\+/ Night City Stories \+/ Chapter 64 - Just A Little More The night time neon glow of Night City casts a thick shadow in an undisclosed, darkened, narrow alleyway. A small pair of glowing orange eyes is seen within it with a jet-black Chevillon Emporer parked at the entrance. Molly with her eyes glowing orange is seen casually leaned up against a wall in the alley and ocassionally pacing back and forth up and down it. While Manny patiently waits at the driver side of the Emporer watching the streets. Molly is nearing the end of a long meeting with the board. He ocassionally hears her off in the distance trying to drive the meeting to its end with the proverbial: "Yes sir. uh huh. Ok. No problem. Alright. Yes ma'am. Understood. Alright. Ok now." This causes Manny to chuckle to himself. Molly finally arrives at the end of the long conference call and immediately lights a smoke. She makes her way back up the alley toward her ride to a waiting Manny while taking deep puffs. "So? How'd it go?" "Good! Yeah.. squared away." Molly responds matter of factly. Manny pauses briefly before responding. "They were uh.. alright with the call you made on the op?" "What do you think." She says before taking another drag. This causes Manny to smirk. Confirming his intuition. "The uneasy, tight leash again huh... Couldn't be from us playing out in the sand of the Badlands now could it?" "Tch, i'm sure that didn't help. Regardless. You know I work best when the spotlights on." "You know I've got your back." "What've you got so far." Molly asks before taking another drag. "Got in touch with one of my POCs earlier about that access card. Said he got lucky on pulling the geo-sat tracking data which was kind of a miracle in itself considering its not stored in a database for too long. Although the logs were pretty sparse, he did scrape together enough of it to paint a picture. Looks like the card was klepped from somewhere in-house before that chase began. Geo-sat pings dropped off somewhere on the border of Arroyo and Rancho Coronado in some little neighborhood apparently. Should probably start there." "Tomorrow maybe... Its late and I need a drink." "Nothin' compares to your pace in my opinion. You know that." Manny concludes with a smirk as he promptly opens the door to the Emporer for her. She glances at him and returns the smirk with a light hearted giggle as she flicks her smoke and hops in. Later that night, BugBear is seen at the ho-oh in Kabuki; a neon lit bar sitting alone to the sounds of house music. She takes a swig of her drink and finishes it before lighting a smoke and glancing out the window. She notices the rain begin to pick back up as it taps on the windows trying to get in. She puts her cigarette hand on her forehead thinking deeply as the smoke calmy whoffs upward. Various thoughts about her current situation flow through her mind. Although shes someone very aquainted with her type of Night City lifestyle, the constantly varying factors involving some of the closest people in her life has heavily weighed on her. She hasn't had much time to process some of the events that've gone down but she clearly understands the stakes. This clearly isn't some run of the mill gig passed down by some fixer with organized processes and clearly understood players. In fact.. none of this is a gig at all... The amount of x factors involved in her situation presents it as a very all or nothing endeavor... where eddies and fame have fuck all to do with it. A deadlock between life and death. As BugBear's anxiety and stress begin to peak, she instinctually thinks back to some memories involving Netty. Him trying his first smoke, her teaching him how to use the DR5 Nova she gave him, but mainly.. she thinks about when she was at his house. The warmth of being in his arms.. the smile she had on her face with her eyes closed as they slowly swayed to the music together. The purity of this moment... in a city breathed of such things grabs ahold of her and doesn't let go. Her deep thoughts are abruptly interrupted by the sound of liquor pouring into her glass. She glances up to see the bartender stood behind the counter. "Thanks Eric." She says in a monotone before grabbing the glass and taking a swig. "Everything alright?" He asks with his eyebrows slightly lowered after picking up on her energy. "Yeah... just uh.. got a lot goin' on you know." "Anything ya wanna talk about?" He asks in a curious tone. "Oh.. not tonight" She says with a light chuckle with certainty in her voice while raising her eyebrows at him. "Just trying to... get away from it all." A brief pause takes place as the various sounds of a packed, lively and active bar take over. The bartender breaks the silence while cleaning a glass. "Hm. y'know.. I know you're in the business of running and everything Bear... but sometimes in life, although you easily can... there's just some things