SUB-WAY 2077
So remember that one question about a sandwich I asked months ago?
This was written like a year ago, and never quite got finished… So uh, this is before Motoko got her fancier gear. Somewhere before reboot optics and after the time she blew up a ship.
Walking down a side-street near her apartment, Mokoto reflected on the past few days. She'd hit a couple of scav dens with her chooms and made a fair amount of eddies in the process. Just an average week in Night City.
Rounding a corner, she became acutely aware of a scuffle going on, if the raised voices and flashes of chrome were any indication.
"Look buddy I'm just asking if you wanted to buy some freakin' sandwiches, no need to spazz out on me" The voice exclaimed exasperatedly. She sounded extremely young, though in today's world that hardly meant anything.
"Yeah ANd I'm aSKin' fer all the eddies yoU got, pipsquEAk!"
"Look I dunno who this 'Eddie' guy even is but–" She was interrupted by a screech of metal, followed by several grunts and the sound of a metal pipe being used as a bludgeon.
Motoko turned the corner into the alley to investigate, thinking someone was being mugged. She slunk into the shadows, hiding herself from view as cool took effect.
The scene in front of her was… odd.
A young girl, twelve perhaps, sat against a dumpster, willfully ignorant of the filth around her as she studied the bionic in her hand, turning the chrome over and over. She had to have chemskin, considering that her pallor made albinos colourful. Her ghostly blue eyes glowed in the darkness of the alleyway, curiosity etched in her face as she examined the ripped away item.
The chrome, which appeared to be a Mantis blade, was still attached to the cybernetic forearm it had been implanted in. The limb had been shorn-off at the elbow, various cables and circuits easily visible through the broken prosthetic.
Of the body it was once attached to, only his legs could be seen, dangling limply from the mouth of the dumpster, the corpse–
The legs began to kick weakly.
The man, heavily borged judging from a quick scan with her Kiroshis, started cursing as he struggled uselessly in hauling himself out with his leftover limbs.
Even through her sneaking skills the girl noticed her entrance. The short albino scrambled to get up off the ground and quickly hid the bionic behind her back, as if caught doing something naughty by her parents.
"Oh! Hey!" The girl said, slightly startled, "I didn't see you there!"
"People usually don't," Motoko looked around the alley warily, slowly moving out of her cover. This area was Tyger Claw territory, but she hadn't seen any of their people around lately. "What's a kid like you doing here all by yourself?"
She was asking more to make conversation than out of genuine concern, as from the looks of it the girl was far more dangerous than she seemed, having manhandled the borged out scav by herself. What mods she was running though, she had no idea. Her attempts to check were just giving her static.
The girl struck a pose that honestly looked a bit ridiculous, as she began what had to be a practiced spiel. "Come to Sub-Way! It may be fresh, but it's definitely food!"
Motoko blinked speechlessly. Subway existed?
The girl, seeming to realize something, ducked back towards the dumpster. Motoko tensed for a brief moment, before the girl brought out a large, archaic sign, the words 'SUB-WAY' written on with what must have been sharpie.
"Forgot the sign," she said sheepishly, before waggling said object around a bit.
"You're advertising for a store." Motoko said flatly, giving the pale girl a stare.
"Yes!"
She looked around again at their surroundings pointedly. Before looking back at the dubious, little, heavily chromed girl in front of her. "In an alleyway?"
"Look, do you wanna eat or not?" The girl said, pouting.
This was either a trap or hilarious incompetence, and honestly she wanted to see which it was. Her fingers ghosted over her Burya, mulling whether it was worth the risk. If this was their bait, they were definitely not a professional bunch, with how obvious this bait was.
Motoko gestured vaguely, "Sure, lead the way."
The girl grinned, revealing shark-like teeth.
The sharp teeth made her pause. Though honestly, those weren't too out of the norm these days. A bit on the weirder side, but it definitely sounded more threatening than it actually was. A girl couldn't bite through chrome with just their teeth, right?
"Awesome~!" She started walking, letting Motoko keep a healthy distance. "Name's Georgia by the way!" the little girl said without looking back, an unsettling cheery tone to her voice.
As the now named Georgia headed deeper into the alley, stopping briefly to pick up a large pirate hat that Motoko swore hadn't been there earlier, and continued walking towards a backstreet.
