Malcolm

“You’re actually going to take part?” He asked as he continued to look through Motoko’s eyes.

*Yeah. I want to practice it a bit. They have an external connection here. So I’m going to disconnect and let you watch through their cameras. If you see me start dying or something you know what to do.*

“I’ll watch your back.” He assured her as he threw a few more Shwabshwab back. Blue was the best flavor after all.

*I know.* She replied back with a surety that would have made Malcolm blush if she was looking at him.

Motoko was pretty intense, but there wasn’t anyone that Malcolm trusted more. When it came to a serious situation Motoko was the most reliable person he knew. Which still freaked him out sometimes but that was just life.

The video on the laptop shifted loading for a few seconds before it showed an arena. It loaded for a few seconds, terrain forming up until it became a desert space. Bushes and hills becoming the only cover.

*Ghost in the Shell Vs. Hamm3r.* A pop up appeared and then it was on.

A fucking netrunner match. Malcolm popped more ants into his mouth chewing as he watched.

Malcolm didn’t even know you could see this sort of shit!

The arena started and Motokoed instantly started moving. Rushing forward, and to the side, once she was a ways away she kneeled down and started… Doing something?

He wasn’t sure, but it only took her about thirty seconds before whatever she was doing was complete. He watched as the opponent was moving cautiously out of his spawn point. Looking all around him, and even behind him, as he started activating Daemons.

Glowing orbs appeared around him, and then set off. Seemingly searching around while stopping to scan anything and everything.

They didn’t look very smart. He saw the same Daemon scan the same bush twice as it backtracked.

Motoko stood up and Malcolm now knew what she had been up to.

*System Breached!* Appeared on his screen attached to Motoko’s half, and suddenly a Minimap was on the screen he could see.

So… Motoko had breached into the system? That was good, he guessed. It must be if Motoko had decided to do it, but it was still weird.

Then Motoko seemed to explode, from her form something hard to see popped out, and scattered, seemingly vanishing into the floor of the server.

It looked kinda gnarly, and there was no update about what Motoko had just done. Instead she started moving. Slowly circling around the arena, seemingly purposefully in the opposite way that the opponent was going around.

Malcolm kept expecting something exciting to happen, but…

It was slow.

Motoko was stalking around. She didn’t seem to have any interest in attacking, instead she just seemed to follow in the shadows of the arena, not that there were any, but she seemed to keep a hill between her and the other guy at all times.

Then Motoko came across one of the Daemons. The orb literally floated right past her.

“What?” Malcolm had to wonder, because those things had scanned literally everything. Motoko seemed to be testing it. Walking around it, even moving in front of it, but the Daemon was stupid. When it bounced into her, it just shifted directions to wander further.

Motoko shrugged, something he had seen her do pretty often, and then in her hands a burst of fire slammed into the Daemon.

It melted. That’s the only thing Malcolm could think of. The Data steaming from it, as it melted away.

Motoko was obviously pleased. She had a little smile on her face, the most amount of emotion he usually saw from her, when she was in serious mode.

But the attack had an effect. The other guy. Hamm3r? He must have been alerted to the Daemons attack.

Instead of wandering, all of the orbs started rushing straight towards where she was.

She obviously noticed it, as she looked over but instead of running she just took a step back and waited.

The Daemons all floated over a hill. Looking red and angry as they started scanning around, but to Malcolm’s surprise they continued to just miss Motoko. Like she was a Ghost standing among them.

They floated towards where the burning remains of the other Daemon was, and it took a few moments, as Motoko wandered around them. Obviously preparing something.

And then it happened.

As the Daemons gathered closer to the flaming Daemon corpse she sent seemingly multiple bursts of her fire into them from different directions. The Daemons reacted, but it was too slow. Only one of them turned and actually started trying to attack back before they all burned.

The one attack was blocked by a wall of weirdness Motoko made, that took the hit and just seemingly fizzled it out.

The enemy runner obviously noticed what had happened, as he stopped charging towards where Motoko was and instead started summoning in even more Daemons. This time they weren’t small orbs exploring. He instead took longer, slowly forming a Daemon that resembled…

A thug? It looked kind of like a gangster, but Malcolm realized why this was the Daemon that was summoned, as a moment later it pulled out a gun.

This Daemon seemed to be smarter, instead of running off, it stuck to the runner guarding his back. Satisfied, the runner started forming another one.

It took a while and Motoko was seemingly watching what was happening through the mini map, content to give this runner time.

So Malcolm watched as nothing really happened. Motoko seemed satisfied to wait, and the runner seemed content to spend time generating more and more of his Daemons.

*FlAm3r: Both of these n3rds need to get on with it.* A message suddenly popped on the side of the screen, and Malcolm almost freaked out wondering if someone was hacking him, when a second message happened.

