Chapter 116

I arrived at Lizzies not long after. The saved BD of my parkour performance should be pretty fun. Hopefully Nox would be able to sell it.

 

Or not. I mean the BD creation thing was more for me than anything.

 

Unfortunately I was stopped at the door by Rita. I waved a hand at her as I approached but was stopped instantly as she reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

 

“Mona take over for me?” She called out to another bouncer suddenly.

 

“Sure Rits.” The other bouncer called back and then I was pushed inside and into the side room by Rita.

 

“Rita?”

“I want to know Motoko, before anything else. Are you okay?”

 

I blinked.

 

“Yeees? I mean I had Vik my ripper do some work on my hands earlier bu-” She shook her head, cutting me off. The borg woman settled both of her hands on my shoulders, even bending down a little so we were at the same height.

“Motoko, I saw your BD. The one with the song, and with you going completely Cyberpsycho on the Scavs.” Rita said dropping a bomb and I winced.

 

Dammit. Was that still causing me trouble!? That was supposed to have been fun! Well I mean. It was.

 

Like super fun.

 

But that was besides the point. I hated when fun things I did caused problems later!

 

“I’m fine Rita. Honest. I was doing an experiment that night to go along with the song that I wrote and-”

 

“Motoko.” Rita cut me off sounding really serious. “You sound okay. You look okay, and you aren’t closed off or freaking out, but I’ve seen a lot of people I thought were okay with a smile on their face as they murdered people they loved and cared for.”

 

“I was just… trying something different. Letting myself get super angry, even forcing it a bit.”

 

“Kid, you were absolutely wrecked during that BD. If I had been hit half as hard as that Scav punched you, I’d be down for the count.”

 

“I’m pretty tough! Look.” I said, spreading my arms. “I’m not hurt. All healed up. Vik my ripper does great work. Took care of me. Yes I went overboard. I’ve even… I even admitted that to myself. I did the music and I thought it would be cool to be all brutal like that, but it sorta… The music wasn’t supposed to be that… it was supposed to be the thing that pulls me away from that sort of stuff. That was the whole point. So yeah… I fucked up.”

 

Rita continued to watch as I sort of rambled before sighing. And then to my surprise she pulled me into a hug.

 

She was pokey. All the spikes I mean.

 

“So you aren’t going Cyberpsycho? You mean it?”

 

“I’m actually doing okay. I mean I’ve been super irritated recently with the Scavs attacking my home, and the move to a new place, and the TC boss Fujimura keeps wanting to get me to admit to being his underling and it’s annoying.”

 

“If he is bothering you, we can take care of that for you.” She said then and I couldn’t help but feel warm at how quickly she offered to basically fight a TC boss for me.

 

Rita was good people.

 

“Nah. He’s Jun’s boss. And he got us a new apartment. Jun is over the moon about it, cause it’s all big and I have a much bigger room now and stuff… It’s just different and I didn’t want different. Fujimura, despite being a little pushy, hasn’t crossed the line.”

 

“Hmph. Well when he does.” She offered and I smiled.

 

“I don’t think I would want to get the Mox involved in my trouble. But I appreciate it.” Rita scoffed but nodded, reaching out and resting a hand on my shoulder.

 

“If you need to talk. Don’t forget you have friends here. You aren’t the first young girl to show up here with family in other gangs needing help.”

 

“I don’t… I don’t need help… Not yet!” I added at her unconvinced look. “Jun is great, and Fujimura is annoying, but he hasn’t pushed past the line… Like I said, a lot of things have changed and it’s just making me uncomfortable.”

 

“Then remember I’m always willing to listen. C’mon then, you’re here to see Judy right?” She asked as she finally pulled away from me, and I noticed she looked a little uncomfortable herself.

“Yeah! I did a new BD focused around Parkour instead of other stuff. It was preem. I leapt off the side of the building I’m on and made it all the way to Sakura Market.”

 

Rita shivered a bit as I spoke as she guided me out of the room. “You leapt off a building?”

