“And that’s it! Great job!” Hiromi called out as the last box in the truck was dumped off at the foot of a Ripper and we were finally done.

“Yes! Whoo!” I cheered, jumping into the air a little. We had done it! Sold our loot! It actually felt like something an adventurer would do after clearing some Goblin cave or something! I mean sure Scavs aren’t exactly Goblins… Mostly…

But it was the feeling it gave!

“Payday!” Malcolm cheered, hand out and flat towards Hiromi giving her a cheerful look.

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Not here you gonk. C’mon let’s go to Motoko’s place and we can split the eddies.” She said ignoring Malcolms whine for money as she climbed back into my Quadra.

“Wait, why are we meeting at my apartment?”

“Ichi lives with his Grandmother. Malcolm has his parents, and we aren’t going to my place.” Hiromi answers simply.

“Sounds good to me.”

“I agree.” The boys both say with a grin as they jump into the truck and start driving away!

Why did everyone just drive off on me! Bullying gonks!

I huffed but got in my Quadra and started driving home. I hope Jun wasn’t home.

—--

“So the split is completely even. Each of us gets 25%. I doubt anyone is unhappy with the number?” Hiromi asked as she passed us a pretty hefty chunk of change each.

My own bank account was grateful and it was more than I would have made doing three gigs for Wakako!

“This was amazing.” Malcolm said as he flopped back onto the floor of my apartment. We were all sitting around the living room table. Ichi and Malcolm both on the floor while Hiromi and I had the couch.

“Uh. Malcolm, that floor isn’t super clean, you might not want to lay back like that.” I said unable to not mention the dusty floors.

Listen. I still remember how dirty it was when I was doing pushups, and neither Jun nor I had really done any cleaning outside of fixing up our messes…

Okay mostly me picking up tech, or guns laying around, but the point still stood.

“Yeah it’s kinda dusty down here.”

Ichi cut in then shaking his head as Malcolm dusted himself off a bit. “Either way… Motoko. Hiromi. Malcolm. Thank you. I was really hurting for eddies, and I couldn’t have made anything like this much in such a short amount of time. Motoko… You still pay better than any other boss I’ve worked for. Thanks.”

I grinned at Ichi’s sincerity as he bowed his head a little but Malcolm spoke first, throwing an arm over his friend's shoulder. “Anytime choom! I needed some cash too, I gotta admit, other than the terror and chance of death… Which we already dealt with during the war. The pay is certainly better. When are we doing this again?”

I blinked.

My crew all looked to me, and I realized what they wanted.

I mean…

“I have the computers that the scavs and the ripper were using… I’ll start digging and see if there is any info on another den?” I offered with a shy shrug.

“Oh oh! I’ll reach out to my contacts, because I have those now, and see what I can find out!” Hiromi offered, putting both of her hands on her hips and flipping her hair a bit as she looked all pleased with herself. She seriously looked like her mom right there.

I decided I wasn’t going to mention that.

“Huh. Well… I’ll call up some of the TC guys I worked with during the war… I’ll see what they say.” Ichi offered looking happy to be involved.

“Oh fuck all of you. I don’t have any cool contacts.” Malcolm said as he slumped over the table.

“Don’t worry Malcolm, not everyone is good at gathering information! Why don’t you see Vik and get some upgrades. I’ll probably do that sometime soon too.”

“Yeah… Yeah I can do that. It’ll be preem to actually have some real chrome. I mean! Mantis blades you know!?” We all laughed as he started faux swinging his arms around as if he was using the blades.

We ended up just kind of hanging out sorta mini celebrating a job well done when Jun finally came home.

Which of course distracted me completely.

“GASP!” I yelled out as I looked at Jun, and he rolled his eyes at me.

“I said I was going to Viks.” He said and it was true. His arms looked mostly real now!

“Hug!” I demand as I jump up and clamber over Hiromi as Jun sighs but gives in and wraps his now fleshy arms around me.

“Much better! Did Vik give you a checkup as well, how’s the chrome?”

“He did… Better. He did a good job settled, some issues I didn’t even know I had… You were right. Don’t let it go to your head.” He mutters and I just giggle happy that Vik took care of him.

“Looking good Jun-Nii.” Hiromi offered with a wink and Jun rolled his eyes at her flirtations.

“Thank you Hiromi. Good to see you too. Doing something new with the hair?”

“Well the mohawk wasn’t me anymore.” She demurred a bit as she ran a hand through her hair. Her hair was growing out everywhere but she still had the long mohawk laying sideways.

It looked good even so. Hiromi was one of those girls that always looked pretty no matter what she did.

