Ghost in the City: Early Chapter 99 (Patreon)

V went silent after my victory with nothing to refute my perfect argument for what Samurai song was the best. I settled down as well. V looked… Tired.

Honestly I kinda wondered who would look more worn. V now, Or V dying from the engram?

I felt a little sad for the woman knowing her future. Knowing that all the stress and heartache and pain she was suffering under from Arasaka would all amount to nothing. Hell less than nothing. A bullet to the head, if Jackie hadn’t been there.

“And two drinks for mis amigas!” Jackie said, showing up with his hands full of drinks, dropping a tumbler in front of V, one for himself, and to my surprise a martini style glass, and a can of soda in front of me. “You don’t have to drink the alcohol Hermanita, but me and V do this every time after a gig it’s our little tradition.” He said as he settled down.

“V?”

“I’m fine Jack. Just been needing a drink.” V said, arching an eye at Jackie who chuckled.

“Sorry choom. The lines were a little long tonight, had a big group dropping off like forty orders right in front of me.” He just laughed it off and V looked for a second like she was going to go bust some assholes down to size but just shrugged it off and grabbed her drink.

“To good fortune.” V offered.

“To good friends.” Jackie replied back.

“To the good fortune to have good friends!” They both said at the same time and then looked to me.

Ugh. Miserable bad influence adults!

I grabbed the stupid martini glass.

“To adding new friends to that list.” I added on my own and Jackie burst into a bright smile. I guess I had done well then we clinked out drinks and took a swallow.

Blegh! So gross!

—--

“A thing of beauty! I know! Will never fade away!” I shouted out standing on top of the table V right beside me singing along with me. The Corpo woman had a pretty good voice!

“Motoko! Get off the table!”

“Rita! Hey! Hold on the songs almost done!” I called back. I don't know why she winced. I had just yelled a little!

We were partying! V and I were great chooms now! Sure she was a little drunk, having been absolutely hammering back shots, but that was okay! One of us had the brilliant idea of requesting some Samurai songs from the system, and one thing led to another.

I don’t remember exactly who got up on the table to sing first, but I was having a great time!

“Oh no you don’t.” There was a jumble of movement or something there and the next thing I remember is waking up as I crash into a pile of trash bags.

It had been surprisingly gentle though.

“You able to get a handle on these two?”

“No p-prob-prob… I can do it! Come on now Hermana! Hermanita, let’s stand up yeah?” Jackie was there and I blinked, raising my head out of the trash.

“You okay there kid?” Rita asked and I checked myself. No injuries. I threw her a thumbs up. “You good to have these two help you get home?” She asked as well, glaring a bit at Jackie which was unfair. He was really struggling with V from the looks of it. Was the Corpo woman passed out face down in the trash? Oh no she was just puking.

“V and Jackie and I are chooooooms!” I called out in response. I even reached out and pulled V’s head out of the trash.

The regurgitated flood of nastiness meant I quickly let go of her hair ignoring the slimy plop as she fell back.

“We’ll be okay Rita, Honest. I’ll drive them home.” Jackie offered. The man sounding a little tipsy. You shouldn’t get so drunk Jackie.

Wait. Driving and drunk?

“NO! Drunk driving is bad! BAAAAD!”

“I’ll call a cab.”

“Yay!”

—--

I blinked awake instantly. “Unfamiliar ceiling.” I muttered as I Rose up and stretched. “Oh gross what died in my mouth?” I grunted wanting to stick out my tongue at the taste, but other than that I was fine.

No headache or anything, I patted myself down noticing most of my gear was settled on the table next to me, but my Kang Tao armor was missing…

I don’t remember what happened to it.

Looking around I tried to figure out where I was.

The array of men stuff around the room gave me a hint to where I was. “This Jackies place?” I asked, looking around in surprise. I was on his couch with a little blanket strewn over me.

“Oh you awake too kid?” I sat up and there was V. Not a hair out of place, the corpo woman looked like she was ready to step into a boardroom or a battlefield.

“You can just call me Motoko.” I told her as I got up and stretched.

It hit me then. Aw man. I got drunk. I hated that! It was so gross! “Huh no hangover or anything huh? Must be nice to be a kid. Poor Jackie is still laid up.”

“Heh. Really?”

“Yeah nasty hangover. The oaf.” V said as she sipped on a can of something. “I’ll be heading out soon. Kid, it wasn’t horrible working with you.”

“Is that your nice way of saying I’m more competent than you expected and I’m useful?” I asked as I took a seat across from her.

She scoffed but didn’t actually deny my words.

So I threw her my deets.

“Really?” She asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Hey, I know what it’s like up in that stuffy office they probably got you in. If you ever need someone you can trust to watch your back, I am a merc.” I explained and she seemed kind of surprised at my words for a moment before her face blanked as always.

“I’ll keep it in mind.” She sends her own deets back. Giving me a number and even an email although it was a .Arasaka address which meant I wasn’t going anywhere near it. “Oh I looked into our little jaunt last night. Kang Tao are frothing mad, but they don’t have much to go on. I’d suggest you get your car repainted, maybe reset the ID, and don’t let it spread around.”

