Chapter 186

“So there we are, Pilar, is acting like a gonk, and this borg is just looming over him. Pilar looks down to the electronic key he had to Maine’s car and he says, ‘Well you can’t really blame me for this, your security sucks.’ And Maine just glares.” Rebecca spoke standing on top of the couch we were all sitting around at.

 

Somehow after the shooting range Rebecca had decided we all needed to party some more and here we were.

 

“Did Maine bash his head in?” I asked, and Rebecca started cackling.

 

“No, it’s better! Maine looks down at the electronic key, and hits my bro where it hurts, he says. ‘Your toy didn’t work, so I can.’ And PIlar the fucking Gonk, gets outraged. ‘It would have worked if it wasn’t for that fucking kid!’ And points at Sasha.”

 

I chuckle at the image of younger Sasha being a little shit as Rebecca continued.

 

“So Maine basically dragged Pilar to the car and forced Pilar to try again, and it actually worked! Pilar really did make a working hack key for Maine’s car. So Maine decided if he could do that, he could do it for other rides, and so Pilar was brought into Maines crew.” Rebecca explained and I laughed at the end of the story.

 

I looked over and saw that while I was interested in Rebecca’s story the rest of my chooms weren’t that into it. They were each distracted by their own thing. Hiromi had disappeared at some point, while Malcolm and Ichi had both been distracted by one of the girls on the dance floor.

 

I smirked at their very obvious stares, and the fact she was at least a few years older, and obviously not interested.

 

“How’re they doing anyways?” I asked, trying to sound casual, as Rebecca took a sip from her drink.

 

“Same old. Sasha is getting more freedom, things are cooling down. Maine even traveled to the Afterlife to check in for some work. They didn’t tell me if something came up though.” She explained, but at the end I picked it up. A hint of bitterness.

Rebecca had been a bit squirrely about joining us for range day at first. I looked her over and she noticed before sighing.

 

“It’s nothing. Just pissed that Maine is still treating me like a hanger on, and not a member.” She offered, and I nodded at that. It must grind at her, to have us accept her so readily, and Maine still hesitates.

 

I would just have to keep offering her honey until she was fully a member of Section 9, and Maine could go jump off a bridge.

 

I nodded. Yeah, Operation Steal Rebecca was working out wonderfully.

 

Movement to the side caught my eye and I looked up to see Judy approaching suddenly.

 

“Hey, I heard you were up here.” She greeted, and I offered her a smile and a wave.

 

“Yep. We are doing a celebration day. Hey Judy, how’re you?”

“Tired.” She decided after a moment and without a word she sat down. A drink in her hand earned her full attention for a few moments, and then she sighed as she finished. “I really liked your music BD.” She finally said and I blinked in surprise at the response.

 

“Oh.”

“So uh. Here.” She said, pulling out a shard and offering it to me. I took it and realized with a quick scan that it was just my Red Dirt Gig BD on a shard. I looked at it in confusion and turned to Judy and she sort of sighed. “Would you sign it?” She asked, and I very slowly blinked. Forcing my eyes to close and then open to make sure this was reality.

 

“What?”

“What Music BD?” Rebecca asked, interrupting my own confusion as she stood up on the seat and peered over the table at what I was holding.

 

“I did a performance, like up on stage a while back.” I explained, a little awkwardly. “I just played some songs, but I gave Judy the raws for my BD’s and I scrolled one then.” I looked up at Judy. “You want me to… Sign it?”

 

“Please.” She agreed. “That thing is going to be worth eddies in a few years.” She said surprisingly confidently and I felt a little odd.

 

“What?”

Judy just rolled her eyes at me. “Motoko, you have technical skill, and you’re good at writing songs. You sing with emotion, you play well, you’ve made new songs, songs that aren’t corpo trash. People are already starting to like your music.” She explained and I just looked away awkwardly, which didn’t help, but Rebecca was right there.

 

“Okay this I want to see. You mind letting me see?” Rebecca asked Judy, who nodded waving her hand. “Sure, but only if Motoko actually signs it.” She said again, smirking at me, as I looked at the shard.

 

I breathed in and out.

 

“Sure.” I said after a moment. It didn’t matter. I took the marker Judy had and signed it, and a moment later, she took the BD and popped it into a BD case, and then pulled out a different one and handed it to Rebecca.

“Here.” She offered and Rebecca grinned as she took it, and grabbed one of the BD wreaths that were all over the bar, and settled in. I watched as she slipped the shard inside and then as she slumped back into the world of the BD.

 

“You doing alright?” Judy asked suddenly. I looked at her in confusion and she looked a little bashful.

 

“Yeah why?”

“You looked pretty uncomfortable when I asked for your autograph. Figured… Nah it’s nothing. You being careful? New artists can get in trouble in Night City. Especially ones that don’t have backing to protect them.”

 

I opened my mouth to blow off the question, but instead took it seriously. Breathing in and out I figured out what to say.

 

“I’m not extremely worried. Hiromi has good Corpo training. She’ll see most of the traps coming… I hope. And it’s pretty hard to threaten me physically. I’m confident in killing anyone that tries to make a run for me, unless they are absolutely top tier mercs… But yeah. I’m still a little uncomfortable with it I guess.”

