Strong Enough Shot Caller Finale

Shot Caller Arc Finale

“Pop the bottle and kiss it up to whatever god you believe in, chooms!”

Becca puts words to action, breaking off the neck of the champagne with a deft flick of her revolver. Glass tinkles against the quick tarp they threw down right in front of the elevator, a designer table was dragged over to hold whatever cups and glasses they could find. Becca fills them gleefully.

David is a few floors down, helping his mom move into their new two bedroom apartment, but the rest of the crew all lifts a cup topped up with bootleg champaign and cheers, even Lucy.

“To a job well done,” Taylor says. She drinks with a smile. “Don’t forget your key shards. After you download the key—”

Becca pulls the data shard out of her neck, drops it on the floor next to her own already empty glass, and crushes them both with a single stomp. “Whoop, whoop! We are so brrrrrrrrrrrrack, bitches!”

“Careful!” Emma elbows her playfully. “We don’t have any more cups, you’re cut off.”

“Yeah right!” Becca grabs the rest of the bottle and chugs it faster than Taylor can finish her own drink.

“What happens if one of us leaves the crew?” Lucy asks. She snaps her own keyshard across her fingers before dumping it in a puddle of sparkling wine on the tarp.

“Revocation and rekey,” Sasha says. “We’re gonna get the whole setup airboxed up here. Not exactly a ‘Saka data vault, but secure for us.”

Lucy hums, looking around the penthouse. “And that’s why different keys.”

“Forgive me for not giving you a key to my house,” Emma spreads her arms. “Only friends and lovers allowed overnight.”

Lucy laughs. “With a place this nice, you might even be able to pick up some of those.”

The place is nice, so nice that Emma doesn’t take offence. After all, they put her and Taylor on the deed. Emma Barnes, getting preferential treatment during an Arasaka smash and grab. What did she do to help the company? Who knows, but as a reward, she received a two-story penthouse in Watson, with hardwood floors and a full wall of windows. Five bedrooms, an open concept foyer where they now stand with a commanding view of downtown. It even still has an actual upright piano (synthetic wood) on the lofted second floor right across from the master bedroom. It’s bigger than Alan’s apartment was, exactly as nice as the rest of the building is awful. Night City in a microcosm.

But now the whole building is theirs, and things are about to change. The fire in Taylor’s chest won’t allow anything less.

“Any problems with your room, Sasha?” Taylor says. They have a few things they need to check off, before they’re finished settling in.

“Nope! Bed fits, just gotta finish going over security for the intranet and I’ll be all cozy up in my web.”

The corner of Taylor’s lip lifts into a smile. “Our own part time dweller.”

“Dweller’s gotta dwell,” Sasha replies.

“I’m surprised you didn’t pick the master,” Emma says.

Sasha rolls her chair forward. “Wheels.” She sets her flute—the only one—of champagne back on the table untouched. She can walk around, already had the crew carry in her walker, but right now she’s using the chair to get her things just how she likes them.

Also, the floorplan of this new place is much larger than Taylor remembers Sasha’s last unit to be.

“Just gotta get a lift put in, right, Hotwheels?” Becca asks.

Sasha giggles. They turn into some light coughs at the end, but she recovers quickly. “I’m fine with the ground floor.”

“Good, because we’ll have enough trouble with contractors for the rest of the building.” Emma sighs. “And to think, I was getting used to having money again.”

“Some of it better fix my heating,” Lucy drawls.

Emma rolls her eyes. “Don’t worry, we already have that earmarked. Guttersnipe’ll be down with a toolbox to see if we can’t kludge it together until we get professionals.”

“Bitch, we are professionals!” Becca hops, throwing an arm around Emma and Taylor’s shoulders. The empty bottle of champaign slips from her fingers.

Taylor snatches it out of the air with a burst of speed, leaving Becca giggling again.

“Preem and professional.” Becca nods, turquoise hair tickling at Taylor’s nose. “Ooooooh, Scar! I can’t believe we pulled it off!”

Taylor’s smile grows a little bit. “Don’t celebrate yet, we still have the scav den in the basement.”

“Pshh.” Becca waves a hand. “Barely an outpost. Hell, let’s go deal with it right now.” She hops off. “C’mon! I’ll grab dimples and my heavy guns. Let’s christen our new building the good old-fashioned way.”

