Ghost in the City

I arrived at Lizzies not long after. The saved BD of my parkour performance should be pretty fun. Hopefully Nox would be able to sell it.

Or not. I mean the BD creation thing was more for me than anything.

Unfortunately I was stopped at the door by Rita. I waved a hand at her as I approached but was stopped instantly as she reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

“Mona take over for me?” She called out to another bouncer suddenly.

“Sure Rits.” The other bouncer called back and then I was pushed inside and into the side room by Rita.

“Rita?”

“I want to know Motoko, before anything else. Are you okay?”

I blinked.

“Yeees? I mean I had Vik my ripper do some work on my hands earlier bu-” She shook her head, cutting me off. The borg woman settled both of her hands on my shoulders, even bending down a little so we were at the same height.

“Motoko, I saw your BD. The one with the song, and with you going completely Cyberpsycho on the Scavs.” Rita said dropping a bomb and I winced.

Dammit. Was that still causing me trouble!? That was supposed to have been fun! Well I mean. It was.

Like super fun.

But that was besides the point. I hated when fun things I did caused problems later!

“I’m fine Rita. Honest. I was doing an experiment that night to go along with the song that I wrote and-”

“Motoko.” Rita cut me off sounding really serious. “You sound okay. You look okay, and you aren’t closed off or freaking out, but I’ve seen a lot of people I thought were okay with a smile on their face as they murdered people they loved and cared for.”

“I was just… trying something different. Letting myself get super angry, even forcing it a bit.”

“Kid, you were absolutely wrecked during that BD. If I had been hit half as hard as that Scav punched you, I’d be down for the count.”

“I’m pretty tough! Look.” I said, spreading my arms. “I’m not hurt. All healed up. Vik my ripper does great work. Took care of me. Yes I went overboard. I’ve even… I even admitted that to myself. I did the music and I thought it would be cool to be all brutal like that, but it sorta… The music wasn’t supposed to be that… it was supposed to be the thing that pulls me away from that sort of stuff. That was the whole point. So yeah… I fucked up.”

Rita continued to watch as I sort of rambled before sighing. And then to my surprise she pulled me into a hug.

She was pokey. All the spikes I mean.

“So you aren’t going Cyberpsycho? You mean it?”

“I’m actually doing okay. I mean I’ve been super irritated recently with the Scavs attacking my home, and the move to a new place, and the TC boss Fujimura keeps wanting to get me to admit to being his underling and it’s annoying.”

“If he is bothering you, we can take care of that for you.” She said then and I couldn’t help but feel warm at how quickly she offered to basically fight a TC boss for me.

Rita was good people.

“Nah. He’s Jun’s boss. And he got us a new apartment. Jun is over the moon about it, cause it’s all big and I have a much bigger room now and stuff… It’s just different and I didn’t want different. Fujimura, despite being a little pushy, hasn't crossed the line.”

“Hmph. Well when he does.” She offered and I smiled.

“I don’t think I would want to get the Mox involved in my trouble. But I appreciate it.” Rita scoffed but nodded, reaching out and resting a hand on my shoulder.

“If you need to talk. Don’t forget you have friends here. You aren’t the first young girl to show up here with family in other gangs needing help.”

“I don’t… I don’t need help… Not yet!” I added at her unconvinced look. “Jun is great, and Fujimura is annoying, but he hasn’t pushed past the line… Like I said, a lot of things have changed and it’s just making me uncomfortable.”

“Then remember I’m always willing to listen. C’mon then, you’re here to see Judy right?” She asked as she finally pulled away from me, and I noticed she looked a little uncomfortable herself.

“Yeah! I did a new BD focused around Parkour instead of other stuff. It was preem. I leapt off the side of the building I’m on and made it all the way to Sakura Market.”

Rita shivered a bit as I spoke as she guided me out of the room. “You leapt off a building?”

“Yeah! A couple times.” Rita shivered again and it made me realize something. Rita is afraid of heights. “Probably not a BD for you then.”

“No, no I don’t think so.”

—--

I dropped off the BD with Judy only after swearing this BD wasn’t some gore fest that would make her want to clean her fingers from brain matter again.

Then I was driving back to the apartment flopping onto the couch and wondering what to do next.

I once again heard the faint thump of bass through the floor and knew what I had to do!

I got up and grabbed my guitar and went at it.

I needed more songs. More music! I had to defeat the Rockerboy Neighbor! So I jammed out. Working on some Foo Fighters, because I was already doing Nirvana. Might as well.

But the idea hit me, and I stopped mid way through The Pretender to work on another song.

Think by Kaleida. “I’ll never! Break your heart!” I jammed out, having had some trouble getting the drums for the song right since they weren't normal drums, but I found the right instrument sound eventually.

Now I had a John Wick song!

It took a good couple hours to get the track done, and then I went back to the Foo Fighters.

More songs!

More music!

More levels!

Long into the night. After Jun had come home and gone to bed. While working on tweaking some of the hologram motions. Making me play through The Pretender again, for what felt like a millionth time.

