It had been four days since they got Johnny back. Block by block they were overtaking virtual Steelport and according the Kinzie and Matt, that meant they were weakening Zinyak in a more general way. Gill didn't know one way or another how it worked. She just knew she was having a fuck ton of fun. No matter what she destroyed, she could come back around in an hour and blow it up again and Kinzie would shout words of encouragement at her.

Yep, no doubt about it, she fucking loved Kinzie. Great, great girl.

She stood on the roof of the Three Count and admired the city below her. The air around her was unnaturally still. This Steelport had its own sort of beauty in the way it was an imperfect replica. Gill was proud of herself for noticing all the ways Zinyak's copy didn't live up to the original. A door that was the wrong color, or an intersection with the angles too sharp, the dip of a hill. It was little things like that which showed how inept Zinyak really was, how his hubris would be his undoing.

Her hubris, on the other hand, was pretty damn well founded.

Hopping down from the top of the Three Count, Gill casually walked into traffic, shooting off random rounds until the Zin finally appeared when she caused a car crash. One of those fiery red portals opened up and half a dozen Zin fell out before she took out the portal with her pistols. It flickered out of existence.

Two started advancing on her while the other four held back. Shooting off a freeze blast at the more distant pack of Zin, she turned her attention to the two in melee range. Gracefully she swept the legs out from underneath one of them, his ass hitting the pavement. The other she grabbed by the arm and flipped him over her shoulder before throwing her elbow down into his bony stomach. Zin were fucking tough, like made of hardened leather or some shit. But they broke all the same.

The Zin were uniform in size and pretty dense. It had taken some time to get used to the different center of gravity they had when compared to humans. It was a minor thing though. One center of gravity for men, one for women, and one for Zin, no big deal.

Did Zin have women? They had cocks, she knew because once she had made the mistake of putting on sandals before kicking one right in the crotch. Never again. The way it squished against her foot. Nope.

One Zin down and five to go. The one she had knocked over was getting to his feet again and she had another three seconds before the frozen ones would be active again, then another two seconds of cool down before she could use blast. Kinze was always working on reducing these stupid fucking cool down times. If she had fucking super powers she should be able to use them all the time, not these bullshit intervals. Lame, lame, fucking lame.

She punched the wobbly Zin twice in the face and he staggered backwards, his lips curling and showing those fucking awful teeth. The more distant pack thawed, but she couldn't do anything about them at the moment, just absorbing their bullets for now. The Zin she had been punching fell over and she smashed her boot in his face before moving on. Its virtual bones crunched under her heel.

Blast recharged, she set it off at the pack of five, who had stupidly remained bunched together, and unloaded her pistols in their general direction, only aiming in the loosest sense of the word. It just really wasn't necessary. A few shots and all five started shattering like glass, bits and pieces of fake Zin flying off in all directions. Some of the pieces scattered by her feet. They were so pretty like this. Had the crystal-Zin-bits-and-pieces been real, she might have tried to make a necklace out of them. Maybe she could ask Kinzie about it.

These fights were always over way too fast. If she wasn't actively causing mayhem, the Zin just kind of petered out before too long. They couldn't keep up with her anymore. Gill supposed that meant they were actually making progress. It wouldn't be too long now before they assaulted Zinyak in the flesh. She was sure as hell ready. Six weeks ago she was fucking ready too, but Kinzie assured her this was the best way to do it.

She holstered her pistols, which just caused them to disappear into this thing Matt called an "inventory." All these fucking weird restrictions. Shit felt real in here. Well, sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't. The pistols had weight in her hand when she held them, but her body itself felt lighter. It was a real fucking head trip.

Thinking about her PDA, it materialized in her hand and she called up Johnny.

"Hey man, carnage?" It was a simple question he would understand.

"Be right there," Johnny's voice was cheerful on the other end of the line.

It would be a couple of minutes before Johnny got jacked in to the system. Four days and she hadn't made any progress in telling him. They hadn't been ignoring each other or anything. Yesterday, when they had both been out of the sim, he had visited her in the cockpit and she rode him in the pilot's chair. He had gotten to seen her framed by a backdrop of stars and pieces of earth that floated around the ship. She had gotten to look him right in the eyes as he came. In that moment, he looked way younger. Fair trade-off.

Fuck, when had they gotten so old?

They fucked but they didn't talk, which was generally the way things went with them. Well, they did talk, they had long, extended conversations about the pros and cons of different weapons available to them in the sim. Johnny didn't care for the laser rifles one bit. Gill thought they were okay, but now that Kinzie had her sim tweaked the fuck out she took a special sadistic pleasure in killing things with the power of dubstep. Johnny could not be convinced of the fatal power of bass.

The first day Johnny was out, before they had gotten him his super powers, they actually had to ride together in a car and he made fun of her taste in music. He always did that. He made "wub-wub" noises over every electronic track just to tease her. Just to spite him, she crashed the Emu into an oncoming truck so he would go flying out the windshield. Side-effect; she went flying too and they ended up wrestling in the middle of traffic.

He hijacked another car for them and she smiled and called him a dickface. Like always, he held the door open for her as she took the driver's seat. After that, they rode in silence for awhile.

Yeah, they would go after Zinyak soon, and she wanted to tell him while they still had the simulation as an outlet for their frustrations. She didn't have a media example to emulate for this. Predicting what she should do, or what he was going to do, was really difficult.