“It wasn’t exactly a big deal.” I said honestly. I mean you don’t see AV’s much in the game, but that was engine limitations, those things are everywhere in Night City. I’d honestly been surprised I hadn’t gotten involved in an aerial chase through the city until now.

“Pfft. You took out a Kang Tao AV kid. You do know the price tag on those things right?”

“Million or something?”

“More like twenty.” She said with an actual laugh. “And worse, it crashed in the city. NCPD, get involved for things like that, which means KT is paying fines and bribes to make it go away. Like I said. Alter your car a bit, and keep it quiet.”

I hesitated but nodded. “Shame. I wanted to make a BD of that explosion. Commemorate it a bit.”

V went still for a moment before speaking. “You record BD’s while on gigs?”

“Yeah! It’s preem! I have a choom with the mox that edits and then another that sells them off.” I explain in a rush, happy to share. V just shakes her head.

“Not sure if that’s preem, or just crazy. Be careful kid, and don’t put me in any of them. Last thing I would need is my boss finding out.”

“Deal.”

“Alright I’m out. I already checked on Jack. If you’re feeling good feel free to leave when-”

“YOU BITCHES!” A voice screamed out as the door opened and a woman I didn’t know stomped in. She started absolutely going off in spanish, which my limited vocabulary recognized most of them as insults.

“Hello to you too. You’re Camillla right?” V said calmly, seemingly unbothered by the slightly short spanish woman that was ranting and raving at her.

Oh and me. The woman spit out something at me too.

“Who wants to know some homewrecking whores in my Jackies home!?”

I blinked.

Did… That’s right. Jackie mentioned he had an Output.

So this was the girl that Jackie had left, eventually dating Misty.

The girl that Mama Welles had preferred.

Huh. No accounting for taste Mama Welles.

“I’m V. An associate of Jackies.”

“Yeah I’m sure he associated with you all night you-” And there was the string of spanish added on.

Awkward.

This was so awkward. My cringe meter was absolutely blasting and that thing was broken half the time.

“Hey, how about we all take a second. Jackie V and I all had a gig last night. We didn’t like… Do that.” I said, waving my hands in different shapes to show the things that we didn’t do.

Before the woman could turn to me and start exploding because she was definitely about to Jackie came stumbling out of his bedroom.

Jackie looked like shit. I almost wanted to giggle as he stumbled into the room clutching his head. Voice croaking as he barely could open his eyes.

“Cami? That you? Everything alright?” He asked as he stumbled over and finding the right woman pulled her into a hug. But she slapped him away and started screeching.

Ow.

That was making my head hurt, and I didn’t even have a hangover. Jackie looked utterly fucked up.

“Jack. I’m gonna head out.” V said showing zero sympathy as she just walked out after everything leaving poor Jackie to his fate.

I followed after her, because I wasn’t a gonk.

—--

V and I split up, and I did as she recommended. Jackie had dropped some eddies into my account last night at some point, so I just headed over to a detailing shop.

This time my Reaver didn’t look like a Raffen vehicle, so it only cost a more reasonable amount to redo the black paint and add some purple in for highlights. By the time it was done, I had already modified the identification with a bit of netrunning and it was lunchtime and I was getting hungry so I stopped for some noodles.

Oh, and my Kang Tao Armor had been in the passenger seat. I must have taken it off at some point.

Then I pulled open my system alerts.

I had to whistle a bit as I looked through the alerts. Blowing up that AV had certainly given me a nice stack of Engineering XP from the Uragan.

And a level up.

*Engineering skill level up!*

Jeez that skill was so low. And it still made no sense why Engineering had to do with explosions!

I shook it off and continued going down my list.

“Assault XP, Assault XP. Assault level up!”

*Assault skill level up!*

Assault 6! I guess using my Assault Rifles instead of just defaulting to my Burya all the time came in handy.

Aww yiss! New levels!

*Driving skill level up!*

Driving 7!

I guess that race through the city while being shot at had helped me out!

Well that and my daily driving.

That was all my skill upgrades from the night of hell raising with V and Jackie, but that wasn’t all I pulled out of the wreckage.

*750 XP Gained.*

*750 XP Gained.*

*750 XP Gained.*

*750 XP Gained.*

A short burst of XP in the middle of the fight. That was where I blinded everyone and shot a few guys.

But then there was the big bunch.

A single 1000 XP stack, and then five more 750 drops.

In the end I wasn’t quite at a new level up, but I was very close. Considering it had all happened sort of on accident. I would have to do something nice for Jackie as thanks for all that XP.

Ah wait, he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Better to just be there for another gig if he ever needed me.

I slurped up the last of my ramen and dropped a tip to the Ramen chef who gave me a bow as I headed out of the shop.

I’d been running around doing gigs a lot recently.

“Time to go get some more songs!” I decided as I stepped away from my empty bowl of ramen.

