“You handled that without killing anyone…” Wakako spoke the not quite question, as I was sitting across from her, not at our usual spot.

Wakako had sent me a drop off that ended up being an old apartment complex. A few men, obviously TC, or at least with their looks helped carry Susan out of my car and into an apartment that had two other people.

One was a ripper, and the other was Wakako.

“I thought about it honestly. I could have killed them all, almost did. But they weren’t Scavs, even if they tortured your contact. I uh… Figured it was cleaner this way.”

“You did well.” She said after a while, taking a puff on her cigarette. “Padre is already annoyed with the discovery of my agent. The lack of bodies to clean up will make our next communication more civil than it would have been.” She explained casually.

“Those guys were Padres?”

“They were Valentino.” She responded as if that answered the question and I guess it did.

Every Tyger Claw was probably under Wakako’s thumb in a similar way at least to her mind.

“Should I call him and apologize for roughing up the guys?”

“No.” She answered back simply and I nodded. “Motoko.” Wakako said suddenly as I was looking over at the ripper taking care of Susan, making sure she wouldn’t die.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t enjoy offering surprise gigs like this, without warning and demanding it from you. It’s unprofessional. You took it without complaint and did what I needed.” She took another puff of her cigarette. “You’ve grown from the fool who walked into my office earlier this year.”

“Oh, thanks.” I said, a little happy despite myself. Wakako was like my strict asian Grandma… Well my Yakuza Grandma.

“You haven’t done any work at the Afterlife yet.” She said suddenly, and I perked up and looked over.

“No. Rogue gave me the invite, but I haven’t really needed to do much work. Recently. I’ve been doing other things.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t, with Ms. Mitsunashi’s jobs keeping you busy.” She said and I smiled as Hiromi was acknowledged.

“The last one was pretty fun.”

“I heard about it. 6th St. Were quite unhappy with your interference. Although none of them wanted to interrupt, considering the armament you brought along.”

“The Minotaur is so cool.” I replied back smiling because it fucking was!

“Wakako? The patient is waking up.” The ripper called and Wakako turned her attention away.

“Motoko. Payment will come through soon, Just give me a few hours.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You got something else to do first.” I assured her and got up, stretching a bit, and accidentally hearing a tearing noise. “Dangit, this stripper gear is shit!” I cursed earning an actual scoff from the older lady.

“That isn’t stripper apparel, dear. You are far too dressed for that.” She snarked at me, and I couldn't help but laugh at the older woman's words, but I also really didn’t want to ask how she knew that in case I would be subjected to mental trauma so I headed out with a wave.

Wakako seemed pretty gentle with Susan…

She wasn’t a relative or something… Right?

—--

“Please don’t ask any questions.” I sighed. I had decided to change once I was back in the apartment. Changing in the car hadn’t been very comfortable the first time, but even with my normal jacket over my shoulders, and carrying my gear in my arms. I still looked like I just left my job as a stripper.

And Jun was not just home, but had been walking back to the couch with a burrito in his hand when I opened the door, no chance for me to sneak in.

“I have so many questions.” He said going directly against what I had asked as he turned away from the couch towards me. “Let’s start with-”

“Nope! No, questions. I need to get changed and throw this away. It’s not mine, and doesn’t fit.”

“Well yeah, of course it doesn’t fit, you had to stuff the shit out of that top.” Jun snarked back and I felt my jaw drop as I brought my holsters and leotard up to my chest to hide it.

“No I didn’t!”

“Motoko.” Jun said in a monotone, and then added nothing else. As if saying my name would make me realize how silly I was!

But jokes on Jun! I’m capable of bringing up his weakness! The nuclear option in this situation!

“We are not talking about my tits right now.” I demanded, and Jun flinched, deciding that the better part of valor was to run away.

Which I also did hurrying to my room to take off the stripper wear and get dressed in comfortable leotard.

Definitely covering more skin… I looked down. Actually when I didn’t wear the jeans with it, I think I actually showed more skin…

Nope. That thought was going to be shoved into a dark corner and never thought of again.

Stepping out fully dressed I noticed Jun was still waiting for me, with a look on his face demanding answers.

