Ghost in the City

We went home to the apartment after and the whole time Jun was being insufferable.

“I told you you would like it!” he teased, smiling like the stupid gonk he is.

My desire to punch him was rising. Just because I had accepted that moving was what Jun wanted, and I shouldn’t hold him back didn’t mean I really wanted it.

But he was acting like I was super happy with it all.

“Jun shut up.” I told him simply as I walked around my room cleaning things up. Gathering up everything so we could start moving stuff.

“When do you want me to call Ichi with his truck? Wait, when does the lease and stuff actually go through?” How did leasing even work in Night City?

“What do you mean, it’s already ours.” Jun said as he popped his head around the corner from his room to look at me.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Fujimura already gave you the apartment before you ever tried to convince me to move didn’t he?” I accused him, eyes narrowed as I prepared for the answer I already knew.

“Nooo?” He said and I chucked an old shoe at him that I had found in a corner. Unfortunately he was pretty quick and dodged it.

“Jerk.” I grumbled as I continued to dig things out of corners. And finding bags and boxes to put them in.

I picked up another cardboard box that Jun had grabbed to stuff shit into.

Well it wasn’t actually cardboard. It looked like it, sorta felt like it, but it wasn’t. And I had long ago decided not to ask questions about what stuff in Night City was actually made of.

I should be killing Scavs right now.

Not dealing with moving.

I pulled out my little dresser, noticing a bunch of stuff that I had never seen before back behind it.

Motoko was kind of a slob…

Okay I was still kind of a slob, but I had a lot less knick knacks and junk…

Okay I still had a lot of junk, but it was all tech supplies!

“Huh.” I muttered pulling out an actual digital photo display. I switched it on and blinked.

“So that’s what I looked like before.” It was a picture of Motoko… Well older Motoko sitting on Jun’s Kusanagi. She was dressed up fully in Tyger Claw swag, hair done up in mohawk…

I guess HIromi and I used to share hairstyles? Although mine had been a shorter faux hawk.

I looked at it for a while. I had no real connection to it. Jun was younger. Probably fifteen? He looked hilarious with his tough guy wannabe looks…

No wait. That means he would be around Ichi and Malcolm's age! He was a wannabe too! Oh man!

“Hey Jun, look what I found!” I called out smirking as I walked out of my bedroom to see Jun carefully disassembling the family shrine.

“What’d you find?” He asked solemnly as he slowly took down the picture of our parents.

“Nothing that interesting. Need some help?” I asked as I threw the picture frame onto the couch and moved to help Jun pack up our family shrine.

I’d tease him about the picture later.

—--

“So you’re really moving?” Ichi asked as I led him inside.

“Yeah. It was important to Jun.” I admitted as I pushed a box to the side to clear up some room on the couch. “Take a seat.”

“No I can help!” He offered doing the usual childish act of flexing an arm.

“If you want? But the guy who brings the truck can put his feet up if he wants.” I informed him which earned me a chuckle.

“Crazy to think last night was the last time we’ll ever meet up here.” He muttered, and I did my best to keep cool, to not let that thought strike my heart.

For Jun.

“Yeah, but starting tonight, You’ll be able to meet up and party at our new place.” Jun said as he appeared from around the corner, holding a box in one under and a long bag that I realized was acting as his gun bag.

Huh, I didn’t know Jun had a gun bag…

Wait fuck I don’t have a gun bag! All my guns were stolen from gonks! It’s cool. Just pretend I don’t notice and it won’t matter.

“Yeah that’s true. We’ll have a new meetup. Motoko’s fancy new place.”

“It is kinda fancy.” I whispered to Ichi as I walked by arms full of boxes. “Grab that one?”

“Yeah sure.” He hefted up another box and all three of us headed down towards his truck.

It was parked just out front of the apartment, and the guards were keeping an eye on it, so we wouldn’t have to worry about anything going missing while loading it up.

Pushing my box in, I stopped and headed over to the meat stick guy. “Gonna miss my usual.” I told him and he chuckled and passed me an extra large stick.

Thanks, Meat stick guy. You’re the best.

I paid extra though. I definitely had more eddies than the poor old man.

As I took a break and ate my last meat stick skewer I looked around. Mostly because I was still on edge and expecting to see a Scav hunter group or something barreling down the road.

But there was nothing.

Just a quiet day on the streets.

In the end, despite my fears there hadn’t been a second Scav attack. No bomb, or trick. It made me nervous because I thought there would have been and yet.

Nothing.

I didn’t know why though. Then again what I had done could have been completely covered by the acts of the Tygers.

