined the classes as part of the system, just creating the skills as part of the skill tree. V hadn’t had any Rockerboy skills, but then again he also had Johnny Silverhand in his head sort of acting as a max level Rockerboy…

So I guess this was a thing… Fuck! It was so embarrassing! I had been singing! I was level 0, that meant my skill was garbage! If I had known I could have grinded out a few levels and actually been amazing before I had to sing in front of strangers! Hiromi! This is all your fault! I groaned into my arms as I put my head against my knees. I could feel my ears burning!

I was pouting for the next few minutes. I knew that. Hiromi knew that and was even teasing me a little for being all embarrassed about it.

But it was! I was gonna go home, and grind so hard! I was gonna be an amazing Rockerboy the next time Hiromi tried to embarrass me, and then I would shock her! She would be like ‘Motoko you’re so amazing! I’m so sorry for trying to embarrass you!’ and stuff!

It would be perfect!

Wait… It made me think. I did like music, I just was terrible at it… Wasn’t music a pretty good hobby? I could play an instrument and sing, and it would give myself something to do completely outside of me being a merc. I could grind and practice it while having fun making music! There! See Rita! I can do more than just merc stuff!

Something that wasn’t murdering people, or better ways to get to people to murder!

This could work.

Hiromi poking my cheek distracted me from my thoughts, “C’mon ‘Toko don’t be so grumpy. It was just one song.”

I shook my head wiping the thoughts away. I wasn’t going to let a little embarrassment hold me down!

“I’m fine. You want to grab some more food?” I asked her as I rose up and she nodded, reaching up to grab my hand as we wandered back to the kitchen area.

Barbeque! It was pretty good even if it wasn’t real meat.

—--

As nice as it was, I did eventually get started on the drive home that night. I didn’t really feel like sleeping in one of the Nomads tents, as nice as they were to offer. With everything decided between me and Saul I packed up Hiromi in the passenger seat, as she was getting pretty drowsy by now, and started driving home.

As we headed out I left the headlights off. Honestly my Kiroshi let me see better without the light. Trying to see into the darkness through the bright lights was actually harder.

“Can you even see anything?” Hiromi asked, surprising me, and of course my many years of filling my brain with movies provided me an answer.

“I see everything.” I said back mimicking Arnold's voice for a moment. Ah Terminator 2. Such a good movie.

Then I realized Hiromi had no idea what I was doing. “Ah yeah. I see just fine. Want me to turn the lights on so you can see?”

“Nah ain’t anything to look at anyways. You okay to drive? Not-” She broke up her sentence with a long yawn. “Tired?”

“I’m fine. Actually a little energized, I talked to a Mox I know the other day and she suggested I take up a spiritual hobby, something that won’t just leave me running towards fights all the time… I think I found it.” I told Hiromi. Although afterwards her many questions were ignored, I would tell her when I was ready.

Because music was very spiritual! It wasn’t directly related to me being a merc! I could grind and practice it while having fun making music! There! See Rita! I can do more than just merc stuff!

I was tempted to start grinding on the way home by singing along to the radio, but Hiromi was there, and my stat was still 0. And I hadn’t gotten any alerts for doing that before. There may be more to grinding it than just singing along to a recorded song.

I would need to experiment!

—--

After dropping off a sleepy Hiromi at home, I didn’t instantly head home myself. Instead I did a quick search and went looking for a store.

Luckily this was Night City.

A 24/7 music store was pretty easy to find. It was mostly empty at this time of night, but it would do. I walked in, the instruments along the walls weren’t open and free to take all of them secured and under surveillance, and a pop out turret if my eyes didn’t deceive me.

This was Night City after all.

Instead I found a guitar that I thought would work and let the man at the counter know. Only after paying for it did he go bring it down, I did grab a “How to play the Guitar” shard as well on my way out, it was cheap, and I honestly didn’t know how to play.

I just needed enough of a start to hit level 1, and I should be good to go.

So I headed home. The apartment was quiet when I got in, and I dropped the Guitar on the living room table right next to my laptops, and my tinkering gear… And my guns.

Okay so Jun may have a point when he talks about me needing to clean up a bit.

Speaking of Jun, I peeked into his bedroom and he wasn’t there. Considering how late it was, that made me a little concerned, so I sent off a text asking if he was alright. Then sighed in relief that he wasn’t here as I headed back outside to my Quadra.

The Uragan needed to be brought inside… After successfully. Mostly. Bringing the crate with the launcher and ammunition into the apartment and hiding it under my bed.

I mean not hiding it. Because hiding it meant I was embarrassed I now had a Rocket Launcher. I was just… Saving it. For later. Along with a few of the other goodies that Saul had sent me off with. Honestly I was just glad the Quadra had a big trunk because it had all barely fit.

Once that was done I settled down on the couch.

“Okay Motoko, just… Play the Guitar.” I told myself as I picked it up, and strummed a chord… Well tried too.

I winced at the tone in my head. The noise was… Well.

It wasn’t any musical note I had ever heard. Realizing how loud it could be as well, I grabbed my cord out of the back of my neck and pushed it into the access port of the guitar. One of the reasons I bought this guitar specifically. I could jack into it, and instead of playing the sound aloud, it would play in my head.

I also grabbed the How to Guitar shard and clicked that in. Following along as it walked me through playing baby chords.

The problem was, it wasn’t giving me any experience. I stopped after about twenty minutes with nothing to show for it.

“What am I missing?” I wondered, grumbling as I rested back and closed my eyes. It wasn’t just singing or something, because I sang along to the radio plenty of times.

Was it the people? With no one to hear, did I not get Rockerboy XP?

That seemed… Annoying. I guess I could go outside and play on the street?

The flutter in my stomach at that thought told me that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I decided to try a few other things. I turned on the radio until I found a song I actually knew the lyrics for, and started singing along, strumming the Guitar as best I could following along.

When the song finished I flushed in pleasure.

*100 Rockerboy XP Gained.*

Okay! So I could gain XP without people watching… What was it exactly though? I continued working on it, a few hours of grinding and I had some basic answers.

I had to actually complete the song to get XP. From start to finish. If I stopped halfway I got nothing.

I guess my system agreed that the show must go on.

Each completed song seemed to get me an alert, so completing a full song was the way to grind. Which meant I spent a lot of time on Morro Rock, for the Samurai songs.

But it worked. As I played along song after song, singing and trying to strum the guitar to the right chord.

It wasn’t the right chord… ever. It was an attempt. Completing a song, right or wrong was where the XP came from.

But it didn’t matter. Alerts came in, and eventually? Eventually I got it.

*Rockerboy skill level up!*

And suddenly I knew the basic chords. I couldn’t perfectly pick out the right chord to a song, but I now at least knew when I was on the right track. I adjusted my fingers, actually holding the damn thing correctly now, and with a movement played my first real chord.

My playing along actually started to sound… Okay.

Just okay.

So I needed more levels. As I worked on it, I was trying to memorize more songs as well.

I wasn’t very good at it, never could remember lyrics to songs perfectly well. Thankfully as long as I kept trying, the system didn’t seem to care if I butchered some lyrics, which I did. A lot.

Which is why I was forced to change radio stations at times. Some of the songs were things I had never heard before. Couldn’t exactly sing along to a song you’ve never heard before. But it was taking a lot of concentration to get right.

Which is why I didn’t hear the door. I was half way through Resist and Disorder by the Cartesian Duelists, one of my favorite songs in this world so far, when Jun suddenly walked in.

I could feel my throat close as my soul died. I had been audibly singing…

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

His lips twitched.

Mine quivered.

I could feel the heat shooting up my neck. My neck, my cheeks, my ears were all growing red. I just knew it!

He turned and walked into his room without a word, and honestly? I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than if he had actually said something.

I turned the radio off. I was done grinding. Instead I pushed my face into a pillow and pretended nothing existed for a while.

 

[Seras]

So I may be taking the whole concept of getting a non combat hobby a little far. I had spent the entire night grind-I mean playing away. Although I had to practically whisper the words, it still counted as long as I kept playing the guitar until the song ended. So through the night I got little alerts, drip fed in.

I had even hacked into the radio to have it play through my agent so I wouldn’t wake Jun. That had only taken a few minutes to set up, and I had even gotten an intelligence alert from it!

Grinding Rockerboy actually went pretty quickly. With Rockerboy level 1, I was actually somewhat capable of keeping up with the music, and in fact had a pretty nice advantage.

My arms were chrome.

I didn’t get tired, my fingers didn’t get sore. I didn’t have to worry about my fingers needing calluses. I could simply strum the strings, play the chords, and keep hammering away at it through the night.

So I did, at first it wasn’t fun. I didn’t know enough modern music to play along with, as I wasn’t exactly a musician in either life. So I had to keep trying, working through songs that I didn’t know while doing my best to keep up. Thankfully I didn’t need to know the lyrics if I was strumming along. Or the chords if I was singing.

Until I finally leveled up.

Level 2 Rockerboy gave me a Perk option, and as I had learned, Perks? Perks were power.

As always there were a lot of interesting perks, including a perk that would improve my vocals. Siren song went on the list, but I needed something else first, something to solve the biggest grinding issue that made the whole thing a chore rather than fun.

And there was a perk that fit every criteria I needed. I had barely hesitated once I found it before choosing it as my level 2 perk.

Perfect Musical Memory: Any song you’ve heard once you’ll remember. Including the chords needed to replay it and the lyrics.

I had taken it thinking it would be useful going forward, maybe I could get away from using the radio as a crutch even. If I could just listen to a song and remember it enough to play it.

But, as always the perks were so much more powerful than that. The moment I had selected the perk in the middle of the night I had nearly yelped at how my mind exploded as the memories flooded in.

Rockerboy 2 had given me a firm basis on chords and pace, as well as the muscle memory to play the guitar at a point where I was actually playing. Well at least I wasn’t acting like the kid in first year music class anymore.

But now? I had heard thousands of songs in my life, no in both lives. Memories from a previous life coming in clutch! I took a moment to figure out what to play first, and decided on some childhood sounds, something that I hadn’t heard since waking up in a coma.

Something… Yeah.

The first strums of Nirvana’s Come as you are, flooded my head. I even knew the lyrics perfectly, like I had spent years memorizing them. I strummed and sang along. For the first time in my life, actually really playing a song for myself.

“No, I don’t have a gun! Memory… Memory…” I belted out. And honestly when I finished. The final note trailing off…

I felt good.

*100 Rockerboy XP Gained.*

An instant alert. I guess the system had liked me actually getting everything right… Mostly. I had slipped on a few chords, and my vocals were still bad. I had enough knowledge to know I sounded flat, without knowing how to fix it.

Stupid voice!

But I could actually judge myself now. I knew just where I needed to improve, and a constant reminder my voice needed work.

“What was that?” Jun’s voice suddenly interrupted me and I yelped, nearly falling off the couch. I had been so focused on the music in my ears and singing along that I hadn’t heard him come out from his room.

Jun! Stop being a ninja! That’s my job!

“Jun?” I asked, blinking a bit as I came out of the haze of making music, I popped the cord out of the bottom of the guitar letting it settle back in my neck.

“That song. What was it? Never heard it before.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. How in the world was I supposed to explain that I knew a song that didn’t exist.

Nirvana didn’t exist in this world. I guess America and its Seattle residents were a little too focused on the First Central American War that was happening during the time, for a grunge band to become popular. Or maybe they were drafted. I had no way of knowing.

In fact the only reason I even knew the war had been happening at the time was because I had looked up old bands on the the Intranet a while back while wanting to listen to something from my time.

“Just a song I heard once… I think.” I offered, deciding to just not admit to anything. “You should’ve told me you were standing there… It’s embarrassing!”

“I could hear you from my room. You were singing pretty loud Imouto.” I blinked. I guess I had been a little too into it. It had just been so nostalgic.

“Sorry?” I said, feeling my face flush a bit. I had been trying to keep my voice down, but I guess with the excitement of the perk I had forgotten.

“Don’t be. It’s okay.” He said but then to my embarrassment he didn’t leave either.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just standing here.” He said, lips quirking into a smirk.

“Fine. If you want a song, I’ll sing you one. Jerk.” I grumble but since I was already on a Nirvana kick.

“Smells like Teen Spirit.” I mumbled, before starting. The power chords were a little annoying. But I realized instantly I wasn’t getting the sound just right, I adjusted my fingers a few times repeating the intro refrain until I got it. The chord finally came out right, and I started into the song.

Rockerboy 2 gave me a lot, but I could still make a stupid mistakes.

“Load up on guns, bring your friends!” I started belting out, a bit more clearly than the honey mumbles of Cobain, and not nearly as sweet.

And I played the song. A few mistakes here and there, and without the drums and bass it wasn’t as good, but I played through it.

Another alert popped up as I finished.

“Huh.” Jun mumbled a bit as he seemed to take me in for a few moments.

“Well? Don’t just listen to the whole song and then huh me!”

“It was interesting. You could use some more practice though.” He told me, smirking.

Jerk ass older brothers!

Then suddenly he reached over and mussed my hair. Which, ow stupid chrome hands! “I’m proud of you Motoko. Do this instead of merc work. It’s safer.” He said firmly and I puffed some air to knock my bangs out of my eyes.

“Not a chance. I’ll just do both! Rita said I should get a hobby that was more spiritual instead of just death and murder you know? So I guess music works.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. “A smart woman… Who’s Rita?”

“Oh Rita works as a bouncer at Lizzies. She’s nice. She talked to me about being chipped forcefully, and offered some advice.” I told him and Jun frowned at my words.

I guess it was still too soon for Jun to hear about the kidnapping.

“Be careful with the Mox… But I’m glad you had someone to talk to… Make sure you thank her next time you see her.” He told me and I snorted.

“Of course!” I said, rolling my eyes, like I wasn’t going to thank Rita for her advice!

Jun just chuckled at my reaction and then to my surprise started getting dressed up.

“You heading out?”

“Got a gig, they are calling me in. Kamikaze work.”

“You need a hand?” I offered, eyes narrowing at the idea of Jun going out to fight so late at night.

“No.” he said shaking his head and passing me a smile. “I just need to stand around and look scary. 6th St. are seeking a meeting to talk about ending hostilities with us.”

Of course by ‘us’ Jun meant Tyger Claws. I nodded. It made sense. Everyone had started fighting with the NCPD out of the picture, even if the TC had been focused on the Maelstrom, and a little on the Mox, that didn’t mean the other gangs didn’t exist.

“Be safe.”

“I will. Should pay well, maybe I’ll grab some more subdermal.” He mentioned tapping his plastic stomach bit.

“If you do, go to Viks! I know you haven’t had that check up yet! Moron!” I called out loudly so he couldn’t ignore me.

“Yeah yeah.” He mumbled but as he left I nodded. I looked out the window and sighed. It was the middle of the night. The people I would need to talk to… Well it would be best not to show up at three in the morning. So instead I figured a bit more music wouldn’t hurt.

So I spent the rest of the night playing through songs, some of which had never existed in this world. But I continued playing long after I would have gotten tired. Long after a normal person would have become exhausted and needed a break.

Long enough that Rockerboy 2, became Rockerboy 3.

Then 4.

My talent at music skyrocketed. I was no longer an amateur player. I was competent. I wasn’t amazing. I still made mistakes. Flubs, missed chords, but I always knew when I made a mistake, it was no longer someone struggling just to try, it was a practiced hand.

I liked it. Any song I wanted to hear, I could just start playing, or singing along.

My voice sounded better too, like I had some training on how to professionally sing. I wasn’t amazing, I wasn’t sure if I would need a perk, or just increased skill overall before my voice sounded good, but I did sound better. I could at least hit the right notes with my voice now.

I wasn’t tone deaf!

Humming to myself I looked out the window seeing the sun was high in the sky. It was time to stop.

As much as my fingers tingled to keep working on this new grind. This was supposed to be something other than a grind to weaponize it, but using it as an excuse to waste some time? That was fine. But now it was back to work.

So I set my guitar down, and instead geared up.

One of the things I had talked Saul into handing over to even the debt was information on Regina Jones.

I still had a Devil to kill after all.

