“We go in, beat up some low rank rezzers, and make some fun eddies! It’s a good way to get your name out too!” Sasha offered practically bouncing despite being in cyberspace.

“What kind of battles? I don’t like the sound of Combat Zone, and Sasha, really I need some deets before I do something like this.”

She looked at me for a moment before sighing. “Okay come with me.” She demanded and faux grabbed my wrist to tug me along. I eventually relented and rose to follow. She led me back through the door she had entered and into a… It reminded me of a locker room.

“Okay Motoko, here is the deal. We are 2v2. There will be a couple of amateurs on the other side. We beat them. No killing, but you do your hacks to disable them. They will get tugged out by the system if something goes bad. It’s all safe as can be. Hasn’t been a death in the Combat Zone in years. And that was practically a suicide. Follow me so far?”

“Sort of. Why, though? Why would a netrunner show off their hacks like that? Isn’t that dumb?”“Eh. You don’t really bring in the best of the best stuff that you want to keep secret, and kiddy scripts aren’t going to be new to anyone. But yeah if you got something special you come in show it off, and you might get someone, or multiple someones interested, then you trade for better hacks, or data, or equipment.”

“I never heard about this place before.”

“Which is weird!” She suddenly exclaimed, arms waving. “Even kiddy scripters hear about it! The fact you don’t know is super weird! So here we are! You back me up. I can handle this myself if I have to, but I have to bring a +1 for the double battles. So just sit back and let Senpai Neko-Nyan<3 show you how it’s done!”

“I’m not sure I want to jump right in Sasha, I’d kinda rather watch to get an idea of what’s going on first. Besides my hacks aren-”“Oh it’s too late for that.” She interrupted, and then suddenly I felt it. I was pulled from the server I had been on before, and instantly moved to another section. I couldn’t even fight it, as it felt more like the entire server section I was in dropped deeper into the net.

Which was a truly uncomfortable feeling. This server wasn’t normal. The restrictions, and setup was odd. Truly odd. I could feel foreign code slam down. Rules of the server architecture that…

It was a game. I was in a game. I twitched, wanting to rip the entire thing apart and get out of here, but I mean…

It was a little intrusive with how I had just dropped in, and I didn’t know the rules, but I quickly pinged the system and confirmed that the rules would keep anything from going too wrong.

Suddenly the far wall of the locker room burst apart into data revealing what looked like a recreation of a garbage dump beyond.

“Sasha.” I said flatly not at all amused. “Did you just walk me into the arena while explaining what this place even is?”“Yep! Put down a bet on your behalf as well!” She said with a wink.

“Don’t kill her Motoko. Don’t kill her.” I whispered to myself. I just saved her. Killing her would be a mistake…

“Wooo!” Sasha cried out as she charged ahead, and then threw out a hack. The data coalesced from her hand in a stream of white hot plasma that ripped a hole straight across the arena towards the other side. The blast distorted the data in the way, smashing through every piece of terrain the arena had created.

A moment later she snapped her fingers. “Aww. That sometimes works. Killing them before they leave their starting zone.”

“Great. I’m teamed up with a spawn camper.” I muttered in realization.

Sasha was a toxic gamer.

Fuck.

I hurried to escape the spawn point not sure what the fuck was gonna happen in retaliation, and I did so just in time.

A… Missile? It looked like a missile, or lots of them anyways, shot over the terrain and then came down in a mass towards our entrance. Slamming into the little locker room and exploding constantly, a barrage of damage, that I was able to see beyond the display, and realize it was tearing apart data that was struck. A virus, and a nasty one.

Looking around I realized that Sasha was completely missing.

“Bitch.” I muttered and then breached into the server around me. Its defenses were strong. Probably to stop people from doing just what I was up to, but I hadn’t been seen, and I wasn’t going to.

I could hear explosions and sounds of fire, and wind, and even the noise of many footsteps all rushing around, but I remained hidden. Using everything I knew about staying invisible to keep me out of this mess as I started breaching. Whoever we were against wouldn’t have access to the server right? They would have to breach in too, so they shouldn’t notice?

Fuck if I know. Fuck if Sasha had given me a chance to figure out what the fuck was happening!

Finally I broke through. The entire server architecture displayed before my eyes.

Then it reconfigured, and… Those fucking gonks.

I was looking at a minimap. Whoever designed this arena planned for a breach of access and set it up so that if you slipped through the defenses you could get a mini map…

Which meant someone might know where I was. I quickly removed my information from the system, my stealth Daemon activating as I had access now. It appeared beside me since the breach was complete. The Face Hugger burst away from me, going invisible as it did, and it spread, each Daemon it would find it would help blind me in their eyes.

That left Sasha and…

Two were still there, two big red dots that were netrunners. Dozens of smaller ones that were Daemons, and one green one. Sasha.

Sasha was fighting them. I could see her green dot running around blasting massive server breaking attacks at them, but together they seemed to be defending.