“Ah Ichi, and… Malcolm, right.” He said and the boys nodded at their name. “What are all of you doing?”

“Celebrating!” Malcolm called out cheering a bit as he raised his drink into the air, and Hiromi reached over to clink her can with his. It wasn’t alcohol, but we were having fun regardless.

“Oh good news on the sales?”

“Yeah! With Hiromi’s help we made lots of eddies!” I cheered showing Jun just how much we had all made. He smiled and patted my head, looking proud of me.

Yeeessss.

—--

A few hours later I was resting on the couch. Everyone had headed out, probably to spend their newly found eddies.

Jun had claimed the TV and was watching some weird ass future show that I just couldn’t understand why he liked it.

Part of me wanted to do some more music, but even I wasn’t a brat enough to do that while Jun was in the middle of his show, so instead I grabbed the shard I had downloaded all of the Scav data to, and started going through it.

I hadn’t just stolen the scavs emails, but the computer's history as well. So as I sorted them out I started looking for anything that would lead to more scavs.

As I buried myself searching through the data for something I could use, time flowed past me.

In the end I came up with nothing.

No emails to Charles about who the boss was, or where I could hunt him down. In fact it was almost as if the Scavs had purposefully kept any connecting info to another den off the systems.

Irritating.

“Ugh.” I groaned as I leaned back away from the laptop. That was a good couple of hours wasted.

“What’s wrong?” Jun asked, although he didn’t tear his eyes away from the TV.

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

“Just went through all the computer records the Scavs had at the den, trying to hunt down a lead to find more of them.

“Not that easy. One thing they are good at is keeping to themselves. They can’t ever get enough power in one area to hold territory or anything, but it makes them impossible to remove.”

“Yeah.” I grumbled, as I reached over and closed all the files I had been burning through. Instead I closed that laptop and grabbed my ICE laptop. Plugged in and started burning down the ICE instead. At least with this I could make progress.

And in fact I made quick progress. My new Cyberdeck was amazing!

The ICE was still there. The task was just as hard as always, but I had so much more flexibility. More speed. I really had been needing an upgrade for a while. I was forced to admit to myself as my speed of cracking ICE more than doubled, simply because of how much faster my deck was.

—--

The next day I was bumming around the apartment again.

Mostly mixing up my grind between playing some random song that I remember from before or trying to get my programming all fixed up.

I had also checked through the alerts for the scav den. Other than the XP I hadn’t paid any attention to what else I had earned! I really should have because one of the alerts, wasn’t just an XP notification but an actual level up!

*Reflex Leveled up!*

Reflex 7.

I was in shock! I hadn’t even realized such an important stat had leveled! Awesome! Unfortunately since my Blades skill had already been maxed out, I hadn’t gotten any Blade alerts, but still! Reflex! I could update my Handgun skill again!

I was so proud of myself I almost ran out of the apartment to go shoot things before remembering that I was taking it easy-ish today. Only minor stuff on my to do list.

I had sent a text to Regina asking for info about the hold up on the gig, but all she had sent back was that it was taking a bit longer than expected.

So I had been sending texts out to people between grinds.

Hiromi was back in school. Ichi was free, but he was following through on his idea. Speaking to some of the old timers he knew about Scav hideouts.

But it was Nox that I was texting with the most.

Turns out he had finally hit the point where he was making more eddies than he had put into the project. That was cool.

It was still nothing to what I made on a gig alone, but the BD’s were getting around out there.

Which reminded me I had a few more BD’s for Judy, including the Ichi one which I needed to get made to give to Malcolm and Hiromi.

Deciding to get out of the house I got dressed and headed over to Lizzies.

To my relief as I pulled into the parking lot Rita was hanging around outside. I parked and hurried over waving a bit as I approached her, earning a quirk of her lips in return.

“Hey Motoko, doing alright?”

“Yep! Hey Rita. I wanted to say, thank you.” I said when I got close enough to talk quietly with the Mox. “Your advice was really good! I ended up finding a new relaxing hobby to do in between all my merc work. So… Thanks.”

“Oh, well I’m glad.” She said, looking pleased at my words, her smile turning completely genuine. “I’m glad I could help. What have you started doing?”

I flushed a little at her question scratching at the ports on the back of my head as I hesitated, but if anyone deserved to know it was Rita. “I started playing music, I picked up a guitar, and I sing a bit I guess… Just don’t tell anyone.” I said seriously and she giggled. Actually giggled at me.

“Deal. I won’t say a word. You any good?”

“I… Well I’m getting there I guess?” I offered, dancing back and forth a little on my feet. Which seemed to make Rita even more amused.