you ought to not run from." He concludes causing her to look up at him after another brief pause. "Thanks Eric-" She says in a soft, genuine tone with a light smile. "HEY!! DRINK SLINGER! I NEED TWO OVER HERE!" The sound of a woman shouting causes BugBear and the bartender to look over. They see Molly Seeker with a smile on her face along with Manny.. causing BugBear's heart to sink. She quickly turns her body away from the pair in a subtle fashion however Molly's intuition instinctually catches this subtlety after watching BugBear and the bartender speaking before she interrupted.. Molly makes a mental note of BugBear's reaction. "Shit..!" She says to herself under her breath. She instinctually thinks of calling Brian but abruptly stops herself before doing so. She faces forward and looks down while calmly taking another sip of her drink before her eyes begin to glow red. She quickhacks a camera on the corner of the ceiling closest to Molly and Manny in order to listen to them. Without looking, she listens to the pair over the chaos of the bar. "So what do you think we're gonna find with this access card?" Manny asks before swigging his beer. "Well, its tied directly to the warehouse, but we're probably in for another fucking breadcrumb trail if you ask me." She responds before swigging her drink "Sounds like a lot of leg work. Kinda got the best of both worlds working for us with a full team's worth of intel for just the 2 of us to sift through. Traveling light tends to always be more effective with so many different factors at play." Manny replies "Yeah.. to be honest with you i'm not really in any rush to get started either. Can't you tell?" She says before they both chuckle together and clink their glasses. They then go on to start scanning the room and people watching... laughing and gossiping about various people one after the other while having a few drinks together. BugBear glances at the pool table through the camera and sees a game between several people going on. She notices one of the players with a pool cue in one hand and a drink in his other, held by his prosthetic cyberarm. She quickhacks the man's arm causing it to malfunction and splash his drink on another guy who was trying to sink the 8 ball. "YO! WHAT THE FUCK GONK!!" The shooter says as he gets in the drink spiller's face. Before the guy can even say anything he is quickly grabbed by the collar.. causing a shoving match to begin which quickly turns into an all out brawl. The shooter gets hit in the back of the head with a pool cue by a 3rd person cracking it in half as the spiller gets tackled from behind by someone else. Most of the bar errupts into a full blown melee as the bartender shouts and hops over the counter to assist security. BugBear takes the distracted opportunity to casually get off her barstool and walk out of the exit. As Manny attentively watches to protect Molly, she looks on with hyper excitement and joy as she laughs loudly at the situation. "OH MY god-... AAHAHAHAHA!!!" She cackles out loud while fully taking in the experience. She takes a deep breath before shaking her head lightly. "Can't stop diggin' Night City.." She says to herself under her breath with a smile on her face. As the brawl continues to errupt, she takes a look back at where BugBear was sitting and sees nothing but a half filled glass of liquor. This gives her pause as her intuition is triggered causing her to wrinkle her eyebrows slightly... As soon as she begins to think about it she hears her text notification tone which snatches her attention away. She glances at her messages and sees a new single text message from a contact name that simply reads: ' Her ' She gasps deeply to herself with excitement as her body begins to tingle. She opens the text message... It reads: = Milaya? = Molly immediately closes the interface and takes a quick glance at Manny who is fully focused on the bar brawl being broken up. She swigs the last of her drink and puts it on the bar counter while taking a final hard look at BugBear's abandoned glass. "Hey. I'm gonna take off. I'll give you a call tomorrow" Molly says into Manny's ear struggling to speak past the loud noises. He then leans back over to her ear. "You sure you're gonna be ok? Don't need me to give ya a ride?-" "I'll be fine. Go ahead and take the night... Maybe taste the night. Red head at your six has been checking you out since we got here." Molly says subtly gesturing over to the hot, long legged red head causing Manny to look back at her. Molly gathers her stuff and makes for the exit. BugBear is next seen fast walking down a dark alleyway toward her parked bike occasionally looking back over her shoulder. Her eyes begin to glow orange. = Brian... Its Bear. =
Yo, Chooms! Did ya miss V?
Always! lmao. I still gotta do a playthrough as her one of these days.
came for the thumbnail. Stayed for the sweet tunes.