Considering how Scavs act. We could have killed the Scavs that knew about where I lived. Or killed all the Scavs that cared.

The whole thing was a massive mess, and unlike in a video game that would always have a helpful conversation shard sitting on the side of a table or something, there wasn’t anything that helpful for me to figure this out.

I still really wanted to kill them. Just to make sure, but the whole thing was weird.

In the end the real world wasn’t a game, or an anime. I wasn’t the main character of Night City.

Well…

Not yet.

—--

“Well. This is it.” Jun said as he dropped the last box of stuff into the middle of the living room.

We were completely moved out.

Our entire apartment, our entire life, had fit in the back of Ichi’s truck. It had only taken one load to move everything over.

Our vehicles were now parked in a garage under the building.

Our stuff was there on the floor. Malcolm and Ichi were watching the truck to make sure nothing went missing while Jun and I unloaded.

“Yeah.” I muttered before sighing and walking into my room. It had an actual bed. One of the weird future beds that were everywhere in Night city. Gently I pulled out a special object out of my jacket. Something I hadn’t trusted letting anyone else mess with. The bed had little drawers along the side of it, and for now that was good enough. I slipped it in.

“What’s that?” Jun asked, not quite startling me.

“A cyberdeck.” I explained. I just didn’t explain that it was Rache fucking Bartmosses deck.

“Okay?”

“It’s rare, one of a kind, so I kept it on me.” I told him and then shrugged heading back out to the apartment. “I’ll go get the boys.”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Jun said looking at the pile of junk that we had stacked up on the floor. He sighed and grabbed the first box.

That’s right Jun! Suffer at the knowledge that moving sucked!

I headed out. The hallway as usual was so fancy it almost made me uncomfortable. I kept checking my boots to make sure I wasn’t tracking mud on the carpets.

But as I walked past the apartment right next to ours, I heard something that halted me in my place.

Music.

Not recorded sound, but someone actually playing an instrument. I stopped to listen for a moment as the tune came through the walls.

Huh. They were good! I hummed along for a moment as I let the song play through. I liked it. The musician had a recorded track they were playing with, a lot of recorded sounds, and a definite Japanese electronica groove.

Honestly I was just thankful it wasn’t Us Cracks.

I shook it off, and decided I would say hello to my new neighbor sometime soon.

Until then I needed to head back down and let the boys know we had finished and they were now free.

I headed down taking the elevator that took forever to get down to the garage basement floor.

I walked out and had to frown.

A few Tygers were messing with the boys.

Around the front of Ichi’s truck were a group of teenagers. They were obviously unwelcome as they were resting against the truck, one even sitting on the front of Ichi’s hood, her legs swinging as they obviously were causing trouble.

“Hey!” I called out as I walked over catching the eyes of the group. “What are you guys bothering my chooms for?”

“Eh? Bothering? We are just checking out these weird gonks idling in our garage. Who the hell are you?” The one that had been hanging his elbow in Ichi’s window called out, but didn’t move away, instead a couple of his chooms were focusing on me.

“They were helping us move in. Twenty-Seventh floor.” I called out, emphasizing the floor. Fujimura owned the entire floor? Then anyone in the area would know not to mess with anyone from that floor.

Their ‘leader’ slowly pulled away from the window as he looked me over.

“You don’t look like the type to live on that floor.”

“Fujimura and I have an understanding… And my Nii-chan is one of his men. Now stop harassing my chooms.” I demanded.

I had learned from my lesson with Hiromi. Be blunt and direct with gangsters because they might not have the brain cells to rub together to understand a less blunt threat.

It still grated at me. To rely on Fujimura’s rep. The stupid “Do you know who I am?” Statements always annoyed me.

I walked past the group, noticing the girl on the hood had slipped off, and tried to make it look like she hadn’t just been sitting on Ichi’s truck.

“Thanks for the help guys. Jun and I have it from here. Why don’t you head out of here, We are just going to be unpacking for a while… Here, dinner’s on me, okay?” I quickly sent a bunch of eddies to Malcolm and Ichi, despite Ichi’s glare.

He had refused any payment for helping out today, but I wasn’t going to let them help Jun and I move for free.

“Hey! That’s the boss for you!” Malcolm called out more than happy for the payment.

“You don’t have to… Motoko!” Ichi yelled behind me but I was already hurrying away, passing through the gangster gonks who were all watching me, their faces all showing their curiosity in who I was.

If I was important.

If I was lying.

If I was telling the truth.

