Sasha stared quietly at her apartment window where a piece of paper with the words "Don't be a self-sacrificing gonk!" was taped on.
Now, under normal circumstances the netrunner would just dismiss the message as either a bad prank or someone trying to message the wrong person.
The issue was that this wasn't a one-off occurrence. Oh no. Some absolute shithead has been stalking her for weeks and slipping the same message to her over and over again and frankly she was getting really tired of it.
She saw it taped on her front door. It was plastered on her ride. It was messaged to her agent everyday, even when she changed her contact number. Twice.
Don't be a self-sacrificing gonk!
Don't be a self-sacrificing gonk!
Don't be a self-sacrificing gonk!
The pink pajama clad woman was this close to losing her shit as she angrily held her synth-coffee in her favorite cat-themed mug.
She already tried catching the stalker, multiple times, but whoever it was had some serious skills because they clearly did not want to be caught. She tried tracking the agent texts, but they were definitely using some heavy duty encryption because that went nowhere. Hidden security cameras she installed around her apartment were immediately hacked to show no one. Once she even saw the E-billboard in front of her apartment get hacked to only show the fucking message for three days straight until a NightCorp techie fixed it. Trying to even catch a glimpse of their Icon in the Net was also a waste of time - she spent an embarrassing 4 hours furiously entering multiple city servers following a supposed trail only to arrive at a dead end - to make her humiliation complete, the dead end was a recently created website that only had the words "Don't be a self-sacrificing gonk!" typed in basic HTML.
Pillar thought the story was hilarious and referenced it for weeks afterwards, the irritating fuck.
Maine was more understanding and took the risk seriously. He, Dorio, and even Rebecca had offered to camp out at her apartment for a few days to see if they could catch the psycho in the act and Sasha kinda liked the idea even if it would be super inconvenient.
Honestly, the sole redeeming quality of this stalker was that they haven't tried to break into her apartment or meet her in person. Yet.
She carefully pulled out her favorite upgraded tech pistol from a secret compartment under her kitchen table and relaxed as her hand tightened around the grip. If that bastard tried anything up close, she was ready…
Hiromi stared at Motoko in incomprehension as they both sat in her parked Quadra. "So, you've been terrorizing this woman you met only once in Afterlife for the past month…to save her life?"
"That's right!" Motoko stated proudly. "My plan is to tell her to stop being a self-sacrificing gonk until she..well…stops being one."
The corpo girl raised an eyebrow. "Toko, that's insane."
Motoko tapped her forehead while smirking. "Is it though? If I keep harassing her, she'll freak out more and more and load up on quick hacks and start carrying better guns."
"Okay?"
"The next time she goes on a gig that turns out to be way harder than expected? She will use all the extra offensive capabilities she was hoarding for me and use it to finish the gig without dying in the process."
Hiromi continued to stare incomprehensibly at Motoko.
Motoko's face grew serious as she observed, through her binoculars, the antsy netrunner who was currently cuddling her iron for comfort. "I know what you're thinking choom and I'm thinking the same thing…"
Motoko turned her gaze to her passenger in solemn silence.
"Sometimes my genius is..it's almost frightening."
Hiromi blinked and closed her eyes in exhaustion. "You are such a gonk Motoko"