"It's been ten hours, Motoko," Rebecca whined, "I shouldn't be complaining about getting to play with grenades. That should not be happening, but here I am."
"I don't understand. Last time it only took a few hours before... hold on. There's someone coming."
The two girls sat on Motoko's Quadra and waited as a lone vehicle approached.
Sadly, Motoko saw it was a small Thorton Galena "Rattler" variant that nomads like to use. She could practically feel Rebecca's disappointment. Then she noticed a brief spark of light off in the distance.
"These may not be gonks," she told her small friend, "I'll talk to them."
"Why?"
Motoko nodded off towards where she saw the light, "Snipers."
They waited until the car pulled up and a tall, lanky nomad guy stepped out.
"Name's Cale. Heard explosions around here and came to see what's the what."
"Hey, I'm Motoko and this is my choom, Rebecca. Just doing a bit of grenade practice."
"Hmm. For that many hours? I think not. What's the real reason?"
Motoko deflated, "I was hoping some gonk wraiths would show up and start demanding my car or something so we could shoot them and get a ride for my friend here."
Cale laughed, "Yeah, I can picture that happening. But the Wraith here have been spooked by something before. I don't suppose you'd know what that was?"
"Not a clue," Motoko tried not to whistle innocently causing the nomad to laugh.
"Well, if murder and a ride's what you're after, you can always enter the Desert Run. There's an abandoned refinery complex where anyone who wants can race. The purse is more than enough to get some choice wheels for your friend. But I do have to warn you, sometime corps send a ringer. The Raffen enter anyways since they're Raffen. Your Quadra is nice, but it's going to need more armor and weapons if you want to participate. You can watch the next race tonight and see what you think."
Motoko accepted the details of the location and gave a wave as the nomad got into his little mismatched hatchback and rode off.
"You want to go watch a race?"
Later that night, the two girls purchased tickets and Motoko paid a little extra to have the video streamed to their agents so they could watch all the parts of the race with equal quality.
They saw the two person teams get into their heavily armed vehicles and saw something straight out of a video game. Then the totally-not-militech team release a weaponized battle rig semi into the arena.
After the show, the winners and runner up were crowned and given their prize money and medical treatment while the losers were mopped up off the track.
The two girls looked at each other and an unspoken agreement passed between them.
Rebecca remembered the effortless drifting skills of Motoko while the girl in question had xp gains and leveling up in her eyes.
Motoko smiled and said to her wide-eyed friend, "Come on, Rebecca. We're going to need to do a lot of work on my Quadra if we're going to enter that."