Before she could comment on that oddity, she stepped into the street and felt her mouth gape a little bit. In front of her, amidst strewn rubble and with an empty building half collapsed on top of it, was the distinctive green facade of an old-fashioned Subway store.
"We're here!" Georgia chimed.
Inside, Motoko could not help a bit of nostalgia making it to her numbers-go-brr brain. The store looked pretty much exactly like what you would've expected out of a Subway restaurant, especially the long counter that put various meats, cheese, vegetables and sauces on display. There wasn't even some weird bulletproof-glass or cameras around the place, like this branch wasn't even aware of the dangers of Night City. Attempting to Ping anything here revealed absolutely nothing.
That didn't say that there wasn't any unusual menu choices. Mystery meat that 'May Or May Not Have Been Cthulu,' bauxite bread, 150 octane gasoline sauce, and some other similarly weird ingredients were featured on the menu.
And outside the staff, there were only three people here, all clustered around a table. Two of them looked more normal; the blonde had shoulder-length hair and a braid worn like a crown, while the other had most of her black hair tied in a ponytail. The third was a clear outlier, somehow having a long snake-tail that was spilling out from under the table, black armor plates cladding almost every inch. The Naga also had the same odd monochrome colouring as the small child that led her inside, her skin and hair both unnaturally pale. Maybe a relative?
With a silent start, Motoko realized Burya could maybe penetrate those heavy plates. Turning her attention elsewhere, she finally laid eyes on the counter properly, Kiroshis examining the staff present.
Sitting at a table by the ordering line was a pair of girls wearing Subway caps. They both looked Japanese, but one of them had silver hair and was surrounded by a plethora of holograms, while the other looked like she lost the height lottery but got cat ears. Not even the weirdest of the bunch, to be honest.
"Shihayaku, what are you working on?" the shorter of the two asked.
The hologram girl cracked an eye open and replied in a monotone voice. "Intelligence."
Another two, this time a grey-skinned woman in a staff uniform with bright red hair was crouched together with another monochrome girl in baggy clothes, both working on some contraption in the far corner. It looked like some weird sci-fi glowy object. There were even sparks flying around when one of them prodded it.
Moving her gaze elsewhere, behind the cash register was a mature-looking girl with a similarly pale skin tone as Georgia, the nerd with baggy clothes and the Naga lady (were they related or something?), and was honestly the least weird of the three.
"Welcome to Sub-Way," the register girl chimed politely.
A guy suddenly emerged from behind the long counter, slipping on some disposable gloves. Upon noticing her entry, he stopped. "Holy shit is that the Major?"
Motoko had to do a double-take. Oh god, he actually recognized who she was copying cosplaying as. Play it cool. Play it cool, Motoko.
Voice changer time. "Helloo~"
He whistled appreciatively. "Damn, that's some quality cosplay. Can I take a photo with you?"
eeeeeeeeeEEEE
Motoko forced herself to lean on Cool, keeping her reaction completely and utterly buried while she put on a seductive smile in its stead. "Of course~"
The guy fished out his phone and took a quick selfie, as if the cellular device was a normal thing to have these days. He gave her a thumbs up. "Alright, thanks. Mind if I take your order?"
With a nod, she started looking over the various meats available, skimming over the different selections. Most of it was normal, with seemingly everything that she could remember, from various classic cold cuts to meatballs. However, some of it was a bit unusual, like the inclusion of a set of very ominous purple squid or something like that. The colour was definitely weird, shifting through a range of black, purple and some weird psychedelic combinations.
Her Kiroshis were registering errors when looking at it. She poked the glass curiously. "Wait. Is this real meat?"
"Yeah?" the guy intoned, arching an eyebrow. Oops, may have dropped the voice changer. "Why wouldn't it be?"
Deciding to just get some real meat for once in this godforsaken city, she picked out a chicken bacon ranch sandwich for herself. With extra ranch, of course. The employee, Archerfish, his tag read, nodded and began assembling it.
Out of the corner of her Kiroshis, she noticed a very tall woman poke her head out of the depths of the employee section with the flattest expression she's ever seen. EDV Alicorn, her name tag read, staying there just long enough for her to notice before moving to the table with the short catgirl and hologram girl.
"Was that the manager?"
Georgia pouted, suddenly appearing next to her. "I AM the manager!"
"Really? You?" Motoko said before she could stop herself.
