{i had been planning to do a cyberpunk story for a while or a story with cyberpunk elements. It was always hard to choose because there are a lot of good ones, like ghost in the shell, and Appleseed, Alita, but I decided to start with, as you guessed it, Night city. I'll rectify things after Cyberpunk 2077 comes out, not that I can even play... I guess Ill just watch others play or read up on it]
Aki opened his eyes shortly after his vision had faded. His body felt a lot lighter than it used to. Though his stomach felt a lot heavier for some reason, or so he thought. Lifting his head, he noticed his head felt a lot heavier as well, but come to see, the reasons were totally different.
A child was lying on his stomach, that's why his stomach was heavier, and Aki's body was a lot smaller than he remembered it. Propping himself upon his hands, he looked down at his body and saw that he had gotten a lot smaller.
Looking down at the child, he finally noticed the face but immediately fell into more confusion. That was Aiki's face and hair cut, but from when she was seven or eight, he must be around ten or eleven if he compared their sizes. He felt the tension running high inside him, he didn't know where they had been dropped off, but a couple of toddlers didn't have a good chance of surviving on their own.
Even with the sword skills, he needed a sword, right? Could his body even hold a sword? A lot of things he needed to find out and not much time to do it. Pushing Aiki's messy black hair out of her face, Aki looked around to examine where they were.
Green grass carpeted the ground surrounded by rusty walls and items that led up to a ceiling that no longer existed some twenty feet up. Past the non-existent ceiling was a blue sky and dust swirls that were pushed by with a wind that kicked up a wooshing noise every time they brushed past the edges of the roof.
Everything was quiet besides the sound of their breathing, and the wind as Aki continued to observe their surroundings and get an idea of where they were. Soon thirty minutes had passed, and he still didn't have a clue, so he began to think about his second wish.
'I wished for the swordsmanship of Musashi, but how does that work?'
As Aki pondered, he felt some movement from the head that lay on his legs. Watching his little sister wake up had always been a funny thing for anyone but her. If you asked her, she would describe it as "Horrific."
Pushing herself up on one arm and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, scratching her head and ruffling up her hair. She looked around as she scratched her arms and back before finally noticing Aiki. The look of shock on her face as at not having noticed a second person right next to her had completely woken her up.
"EHHHH, Who are you?!" She yelled as she fell backward
"It's me, Aki."
Aiki's face scrunched up in anger before saying, "That's an awful joke, you dick. My brother died five years ago! You don't even look like him, and he had black hair like me."
Aiki, blinking in surprise, grabbed a strand of hair from his bangs and brought it in front of his eyes. Focusing in front of him, he could see that it was gray but recalling how Mori said she would change him a bit, and it made sense to now.
"Do I look that different?" Aiki asked
"Yesh! My brother didn't looksh like you at all! And you are too young!" She said in a vindictive tone, but with her young body, it just looked cute
"Pfft, haha, just look at your own body firecracker," Aki said with a laugh, wondering how she hadn't noticed her own circumstances yet but then again, that was just like his sister.
"Howsh do you know that name?" Aiki how her eyes narrowed before bringing her hand up to point at his nose " You are one of those stalkers ar-." Her words cut off as she noticed her small hand pointing at Aki, going cross-eyed as she stared at her chubby little fingers attached to an equally chubby hand and arm.
"Wha- whash going on?! Why am I shmall?! Where am I? Who are you?!" She said with panic building on her chest
"I don't know why we are small... well, I have a guess, but I am you are big brother. I don't know where we are either. I didn't think my little Musashi would panic like this." Aki answered in a teasing tone with an older brother smirk that is really good a pissing people off.
"How do you know he used to call me that?" Aiki questioned with eye narrowed again
"Same way I know the last thing I remember was getting hit by that chair."
"Tell me something only we would know and if you get it wrong..." Aiki started waving her fist at his face, unable to hold it in; he started laughing. What really surprised Aki was how his voice sounded. It was completely different compared to before. Maybe it was because he was away from there, and now it was just him and his sister.
"I remember one time we talked about how if you were in the Edo period, you would have been better than Miyamoto Musashi while we played FGO in my room. You were sitting on my lap as we played on my phone as usual. She was your favorite character too. You even told me how you wanted to get in a brawl while eating meat off a stick like her." Aki said with laughter in between sentences.