“Then you’ll have to play something for me sometime. But no rush, you here to see Judy?” She asked and I nodded, reminded of what I needed to do.

“Yeah I have some BD’s to drop off.”

“More gigs?”

I looked around a bit to make sure no one was listening in. “My Chooms and I hit a Scav Den a few days ago, cleared the whole place out too.”

Rita scowled at hearing about the scavs but then smirked at the rest. “Good. Fucking scum suckers. You all alright?”

“Oh yeah it was easy only ten of the guys I took them all out without them even realizing, easy.” I waved off the concern. As if I was in danger from a couple of scavs!

She looked me over for a while before nodding. “Well it’s good to hear there are a few less of them in the city.” She reached out and patted my shoulder looking proud.

Ack! Too many people being proud of me!

We chatted for a few more minutes about Rita dealing with gonks that needed to be thrown out of the club before I headed inside to find Judy.

“Judy!” I called out as I entered, making sure to make noise long before I walked into her lair. I didn’t want to startle her again.

“Huh? Oh hey Motoko, how’re you?” She asked as she looked away from the computer she had been staring at as I entered as always she looked like she lived down here, with her desktop covered in cans piling up.

“Not too bad! I have some BD’s to drop off, and I wondered if I could ask for a favor about a small BD edit?”

“Hmm? What’d ya mean?” She had turned around from her computer giving me her complete attention. I couldn’t help but smirk a bit at the thought of what she was going to see.

“Okay so I have this BD I made about a prank I pulled on a friend…”

—--

Walking out of Lizzies a few hours later I was still giggling at the BD in my pocket, even if my wallet was lighter. Judy was more than willing to do a BD edit for like a minute long Virtu, but it wasn’t free.

I shrugged. It was good enough. Now I could torment Ichi.

“Heh Mr. Studd. That’s never going to get old.” I muttered to myself as I drove home, still giggling. Judy had also been given the scav den Virtu to fix up and hand to Nox.

Well that little job was done. Considering how close I was I considered heading over to Yaiba tower and talking to Regina but in the end she would contact me with a gig. If she didn’t want to give me gigs, it wasn’t a problem for me. I wasn’t hurting for eddies.

No, instead I headed towards my favorite ripper. After everything Vik had gone through the chrome we had dropped off and found a few pieces that I had put away. I don’t think I was ready for all of it, but there was still a few little updates I wanted to chip in.

I stopped in to see Misty of course, we had a fun conversation about some article she was reading in her magazine about the Net and souls.

But then I went down to Vik.

“Oh? Finally ready for those upgrades huh?”

“Yeah, but first!” I demanded as I stomped up and pulled Vik into a big hug. “Thanks for helping my brother.” I told him and he looked a little flustered as he patted me on the shoulder.

“You know there isn’t any reason to thank me. I didn’t do anything most other rippers couldn’t do.”

“It was special to me.” I told him simply ignoring his attempts to break free until I was satisfied my thankfulness was understood.

Then when I broke away I moved over to his ripper chair and settled in.

“Let’s do this.”

The smart link system took only a few moments to install. My Condor arms were designed to accept one after all.

But the Ex-Disk was a bit more of a job. Vik put me out as he was dealing with my neural link, but I woke up feeling perfectly fine.

Just with a new piece of metal in my head that gave me some more RAM for my Netdeck.

“Is it working?” I couldn’t help but ask, as I didn’t feel any different and Vik just chuckled.

“You won’t notice much yourself, it mostly boosts your Netdeck. Just keep an eye on your RAM usage while you're out and you should notice a difference. How’s the head? Any headache? The neck? Sometimes the headache shows as a stiff neck.” He suddenly asked as he rolled over with a inhaler and prompted me to take a hit.

“No? I feel fine. Nothing seems wrong.” I said checking my head and neck.

“Hmm. Usually you’d have something after an install like that. Noticed you weren’t having a problem with your Cyberdeck install last time either. I don’t expect the Smart Link to cause any problem, but a new Neuralware is usually a quick road to a headache for a few days even with my care.” Vik muttered as he started running scanners over my head and seemed to be checking me out.

I quickly pulled up my status page while he worked.

First thing I noticed quickly was that my Cyberization number had gone up for Intelligence.

Intelligence 7 (11) Due to Cyberization, Maximum value has increased by 4.

It used to only be increased by 2. So I guess the EX-Disk made a difference?

But also.

Arasaka SmartLink System. *Adaptation SmartLink 0/0*

Arasaka Ex-Disk *Adatapation Ex-Disk 0/0*

Neither of the two Cyberware had an adaptation cost?

I could only humm to myself as Vik worked on checking me out, but I felt fine. Better than fine really.