"YES ME! How does everyone keep thinking that she's the manager?" When Archerfish laughed, Georgia threw a glare his way. "Is it because I'm short?!"
"I will not confirm nor deny!"
Motoko stifled a laugh.
The sandwich, once garnished with all the required vegetables by the choices of Motoko's brain and mostly her memories of working there, was wrapped up and moved to the cash register, almost ready to be eaten.
"Would you like a drink with that?" the cashier girl asked.
Looking over the soda fountain, Motoko had to do a double-take. Again. "MACHINE OIL", "PROBABLY KOMBUCHA", "REFINED URANIUM," "NANOMACHINES, SON," and haphazardly taped onto the end of the machine was a dispenser labeled "TEARS OF THE BEHOLDER."
…To be honest, she was really tempted to try some of them out. Very tempted.
In the end, she resisted the intrusive thoughts and went for a normal soda instead. Maybe she'll try them on another day, with Hiromi or her idiot brother. Actually, her brother would probably not let her come, since he'd find everything suspicious. "How many Eddies is that?"
"Second time. Who the fuck is Eddie?" Georgia asked.
Motoko could only give the girl a flat look.
The silver haired girl… Shihayaku came up behind them, a single holographic tablet floating in front of her face. "Eurodollars is the most common currency used in this area, roughly equivalent to 2 US dollars."
The tiny monochrome manager made a face. "Eeeh 3 Urodoola–"
"Eurodollars," Shiha corrected.
She stuck her tongue out at her. "Whatever! 3 should be enough."
"Cash or card?"
"I… don't think we use hard currency here. Card?" Motoko asked, looking carefully at the card reader. Her memories were fuzzy over whether she'd seen that before. Maybe?
The nice cashier girl moved the device forward, the polite smile still on her face. "Please scan your card."
Motoko fished for her card. Wait. "Uhm… how do you send Eddies to the machine? We don't use bank cards either"
Georgia looked at her funnily. "Hey if you can't pay for a sandwich say so!"
"Hey, what if you scanned your forehead?" Archerfish jokingly suggested.
With a shrug, she bent forward and put her forehead against it. Nothing happened for a few seconds, excepting the concerned gaze of the cashier. Just as she was about to apologize and try something else, the machine emitted a tingle, just like one of those she heard in commercials.
"Huh, I can't believe that worked," he noted, eyeing it funnily. He slid the wrapped sandwich into a bag and slid it across the desk, right into her hands.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Motoko hefted the sandwich, giving a smile back at the kind girl. The food probably wasn't healthy, but it would certainly beat Jun's burritos by miles. She was just about to leave when something really really weird happened.
As one, everyone in the store turned their attention outside, like some sort of pseudo-hivemind. That wasn't the top of her horror list but still kinda creepy.
Motoko focused on her senses. There was some yelling outside the SUB-WAY, and turning around, she spotted scavs out in the open with a lot of borgs among them. There were at least half a dozen of just those, with the rest counting in the dozens. The guy from earlier, the one that was tossed into a dumpster after getting his chrome torn off, was gesturing wildly with a gun in his hand.
Apparently he was important.
Not good. That was way too many for her to take on, especially when caught in the open like this. Her Nekomata wasn't with her, and even then she doubted she could take all of them on.
The scavs began to surge toward them, hollering and shooting wildly.
With only a single word, Alicorn suddenly picked up the diminutive catgirl beside her and threw her like a fastball through the doorway. (Throw me closer, I want to hit them with my torpedoes) The human projectile smashed into a borg and bowled it over, seemingly uncaring about the impact. Motoko's stomach dropped on seeing the giant dent in the scav's body, the chrome caved in by the move.
She couldn't have survived–
And then the catgirl got up, completely unscathed.
What.
"I don't have my rigging Alicorn!" the girl complained, dusting her damaged uniform off among the shocked-still scavs.
"You're three thousand tons! Deal with it!"
"Wait… did she say three THOUSAND TONS?! She's thirty kilos, right?" Mokoto asked the tiny manager, feeling her worldview starting to wobble.
Georgia grinned mischievously. "And she's light compared to the rest of us!"
"She's wha–" She didn't have enough time to finish her question as gunfire resumed and forced her to dive under a table. The three customers, she presumed, weren't even bothered by the scavs and remained seated there, simply watching. She couldn't get a good view of their attackers, but someone was screaming, and it didn't sound like a catgirl.
