"Another drag out fight. We should see if we can just ban her from the system." One spectating netrunner said.
"Here she comes now." said his friend sitting across from him in their virtual booth.
"Look, kid. If you keep doing this I am going to have to ban you." Admin told Ghost, frowning at her.
"Wait, do you actually not know what I'm practicing?" Ghost asked Admin, seeming legitimately confused.
"Playing with your food?" Said someone off to their side.
"No, I'm both getting used to a new cyber-deck after I fried the last one in the moments after my first match." This got a lot of 'runners attention, "But more importantly I am working on balancing both RAM and HEAT costs of various programs."
"And, what exactly, is HEAT?" Admin asked in a questioning tone.
"HEAT, like the literal temperature of my deck? Are you telling me that no one has ever worked on longer term battles? Is that why everyone has been giving me the cold shoulder?"
"You... No. I can't say I have ever heard of someone doing that." Admin replied. "I don't know anyone who would actually be able to use such a ability since most 'runner battles end rather quickly."
"Wait..." Ghost replied, "Does no one actually work on stealth with their hacks?"
"Of course we do!" yelled yet another 'runner, affronted. "But once someone sees you stealth isn't really useful now is it‽"
"Well the solution is to not get caught, now isn't it." Ghost replied.
"Impossible!" a 'runner yelled out.
"If you think that way, how about I issue a challenge?" Ghost announced. "Me vs Teams with a pair of time limits, I cannot directly attack the opposing team until the first timer has been reached. Then I have to take out the opposing runners before the second timer has been reached. I feel like that would let me experiment in the ways that I find interesting and should give you the excitement you want."
Am I a good writer? I don't think so. Would I be interested in Seras writing some battles like this? Yes, yes I would.
Honestly, this goes into the whole "Edgerunner vs Shadowrunner" debate (Yet another one I'd actually like to become canon.) in that the CP'verse seems to think that "burn bright burn fast" is the only option. Meanwhile Motoko tends to use almost every option but that one. Honestly it's probably one of the reasons why it works so well is that no one really uses it so no one expects it, but she needs to market her approach better to... Associates? People who aren't her allies but not her enemies.
Anyway, if she did something like this it would probably restore her rep a decent chunk because while yes she will be seen as arrogant, she probably won't win all of the battles, if she continues to ask for the modified terms for the battles, her rep will transition from "Bad Sport / Plays with her food / Not entertaining" to "Arrogant and Know-It-All" to "Eccentric who is experimenting with a new technique that somehow works a lot of the time, but no one really understands how or why,"
And honestly Eccentric is a good rep to have. Not only is it a lot better than Arrogant or Unsportsmanlike, it can also let her make really weird requests and while people would probably scrutinize it, they would probably just do it to see what she manages to do with it since they know it won't be normal. But it also won't be dangerous, which is why they go along with it.
And who knows, she might make a more sport-like genre of the combat arena where people try different strategies instead of just variants of "HIT IT TILL IT DIES"