Ghost in the City: Cyberpunk Gamer SI

“Alright, everyone up. Slow and steady now.” I called out as we were guiding the people into the Behemoth. There was an understandable hesitation in wanting to enter the massive truck.

“Hey, it’s alright! We’ll be heading into Night City to drop you all off, it’s not like there are buses out this far yeah?” Malcolm called out, reassuring everyone as he even ran up and climbed onto the back of the behemoth. “I’ll be in the back with you. Come on. Let’s go home!” He shouted and that got them moving.

I shrugged. Malcolm had done a better job than I had in getting the hostages to relax. He jumped into the back of the truck with them, to be their contact as Ichi started up the truck. I would drive my Quadra, Hiromi would drive Malcolm's car. And Rebecca?

I looked over and blanched.

“That is not what I expected you to pick.” I whispered to myself Rebecca had not jumped into the Archer Quartz, the little two seater that I thought she had been eyeing.

No, she had jumped into a massive Thorton Mackinaw. The same truck Panam drove, only Panam was normal sized. Rebecca looked like a kid while sitting in the drivers seat, but I couldn’t deny her massive grin was rather telling.

I walked over and climbed up to see what she was up to. And I laughed as she was working on the switches and things on the dash.

“Trying to figure it all out?”

“It’s a lot!” She argued, flushing a little embarrassed at her confusion.

“No worries. That one is the Crystal Dome Opacity. That one is the wheel differential. That ones the scanner.” I started, and each time I waited for Rebecca to play with the switches to get a feel for what it did.

“That one I have no idea. Some custom option probably.” I offered and of course Rebecca flipped the protector on the steering wheel and hit the switch.

The roar of two machine guns built into the front of the truck went off and absolutely destroyed an old shed next to the farm house.

We both went silent for a moment.

“Ffff-AHAHAHAHAHAH!” Rebecca broke into horrendous Goblin laughter as she realized her new truck had weapons.

“Of course it has weapons.” I mumbled, why did my Quadra not have weapons!? I should attach weapons!

“This is awesome!” Rebecca roared out and I couldn’t help but smile at her.

I was just happy, she was happy.

—--

The trip back to the city wasn’t too bad. We had to stop a few times for bathroom breaks for the hostages, but Malcolm had stayed with them specifically to be able to reach us in case something like that was needed.

Ichi didn’t want someone peeing in his truck.

When we all reached the city we released everyone at the first bus stop, which while half were relieved we weren’t kidnapping them, the other half complained about us leaving them on the edge of the city and not driving them all home.

Pretentious little shits.

Luckily no one pushed past complaining and we were soon on our way. The small bits of loot we had gathered would be dropped off for Hiromi to sell, and Dakota had already taken the other vehicles we had left behind, adding a bit of eddies for the gig.

More interesting though was Rebecca.

We had given Rebecca a monster truck.

“I kinda regret everything now.” I mumbled, as I watched her drive off, nearly driving over another car that was driving too slow.

Rebecca was splitting off to get her car painted and registered. And then she had said she really wanted to show it off to her brother.

In the end I was pretty happy with how everything had worked out.

Dropping off the loot didn’t take long and twenty minutes later we were all gathered up at Lizzies for an after gig party.

—--

After the party I headed home. Flopping onto my bed and passing out for the night. I woke up the next morning without much to do, so I ended up settling onto the couch and messing around with some Quick Hacks.

There was a lot that I still wanted to work on, my netrunning resources still weren’t complete, but the fact was, a lot of the high end stuff I wanted to do was out of reach still.

My mind often ran back to the Laughing Man, from Ghost in the Shell. The ability to in real time hack into someone and change what they were seeing.

The Major even used it to make herself invisible in a later episode, but the complexity of something like that was beyond me. If I wanted invisibility I would need to somehow hunt down some Optical Camo, which was basically impossible to find. It was a cyberware that was rarely put out on the market, as it was highly coveted. Any stealth solo wanted Optical Camo.

Imagine a thief that could go invisible. Of course they would want it.

Unfortunately I would have to take out some Arasaka ninja, or Militech hitman to get my hands on it at this rate.

So since neither option was reasonable, I was stuck doing something else.

Currently I was cleaning up another request from Yoko. Someone wanted a skeleton key to a network. Basically, they didn’t have a netrunner good enough to breach into the system themselves, but they still needed to get in.

That’s where I came in. They sent the data to Yoko, and she passed it off to me, as a test.

Well, really it was more that she just didn’t want to do the work I think. But it was alright. She promised me some favors for the work, and it wasn’t really hard.