Art 🎨🎭❤
Sounds good
This is some of your best work keep it up
Hello chumba, as always, I listened to music with great pleasure)
\+/ Night City Stories \+/ Chapter 64 - Just A Little More
The night time neon glow of Night City casts a thick shadow in an undisclosed, darkened, narrow alleyway. A small pair of glowing orange eyes is seen within it with a jet-black Chevillon Emporer parked at the entrance. Molly with her eyes glowing orange is seen casually leaned up against a wall in the alley and ocassionally pacing back and forth up and down it. While Manny patiently waits at the driver side of the Emporer watching the streets.
Molly is nearing the end of a long meeting with the board. He ocassionally hears her off in the distance trying to drive the meeting to its end with the proverbial: "Yes sir. uh huh. Ok. No problem. Alright. Yes ma'am. Understood. Alright. Ok now." This causes Manny to chuckle to himself.
Molly finally arrives at the end of the long conference call and immediately lights a smoke. She makes her way back up the alley toward her ride to a waiting Manny while taking deep puffs.
"So? How'd it go?"
"Good! Yeah.. squared away." Molly responds matter of factly.
Manny pauses briefly before responding. "They were uh.. alright with the call you made on the op?"
"What do you think." She says before taking another drag. This causes Manny to smirk. Confirming his intuition.
"The uneasy, tight leash again huh... Couldn't be from us playing out in the sand of the Badlands now could it?"
"Tch, i'm sure that didn't help. Regardless. You know I work best when the spotlights on."
"You know I've got your back."
"What've you got so far." Molly asks before taking another drag.
"Got in touch with one of my POCs earlier about that access card. Said he got lucky on pulling the geo-sat tracking data which was kind of a miracle in itself considering its not stored in a database for too long. Although the logs were pretty sparse, he did scrape together enough of it to paint a picture. Looks like the card was klepped from somewhere in-house before that chase began. Geo-sat pings dropped off somewhere on the border of Arroyo and Rancho Coronado in some little neighborhood apparently. Should probably start there."
"Tomorrow maybe... Its late and I need a drink."
"Nothin' compares to your pace in my opinion. You know that." Manny concludes with a smirk as he promptly opens the door to the Emporer for her. She glances at him and returns the smirk with a light hearted giggle as she flicks her smoke and hops in.
Later that night, BugBear is seen at the ho-oh in Kabuki; a neon lit bar sitting alone to the sounds of house music. She takes a swig of her drink and finishes it before lighting a smoke and glancing out the window. She notices the rain begin to pick back up as it taps on the windows trying to get in. She puts her cigarette hand on her forehead thinking deeply as the smoke calmy whoffs upward. Various thoughts about her current situation flow through her mind. Although shes someone very aquainted with her type of Night City lifestyle, the constantly varying factors involving some of the closest people in her life has heavily weighed on her. She hasn't had much time to process some of the events that've gone down but she clearly understands the stakes. This clearly isn't some run of the mill gig passed down by some fixer with organized processes and clearly understood players. In fact.. none of this is a gig at all... The amount of x factors involved in her situation presents it as a very all or nothing endeavor... where eddies and fame have fuck all to do with it. A deadlock between life and death.
As BugBear's anxiety and stress begin to peak, she instinctually thinks back to some memories involving Netty. Him trying his first smoke, her teaching him how to use the DR5 Nova she gave him, but mainly.. she thinks about when she was at his house. The warmth of being in his arms.. the smile she had on her face with her eyes closed as they slowly swayed to the music together. The purity of this moment... in a city breathed of such things grabs ahold of her and doesn't let go. Her deep thoughts are abruptly interrupted by the sound of liquor pouring into her glass. She glances up to see the bartender stood behind the counter.
"Thanks Eric." She says in a monotone before grabbing the glass and taking a swig.
"Everything alright?" He asks with his eyebrows slightly lowered after picking up on her energy.
"Yeah... just uh.. got a lot goin' on you know."
"Anything ya wanna talk about?" He asks in a curious tone.
"Oh.. not tonight" She says with a light chuckle with certainty in her voice while raising her eyebrows at him. "Just trying to... get away from it all."
A brief pause takes place as the various sounds of a packed, lively and active bar take over. The bartender breaks the silence while cleaning a glass.