*B/\it: Tell me about it. Ghost is acting weird, but Hamm3r is a fucking noob. Stop playing with the little shit. I saw her last match, she could easily wipe this kid.*

And Malcolm realized there was some sort of chat? He typed into the keyboard and the words instantly went into a previously invisible chat field.The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Huh.

He noticed he didn’t have a username, and just before he started trying to make one he realized he was literally talking about a netrunner system…

He decided to not respond and just continue watching, even as a few more runners shit talked about the situation.

Finally Hamm3r started moving. Groups of his Daemons gathered together and started hunting. Leaving four of them with him, while an equal sized group left.

He waited and watched as Motoko finally reacted. Moving steadily towards the Daemons.

*B/\it: Why is she focused on the Daemons? If she wanted to attack him, she should have done it while he was summoning. Fucking loser.*

*R0ck4tr3ss: Shitstain fuckin shut up. You always complain and whine about other people but bitch out and never step into the arena. It’s obvious she is testing to see what Hamm3r can do.*

Malcolm nodded as he watched the fight continue. Motoko hunted the four Daemons down, murdering all of them with fire seemingly without any real issue. Especially since they couldn’t seem to see her.

*R0ck4tr3ss: Why aren’t the Daemons responding to her? Some sort of optical hack?*

*Admin: Ghost dropped a Daemon into the arena when she breached the system. I don’t want to go poking too deep while she is actively battling, but it seems to remove her from the sight of digital constructs. It does seem to work on Hamm3r as well to an extent.*

*B/\it: The lord speaketh! Hail the Admin!*

*FlAm3r: I’ve never heard of a hack like that. You got any deets @Admin?*

*Admin: You don’t have the funds to pay for such information. Best to leave it.*

*FlAm3r: Fuck off!*

*B/\it: LEL Flamer more like Flamed.*

Malcolm looked away from the chat as it was filled with people laughing and not much else, to focus on Motoko.

He looked over and she was still laying seemingly asleep on the chair. Completely calm. A quick check and her Cyberdeck was still just warm and not overheating her. Everything was fine.

She finished fighting the daemons, and then slipped away. Seemingly waiting to see how the runner would react.

Angrily it seems.

Hamm3r rushed towards where Motoko was. The wait seemingly getting to him as he reached the bubbling mass of his former Daemons burned into flaming puddles he looked around.

*Come out! Stop sneaking around!* He roared looking around but then. Nothing.

Motoko definitely heard him, but she wasn’t moving. Pissed, the guy summoned up another mass of Daemons, the orbs again, appearing much faster than the guys in suits, and then they sent out again. Searching.

But it was obvious to Malcolm that Hamm3r was seething.

Once a dozen of the IMPS were summoned, he stopped and started creating the larger Daemons again.

Though Malcolm noticed summoning each one was much much slower than before.

He looked towards the chat wondering if anyone would talk about it? Maybe he could get some answers.

Nothing. They were all just arguing about some random shit Malcolm had no idea what about.

So he just settled in to watch.

—--

Hamm3r I decided was really easy to piss off.

I felt a little bad for Malcolm as he was probably a bit bored, but grinding XP was not for everyone.

I was settled in a corner of the map just letting my deck stay cool, as I watched Hamm3r struggle to summon more Daemons.

Which was weird? I hadn’t done much with Daemons, besides the free code for the facehuggers that I got from the perk, but I knew the basics. Each Daemon took a certain amount of Space on your deck to summon. But in exchange you had a program backing you up. Usually with a built in hack of its own to attack with.

Some were of course specialized like my face huggers, or the IMPs that were summoned to search for me. And yeah there was a limit to how many Daemons you could run at once off a deck, but… Was Hamm3r already hitting his limit?

The last two guys hadn’t had any issues, but they had both been way more skilled than this guy.

Hamm3r was sort of outclassed. I had realized it when he had tried to breach into the system, and I hadn’t even needed to intrude for him to fail.

It was kind of embarrassing.

Still, he was angry, and doing exactly what I wanted. Summoning XP for me.

I followed an IMP as it wandered around until it was far enough away and killed it. Hell Flame ending deleting its data too quickly for it to start any hacks against me.

Once again this set off the IMPs, but I noticed instead of all charging at the last spot they gathered up with Hamm3r as he hurried towards the spot.

I considered leaving a trap, but he would see it, and that would just be a waste of heat.

It was funny but I had learned something from the last time I was here.

RAM might be mana, but the heat of your Cyberdeck was mana burn.

You can’t just go all out constantly, or you’ll burn yourself out. So I just had to balance my cooldowns, and adjust my mana spending!

Thinking about it like a game, or like how I would if I was playing a wizard or something in an MMO helped.

