Chapter 86

I was still hammering through the issue in my head when I got back home. I would call the team together soon to chat about what to do, but we had been running around for a few days now. Best to give everyone some time to decompress.

 

Unluckily for me. Jun wasn’t home which was disappointing. I really wanted to talk to him about what to do.

 

So instead I flopped onto the couch and pulled up all the data. All the recordings and pictures.

 

Oh! Hiromi had actually sent me a dossier on the owner of the yacht…

 

Well it wasn’t quite that professional, but it had the information I had asked for.

 

“Bartolomeo Mordellini.” I muttered as I read through the information. Apparently he was a purveyor of certain kinds of entertainment for the rich and famous. Parties. Drugs. BD. He did them all, and was apparently rich and popular enough his parties could even have high entry costs. The sort of thing that the rich and famous could get involved in to make themselves seem even richer and more important than the people that couldn’t get in.

 

His yacht the GEIshhhA was a common party spot.

 

I’m sure the parties were all very respectful and drugs and other entertainment wasn’t allowed.

 

Sure.

 

But there was a benefit here. As popular as he was. He wasn’t a member of a corp. If he disappeared some people might be annoyed at the lack of parties, but I doubted I would have corpo hit squads after me and my chooms.

 

Why Scavs? I didn’t get the connection though. He obviously wasn’t one himself. But why would a guy who hosted parties help out Scavs?

 

Money?

 

I doubted it. If he was hosting parties with the rich and famous he was already quite wealthy. So what was going on?

 

I shook it off. Whatever deal he had didn’t matter. Fuck the Scavs, and fuck this asshole who worked with them.

 

So how do I come away with this gig without getting burned.

 

To start with. I would need to move the yacht. I would have to make sure it even had fuel, if it didn’t it certainly wouldn’t be able to move. That would be tricky.

 

I would need to do this hopefully without having the marina realize until it was too late.

 

Then I would need to sail the boat down the coast to somewhere I could loot the thing, hopefully NCPD didn’t have a coast guard element… or if they did, they would just ignore what I was doing. I gave it a 50/50 either way.

 

Then I would need to have enough people to unload the ship. To pack it away into trucks and get it the hell out of there to hide it somewhere else. All without having Raffen or other scavengers come to take it from me.

 

The Nomads not helping made it more difficult.

 

I sighed.

 

Did I want to try bringing in the SLS into this?

 

I winced at the very idea.

 

Sure they obviously knew how to loot, but bringing a bunch of kids that I barely knew? With crates of chrome each worth tons of eddies?

 

I would be surprised if even half the crates showed up at the end.

 

Could I trust them? I don’t know. I was leaning towards no though. Maybe I can hire them out to help Hiromi while she is selling or something, but for something this big…

 

So who else could I trust?

 

The Mox?

 

I had to shake my head there too. While I was close to Rita, and I liked Judy and Nox. That wasn’t the Mox.

 

The Mox were more than just three people, especially three people that weren’t all that high up in the gang.

 

Suzie Q. I had met her before, but I was well aware that Suzie was very much a Mox first kind of woman.

 

Could I trust that I would have any of the crates left over at the end?

 

Ugh.

 

The one negative about not being part of a gang I guess. Sure I didn’t have to deal with mob boss assholes willing to throw me away at the drop of a hat for a few eddies. But I also didn’t have enough people I trusted to get some gigs done.

 

I was even starting to consider going to Wakako. She would know people, but I was sure if I did that my payday would start dwindling real fast.

 

I shook it away. I would talk to Jun. He was great at giving me advice, and being a sounding board.

 

I ended up getting stuck in my head despite my goal to wait for Jun, so when he finally got home a few hours later, I hadn’t done anything but consider what I was going to do.

 

“Jun! I need life counseling!” I demand from the couch sitting and pinning him with a firm look.

 

“What?”

 

“I need advice. Come sit when you are ready.” I told him firmly with a nod of my head, and Jun must have realized something because he snorted and nodded, first heading to the kitchen and then coming back to settle onto the couch with a drink in hand.

 

“What’s up Motoko?”

“So here is the deal.”

 

—–

 

“You should totally steal it all. Flatline the gonk too.” Jun offered with a sage nod.