It happened.

*Rockerboy skill level up!*

Rockerboy 8.

“Yes!” I cheered, leaping up onto the couch to celebrate I could feel even more musical knowledge flow into me.

At this point, it would be an actual surprise if I flubbed a chord while playing anything but the hardest songs!

—--

“What are you three doing?” I asked as I was brought into Malcolms apartment.

Around the TV laying around the couches were three teenagers that looked like they were in a full food coma.

“So many snacks.” Malcolm moaned from where he was laid up. His feet up on an ottoman and a blanket over most of him. The many many bags of chips and things that surrounded him told a story. “It’s all Ichi’s fault.” He moaned.

The boy in question didn’t say anything, just continued to stare into the ceiling with a dazed look in his eyes.

Hiromi was here too to my surprise and while she wasn’t as bad as the boys she looked like she got into a fight with a cake and lost.

I walked over and she threw me a big smile as she lay half on the couch and half off.

Leaning down I wiped the bit of frosting that was stuck on her cheek. “You three look like you got in a fight with your snacks and lost.” I told them as I stuck the bit of frosting into my mouth.

Huh. That was almost chocolate.

“Ugh.” Ichi moaned without shifting his dead eyed stare at the ceiling.

“What did you guys do?” I asked, laughing. I had gotten the message that everyone wanted to meet up in the morning but I had been…

Well I was napping after leveling Rockerboy. So after looking at the message and seeing it wasn’t an emergency I went back to sleep.

So I was late to this party.

“It’s Ichi’s fault.” Hiromi informed me, looking up at me with a big smile.

“It’s Hiromi’s fault!” Ichi retorted. “I said I would get snacks. So Hiromi dragged me to this crazy corpo shop. Everything was expensive but they had all sorts of stuff.” Ichi said in turn, still glazed out.

“Saka-Go is a very valuable member of the Arasaka conglomerate that ensures that traveling Arasaka members can always find their home town snacks even across the world.” Hiromi replied, speaking in a cadence that made me think she was repeating something she had heard before.

Of course Ichi and Malcolm both instantly started throwing whatever snack they had on hand at her, so I quickly backpedaled away to avoid the friendly fire.

“H-hey! You all enjoyed the snacks! Don’t give me that!”

“Some of it was good.” Malcolm agreed and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the look Hiromi threw at the crew.

A few chips stuck in her hair as she stood up with all the dignity she could retain and headed into the bathroom to clean up.

I walked over and after pushing some chip bags out of the way settled near Malcolm.

“How you feeling choom?”

“Hey Motoko. I’m actually feeling pretty good. I’m able to get up and walk around now without any pain or anything. Dr. Vector did tell me to just take it easy for another week or so, but that I was good to do normal things. I’ve got a checkup tomorrow to be basically cleared for light stuff.” Malcolm offered with a smile even as he tugged up his shirt a bit showing the scar on his chest and side. Both looked a little red still. But more like irritated scar tissue than recently damaged wounds.

“Healing nicely.”

“Yeah. Hey I… Motoko. It still feels like it hasn’t hit me yet you know? That I was so close?” He offered and I felt the light hearted conversation change as he went serious. “I just wanted to thank you, for saving me.”

“I was just glad I got there in time.” I said honestly. I was once again thankful I didn’t dream if I slept under the system. I really didn’t want to deal with the nightmares I would be sure to have.

“Heh. Yeah. I wasn’t getting through to anyone until I called you. I’m glad… I’m really glad you picked up.”

I nodded and then probably to Malcolms surprise I bent down and drew him into a hug.”We’re chooms! Of course I would do everything I could to save you.”

“Yeah. Thanks Choom.”

“Hey! Hugging Motoko without me!? I refuse!” Hiromi called out as she came back into the living room and instantly rushed over to Malcolms surprise she jumped into the hug pulling Malcolm and I tight.

“I am not doing a group hug.” Ichi called out from the other side of the couch.

“Group hug on Ichi!?” I gasped in delight and after a moment of helping Malcolm up to not jostle him too much, we all collapsed on our other choom much to his irritation when Hiromi just ended up sitting on him instead of actually hugging him.

While we all vegged out on the couch spending the rest of the day hanging out. I sent the text to Jackie to wrap up the gig.

Since Malcolm would be back on his feet soon it was time to put out some bait.

—--

That night Section 9 met up in my netrunning cave.

Even Malcolm was here. Although with some help from the Straight Lane Shooters above. I had found a nice couch and brought that in so Malcolm was able to be comfortable.

Even if his whining about us treating him like an invalid was getting old.

“I’m feeling fine guys. You don’t have to baby me!” He continued to harp as we had set him up with not just the couch, but a table close by he could rest his Laptop on, along with some blankets and things.

“Vik hasn’t given you the all clear yet.” I reminded him and he rolled his eyes.

“Only because I have the final check up in the morning. Really. I’m fine!”

“Here Malcolm, make sure to stay warm okay?” I said purposefully adjusting the blank around his feet so his toes would stay warm.

