Chapter 61

“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.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

 

“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.”