—--

Despite only being Rockerboy 7, it wasn’t hard to basically recreate songs. Any mistakes I made while recording them through my music box were easily fixed with a bit of digital chop shopping.

But it was a nice time waster.

Each song had to be played through multiple times, then multiple times on top to fix errors. Then mashing it all together, which took more time.

The very second song I wrote out for my box?

Never Fade Away by Samurai!

Maybe I would bug V sometime and get her to co vocal it with me? I had been pretty drunk, but I still remember noting her voice was really good.

The song after that, I went with something that didn’t exist.

Smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana.

It was a simple song to work on and grind some more experience. I mean. Some of the songs were incredibly technical, and it was only because of a perk giving me perfect memory that I could remember how they went.

Nirvana was… Simple by comparison to The Only Thing They Fear.

Not that it wasn’t a good song.

I mean. It would fit right into Night City, the first lyric was “Load up on guns, bring your friends.” If there was ever a song lyric that fit Night City that was it.

So I added the song to my list. Enjoying crooning aloud as I recorded the audio.

As I was finangling the drum track, which was taking a while, considering I had to do it completely digitally. Jun got home, opening the door and seeming to relax at seeing me camped out on the couch like normal.

“You left last night.” He commented as he put down some of his stuff. His Katana joining my own on the Katana rack near the shrine.

“Jackie called me for netrunner help on a gig.” I told him leaving out all of the actual exciting bits.

“You could have left a message.” He said and I nodded at that. He was right. I mean. I hadn’t because Jun might have tried to stop me, or follow along, but I could have. He sighed seeing I wasn’t going to actually do the right thing and say I will in the future.

“You okay?”

“Oh I’m fine. I met one of Jackies Chooms! V’s so cool. Arasaka Counter-intel. She has this I’ll kill you and destroy your entire family aura about her. But she can sing Never Fade Away so she isn’t all bad!”

Jun blinks at my rather odd words before seemingly deciding asking isn’t worth the effort.

“Counter-Intel? Those kinda of people are… Crazy. I’m not sure I want you hanging out with someone like that.”

“Nah. V’s more Jackies Choom. They saved each other on some gig. I didn’t get the deets. Anyway, she’s safe enough. I don’t think I’ll hang out with her, without Jackie or something, and he’s like… Her weakness. She goes all buttery soft around him. It’s adorable.”

“They Input-Output?”

“Nope. I think they might have something there, but neither is willing. I think V’s life is just complicated.” I shrugged, deciding to take a break from this drum section.

“And the gig he pulled you into?”

“Break into a corpo laptop for some info on where something was taken. When I got there everything was quiet. Took me like ten minutes to break in.”

“You were out all night. Motoko, you’re avoiding saying what you actually did on the gig. You always blab about the entire adventure when I ask. I usually have to leave to get you to stop.”

“Rude!”

“Avoiding the question.”

“Okay, fine. Yeah the corp was Kang Tao. Some minor gang of kids klepped a car that had some stuff in the trunk. Kang Tao wanted it back, and killed the kids. Jackie was hired by Padre to get the stuff back, mostly in revenge for the killing and well… I followed Jackie and V on the gig as their backup. Shit got a little crazy.”

“Define crazy.” Jun said flatly and I winced before looking around a little.

“Okay, first. You can’t tell anyone. V mentioned Kang Tao has no idea who did it, so that’s good, because they are pissed.”

“What did you and your chooms do?”

“Well… This is more of a me thing?”

Jun was done paying attention to his gear that he was taking off, he walked over and sat on the couch glaring down at me.

“I blew up an AV with my Rocket Launcher! It crashed and made a massive crash and Jun-Nii it was the coolest, most preem thing EVER! I’ve been wanting to tell someone all day!” I let it all out in a rush making an explosion motion with my hands to emphasize how amazing it was!

I blew up an aircraft!

I always wanted to do that!

“Fucking hell.” Jun said as he tried to process what I had done. It wasn’t like you could just walk up to someone you know and say you shot down an airplane with a rocket launcher and not have it be a bit of a deal to process.

So I remained quiet just squirming under Jun’s gaze as he came to a conclusion about how he felt.

“Ow!” He hit me right on the head.

“Don’t go to war with the corps you idiot!” He hissed at me quietly, obviously not wanting to shout something so incendiary through the walls.

“I didn’t!”

“High explosives is an escalation!”

“Well! Fine! I’ll get a Techtronika Grad and use that as an AT rifle instead! I’ll just snipe the pilots ou-Ow!”

“Don’t blow up AV’s! Fuck I can’t believe I have to explain this!”

“Okay fine! I’ll leave the AV fuckers alone. I’ll just kill everyone they drop off if I ever run into them or something.”

“Just stop putting yourself in situations that corps are sending AVs at you! I’ve never had this problem!”

I considered it.

He had already hit me twice so you know what?

“Wow, that’s pretty sad Jun. You should get on my level.” There was silence for a moment between us as we locked eyes.

“OW!”