He faux kicked me that had me laughing, but I did stop bothering him then.

There was a reason we had all gathered here.

Malcolm had originally set up the car trade through a reliable website he went to for car trades, or at least he considered it reliable.

Either way, if the gonks that attacked him were using it, that meant they were just as likely to come back and use it again. So it was time to set some bait.

“Okay everyone. First thing first. Malcolm, let’s check out your car trade site. I’m going to slip in, so we can send the fake car trade out. I’ll be making sure our guys see it.” I grinned.

I smiled ferally as I thought about what was going to happen to these fucks.

“Alright. I’ll set up the actual offer since I know what they look like.” Malcolm agreed and Hiromi and Ichi would be working on backing me up.

I settled into my netrunning chair and took a moment to attach all the connections into my netrunning suit, shivering a bit as the coolant pump started sending ice over my skin.

Then I sat back and since I had it. I flipped the netgoggles over my eyes.

I didn’t really need them, but they were cool.

Then in a blink I was in the net. The entire digital world set out before me.

“Okay seriously Motoko. You need to set up a lobby.” I whispered to myself looking over the blank pillar that I stood on.

But I shook it off and stepped off and into the web.

Unlike when heading to Yoko’s I didn’t have the direct IP. So I had to actually look for the website. I walked along neon lights. The road nonexistent below me. In some places, bad connections. Or old wiring, caused the world to flicker or turn to static, and of course the figures that I walked past were mostly inhuman figures. Daemons, for search engines and things that normal people use.

This world was something I had only touched on the most shallow ends of.

I would have to explore down here more sometime.

But for now I followed along the lines towards the website. Using a Search Engine to basically create a path for me to reach the server I was looking for.

When I got there I had to roll my eyes.

So much spam.

The entire outside of the server was covered in Spam Daemons.

Little goblin creatures that would attack any Daemon or access request and try to flood them with their carried spam.

The first one that tried to attack me was melted with my [HELL FLAME Anh. 2.132] Hack. Watching the Daemon melt into digital sludge along with its spam funnily sent the rest of the pack hiding away.

It took me a moment to realize this was something their creator must have come up with.

No one wanted days of work on their Daemons to be removed because they annoyed a netrunner after all.

So they must have been programmed to ignore anyone that managed to destroy one of them. I would have left it at that but…

*250 XP Gained.*

I grinned and flames burst into my hands as I activated my ICE to slow the Daemons down, keeping the programs from being able to escape into the net as I cut them all down.

1,500 XP wasn’t something I was just going to ignore.

I walked into the server ignoring the flaming chunks of Daemon I left behind.

I stepped into the chipper bright lights of the Server.

It was kinda badly designed though. Instead of the white room having multiple exits to other sections of the server. It was like they hadn’t realized they could section off things and just plopped everything into this one room.

I bet this server lagged like hell when it was in use.

The different sections of the server were set up like… Stands? No, it was more complete than that. As if someone had just taken a massive room and just plopped square rooms in different places.

At least it told me something important.

If this place did have netrunner security. I wasn’t fucking worried.

I walked up to one of the rooms that had admin login on the door. It didn’t take me long to get the door breached open and let me in.

I wrinkled my nose.

“Fuckin Spaghetti code.” I grumbled aloud as I took in the mess of wires leading to different control options.

Definitely not a netrunner because any netrunner worth their salt would see this fucking mess of admin tools and just burn it all to the ground and start fresh.

I spent more time finding the user information than I did breaking into the admin side of the server.

Finally I was able to pull up Malcolms info from this side and find his request looking for a Rayfield Caliburn.

I spent a minute just arguing with myself about wanting to hit Malcolm after.

This site wasn’t a reliable car trade site. Malcolm you fucking gonk. You just searched car traders or something and found a random site didn’t you?

Regardless I was able to see the contact, the one that had confirmed they had what Malcolm was looking for.

Pulling up “NCAutoRepairRC” From the message he had sent Malcolm I noticed something pretty quick.

Assholes had been doing this for a while. About twenty different messages just like the one Malcolm had gotten were sent out from the profile. All confirmed the car they had on hand with pictures that looked normal.

Only the fact I was able to see all of them clued me into the fact they were all taken from all over the city and likely either something they had just noticed on the side of the street and snapped a picture of, or stolen from somewhere else.

Irritated at such a stupid scam, I dug in. They had actually been active a few times since Malcolms shooting. Although they certainly hadn’t sent out anything.

*Okay guys I’m in the site. Go ahead and upload that car trade.* I called out to the team as I settled in to get this crappy site to do what I needed.

A moment later a new advert was added into the sea of requests and trades.

Within a few moments I added a bit of code into the request.

Next time NCAutoRepairRC logged in, they would see the request we just added in right near the top of the new page. No matter how long it took, whether it was tomorrow, or a week from now, our advert would show up as if it was pretty new.

Okay I pulled out walking out of the server and back into the open electronic city. The bait was set. Now we just had to wait for a bite.

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