Besides, I had a different objective than poor Hamm3r. I was here to farm him.

When he reached the burned corpse of his IMP he found nothing.

And that made him even angrier.

The poor kid was already overheating. While he had tried to breach into the server to get the Minimap info. I had breached him back.

Something he hadn’t even noticed considering how sneaky I had been.

To my surprise though, when I breached, a lot of stuff had been blocked off by a firewall, and instead I had been given a screen just like the Minimap.

Which had things like his Cyberdecks RAM usage, and current temp.

The arena was an interesting bit of code. I was gonna have to speak to Admin about seeing under the hood. It was kinda cool.

But regardless, each Daemon he summoned cost him a chunk out of his Cyberdeck’s RAM to keep up, and it was heating him up constantly.

He wasn’t overheating himself yet, but he was getting close.

But still I didn’t approach.

I just kept poking.

His IMPs once more wandered around, this time in sets of twos, trying to track me.

He seemed distracted, instead of summoning more I noticed on the minimap the Daemons were moving with more intelligence.

I guess he decided to switch to an RTS?

Finding a pair of IMPs that were far enough away wasn’t hard, and once again I snuck up on them, and then blasted them with Hell Flame.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

Smirking, I hurried away once again as all the Daemons rushed towards their death once again.

Poor Hamm3r.

I could hear him cussing at me through the entire arena. Digital shit talking that I just ignored.

Hamm3r tried. He loaded up more Daemons together. I killed them.

He tried staying with them, but after a while where I just didn’t do anything he split them up and tried keeping them in larger groups again.

In the end, Hamm3r started absolutely raging at me. At the lack of my appearance, or doing anything.

I noticed he stopped summoning more Daemons. Which was the moment he rang his own deathknell. If he wasn’t going to give me more XP to farm? Then this match was over.

Slowly I came out of hiding, just approaching the man that was pissed and fiery, shouting expletives into the air.

Walking closer and closer, it was inevitable that he would notice me, even if he wasn’t looking, the digital scape wasn’t like the real world. You didn’t entirely see with just your eyes.

He jerked away from me, shocked and startled, and that was when I moved.

Sandevistan activated. A Breach jumped, and a moment later he was down, and his Daemons were burning.

*Ghost Wins!*

—--

When I reappeared in the club I was met with looks of both amusement, and irritation.

“You sure took your time!” One of them yelled out and I just shrugged, but it was a curse from behind me that caught my attention.

“Bitch!” Hamm3r was there, red in the face and really pissed. “What the fuck is wrong with you!” He demanded as he charged forward, but he stopped when Admin was suddenly there hand in front of him blocking him from advancing.

“No fighting here.” Admin demanded the older man firm and then he looked to me, and Hamm3r to make sure we both understood.

What could I say? What should I say?

I sighed, really wishing I could run a hand through my hair.

“Sorry, I was trying things out. I didn’t think of the time it might take.” I offered but Hamm3r just scoffed and flipped me off.

“Never going in a match with you again.” He threw out as he turned and headed away quickly disappearing in a log out.

“That was rather cruel of you Ghost.” Admin offered and I flinched.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I was just…” I trailed off, because how do I explain that I was hunting his Daemons?”Admin shrugged. “It was a competition, and you just showed how time can be an advantage netrunners often don’t get the chance to take advantage of. If you continue to battle in such a way, just be aware of the effects it will have on your reputation.”“Right.” I offered quietly.

Because honestly I probably was going to act like that as long as I was fighting someone that used Daemons.

The XP had been too good to ignore. Over 5000xp from all the Daemons in just one match!

It was a massive increase, and if not for the fact Malcolm was waiting on the line I would be tempted to throw myself into another match.

Which is probably why it was such a good thing he was here. I should cool off and take in what I learned.

“Thank you for the opportunity. This was actually very helpful.” I offered to the older netrunner and I could see him react with a blink before he formed a smile.

“Well that isn’t something I hear often. You are very welcome, Ghost.”

I nodded at that and disappeared in my own logout.

—--

“That was kinda interesting, and kinda boring.” Malcolm offered when I sat up, and I winced at the words.

“Sorry. You were really useful to have here though.”“Hey don’t take it like that. I got to see a netrunner battle on the net, you have any idea how rare that is?”“Is it?” I asked confused. “I mean, if that combat zone exists, then shouldn’t there be recordings?”“Never seen one.” Malcolm replied with a shrug. “It was kinda cool though.”“Huh.” I muttered, maybe I’d talk to Hiromi about it. Could be something interesting for the BD market? Or at least a video side of it.

I shrugged and got up stretching, feeling pretty good. A big chunk of xp always left me feeling better.

“Want to get some food?” I asked, and Malcolm nodded instantly.

“I could eat.”