A neon-lit room. Strobing lights. A set of chairs and couches arranged in a near perfect circular fashion. A dance floor that seemed to stretch onto eternity. Someone's crappy classic playlist blaring out over the virtual speakers. Welcome to LazWerk's Social Hub. A corner of the matrix that was all too familiar for Onigiri.
“Y'all heard about the shit that went down a few days back, yeh?” remarked one of the patrons. Normally one obfuscating their identity here would go for something fantastical, but this one pumped the brakes early. A plain tan hoodie with the hood tugged up and over their head, the light hitting them just at the right angle to cast an impenetrable shadow on their face. Onigiri's attention shifted to them when they spoke up. If it wasn't for what was being said, it was the strange choice of wear that made them stand out amongst the crowd.
“Yeah, big wave o' bounties?” another patron chimed in, this one dressed up in a business suit lined with bright blue neon tubing. The head of his virtual avatar was shaped like an old-timey megaphone, the rim of the speaker end lined with lights in the same shade as the tubing on his suit. It strobed unnecessarily, in perfect sync with his obnoxious cadence.
“Fucking huge wave of bounties.” Tan Hoodie responded. “All the bloody wetworkers in the city. They turned on each other like a fucking pack of starving rats. Go figure, huh?”
“Heard a buncha them are moving ou' north to the Slag. Apparently there's a rumor goin' 'bout that the Corpos are grippin' the ones who survived the first wave.” Blue Suit folded his arms behind his head. “Nobody's sure if they're linin' the cunts up and shootin' them on the spot, or if they're strongarmin' them into contracts.”
Another person drifted into the conversation, this one floating upside down while their form glitched into an incomprehensible mess. “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Apparently there were four of ‘em that got mowed down in an old hab block or something. My old pal Jethro found the bodies while he was scavving about.”
“Fix ya avatar, ya friggen’ namby!” another patron shouted from across the room, throwing up a rude gesture to put emphasis on their point. Typical hub interactions.
Tan Hoodie shook their head, doing their best to pretend that a matrix fight was about to boil up in their proximity. “‘The usual talking heads are calling it a hoax. Bet half the folks here who aren’t Slaggies are drinking that down.”
Though this could be just usual barroom bullcrap, it lined up too well with what Hotrod's pal was speaking of the other day. Even if it just reaffirmed something that they already knew, Oni also knew that her job was very much canary-work, and she should be telling someone at the very least.
And it'd be an excuse to get out of the place before the usual suspect started hassling her about drinks. She flicked her wrist up in a practiced fashion, brought her HUD into view and promptly disconnected from the hub.
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Onigiri's attention drifted ceiling-wards, an unlit ciggie dangling from betwixt her lips. The mousy-looking girl with the jet black bangs, everyone's initial thought until she opened her mouth.
“Neh. Fuck,” she mumbled to herself and snapped her attention to her surroundings. The Screaming Banshees clubhouse. The garage, to be more precise. Skeletonized bikes, works in progress, dinged up rides. Not the worst place to come back to reality, but not exactly the best place to black out if you don't want a crick in your back. The girl patted down her coveralls and languidly rose to her feet. “Fuckity fuck.”
Being the new girl wasn’t the most pleasant of things, especially around the Slag. You had to earn your keep, which was exactly what she was trying to do, but it felt like she was doing the opposite here. She may have confirmed what was told to them by Harridan, but that also confirmed she had bad news to tell. Something that she most definitely did not look forward to telling Switch.
Switch intimidated the ever-loving fuck out of her, for good reason. Who wouldn’t be intimidated by a towering woman with mechanical arms that could punch through concrete? Oni definitely was. To the hacker-turned-mechanic, the boss lady may as well have been a mythological being.
She pulled up an ARO to shoot a message at the only Banshee that came to mind. Stiletto.
[https://i.imgur.com/akRiFCb.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/08o2Bl8.png]
Onigiri flattened her brow. That girl must live at the Primo Purchase, considering that she always seemed to be there every time she called. Not that she could blame her, it’s the one of the few places in Slag where you could actually get okay food for a decent price. Even though it was sometimes barely a step above eating garbage in some cases.