Grunting, Motoko took out her Burya and began looking for targets. Her Kiroshis spotted one of the borgs tangling with the catgirl, with the smaller of the two somehow throwing the heavily augmented scav around. She was completely shrugging off all the fire that was coming from a dozen or people, like it entirely didn't matter to her. If it wasn't for Cool, she'd probably be staring at her right now, wondering how in the world she was still alive, never mind trashing a borg so easily.
Georgia put a hand in front of her. "Hey, I wouldn't do that if I were you."
"Why? We're in a firefight with scavs," she pointed out, frowning.
The manager gestured to the two working in the corner, two odd employees entirely engrossed in the machine. "If the glass breaks, they're gunna be suuuuper pissed. Just let Jireigo handle it."
"But she's surrounded by scavs right now!" I mean yeah, the girl was alive despite crushing a borg from being thrown, but she still had no weapon.
Archerfish walked over casually and sat on the edge of the table she was taking cover behind. "Eh, don't worry. Even if she's the lightest of us, a bit of small arms fire won't do anything." He pointed to Georgia. "This fatass is eighteen thousand tons."
"Hey! What about Red? She's forty–wait we don't actually know anymore. My point is that she's much heavier than both of us combined!" The tiny manager complained, pointing at the woman with the red hair and grey skin.
"Simulacrum bullshit," he countered.
Georgia groaned.
Motoko glanced at Alicorn, who was quietly watching the fight from the same chair she threw Jireigo. She looked at the two people next to her, now feeling a glare on the back of her head.
"We don't talk about it."
"We don't talk about it."
In the chaos, a shot shattered the glass beside the two working on the contraption in the corner.
"Oh no." Archerfish visibly paled, immediately putting on earplugs, a muffling headset and wrapping his hands over those too. The catgirl outside immediately dove for cover, the fight the last thing on her mind.
Slowly, menacingly, the Abyssal stood up. The world seemed to still at her motion, stricken by an incomprehensible grasp of dread. Shooting stopped. Breathing stopped. Heartbeats stopped.
"I was SO FUCKING CLOSE to finding a fix for the damn teleporter and you RUINED my concentration.
P̸̻͙̏̄͛͛́ ̴̧͎̻͎͓̝͋͗͒̽͋̚R̴͔̘̳̘͕͑͆͒̿̒ ̵̳̱̟̫̻̑E̷̺̲̒̀̐̈́̎̕͜ ̶̧̫͔̌̓̌P̷̢̢̫̯̰͆͘ ̶̯͎̆̃A̶̬͎͓͕̰̓̔͌́ ̸͕̯̒̏͊̅̀Ŕ̶͉͚̬̯̄̕̚͝ ̴̝̆͝Ẽ̷͚́͐͌̿͠ ̴̘͂̾̃͑̅͠ ̶̧̨̳̥̞̕ ̵̨̰̝̗͌̍T̵̗͖̅̉̆̐̃ ̵̢͙̭̟͔̔͒͒̈́O̶͖̥͆̔̕ ̴͎̾ ̴̧̢̡̜̳̹̑͐̊̚ ̶̦̯̙̰͐͝D̸̨͔͈͇̰̈́̂ ̵̛͓I̸̢̧̖̫̹̺͊̈́̀͊ ̵͍̃̅͛̍͝E̶͕̤̮̖͛."
The mad howl was this close to ripping her ear drums from reality. Another screech followed, this time definitely damaging her eardrums. A cold shiver down her spine. Her hands were shaking, the Burya vibrating wildly in her grip. Her mind felt incomprehensibly disoriented, as if upside down and spinning out of control. Arms and legs refused to move entirely, pinned in place by some tremendous force. The noise rippled through her bones, uncaring whether or not her ears were still functional.
She had Cool! But Cool WASN'T FUCKING WORKING!
As she felt her mind slowly slip into an insensate husk, completely powerless in stopping the erosion of her psyche, something took grasp of her, freeing her from the shackles of the Abyssal song.
Cold fingers softly grasped her shoulder, cool yet ironically soothing. A small shake was enough to pull her back into reality, the horrors fading away into nothingness. "Are you okay?" The cashier girl from earlier asked, like a monochrome angel descending from the heavens, pushing away the grasp of madness.