—--

Regina Jones had an office in Watson. I just hadn’t known where until now. Saul himself didn’t have the information, but he did have a connection to the Nomad fixer Dakota Smith, who did.

Dakota had handed over the information, and Saul had handed it to me.

Of course Saul owed Dakota something now, but that was just how business worked in the Bad Lands.

So here I was. Yaiba Tower.

Which was annoying because it was literally down the street from Lizzies bar. I sighed as I walked up to the Tower, not through the main entrance which had the bottom rooms all rented out and used by business or pleasure.

No, there was a side elevator that went up directly to the top floors. The private floors.

There at the very top, Regina Jones had her base. She owned the whole tower apparently renting out floors to others.

The elevator was actually in a small room that was pretty secure. A camera watched over the little room, and the elevator was secured, only someone with permission could use it.

Which meant I needed to get it.

I hit options on the little electronic pad next to the elevator until I found the call button for the top floor, and pushed it. Then I waited.

A minute passed by before I got a response.

“Whatever it is, we aren’t interested.” The voice on the line was a man, so it wasn’t Regina which made this more difficult.

“I’m just here to speak to Ms. Jones about a gig.”

“Listen kid. I don’t know you, so we aren’t interested.” The voice popped back on, and I was getting a little annoyed. At least hear me out first you dickbag! I had already put off murdering that devil for long enough. I wasn’t waiting any longer.

“No you listen! I need to— You hung up.” I noticed the talk notification was gone, fuckers!

I considered what I should do here. One part of me said walk away, I could build up some reputation and then smash my skill over this jerk wads head another time…

But that was the reasonable part of me. The unreasonable part said I should infiltrate this building and find Regina Jones…

I sighed, that would be extremely difficult if not impossible. I had no idea what her security was like, but I would put money she had a netrunner on retainer so it wasn’t like I could just hack in.

Fine. Operation be fucking annoying was a go.

I went out to the alley, grabbed a piece of trash I could sit on and carried it inside.

Then I started hitting the call button.

A lot.

—--

“FUCK OFF!” The response came through again, but I was ready for it. The last few times he had cursed me out he had instantly hung up on me again.

So I just kept pushing the button.

“Listen kid, if you don’t fuck off, I’m gonna come down there and fucking end you.” Ah he was still talking this time.

“I need to speak to Regina.”

“Regina doesn’t chat with punk kids. You push that button again and I’m coming do-”

So I pushed the button.

“Fuck this.” He yelled and the call ended, but this time the elevator was coming down.

Hmm. This could be dangerous… I considered just staying where I was, but people in Night City were kinda trigger happy…

I looked around looking for a good advantage, but when I finally realized the best place wasn’t on the floor.

I looked up.

Yeah. That would work.

—--

Ian McKellan

Ian was not having a good day. Sure he could just turn off the elevator alert, but Regina would murder him if someone important came by, and they couldn’t be reached.

He wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Regina had told him before not to do it.

But it was just one kid. The outer doors were locked. He had locked them from above, and the camera in the room meant he knew there was only one person inside.

He would beat the kid a little bit, maybe a bullet hole or two, and then head back up.

Only as the elevator reached the bottom the kid wasn’t there.

“The fuck?” He crept out, his Lexington at the ready as he looked around. This was wrong. Regina was right, coming down like this was a mistake.

He had that thought a moment too late. A second later something dropped on him from above and in a flurry of motion which he tried to resist, but it was just too much force dropping down on him from above, he lost his Lexington. Ripped out of his hands and was thrown to the ground as the fuckin ninja pinned him to the ground.

Had she just spun around his neck to smash him into the ground?

He was dazed trying to resist when he felt his own gun press against his temple. He finally managed to realize what position he was in. His arms were pinned by a chromed out arm and a pair of legs while his own gun was about to take his life.

“Fuck.”

“You say that a lot.” She said completely calm. As if she hadn’t just attacked and completely neutralized him. He wondered if he could get a quick hack out fast enough before she blew his brains over the entrance way.

“Listen buddy. I’m just here to talk to Regina about a gig. Let’s call this whole unfortunate experience just a mistake and move on… Okay?” She asked the last bit offered with a wide smile and slight nudge of the gun up against his head.

“Y-yeah… Just a mistake.”

“Cool! Why don’t you call your boss? Let her know she has a merc looking to meet up? Whenever it’s convenient. I’m not looking to annoy her.” She said and Ian took that for the lie it was, considering she had just spent the last hour annoying the shit out of him.

“Fine.” He pulled up his agent and found Regina’s number.

Regina was never going to let this go.

*Ian. What is it? Where are you?*

*Hey Regina, downstairs, mind checking the cam? But basically I got knocked down by a fucking ninja. She’s looking to talk to you… Wouldn’t mind a bit of hurry, the gun against my temple is a little uncomfortable.*

*Ian you dumbass, I told you not to go down if there was anyone out there. People are looking to kill us!*

*Maybe talk to her soon so she won’t?*

Suddenly Regina’s voice came over the comm unit.

“Alright, you have one of my people at gunpoint. Not happy about it. Talk.”

“Sorry sorry! Hi I’m Motoko Kusanagi, I’m a merc, although I usually work with Wakako. I’m here about a gig or rather setting up a gig? It’s a little complicated and definitely a sensitive topic.” The ninja still held him down acting as if Ian wasn’t even there.

Bitch.

“How about first you stop holding a gun against the head of my people.”

“Sure, I mean he started it.” She said as she suddenly untangled herself from him and stepped away.

She even held out the gun for Ian to take back.

Definitely a bitch.

He took it anyway.

“So can we talk?” Motoko the girl asked and as Ian rose up he realized just how short the girl was compared to him.

She was a fucking teenager. He was never living this down.

“Listen kid-”

“No wait, don’t listen kid me. That’s such bullshit. You definitely haven’t heard of me, I get it. But I’m a merc, and I’m good at what I do. So I’m here… It has to do with the Devil of Kabuki.” She said and Ian stilled.

Jotaro. That fuckin’ monster.

“Can I come up so we can talk about this… I’m not sure this is the most secure-” The girl started talking but Regina cut her off. Sounding much more serious about this whole interaction.

“What about him?”

“I want to kill him.” The teenager said with a calm surety, and Ian knew this day was going to go bad. A kid with too much balls and not enough brains to realize the danger of Jotaro Shobo. Especially since she was a pretty enough girl.

“You?”

“Sure. I’m good at assassinations. It’s sorta my thing. Jotaro’s a piece of shit… But he decided to be a fucking gonk and threaten me and my chooms… So he has to die. I figured some Fixer somewhere would have a gig to kill him.” She said, and Regina was quiet for a minute as if processing what the girl was saying...

“A few of us probably do, but it’s not as easy as you say. Jotaro keeps a low profile he isn’t easy to track down.”

“He spends a lot of time at his club, the Ho-oh club actually. The top floor is his residence… And his BD studio.” The girl said dropping some very valuable knowledge out of the blue.

And also her voice went so cold there at the end despite the fact Ian was gripping his gun, he was feeling uncomfortable. A momentary knowledge that the crazy ninja girl that had just taken him down in a second, wasn’t just some teenager.

The girl was dangerous. It struck him then, she could very likely be some crazy edgerunner that just liked to look like a teen. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he had ever seen.

A reminder to not underestimate someone ran through his head as he inched away from her.

“You can do it?” Regina questioned her digging a little.

“Can I kill him? Yes. Can I do it without anyone knowing? Yeah probably. That’s my goal on this one… My brother is a member of the TC, so I kinda need this to be a below the table sort of thing. Hence why Wakako doesn’t want to touch it. And why I’m here.”

“I see.” Regina went quiet. “Alright Kid. I do have an offer to kill him that’s been gaining dust. You take him out. I’ll consider the gig closed, and I’ll take care of the details.”

“Deal.”

 

[Seras]

I left Regina after a few minutes of back and forth about the gig.

I finally had her number as well! So there! I was officially a better than average merc with two fixers hiring me!

But I refocused, because it was time.

I drove the car over to Lizzies, parking in the lot and heading to the front. Thankfully Rita was there and I waved her down. “Hey Rita. Can we talk for a minute?”

She blinked but nodded without any preamble. “Bett, take over for me.” She called out to one of the other bouncers as she waved me in.

She took me to the admin room right off the entrance, the same one that Nox had been brought to when he was beat up.

“What’s up Motoko. You okay?”

"Actually yeah I took what you said and I no sorry, but that's not what I needed... So I’m gonna be honest. You ever heard of a piece of shit called Jotaro Shobo. The Devil of Kabuki?”

Rita’s plastic face went from kind and understanding to murderous in an instant. “Yeah.” She growled a bit. “Is he threatening you? Do-”

“Not exactly. Well I mean he did. But when he realized I worked with the Kamikaze a bit? He backed off…” I winced a bit and Rita’s obvious discomfort at my reveal. “I’m not actually a member though. I just worked with them because my brother Jun is in the Kamikaze… He joined to kill Maelstrom they killed his choom… I’m just looking out for him to make sure he doesn’t go psycho… And I’m rambling.” I quickly threw my hands up to try and move on from that topic.

“Rita. I just took a gig to murder Jotaro. I know where he is, and I don’t need help.” I quickly filled her in. “But having an alibi for where I was while it happens would be extremely useful… I’m gonna take him out tonight, so do you mind if I stick around, make sure everyone sees me here, and help make sure no one notices me leaving for an hour or so later tonight?”

Rita looked at me a little dumbstruck.

“Motoko The Devil isn’t someone you can just…”

“He is just a guy Rita, and I know where he is. He hides in his club all day every day from what I can gather. Trying to lay low, it’s why so few people know where he is. I’ll go in and out, no one will even know I was there if I do my job right. I just need an extra alibi just in case… My brother is Tyger Claw and if they catch on that I killed Jotaro they might cause some problems.”

I was breathing in ready to get another big breath when Rita’s hands grabbed my shoulders.

“I don’t like the idea of you going after that monster alone… But of course we’ll help you. The Mox have a particular bone to pick with that monster.”

“Great! So I just need to be seen hanging around for a few hours until dark.”

“I know the perfect thing.” She said suddenly smiling and I suddenly wasn’t.

I have a bad feeling about this.

—--

“Welcome to Lizzies. Don’t touch anyone, if you like the looks of a girl please check our catalog.” I repeated for the umpteenth time.

Yeah. Rita had with an amused smile actually convinced me the best way to make sure everyone knew where I was?

Work the front desk.

It wasn’t really hard. I mean, greeting people, walking them through the catalog if they were somehow tech illiterate. Boom. Job done.

I didn’t even have to deal with the eddies, another girl Mara did that.

You know as much as I hated the whole retail job, working the front desk of basically a strip club was actually pretty interesting.

The Mox put up with zero shit, and everyone coming in knew it. If you were the type to get drunk, or back talk? Rita threw them out on the street. If they were drunk… Rita threw them out on the street.

Rita handled many a problem at Lizzies. But it meant everyone was very polite until they got into the back and started scrolling their BDs and then it wasn’t like they were interacting or bothering anyone.

“Here Motoko! I finally found it.” Mara called out, she had been going into the back of the little reception area over and over to ‘find’ something.

I glanced over and instantly burst into laughter.

“Mara I am not wearing that.”

“Aww c’mon it’s a Mox jacket, and it’ll fit!”

“Mara it says Fuck to live, Kill to Fuck.”

“Yeah! The Mox words!”

“Denied.” I answered crossing my arms in an X in front of me.

“Aww.” The girl was a bit of a weird one, nice. But weird. I almost wanted to ask if she had some mental issues. The way she talked had a really slow pace to it, and it seemed to take her a while to do some tasks…

But she was a sweetheart, so I wasn’t going to make a fuss.

“Are you sure? It would look good on you!” I looked over at the blue jacket that had a fuzzy collar and the Mox words on the back.

“I’m good Mara, honest. I like my current jacket… It makes me feel cool.” I whisper the last bit to her, earning some giggles before she stops and sort of blinks her big brown eyes.

“What’s cool?”

My offense of course was swallowed down. “It means it makes me feel preem.”

“Ah okay. You should just say that.” She said, nodding a bit at her own words.

Rita walked in then caught my eye nodding towards the back.

Perfect it was time.

We walked into the back and then up the stairs to the roof. The roof that was currently cleared out. A favor from Rita.

“You sure about this Motoko… I’m more than willing to come with, back you up. We can get others as well.” Rita offered looking serious.

“No. It’ll be easier on my own. No one will even know I was there.” I told her with a smile as I grabbed the backpack Rita had helped me prepare for this.

I had told Regina, and Rita that I wasn’t planning on being spotted, but if I was? Then I definitely couldn’t go as Motoko.

So Rita had helped out, along with some of the clothes I had picked up over my jobs. The Raffen dust mask went over my face. Rita gave me a wig that was long and red. Along with a few spare clothes the Mox had left lying around from patrons forgetting things in the back rooms. I had a full outfit that no one would ever attribute to me. Now I just had to hope that with that, and my Kiroshi, I would truly be a ghost on this gig.

“Good luck.”

“See you soon Rita.” I said as I started climbing. Rita hadn’t known exactly why I had asked to use the rooftop. But she was about to get a front row seat.

Up I went, climbing old AC units and power boxes until I clambered up onto the edge of the fence around the roof.

Then I grabbed onto the Highway overpass that ran right over Lizzies bar. Climbing up the concrete outer edge was child's play. It had plenty of power lines and pipes running along the outside, after all it wasn’t like anyone would normally get this high.

But I did. Easily climbing up onto the pipes and started walking, I was two or three stories up at least, the wind was strong, and no one ever saw me, except for Rita who I left far below.

I quickly reached the place where I could drop down onto the Bellevue Overwalk. The pedestrian infrastructure looked like it had once been part of a park or something, now it was just full of bums, and people hiding out.

Dropping a dozen feet I landed in a quiet crouch in a corner of the overwalk out of sight.

As always falling like that was a rush. The sense of surety that I could do it, that I would be safe? That I would be quiet?

I loved it. I crossed the overwalk, no one saw me. The few bums that were hanging around, or couples enjoying some quiet moments never even noticing my bright red hair.

I landed first on some roofs, and then crossed to a massive pipe that crossed the whole area.

The pipe would lead me directly where I needed to go. As much as the entire area of Kabuki was a maze, from the rooftops it was childsplay to reach where I needed to go.

A few Tyger Claws hanging out on the roofs half way to my destination were bypassed without a sound.

I could have killed them.

If I had been on any other gig I might have. But honestly… I felt kinda bad killing the Tyger Claws. I was one of them, in a way. As much as I denied affiliation. My family was one of them. If I had to turn to a gang for help, they would be the first I sought out.

The fact was in Night City everyone had a gang affiliation of some sort.

Even if it was just to be left alone.

But it didn’t matter. Because here I was.

Standing on the roof of the Ho-Oh club. No one the wiser, completely bypassing all the defenses and protections the hidden club would normally give.

There was no one around. The rooftop was tucked away and quiet. No cameras. No hidden sensors. Nothing.

I walked around from the north letting me see right into the room that I knew was Jotaro’s bedroom.

He wasn’t there. So I waited. I went very still in the shadows, letting me see into his room, but I knew he wouldn’t see me, unless he spent the time to really look.

It was so easy to let cool take over. Slow my heart and breathing, until I was practically a statue. Until every minute passed in a flash because I was simply waiting.

Then he appeared, suddenly slamming open the door he was pissed. Angry.

Good.

He snatched a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket as he grabbed one with his teeth and chucked the pack onto a side table near his bed.

Then he was there head practically out the window as he smoked. Long trails of the gray smoke arching up twirling before disappearing into nothing.

I waited. He was angry. Not paying attention to anything outside the window. He was a man lost in his own thoughts.

I shifted, just a tiny amount as I moved out from the shadows crossing the roof above him without a sound.

He didn’t see me.

I walked along the edge of the roof until I was directly above him.

He didn’t hear me.

I drew a knife not my usual blade, but it would do.

I fell. Right outside his window was a row of AC units. With them, and the concrete windowsill I landed without any fear of something breaking and making noise.

He didn’t speak.

A knife stuck in your throat tended to silence the screams.

I held him. One arm around the back of his head holding his body towards me so he couldn’t fall away from me. Our eyes met.