 

Which did nothing to actually help me.

 

“Your life counseling sucks.” I informed him which didn’t seem to bother him as he shrugged.

 

“Motoko. You’ve been thinking about all these groups that could help you out, but you forgot one of them in your list.” He says and I have to turn my head away.

 

I hadn’t forgotten one of them.

 

It just wasn’t even an option.

 

“Fujimura-Sama would definitely mobilize the Kamikaze for a payday this big.”

“I’m not working with the TC on this Jun.”

“You are worried about the heat a gig like this will bring right? If the TC helps, suddenly the heat moves away from you and your chooms, and is put squarely on the TC. It solves all of your problems.” He argued.

“Except I would have to work with the Tyger Claws! Putting myself even closer to…”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Becoming one of us?” He said with a smirk.

 

“I’m not.” I argued instantly, but I was definitely not whining! Jun reached over and pulled me into a hug.

 

“I know. You’re a bit too wild. It drives Fujimura-Sama mad.”

 

“Good! He’s a jerk anyways!” I grumbled but Jun just stayed there and I sighed. “I don’t want to just be some gang banger Jun. I shouldn’t need to rely on something like that.”

“Well you have choices Motoko, but it sounds like all the choices have good things, and bad.” He informed me and then like the big brother he was he picked me up as he stood up and tossed me back on the couch suddenly as I yelped at the sudden motion.

 

“Figure it out. I’ll help if you want help.” He said and then just walked into his room.

 

Oh man I am so cannonballing his ass sometime soon for this.

 

—–

 

“I don’t get the problem Motoko. Let’s just grab Richard and some of the kids. Rent a couple trucks and steal the boat. You said you could.” Hiromi said as my chooms and I had met up that night.

“I said I probably could.” I mumbled, but it wasn’t very strong.

 

I don’t know why, but I was just nervous about this gig. It was one thing to take out some Scavs, or something. Street level crime happens every day.

 

Stealing a yacht that probably cost more than a million eddies? Stealing an entire shipment of Scav chrome?

 

All with the chance of it blowing up in my face?

 

My chooms were happy with taking part, and maybe getting a ‘rep’ from the gig.

 

But I wasn’t.

 

“I like being unknown Hiromi. Doing it all ourselves means all the heat goes straight to us.”

 

“I’m not understanding the problem with this Motoko.” Hiromi said, continuing to argue with me across the table. We were back at my basement, which had somehow become our defacto hangout point I guess. “You need a better rep. Right now no one knows you. Like… When we went to get the car back. If you had a rep, they wouldn’t have dared mess with us.” Hiromi argued.

 

“I don’t think a rep would have changed that-”

“It would have. It totally would have. God Motoko You are like a super ninja killer but everyone just treats you like an unknown because you don’t… Show off! You are so standard it’s infuriating. Sometimes.” Hiromi said with a groan of frustration.

 

“Did… Did you just call me standard? What does that even mean!?” I demanded and Hiromi rolled her eyes.

 

“I didn’t mean anything bad! You just don’t try to build a rep or anything. You don’t ever hype yourself up. You do the BD thing, but no one even knows it’s you! You could be like a famous solo right now!”

“Fame just means more people know about me, and can plan around my skills. It’s a terrible idea.” I argued but Hiromi rolled her eyes at me, turning to the boys.

“Help me out here.” She demanded and the boys perhaps wisely both didn’t jump in. Malcolm even raised his hands up nonverbally saying don’t bring him into this.

 

“Don’t try to team up on me. That’s mean!” I said and Hiromi growled a bit.

 

“Motoko I think you’re amazing, but you are so gonk about this. Rep is important, it tells the gonks on the street not to mess with you. If you weren’t hiding yourself so much, you could walk into any TC place and they wouldn’t dare mess with you!”

 

“And it would make every gonk on the street that thinks they can make a rep, come for my hide.”

 

“Hardly! You don’t see people gunning for Jun do you? That’s because everyone knows Jun will flatline them! You just need to build up a rep too.”

“Hiromi. I literally got kidnapped, because people were gunning for Jun.” I reminded her waving my silver hands at her.

 

She winced, looking a little lost as she didn’t have a good rebuttal.

 

But…

 

It wasn’t about winning or losing the discussion.