Time to hunt down Yuto.
Motoko found her prey. It wasn't even hard after the data she pulled from the NCTV site.
She could easily sneak into the safe house and do a bit of casual murder and then be done with this, but something didn't sit right with her. The target was still her brother's choom. And after experiencing some of the.. TC hospitality from the target's target, she did sympathize just a tiny little bit. But why did no one let him know that there are proper processes that he needed to go through to do this smart. This is one of the reasons fixers exist. They quote a price, you pay it. Capable mercs get a mission. Your target ends up dead. You don't do things yourself, especially not sloppy and haphazardly like Yuto did.
Heck, sloppy drive-bys are the entire reason that kicked off the Edgerunners anime when they got David's mom flatlined. What if Hiromi or any of her chooms were caught by Yuto's attempt instead? Nope, he had to go.
'Sorry, Jun, but I'll introduce you to better chooms, ' Motoko thought as she drove onwards.
But Yuto didn't have to go in a same old boring manner. She was being paid to send a message, right? Perhaps the best message is not something that a Ghost is the Shell can send. Perhaps she needed to become the Onryō instead.
"I'm going to need another NCTV access point, my music box, and a bit of coding for this. Oh, and a wig," Motoko nodded to herself and detoured to the nearest store that sold such things.
Yuto sat down hard on the sofa in the safe house and turned on the television. His choom, Roger, told him that some no name merc was gunning for him, even offered him eddies for information, but he didn't even budge. Why was it the best chooms he had now were the ones he made in prison?
And now he was being hunted, never knowing when his next day would be his last. Why did no one tell him paranoia was so exhausing? He turned his tired attention to the latest episode of Watson Whore to take his mind off things. At least it was one he hadn't seen before.
"There's only one way to get rid of the nanite plague instide you, Miss Chestnut. It's only weakness is repeaded kinetic impacts above a certain threshold. Now remove all your clothes if you want to live!"
"You are the expert, Mr. Delgato."
The screen flickered for a split second.
In the scene, ahe doorbell rang, interrupting the disrobing.
"Who knows that we're here? Do you know who that could be?"
"It's.. it's probably the landlord. I need to find some way to pay the rent this month," said the titular Watson Whore.
The door swung open just as the lighting failed as everything on the television went into absolute darkness.
One bulb flickered briefly, and the split second of light revealed a tall, barefoot girl wearing a blood stained dress holding a very large kitchen knife. Her face was entirely obsucred by long, dark stringy hair.
Then it was pitch black again. Two screams souted and were quickly silenced.
The lights flickered again showing the whore and her friend's corpses laying on the ground, bleeding from their headless, severed necks. The girl was standing on the ceiling.
Then she spoke. Her voice like water, or perhaps blood, racing over river pebbles, "I'm CoMiNg FoR yOu NeXt, YuTo!"
"What!" Yuto was wide awake, blinking away any last traces of exhaustion.
But the show playing normally. The whore and her latest hero were doing normal show things very enthusiastically to get rid the nanites or whatever.
The screen flickered again.
The whore's screams took on a diferent timbre as the hero's head unexpectidally exploded in a gyser of blood that shot up to the ceiling and coalesced into a puddle up there. Said puddle formed into the same horrifying barefoot girl with the long face-obscuring hair who screeched. The sound was a mix of biological and machine noise, like a combination of angry animals and screaming robots. Then the girl fell upon the terrified whore.
The television screen turned to static.
"The fuck!" Yuto screamed as he shot up from the couch.
The screen remained hissing static.
Then an arm shot out of the screen.
Followed by a second, familiar, knife wielding arm.
Yuto watched in horror as the murderous girl pulled herself slowly out of the static filled screen.
"You're not real!" he shouted as he unloaded his gun into the figure, "Ghosts aren't real!"
The girl screeched and vanished in a burst of static, only to reappear standing on the ceiling on his right.
He fired again until his gun ran out of bullets.
The girl vanished in static once again and reappeared behind him, laughing.
"I'm very real. And I do hope you like ghost stories, Yuto," she said.
There was a burst of motion.
He felt the girl's very, very real knife slice through his throat. A line of fire, followed by burning pain and a sudden inability to breathe. A second line of fire before he saw his headless bleeding body slump to the floor.
"Because you're in one," were the last hissing words Yuto heard before everything went dark.
Judy read the small note Motoko had left while she was away.
'Don't worry, Judy. I'm not turning into a cyberpsycho. - Motoko'
That was all it said.
Judy looked down at the chip containing the raw footage like it was a pile of angry venemous snakes.
With a sigh, she started to watch, bracing herself and hoping it was enough.
It was not enough.