Even if mine were hidden behind the dust mask. I wondered if he could see the crimson of my irises. I wondered if he would remember. The look in these same eyes when he threatened me.

Made me realize what a monster he was.

So I held him. As his body slowly crumpled.

*750 XP Gained.*

*Ninjutsu skill level up!*

Huh. Hadn’t seen an upgrade in that in a while. Level 8 Ninjutsu. I shook my head away from the dump of very detailed almost situational pieces of the skill.

I wasn’t done.

Regina didn’t just want him gone. She wanted a message to be sent to the Tyger Claws.

She had a few ideas of ways to make his death messy enough. I had vetoed most of them, but had agreed to do the job with a knife she had supplied. Apparently it would have ‘meaning’ to the TC.

The other was to make sure it couldn’t be hidden away.

It was unfortunate I wasn’t about to record this as a BD. I would have loved to spread around the sight of his eyes going dim as he bled out to the families of the many people this man tortured to death.

But this would have to do.

I left the knife in his throat, and then grabbed him around the collar of his stupid white suit.

It wasn’t white anymore.

Then I hip checked the body over the edge of the window.

Once that was done. The loud splat of a falling body echoing around I was moving climbing back up onto the roof thanks to the many easy to find handholds, and I was gone.

Back across the rooftops no one saw me even if the commotion started growing louder behind me.

—--

Rita was waiting for me on the roof. From the way she was fidgeting and pacing. I would have expected to see her chain smoking through a pack. But she wasn’t smoking. Just pacing like a caged lion.

I landed onto the roof without more than a scuffed noise against the roof.

“Hey Rita.” I called out gently, making sure I was far enough away not to startle her.

“Wha… Motoko. You’re back.”

I nodded glad for once I was able to approach someone without scaring the fuck out of them.

I started peeling off the borrowed clothes, letting Rita take them and put them into a plastic bag that would be burned just to ensure there were no traces.

With that I dressed back in my own clothes and only when Rita checked me over for any blood stains did she give me the okay.

We headed back down, the bag was given to another Mox to burn and I was back out at the front desk for another few hours.

Alibi complete.

Gig done.

 

[Seras]

A few hours later I drove home.

Jun wasn’t at the apartment when I got there which let me flop onto the couch uncaring of the loud sigh I gave off.

Gig complete.

I had done it. Killed at least two of the monsters that I remembered from the game. There were others I was sure. But these two were what I remembered. Killing them was enough to at least lighten my conscience.

Would killing them make Night City just a little bit better of a place?

I think it would.

I reached over and grabbed the guitar.

I didn’t know what to play.

The ideas flowed through me. I could play something famous or popular, but I was a total nerd. I listened more to anime OST’s than radio pop.

So I just strummed a few times before the idea formed.

I couldn’t do it all, I didn’t have the electronic sounds needed for it, but I could play the guitar, and I was feeling in a pretty dark metal mood having just murdered a man in cold blood.

As I started the first riff, I was thankful there were no lyrics to this song, just sound from my guitar.

But I had to say something anyway, something that simply fit too much.

“The only thing they fear Is ME.” I growled my face turning into a smile as I lost myself in the music for a while. Playing through a few songs from the Doom Soundtrack that I liked, at least what I could do with just a guitar.

I would need a lot of extra equipment if I wanted to recreate the song in truth.

Which is why right in the middle of BFG Division, I realized I was a fucking genius.

“I’m a tinker, and a netrunner. Why the hell can’t I make the noise I want!”

I put the guitar to the side, and went to grab my laptop. Engineer it first, then tinker it into being.

Hah! See Rita!I was a perfectly sane and normal girl! Capable of normal sane girl things!

But first I needed to focus. I needed this to properly shred! How would they know that they should fear me, if I didn’t have an awesome theme song!

Honestly it was really easy. Using my CAD software I was able to build up the little box from bottom up.

When I finished the blueprints of my music box, I realized that while I could handle the outside of the system just fine. I had no idea how to properly program it. It was the same problem I had with my directional Mic. I could finish the hardware and get it running, but programming it to do more? I had no idea.

Even with my netrunning… Right now my ability was only at the level of script kiddy stuff. I could use programs already made, I was even good at it.

But Programming?

No idea.

With a very important part of my future music box unfinished I started hammering my head at the wall. The CAD software was of course capable of accepting some programming to test it out, but as I went through it I very quickly got nowhere.

I found myself wasting time, going in mental circles.

So I needed to program this thing. I realized I had a blank in my netrunning understanding. I was pretty sure I was fairly competent, with Intelligence and Breach at 6, even if my Quick Hack skill was lagging behind.

“This system is deeper than I thought.” I admitted realizing that I was definitely missing a skill. If Rockerboy was a skill under cool, and Driving existed, then obviously there were more skills in my system than there were in the game.

I just had to figure out how to start a new one.

I couldn’t help but sigh when I realized I had another skill to grind, no matter how much time I spent grinding away, there always seemed to be more!

Which was both good and bad as I liked grinding, but I didn’t want to admit that I liked it! I wanted to be irritated!

Fortunately I had an idea of how to get started. I went into my room and pulled out my mothers netrunning guide.

I popped in the shard and started browsing through it swiftly, until finally I found it. A small section she went over personalizing Quick Hacks.

It wasn’t much. It wasn’t long. She prefaced it with ‘99% of you will never bother with this.’ But it was there.

So I sat and followed the steps of my biological mother in altering just a tiny bit of the code of my Ping Quick Hack.

It was the basic of basics program already. My Ping wasn’t special, or anything. If I put it in game terms, my Ping was the white common rarity.

But as I pulled it apart, I was able to make a minor change that I followed along as my mother guided me.

And finally something I had done, was enough.

*Programming Experience Gained.*

*Skill not unlocked, no XP gained.*

*Programming Unlocked.*

Well that was level zero…

Let’s see what I could get a level before Jun got home.

—-

Turns out that unlike Rockerboy, Programming was fucking hard. I had ended up making a copy of my Ping Quick Hack. And basically tearing it apart over and over again trying to find ways to make it slightly better.

Most of the time I ended up spiraling the program into utter uselessness.

But the times I succeeded at least on not ruining the program I got that alert telling me I was one step closer to understanding.

Finally hours after I started and with a few clumps less hair on my head I altered the Ping so it would visually show a different color connection in my optics and the alert popped.

*100 Programming XP Gained.*

*Programming skill level up!*

And my eyes were opened. Breaching. Quickhacks? They were a tiny miniscule sliver of the net. Breaching was like learning how to move in the Net. How to bypass system security, or even just port access through different servers. It was what you needed to live in the net.

Quick Hacks was bringing the power of the net to the real world.

But Programming?

Programming was magic. There was nothing in the net you couldn’t do with the proper application of programming.

It was also incredibly difficult, easily the most complex of the three skills, and the one that the least amount of people used.

Real Netrunners didn’t have high Breach, or Quickhack skills.

They had high programming. The difference between a ‘common’ Ping Quick Hack, and a Legendary one was a layer of magnitude in complexity.

If someone who could use Quickhacks was a knight, the Programmer was the smith. The weapon designer.

A lone Netrunner could find weapons and use them.

A lone Programmer? Could create an army.

I suddenly realized that Programming might very well be the most powerful skill I accessed. If I designed a Legendary Quick Hack. Or in the real worlds terms. A Quick Hack of insane complexity and power, I could sell it, or trade it for favors, for eddies, for power.

It was in a lot of ways making a magic weapon in a mundane world.

Eeeeee! So cool! I giggled and kicked my legs as I rolled around on the couch.

So I had the basics of another powerful tool.

Now I just needed to spend the hours upon hours to grind it out.

Since all I really had was Ping, that was my go to playground. I knew it could be improved after all. If I could practice with it enough, I could figure out how, and improve one of my only Netrunning tools.

Fuck I really needed to upgrade my deck.

I reached behind my head and touched the back of my head where it was installed. The little port hidden in my skull.

Was I ready for it?

I wasn’t sure. It made me kind of nervous. I was still working my way through my arms, trying to adapt to them, make them mind, and I still felt the effects of chipping them at times. The harsh reminder, always there niggling at me, and yet.

I didn’t want that spider ripper to win. To scare me away. I wasn’t afraid of chipping chrome. I liked the idea! I always had. Just in moderation and not adding in something stupid to myself.

But still. There was that itch in my shoulders at the thought. That, and the fear that slid down my spine.

I knew how close I had come to losing it. I didn’t dwell on it really. It was too easy to just ignore it. But before I had put the points into adaptation, I had truly been on my way to losing myself in revenge.

I hadn’t liked the person I had been becoming.

Which was part of the reason I hadn’t been hunting the Maelstrom Spider Ripper down afterwards. I didn’t want to admit to myself how out of control I had been thanks to the constant pain and trauma.

I sighed flopping onto the couch for a bit. Why was life so complicated? I just wanted to have fun and do cool shit.

But life was more complicated than that, and a Cyberpunk life more complicated still.

I would talk to Vik, I did still owe him a night where he would check on my healing. He had been nice enough to only say I was due for a checkup rather than the truth in his texts that I got every few days.

Stupid Dad Vik, making me feel bad for not seeing him. I was just so busy! I looked around at the multiple projects that surrounded me and sighed.

At least I had a few days before I would see Regina about payment for killing Jotaro. She was going to send me a text in a few days to fake an initial meetup. I guess I would be able to start taking gigs from two Fixers after that.

It was a step up. In a good direction even.

Maybe it was time to do some upgrades…

I pulled up my phone system.

*Ringing*

*Ringing*

*Motoko? What is it? You okay?” Jun’s voice picked up quickly, sounding concerned.

*I’m okay Jun! I just had a thought… I’m thinking I might get a new Netdeck… I’m just… Should I? Is that okay? Is it too much too fast? I’m still recovering from my arms and I just-*

*Whoa, Whoa slow down. Hey hey. It’s okay just, breathe… Do I think you getting a new Netdeck is okay? Yeah I think it would be good for you. You’ve been practicing a lot, and it’s not like you really have enough chrome anyways. I would feel safer if you had an upgrade… Are you really still worried about your arms?*

*Jun… I was literally going crazy after! All I could think about was killing the Maelstrom. I wasn’t me. I’m still not feeling 100%. Of course I’m worried! It’s like you! You were one step into some form of Cyberpsychosis when you rescued me.*

*I wasn’t!* He denied instantly, and I had to breathe to not say something instantly, and end up snapping at Jun.

*You kinda were Jun. You’re better now though. But I was really worried.*

*Talk… Talk to your ripper. He was a good guy. He’ll make sure you’re ready for new chrome before giving it to you… I guess I don’t know when enough is enough.*

*Jun?*

*I… Haven’t thought about how it must have looked… No how it was. I was stupid… I’m sorry. I must have scared you.*

*You did, but I wasn’t scared of you Jun. I was scared for you.*

*I see.* He said in a voice that told me he very much didn’t see.

*Alright… I’ll talk to Vik. I owe him a checkup anyways.*

*What? Go get your checkup you gonk! If your ripper says you need to be checked out then get moving!* He yelled into the line at me making me jump.

*Alright alright! I’m going! Yeesh.*

I grumbled as I ended the call and rose up. I guess I was visiting Vik.

—-

“Misty!” I called out as I entered the Esoterica and the fluffy haired blonde looked up from her digital magazine.

“Motoko! How are you?” She asked as she rose up and actually pulled me into a hug for a moment. “Vik is in, are you hurt?”

“No no, and it’s not a rush, what are you doing, anything fun?” I asked as she perked up at me asking about her.

I guess I had been a little rude just passing through to Vik. Misty was good people after all.

“Reading about Buddhism at the moment, come sit with me!” she called pulling me over to the two chairs she had set up where she plopped me down. “How have you been?” She asked instantly and I smiled at her genuine interest.

“I’ve been okay. I had a talk with someone that… Well she’d been forcefully chipped chrome as well. Rita’s preem… Anyway she talked with me, and reminded me to actually do something for my spiritual needs that didn’t just lead to violence… I uh… started playing music, I bought a guitar…”

“That’s great Motoko! Music an amazing spiritual relief! You should play something!”

“I uh.. Didn’t bring my guitar, and I don’t think I’m ready for that… It’s embarrassing. Only Jun has heard me play so far. I’m still making mistakes and it’s kinda-”

“It sounds like you are having fun, no need to stress out about it.” She said gently reaching out and taking my hand to stop me from rambling a bit.

“Thanks Misty.”

It was all I could offer, and we both smiled a bit as we settled in to chat. I mostly listened as Misty discussed her interest in esoterica, and spiritualism. It was fun, soothing, and had nothing to do with the crazy Night City stuff.

So I spent a good hour just listening to her talk, and before I realized it she had even tricked me into a meditative stay with her lighting incense and walking me through my breathing.

I pretty much knew all of it thanks to Cool, and Ninjutsu, but it was kinda nice to do it outside of controlling myself for combat.

—--

“Hey Vik!” I called out after Misty finally let me go from her constant desire to worry about my spiritual and mental health.

She was fun.

“Motoko! Glad to see you kid, you’ve been dodging me.”

“Not purposefully! I’ve just been kinda… Busy… Sorry that’s not really a good excuse.” I offered in the end, actually pretty contrite. Vik was just trying to look out for me.

“Ah, you aren’t the first of my patients that are hard to get in for a checkup, c’mon take a seat I want to check on your arms, and you can tell me what finally brought you by.”

“You are way too sharp, Vik.” I mumble as I did as I was ordered and let Vik start checking out my shoulders and arms. Even popping open a hatch on the arms to diagnose them.

“So what brings you in kid?”

“I’ve been thinking about an upgrade… Upgrades… I’m just not sure I’m ready.” I admit quietly feeling a little uncomfortable mentioning it to Vik. “I want a new CyberDeck… But my arms messed me up pretty bad. I’m not sure I’m really ready for them. Even if I really do need an upgrade.”

“I see.” Vik murmured soothingly as he spent another moment staring at my screen. “Motoko, it’s very rare I get a customer that actually worries about too much chrome, even with all my warnings. I would definitely be worried about you for most things. If you wanted to get something big I would do my best to stop you. You aren’t ready for that.” He said and I couldn’t help but exhale as a tension left me.

Vik had said it. I wasn’t ready. So I could stop thinking about it. I didn’t have to keep wondering if I was being stupid for not chroming up even a little more.

I wasn’t David level stupid, but there were times I wish I had some Subdermal armor, or maybe Optical Camo.

But I could just let that go for now. I wasn’t ready. Doc Vik said so.

“But changing out a Deck isn’t difficult. I’ve never seen anyone have any issues from a simple swap. Do you have a deck in mind?”

I had to open my mouth and then close it and then answer with a bit of a blush. “Not really…”

“Heh. Well kid you’re at the right place, let me pull up some options for you. I don’t have much, especially anything that would interest you, but I can see if I can find something, or at least send you to another ripper that I know will.”

“Cool. Thanks Vik.”

“Anytime kid. Now about that sleep study.” He said with a grin and I couldn’t help but laugh as he was teasing me more than anything. But it was a thing I needed to do.

“Fiiine. How about now? I would rather get it done now, than keep putting it off.”

“Well that I can do.” He said with a smile as he started pulling down different pieces of tech around the ripper chair.

Interestingly enough. I was able to recognize most of it. That one was a X-ray machine, or more accurately a modern MRI machine. That one was a metabolic scanner, that one a mechanical sensor, it would keep an eye on my chrome and tell Vik if they did anything weird.

Cool.

After that we settled in and Vik went through a catalog of options for a netdeck. It was pretty comprehensive. Every Netdeck Vik had probably ever come across was on the list. As we searched through it.

The problem was cost to benefit. Of course I wanted a Tetratronic Rippler. But that was an ultra rare, and pricey piece of chrome.

So I set my price range, even if I couldn’t afford it right now, Regina would be paying me a pretty penny for Jotaro and I could afford it then.

Eventually I picked one that had Vik laughing at me. “Planning on breaking and entering are we?” He eventually asked as I pouted at him.

“I’m an infiltration specialist!” I whined but then pouted because I had to add in. “And I do break and enter a bit more than I think is right. I blame Wakako.” I added because the Seacho Electronics Mk. 2 Cyberdeck was a good deck.