Taylor flips the champagne bottle in her hand, catching it by the remains of its neck. She traces a pinky over the jagged glass of the edge. “Great idea,” she says. “We’ll be right down.”

“Nice. Let’s go, Luce!”

“In a sec.” Lucy turns towards Taylor and Emma. “Before we start new work, I want to talk about splits.”

“Always money with you,” Taylor replies.

“Can you blame me?”

Taylor laughs.

“Like we told everyone.” Emma says. “If you need Eddies while we’re getting set up, it’ll come out of Aaron’s accounts, but pretty much everything is earmarked for repairs.”

Lucy leans forward, arms crossed. “And after?”

“After we fix the building, evict the shills, the squatters, and the scavs, fill vacancies and establish an emergency fund for the crew? First goes to building and equipment maintenance, next to job expenses, and then a petty cash fund. If we somehow get more than that we’ll get the whole crew together and talk about how we’re going to split our fictional wealth that doesn’t exist and certainly won’t exist if we let scavs take over the basement like Aaron Lombard was happy to do.”

Lucy meets Emma’s gaze for a while longer, before huffing. “I’ll be watching the financials.”

“Do that,” Emma replies.

Lucy joins Becca at the elevator. Taylor thinks the contrast almost comical. Not between Becca and Lucy—though they’re opposites in basically every way as well—but between the gleaming neokitch inspired doors and the torn up and poorly maintained elevator interior. There are reasons Lombard couldn’t get anyone to rent his penthouse, no matter how nice he staged it. Only now, when everyone was looking for housing, had he started to get inquiries.

Just a tad late.

“See you at the loading dock,” Lucy says. The elevator doors slid shut.

Taylor turns to Sasha. “Need help with anything else?”

“Hmm.” The runner hums. Taylor can’t help but see, once again, how different she looks.

When they first met, Sasha dressed in tight pink and neon colored gear, topped off with fluffy bolero jackets that never covered her middle. Recovering, she favored loose shirts and pants that tied in the front, and her perfect bob grew out to her shoulders, straightening under its own weight.

Now, Sasha looks like a mix. She still hasn’t gotten her hair styled, but it’s cared for, and while her clothes are a bit looser and easier to slip on, they’re still bright and drape elegantly off her recovering frame. The only thing that never changed is that catlike smile which crinkles Sasha’s eyes at the corners. “Nope! All good. Thanks for helping me wheel in the bed.”

“Least we could do,” Taylor replies.

“Still, it’s good the party wound down.” Sasha lets herself slump back in her chair. “I was starting to run out of Choo.”

“Go rest.” Taylor waves her off. “We can handle this next part.”

“Sure you won’t need me?”

“They won’t even know they’ve been hit until they’re lying on the ground.”

Sasha smile widens. “Good. I think I saw a lookout eyeing my chrome when I got into the building. No one’ll be comfortable long as you’ve got scavs in the basement.” With that, she gives one last nod to Emma before wheeling over to her room. She picked the one on the first floor farthest from the elevator. Less noise, less particulate. She’s already talking about installing an inner door for her room to keep everything else out.

More money, but Sasha’s health is important. The whole crew is important.

After, Taylor takes a heartbeat to clean up the tarp and dump it down the garbage. It goes all the way down, right next to the loading dock. She looks down into the darkness for a long second, before shaking her head. “I can’t believe he let scavs set up in the building.”

“They kicked-up, you’ve seen the financials,” Emma says.

“And now we have to solve that, too.” Taylor turns away, going to grab her stuff for this new job, the first in a long line of jobs related to the building they own.

“Taylor.”

Emma stops her.

Taylor raises an eyebrow. “Emma?”

“What did Lady Wakako want?”

Taylor snorts. “What do fixers always want? Their pound of flesh.” She steps around Emma.

“Taylor.”

“Later, Emma.”

Emma steps forward and snags Taylor’s sleeve, lightly. She knows she can’t catch Taylor with force.

“What?” Taylor asks.

“You’ve being ‘later-ing’ me a lot, recently.”

“Because you always pick right before the start of a job to have concerns.” Taylor looks over her shoulder. “Maybe there’s a time and place.”

“Oh look.” Emma forwards Taylor a text from Becca.

>Got caught up meeting Mrs. Dimples.

That would be David’s mom.

