YOUR CURRENT LOCATION IS EMERALD MEADOWS.

THE CURRENT TIME IS TWO A.M.

You have an incoming message.

Stiletto jolted from the sudden buzzing of her commlink and called up an ARO to read the message. In her hurry, she accidentally closes the novel she was reading. Intuition dictated that it's Onigiri throwing more work at her, because that's how it's been working out lately.

Onigiri gets told to do something, or finds something to do.

Onigiri tells someone else to do it.

«NeuroLine_Onigiri → Stiletto: I hope you're awake. I might be a little hopped up on… things. Not going to clarify, but I had some stuff hit me from over the waves. It's not even that urgent, but—»

A long pause.

A longer pause.

«NeuroLine_Onigiri → Stiletto: You wanna go steal stuff from a bunch of go-gangers that are barely go-gangers?»

Stiletto composed a short reply as she scrambled to reopen her novel, giving up after remembering that she hadn't bookmarked her spot.

«NeuroLine_Stiletto → Onigiri: From who?»

«NeuroLine_Onigiri → Stiletto: Hold on. You're upstairs, right? I can tell you in person.»

Onigiri hoped that Stiletto was upstairs in the meeting room, or she would look like a dumbass trampling up the stairs and barging straight through the door; already dressed to the nines in her racing gear.

Luckily for her, Stiletto was indeed upstairs, hanging upside down from her usual spot in the rafters. She waved at Onigiri when she saw the smaller girl coming into view. “Hey!”

“Hey! Fuck, it's weird to not be talkin' over NeuroLine for once,” she noted as she slung her messenger bag back over her shoulder. “You ain't in the middle of anythin' important, right? 'Cause otherwise I'll go and tag Growler or somethin'.”

“Just reading. Who are we hitting?” She hopped down from her perch, gracefully twisting her body around to land on her feet.

“Have you heard of the Speednovas—” she paused in order to watch this display of acrobatics, applauding quietly before returning to what she was saying.

“Okay so, the Speednovas, right? They're a shitty knock-off go-gang that wishes they could be a go-gang. I think. I'll be honest, I haven't done my research yet, 'cause they ain't local.”

Stiletto tilted her head to one side, face scrunching up as she tried to remember if she heard the name before. “I don't think I have. If they aren't local, where are they from?”

“Aurora Hills.” Onigiri shot up finger guns and fidgeted around with her messenger bag again, bringing it around to check its contents. “That's the thing though, we'd normally have to go to Aurora Hills to mess with them, right? But right now we don't. And they're a bunch of rich kids, so it might as well be a victimless crime.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Oh? Are you saying they're currently here, on our home ground?” Stiletto leapt over the table to get to the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Saturn's Shadow.

“Well, not at the moment, no. They're currently moving a bunch of tuners through our turf and down into Aurora Hills. I don't think any of them are personally there? I'm assumin' it's all gonna be their parent's corpsec and stuff.” Onigiri still fumbled through her bag. “'Cause they live in Aurora Hills. Who lives in Aurora Hills that isn't a corpie?”

“This is true. So what's the score? Are we going to steal their rides?” Stiletto popped the cap open and took a swig, doing a little happy jig as the beer's citrusy notes hit her taste buds.

Onigiri looked up from her messenger bag to shoot up a finger-gun again, dropping a handful of datachips on the ground in the process. She scrambled to pick them back up and cleared her throat.

“Right on the money. Steal what we can, and wreck the rest,” she said as she knelt down to stuff the chips back from whence they came. “The bad news is that I don't know much about the route they'll be taking. My contact said they might be followin' the smugglin' route used for movin' shit in from Noordrijk, but the waves are kinda failin' me on that one.”

“Huh, that means they'll be coming into the Slag from Sunnbury Flats then. Straight up through the farmlands. Should we coordinate with our sisters in the Contessas? Northwest Slag is their stomping grounds, after all.” She walked over to Onigiri while taking another generous swig from her bottle, doing the same happy jig again.

“Aaaaaaareeeeen't the Contessas kinda weird?” she asked with a raised brow, trailing off as she watched Stiletto jig.

“Weird how?” She stopped her little jig and sloshed her bottle around. Staying still while on the ground was an alien concept to her.

“They're all chromed up as bad as Switch, aren't they? Except like, they ain't as level as Switch is.”

“Oh, you mean in that way. Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Totally your call. As in, you're probably gonna be the one to call them. Or, I can. Or—” Onigiri squinted for a moment as she figured out a genius plan to try and avoid having to split whatever pay they get from screwing with some corpkids. “We could just wait until the trucks are outta their territory.”

“Okay, we can wait until the trucks are out of NW Slag.” She paused. “Do you have an estimate on how many trucks there will be?”

“The waves said prolly only two. They're those big ass car haulers, though.” She held her arms wide for emphasis on this. “Covered backs and everythin'. Guessin' they didn't wanna be hit on the way through.”

“So what's the game plan? We hit them with a blockade, clean up the escorts, steal the haulers?” Stiletto resumed her dancing, sliding left and right.

“Do we have anythin' to stop them on the road?” Onigiri rubbed her chin, staring down into her messenger bag before zipping it back up. “Fuck, prolly shouldn't have gotten rid of that ugly as piss Dominator.”

“Oh, right. We had one of those for a while.” Stiletto took another swig from her bottle and stared inside it while thinking. “We can try rerouting them into a dead-end and then ambush? We know these streets like the back of our hands, after all.”

“Well, correction. You do. I don't really get out much, yeah?” Onigiri shook her head, snorting. “You probably know the route better than I do. So that'll be down to you. I can support you where I can, though.”

“Okay! If you can reroute them into a dead-end road, I'll take care of the escorts.” She eyed the AM-77s sitting on the gun rack by the stairs and pointed at it. “—maybe I should bring one of those, huh?”

“I've never actually seen you fire a gun,” Onigiri fired back rapidly, as if she needed to say that in that absolute exact moment.

“I have used guns a few times. It feels weird, though. I'd stick to my knives, but that's maybe a bad idea against CorpSec.”

“…That's fair. 'Cause they might actually be sorta armed if they're goin' through the Slag.” Onigiri rubbed her chin again at that, walking back towards the door. “Doesn't hurt to be prepared or nothin'. Besides, we got a while before they hit Slag turf anyways.”

“I'll go get my bag ready!” She leapt down the stairs to disappear inside her designated room.

“Why are you in such a rush? I told you that we got a while—” she called out, before realizing the effort was fruitless. “Okay, I guess that means we'll have time to scout out spots.”

She sighed and ambled her way back down the stairs. At least she's somewhat prepared.