Hey there! Figured I'd write a short omake for this story I love so much, apologies that it's not too well written, I wrote it in an hour on very little sleep but I just can't bring myself to change it. A part two will be coming at some point.
So, enjoy this omake based off on a simple concept!
What if Motoko never stopped her near Cyber Psycho fuelled XP grind against the Scavs?
AKA
Full Murder Hobo
Jun paced furiously across the Dojo floor, the other members of Kamikaze silent, part fearful of him unleashing his rage against them, part just waiting for him to calm down. The bearers of the bad news had already made themselves scarce and left the immediate premises already, knowing Jun's rage burned bright but burned quick.
"She escaped again" He muttered to himself, clenching and un clenching his new Gorilla Arms. He can't remember which brand they were, some heavy duty set used by prize fighters, each having their own ICE installed to prevent outside interference. He'd gotten this set after the target of his worry born rage had hacked his arms and froze them solid a few weeks back, it had taken a trip to his ripper doc to undo. She'd somehow shifted the gears inside and physically locked them, using the installation settings that usually required manual configuration by a ripper at installation. Nobody was quite sure how she managed it and, from the mutterings he'd heard, the Corpo's were up in arms trying to track her down and convince her to share these hacks she's making on the fly. Either through force, Eddies or by ripping them directly out of her deck.
She'd been a literal ghost for months now though. Ever since that warehouse raid, she'd dropped off the face of the earth aside from when she ran a bloody swath through the Strommers and the Scavs alike, before vanishing again to parts unknown.
They had everyone looking for her. Every fixer, every informant, every bum on the street knew her face and knew to contact them first (it was too much hope that they'd contact only them) when she was spotted. Initially this had been paid for out of his own pocket, his own personal crusade. But the more bodies she racked up and the more her rep grew, the rest of the TC had taken part in the hunt too.
They wanted her reigned in. She was hitting their rivals which was good, but she was hitting them too hard, too fast. Out of town Strommers and the original, actual scavs from Russia were making an appearance, their ranks swelling even as they were decimated over and over again. Not to mention the opportunistic out of towners, eager to take a slice of night city of their own now that there's property opening up. The chaos was making everyone's life harder, making their operations more at risk.
He knew there were mutters from the upper ranks, talk of ending her life instead of bringing her in. It was minor for now, the vast majority wanted to bring her in and utilise her prodigious talents for their own ends. But after this latest stunt...
They'd tracked her down. Not found her on the job, not a random sighting they responded to fast enough. But they'd tracked down where she was hiding out, found her base of operations.
His sweet sister, living in bowels of a megabuilding. Not even in the basement, she'd set up shop in the maintenance tunnels, hacked the drones and bots that patrolled it and made them ignore her presence, best their own runners could tell from digging through the remains of them.
A particularly dedicated claw had spotted her. Completely ganic, no chrome to speak of, which was probably how he'd managed to follow her. The guy would have fit in better with the animals, decked out with the best bio mods and upgrades he could get his hands on. From the report, he spent over an hour tracking her through alleys and watching for her on the rooftops, tracking her down to a mega building.
From there, they'd got an idea. They recruited a few members, completely stripped them of their cybernetics and then sent them looking. Took them days to find her, they were just lucky she'd been busy hunting down a new strommer group and hadn't been paying attention to the people living above her hide out. It allowed them to track her down to her hideout.
He wished they hadn't.
They didn't send him down, or any member of Kamikaze. They were too chromed up, too vulnerable to her hacks. They figured a group of biomodded, experienced gangers with weapons that had no net connection would have been able to handle her. At least long enough to talk her down or bring her in. They all thought her success so far was due to her Stealth, chrome and especially her net running. They couldn't have been more wrong.
The moment they'd breeched her hide out, the slaughter had began. Her turrets and bots had been expected, any runner with any sort of experience would trap their hide out to high hell. They'd come with EMP grenades, solid shields and all the armour they could fit on their body. They'd all whined and complained, moaning about looking like a 'bunch of dough boys' but they'd worn it all the same.
It'd worked, the turrets and bots had went down, no loss of life. They kept going and going, confident in themselves maybe. Everyone was sure she'd hold back against them. She'd never acted against the TC at any point so far, always ran from their members without causing any more harm than what was necessary to flee, everyone figured that trend would continue.
They never made it out.
Best they could tell, after they breached the first few layers of security, actual humans came instead.
They weren't sure if she'd hired a bunch of security (unlikely, nobody would live in those tunnels without a truly insane amount of Eddies being involved), recruited a team (Jun thought that one was equally unlikely. His baby sister had left all her friends behind to deal with her rampage and he couldn't imagine anyone crazy enough to join up with her) or, the most likely option, she'd handled them all solo. She must have gotten her hands on some speer ware or tool them all by surprise, but they all died huddled up together, heads removed from necks, helmets blown clean through with some sort of anti armour or borg weaponry or with holes running through the unarmoured sections of them.
It was quick, clean and Brutal. A dozen dead. They only knew what happened because they'd sent in back up hours afterwards, who found the body and the remains of the base, but no Motoko. She'd obviously gathered what she could and left in a hurry afterwards, now she was gone again. Dust in the wind and with a dozen more bodies to her name, tiger claw bodies.
He didn't know what to feel aside from the rage. Rage against the strommers. The scavs. Motoko, himself, the tiger claws, god damn night city itself!
Jun usually burned bright and burnt fast but now... now he couldn't afford to. If he let go of the rage he'd have to confront the fact that now their would be no more non Lethal when it came to Motoko. Now when they saw her she'd be an enemy of the gang. If he let go of that rage he'd be left to face the fact he failed. He failed his sister and his parents, not once, not twice but three times over now.