Plenty of Ram. Four times what I had with my current Paraline. More Buffer, which means I could breach into better systems, and more Program Slots, for Quick Hacks.

But the real reason is because it had the honor of being the most commonly used Cyberdeck for Break-ins. It was built for stealth hacks, and even had an overclocked CPU so it could scan, connect, and upload a Quickhack much faster than its competitors.

It’s ten grand price tag hurt, but I would have enough that the cost wouldn’t hurt once Regina came through.

“Alright kid. I know a guy that should have one, I’ll put in some calls.”

“Perfect! Then I’ll take a nap. Ready?”

“One sec, I want to make sure I get this instant sleep function of yours. You don’t have any cyberware that should allow it, so I want to see what happens.”

“Sure Vik, oh actually I should do this too.” I mentioned whipping out my knife and giving myself a cut on my hip where my leotard and pants failed to quite match up.

“Motoko! Don’t do… Jesus kid you’re gonna give me a heart attack. Hold on.” He muttered grabbing some supplies and then to my amusement disinfected the cut and even put a loose bandage on it.

“I’ll keep an eye on it during the day, but really kid you shouldn’t hurt yourself like that. Alright sit back, scan is ready. Night night.”

I laughed at him as I set my sleep for eight hours and I was out.

—--

I blinked awake. Everything was slightly different. Vik wasn’t standing over me, but instead across the room.

And as always I was crystal clear and awake.

“Hey Vik.” I called out getting his attention as he looked away from the boxing match he was focused on.

“Hey Kid. How’d ya sleep?” He asked rolling back over and fussing over me as he started moving the scanners and things from around me letting me sit up.

“Fine, good as always. What’s the verdict?”

“I have no idea. I can tell you, that it took me a while to narrow down something. You got some Nano-machines in you. Not unusual, we all do at this point, but yours were elusive, couldn’t get a scan, couldn’t collect one. They would disappear the moment I tried. I can tell you that your healthy as an ox, and I don’t see any issues popping up. Whoever designed them? They are out of my league. It’s a shame. Could help a lot of people if we could figure out how to make them.”

I nodded along as Vik spoke. I expected most of that. It was a shame in some ways that he couldn’t figure out the sleep healing.

But I also felt relieved. The idea of other people becoming gamers in Night City? That was an apocalypse waiting to happen.

“Sorry Vik. I know you were kinda hoping.”

“It’s fine kid. I got lots of scans while you were sleeping, and at least… The cut is gone.”

“Hmm? Yeah I slept for eight hours.”
“But kid I’ve been checking on that cut every twenty minutes. It was still there not long ago.” He grumbled as he started checking his stuff spinning nobs, and putting a VR style interface over his eyes.

“Looks like about five minutes before you woke up, suddenly all the nanomachines I had been tracking around the wound, nearly instantly repaired the damage… Incredible. I have no idea how they did that…”

“Yeah I have to wait eight hours and then I heal. If I don’t sleep that long I don’t get any healing.”

“That doesn’t… Make a damn lick of sense.” He grumbled but nodded as he took off the headset. “Well with this I’ll be busy for the next while… Maybe I can get something out of these scans. Even if your nanomachines don’t like to be recorded.”

“Thanks Vik. Just make sure you keep this quiet okay? I trust you, but really I don’t want to end up on some corps experiment lab because of it.”

Instead of taking my joking request for a laugh he went very serious and nodded, reaching out and putting a hand on my shoulder.

“I promise kid. This stuff’ll be on my private server, No one will know about it.”

“That’s all I can ask Vik.” I said fully trusting the older man. “Did you happen to find a seller?”

“Hmm? Oh for your Deck? Yeah I called around a bit. Found a Ripper that has one. I’ll send you the details. Go on kid. I can practically see how antsy you are to get out of that chair. Feel free to bring the deck around when you want it installed.” He said without actually saying he didn’t trust the ripper to do it right.

I grinned as I hopped off the chair and did indeed rush out of there.

The eight hours may have passed in a flash, but it was still time I wanted to do stuff with! I had grinding to do! Playing music to do! I whistled a Foo Fighters song on my way upstairs. Time to get back to work!

 

[Seras]

I was back home setting up for some programming grinding since I still wanted to make my music box, when I got an incoming call from Jun.

*Hey Jun-Nii. What’s up?*

*Finally, I called you a few times this afternoon, where were you?*

I blushed a little when I noticed that I had alerts for missed calls. Okay Motoko you fucking boomer. You really need to remember to check your phone more often! I yelled at myself before answering Jun.

*I was with Vik, doing a sleep thing. He was giving me a check up but wanted me to stay for a bit so I took a nap. Sorry Jun-Nii. You okay? Need my help?*

*I’m fine Motoko just checking in on you. You weren’t home when I stopped by. Listen, I have a feeling you already know, but Jotaro Shobo is dead.*

*Waaa no waaay? Really? Oh man that’s terrrrrible.* I fake gasped to get a laugh but Jun wasn’t laughing.

*As far as anyone is concerned Jotaro was killed by the family of someone he… It doesn’t matter. But that’s what everyone is saying. Keep it that way. Motoko if you ever listen to me, then listen to me now. Never talk about Jotaro again.*

Jun was seriously worried. I frowned looking at my programming for a minute just to have something real to focus on.

*I promise Jun. It’s done. No point talking about it.*

*Good. Good… You know you can talk to me about stuff like this. I can protect you from anything Imouto, you just have to trust me enough to tell me.*

*I do trust you Jun. And you can trust me to protect you too. So if you ever need a hand.*

*I will call this scary sniper I know, yeah.* He said and I had to giggle at that. Sniping was like the least of my talents though. I wasn’t even that good at it. I was just sneaky.

*I have to go Motoko. I’ll be back in the morning, and we’ll talk more then. Just keep your head down for a bit.*

*Sure.*

The call clicked as it ended and I was left to refocus on my work. So the TC didn’t suspect me or at least the common members didn’t. Good.

Hopefully it will stay that way.

I put my hands back on the keyboard and started typing. I had a skill to level up.

—--

I was still only working on Ping as I had no other Quick Hack programs to mess with, and I didn’t feel confident enough in trying to create a program from scratch yet, when I got my second ding.

*Programming skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

“Yes!” I called out thrilled at the sudden burst of knowledge with Programming 2. Yeah I was definitely feeling a lot better about my programming, plus the perk meant I would have a serious advantage. Instantly I dug through the perk list. This perk would be supremely important to my future, because Programming was going to be a serious advantage in the future.

So I explored the options entirely. A few instantly popped to the forefront.

Inspired Programmer: Inspiration strikes constantly. Never run out of steam while programming.

It seemed kind of innocuous, but also secretly really powerful. Sure my system gave me knowledge, and I didn’t tend to get bored with whatever task I was doing, but constant inspiration would mean my programs come out better, come out faster. But it wasn’t the only one that caught my eye.

Debug: At a single glance, you will know what is causing your program not to work, or where the program can be improved.

Another extremely powerful sounding perk. It’s one thing to know programming, and it’s another to have confidence in being able to make it work. To figure out what was wrong…

The list went on, but I needed to decide. At Programming 2, I was still so new to the skill that a perk would make massive changes.

Did I want to make sure my programming worked? Or did I want to keep pumping out programs to level up?

It was two sides of the coin.

But I had to make a decision and so I did.

Debug. I decided to make sure what I was working with could work. It might not be the best, but the skill itself did give me knowledge on how to make the programs anyway. But making sure whatever I was working on would actually function would hopefully give me more XP in the long run than just pumping out Programming that was a mess.

Instantly I felt like I was some ancient programmer that debugged irritating students for a living.

But I knew.

I pulled out my Ping Quick Hacks details on the laptop again, and instantly I could see the absolute college programmer tier problems with it.

Made sense. The program was bottom of the barrel sludge ware. I could fix it though. At least somewhat.

That sense of knowing as always felt great, filled me with a sense of purpose.

My hands tore across the keyboard removing bloat, fixing leaks. Solving a problem that made the thing last half as long as it should in systems that aren’t resisting.

And to my delight each problem solved was a bit of XP.

With that the XP started racing in, as I was making honest real improvements to Ping. When I was done, I wouldn’t say it was quite at the level of an upgrade to its rarity in game terms, but I think I had actually reduced the RAM a Cyberdeck would need to run the program.

Which was impressive enough, since the program was already fairly light.

But I kept working on it. Tearing it apart piece by piece, line by line.

And a program, even one as simple as Ping wasn’t a small piece of code. The amount of systems it had to interface with, both external and internal as it had to use whatever optics you had installed to display the information it had gained?

The thing was overly complicated.

Which made me realize I could completely do away with most of it.

I tore apart huge swaths of the code reducing it so it would only work and display on my particular optics. Since it didn’t have to query or check for any other internal systems, the program slimmed right down. Practically reducing the actual program slot usage to almost nothing.

I realized that it was completely possible for Ping since it was much smaller than the juggernauts of the Quick Hack world to be reduced to a completely negligible size on my Cyberdeck.

I might actually be able to reduce it so much that it wouldn’t even use up the Cyberdecks slot count.

To always have Ping installed, ready and able? That would be supremely useful, and give me more utility.

I couldn’t help but laugh as I stepped away late in the afternoon to get a meal from the street vendors. I was right Programming was truly a weapon that I had to utilize.

I decided to step away from the apartment for a bit while I ate. I still had my Burya and Lexington on me, so I decided to walk around the block. Like I had done back when I was still grinding out my body. It was… Nice to go back to something so simple.

It reminded me that I needed to keep choosing to live my life how I wanted, and not be subconsciously afraid of Maelstrom Borgs around every corner.

I stuck the final bit of meat on a stick into my mouth, tossed the skewer into the trash and decided to move around a bit. Instead of heading straight home I went for a jog. First up further into Japantown taking the stairs up to the surface near Cherry Blossom Market. Then just around the shops along the strip malls trailing the roads.

Honestly I just had that urge to move. I had spent days grinding or planning murder, and only did a little bit of time outside while actually committing the murder.

I just wanted to be free of of it all for a bit.

I walked through crowds amused at how many of them were armed. And how easy it would be to kill almost all of them. It was amazing what just having a bit of skill and experience will do to someone. Sure everyone had a gun, but most of them would die before ever getting to use it in an emergency.

I shook that thought away. I had a benefit that no one else did, and there were still people better than me. I shouldn’t get arrogant. The fact was, I was only special because of a random blip of chance.

One in a trillion.

I didn’t know if there was a god in this world. I mean, chances were there actually was magic considering the Cyberpunk references in the Witcher.

But I wasn’t sure what great deity I should thank for my circumstances, so instead of picking one I just looked up into the sky for a moment, and sent a silent thank you into the air.

Because the fact was. I loved this life. With all the horrors and disgusting elements. Even without puppies.

Because I had power. And power gave me autonomy. I could choose what I wanted to do. Where I wanted to go.

In my last life I didn’t have that. Stuck in the same routine to survive. Now, if I ran low on eddies I could find a fixer and in a single afternoon make thousands of eddies while also making myself stronger.

The dopamine rush of improving yourself, and knowing you are getting better mixed with the freedom to do as I liked? Yeah I loved this crapsack world. I blinked as a drop of water landed on my nose. The sky had been cloudy all morning, and suddenly it started raining. I looked around. Noticing some people grabbed umbrellas out of bags and continued on with their day. Some ignored the water throwing hoods over their heads, or just walking through it without a care. Either too drugged, too chromed, or too indifferent to care.

Others hurried under overhangs or moved out of the open to get out of the water.

And there I stood. Letting the rain come down, and soak my hair as I watched the people all around me.

The water darkening the california sun, the people hurrying around neon shining off wet umbrellas and coats.

It might be a cyberpunk dystopia. But it’s my cyberpunk dystopia.

I continued walking through the streets just enjoying the ambiance of a rainy cyberpunk city.

I would think about grinding more. Killing more, and living more in a few hours. For now I was just enjoying the backdrop.

—---

The next day I got a call from Regina to meet.

I suited up, making sure I had some max-docs in my pockets just to be safe and headed out.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Regina.

…It was just that I didn’t trust Regina. Or rather I was cautious. I had sorta forced the gig on her, and I hadn’t been nice to her underling.

Pulling into a space near her building I walked up to the side entrance like before, but this time when I entered the little elevator room on the side of the building and hit the button Regina answered.

“Come on up.” The elevator came down moments later and I slipped in, the option was already pressed when I entered and it started moving upwards.

When the elevator reached the top I was in fact faced with two HMG turrets, both on and pointing. I readied myself. It wouldn’t be easy to survive if they both went off…

Okay even I would die if those two started firing at me in an enclosed space.

But instead they powered down after a moment and Regina turned the corner.

“Nice to see you face to face.”

“Nice to not have guns pointed at me anymore.” I mumbled but stepped out and took her offered hand.

“Just a precaution. It wouldn’t be the first time someone did a gig for me to try and get close enough to knife me.”

“Well luckily, I’m not here for that.”

“No, you aren’t. Payment for services rendered.” She offered her eyes flashing blue and a hefty chunk of eddies was dropped into my account. I couldn’t help the smile spread on my face. I would probably go hunt down that Cyberdeck once I was done here now.

“Walk with me.” She said after a moment leading me out of the broken down lobby and into a room with a massive window overlooking the city, she walked over leaned against the glass looking outwards.

I stood there for a few moments wondering what she was going to say, but the silence stretched on for a bit longer than was comfortable for me.

“Motoko Kusanagi. I’ve looked into you a bit. Spoke with Wakako. She speaks highly of you. I’ve only worked with her a few times thankfully. Never seemed to have a kind word for anyone, but you she did. I’ll be honest, I didn't expect for Jotaro to die. Not so quickly after you said you could. I definitely didn’t expect it to happen without anyone knowing who did it. TC leadership are convinced it was done at the behest of a family Jotaro murdered… They are all dead, just in case you didn’t know. I was working with the mother when she was picked up by Jotaros goons.”

Jotaro being a piece of shit and murdering an entire family? Color me not at all surprised. Still it was kind of nice for Wakako to talk me up. I’d have to stop by and thank her some time.

“Yeah I heard. My brother mentioned everyone thought it was the family of a victim that put out the hit.”

“And your skill meant no one had any evidence to say otherwise… You did good work. I have a contact with the TC, got me the report they put together about the kill. No evidence towards who could have done it at all. That isn’t something any street kid with a Lexington can pull off.”

I simply waited without saying anything. It was one of those statements that was more a question. Like everyone at first they want to know how a fourteen year old can act like a professional killer.

The silence stretched, my eyes didn’t blink more than happy to wait for her to actually ask something, or just move on.

She chuffed a soft laugh. “Fine. I may have some gigs for someone with your skillset. I already spoke to Wakako about poaching you, she told me to go die in a ditch, but agreed that I can offer you some gigs without stepping on toes.”

“I wouldn’t mind a few gigs.” I had to agree. A few fun gigs some more eddies, it would give me something to do.

“Excellent. Today is a face to face. I’ll reach out to you in the next week with a gig. Should be right up your alley. I have someone I need flatlined. I don’t think that will be an issue?”

“No. No problem. I’ll kill someone if the gig says I need to.” I answer simply. There was no point in trying to hide it.

I really didn’t have any emotional problems with killing people.

“Good. Then I’ll be in touch with you soon once I set the gig up… I’ll admit kid, you aren’t the normal type of merc I hire. But if I didn’t already know you had killed Jotaro… Even I wouldn’t have any idea who did it. I can use that skill. As long as it stays consistent.”

“Then we’ll be working together a lot in the future. Anything else?”

“No. Go on kid, enjoy your eddies.”

I headed back to the elevator, always keeping an eye on the reflection of Regina in the window, and then on the HMG turrets that were still shut down, but it would only take a second for them to turn on.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Regina… It was just I felt like she would stab me in the back if she thought it was useful. I had no real reason to expect it, but it was just a general paranoia. Whether it was good or bad, would be determined I suppose.

Only once I was back in my Quadra and driving down the street did I release a sigh.

Finally.

Time to go shopping!

