“It’s not too bad.. Right?”

“I think it suits you.” Misty assured me. It was a full twenty hours after I went under the knife. Vik had done a lot of work, and after eight hours I felt… Perfect.

My neck was a little weird, but that was something adaptation would help with.

I looked in the little hand held mirror and what gazed back at me, was something more than human.

The Neural Link Vik had chipped into me was an Arasaka brand. So the chrome was the usual black with little red ports for everything.

I knew Hiromi would love it. But it wasn’t just a few chip slots hidden beneath the flesh that had long grown over it.

This was heavy duty chrome, and I didn’t like hiding my chrome.

So the entire back of my neck, from just above where my Occipital bun as Vik had called it, but it was just the bump on the back of my head. Everything below that was chrome to just above my shoulder blades. I even had some cool chrome stretching into the sides of my throat giving me a bit of flash there.

And now Misty was cleaning up my hair on the back of my head, and there it was.

The largest chunk of myself other than my arms, that wasn’t natural, something I wouldn’t be hidden away beneath my boots like my ankles.

And I low key fucking loved it.

“Vik did a great job. It looks amazing.” I said… Okay so maybe it was more like high key I loved it.

“Hehe, it really suits you. You always carried that Neo-Mil look. Well it looks even more so now.”

I felt myself smiling even wider as I turned the mirror so I could see Misty.

“Thanks Misty.”

“Of course. You’ll make sure to take all the drugs Vik gave you in exchange.”

I kept myself from laughing too hard as Misty was cutting my hair a bit but I flashed her a smile. “Sure you bet.”

“Good. You’re one of the patients that actually listen to all the recovery instructions. You have no idea how hard it is to get a bunch of gonks to take their medicine correctly.”

I giggled all the louder as Misty ranted, happily telling me horror stories of idiots not listening to Viks orders and coming back with their body rejecting chrome or worse.

“All done… It looks about the same as before, but from the back… Well it definitely stands out… In a good way!”

“Hold the mirror?” I asked her and she nodded as I walked over to a wall mirror and with Misty’s help was able to actually see it.

Heh. I’m really glad that Vik or whoever owned it previously got rid of the Arasaka symbol on the back, instead of looking tacky, my chrome looked… Sinister.

Cool.

“Remember to follow Viks instructions!” Misty demanded, and I nodded in agreement, the feeling felt weird as my neck no longer moved in the same way.

But I would get used to it.

Finally Misty let me free, and I would follow Viks instructions, only the actual instructions he had given me. We hadn’t wanted to tell Misty that I had already healed post surgery, so Vik had given me different instructions before I had left.

I walked out and breathed in the Night City air. People walked past me, in a blur of neon and suspicion clad faces.

But I didn’t care. Because today? I had just done something amazing. Time to go home. Despite the heal, I was still ordered to go very easy on my Cyberdeck, and not to even think about using my Sandy.

Even if the urge was there.

—--

“You’re staring.”

“Of course I am. My little sister got a nova upgrade.” Jun agreed as he had intercepted me as I got home.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I said, flushing a little at the attention.

“I have the day off. Show me.” He demanded but it was with a gentle smile and I huffed and did just that. Settling onto the couch.

“It’s an Arasaka Neural Link, an ODA apparently. The Sandy’s a Dynalar. Just a Mk.2.”

“Nova. That’s good chrome.” Jun confirmed as he spun around me so he could get a better look.

“He did a good job on the install, I can barely see the wounds.” I nodded slightly at that. He had done an amazing job, but the real reason there weren’t any wounds was because I had slept eight hours after the install.

“Anyway, I haven’t used it yet of course. I need to give it some time for everything to settle in. Docs orders. So I’ll be working on stuff around the house… Do you need anything done… Armor for instance.” I hinted and Jun just happily ignored me as he patted me on the shoulder.

“Nah don’t worry about it. That armor just got in the way. It was interesting, but not for me-Ow! Motoko!”

“I’m sorry I just happened to hit you right where you got shot the other day! Oops! Wow too bad you weren’t wearing the armor properly or it would have blocked that bullet and only given you a bruise!” I hissed at him, and while Jun looked like he was about to pick me up and throw me, he hesitated, glancing up at my neck.

I reached up and rubbed my neck too and that put a damper on it. Jun wasn’t going to rough house while I was healing.

“I wish you would wear more armor.” I told him seriously. “Look at how effective it was for us. I got shot a few times in that fight Jun, but it didn’t even slow me down.”

He didn’t say anything in turn at my turn towards the serious. Instead just patting me on the head. “Don’t forget to call Hiromi. She’ll freak.”

“Hehe! I’ll do that now. Maybe she wants to spend the night?” I wondered and jumped off the couch to run to my room to make the call.

—--

“That kinda tickles.”