 

Judy nodded, sipping at her drink some more. “Well, I can’t offer much.” She admitted softly glaring towards the corner of the room which I followed her eyes and saw none other than Suzie Q. “Suzie’s been pulling back on a lot of our work helping people lately. She’ll just say you aren’t one of us, so why should she offer to help.”

 

“I appreciate that you want to help Judy, you’ve always been cool with me, even with all my crazy shit. Well other than when you sold my BD without asking.” I said pointedly.

“Just don’t dump another Only Thing BD on me without a fucking warning, you cyberpyscho…” She said purposefully avoiding what I said. “But just because the Mox won’t help… Doesn’t mean the Mox won’t help. Maybe even as an apology as well.” She offered, and I nodded, she was basically offering what she could, and I appreciated it a lot.

 

We both went silent after. Judy relaxing and enjoying her drink, and seemingly absorbing the atmosphere of the club, while I went back to watching the boys who had both been shot down by the girl they had their eye on. Both boys had deflated pretty badly when she had gone for some older pretty boy with a fake platinum chain, who was trying too hard to look rich.

 

Which is hilarious, because if the girl was interested in eddies. Ichi and Malcolm definitely had more, my chooms were loaded thanks to me.

 

Well, I looked over at Malcolm. His tendency towards expensive cars might mean he wasn’t as loaded as he appeared.

 

Did my chooms have money problems still? We hadn’t really discussed it much. I mostly let Hiromi handle money and I expected my choices to be good, but I was also weird about eddies, and Ichi had his Grandma, and Malcolm had his family…

 

I moved around the still Braindancing Rebecca and settled in next to the chooms.

 

“Hey guys.”

“Motoko.” Malcolm greeted with a grumble. The boy was practically face down on the table.

 

“Don’t worry about it choom. She wasn’t the sort of girl you wanted anyways.” I offered, but Malcolm just sent me a look.

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“I wasn’t going to marry her Motoko.” Malcolm replied, and Ichi and I both snorted at the same time. Ichi’s failure as well, seemed to weigh on him less as he patted Malcolm on the back.

 

“It’s alright Choom.” He offered and Malcolm sighed.

 

“But we both failed. I really wanted to beat you.” He whined and Ichi laughed.

 

“Not all bets work out.” Ichi replied and I blinked at that.

 

“You guys bet on who could pick up a girl?”

“Well… Yeah?” Ichi said, blushing a little. “It was just a bro bet.” He offered and I looked confused as Malcolm sort of faux coughed.

 

“It was just to mess with each other, Motoko. We would have teased whoever lost, but uh, We both did. Bummer.”

“Well, I’m kinda glad you did. That girl looks like trouble.”

 

“I wasn’t going to date her either.” Malcolm whispered into a sigh, looks like Malcolm didn’t care if she was trouble or not.

 

We all relaxed, and eventually Malcolm perked up, returning to shooting the shit with Ichi, and girl watching.

 

I mean Lizzies was a BD bar, so I wasn’t sure if this was really the best place to try and pick up girls, but boys will be boys.

 

“Woo!” Rebecca suddenly cried out and I jumped a bit reaching for my gun before relaxing. “That was NOVA!” She cried out jumping up onto the table as she pulled off the Wreath, I noticed Judy grabbing it and taking the shard a moment later.

 

Then Rebecca turned to me.

 

“What the hell!? You’ve been holding out on me, Strings!”

 

“Strings?”

“Yeah, you definitely ain’t a kitten! You played those strings like a pro!” Rebecca offered and I smiled at the fact I had apparently earned an upgraded nickname before Rebecca flopped onto the table in front of me, staring me in the eye.

 

“Why didn’t I get an invite huh? Your choom Becca wants to go to a fucking awesome concert you know?”

 

“Sorry.” I answered back, but I was definitely a bit uncomfortable. Rebecca was a bit close. “I just didn’t really want to invite anyone for it? It was supposed to just be a me thing, and someone invited Jun, and then it spread.” I said giving a side eye to my chooms who looked away.

Rebecca glared at me for a moment longer before switching into a smirk. “Fine, I’ll forgive you, but I get free tickets to all your shows!” She demanded and I just laughed back.

 

“Sure Rebecca. All of my many future shows that I’m totally planning.” I said with a roll of my eyes. How many gigs would I really do in the future? Like… Two? I was really only doing this for fun.

 

—–

 

That night I spent a while working on the Tachikoma. Cleaning up more of its code, slimming it down again, making sure what it actually needed to know was saved while junk code was removed.

 

I was basically letting the Tachikoma tell me what it had learned through the day and then I was cutting or reinforcing the data to make sure it was accurate.

 

No Tachikoma-chan, Jun’s head wasn’t a good place to place the metal blocks. I literally have no idea where you came up with that idea…

 

Okay so I may have saved that particular data and might maybe use it later, but that was beside the point!

 

Random processes could pop up with decisions that I had to remove because they were absurd.

 

And so the night went. Tachikoma was currently inhabiting its actual shell, and I was pruning its decision making as I also sometimes took control, and practiced moving around. It was a good combo, letting me teach the Tachikoma directly what I wanted it to do.