—--

As I drove out towards the ripper that Vik had told me had my Cyberdeck I was more than happy to make this deal.

But then as I started walking up to the place the ripper should be. I had the wildest sense of deja vu

I found myself staring past the sign of the ripper dock, looking out into the water off the pier.

I glanced at the opposite wall. A big 6th Street tag which looked pretty fresh was covering the wall.

I knew this place.

I knew this place!

This was David's Ripper. That crazy fuck that had literally fucked David over by not giving him his meds after an operation.

But also a guy that afterwards had tried to help out David. A weird dichotomy of a man.

Either way, I knew how this fucker operated. He wouldn’t lay a finger on my meat or my chrome.

I shook away the ghosts of the future and stepped in.

“Looking for the Doc.” I called out noticing the room was dirty, I didn’t see him at first, only as his head popped out from behind his ripper chair did I notice what he was doing.

BD and masturbating…

Greeeeat.

“Oooh. And who is this? Looking for some chrome? Well I got the stuff alright.” He said his face shifting looking me over, his electronic eyes had already noticed my equipment. He hadn’t hesitated a moment before realizing I was here with eddies.

“Viktor Vector contacted you recently, about a Seacho Cyberdeck. You said you have one.”

“Oh that’s who you are, Viks chrome ey? Alright alright, come on in, I got what you want.” He said with a chuckle that I wasn’t sure if it was perversion or greed.

Fucking slimeball.

But after a few moments he pulled out a canister, cracked the seal and pulled the canister open showing the Cyberdeck resting in the cradle. Then before I could get a view he closed it down.

“Twenty thou for this beauty.”

“Bullshit. That thing isn’t worth more than fifteen, and we both know it. Vik even confirmed the price with me.”

“Twenty, these aren’t easy to come by anymore. Got another buyer, so the price went up.” He offered with a chuckle.

This fucker. Fine if he wanted to play fuck around games.

“No deal. I’ll go find another deck somewhere else then.” I said turning to leave the room.

“H-hey, hold your chrome, you won’t find another in the entire city! This little baby is worth the price.” He offered waving the canister at me enticingly.

“It’s worth fifteen grand max. If you want to sell it and have those eddies in your pocket right now, that’s the price.” I offered instantly. If it was any other ripper maybe I would have haggled but I didn’t want to deal with this guy in the first place.

“Tsk, no interest in bartering in the new generation.” He said but didn’t agree to the price. Instead he walked over and settled onto a chair waving the canister at me. “How about a deal, a few extras you can buy that might-”

“I’m only here for the Cyberdeck. If you aren’t going to sell it, I’ll delta.” I cut him off. I didn’t want anything this ripper was selling.

Other than my new Cyberdeck.

“Fine, fine. I’ll give it away at sixteen thousand. Since you’re here, and the other buyer isn’t. I mean it girl, you won’t find anyone else with one of these babies.”

“That’s robbery. I’ll throw an extra five hundred on, lowest I’ll go, offer me any other deal and I’m deltaing. I can find another Cyberdeck.”

“Hehe, Well I guess I’ll just have to take it then.” He offered chuckling but I wasn’t happy, before he could say anything I snatched it out of his stupid cyber hand.

“Hey!”

I popped the seal and looked it over, scanning it for any problems. To my surprise it was actually in good condition. I noticed a few problems, but just normal issues with Cyberdecks that had been used before.

I could actually fix most of them with a few minutes work if I felt up to it, but I bet Vik could as well.

“Now my eddies, and I’ll get that right in there for you.” He offered waving at his chair. Only his wasn’t anything like Viks.

It had a fucking bite bar.

“Pass. I have my own ripper.” I told him but my eyes went blue and I sent over the 15500 eddies, and walked out.

I felt like I needed a bath. But Vik first.

I wanted more RAM dammit!

—--

“Viiiik!” I called out as I spun into his downstairs clinic having leapt down the stairs and grabbed the hand rail to turn my momentum into a spin inside. “I got my Cyberdeck!” I told him holding up the canister in both hands to show it off.

“Heh!” The old ripper couldn’t help but laugh as he looked up from his laptop he had been mid email by the looks of it as I entered, seeing me practically bouncing on my toes to get an upgrade.

“Alright alright. C’mon kid let’s take a look. I’ll need to look over the deck before I install.”

“Definitely! The chip is in good condition, but it could use a good cleanup, and maybe a repair to one of the neural input. I noticed the connection was a bit tarnished.”

“Oh? Good eye. Heh or good eyes I suppose.” He teased looking up into my eyes before taking the canister from me and rolling across the floor. “Alright let’s see what we’re working with.” He muttered as he slotted it into his system and it instantly started doing a check on the deck, as well as a visual high def magnification on the circuitry.

Vik was cool.

I settled on the ripper chair beside him and pointed out the tarnish I mentioned only to see him use his tools to instantly clean it off, and even overlay a new gold overlay to ensure the connection wasn’t damaged.

“All cleaned up, and fixed up. You ready?” He asked teasing, but he did let his face relax a bit and asked the same question a bit more seriously. “You sure you’re ready?”

I hesitated but exhaled.

This wasn’t going to hurt me. It couldn’t. Nothing about me would change. I was I.

Motoko was Motoko.

My body was a piece of me, but wasn’t me. My soul. My ghost would not be harmed by something like this. Something so miniscule.

“Yes.” I said opening my eyes, my will firm and ready.

“Then let’s settle you back.”

 

[Seras]

I walked out of Viks clinic into a new world.

I could barely believe the difference a new Cyberdeck brought. The speed, the clarity.

The fact it was able to connect to my systems better. It wasn’t fifty year old tech trying to connect to modern Kiroshi, anymore.

The Seacho Mk. 2 wasn’t top of the line, but it was a specialist deck. Made for rapid instant break ins and uploads. It was more than three times the power of the Millitech just outright. And that was only the numbers, and the numbers didn’t tell the whole story.

It was new architecture. The difference of more than fifty years of improvements on the programming code…

Well fifty years was saying a lot considering the Data Krash pushed everything back so much the Paraline was even still being sold. But the Seacho was new. Responsive, and designed for someone like me.

In my old life, it would be the difference in RAM from going from a DDR2, to a DDR5 memory stick.

You could have both offer the same level of RAM, but the DDR5 was a different beast even with the same numbers.

I glanced at a vending machine, as I walked past, reaching down and scooping up the soda it dropped.

I didn’t even need to slow down. Didn’t need to hold my eyes on the machine as I breached through its ICE.

No.

I simply looked, and instantly the pointed knives of my attack slipped through all the defenses.

I stepped out onto the street. People traveling up and down the streets moved past me, but it didn’t matter. I was utterly focused on the netscape.

As I slipped through barriers, defenses, and peeked into their secrets.

This?

This was cool.

—--

I was feeling pretty good once I got home, but I had a lot of work to do.

First? I needed to level my programming skill up some more, because I wanted to do something crazy.

I wanted my own Quickhack.

That was my goal. I wanted to be the netrunner that creates their own tools, because I wasn’t some script kiddy playing around.

I was Motoko Fucking Kusanagi. I might not be The Major, but I would do her proud by not being a net moron.

So I took off my jacket, plopped my gloves on the table, stretched my fingers and got to typing.

Ping was still my target. I had managed to clean up a lot of the code, although now that I had a new deck I needed to adjust it again, the downside of slimming the program so much, but now it was a slim program that basically just did the one thing. It highlighted everything connected to the network, but I wanted it to do more than that.

It could do more than that.

First thing started adding to the program trying to make it harder to detect. Stealth was still my biggest advantage, and if I could ping a network without anyone noticing, even if there was an active netrunner that would be an advantage I couldn’t ignore.

I knew just enough about programming now that as I started writing code to try and hide the Ping network access that I knew it wasn’t going to totally work, but that wasn’t the point. I didn’t need perfect. I just needed code that I could improve, correct, rip apart and start again if I needed.

It was all about grinding, and even within just a few minutes of work, I got another alert.

*100 Programming XP Gained.*

Well that just meant I was on the right track.

—--

“Hey Jun!” I called out as I continued to type along. This bit of code was just not working, and it was driving me nuts!

Even my debug knowledge, while helpful, wasn't enough to fix it immediately. Although a sense of knowing had narrowed the bug down to just a small section of the code. Something here was wrong.

I knew it was wrong. I knew it wouldn’t work and would crash if I tried to use it, but I didn’t know why. I was down to reading through each line of code going through the section I just knew something was wrong at, luckily once I finished reading a bit of the code I could ignore it after.

The bug wasn’t in anything I had already checked. So I just had to keep reading down the lines till I find it.

“Motoko… You okay?”

“This bug is going to die Jun. I kill things for a living so I will eventually kill this bug too.” I told him as my fingers continued to thrash along the keyboard slowly line after line the code dropped down further and further. I was nearing the end now.

Ah.

That’s why! The port information was wrong. I had mistyped while going through it! A few moments later I finished the line and I knew it would work. The surety from Debug telling me this bit of code would work.

It wasn’t pretty. It was messy and there was a memory leak in there I was gonna need to work out.

But it worked.

*Programming skill level up!*

Programming 3.

“Whew.”

“Get it?” he asked as I glanced up. Jun had obviously made himself at home while I was focused, a burrito in his hands as he sat on the couch, beside me.

I honestly hadn’t even felt him sit down.

“Yeah mostly. It’s still garbage code, but it works, and it’s mine.” I told him with a smile as he nodded slowly, eyes on me as he ate his burrito.

“What?’

“You are so weird now. I’m proud of you, for actually sticking through it enough to learn netrunning stuff, but it’s still so weird to see you so focused.” He offered as he bit into his burrito and started chewing, eyes never leaving me.

I felt my cheeks heating up a bit.

“It’s just a useful skill… And it’s not boring exactly… I don’t really get bored as long as I’m doing something nowadays.” I had to admit. Fact was, that fully knowing you could improve just by slamming your face into something made boredom sort of a non issue. Like how someone can sit behind a computer and grind a stat in a video game, it was that same sense. Sure you had already killed a thousand goblins, but you only needed another four hundred and you would level your sword skill! That same sense of just a bit more to get there was nice.

“Well I’m glad. Maybe you’ll start putting out some useful programs, get rich and retire from all this crazy merc stuff.”

“Never!” I said with a sharp grin. “Even if I’m a bajillionaire I’ll still go out into the city and beat up gonks!” I cried out, chrome fist raised.

“Yeah. I know.” He said, not quite laughing but with a small smile on his face. “I’ll just have to keep getting dragged into your disasters to keep you safe.”

“You followed me last time! I didn’t drag you anywhere!”

“Sure.” He said disagreeing with me in tone as he reached out and patted me on the head a few times. “Whatever you say Imouto. Just make sure you tell me before you go do something crazy again.”

I huffed at him stupid Jun-nii! But since I was a generous little sister I decided not to kick him while he ate. I instead focused on the program infront of me.

It might be workable now.

But it wasn’t done.

And neither was I.

—--

After a few more hours of fixing the code that I just wrote, because as I leveled up, I already knew a few things I could do to improve it. I sat back. Jun was still sitting beside me, although he had moved around a few times since the last time we chatted. He was now on the floor instead of the couch cleaning his equipment. His Thermal Katana, currently getting a going over as he sat and worked over the blade.

I watched as he slowly wiped down the blade, he had already put it in a sharpener. The mechanical system rehoning the blade to a molecular edge.

Science katanas were pretty cool.

I should probably clean up mine too. I always did a little bit of work cleaning everything up when I was done, but my fingers were feeling a little itchy still.

So I pushed my laptop away, and instead grabbed my axe.

The guitar thrummed lightly as I hit some random notes, just a way to stretch out my fingers. The noise drew Juns attention as he looked up.

“Still interested in being a Rockerboy huh?”

“I just… It’s nice. To do something that has nothing to do with my merc work.” I told him honestly as I started strumming a little song. Nothing in particular. Instead just a mish mash of different songs and chords that I wanted to hear.

“Still no good at it.” He told me, teasing after a few minutes of me just playing around.

Outrage!

Vengeance!

I instantly started into the opening riff to Ballad of Buck Ravers. My eyes locked on Jun as I played ‘oldies’ just to punish my brother that had no taste.

His nose scrunched up as I started the vocals.

“Lost another day! To pointless drudgery!”

“Motoko, stop it. Play something good.”

I ignored his pleading, fully getting into it as I jumped onto the couch and started rocking out.

I mean sure one of the neighbors started pounding on the walls mid song, but the look of irritation on Jun's face was well worth it!

—--

That afternoon long after I had driven Jun away with my perfect rendition of Samurai… Okay it could still use some work, but it wasn’t bad anymore. I was actually fairly competent with my Guitar now.

My voice could probably still use some practice though…

Anyway, I got a call from someone I didn’t expect.

Ichi.

*Motoko. Hey, do you got a minute? I need… I need some help.* Ichi’s voice started as soon as I picked up even before I could say anything.

*What? Of course Ichi, what’s wrong?*

*Jotaro Shobo is dead. Murdered at the Ho-oh… I don’t… I don’t have a job anymore.*

*Yeah I heard about that from Jun, but what do you mean you don’t have a job?*

*Shobo needed people to haul stuff around, the new owner of Ho-Oh doesn’t. Anyway, listen. I know you're crazy and stuff… You don’t happen to have some work I can back you up on? You know I’m not amazing with iron, but I’m a good driver. I can-*

*Whoa whoa Ichi slow down. I’m more than happy to work with you if you want, but what’s going on? You’re sounding freaked* I told him, and he did, he sounded stressed as fuck.

*I never told you, I… My parents are deadbeats. I don’t even see them, but I live with my Grandmother. She’s old Motoko. Can’t really work anymore, but I can’t just… I pay the rent and buy food and stuff, but without my job with Jotaro I don’t…*

Shit.

Shiiiiit. This was my fault. I hadn’t even considered the repercussions of killing Jotaro on my choom…

Okay it didn’t matter I still would have killed him, I like Ichi, but his comfortable job wasn’t worth the monstrous shit Jotaro did, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t responsible here.

*The TC won’t give you work? I mean, you did great during the war right?*

*Motoko, the war is over. There were a lot of drivers that don’t have a job anymore. The old timers can go back to their old jobs, the ones that made a name for themselves, can get pulled in under a boss, but Jotaro was my boss. He was the only one that would speak for me. I’m… I’m back to square one.*

Ouch. That actually sucked.

*Well… It’s a good thing you got your good Choom Motoko then! Forget the TC Ichi. They pay shit, and your boss was a psycho. Motoko Mercenary Jobs pay way better!* I told him proudly.

Then he laughed.

*You certainly haven’t changed… But listen I don’t have a lot of eddies right now. Do you have anything I can help with?*

I hmmed as I considered the problem. First off. I really didn’t. It wasn’t like I had a bunch of scav…

*Hey Ichi. You got around a lot in the city during the war right?*

*Yeah I traveled all over.*

*Then do you know where like all the rippers in the City are?*

*All? No, probably not. I know most of them though. Jotaro… Well he had deliveries to different rippers…*

*Yeah he is a monster let’s move past that. He is dead. Knife to the throat. Terrible way to go. Listen, I need to find a specific Ripper. I don’t know exactly what his name is or anything, but I caught a rumor that a Ripper is working with the scavs… In other words people going to him for work sometimes disappear, and their chrome ends up in scav hands.*

*Fuck.*

*Yeah, buuuut, if we find him, and confirm it, I can smash the scavs kill the ripper and end up with a whole lot of premium chrome and equipment. I’ll need someone who can clear out a base for me. Collect the loot. You wouldn’t happen to know a guy?*

*I know a guy.* Ichi said, sounding excited. I could practically hear the cash register noise going on in his mind.

*Cool. So how about you come by. We’ll go hit all the Rippers you know. If I see the place I’ll know which one.*

*Really? Just by seeing it?*

*C’mon Ichi. How many scavs do you think I’ve killed? I can practically smell them.* I told him with a laugh which he shared.

We agreed to meet up and drive around. If Regina, or Wakako weren’t going to get back to me soon enough. I’ll just make my own Gigs! With chooms! And rippers!

—--

Although Ichi did come around in his truck. I pulled him into my Quadra instead. This was just reconnaissance after all.