Giving an embarrassed yell, she began trying to hit Aki in the head to get him to stop laughing, even going so far as to jump. "You jerk stop laughing!"
"There is also the fact that you didn't want to sleep alone, even until you were nine. Hahaha!" Aki started laughing some more. "Stop laughing, you bastard!" Yelled Aiki as she started punching him in his stomach
"How are you here if you died? You died five years ago for me..." Aiki stated, her face still angry, but now tears threaten to spill over. "You look so different too."
Running his hand through his hair, Aki leaned backward and gave a helpless kind of smile. "So the day it happened, I was walking home, right? Well, when I got home... I remembered a few sounds... the thing I asked for was you... then she said she had to change me a tiny bit... I blacked out and woke up here with you asleep on me. As she said, this is all for her amusement, so I have no idea what we will encounter out there."
Aiki was wrapping her arms around her brother's waist, crying into his shirt. Sobs and hiccups shook her body as her hands tightly gripped his shirt while he patted her back. It went on like this for almost an hour before Aiki finally stopped crying and sat up to look her brother in the eye. Something that sounded too incredible to be true but was somehow a fact, a thoughtful expression suddenly took hold of her face before she started giggling.
"Hehehe, you know what this means, right?" She whispered with a sly grin
"And what's that?"
"You aren't the big brother anymore. I'm Onee-san 'cause I lived longer by a few months. Hehe"
A big grin slid across Aki's face before he started laughing. "Unfortunately for you, I'm older again!"
"Noooo, that's not fair! And why do I have to go through shit all over again! Puberty sucks!" Aiki said with a despairing grimace as her hands slid down the sides of her face
"Ahhh, it'll be alright Aiki, I do too."
"Shut up, Bro, all you guys do is get a bigger penis!" Snapped Aiki, "Whiles I get to bleed and grow up weird!"
Taken aback by her words, he guessed they weren't unexpected for her, but for a seven-year-old her, it was upsetting, "You need to watch your language, Aiki. You aren't older anymore."
"Who cares?! We need to find out where we are!" she said while throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation.
"Calm down, I want to ask you a question first. How did you die? I'm sure that old man got put in jail, right?"
Concentrating really hard as she thought back and dredged up memories. "Yeah, he did, but I don't remember how I died or anything..." she said while pouting with her bottom lip jutting forward.
"It's alright, we can think about it later. Let's figure out where we are. Mori wants entertainment, so I don't think we will be in a completely safe place... Make sure you stay close to me, ok?" Aki said
Aiki nodded her head and held onto the back of his shirt while walking behind him. They were dressed in blue jeans and t-shirts with sneakers on, so while it covered their bodies, it wasn't anything protective. Slowly moving through the grass, they examined the surroundings more, taking note of the pieces of machinery that looked similar in shape but very foreign to the things they had seen before.
All of them were covered in rust and dust, but that didn't stop their unique designs from popping out at us, the way they hung down from the walls and ceiling in different rooms with thick cables running to and fro. After searching around the old place for a while, which seemed to be an old garage, Aiki eventually spotted a tarp folded in the corner under some toppled boxes.
It took them a while but eventually, they managed to move the old plastic boxes, and using a pair of old wire cutters they found in some drawers, they cut the tarp into some covers for themselves.
After a bit more searching, they managed to scavenge some sharp metal and to make a shiv with for Aiki, they just tied some of the tarp around it to make a handle and a pipe that Aki could swing easily.
Picking up the pipe, Aki felt some memories popping in his head. The best way to swing, practice for the basics, Musashi's basic footwork, all the basic techniques for Niten Ichi-ryu that Musashi had evolved, and some techniques that were made for survival. Feeling as if he would get more later, Aki put the questions on the back burner for now and looked out the dirty windows that were caked with layers of dust.
The siblings could make out a city some miles in the distance, looking past the many steel towers nearby. Noting the steaming pools of black sludge and pipes that were many times bigger than them at a glance, they knew it would be a rough walk.
With Aiki pushing her older brother's back to get him moving, as she was never one for patience, they started their journey towards the city. The moment they first stepped foot out the door, they were hit by a gust of wind that carried the faint scent of chemicals and putrid garbage.
Aki started thinking, 'Maybe this wasn't the best start to their journey, but Mori was probably liking it. Who knows?'