But I wasn’t here to satisfy their curiosity. I rushed back to the elevator and headed back up.

Time to unpack.

—---

Jun and I both flopped onto the big round couch.

“That was tiring.”

“Yeah.” I agreed with Jun. Everything was unpacked, or at least the boxes were put away in our rooms for later. Our family shrine was up. Our weapons were stored away, which had taken a bit longer than expected.

My armory had to my absolute delight put Jun’s to shame, and we might have gotten into a wrestling match when he made a move towards my HMG.

Mine!

But now we were basically done.

All moved out.

All moved in.

“It’s gonna be great Motoko. You’ll see.” He said and I didn’t respond. He had been saying stuff like this to me all day, trying to hype me up for the new move.

“Aren’t you the least bit excited? A new place? Bigger! Better!” I could try to explain to him that I knew what moving to a new apartment was like. It usually just ended with a month of getting used to it, before realizing all the new problems you had to live with that might not be the horrible ones from the last place, but were still shit.

But I couldn’t exactly tell him that. As far as Jun was aware this was my first new place ever.

“I’m gonna play the entire Samurai Catalog at full blast right outside your room all night… Fair warning.” I informed him and received a retaliatory pillow in exchange.

“You’ll like it. It’s better in every way from our old place.” Jun informed me with a dreamy voice.

“You realize of course there isn’t an XXL burrito machine outside the apartment door anymore.” Then I let that tidbit settle in. A moment later Jun was at the door and then rushing down the hall.

I had checked as we walked in. No XXL burritos in the area that I had seen.

Good luck Jun-nii!

—--

Okay. We were moved in. Now back to work.

*Yes really. Why are you so confused? You sent the shard with the code over, and I just spent the last couple hours debugging it. It’s done.*

*I expected you to take at least a week checking it over Motoko… Please make sure you are thorough.*

I sighed audibly and rubbed my face.

*I’ve already gone through it all Yoko. I’ll add a file into the shard showing everything I fixed just so you can be sure, but I’m done. There isn’t anything else that needs to be fixed unless you want me to start rewriting the code from scratch.*

The line was quiet for a while. *Very well. I’ll have a runner come by your new place for a pickup. I’ll confirm the work, and message you when I’ve found an issue, or written off the favor.*

*Perfect. Talk to you later then.*

I hung up. Wakako was right. Hanging up on people that were annoying you was great.

I groaned as I flopped on the couch. Between coding work and moving in. I was done for now. Jun was still bustling about his room setting things up looking happier than I had seen him in a while.

Stupid Jun. Being happy about this crummy apartment.

I wanted to go kill Scavs.

I rolled up and rushed to my room. Grabbing my ammo and MaxDoc pouches, I suited up. If I went fast enough Jun wouldn’t catch me leaving and bother me again.

I geared up quickly, grabbing my Kang Tao armor and doing a full suit up.

Techgogs equipped I was ready for war.

Sliding the goggles over my eyes I slipped over to my door and peaked out.

No Jun in sight. Operation was a go.

I rushed out bare feet utterly silent on the carpet. Honestly it was a weird feeling since I was so used to the tiled floors that filled NIght City and the fact I usually just wore my boots around so I would be safe from any trash on the floor.

But this apartment was too clean, so I had to leave my boots at the front door. I quickly grabbed them and left through the door once the door was closed I slipped them on. Taking a minute to secure everything and then I was heading down the hall. Passing by music neighbor and reaching the elevator without anyone noticing beside the cameras.

I quickly sent Jun a Text.

*Motoko: Heading out for a while.*

Just as the door shut.

Didn’t want Jun to try and stop me. I whistled fakely as I pretended to ignore the text he sent back in response wanting to know what I was doing.

Then I was back in the garage, and the city was mine.

I walked out stalking towards where Jun and I’s parking spot was located. Ignoring the attention that the Tyger teens gave me as I walked around.

Don’t call me a Dough Girl. Don’t call me a Dough Girl!

I ignored them. I didn’t even want to know what they were saying as I walked up to the Quadra and popped the trunk.

Inside my armory was ready. I grabbed the Copperhead from the roof of the trunk. I had spent some time adding additional weapon slots to the trunk over time. Honestly I had a few cutouts that I didn’t even own yet, but more as future desires.

I patted my Nekomata a bit as I left it behind. I needed to work with Jackie and V and stuff more. I would get more sniper work with them I felt.

But I ignored that as I walked to the driver seat and laid my Copperhead in the passenger footwell. So I could grab it quickly if needed.

I had a few more places to hit tonight.

Time to get to work.

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