It was funny, it actually didn’t take me long to find the right place.

The only thing I remember about the quest after wracking my brain about it was that I ended up gaining the quest in the game while I was around Kabuki Market. The big roundabout that had the Dewdrop Inn.

So I knew it had to be around there.

With Ichi’s help, mostly his street knowledge, and helping navigate the side streets. We only stopped at two other Rippers before we came to a ripper shop setup in an alley that was twigging me hard.

When we walked in. I was already sure about it.

“Welcome! How can I help today? Need some new Chrome?” He asked Ichi as he entered in front of me looking very excited, until he noticed me following in.

The multiple weapons I was carrying including my thermal Katana had the guy instantly looking nervous.

Ichi followed through on what I told him, our little plot to make sure it wasn’t weird we were walking in.

Of course the fact he was blushing a bit made it all the funnier.

“I’m… I’m looking for a Mr. Studd.” he said in the most dead inside voice I had ever heard from the boy.

I pointedly wasn’t looking straight at Ichi…

But I was still recording it. This might be a more private BD, but I was planning on bribing Judy and getting this one done so I could share it with the crew.

Malcolm was going to DIE when he saw this. And Hiromi would never leave Ichi alone.

“I uhhh. Yeah I have a few models. Come on in son, and this is… Your girlfriend?”

“Pimp.” I offered instead making Ichi turn on me, his face gaping in utter horror at my words. “Make sure my little guy gets something packing okay?” I said Cold Blood cranked up to maximum the only reason my face wasn’t breaking down into absolute mirth at the look on Ichi’s face.

“Wha! Motoko!”

“Uhhh?” The Ripper sounded confused, looking a little surprised at the way this entire conversation was going.

“Fine, fine. You win the 50 eddies. Sorry Doc, just a prank on my choom here. Nice place, next time I get some chrome… I’ll know where to come.” I told him as I walked back out of the office leaving a stupefied Ripper and an angry Ichi following after.

Blackmail… Get!

—--

“It’s not funny.” Ichi growled at me.

“It totally is, and it means that doc won’t think twice about us until it’s too late.”

“I really doubt us going in, browsing and walking out is going to cause him to wonder either.”

“It would, since you have no poker face and it looked like you were trying to case the place, now it just looks like you were embarrassed.”

“I AM embarrassed!”

“Well don’t worry. That Doc is the one. He’ll be dead soon and no one but me will ever know.” I lied blatantly.

“Motoko… Why did you just lie to me.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about Ichi.”

“You pointedly looked away from me, and weren’t able to stop grinning when you just said that. That’s your lying face.”

“Hmm nope. Doesn’t sound like me. C’mon let’s go call everyone. More hands will make clearing that place way easier.”

“Motoko!”

“Oh look a call!” I told him as I quickly called Malcolm to invite him to the gig.

This was going to be fun!

 

[Seras]

Funnily enough we were all at the Ho-oh club that night.

Even Hiromi made it!

Of course the place was wildly different right out the gate. There were still a bunch of TC guys but the atmosphere had changed. It was more relaxed, and there were signs up, talking about opening of the upstairs areas.

Apparently the private TC second floor was opening up soon to bring more attention to the bar.

I honestly didn’t want to meet up here, but it was kinda the closest club to everyone's home.

And despite my knowledge about Jotaro most of the others had no idea. I guess since he was dead it was fine now.

“So here is the gig.” I whispered, sending everyone a text message with the details I had put together including the address and pictures of the building.

Both back and front. Ichi and I had driven around, enough that I had confirmed the scav base below as well. I let them read the little snippet I had put together and everyone was nodding along as they read through.

“So what’s the cut for everyone?” Malcolm asked before even finishing the brief.

“Fair split between everyone, excluding any Chrome that someone wants to chip. Just like last time, but this time we’ll be looting more thoroughly. There should be Ripper equipment we can klep for example.”

“Who are we selling to?” Hiromi asked, breaking in as Malcolm was practically bursting at the seams at the idea of all the eddies.

“I haven’t got that far yet?”

“Gonk. Nope. We aren’t doing that again. Fine. I’ll make some calls, and find buyers. Motoko. Send me your Fixers number as well. You know Wakako right? She might have some buyers as well.” Hiromi demanded as her eyes went gold and she sat back as she started calling…

Someone?

Wow Hiromi was pretty cool. I sent her a text with Wakako’s number and refocused on the boys.

“How much loot are we looking at Motoko?”

“Honestly? No idea. But that’s the thing. We clear this place, and if I do it fast enough, maybe I can pull some information on another den. I would like to be able to just keep hitting them.”

“That’ll piss off the scavs. Like seriously piss them off, they come after you. After us.”

“Not if we do it without anyone knowing.” I told him firmly. “I go in clear them as quietly as I can, if I do my job right, no one fires a bullet, no one finds out until the place is empty and we are long gone. I’ll trash any recordings of what happened. I got an upgrade.” I told him tapping the back of my head where my Cyberdeck is installed.

“Okay but what if you do get seen, and word gets out?”

I opened my mouth to assure him that wouldn’t happen before closing it.

“Okay. I don’t wear my normal gear. I’ll suit up in something new. We all will. Masks and everything. Your Villefort Columbus Truck isn’t exactly unique either.”

“It’s the most common moving truck in Night City.” He said, rolling his eyes. “And that was done on purpose… It was Jotaro-samas' idea, drive around in a vehicle no one would look twice at.” He said, sounding a little sad.

Ugh. Ichi don’t feel bad about that bastard!

“Well it works for us! So we go buy some gear first, and then we’ll be good to go.”

“I don’t have the eddies for that.” Malcolm said outright. “I’ve been out of work for a few weeks since… Well since the war and stuff.”

“Not exactly doing great either.” Ichi agreed, and I nodded.

“Not to worry chooms. This is a business expense, and will come out of the company expense account… I’ll pay for it, you can pay me back later, or not. I don’t really care.”

“Motoko. I’m not gonna just take-”

“I’m not gonna steal from a choo-” They both started arguing but I waved a hand at both of them to shush them.

“We’ll make ten times whatever I pay for the gear we need on the loot, and I can’t make much just by myself. You guys bring the truck, and the looting experience. So I’ll pay for this. You pay with your truck, and Hiromi I guess is paying by taking care of the least important stuff.” I add right at the end teasingly, as I noticed Hiromi’s eyes turn back to normal as her call ended.

The fact she kicked me hard in the shin a moment later was totally worth the look of outrage on her face.

“Motoko!” She snapped at me making me giggle up a storm as even Ichi and Malcolm started chuckling along.

“Sorry sorry! You finding buyers is super important. Find anything?”

“Not yet. I was talking to… I was calling my dad for advice. I hope that doesn’t bother you Motoko, I did tell him what we are doing?”

“I winced a little but in the end shrugged. “I highly doubt a small ripper doc and some scavs will interest your dad at all. So I think we’re good. What did he say?”

“He’s gonna give me a shard on marketing that I apparently need to study now.” She grumbled glaring at nothing. “But he did give me some advice on who to contact from Arasaka intel that he has access to. So yeah we have some options. He suggested I know what I’m selling before I start calling around though.”

“Great! So we go, clear it out, and then Hiromi can find us buyers! This is gonna be so much fun!” I cheered getting looks from everyone at the table.

They just didn’t understand why raiding scavs was fun because they were boring and afraid of ‘bullets’ and stuff. It’s fine. More fun for me!

—--

Obviously I wasn’t going to rush into this. So even as the sun was going down. We were all heading away from Ho-oh club towards a certain little shop I know.

We entered in through the front. The guard was still around. The LMG in his hands deadly but after we entered he went on to ignore us as I walked up to the little old asian lady that I had bought my Leotards from.

“Oh? Back again, and with friends?”

“I need some work done. Or at least supplies. I’m wondering if you can help me out?”

She looked over the little oval glasses she was wearing at the four of us before beckoned us into the back of her shop.

“Let’s talk what you need.”

—--

Three hours later we were actually getting close to being done. I had paid for a rush job since we were all here and had the time at the moment.

Between machines, the old ladies' incredibly fast stitching and machine work, and me quickly starting to help out which surprised her, I got my crew all specced out.

Hiromi had even headed out to grab some new boots and supplies for everyone to go along with it.

They weren’t netrunner suits exactly. More just heavily armored clothing.

But they were tight, dark colored, and looked pretty cool. All of us would even match!

I mean sure I had considered going for the three piece suit look. Can’t beat a classic look! But considering only corpos wore anything close to that we would stand out, and the goal was to try and stand out as little as possible while staying protected.

Even if we were in matching clothes.

“Done.” The lady mentioned pulling out a final jacket piece out of the machine looking it over and throwing it at Hiromi.

With that we were all done. Boots, armored pants and armored shirt and jacket.

It looked pretty generic, but it was armored clothing, and would give us some anonymity.

“Thanks Oba-san.”

“Bah. Pay me first then thank me.” She barked at me with a chuckle as I nodded quickly and did just that.

The payment was… Hefty. I was really lucky I had gotten Reginas eddies otherwise that would have broken my bank.

“Now I don’t know what you are planning. Nor do I want to. I never helped you. Get out.” She ordered, waving at the door and we all gathered up our leftover clothes and rushed out towards the cars.

Hiromi jumped in to ride with me in the Quadra as we all split off.

Preparation almost complete. Soon we strike!

—--

“What are you wearing?” Jun asked as I was standing in the bathroom looking at the mirror making some adjustments to my new outfit.

“It’s my new secret killer outfit… I found a scav den attached to a Ripper doc. We are going to clear the place out and loot it to the bedrock, but we don’t want anyone knowing it’s us.” I told Jun as I kept working on my stitching.

I needed to make sure it fit right. It would be really annoying if not.

“Okay Ninja girl.” he said and I quickly spun around throwing my hands into a ninja handsign as I did.

“Nin-Nin!” I told him seriously. What I had been working on was a face mask, a ninja mask specifically. I had spent a little extra at the old ladies shop and bought some really breathable cloth so I could make it.

“You look like a dork. What’s with the fingers?”

“My secret Ninjutsu!”

“Embarrassing.”

“Ehhh! Secret Ninjutsu! MOTOKO KICK!” I called out rushing towards him but Jun knew a bad fight and instead of fighting back turned and ran. My kick missed by a mile, but that wasn’t enough to stop me!

“Secret Ninjutsu: Burrito throwing knife!”

“Burrito wha-Urk” Jun in his haste to flee had left the wrapped XXL burrito on the kitchen counter, I of course made due with my improvised weapon that smacked right into my brothers face as he turned to see what I was doing.

“Motoko!”

“Hahaha! Pretty Princess Ninja Motoko wins ag-urk!” That of course was the sound of my borg brother tackling me onto the hard tile of the kitchen.

Lesson learned. Leave Juns burritos alone he gets touchy about it.

—--

Once I finally fought off the Oni I had nearly 24 hours before the gig was set to begin. Without any other prep I could get into at the moment.

So I pulled out my guitar and started thrashing. Letting all the nervous energy flow into it.

Yeah I was a little nervous. It was one thing being on a gig solo, but even if I wasn’t planning on having my chooms involved until the end, that still meant they were there.

One wrong move and they would get involved trying to help, so I put the energy into the guitar.

It was nice.

“I'll burn it down!” I yelled out the last line. Franz Ferdinand isn’t usually my taste, but it was an official Cyberpunk song. This Fire, was an alright song. I didn’t hate it. Plus it fit the energy I was feeling.

*Rockerboy skill level up!*

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

I caught my breath as I checked my stats. Rockerboy 5 huh? That was pretty fast, but then again. I was playing song after song whenever I wasn’t grinding something else.

I think mostly it was my general disinterest in most of the TV shows in the future.

They were weird! So I didn't want to watch them. One episode of just about anything was enough for me to burn out on it.

But I knew what perk to pick. My biggest problem with music now wasn’t song list, or playing.

It was singing…

Listen! I just never really learned how to sing! It’s more complicated than just singing along while driving down the road or something you know?

So I picked the perk I had almost picked last time.

Siren Song: You control your voice. You can sing. Croon like Sinatra, or Rock like Silverhand. You know how to get the most out of your voice.

I shivered. Rockerboy had given me some singing lessons, even if it felt like they fell behind the actual musical knowledge… It was like knowing how to sing a note, and knowing how to sing a song. They weren’t exactly the same.

I reached up to my throat, swallowing down almost like I had something caught in my throat, but it was just…

How I was holding the muscles in my throat. I knew how to actually modulate my voice now. How to sing, how to breath and exhale while singing…

Hell, I knew how to mimic voices now.

That made me blink.

Could I? I looked around the room there wasn’t a mirror anywhere so I hurried to the bathroom looking at myself in the mirror. A mirror of a mirror.

I had mirrored myself in a way. Motoko Kusanagi. A story book character that I had practically become. Similar eyes, same hair, hell same build, even if mine was meat and not chrome for the most part.

Honestly there were times I forgot that I was basically playing pretend.

But was I? It wasn’t any different than someone deciding to wear the same clothes as some celebrity, or the same haircut.

I just also shared a name, well and a burgeoning skill set, but that was going to happen anyways. But this?

Might be a liiittle too far. If anyone found out it would be so embarrassing…

“The net is vast and infinite.” I spoke, but it wasn’t my voice. Oh no. It was husky and mature, and I could feel my face flush in delight and embarrassment.

I cleared my voice and decided I could do it, saying a line I remember from the show. “Batou not more weight training equipment! Blowing your pay is one thing… Oh god I can’t do it. Sexy Motoko voice is too much!” I still remember that scene where Motoko makes Batou punch himself, it was one of my favorites! But to be able to literally copy her voice! Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Sorry I took your voice for a minute!

I’m such a weeb! OMFRGL! I buried my head in my knees for a moment, trying to keep making any more noises of embarrassment.

I relaxed my throat letting my voice go back to normal. “Okay. I’m gonna have to put a ban on sexy Motoko voice. That’s a secret dangerous skill.”

“What is?” Jun asked having come out of his room at some point as he pulled open the fridge.

“Nothing! You didn’t hear anything! You can’t tell!” I screamed at him even pulling up my guitar which I still had strapped to my hip and pointed it at him.

Would I knock Jun unconscious if he knew…

Yes. Yes I would.

He blinked at me as he reached in and grabbed a drink pulling the can out and popping the tab in one motion before taking a looooong sip.

“Motoko. Imouto. You’re really weird.” He finally said, crushing me in a totally unexpected way.

I gaped at him as he walked away.

“You destroy your little sister's self esteem and just walk away!?”

“Yep.”

That bastard! Tease me will he! Fine, I will just have to release my new secret skill. For revenge!

I stepped out of the bathroom after him. Waiting for him to be almost into his bedroom when I spoke, but not in my voice. No, the Major's husky words poured forth.

“Jun, you should be nicer to your little sister. You never know when she’s going to grow up.” I pointed out and I enjoyed the way my words affected my brother.

First he had stilled at the unfamiliar voice searching around until he saw me and then he was left gaping this time!

“What the fuck?”

“Ah-ah Jun-boy. Those are naughty words.” I told him still in my Sexy voice.

“Motoko!? What the fuck?”

“What’s wrong Jun-nii? Is there something bothering you?” I asked my smirking growing wide.

Tease me will he! Make fun of me will he!

I have skills! All of the skills!

“Motoko, that's super creepy.”

“Hmm? Is that so?” I asked him before reaching up and messing with my throat a little. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.” I told him in my normal voice.

“Don’t do that again. That’s creepy! Where did you even learn to do that?!”

“What’s wrong Jun? Is your little sister growing up scaring you?”

Funnily Jun didn’t answer, just sort of throwing up his arms and then pointing at me and shaking his hand in my direction as if saying enough was enough.

“Sleep tight~!” I said, returning to my sexy voice which had Jun swiftly run away.

Victory is mine!

Now who's weird!? Huh!? Huh… Actually. Messing with my brother with a sexy mature voice…

“Fuck… I AM weird.” I muttered.

 

[Seras]

I ended up practicing some songs for another hour or so to see what my new voice could do, before Jun threw a pillow to shut me up.