“Ugh! Okay I’ll say this once, and we never talk about it again! Wakako called for an emergency gig. Had to pick up a contact that got ratted out. They were holding her in a club, like a BD bar. I had to sneak in. They had a netrunner watching the cams, so I couldn’t just walk in normally. I saw one of the girls leaving and… acquired her uniform. That’s it. We are never speaking of this again.”

“Motoko.”

“What?”

“You looked like a stripper.”

“Jun.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Yeah?”

“You look like a two bit yakuza.” I offered back and Jun actually flinched looking down at his clothes.

“What part of me is two bit? Motoko! Hey don’t walk away, what part of me is two bit!?”

—--

Tachikoma was doing well. I had spent the night after the gig working on building a personality kernel. The small seed wasn’t anything big yet, still far too early to really do much, but of course I wanted my Tachikoma to be cute when it was done!

I couldn’t run it yet. I didn’t have the processing power on my hardware on hand. But I had a plan for that.

Long before the sun was rising, I was heading out. Driving across the city to the netrunner cave!

There I plugged not just my laptop into the server, but the Tachikoma as well.

The server synced in just a moment, and I edited my lobby to allow the Tachikoma access. With a bit of work it was ready, and I went and plugged into my netrunner chair. Making sure to fully hook in. I wasn’t doing a deep dive, but I was going to do a lot of work.

A moment later I was in a digital landscape.

There was a… Well it was more like a mess of squiggles than any specific shape. The Tachikoma didn’t have a sense of self, or even a digital avatar. It wasn’t even at the level of a Daemon yet.

It was probably about 70% on its way to having enough data to be considered an IMP. Of course unlike an IMP it would be capable of improving.

I was going to speed that up. First thing I did was bring in the dimensions for the Tachikoma and sync up the digital connection.

The digital mess buzzed for a second as it shifted into the form of a Tachikoma.

It took a second, but the learning module activated as it took a step. And then another, and then it was walking around.

It wasn’t quite right to call it exploring, there was no impetus in the motion yet.

That was what I was here for. Personality was actually really easy. Anything digital had some personality now after all. The thought made me think of Brendan the SCSM capable of so accurately pretending to be alive people thought it was a full AI.

There were even personality systems for Agents, to let them talk to their users.

I didn’t have one, myself, or at least I had never activated one. I didn’t need a second voice in my head.

Anyway, with the Tachikoma settled I pulled up a digital screen.

There were plenty of personality matrices out there. I could go to any shop and buy one that would let my agent, or my clock, or whatever talk to me in some famous actor's voice.

But that was crap. I wasn’t making some dirt tier program.

I was raising a Tachikoma! Settling into the lounge chairs I started working. Mentally running multiple keyboards as I used my new cyberdeck to modify the personality kernel.

It was actually pretty easy. It was just a seed. The beginnings of how the Tachikoma would develop its personality. It was easy to start, but it would take a long time to grow.

But I stopped as I was just starting to get going.

A long time.

I don’t think I wanted to wait a long time. The longer it took the longer I would be without my backup Tachikoma squad.

I looked at the little digital avatar wandering around. Completely without awareness, completely without a ghost.

I knew how to make an AI grow faster. I just couldn’t do it yet.

Lack of equipment, lack of skill. The fact was, I couldn’t think like a digital entity. I had started moving towards that with Intelligence, over 10. That was basically what Intelligence did once it went past the human limit. It let me act as if the digital was my native space.

It’s how I was able to run multiple keyboards at once despite how difficult that was.

I pulled up my stat screen.

One Stat point.

Sighing, I shook it off. Decisions decisions. Make myself stronger, or make myself mentally safer? I didn’t exactly want another episode. Burning my cyberdeck out for nothing wasn’t a fun experience.

I hummed as I settled back, letting myself just think.

My neck didn’t get tense on the web. My body was far enough away that sort of thing wouldn’t be noticed. It hadn’t been as bad since I dropped a stat point into my neural link, but I really wanted to get stronger too.

Cyberware, or advancement? It was a choice I was coming across more and more, and once all my stats were over ten…

Yeah that was going to be tough to choose. I really needed to figure this out.