I knew exactly where the security system was weak, and with a bit of work, I had a quick hack that was small enough even some rezzer could breach through the system.

I sent it off to Yoko, but only after sneaking a little bit of code into it, that would basically blow confetti into her face when she opened the file.

She might have thought it was slick to send along a Daemon into the information packet she had sent me, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t catch my little present until it blew up in her face.

I could only hope she was around other people on the net when it happened.

Stretching as I rose up from the couch I noticed Jun was missing. Him and Akari had been disappearing together a lot recently, but it was all because of that little shit that tried to get Jun into trouble.

Jun might not want me tracking him and killing him, but I swear if Jun had any further blow back over this nonsense, I would hunt that little shit down. Old friend or not.

I was just thinking about going out and grabbing a bite to eat when I got a call from Hiromi.

*What’s up Hiromi?*

*Motoko! Okay, listen! You need to turn on the radio! Right now! Go to Growl FM! 89.7! This is huge! Aaaah!* She squealed into the phone, and suddenly I felt… A disturbance.

*Hiromi, what did you do?*

*I talked to a ton of people! Radio now! It’s almost time! Ash said it would be coming up next!*

I blinked, because… What station was Growl FM? I don’t remember it from the game, was it gone by then? Then because I knew what I was going to hear, I glanced over to the radio and flicked it on with a quick breach.

“Of course that doesn’t mean Biotechnica are innocent in this. The Securicine reveal will be a black mark the corp may never recover from. Or from their last stock prices, they already have. That’s the truth of the game folks. Anyway, here is an amazing amateur track that was played last week at a little dive called Red Dirt. I want to introduce the whole city to Ghost in the Shell, and this will be, Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

I need to sit down. I stumbled over and managed to flop into the couch as my song started playing.

I could hear Hiromi chattering away in my ear, but I was too shocked at what was happening to properly hear her.

My version of Nirvana was on the radio and Hiromi had set this up. It was a copy of the BD track. I could hear the distortions of the club, people chattering and talking and singing along in the back.

It was like a live track almost. Well, the quality wasn’t all there, too much deterioration from the mediums, but it was… Okay.

It was okay.

I’m okay. This was okay.

Right. If I told myself that, I would believe it…

The song finished.

“So that’s the first track that was played, and I’d say the artist Ghost? Ghost in the Shell? Apparently it’s the whole thing? Whatever, it’s nova. I liked it. I’ll probably try out the other tracks from this set as well, quality isn’t great, but that’s the name of the game with our pirate station isn’t it? Anyway, let’s switch over to something a bit older.”

I flicked the radio off.

*-Believe she agreed! I talked to Judy, and she talked to Rita, and Rita apparently knows Ash, which I guess should be obvious, she is a Mox after all. So Rita put the-*

*Hiromi.*

*Motoko! You are still there, I was starting to get worried you know?*

*Hiromi.*

*Yes?*

*I honestly don’t know whether to cry or scream at you right now… I’ll talk later.* I hung up.

Then I flopped over into the couch and screamed into the cushions.

—---

A few hours later after ignoring phone calls I had told Hiromi to meet me. The fact was I didn’t wait for her to come up though.

The moment she had parked her car and headed the the elevator I was inside, as the doors opened she startled for a moment seeing me right on the other side of the metal doors.

“We need to talk.” I informed her, and then hooked my arm around her elbow and tugged her inside.

“Wha-Motoko, hey.” She muttered before realizing I was smiling at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask before going through with it, but I was put in touch with Ash, and it was a one in a million chance! I had to accept…” I didn’t answer as the elevator started up without me pushing a button.

As if I hadn’t hacked into the building security and had my own overrides by now.

The elevator ride was quiet as Hiromi seemed to realize I wasn’t responding and she started fidgeting.

Finally the elevator reached our floor and I dragged Hiromi along, her faint resistance no where near enough to slow me down, before I entered the apartment and finally let her go.

Then I started pacing, not even heading to the couch.

“What the fuck Hiromi?” I demanded, and she jerked.

“Wha-I, I just wanted your song to get big!”

“That’s not the problem here.” I told her. “You know I’m uncomfortable with this, I only agreed to the Red Dirt gig because… I think I was ready for that. I was ready to try it, and see how it worked, but this… I wasn’t ready for this Hiromi. You pushed past my boundaries and you didn’t even ask.”