But while I couldn’t Mimic all voices, I had a pretty large range and so some songs I could even sing in character.

It was fun!

But since Jun was going to sleep I settled in to do more programming through the night.

Like all programmers I ended up going out and getting some coffee and then piling the coffee table full of old cups as I worked on the keyboard.

“Motoko. Did you even sleep?” Jun asked as he shuffles out of his room that morning.

“Not yet. I’ll take a nap in a bit.” I told him, which wasn’t untrue. A good eight hours would soon be on the horizon meaning I would be at 100% for the gig.

“Well… Make sure you sleep. You said you were going out on that gig… I can come wi-”

“Denied. This is a Motoko crew only thing. It’s gonna be a milk run Jun. Just some scavs that need to be exterminated.” I told him throwing a thumbs up towards him without looking away from the screen. “Plus if anything goes wrong, Ichi, Hiromi, and Malcolm will be there as backup.”

“Didn’t Hiromi crash her bi-”

“Juun! You can’t repeat that! I told you that in confidence!” I hissed at him pointing. “Besides, Hiromi is like the fixer for this job. She’s going to be contacting buyers for the loot. So she doesn’t have to fight.”

“I wish you wouldn’t pull this shit… But you do have the skill… Take some extra firepower at least. For your chooms or something.”

“Oh that’s a good idea. I’ll grab some stuff and bring it along!” Too bad my HMG was still in rough shape. I really needed to fix that thing.

“Alright…” he sighed “I can’t stick around. Call or text me when the gig starts, and then when it’s over. If it takes too long. I’ll be coming!”

“Okay okay. I’ll let you know. Now get out of here. You got work?”

“Just some stuff with Sensei today. We are removing all the stuff the TC put in to the dojo.”

I blinked before remembering the underground room full of tech, and the Ripper room. I guess it made sense. The place was basically the C&C for the Kamikaze. Pulling it out now that it wasn’t in use, and clearing up Sensei’s Dojo made sense.

“Alright drive safe!” I called out, only getting a grumble in return.

—--

I was back to working on Ping trying to get my little addition working when it happened.

*Intelligence Leveled up!*

I blinked.

Level 7!

“Yes!” I cheered as the level up came in, I guess all my programming had finally given me an upgrade!

I settled back down and I did actually notice a difference as I worked. I hadn’t been able to really notice a difference between intelligence levels before, but this time? This time since I was programming before and after I could pick out the differences.

It wasn’t that I was just smarter. But I did process information faster! I could look at a cluster of code and process through it that bit faster than I had before. The numbers were able to be calculated just that little bit faster.

It was nice.

But I pushed that aside. It didn’t really change anything. Just made it a little bit easier. So I spent the next hour or so debugging the code.

It would work.

It was messy. It wasn’t clean. But it would make Ping a little bit harder to track if I used it on a network. Stretching out I uploaded the completed program into my Cyberdeck and shut the laptop down.

Time for a nap!

—--

“You all look great!” I told the crew as we met up. We were all meeting up at Hiromi’s apartment complex. Funnily enough the security there meant that it was actually pretty safe to gather together in our armored clothes before the gig. Sure there were cameras, but if you knew anything about Night City, you knew that anyone in a Corp isn’t going to want records of their coming and going.

So the garage was pretty safe.

We all met up around Ichi’s truck, I was the last to show up much to my embarrassment. Thankfully Hiromi distracted me from being late.

“What’s with your mask Motoko?” Hiromi asked and I eye smiled as the bottom of my face was covered in a cloth ninja mask.

I was pulling a Kakashi!

“I’m a ninja Hiromi. Nin-nin.” I told her happily.

“Nin-nin? What the fuck is that?” Malcolm asked just confused, and so was everyone else.

“And three fourths of you call yourself japanese. Disappointed.” I tell them all frankly. “Now enough about my amazing ninja outfit. Let’s go over the plan again.” I said grabbing everyones attention.

I had planned this last night.

I had wanted to mess with my friends to work off some of the anxiety. So I coughed lightly into my fist. Altering my voice to my Sexy Motoko.

“Attention Section 9. Mission brief begins now.”

And then I stood there enjoying the lovely chaos.

Hiromi’s jaw dropped.

Malcolm looked utterly confused. Looking around as if wondering what the hell was going on.

Ichi had a flush crawling up his neck to his ears as she stared at me.

“Oh? Cat got your tongues?” I mocked a little, putting a hand on my hip and cocking it a bit. “I suppose I’ll hav-Hiromi!”

“Mooootokooo! Did you get a voice changer!? Your new voice is so sexy! Amazing!” Hiromi called out after tackling me, nearly knocking me on my ass as I had to spin her a bit to bleed off her momentum.

“It’s certainly… Mature.” Ichi offered.

“Is Motoko fucking with us?” Malcolm added.

“I’m not, not fucking with you.” I offered to Malcolm, and I got to enjoy the way his face got a little flushed too as I threw him a wink.

“I’ve never heard that voice before. It’s pretty good. What’s it called?” Ichi asked a little too calmly.

“Well fortunately for me. It’s not a voice changer.” I pulled down my ninja mask showing my unchromed neck. “I just learned how to change my voice a little. It’s mostly in the chest, breathing differently, to make me a bit deeper and huskier.” I offered with a casual shrug. Once you knew the trick it really was pretty easy.

My answer did not in fact calm things.

I ignored the many questions from my chooms as I coughed into my fist. “Let’s all settle down now. We have a gig to do don’t we? Malcolm. Ichi everything settled with the truck?” I prompted cutting through the many questions, and my voice did grab attention.

“A-ah yeah I messed with the license plate. As long as we don’t run past any NCPD we’ll be fine, and any recordings will have the wrong plate.”

“Excellent. Malcolm, you got the equipment loaded?”

“Yeeep.” He said staring a bit but shaking it off. “The trolleys and loading tools are all in there ready for us.”

“Hiromi, ready for boredom?”

“Yeeees.. I mean no?” She asked, looking a little frazzled as she was still hugging me.

I smiled at her, and patted her on the head. “Good job.” I told her and turned towards my car. “I have some extra weapons if anyone wants something with a bit more kick. I doubt we will need them, but I would rather you have them just in case.” I called out as I pulled away from a suddenly limp Hiromi.

“Uh yeah I’ll take something. I only have my normal iron. Wasn’t any reason to pick up something bigger during the war. If I got into a fight I was fucked already.” Ichi called out and Malcolm echoed him as I pulled open the side door on the Quadra showing my collection of shotguns and rifles. The Nekomata was there too, but I was gonna slap anyone upside the head if they went for that.

You have to be trained to use a sniper.

Hiromi didn’t collect anything but the two boys each grabbed a shotgun.

“H-hey Motoko… Are you gonna use that voice from now on?” Hiromi asked quietly but I laughed, which sounded pretty cool in sexy Motoko voice.

“No. This was just a little trick I was playing on all of you to calm you all down for the gig. Unfortunately, Sexy Motoko voice is going away.” I said relaxing my throat and stretching it a bit with a hand. “See? Back to normal.”

“Aww.” Hiromi whined and even Ichi and Malcolm looked disappointed.

Of course! The Major's best voice is definitely an amazing voice! I’m almost sorry to go back to my normal voice too!

“Alright everyone! Section 9! Move out!”

“Section 9?” Malcolm asked and I could see Ichi just shrug out of the corner of my eye. I ignored them of course and climbed into the back of the truck with Malcolm.

Hiromi and Ichi were driving, and Malcolm was the one with experience in the back of these trucks.

And so we set off.

—--

“Seriously though Motoko, that voice is pretty preem, especially since you can just switch like that.”

“Malcolm, it’s been ten minutes. Let it go already.” I told him. I guess my plan to distract my team went a little… Too well.

“Here it is… But seriously, the voice!” He whispered to me as we bounced lightly down the road.

“Just keep focused.” I told him as I kneeled down. My recording of the gig started, and as the truck passed across the spot I rolled out of it landing on my feet and with a quick jog slowed myself down as I ran up a set of stairs into the alley. I reached the back entrance of the Scavs den in moments.

The sun was down. The lights were dim in this area, and no one noticed a lone truck just driving down the street.

Ichi would drive around the building parking near the front entrance until he got the call. Until then I was on my own.

Looking around and being pleased there was no one around. Not even cameras or anything. A little dead spot…

Probably set up like that on purpose I realized.

My eyes flashed as I started scanning. As I slipped inside the door not even taking a second to get through.

It looked like an old chopshop. A busted up car that was half taken apart stood in the little garage area.

Figures scavs would hide in such a place.

No sign of them being scavs… Yet.

But I already knew. I just wanted ‘evidence’ on the BD. In fact. The garage bay was empty, both floors, and I made sure to look up checking for cameras and things just to be sure.

Nothing.

I smiled as I crept up and looked through the windows on the garage, the Scavs had a nice little living space. A few were hanging around watching TV, one had a Wreath on his head…

I would definitely be killing him mid BD, he was practically begging for it! But not yet.

I started counting. Getting my numbers. Unlike previous gigs, I wasn’t going to kill as I go.

I was going to know exactly how many scavs I needed to murder before I started. They wouldn’t know I was here until it was too late.

Instead of heading into their living area I moved to the yellow utility stairs leading to the second floor overlooking the garage area. It also wrapped around leading into a second floor of the living space. No one was here. So it was literally giving me full access to everything they were doing. Following along there was a door I checked.

Small storage. Nothing immediately interesting. I continued. Down a hall to another little room that had the normal interior stairs. Since no one was up here. I checked the door.

Another storage closet.

Was this place all storage closets!?

But then I noticed the security access panel on the wall. I closed the closet door behind me as I jacked in.

It was a rush. The Seacho was a whole other beast compared to the Paraline. The moment I connected I could practically smell the lack of a Netrunner protecting the place, and I broke through the ice in seconds.

It was WET. One of the already solved ICE walls that I had picked up from Yoko! These idiots hadn’t upgraded their security in at least twenty years!

With that I had access to their security net.

I also was able to send a Ping through the system.

Instantly lines of light erupted in my view.

Ten Scavs?

Might as well sleep through this gig.

With them all in my sights I felt extremely comfortable moving around.

I traveled across the weird upper level this place had, letting me look down at the stupid scav gonks and their day to day. I even zoomed in on one of them playing some game on a laptop. Watching for a minute before he failed a jump and died.

“Pathetic.” I couldn’t help but whisper. The radio, TV, and general noise of people on electronics, more than enough to keep my voice hidden.

But as I traveled across I noticed it. There was another set of stairs in the corner behind me.

Heading down. I had scoped out this entire area, and there was no scav shit up here. Just scavs.

Some of which did have bounties…

I could just start killing…

No I instead moved back across the catwalk, finding a space that would work. I jumped down to avoid some of the wandering scavs and reached the basement stairs in a quiet pomf of noise before sneaking in. The stairs led into a broken room, with the plastic strips that were often used in Night City to stop blood splatter.

The fact there was a body broken open and ripped apart on the chair was evidence enough of what happened here.

Okay. I got confirmation.

There was no one down here. Perfect. I slipped over to the body bypassing it until I reached a computer that was stationed nearby. It took a bit longer to break the ICE on this one. It was newer, but off the shelf, without a netrunner protecting it, it only took me a minute before I was in.



While I pushed a shard into the computer setup, and started downloading everything. Emails. Connections. I even hacked in, and started downloading the OS records. There would be nothing on this computer that I wouldn’t have.

I was reading the emails, making sure that Charles was the nasty guy I expected him to be. That this wasn’t something he was being blackmailed to do. I would still kill him if he was being blackmailed, but I would feel slightly bad about it.

But nope.

I had read enough to confirm his participation.

Then I unplugged. Pocketing the shard. Time to roll.

I stalked back upstairs. Thanks to Ping I already knew where everyone was.

Nine Scavs hanging around the living room. And Charles the ripper behind me. Turns out he was hooked into the security net as well. Made sense.

But he would be last.

First gonk died from surprise loss of the ability to breath through all the blood flooding down his neck. I dropped his body, I didn’t need to hide bodies simply leaving him on the floor where he had been walking towards a table to grab some grub.

*500 XP Gained.*

There wouldn’t be anyone left to find them soon. Next guy was BD Wreath guy. As was tradition I took him out just as quickly and moved on.

*500 XP Gained.*

Third and forth died together. They were watching TV like a married couple. I had a spare knife now thanks to a Raffen Shiv member, and my knife and ‘shiv’ sunk in and tore free killing them both in quiet gurgles.

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

Fifth guy I didn’t even sneak up on.

He was sitting at a table eating and I walked right across the room to him. He noticed me only in the last moment, eyes widening before my knife swept through his throat.

*500 XP Gained.*

I ignored his fumbled attempts to talk as he fell out of his chair.

The noise must have alerted someone as I saw the golden line shift closer to me. I just flipped my Shiv and tossed it.

The poor number six Scav rounded the corner, not even armed, just looking around wondering what the noise was when the knife took him in the chest. My second throw took him down instantly.

*500 XP Gained.*

Honestly scavs were so pathetic. Barely any chrome on these ones. The first Scav den was more put together than this one. Then again from the emails I had looked through on the computer downstairs, these weren’t the best of the best, just some guys meant to keep an eye on the doc, to do his dirty work.

No, I would be searching for their main base once they were cleaned up.

But I moved on. Seven eight and nine were together as well.

Sitting on a couch watching some TV.

I thought out my assault in an instant and moved.

One knife was thrown as I leaped over the couch, slipping into a poor gonks throat, my other hand slammed a knife into the scav on my right slipping into his trachea, I tore it loose uncaring about the blood that splattered over me and scav gonk number nine.

*500 XP Gained.*

*500 XP Gained.*

The fact I had landed directly in his lap, gave him about a second to start trying to react, instinct meant he tried to push me off.

I rolled with his motion spinning a bit in his lap until we were face to face.

Then he coughed. My knife slipping up and into his chin. His body shook trying to do something as he slowly gagged and choked to death.

*500 XP Gained.*

With that done I sent a text to the crew letting them know to move in. I hurried back through the den downstairs and then up until I reached the door to the Doctors fake ripper clinic.

Then I just walked inside.

Malcolm and Hiromi were already inside, and the Ripper wasn’t looking too happy with both gun toting teens.

“Oh don’t cause a fuss Charles… We already know you’re working with the Scavs.” I said in my sexy voice to the room, the Ripper spun to face me as I opened the door looking horrified that I had come up from the basement.

My words, and the fact I was coming out of his back room quieted the room.

Oh and probably the blood.

I was covered in a lot of blood.

“H-hey that’s not it! They forced me! The-”

“I read your emails Charles.” I assured him. Then before anyone could react, I drew my Lexington and fired. Then I walked over and fired twice more.

Always double tap when possible.

*500 XP Gained.*

*Cold Blood skill level up!*

I closed my eyes and turned off the BD recording.

Huh Cold Blood level 8. It was now maxed out compared to my current Cool stat.

“Okay guys you all ready?” I asked turning to my team.

“W-why are you using the sexy voice again!?” Malcolm couldn’t help but snap at me, even if he was looking more towards the dead body.

“I guess I like it!” I said with a smile under my mask.

“Oh, well I like it too!” Hiromi offered her Katana sheathed with a little flourish. She would look perfectly at ease if not for the slight shake to her hands.

“Alright let’s go through everything. Malcolm start here, find his Cyberware and box it. Hiromi you’re with Malcolm. I’ll go help Ichi at the back.”

“Yes Motoko!” Hiromi jumped to it, seeming a little too quick to listen to me.

What was with that girl?

 

[Seras]

For once cleaning up the place went without any issues. I ended up dragging the bodies away from where I killed them all and pushed them into a corner so they wouldn’t bother the others, while Ichi ran through the base finding loot and gathering it all up.

I did take a small break to grab the Scavs laptops laying around. Hopefully I could use a bit of netrunning sneakery and figure out another Scav den.

Honestly we probably could use more hands next time we did this, but while everyone did start flagging an hour in, I just reminded them that the more we could drag out of here the more eddies we would have in the end.

Boxes of Cyberware. Computer equipment. Ripper Equipment. Bits and bobs from the chop shop that Ichi confirmed would make some eddies if sold.

