Figured since that we where on an action arc for a little bit I'd write something a bit more slice of life-y!

So this one is a little bit different. I wanted to do another PoV this time from Malcolms perspective, but I also wanted to try and stick to using only words he would know or have learned from movies and such. I don't think it's perfect, the ending is abrupt because I didn't want this one to be super long or serious. Malcolm's just a kid currently living his best life in a dystopia. So the tone kind of swings around from time to time.

Typically when he hung out with Motoko they'd fall into an easy silence. He didn't mind, watching his choom work was an experience in and of itself. This time however the silence wasn't quite so easy... Neither was the sight to be honest.

He'd seen a lot of horrifying things in his (frankly) too short life. There was that time he'd been stuck on the metro only to have a drunk sixth street ganger pull out his iron and start flashing it at anyone who looked even remotely Hispanic or Asian. -Had the unfortunate chance to see the light leave someone's eyes as they passed out for the final time on the sidewalk. Had nearly bled out on the street himself after being shot.

All of that was harrowing? Harrowing sounded like the right word? The adverts for Bushido 5: Body of Law had used it to describe the plot of the movie, so it had to be close.

-So harrowing, but you know normal, sure he was scared as shit on that train. Even more so as he slipped in and out of consciousness on the pavement while trying to dial Motoko on his agent, but that was all just normal shit. What he was seeing now was an attack on his eyes, like that hot pink Rayburn with red flames that still appeared first in the list every time he checked car listings in Night City.

Motoko had called him over to test some new sort of hack she was making, and while he didn't really want to be a guinea pig, the promise of a road trip out in the badlands after was too good to pass up. Currently she had him sitting on the sofa in her apartment just watching her as his eyes continued to glitch. Her body and clothes rapidly changing colors and giving him a headache.

"So what do you think?" He straightened up at the words, stopped slouching quite so much like his Mom always asked him to. He couldn't really help it, he had an actual female choom, like a choom choom. Not the kind who bounced as soon as the free food disappeared, but like a choom. -Even if she currently was neon green.- Sure he knew they'd never go beyond that for many, many reasons. Not least of which being that he half expected Hiromi to have a team of snipers and an angry Oni on standby if she ever caught wind of anything, but still he had an actual female choom. Which put his chances of actually landing a real girlfriend at least ten notches above where they where. I mean he had to be doing something right if Motoko didn't just run away from him in horror every time he showed up.

"-Earth to Malcolm!" A blue finger snapped in front of his face.

"S-sorry just got lost in thought for a moment there." He awkwardly rubbed the back of his head while looking away. -His eyes where starting to hurt. "It's distracting, but didn't you say you where supposed to look like someone else? You're kind of just a...Rainbow?"

"A rainbow?" Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him before walking over. "Hold on let me jack into your feed so I can see what you're seeing, it shouldn't be changing constantly unless-" He tuned the rest of the technobabble out and closed his eyes as she approached. The colors were becoming a bit too much.

All of this was kind of just, Surreal.

And he wasn't talking about the hack currently covering his vision.

Motoko was honestly exactly the kind of girl he would go for, Like one of the heroines out of a Bushido movie. (…Well not the one from Bushido 9.) Pretty, smart, -a hacker, good with a gun, -possibly crazy.

…Just you know ,he wouldn't go for her, because of the snipers.

He'd grown up watching Bushido 2's special edition (arguably the worst in the series according to critics, but what did they know!?) on repeat every night until the BD wreathe he'd been using had burned out on him. He still vividly (Thank you Bushido 3: Live fast, Die Never!) remembered the scolding his mother had given him as she threw it in the trash.

Losing that crappy BD wreathe and that little limited edition cartridge had hurt more then he cared to admit. It had been the one bright spot he could return to day after day. Slipping away from being a boring eight year old and slipping into the shoes of an elite ex-special forces operative on the hunt for a terrorist cell that had kidnapped his on again off again love interest.

After living it in a BD? The movie versions just weren't the same.

Yet here he was living it. Sure he hadn't robbed a train or landed his car on an aircraft carrier -yet, but his life was far closer to those childhood BD's then even he would have thought possible.

"-It looks like your eyes are changing RGB values every few seconds for some reason..."

"Preem, can you uh, turn it off now?"

"..."

The silence really wasn't what he wanted to hear from her right now.

So that's that, rewrote this a few times because I wanted him to sound like a teenager who doesn't quite know everything but believes he does. Tried really hard to not make him sound like a creep, but I may have failed at that as I attempted to type out the stream of consciousness that is a teenage boy.

As a side note, they're making a new ghost in the shell anime! This time it looks to be focused more on the old goofy manga.