Their trek towards the city hadn't last, but a few hours when they both heard the loud sound of a large number of motors, seeing as how they had been sticking within glancing distance of the road, it wasn't a surprise. The number and how loud it was is what surprised both of them; laying behind a large steel pipe that ran close to the ground, the siblings tried to tuck themselves under their pieces of tarp.
"Did you see them, Bro?" Aiki asked with some warble in her voice
"No, I didn't. I think they were behind us, though."
The motors' sound slowly got louder, eventually reaching a roar so loud Aki couldn't even hear himself think. Soon the convoy passed by, motioning Aiki to keep her head down. Aki slowly peeked over the pipe with his head covered, seeing the dust kicked up far into the distance closing in on the giant city ahead of them; he sighed in relief.
"Yeah, they're gone. Let's go in a few more minutes, though."
Aiki nodded at her brother's suggestion before grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. They waited for a while longer before finally getting up and getting back to their walk. The giant city filled with buildings that reached past the heights they had only imagined was slowly starting to loom larger in their vision.
The night was slowly starting to close in, and they hadn't made anywhere the progress they had thought, forgetting they were in much smaller bodies now. Aki's arm was aching from holding both the pipe all day, but he figured this would be a good way to get used to holding a weapon, so he continued to grip it in his hand.
Aiki, on the other hand, was dealing with her legs hurting. A girl in a four-year-old body is bound to have trouble walking some miles, as for the shiv, she had shoved that in a hole she made in the tarp that covered her. The growling stomach surely hadn't helped her either, but her happiness at seeing her brother had easily engulfed the hunger and made her forget.
They kept walking, even when the sun went down since the absurd glow of the city and flames from some of the steel rigs lit the way for them. Casting eerie lights as jets of flames were sent high into the sky in bursts of heat, and the two siblings continued their journey to the city. Coming closer to the edge of the oil rigs, they could see them thinning out and becoming far less active or simply inert, more so what laid beyond them was a body of water the reflected all the neon and bright white lights of the city.
Forced onto the road finally, the Aiki and Aki chatted in low tones as they crossed over the water by using the highway that stretched over the body of water. With Aki keeping watch behind them and ready to let him know if someone was coming towards them, they could hide against the railing and pretend to be garbage bags if she spotted someone.
Slowly day was coming back around, both of them were tired, and Aiki could barely keep on her feet. So Aki had resorted to carrying her piggyback and using the pipe to hold her up, his feet moved a bit slower, but overall her weight hadn't made much of a difference to Aki. Maybe it was the body Mori gave him, or maybe it was just because his sister was light. Who knew?
The road he was on had finally crossed back over the solid ground with a set of stairs leading down from the rather high up road, looking over the area where the stairs led to, he noticed a bunch of warehouses and cranes. Biting his lip, Aki had a dilemma because, from the books he had read and the anime he had watched, those places usually had a rough sort in them. Even if they were fiction, there was probably a kernel of truth.
Deciding to risk the sidewalk next to the road for a bit longer, at least till he got past this district, he kept walking. With the sun coming out, he could hear more cars in the city though none had come his way. Thinking he was right about this district, he hurried his steps up.
With Aiki's head lolling on his shoulder and the tarp insulating his heat from his body and the sun, sweat had begun to collect on his forehead. It took several hours of walking at a severe pace to get past the warehouses and into another area. But it was an area he was a bit more comfortable with if you discounted all the weird billboards and indecent advertisements everywhere.
Seeing many signs in Japanese and English, he continued to walk past the cars that now flashed past him, the road had already begun to slope down into the district that he was vaguely aiming for. Growing up in a Japanese house in Japan had been fine when their family had moved to America for a year, and back was when everything went downhill.
With his head down and tarps covering both of them, Aki slowly looked around. Noticing the many strange looks that people had, robotic limbs, strange metal lines on their body, weird facial features, some were full robots even.
Feeling his grip on the pipe starting to weaken now that he had gotten somewhere his body considered safer, he looked over at an alley that was next to him and hurried over to it. As he walked into the alley, readjusting the grip on the pipe to keep it from slipping, he let out a groan. Hearing cries of help from a tremulous, high-pitched voice, Aki walked over and peeked around the corner of the alley made.
What he saw made him hesitate for a few seconds.