I considered it. I could just fucking leave. Let Sasha take the loss…

But I was also pretty competitive, and while this was a mess I had walked into, it was also Sasha.

For the girl I had watched die so many times… Yeah fine. I would deal with this.

But I didn’t have the programs for this. What Sasha and the enemy netrunners were throwing around was way beyond what I had.

The programs I had picked up from V3L0CITY way back, had been on his server storage. They weren’t his best, but hacks he didn’t use anymore, or just found and thought they were interesting. I wasn’t throwing Kamehameha waves around like Sasha had just done! My hacks were mostly Anti-Daemon tools. Sure Hell Flame wasn’t something a netrunner wanted to touch, but it was easily defended against by anyone competent.

So I would just have to be sneaky.

I couldn’t program something fast enough to matter here, but I could at least act as support, and maybe an assassin.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

So I got up and started moving. As I did I walked around a corner and had to duck backwards. A Daemon. The netrunners we were fighting must have activated it. It was a pretty common grunt Daemon, but it was designed to look like a soldier, and came in a squad of five.

Their faces were already covered by my face hugger daemon so they didn’t notice me… That gave me a chance.

I breached one of them. If I had a Cyberpsychosis hack I could probably cause them some trouble, but I didn’t have anything like that installed.

Considering what I did have installed…

I walked up behind them, made a quick modification of the upload rate of my hack and activated it, feeling the heat of the flame almost echo the heat of my Cyberdeck heating up.

I cast the hack five times, each of them only barely moving. Just a flame sort of hanging in the air, before I released them all at once.

The fire shot forward towards the five Daemons that were walking away from me, and had no clue I was around.

Instantly all four took the hit and burned into nothing.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

I blinked at the little menu pop up.

That’s right.

Daemons killed meant XP for me… Okay maybe after bitching out Sasha after this I might think about forgiving her.

I took off, moving through the server as fast as I could. I wasn’t so much walking, as forcing my position to change on the digital landscape. It was an aspect of breaching. Basically instead of using my normal virtual movement, I was just force moving myself through the architecture.

Then I landed on top of the highest point, giving me not just a minimap view, but also an actual view of the arena.

It was a giant circle. Trash piles meant to block sight and movement. With paths in between.

And I could see the battle. Sasha was zipping around sending out massive attacks that disrupted the terrain every time. While the two netrunners worked together on defense, assisting each other.

One was constantly activating more Daemons. The soldiers I saw before, a search program shaped like a dog, and a mass amount of flying I.M.Ps.

The daemons weren’t doing much as most of them searched the arena, probably for me. But the rest focused on Sasha, disrupting her mass AOE hacks, forcing her to stop attacking the runners and protect herself.

I should probably go help.

On the other hand. She wanted to handle it on her own and got herself into this situation. And that was a lot of Daemons wandering around.

I turned and leapt, disappearing as I breached close to another group of soldiers.

A few moments later they burned into digital slag.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

And that was worth it all. XP. Easy XP. Non murder focused XP.

I didn’t have the equipment for this really. I was only able to ambush the Daemons, because of my own. But I couldn’t really mass kill them as fast as I would like.

And it seems I couldn’t do it stealthily. Before I even moved away from the latest kills, I heard it. Scrambling claws.

The Daemons had reacted to the loss of each other and was coming to investigate.

I moved, hiding away and throwing up some garbage data to conceal myself, as three of the scout dogs arrived. They sniffed at the melted still on fire remains of the daemons I had hit and then started their search subroutine.

They were actually pretty low tier. I could tell that just from one look at them. Their bodies were slim, but had bulky sections where inefficient code left them awkward. And their search function was literally to just go in circles from the start point. They were circling around in ever expanding circles trying to find me.

Fortunately they were also already infested with my Daemon.

Which made these weak daemons completely incapable of being a threat to me, as I threw out my ICE hack. Instantly the one I targeted was coated in digital ice, slowing it down to a crawl as I charged in.

I pulled up a modification of my Hell Flame hack I had once made in a rush so long ago, and a longsword made of flame arced out of my hand as I cut through the daemon.

Its data deleted in a massive arc caused the digital program to collapse.

*250 XP Gained.*

The two dogs left both turned to me. My Daemon might keep myself out of sight, make it harder to see me, but something like this would still break the stealth.

Both dogs howled. Alerting the netrunners that they had discovered me, and then charged.

One slammed into a shield, its form distorting a bit as it was bogged down by junk data, while I focused on the other one, I sent off another Hell Flame, blasting the Daemon as it jumped at me. And it landed in a heap half burned away already.

Then I walked over and cut down the last dog that was too bogged down.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

Everything went quiet for a moment, which was good, because I also had another alert that was taking up all my attention.

*100 Quick Hack XP Gained.*

*Quick Hack skill level up!*

Quick Hack 9. I had been using so many hacks on the net I must have finally clicked over. I luxuriated in the moment of knowledge slipping through. But I refocused, I wasn’t safe here. I checked the update from my net chair, showing me my internal temperature was raised, but nothing terrible. I was okay still.