[https://i.imgur.com/WiKfuDO.png]
Not five minutes later, Stiletto arrived at the clubhouse. There was the characteristic thud of rubber against loose gravel, no doubt the result of her pulling the usual wheelie stunt before parking.
“Fuckin—Fuck fuck.” Oni continued to swear at herself, patting down her tan coveralls as she made for the front door. The bolt, the hatch, the lock. She internally wished they could just replace it all with electronics, but she knew they never would. It’d be too easy for someone like her to break in. She swung the door open after a good long moment of finagling with all of the security mechanisms and waved Stiletto in.
Stiletto cartwheeled her way from the parking lot to the door. “What's up?”
The cosmodded girl, in a perfect situation, wouldn’t be Onigiri’s first pick to ask for help. Sadly, Stiletto was one of the rare few girls in the chapter that didn’t scare the utter crap out of her. Which she should. Long black hair, big pointed ears, a permanent grin etched across her face, larger than normal eyes. The girl went to the nines when it came to getting cosmodded. Onigiri couldn’t figure out why. The best guess she had was that Stiletto was really into bats and wanted to look the part. The mammal, not the sporting equipment.
“Everything’s screwed. You comin’ in?” She waggled her hand to goad Stiletto inside. “Hotrod’s pal was right about shit stinkin’.”
Stiletto continued to cartwheel her way inside the clubhouse. “Isn't it normal for shit to stink?”
“Figuratively.” Oni started to work the door back shut. The process took a lot longer than getting it open. “Buncha people got price tags on their heads.”
“Including us?” Stiletto leapt up the stairs and led the way to the meeting room.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Fuckin' wish, almost.” She trundled along after the bounding woman. Onigiri was hardly athletic, so bounding after Stiletto was out of the question. “Mostly the wetwork types, you know?”
They made their way to the room that had a name befitting of its purpose: the meeting room. Though it was often used for such, there were times that it was simply used as a break room; given the installation of a massive state-of-the-art Arcalux fridge—a definite oddity in the Big Slag—in one corner of the room. A large screen mounted opposite to that was usually used for briefings, but equally used for watching whatever they could pick up on a pirated signal. The amount of seating and the large table at the center of the room made it well suited towards both of these purposes.
Their trusty Orsa SRS-TR500 sound system is sitting pretty underneath the monitor and currently projecting Blackjack's metropop playlist, the soft volume turning it into more of an ambiance element than a proper listening experience. Blackjack herself is nowhere to be seen, though.
Stiletto looked up at the rafters, then down at her seat at the table, then back up at the rafters. She walked to her designated chair and plopped herself down. “So how is everything screwed if we aren't even on the bounty list?”
It was enough to give Onigiri one of her usual pauses. Every encounter with Stiletto she had in the past that involved the meeting room had the girl hanging upside down from the rafters and holding a conversation from there.
“Movin' gears,” Oni mumbled as she made her way into the meeting room, plonking her arse down onto the closest seat she could find. “First, we got Hotrod's new pal hangin' around. Considerin' she got swung at, pretty sure she's got a bounty on her. Second, we're gonna have those types scurryin' out here like addled mutant rats lookin' for cover.”
“That makes sense. Is that what you needed to run by me before telling Switch?”
“Well, kinda just sayin' the bosslady intimidates the crap outta me. And I respect her judgement and all that.” She leaned back in her chair. “Just don't want to approach her with bad news without offerin' up some kind of a solution.”
“Right, that's smart thinking. I can't help you with thinking, but I'm guessing you already have something else I can help with.”
Onigiri made a face at that, sitting back upright. “—I was kinda hopin' you'd have an idea.”
Stiletto twisted around in her seat and ended up sitting on the backrest. “Okay, I can try. What sort of stuff did you see and hear on the, uh, waves?”
“Jack besides what I told ya. I'm assumin' the other gangs are gonna get riled up 'cause of this, too. Which – I guess I did hear that over the waves.”
“We can probably scope out the other gangs' turfs and see what they do? If it really is a big deal, they should be gearing up to do something.”
Oni sighed, closing a single eye. “—I'll go dig around the waves and see what's what if you're fine goin' around on foot or somethin'.”