"Hm. y'know.. I know you're in the business of running and everything Bear... but sometimes in life, although you easily can... there's just some things you ought to not run from." He concludes causing her to look up at him after another brief pause.
"Thanks Eric-" She says in a soft, genuine tone with a light smile.
"HEY!! DRINK SLINGER! I NEED TWO OVER HERE!" The sound of a woman shouting causes BugBear and the bartender to look over. They see Molly Seeker with a smile on her face along with Manny.. causing BugBear's heart to sink. She quickly turns her body away from the pair in a subtle fashion however Molly's intuition instinctually catches this subtlety after watching BugBear and the bartender speaking before she interrupted.. Molly makes a mental note of BugBear's reaction.
"Shit..!" She says to herself under her breath. She instinctually thinks of calling Brian but abruptly stops herself before doing so. She faces forward and looks down while calmly taking another sip of her drink before her eyes begin to glow red. She quickhacks a camera on the corner of the ceiling closest to Molly and Manny in order to listen to them. Without looking, she listens to the pair over the chaos of the bar.
"So what do you think we're gonna find with this access card?" Manny asks before swigging his beer.
"Well, its tied directly to the warehouse, but we're probably in for another fucking breadcrumb trail if you ask me." She responds before swigging her drink
"Sounds like a lot of leg work. Kinda got the best of both worlds working for us with a full team's worth of intel for just the 2 of us to sift through. Traveling light tends to always be more effective with so many different factors at play." Manny replies
"Yeah.. to be honest with you i'm not really in any rush to get started either. Can't you tell?" She says before they both chuckle together and clink their glasses. They then go on to start scanning the room and people watching... laughing and gossiping about various people one after the other while having a few drinks together.
BugBear glances at the pool table through the camera and sees a game between several people going on. She notices one of the players with a pool cue in one hand and a drink in his other, held by his prosthetic cyberarm. She quickhacks the man's arm causing it to malfunction and splash his drink on another guy who was trying to sink the 8 ball.
"YO! WHAT THE FUCK GONK!!" The shooter says as he gets in the drink spiller's face. Before the guy can even say anything he is quickly grabbed by the collar.. causing a shoving match to begin which quickly turns into an all out brawl. The shooter gets hit in the back of the head with a pool cue by a 3rd person cracking it in half as the spiller gets tackled from behind by someone else. Most of the bar errupts into a full blown melee as the bartender shouts and hops over the counter to assist security. BugBear takes the distracted opportunity to casually get off her barstool and walk out of the exit. As Manny attentively watches to protect Molly, she looks on with hyper excitement and joy as she laughs loudly at the situation.
"OH MY god-... AAHAHAHAHA!!!" She cackles out loud while fully taking in the experience. She takes a deep breath before shaking her head lightly. "Can't stop diggin' Night City.." She says to herself under her breath with a smile on her face. As the brawl continues to errupt, she takes a look back at where BugBear was sitting and sees nothing but a half filled glass of liquor. This gives her pause as her intuition is triggered causing her to wrinkle her eyebrows slightly... As soon as she begins to think about it she hears her text notification tone which snatches her attention away. She glances at her messages and sees a new single text message from a contact name that simply reads: ' Her '
She gasps deeply to herself with excitement as her body begins to tingle. She opens the text message... It reads:
= Milaya? =
Molly immediately closes the interface and takes a quick glance at Manny who is fully focused on the bar brawl being broken up. She swigs the last of her drink and puts it on the bar counter while taking a final hard look at BugBear's abandoned glass.
"Hey. I'm gonna take off. I'll give you a call tomorrow" Molly says into Manny's ear struggling to speak past the loud noises. He then leans back over to her ear.
"You sure you're gonna be ok? Don't need me to give ya a ride?-"
"I'll be fine. Go ahead and take the night... Maybe taste the night. Red head at your six has been checking you out since we got here." Molly says subtly gesturing over to the hot, long legged red head causing Manny to look back at her. Molly gathers her stuff and makes for the exit.
BugBear is next seen fast walking down a dark alleyway toward her parked bike occasionally looking back over her shoulder. Her eyes begin to glow orange.
= Brian... Its Bear. =