“Yeah! A couple times.” Rita shivered again and it made me realize something. Rita is afraid of heights. “Probably not a BD for you then.”

 

“No, no I don’t think so.”

 

—–

 

I dropped off the BD with Judy only after swearing this BD wasn’t some gore fest that would make her want to clean her fingers from brain matter again.

 

Then I was driving back to the apartment flopping onto the couch and wondering what to do next.

 

I once again heard the faint thump of bass through the floor and knew what I had to do!

 

I got up and grabbed my guitar and went at it.

 

I needed more songs. More music! I had to defeat the Rockerboy Neighbor! So I jammed out. Working on some Foo Fighters, because I was already doing Nirvana. Might as well.

 

But the idea hit me, and I stopped mid way through The Pretender to work on another song.

 

Think by Kaleida. “I’ll never! Break your heart!” I jammed out, having had some trouble getting the drums for the song right since they weren’t normal drums, but I found the right instrument sound eventually.

 

Now I had a John Wick song!

 

It took a good couple hours to get the track done, and then I went back to the Foo Fighters.

 

More songs!

 

More music!

 

More levels!

 

Long into the night. After Jun had come home and gone to bed. While working on tweaking some of the hologram motions. Making me play through The Pretender again, for what felt like a millionth time.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

 

It happened.

 

*Rockerboy skill level up!*

 

Rockerboy 8.

 

“Yes!” I cheered, leaping up onto the couch to celebrate I could feel even more musical knowledge flow into me.

 

At this point, it would be an actual surprise if I flubbed a chord while playing anything but the hardest songs!

 

—–

 

“What are you three doing?” I asked as I was brought into Malcolms apartment.

 

Around the TV laying around the couches were three teenagers that looked like they were in a full food coma.

 

“So many snacks.” Malcolm moaned from where he was laid up. His feet up on an ottoman and a blanket over most of him. The many many bags of chips and things that surrounded him told a story. “It’s all Ichi’s fault.” He moaned.

 

The boy in question didn’t say anything, just continued to stare into the ceiling with a dazed look in his eyes.

 

Hiromi was here too to my surprise and while she wasn’t as bad as the boys she looked like she got into a fight with a cake and lost.

 

I walked over and she threw me a big smile as she lay half on the couch and half off.

 

Leaning down I wiped the bit of frosting that was stuck on her cheek. “You three look like you got in a fight with your snacks and lost.” I told them as I stuck the bit of frosting into my mouth.

 

Huh. That was almost chocolate.

 

“Ugh.” Ichi moaned without shifting his dead eyed stare at the ceiling.

 

“What did you guys do?” I asked, laughing. I had gotten the message that everyone wanted to meet up in the morning but I had been…

 

Well I was napping after leveling Rockerboy. So after looking at the message and seeing it wasn’t an emergency I went back to sleep.

 

So I was late to this party.

 

“It’s Ichi’s fault.” Hiromi informed me, looking up at me with a big smile.

 

“It’s Hiromi’s fault!” Ichi retorted. “I said I would get snacks. So Hiromi dragged me to this crazy corpo shop. Everything was expensive but they had all sorts of stuff.” Ichi said in turn, still glazed out.

 

“Saka-Go is a very valuable member of the Arasaka conglomerate that ensures that traveling Arasaka members can always find their home town snacks even across the world.” Hiromi replied, speaking in a cadence that made me think she was repeating something she had heard before.

 

Of course Ichi and Malcolm both instantly started throwing whatever snack they had on hand at her, so I quickly backpedaled away to avoid the friendly fire.

 

“H-hey! You all enjoyed the snacks! Don’t give me that!”

 

“Some of it was good.” Malcolm agreed and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the look Hiromi threw at the crew.

 

A few chips stuck in her hair as she stood up with all the dignity she could retain and headed into the bathroom to clean up.

 

I walked over and after pushing some chip bags out of the way settled near Malcolm.

 

“How you feeling choom?”