“On foot? Sure. Don't mind stretching my legs.”
“Figuratively on foot. I meant—” She rubbed her nose. “—Do it the way you're best at.”
Stiletto pulled out a half-eaten XL breakfast burrito from her jacket's inner pocket. Aside from the audible chewing, the silence in the room grew to the degree that the lights could finally be heard buzzing above the bar. Onigiri’s staring transitioned from Stiletto, to the burrito, to the ceiling lights, back to the burrito, and then back to Stiletto.
“—I ain't sure if that's in relation to what I just said.”
“I'm just continuing my nighttime snack while you're doing your thing in the matrix.”
“I ain't doing anythin' in the matrix right now, though.”
“Oh, okay.” Stiletto took another large bite from her snack.
“…Are—Are you just gonna sit there and eat that?”
“Should I not?”
“No, I just—” Oni stared for a long period of time before finishing her thought. “—Are you waitin' for me to do the matrix crap while you're here?”
“Oh! Should I go somewhere while you do that?”
“N—What?” Oni stumbled over her words, now stuck verbally flatfooted. “I asked you to come over here so you could help me figure out an idea to soften the blow to—You're fine wherever.”
“Got it. Hold on, let me finish this real quick.” Stiletto stuffed the rest of her burrito into her mouth, which was a bit more than she could chew. Literally.
Onigiri resumed staring. For a very long period of time. She did her utmost to remain flat-faced during all of this. “You good?”
Stiletto raised her finger, still chewing. One, two, three. Gulp. “I'm good!”
Oni reached into her coveralls and pulled out a lighter. “Still fuckin' stumped on what we're tellin' the boss lady.”
“We can just tell her like it is. Mention the bounties and the possibility of unknowns taking shelter in our territory. Or we hold off from telling her until we get more info.”
“Balancin' out the options. The prior? We're in a better spot to handle any crap, but she prolly gets real fuckin' upset with me for droppin' bad news. Even more upset if it ain't accurate. The latter? Fuck, prolly the same.” Oni fidgeted with her lighter, spinning the spark wheel repeatedly. “Fuuuuuuuuck.”
“I'm going with ‘get more info first’ if you think she'll be upset either way.”
“So, you got any connections or anythin’? For askin’ around.”
“The vendors down at the Night Market would be my first go-to, if we're only asking around.”
“Are you in good with the vendors? I don't know nobody from the market, and I figure anyone who's anyone will think my short ass is playin' dress-up with Banshee colours.”
Stiletto hopped up from her chair. “Sort of? I'm pretty much a regular at some of the stalls in the Chunk Bunk section.”
“Chunk Bunk?” She leaned back in her seat again, glancing over something unseen; presumably doing her funky matrix crap as she talks. “You think they're gonna know anythin'?”
“They might? We aren't the only gang who does business there. Unless we have other leads.”
“Hrm. I guess ask around if they can figure anythin'.” Oni sat upright. “I'll trawl around the waves. Just—y'know. Don't be too visible about crap.”
“You got it.” Stiletto leaped over the table and front-flipped her way down the stairs.
Onigiri rolled her eyes, pushing herself up out of the seat. She shouts down after the acrobatic woman. “Stay safe, hey?”
“You got—” The front door clicked shut and cut off that sentence. Scant moments later, the distinct high-pitched sound of Stiletto's Hozumi Cyclone started up and sped away, tires squealing after what was definitely another wheelie.
Oni pinched the bridge of her nose, trundling back down to her usual perch in the garage and flopped back onto her stool. It took her a moment to regather herself, and she realized she should've called someone else other than Stiletto over this. Maybe Hotrod.
Though, that gave her something of an idea. Even though she was still the new girl, she was on relatively good terms with the girls from the other chapters of the Banshees. Obviously it was her charming personality, and not her innate ability to bend the digital waves like it was a piece of paper. Still, contacting them for info was an idea to ponder over; one that was much less daunting than it was to engage Switch in direct conversation.
She connected to her usual data host, forgetting that her commlink was left on the workbench beside her. Oh well, nobody will notice anyways.