“It’s so cool. Arasaka brand and everything! I’m so proud.” Hiromi said faux sniffling as she continued to poke at the back of my neck. I rolled my eyes.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“It’s not the best link on the market, just the one that I have.” I tried to argue, but Hiromi just ignored me. Happy that I had some Araska chrome. Honestly we sort of matched. Her own Neural link wasn’t the heavy duty one that I had, but she did have a strip of black chrome hidden under her hair along the back of her neck. Her chip ports were set into it.

“There is a problem though.” I grumbled.

“What? What happened? Something wrong? Bad chrome!? I’ll kill that old man ripper of yours!”

“No! What? Hiromi, chill choom. Vik is amazing. No, I used to have my Personal link cords on the back of my neck remember?”

“Oh yeah, you picked that weird install. They still there?”

“Yeah, but the ODA’s have a slightly different link design. Here see?” I said as I reached behind my head and felt around until I found it, then showed it to Hiromi.

The ODA had a lot of modularity despite being Arasaka branded. Not something you would expect from them, but it was actually sort of one of their trademarks. Other than the black and red design.

The personal link cord wasn’t in quite the same spot as it used to be. It now detached from a recess along the right or left side of the neural link. Meaning it was more on the side of my neck behind my ears, than it used to be directly behind on the back.

“Tehee!” Hiromi giggled as she popped the personal link out of my neck and then put it back in a few times.

“That kinda tickles Hiromi.” I told her and that just made her giggle more and keep doing it until I swiped her hands away.

“It looks nova Motoko! And with a Sandy our work is going to be even smoother!” Hiromi said with glee kicking her legs as she raised them off the floor.

“It’ll definitely increase safety. It’ll be nice not to be pushed back by every speedware user now.”

“Heh. And that one TC girl you spar with! You’ll be able to beat her ass now! Which you should! Definitely beat her ass!”

“Oh, yeah Hayato. I haven’t talked to her recently. I’ll have to reach out. She’ll be a great test for using the Sandy in a fight… My sandy.” I repeated, because it bore repeating. I had a sandy now.

Sandevistan. One of my own.

It wasn’t Davids OP as fuck secret black project sandy, but it was fine.

“Yep! Well in that case, I’ll focus on the BD stuff for a while. Not like we can go on gigs while you are still recovering from your chrome.” HIromi added shrugging.

“Oh yeah. I still have the BD from the Power Plant. Think I should delete it?” I asked. Things had gotten a bit serious on the gig. And it could be dangerous to have it come back to us.

“Wait.. You made a BD of that?”

“Yeah of course I did. I always turn my BD tuner on before doing something. I just delete it if it’s boring or in the case of the Badlands gig… Well if things get crazy.”

“Definitely! Oh oh! I have a good idea! It’ll be perfect! Gimme! Gimme!”

“Wha-hold on Hiromi, I’ll need to take it to Judy to get fixed up.”

“I know! That’s why give it to me, I’ll take it! I have an idea.”

“Okay sure!” I said laughing as Hiromi was practically reaching for my chip slots like she could just pull it from my head. I quickly flashed a shard and after a moment of it saving I handed her the raw BD.

“Perfect! Hehehehe!” She cackled as she rose to her feet, like full on maniacal laughter.

“I really don’t think I want to know what your idea is.”

“Don’t worry! It’s perfect!” Then before I could say anything else, she ran out of the apartment.

“Was that Hiromi?” Jun asked, poking his head out of his room looking confused. I just sent him a look of confusion in turn. “Wasn’t she spending the night?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

—--

I flopped on my bed just after Hiromi left. With any sort of heavy work taken off the field, I didn’t have much to do. Sure David had chipped in his Sandy then used it right away, but he also fucked himself up enough to pass out doing that, and was a fucking gonk.

I was going to follow my doctor's orders to take it easy for a few days, even with my instant heal.

I looked over and Tachikoma was steadily working.

The programming was clearing up. The program had learned what it was trying to learn, and so actual improvement was going pretty quick. I purposefully pulled up the data on my laptop and didn’t link in to go ahead and do more pruning.

Getting rid of incorrect data, or repeats, cleaning it up and making it streamlined. But it was getting to be time to add more into the program.

So I walked over and picked up a chunk of steel, and placed it in front of the Tachikoma.

A moment later the small addition to its programming I had added started up.

It moved to the sphere and stopped… Then it rammed it.

But steel was heavy.

Nope little guy. If you want to learn how to pick things up you need to do better than that.

Setting the program to run I ended up just laying on my bed staring at the ceiling for a while.

My neck… Well it felt kinda stiff. Like I wanted to stretch it, but I couldn’t.

The negative side to chrome. But I relaxed. I would put in some adaptation and be good to go.

And in exchange for this discomfort… A Sandy.

Which I couldn’t use yet…

“Jun! I’m going to sleep for a while!” I yelled out from my bed without getting up.

“Okay! Sleep well!” Jun called back. Cool.

Another eight hours would make the time until Sandy usage go down a lot.

So I closed my eyes and drifted off.

I awoke instantly and blinked. The light in the room was off, not that there wasn’t enough light from my printers and laptop. So I rose up and blinked.