In the end we filled up the truck with the most valuable stuff and left the stuff that would be harder to sell. We all climbed back into the truck and drove off.

I finally pulled down the mask once the back of the truck was down and Malcolm and I were both squished into the loot we had gathered.

The boy might be exhausted, but there was a shit eating grin on his face as he rested back.

We stopped at Hiromi’s apartment again, all of us relaxing from the gig.

“Alright Section 9!” I called out once again using my sexy voice. Which had an instant effect.

“Stop doing that!” Ichi called back as he blushed a little but Hiromi elbowed him instantly as she threw me a thumbs up. Malcolm just shook his head at my nonsense.

“Never. It’s far too fun. Excellent work everyone. Hiromi, Malcolm, did you find anything interesting in the Cyberware?”

“Loads of stuff!” Malcolm practically exploded. “I mean it sucks it’s all scav chrome, but holy shit they pulled some preem chrome Motoko. You’re gonna be picking some stuff yourself at this rate!”

Malcolm and Hiromis reaction had Ichi and I both looking a little excited.

“Okay pull out the box of stuff let’s take a look!”

“Not here you gonk!” Hiromi demanded, shaking her head at me. “Let’s put the boxes in the cars and drive it out of here first. There are still cameras.” She reminded me and I bowed my head in acknowledgment.

“True. Let’s pull the chrome boxes and load them into our rides, meet up at Viks?”

“I’m gonna pass. You guys know I don’t really need new chrome. My rents would get me whatever I need, Arasaka stuff. You guys take it. I’m gonna start calling buyers. Just let me know what you don’t end up using… Or what you don’t ‘sell’ to Vik Motoko.” She said, looking squarely at me with a face.

Hey! I didn’t deserve a face! Besides… Okay fine yeah I was probably going to sell the rest of the stuff to Vik. He deserved to be well stocked, and I know he would do good with this chrome that had a terrible origin.

Make up for some of the bad karma of it all.

“Oooh hey is that a Mantis blade? Hmm. A Militech Infuser? Never heard of it.” Malcolm said as he pulled out…

They weren’t arms themselves, but more like pieces that could be installed in cyberarms.

“You want them Motoko?” Malcolm asked looking up at me with a face that was practically sparkling.

“As much as I might, I’m keeping any installs to small things for now.” I told him shaking my head. “Is there any Netrunner stuff?”

“Hmm. I think… Yeah small box of some old decks by the looks of them. Nothing good. Oh here you go.” He pulled out a small case, and popped it open. “Ex-Disk.”

“Nice!” I cheered Ex-disk were Neuralware mods that would increase a Cyberdecks RAM. More RAM. Faster punching through gonks security. “Yoink!” I snagged it away which he chuckled at as I closed the little case and put it in a pocket.

That would go with me to Vik later.

“Odds and ends. What the hell? These are some absolutely ancient Cybereyes. I’d be surprised if they even connect to everything anymore.” Malcolm grumbled as he wiped some dust off the thermos looking canister.

“Unless the canister was just used to store it. We’ll pop it with Vik and see if it’s any good.” I reminded him, earning a pleased smile.

“Motoko! Smart link!” Ichi called out waving it at me.

“What don’t want it yourself?” I asked but he just looked at me.

“Only one of us is a crazy solo that clears out entire scav dens on their own.”

“Which means I already don’t need it.” I tease but he tossed it at me regardless and I quickly grabbed it out of the air.

“Fine, I'll chip it. Should be easy enough with these.” I mention waving my hands. I guess it was about time for me to start actually interfacing with my guns.

“There is still tons more, but I don’t know what all of this is… Viks?” I asked the boys and while I got a response from both boys that reminded me of trying to take a bone away from a wild dog. Slowly we gathered everything together, but got sidetracked by Hiromi.

“Change of plans!” She yelled imperiously pointing at me. “You are my bodyguard while we make sales.” Then she turned and pointed at Ichi. “And you need to drive the truck. Malcolm will be with you holding a shotgun. We can start having fun with the loot soon, but I want to get this over with. I already got a sale for some. Let’s go!” She called pointing…

At my Quadra.

“You already made the sales?”

“I already made some contacts thanks to your Fixer. I was just waiting to know the loot. While Malcolm was loading everything up, I was already putting out feelers. You are allowed to worship my amazingness.” She proclaimed hands on her hips.

“Yes oh mighty fixer. Please allow us to help you sell the loot.”

“Excellent! Let’s go! Malcolm! Get that stuff loaded into the Quadra. I already know Motoko isn’t going to let us sell any of it before her ripper gets first look. Ichi! Secure the truck I want to get some of this sold off tonight before it gets any later!”

Ugh. I guess I’m chauffeur and bodyguard girl now.

But at least Hiromi stopped barking orders at me.

—--

The sales were… Interesting!

“No stop trying to rip me off. You wanted the canisters of Flunitrazepam? You pay up for it.” She snapped at the ripper that she was selling the loot too.

Of course it was only because Hiromi was Hiromi that the guy hadn’t turned us away for being scavs or something.

This was the third shop we had hit. And she was selling the stuff we had klepped. Including the Rippers tools and chair.

Apparently Charles had been a naughty boy. He had been making enough eddies with his scav friends he had a lot of top of the line stuff.

Hiromi was selling it off piecemeal.

We had of course stopped at Viks first, for a surprise sale, and dropped off the boxes of actual Cyberware that he had agreed to look through and pick out the choice bits for us, as well as figure out what everything was.

He had even paid Hiromi- I mean us. He had paid us for a new diagnostic tool that he liked the look of.

Which made me happy. I forced Hiromi to give him a discount though.

She had refused at first, but I put on my sexy voice and told her it was happening, and that had stopped any attempts at refusal.

Honestly I had mostly done it to mess with Vik, but I’m glad my mature voice seems to make people listen to me.

And then, despite how action packed it was. It started getting late, and we all decided to call it a night.

Ichi took his much emptier truck and would store it securely in a garage that Jotaro had originally bought to do exactly what he was doing, hiding loot. A place to store a truck full of expensive stuff until it was sold off.

The money was flowing in, although we were keeping it all together for now until we were ready to divvy it out.

It was a good haul, and everyone was super happy. Ichi’s money problems would be solved for at least a little longer, Malcolm and Hiromi were happy.

And I was just glad my friends were happy.

Well that and 5k XP closer to a level up.

—--

“I’m home!” I called out as I walked inside the apartment. The lights were still on so I knew Jun was in.

“Welcome home.” He called out, and I saw his hand wave from his bed as I walked into the bedroom and then into my little room. I peeled out of my new armored suit’s jacket with a sigh.

It was funny, I was so used to wearing my leotard and jeans, that wearing something like this just felt weird. The jacket was tossed onto a dresser and then I peeled myself out of the armored top and pants.

Honestly they were a useful bit of gear, even if the looks were super basic, the sort of brown base, broken up by patches of the gray kevlar, the only spark to them. They looked super basic. And what kind of merc or edgerunner would I be if I wore something like this all the time?

I had only picked it up and wore it so my crew would do the same.

I wasn’t that worried about a few bullet holes, but it was a different story for my chooms.

Once I was free I grabbed one of my Leotards and slipped into it. Feeling much more comfortable with how free I felt wearing one. Then without bothering to put on any pants I walked back out and grabbed my guitar.

I had honestly been pretty bored hanging around as Hiromi sold equipment to fences and rippers.

So I really wanted to destress. Flopping onto the couch I kicked my feet up on the armrest of it and just closed my eyes as I started striking some chords.

It wasn’t any particular song, no lyrics beside my humming, but I let myself relax and move away from the killing and death that made up most of my day.

—--

“So you hit a scav den, that was working with a Ripper?”

“Yep. From the emails he would do work on some people, and some people would just disappear.” I told Jun the next morning as we ate breakfast together.

“Disgusting. He dead?”

“Put a bullet in him myself.” I assured him as I chomped into my XXL burrito.

It wasn’t good, but I was feeling lazy and I didn’t want to leave the apartment yet. I would eventually. After school Hiromi was going to try and sell more stuff, but that was later this afternoon.

“Glad you didn’t get hurt.” He finally said as he finished his burrito and tossed the wrapper in the trash.

“They never even knew I was there. I did get another kill with a guy watching a BD though. That never gets old.”

Jun snorted at my words and patted my head a bit and I winced before kicking at him. “Ow! Stupid chrome gorilla hands go get some real skinn! Do I have to buy it for you!?” I yelled at him as he dropped his stupid chrome hands a bit too hard on my head.

He winced a little as he lifted his hands up. “Sorry Imouto… I didn’t even think about it.”

“Go see Vik! Moron! Dummy! He’ll take care of you. I know you’ve been avoiding him. Hiromi just sold him some Real Skinn too… Actually did you know it comes in these weird canisters? Apparently you have to like grow it. Well it expands I mean. It’s weird stuff.” I muttered, kinda waving my hands around. Vik had been happy to receive the canisters pretty cheap. Lot of people that couldn’t afford it could use some skin to feel more human.

Jun snorted at my rambling but he got serious a moment later. “Alright. Fine. I’ll go see a ripper and get some Real Skinn.” He grumbled at me as he rose up and grabbed his jacket.

“Ah! Good! Go right now! I want a big hug when you come home!”

“Yeah yeah.” He mumbled tiredly, obviously done with my teasing.

“One yeah is enough!” I corrected with a laugh as he flipped me off as he closed the door behind him.

Huh.

“What am I gonna do now?” I could poke Regina. She had said she would have a gig for me soon, but I wasn’t in a rush and she said she would let me know.

I didn't really want to go try and track down the next scav base from the info I got out of the den right now.

So I guess just lay around? I looked over at my mess of mechanical parts. At my laptop full of programming I was still working on…

That seemed like work though.

I reached over to grab my guitar and sat up. Music time.

—--

I did take a break from music to do some more programming, but funnily enough while listening to the radio a song came on that I liked and I ended up grabbing my Guitar and playing along.

I fell into a habit. I was listening to the radio and whenever a song I liked came on, I would sing along and play with it.

Of course I would switch over to different stations.

It was kinda hard to play electronic music on my guitar after all. Which is part of the reason I wanted my music box to be programmed.

I did have a lot of projects on my hands, but I was having fun so that’s all that matters.

Of course I was in the middle of singing along when the front door suddenly burst open.

I looked.

Hiromi looked back.

I looked.

Hiromi grinned.

“HIROMI!” I yelled at her as I swiftly tried to hide the guitar from her as she pounced on me.

“MOTOKO!” She yelled back in delight as she started laughing at me.

I wasn’t blushing! It was just embarrassing! No one besides Jun was supposed to know!

“Hiromi you need to learn to knock!”

“How could I? I heard my Motoko out in the hall singing her heart out! I had to rush in and see!” She proclaimed as she continued hugging me as I tried to peel her off and put the guitar away. I quickly glanced over at the radio and it shut off with a quick thought.

“Aww. Motokoooo!”

Finally managing to put the guitar on its stand I reached down to the giggling girl and put both hands on her cheeks. Forcing her to meet my eyes.

“You saw and heard nothing.” I told her firmly. Even using my sexy voice.

She just grinned.

That meant she agreed… Right?

—-

“You should have heard it Ichi! It was soooo preem Motoko was totally jamming out standing on her couch!”

“No one will find any of your bodies.” I promised as I continued to hide my face against Ichi’s truck. The cool steel just barely kept me from overheating.

She had promised not to tell anyone!

“She tried to make me promise not to tell, but I mean. C’mon! Of course I will!”
“Death!” I whimper-whispered.

“Motoko, when did you start playing the guitar? I don’t think you did before the coma or anything.” Malcolm asked, ignoring Ichi and Hiromi both trying to embarrass me more.

“It’s all Hiromi’s fault.”

“What? How!?”

“You made me sing during the Nomad BBQ! I realized I wasn’t any good at it, so I decided to start practicing!”

“Wait… Motoko, did you really get so embarrassed about your bad singing during the BBQ that you secretly went out and bought a guitar to learn some music?” Hiromi asked, suddenly staring at me with her big old green eyes.

“It! It wasn’t a secret! Jun knew!”

“Motoko… You are the cutest ever.” She whispered, barely hiding the massive grin behind her hands.

“No!” I denied but Hiromi was soon sage nodding at me, Ichi joining in. The jerk!

“You got so embarrassed about singing you went and bought a guitar to learn and practice?” Ichi asked for a moment. “Cute.”

“I’m! I’m dangerous! Not cute!” I demanded stomping my foot to prove my danger.

It didn’t work.

“You weren’t that bad at singing Motoko. You didn’t have to get so cute about it.” Hiromi said and I frowned.

“I’m not bad at singing!”

“You weren’t really great either, Motoko.” Hiromi offered gently as she walked over and threw an arm over my shoulder “But it’s cute you have a weak point.”

Weak point? Me? Never! Weak points are where you get hit for massive damage! I refuse!

I walked over to the Quadra and popped the door and after a moment it was on the radio blaring to life.

And then right in front of my crew I started belting out the song alongside the radio.

A minute later as the song came to an end I was breathing a little heavily. My face was absolutely bright red, but my chooms were all staring in shock.

“That… Was actually pretty preem. Holy shit.” Malcolm said, looking at me in a bit of shock.

“Motoko! When what? You didn’t know how to sing like a week ago!? What happened?” Hiromi asked, marching forward and grabbing my arms and shaking me a bit.

“I learned! I realized I didn’t know how to sing at the camp, so I made sure to spend some time learning! Turns out, I’m pretty good at music in general! I just needed some practice.” I told her. Lying my ass off. Thank you Gamer system! I would be a talentless hack without you! Please forgive me for not telling anyone about your wonder!

“Ugh!” Hiromi coughed like someone had just punched her in the chest as she took a few stuttered steps back until she hit the truck. “How can she be so perfect at everything!? Ichi!”

“Don’t look at me Hiromi. I’ve grown completely used to Motoko making me look like a gonk at everything.” He said, sighing as he walked over and joined her beside the truck, both of them just sort of staring off into nothing. Hiromi at the ground, Ichi at the roof.

“Rude.” I muttered to myself.

“I don’t know ‘Toko. This is kinda crazy.” Malcolm spoke up, still standing beside me as he looked over our chooms. “I mean it’s one thing to be good at fighting. Or sneaking. Or singing, but you are just good at all of them.”

“I just practice a lot!” I argue, feeling awkward, that I was basically cheating in my ability to learn new things. “Besides! We aren’t here to pick apart Motoko’s hobbies!” I remind them, pointing at the truck. “We are here to make some eddies!”

“She’s right.” Ichi agreed, coming back to reality at the mention of money, as he stopped staring at the ceiling like a zombie. “Alright Section 9, on your feet, let’s get this taken care of. Hiromi that means you.” He said.

“Eh!?” I couldn’t help but gasp out as I pointed at Ichi. “W-w-what did you just say!?” I demanded shocked!

“Section 9. It’s what you called us yesterday, remember?” Ichi said and then to my horror!

He smiled!

“You! You’re teasing me!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. C’mon Section 9! Let’s get moving!” He called out and the traitors all followed after!

My Chooms! Betrayal!

“H-hey You can’t use that! Section 9 is… It was just a joke!”

“Nope we all decided. Section 9 it is. C’mon Motoko load up. Hiromi needs to show up in a preem ride to make the sales.” He reminded me as Hiromi already settled into my Quadra.

My chooms were teasing me!

I slipped into the Quadra as Ichi and Malcolm started driving off literally ignoring me as they left.

“You guys are being mean.” I complained to Hiromi as I started following.

“Aww. Is a little teasing too much? Well now you know how we feel after you keep changing your voice.” Hiromi mentioned poking me in the side.

“I thought it was cool.”

“It was very… Cool. Yes, but don’t tease us if you can’t handle getting teased back.” She said, reaching up and pressing a finger against my cheek. “Where did you even get Section 9 from anyways. Some TV show or something?”

“Ah! Eh.. Umm. Nooo?” I denied.

Nailed it.

For some reason my denial didn’t seem to convince Hiromi though!

“Gonk.”

I pouted and refused to say anything else about Section 9 as we drove to another Ripper that was willing to buy some stuff.