>Need 2 make good impression. Dnt tell Scar

Taylor almost laughs. Girl clearly knows who she wants, though Taylor wonders what Mrs. Martinez will think about a modded up little thing floating around her Academy-Scholarship-Receiving son. Still.

“Looks like we have time, and.” Emma waves her arms at the empty penthouse foyer. “A place. So yes, I’d like to know what Wakako wanted.”

Taylor pulls her hand free, and Emma doesn’t fight that either. “It wasn’t anything huge.”

Taylor turns to look out the window. There, on the other side of the river, she can catch the edge of Japantown and Westbrook. After the Lombard job, Taylor went there to make amends for using the name and reputation of its lady.

“If it wasn’t huge then stop stalling,” Emma says.

“Can’t we do this tonight?” Taylor says.

“What, so you can lock me out of the master bedroom and forget?”

Taylor looks over her shoulder, blinking. “Aren’t we—” She stops. “I mean.”

“What are you—” Emma stops as well. She glances up to the top floor. The master was the only room staged with a bed. “Oh.” She looks down at the floor, eyelashes fluttering.

Taylor shrugs. “It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

“Not…” Emma shakes her head. “Only at your place.”

Taylor frowns. “Are you…blushing?”

“No!” Emma half turns away. “Shut up.”

Taylor takes a step forward. “You mean, we’ve never shared a bed, at your place.” True enough, Taylor always took the guest bedroom. Snuggling together in a twin was always reserved for Taylor’s apartments, with no spare bed, giggling underneath the covers with a stolen flashlight. And more recently, on nights where they were cold or tired or…

But always in the context of space. No extra bed, no extra room. Two girls sharing a bed isn’t weird, especially when the alternative is a lumpy couch that hasn’t been cleaned since they shipped it off the factory floor.

Taylor shifts yet closer. “Do you want me to take a guest room?”

“No!” Emma shakes her head. “You’re the boss. You get the big room. That’s…that’s just corporate 101.”

“Of course, slumber party etiquette.”

“Stop making fun of me.” Emma glares up at Taylor. “You’re trying to distract me.”

Taylor leans forward, over the shorter woman. She braces an arm against a convenient pillar, leaving Emma half trapped in her shadow. “Is it working?”

She smirks when Emma doesn’t reply.

Emma’s eyes track her lips, an insane detail to notice, but Emma’s eyes are just so bright. Windows to the soul by intelligent design, bright fractal emeralds surrounding dilated pupils. Emma’s eyes were made to be eye-catching, to be breath taking. Taylor swallows, and watches how those brilliant green eyes track down her throat.

It feels like stripping naked in front of a crowd.

So distracting, Taylor barely even registers when Emma steps forward and wraps her in a tight embrace.

Taylor stiffens. “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Emma’s voice comes soft, almost playful. “We used to do this too, didn’t we?”

“I—”

Emma lifts her head, pressing her lips against Taylor’s ear. “Tell me.”

“Holy shit.” Taylor tries to step back, but Emma holds her tight.

Emma giggles. The sound of it, right there, sends sparks down Taylor’s metal spine. “Two can play at this game, Taylor. And me? I play for keeps.”

Taylor tries to step back, but only manages to flail her arms uselessly.

Emma drags her fingers up and down Taylor’s spine, running her nails along the edge where metal meets flesh. Where—according to Kikyo—the Sandevisitan has been building more and more nerve endings, each and every one of them coming alive beneath Emma’s touch.

“Tell me,” Emma whispers again. Her breath brushes against Taylor’s ear, and she almost uses her speedware to escape, but she doesn’t want to hurt Emma. She wants—

“C’mon.” Emma presses them tighter, one leg coming up to wrap around Taylors. “Tell me.”

“Fuck, okay. Okay, you win already!” Taylor gets her hands on Emma’s shoulders and pushes. After a moment of resistance, the redheaded limpet lets go, and Taylor can finally breathe again. “Fine! Fucking gods.”

Taylor takes a moment to get herself back together, ignoring the flash of disappointment that flickers across Emma’s face. Taylor doesn’t know what that means. Taylor doesn’t know what she wants it to mean. All Taylor knows is that she needs to get back into business mode as quickly as possible.

She takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the heat in her cheeks. She should get a faceplate chipped in just to stop the blushes. She takes another breath.