So I decided like all important choices.

“One for you. One for me.” I said. Unless something crazy was happening I would spend my stat points like that. Last point had gone into Adaptation, and I was feeling better with that. So the next point was for stats.

Nodding, I dropped the point into Intelligence. Bringing that up to twelve!

But that was only the stat. It was time to level the skills, I was about to dump points into stuff before stopping.

“Dumbass, remember what happened last time?” I cursed myself. No more leveling stats more than one at a time with long rests in between.

One point went into Breach Protocol. Bringing me up to 11, and another in Programming keeping me at my max of 12.

The influx was intense, and I felt the way I programmed change irrevocably.

It was one thing to still use a physical system as preference. It was another to know that you didn’t need them.

I had programming on my mind.

—--

“Motoko!” Hiromi cheered as I opened the door, earning an arm full of my bestie as she hugged me.

“I’m free!” She cried out and I nodded.

Friday afternoon. No more school.

“I have good news as well.” She offered as she raced over to the couch and leapt onto it flopping down and sighing in relief.

“Hello to you Hiromi. I’m glad you had a good day at school. Oh you had that for lunch? That’s nice.” I teased as I joined Hiromi who just grumbled at me.

“Business Motoko! Business! We have a meeting tomorrow, to finalize the sale of your song.” She explained and I nodded remembering that was a thing, yes.

“Okay? You need me?”

“You have to sign it over. We haven’t entered any official paperwork on the books to make me your manager.” She explained and then rolled over to look at me with a firm look.

“So I have to go?”

“So you have to go!” She demanded pointing at me. “And to make sure you do, I’m spending the night and hanging out with you all day! Hiromi time!” She demanded and I acquiesced easily. Hiromi had it hard with school and all the responsibilities that I heaped on her.

“Hiromi time.” I agreed, and the bright smile told me I had made the right call. “So, shall we go out, get a bunch of food, hang out on the couch?”

“Oooh that does sound nice!” She sighed, raising her hands. “Help me up?”

I grabbed her upraised arms and easily hauled her to her feet. Hiromi was so light.

“C’mon I’ll drive.” I offered, and Hiromi whined.

“But you drive slooooow.”

“I drive safe.” instantly replied back.

—--

“So you need better data storage?”

“At least for the Tachikoma.” I admitted. Hiromi was playing with my Tachikoma as it walked around in her lap, interested in my drone experiment.

“Hmm. That’s tough, not as easy to get off the back of a truck as weapons.” She explained and I nodded.

“It’s not a rush, but I can’t really make them smart and autonomous at the moment. I can basically just do one or the other.”

“Can’t you do a remote connection and control them that way?”

“Yeeees?” I offered. Technically that was the Militech solution to their Flathead. Just remote connect it, and don’t worry about needing an on board AI.

But I didn’t want a Flathead, I wanted a Tachikoma.

“I can do that for a stop gap, might even be a good idea to do it, so I can help teach it what I need it to do, but I’m looking for an autonomous system.”

“I’ll keep an eye out. Maybe we’ll hit a storage yard, or just knock over a transport?”

“Pfft!” I giggled at Hiromi’s words. “Just knock over stuff huh? Steal it? You’re so bad!”

“What? That’s literally what we do!”

“I know! But it sounds funny coming from you and saying it like that!” I giggled as I turned to my noodles and kept eating. The TV show currently playing was honestly being ignored by both of us.

Me because I didn’t like it, and Hiromi, because she was showing that corpo personality. Always wanting to push more.

“Hmph! Maybe I will make sure when I find the chips you need, the gig requires a transport truck heist! Just to show you!”

“That would be cool. Ichi could be the driver in the Behemoth, and Malcolm could use his Nomad car, the one with the rockets. I could do a cool jump from Ichi’s truck onto the transport and take it over.”

“Or just make them pull over so you don’t get yourself killed!” Hiromi shrieked at me, and I just laughed.

This was nice, the stress from the week disappeared off my shoulders as Hiromi and I hung out making fun of bad TV and eating ourselves sick.