“Ah there you are.” A voice called out and I looked up to see another netrunner standing on top of the pile of garbage. “Have fun derezzing my search programs?”“Honestly it’s kinda fun. Nice to meet you.” I offered a friendly greeting. Just because this was a weird betting arena, didn’t mean we shouldn’t be civil.

“Aww. aren’t you a cute one. Some one-byte runner that the stray cat dragged along? Yeah, I looked you up already. You don’t have a record in the arena. Sorry about that one. The cat has a rep… Listen, we can’t be gentle about this as long as you don’t quit, just how the game is played you know? Nothing personal.”

Then I heard it. A heavy stomping. I looked towards where the dogs had come running and cursed.

“These guys are just rezzers.” I mocked. “It’ll be easy, just let me handle it.” I continued as I stared at the burning Daemon that was a digital hazard, melting the trash around it, as it deleted and warped data in a space around it.

A Balrog.

I had only faced one of these before, and it had sent me scurrying away. This one wasn’t set into a dying server. The netrunner looked proud as his Daemon finished loading and then it locked onto me.

“Oh fuck this.” I muttered and took off. Using every bit of my breaching skill to move as far from that thing as I could.

It followed, roaring a challenge as it stomped after me.

It was slow. Much slower than I was, so I quickly decided on a battle plan.

Just stay the fuck away from it.

It lost direct sight of me quickly enough, and instead of trying to hide, I knew what I had to do.

Sasha might have pulled me into this nonsense, but if I ignored it, then good chance, she would have to face it as well. That Daemon is not something she could handle along with both netrunners at the same time.

So I would be the bait keeping it busy.

And while I did that, I would go murder a bunch of Daemons. I had a minimap after all.

I turned and ran up some garbage leaping over it and then right into an array of five of the soldier daemons.

One was blasted from a full strength Hell Flame. Another was cut in half and it distorted its form glitching unable to stay coherent. I continued on and turned slamming up an ICE shield, letting it absorb the array of lights the three remaining Daemons fired at me.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

The three couldn’t reach me though. Despite their shared attacks, my ICE wall absorbed attack after attack.

I used that moment to cool down. I could feel my Cyberdeck cycling and only once I was cooled off did I prep another three attacks melting the daemons down.

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

*250 XP Gained.*

I checked the minimap.

Sasha was still fighting, and the two netrunners were back together.

I guess they didn’t expect me to be able to handle their Daemon. The daemon I noticed was catching up to me.

I moved at a normal speed, trying to give my cyberdeck cool down time. As I considered what I could do.

Sure I could run around and clear up the groups of small Daemons they had sent out. And it would benefit me, but it wouldn’t do much for Sasha…

“Ugh!” I groaned, aloud because despite my own greed at having XP bags just wandering around. Sasha was on her own, and whether people died or not…

Sasha was still my choom. Even if she didn’t know me well, and I didn’t know her well. Even if she had put herself into this situation, even if she didn’t understand why I was so connected to her.

The image of her falling. Of glass glittering around her, ran through my mind.

An image of her smile. The smile she carried into death.

It was stupid. I barely knew her, and she barely knew me, but… Dammit I respected her even if she was a pain in the ass.

I couldn’t handle this Daemon, but I bet Sasha could.

I shifted where I was going.

I arrived as another of the missile barrages slammed into the area Sasha had just been standing.

When the smoke cleared almost instantly after Sasha was fine, a barrier of light stood before her. Immovable.

“That the best you got!?” She screamed out in challenge, but the two netrunners didn’t react, just stayed together. Both men worked in sync to prep more attacks, to prep more Daemons to distract her and me with.

Probably more a distraction for me than anything.

The moment after, a group of Daemons spawned in, the soldiers instantly pointed and started pelting shots at Sasha.

I could see her frustration.

Which is why I teleported in right next to her, instantly my defenses activated, ICE wall absorbed the shots, and started spawning in Barriers as well.

“Wha? Kitten!”

“It’s Ghost. I’m on defense. Also a big Daemon is coming. I don’t have anything that can handle it.” I warned, but Sasha just laughed. “You leave offense to me then! Maybe breach the server if you can! I could use some info!”

“What? Oh, I breached the server already!” I called in response, as I started throwing up ICE and barriers wherever I could as another missile barrage arced in, and those were nasty. My Barriers slowed them, but I had to remake the ICE each time a missile struck them.

Playing defense was already starting to overwhelm me, but it gave Sasha the moment she needed.

I nearly flinched as she lobbed what looked like a star straight towards the runners. And the attacks instantly stopped as they desperately switched to defense.

It smashed into them, and a howling noise of distorted data reached my ears.

Pretty terrifying considering just where we were.

“Hehe! See Kitten! Look at how amazing Senpai is!” Sasha crowed out in delight at her attack, but I just huffed at her.

“They blocked it! Do something else!”