“Wakako wanted to know who our fixer was, what the job was,” she says.

Emma pauses. She senses the change in atmosphere from…that…back to something they both understand. She clears her throat. “Ah. I see. That’s…”

“Yeah.” Taylor nods. “Not the best outcome.”

“Well, you didn’t tell her,” Emma says. “Because otherwise she’d be much more upset.”

“No one likes it when crews go out and fix their own gigs.”

“Surprised she hasn’t had anything to say about the Mox.”

“Oh, she did.” Taylor laughs once. “Made a lot of insinuations, tried some interrogation tactics on me.” Nothing compared to being grilled by ContIntel. “But on the job itself? We’re clean top to bottom. She had no clue about Lombard.”

Emma lets out a breath. “That’s something. Still. I bet she wasn’t happy.”

Taylor nods again. “She wanted payment for using her name. Led off with that, even.”

“Oh, I see.” Emma folds her hands behind her back, and Taylor tries not to notice what it does to her silhouette. “Made it about the money, but told you that she’d take it from the other fixer, for damaging her rep.”

“Would have tripped up a couple gonks off the street.” Taylor frowns. “Also, I think there might have been a bomb in the chair I sat on.”

Emma blinks. “A bomb?”

“Either that or the floor lamps were tesla coils.” Taylor tilts her head. “She knows I have a sandy, Em. Wakako-sama isn’t gonna let me in close unless I’m covered.”

Emma pulls the face again. It is, in fact, the exact face Taylor saw in her mind’s eye. “Maybe we should take less jobs from her.”

“That won’t be a problem.” Taylor says.

“…Taylor.”

“What?” Taylor spreads her hands. “I didn’t do anything but refuse to answer her questions. I even paid the huge ‘reputation fee’ she slapped on for no reason, okay? Don’t torture me again.”

Emma laughs. “Please, getting up close and personal with me isn’t torture.”

For the first time in a while, Taylor looks away instead of sniping back.

Emma smiles. Taylor’s not even looking but she knows that Emma is smiling. “Anyway, how much?”

“The stupid fee? Ten K.”

“God, that bitch.” Emma sighs. “That’s gonna slow us down here.”

“Mhmm.”

“Though. I am a little surprised you paid.”

Taylor makes a face of her own. “I was sitting on a bomb.”

“Like that’s ever stopped you.” Emma giggles, slipping closer once again. “Well, fine then.”

“Hey.” Taylor doesn’t push her away.

“Hey what?” Emma slips an arm beneath Taylors, coming in to half hug her from the side, head bowed as if in thought. “We have breathing room now, another source of income. We’ll figure it out.” Emma snuggles in deeper.

Then Taylor, for her part, may or may not put an arm around Emma’s delectably slim shoulders.

Emma pauses.

“We…should go kill some Scavs,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Like, Beccs gotta be done with David’s mom.”

Taylor looks away. “You might be surprised.”

“I mean.”

“Just…”

Emma shifts. From the corner of her eye, Taylor can see Emma looking up at her through thick red lashes.

Biosculpting is so unfair.

“It wouldn’t do to be unprofessional in our first job,” Emma says. Her voice comes soft, almost a whisper.

“You’re the one who hugged me,” Taylor says.

“Mm. I did.” Emma turns her body so that they’re face to face, chest to chest, Taylor’s arm draped around her shoulders like a cloak. “Are you going to do something about it.”

Taylor swallows, but this time, Emma’s eyes don’t leave her own. They’re so bright, swimming, glistening. Emma looks almost as lost as Taylor, sinking into a moment.

“Where…” Taylor wets her lips. “Where did this come from?”

Emma shrugs, Taylor can feel the movement of Emma’s body beneath her arm, the warmth of her. “We…used to do things like this all the time, didn’t we?” she asks.

“And then we stopped,” Taylor says.

Emma nods again, looking down. “And then we stopped.”

Neither of them speaks. Slowly, Taylor steps back, unwinding her arm from around her new-old friend. She tries to ignore the way a spray of Emma’s fiery red hair flashes along her wrist, or the way Emma’s fingers come to rest at her waist, tips pressing oh so gently in the edges of her lower back.

Like she doesn’t want to let go, but doesn’t know how to say it.

Taylor doesn’t know either.

Killing Scavs is so much easier than reconnecting with your once-friend-once-nemesis.