It took her an uncomfortable amount of time to get her breathing under control, but she managed it. Looking around, her Kiroshis took in her environment again, vertigo fading.
Her reaction was bad, but the scav's were worse. Much, much, much worse.
The closest scavs were on the ground sobbing with wide eyes, seemingly completely forgetting the world around them. The borgs were not spared either, sparks flying out of them as they held their heads tightly, seemingly falling into madness with every moment. Only the furthest away were spared from being stunned, still having shaky arms and wet pants despite being a block away.
She flinched as a stray shot cracked overhead, the bullet awfully close to striking her face. She couldn't help but briefly check beside her, wondering what it hit inside the store.
The SUB-WAY cashier was standing there stock still, a small dent on her cheek. The girl slowly touched her face with a hand, hovering over the small dash of black against her porcelain skin.
"They hurt Trin!" Georgia bellowed.
"THEY W H A T?!" The entire store responded, every single person standing up with violence.
Motoko flinched at the noise. She could only watch as everyone that was not a scav, herself, or 'Trin' collectively and absolutely lost their shit.
Eldritch screaming flooded the air as deafening thunder shook the streets. Georgia flew out of the broken window, her back hemorrhaging tiny missiles. Brilliant flashes and concussive waves swept over the SUB-WAY, her ears barely picking out the rapid staccato of autocannons contrasting with the earsplitting roar of naval rifles. Bolts of blue carved lines through the air, tracing glitchy afterimages in her Kiroshis.
Both SUB-WAY employee and customer alike shrugged off the paltry return fire with ease, the bullets ricocheting away in every which direction. Explosions swept through the street, concrete and metal splintering in showers of fragments. A spray of heavy tracers punched through the clouds of dust, nailing the one with red hair center-mass. The grey-skinned 'girl' promptly responded by pulling out a metal tube and hurling it back at the shooter with machine-like precision, completely ignoring the impact on her chest. An explosion followed, vaporizing the borg and the building it was in.
Something blew through one of the rare windows that hadn't yet been shattered. It crashed into the side of Archerfish's head and pinwheeled through the air, knocking him on his ass in the process.
Motoko ducked under the stray bounce, eyes widening at the sheer size of the mangled projectile.
'Sniper!' her mind remarked. Peering from behind her cover, she zoomed her Kiroshis down the street to see a scav holding a… Where the fuck did the scavs get a Rasetsu?
Her questions were halted as, before anyone could fire in his direction, a small black sphere appeared above his head. Light warped as the sniper was crushed under an unseen weight, body and gun mangled into uselessness.
Motoko looked at the Burya in her hands. She awkwardly put her gun back in its holster.
The rest of the conflict went as well for the scavs as toddlers fighting Adam Smasher. Which is to say that a group of reinforcements came in trucks and bikes, had the first utterly evaporated by what she swore was artillery, the second pulverized by tiny missiles that might as well just explode the same as big ones, and had the rest cut down by a torrent of heavy autocannon. Somewhere in there, a bright emerald laser swept through a group that escaped the slaughter, burning bright lines where it cut them in half.
Throughout all of this, the pale girl with the eldritch magic held the scav that first threatened them by the throat, horrified screaming just barely audible among the drowning fire and explosions. The man flailed wildly in her grasp, held up high like an insignificant puppet.
A rocket streaked through the air. Bright tracers, white arrows, and emerald beams promptly vetoed its existence.
Ann crushed the man in her hands and cast him aside. An inky black creature covered in gun-like protrusions hovered next to her and explosively removed the offending building from existence.
…Well, that scav was.
As she watched the employees of SUB-WAY make their attackers extra-past-tense, Motoko felt that she had a sudden bout of clarity.
"Wait, you're all shipgirls?"
"Always have been," Archerfish answered.
Click.
…they weren't going to kill her for destroying a yacht, right?
Next minute: Motoko begging them if she could get some '''big guns''' of her own. Georgia, feeling cathartic after wiping out scavs, cracks her knuckles.
PS: Seras pls.
Credits to: MitchMash, KenneGlitch, jessetheswift for co-writing and aceofAces_AA, Eotyrannus ,HarakoniWarhawk, DeepStateNine, Velliria, Lt_Rainbow_Slash, and PyrrhicSteel for lending their characters.
Edit: Forgot some editing notes in there. Whoops.