She opened her mouth to respond before closing it. “I know. I didn’t ask, because if I did, I knew you wouldn’t be ready for it, and the opportunity would be gone. So I just… Did it. I knew you’d be mad… But I hoped I could convince you this is a good thing. An opportunity like this was huge.”

“I’m not mad it’s on the radio Hiromi, I’m mad you did it behind my back! I trust you. Completely. You handle all my eddies practically, and I never second guess, or check to see if you are cheating me or something, because I don’t have to. Because I trust you.” I told her, and my words had their intended effect.

Hiromi flinched, her face paling a bit as I stopped pacing and just stood in front of her, glaring at her until the overconfident demeanor shifted into the real Hiromi.

“I just wanted to… I wanted to be your manager, and get your career started, and… I wanted it.” She slowly whispered out, and I nodded.

“I know. Your desire to keep pushing for more is one of your cute points.” I admitted, then I stepped in to wrap her in a hug.

Honestly I wasn’t that mad. Not really, not about the song on the radio. My words had been the truth, I was more hurt Hiromi would do this behind my back, despite knowing I wouldn’t be okay with it.

But I also knew that Hiromi wasn’t perfect. She made mistakes just like I did, and she wasn’t trying to be malicious.

She was just fixated on improvements, and growth, and sometimes that blinded her.

“Hiromi. You’re one of the few people I trust completely. I don’t, no, I won’t break that over something like this, but… I hope you’ll treat my trust with a bit more gentleness from now on.” I told her, still hugging her tightly.

“I will.” She whispered into my neck, hugging me back tightly.

“Great. Good.” I nodded and stepped back. “You’re my manager after all, I don’t think I can find a better one, especially one that I can actually trust, so… We’ll have to make this work.”

She nodded her eyes watery, but not quite falling into tears yet.

“Okay. Okay. So, my song. On the radio.” I started pacing again. “You said, they wanted a studio version? Ash?”

“Yeah, she said the live version is okay, but if you want it to really blow up, we need a studio version.” Hiromi spoke softly, her voice gaining strength now that I wasn’t letting what happened come between us.

“Fuck. I don’t know if I want to do this.” I muttered still pacing.

Okay Motoko, cost benefits. The costs are, people might start knowing me. The benefits? Eddies? Hiromi will get more experience dealing with high end deals with something I don’t really care that much for.

If someone tricks us and ends up with lots of eddies or something, I’ll just let it go, or kill them depending on how bad it is. The benefits of my wide range of skills.

So…

“Okay. Let’s set up an appointment for Denny’s studio?”

“I can do that.” Hiromi confirmed with a fierce look on her face, excitement filling her now that I had accepted.

I watched as her eyes flashed gold as she started making a call and I kept pacing for a while. I never expected this Rockerboy thing to get this big! I was just doing it for fun, and I mean, sure hearing my own voice on the radio had been…

Well It was kinda flattering, and cool. If horrifying as well.

But was this what I wanted? Rockerboy Motoko? I considered it, Cold Blood flowing over me for a second. I wanted to think about this without a single emotion getting in the way.

I had decided to become a merc because eddies, and because it seemed to be the right path. I liked it. I enjoyed the challenge, and the growth and the killing. As fucked up as that was.

Music? I enjoyed that too. I liked it, it was a rush, and fun, and it was the only way I would be able to hear some songs that I missed.

So was I going to try it out as a career? It would take a lot of time away from… Well… I blinked, realizing my schedule wasn’t limited by anything. I mean eventually I was planning on getting a Gemini, and with my healing, and with technology improving, I might end up living for a very very long time…

I looked down at my hands. They weren’t shaking or moving, I didn’t do that anymore thanks to the Cool Nerves perk, but even without it I don’t think I would be showing any signs.

I would do this, see how it goes, let Hiromi push it as hard as she could and in exchange I would spend some time, make some music, and if it doesn’t work? I just go back to killing like normal. Who cares if I succeed or fail?

The fact that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t need to be anxious about trying out a new career, that its success simply didn’t matter?

It was kind of freeing.

“Okay! I got a slot in an hour, all paid up-”

“Hiromi.” I cut in, causing her to stall out and stare at me wide eyed as I looked at her confidently, hands on my hips. “I’ve decided. We aren’t going to play around with this. Let’s hit this hard. I’ll start doing songs, you start pushing it, and I’ll even do some more gigs. I want to see how far this Rockerboy thing can go.”

“Oh my god.” Hiromi whispered her eyes practically had stars in them considering how excited she looked at that moment. “This is going to be the best!”

I nodded. Glad I still had my best Corpo in my corner.