Chapter 35

“Whusa?” I mumbled as I startled awake at the sound of a door opening. I sat covered in blankets and one eye caked shut cold drool on my chin which I quickly wiped away.

“Real cute.” Jun told me dryly as he caught sight of my sleepy face.

“Jerk.” I snapped at him, cut off by a big yawn as I stretched arm high and wide letting the muscles in my upper back stretch out a bit.

It wasn’t like stretching my Cyberware mattered. Although I did notice my right arm wasn’t right. But it wasn’t the usual discomfort, I glanced at it and noticed the dent.

Right. I had gotten shot last night in the arm… Which reminded me about someone else being shot.

“Jun? Are you all healed up?”

“Mostly.” He confirmed plopping down on the couch beside me and peeling his burrito from a wrapper.

“I’m glad.” I told him gently as he took a big bite. “Sorry I didn’t come back, I was gonna but… well I had my own little thing.” I told him quietly with a smile as I relaxed my shoulders getting to feel my arms settle.

It wasn’t how they would have settled before, but it was how they settled now, and that fact didn’t bother me so much right then.

“You okay?” He mumbled from between bites and I gave him a smile and a nod.

“Yep! I had a big cry… Everything sort of hit me last night. But I’m feeling a lot better.”

“Good. That’s good.” He told me quietly, and while I could feel the emotion in his voice he was definitely fighting back another emotion.

“You wanna talk about me running off last night?” I prompted and I could see him take a deep breath and let it out.

“Yeah. I do.”

“Okay. I’m not going anywhere. So let’s… Let’s really talk Jun.” I rose up off the couch pulling my blanket with me to flop on the other side of the table as I settled in, letting us talk face to face.

He was quiet for a while as he chewed but the way he was staring I knew he was thinking.

“You didn’t need me last night.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” I shrugged a weird feeling now that I was holding my shoulders lower. “I was looting when you showed up, but I might have gotten greedy and stuck around too long.”

“Motoko… You didn’t need me.” He said bluntly, sounding sad as he put the empty burrito wrapper on the table. “You handle yourself like a pro… I left you behind during the raid because I didn’t want you there. I didn’t want you in danger. But you still caught up. You still killed. I hated it. I hate it. Seeing you do that. Putting blood on your hands… But no matter what I do, you’re still gonna do it.”

“Yeah.” I confirmed with a sad smile as I looked at my brother really fighting himself. Jun wasn’t an emotional guy. At least not like this. He was a hothead. Not an empathetic thinker.

But he was trying.

“I can’t stop you. I want to. I… I would kill anyone to stop you, but that won’t change anything. You will still do what you want. Just like always.” He sighed his hands seemingly not able to sit still as he kept opening and closing them, or pushing them together. “I’m scared Motoko. Scared that you will get hurt. I can’t protect you if you put yourself in danger.” His leg was bouncing as he started talking knee up and down in a rapid succession.

“I’m scared for you too Jun… But I can’t stop you. You joined the Kamikaze, which… Man, that name has some connotations.” I grumbled. “But I have to trust you. I have to believe you will stay safe, because I can’t… I can’t physically stop you.”

“And I can’t physically stop you.” He agreed, the two of us looking each other over with matching quirks of our lips.

“What a pair we make huh Jun-Nii?”

“Yeah Imouto.” He chuckled a little, actually sounding like… Well Jun. Before everything. “A real pair. We both have a death wish.”

“No.” I told him instantly, standing up and reaching across the table to put both my hands on his cheeks. “Not a death wish. Just a bloody path ahead of each of us… It’s not a death wish. We might die. We might not. But Jun-Nii. I promise. I won’t throw my life away. If I die, it will be doing something I believe is right. And maybe something I love. Cause I do like it.”

“Little Killer.” He finally said with a huffed out laugh as he reached forward and suddenly I wasn’t standing on the other side of the table. No, I was squeezed tight against Jun’s chest as he held me. I laughed, and hugged him back.

We were both broken. Maybe even crazy. But the world was crazy too.

So we would survive.

—–

“Ow!” I growled as I zapped myself once again. After the nice long hug from Jun, and a bit of sibling bonding Jun had gone into his room to take a nap, still tired from the drugs and his bullet holes, while I went to work on my newest skill!

Engineering!

With Engineering my Crafting had suddenly linked with the knowledge and had exploded.

Two halves of the same coin. Crafting was slapping shit together. How good are you at physically making something? Do you know the right tolerances, the right diameter to make something just work?

But Engineering? Engineering was planning. Design. Engineering was creation. It was the difference between the tinker in his home lab shaving away a few millimeters on something to make it work better, to the engineer that designed the whole thing in a lab.

Together they synced, I was both of those people. The creator, and the end user. Plus with my other skills I was the operator.

How many people could say they were a true Renaissance woman? I could do it all! Although I still couldn’t paint.

So with just how flexible my knowledge was, first step was to mess with my equipment.

I had done some tinkering with my guns already, but I had a lot to do.

First I went out to the car and grabbed all the loot from the Maelstrom garage.

The Nekomata was first. I had looked it over, but there wasn’t much I could change, the previous user knew his gun. It was a solid piece of work. The modifications it had were all solid improvements.

At least for now.

Instead I had a bunch of tech scrap that I already had ideas for.

If I was going to level Engineering, I might as well do it easily.

Grenades!

An explosive, a trigger, and a casing, honestly with my 3D printer I could make everything but the explosives, but those were easy.

I had stolen a bunch of grenade stuff from the Raffen base, and now I was actually motivated to use it. The shard I klepped that had the crazy grenade Raffens tips and tricks on how to create grenades was actually easy to understand with my Engineering knowledge.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Which is why I was putting together homemade grenades. After half a dozen frag grenades I decided that a couple EMP grenades might be really useful.

The discharge for it was pretty standard stuff. I grab a battery that I could find in most devices, and basically set it into a supercharger that would cause it to explode, put that in a case, and set it all up from a button.

Voila EMP grenade. I guess that says a lot about power sources in Cyberpunk that with a few modifications you could turn them into a dangerous explosive.

Honestly the scrap metal I had was running low considering how simple Grenade interiors were.

“What the hell is that?” Jun said suddenly looking at me from the door, his fire hair limp and sticking out at weird angles from a nap.

“Grenade.”

He blinked. Then he blinked again as he looked down towards the wires that I was holding in my hands as I was wiring up an EMP grenade.

“Not in the house.”

“It’s safe!”

“Not in the house.” He said again before slowly backing back into his room.

“Fine!” I grumbled as I undid all the wiring before tossing the grenades in pieces back into my parts section. Not about to leave an unfinished halfway put together grenade in my box.

That’s stupid.

But now I had nothing to do. The Maelstrom would all be sleeping with the sun still up…

I blinked.

Why did I think I had nothing to do? I had a car. A city, friends…

That’s right. I had friends.