“That… Isn't quite it little guy.” I muttered staring at the Tachikoma that had failed at lifting the block… It was using its little grippers on the block and was just… Sort of jerking itself forward and back. But the block wasn’t going anywhere, because it was using the extension I had built into the grippers… Kinda cute though. I stood up and moved to the computer. Oh yeah, that was a glitch alright.

A few moments later I sent the update and the Tachikoma stopped and then with a bit of prodding on my behalf through code, it finally managed to lift the block. Then it started walking and dropped it.

“Ganbatte, Tachikoma-chan.” I whispered to my drone and looked at the screen. I really should sit down and put in some actual work on the Tachikoma interface…

Just thinking about it instantly brought ideas to my mind thanks to inspired programmer… And it was like 2 am so I might as well get something done.

I shrugged and even if I couldn’t program with my cyberdeck, I could still do it the old way.

I started typing, getting lost in the synergy between the VI I was creating from the Tachikoma, and a program to manually control them.

I would need to get the Minotaur interface tomorrow to look that one over as well. I could copy some of the program…

Where was the Minotaur anyways? Last I saw it, Ichi had… Ichi! That little sneak! I realized that Ichi had definitely stolen the Minotaur away from me! Well we would see about that.

I knew where he lived!

—--

Ichinose

Ichi woke up to his alarm blaring.

Sighing into his pillow he blinked up his agent and then shut it down. He sighed into his pillow as he mustered up the energy to get up. Slowly he rose, eyes blinking, one of the benefits of optics, is that he didn’t feel like he could barely see anything when he first woke up, everything was clear from the light coming in from his open window.

Which was weird, Ichi never left his window open. Something he had learned as a kid. He narrowed his eyes at it, and reached over to flip the switch, closing it back down. Nodding at that, he rose unsteadily to his feet, and took a few moments to stretch and groan.

He didn’t want to get up this early, but Hiromi had dragged him into that SCSM job, and well…

It wasn’t about the pay so much, but it was a good experience. Ichi really liked driving through the city, seeing new places, and meeting people.

Malcolm might talk up his massively overpriced supercar, but he was also the idiot that could barely ever drive his car anywhere.

Ichi drove through the whole city whenever he wanted.

As he slipped into the bathroom he made the call to his new ‘partner.’ even if the guy liked to try and get Ichi to call him boss.

Max was the guy that ran the SCSM shop. He was alright, but since Hiromi was technically Ichi’s boss, it gave him a lot of leeway.

*Hey kid! You coming in today or not? You caused a real issue yesterday!*

*Hey Max, yeah I’m getting ready to come in. I’ll have the Behemoth. Won’t have full capacity though.*

*Fuck. How much room do I got?*

*About seventy percent, maybe eighty.*

Ichi ignored the cursing coming over the line, quickly washing up his hair and then once he was soap free stepping out, and grabbing a towel, quickly drying off he checked his mirror, doing a bit of work on his hair to even it all.

*Fine. But we’ll have to haul ass to get a full route done in that case! I expect you in soon kid!*

*It’ll be about thirty minutes Max.” Ichi refuted the man's demands casually, pretty used to him now. It was kinda cool to be a teenager able to tell grown men to fuck off. It wasn’t like Max had any other trucks with the same amount of armor, or capacity. And Hiromi had made it clear to the man that Ichi was the one in charge of the truck, full stop.

Not that Ichi went out of his way to piss him off. The extra storage area and secure holding for the truck was worth a lot on its own.

He stepped out of the bathroom, glad he had his own private one since this was an older style home pushing the beads out of the way he made two steps and then stopped cold.

“M-Motoko?” He asked, because there sitting on his bed, with her feet up was Motoko. Along with his Yukimura in her lap, that she was fiddling with.

“Ichi.” She greeted back calmly and Ichi felt a bit of discomfort, because Motoko was acting weird.

For one she was literally in his room.

“Motoko? What’s going on?” He asked a little awkwardly, making sure his towel was properly tightened around his waist. Dangit Motoko he just got out of the shower! Had Grandma let her in!?

She rose with a predator's grace, something she had started to show more and more lately, and almost languidly stalked him across the room.

Ichi felt his back hit the cold wall as she stalked him right into a dead end, and then she grabbed his hand and put his Yukimura into his palm.

“You should really have more weapons on hand Ichi, I was able to take your pistol while you slept and you didn’t even notice.” She said almost jokingly and he relaxed a bit about to make a joke before asking her to get the hell out but suddenly her palms slammed into the wall beside his head.

Oh.

Oh no.

“Ichi?”

“Y-yeah?”

“Where’s my Minotaur?” She said with sinister intent and all Ichi could do was swallow, the emotions running through him in that moment complicated and unknowable.

“I uh… Can show you?”

“Perfect, get dressed.” She agreed back to happy Motoko as she walked out of his room.

Ichi slumped nearly sliding down the wall.

What the fuck?