Eventually after taking all the scans. Like literally all of them, Vik let me go. He was relieved that he wasn’t finding anything, but also sorta grumpy that he wasn’t finding what he expected.

So I left him to his grumpiness but only after thanking him, and handing over some money for the work. Then I went home again. I was feeling the need to grind some more. Plus I really wanted to level my programming so I could make my music box idea work.

Even if it was stupid and just for my music hobby, it would be really cool if it worked! No! When it worked!

I hummed along to the radio as I drove home.

—-

So I was taking a break from programming Ping. Instead I had pulled out my toy. I mean my very important directional microphone! That was for super important gig work! And not a toy!

But I was trying to program the damn thing.

All I was trying to do was get it smart enough to be able to focus the audio on what I wanted to hear, and filter out any background noise.

Programming is hard though.

I wasn’t making much progress, at least not efficient progress. Everything I typed out was twigging my Debug knowledge telling me it was going to be a mess to work with.

But that didn’t really matter. I just needed to keep grinding and eventually.

*Programming skill level up!*

That would happen!

Programming 4! I enjoyed the surge of knowledge as I nodded along considering what had just been dumped in my head.

Then I took the program for the mic I had been working on and deleted almost all of it.

Yep. It was dogshit.

Then I started again, using the best bits of the last build. I would get this to work!

—-

“Will never fade away.” I crooned as I had taken a break from my programming to strum my guitar and sing.

I wasn’t so much stuck on the programming as just needing to let my mind do something else for a while. So many numbers.

Plus with my two perks filling in for me. I could basically shut down my brain and play a song and not really have to think about it. Letting my brain cool down from the math overload.

*100 Rockerboy XP Gained.*

The message popped in after I finished the song, I couldn’t help but smile because Rockerboy leveled up super fast. Even though I wasn’t getting alerts after every song, or even every other song, it didn’t really matter. I played the songs simply enjoying the music and the alerts came in. Plus it helped that I kept adding more and more to my play.

First it was just strumming and singing badly along, then my instrumental cleaned up, and now I have Siren Song. My voice was so much better, so I was actually singing smoothly

It was fun now! I didn’t feel like a grind anymore. When I played it really was just because I wanted to hear the song.

The only thing that annoyed me was that I only had a guitar. I still needed to get my music box programmed so I could start doing the rest of the songs too.

I sighed as I put the guitar down.

Back to work.

—--

The next day, long after Jun had left for work again, I was standing on the couch and screaming at the top of my lungs while I rocked out.

I was just a little irritated at the programming not coming together.

But at least I had a nice outlet. The squeal of my guitar echoed around the apartment as I finished the song and flopped onto the couch to catch my breath.

I needed…

I don’t know. More things to tweak, more programming to grind with. My microphone work had helped, but it wasn’t enough. I either needed to get an example of someone already having programmed a directional mic, or I needed to level up a lot more.

It was irritating. Even if I was still getting skill alerts while failing.

I put the guitar on the stand and stood up. The music helped me break how stuck I was so now I had an idea. It was time to go talk to Yoko.

Suiting up in my normal outfit, and a quick drive later I walked into the Dewdrop Inn to see Yoko as always at the counter.

“Yoko. I just got an upgrade to my deck, I need some Quick hacks to fill it up… Whatcha got?” I asked as I leaned over the counter and she nodded.

“Here’s my selection.” She offered, pulling out a data pad, and handing it over and there listed out were all of the programs she had.

In this case she was actually selling them for eddies, but I noticed there was a second tab for ‘better’ hacks that were only tradable with knowledge.

Luckily I had the eddies. So I quickly started browsing.

Most of it was just stuff from the game I recognized, although there were some different hacks. Some were meant only for Netrunning. Like ICE Shield which could create a temporary barrier against threats, hopefully giving you some time to jack out, or escape in the net.

Or Distract which created… Well junk data Daemons. That would spread out through a system and try to interfere with everything, filling files with bad data.

But I wasn’t looking for Netrunning code. Mostly because I had yet to really dip my feet into netrunning.

It wasn’t that I was nervous or anything, I just didn’t really need it. Most netrunners couldn’t just infiltrate a building and breach into their network directly bypassing any real worry about Black ICE killing them or anything.

“I’ll take a Weapon Glitch, and a Reboot Optics.” I said confidently. Both were pretty base level programs, but I could fiddle with them, and more importantly, they could both be used in combat when I screwed up and got spotted. Being able to jam some gonks' guns, or blind them would be an amazing help.

I paid quickly and was already installing the programs in my deck as I walked out.

Now I had some new programs to play with and level up!