Maybe she should cry? But he would see right through that, call her on her bullshit. It was hard knowing you were a monster. Not that hard, but a little.

She walked the sidewalk like all the other sims waiting for him. White-purple swirls of numbers created a little vortex next to her and in another moment Johnny was present.

"Kinzie, clock out for awhile." She used her boss voice, not the friend voice she had started using with the hacker over the last couple of years.

"But I slept 52 hours ago! There's nothing else to do," Kinzie's disembodied voice responded.

"Don't care, fuck off." She wished that she had a clever threat to level, but her mind was predictably elsewhere.

"Fine."

Gill had nothing but Kinzie's word that she had disconnected from observing her in the sim. Honestly, that was good enough. Maybe Kinzie knew already, girl knew fucking everything. Dropped the bombshell about knowing her name while she was otherwise occupied and Gill seriously considered shooting Kinzie's car instead of the Deckers'. Now she was glad she hadn't, but at the time she had been furious.

"What are we blowing up, Boss?" Johnny didn't suspect a fucking thing. Didn't have a reason to.

"Walk with me, Johnny." Gill kept her eyes straight ahead, thinking it would be easier to talk without the interference of Johnny's reactions. "We'll kill something soon, promise. You're gonna want to. Fuck." She covered her face with her hand.

"What is it?" Genuine concern. Sure, Johnny was sociopathic too, at least a little bit. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to sleep at night. But he didn't have it as bad as her. One of the things they had in common. But he didn't have the expression problems that had plagued her as a child. Normal things could make him happy; normal things could make him angry. He was going to be angry.

"Okay, I gotta talk you you gotta listen. Don't interrupt me or I won't get all the way through it." Gill wished she was wearing something with pockets so she'd have somewhere to stick her hands. Johnny laughed at her exasperation and crossed his arms over his chest as they continued walking.

"Arrrggg," Gill found it easier to scream nonsensical things rather that just get on with it.

"Was that it?" The smile on Johnny' lips was apparent in his voice.

"No, fuck this is hard."

"Nothing's ever hard for you, Boss." He was goading her.

"It is when you're involved," she pouted. What? Yeah, she could pout.

They walked in silence a bit longer, cars passing them in the opposite direction, flickering on occasion showing the seams of the sim. She was psyching herself out again, like she had been doing for four fucking days, like she would do forever if she could. Oh? Was that an option? No? Fuck.

"When you died..."

"I didn't die, I was abducted."

"What the fuck did I say about interruptions? You gonna tell me about your anal probe next?" Silence. Good, he knew better now.

"Shit, Johnny, you knocked me up, okay? And no interruptions, I know it was you because I'm only ever reckless with you." She kept walking even though Johnny stopped. Just keep walking. Nope, not following her, shit.

Gill turned on her heels and walked back towards him. Still rooted in place, he was unreadable behind his glasses. When she approached, he grabbed his arm and pulled her off the sidewalk and between two residential buildings. The alleyway was empty. That didn't matter, none of this was real, anyway.

"Don't look at me like that," really she meant don't look at her at all, because she wasn't good at telling what was going on under his glasses. Nah, even without the glasses she wouldn't know. He didn't interrupt, now she kind of wished she hadn't told him that.

"I was real fucked up after I thought you died. Nothing made me feel alive, I thought I was depressed. We were fucking up Steelport, the real Steelport, real bad. Just tearing shit up. At some point I took a couple of bullets that Shaundi couldn't patch on her own so I dragged my ass to the hospital. Sewed me up real good and did that routine bloodwork bullshit. Ta-da! Turns out I got a little parasite inside me. 'It would be for the best if you layed off the coffee and the cocaine, Jane Doe.'"

Johnny had a firm grip on her arms the whole time, as if afraid she was going to bolt. There would be bruises there if this were real. Maybe she was considering bolting, but there would be nowhere to run to. This was all fake and the only real thing was a too-close-quarters ship.

"What happened?"

Oh, that nearly fucking broke her. He was so sincere. He did care. That was the worst fucking scenario. She didn't care, not really, but she cared about him, what he thought of her. It was a habit she couldn't break even as she had overtaken him in the hierarchy; objective number one, be badass enough Johnny Gat would be proud.

"I didn't stop. I didn't stop with the caffeine or the drugs or the kicking shit out of people. I couldn't. You know I was addicted real bad to both. Er, all three. Or I just liked it too much. It seemed like the right thing, to keep going, hunt down Killbane and get his head. But I couldn't even do that. Fucking STAG forced my hand."

"And?"

"And? I should have just terminated it that same day. I ended up losing it later on. That's it. I don't think you need details about it, but I had to go back to the hospital."

The tension was disappearing from her muscles, but Johnny's grip hadn't changed.

"Did you care?" Thank fuck he still had his glasses on, because any hint of the look in his eyes and she would be well fucked.

"No, it was a relief." He'd hate her. He might not say it, but he would hate her, because he was never as far gone as she was. "Do you care?"

"You knew I would, that's why you told me." Good old Johnny, always seeing through her bullshit. It's what made him so dangerous. She'd be fucked if he ever turned on her. This might be that time. "You're manipulative."

"You'd say the same thing if I didn't tell you."

"Yeah." His started dissipating from the sim in a cloud and Gill was left alone in the alleyway. This was bad. She was expecting him to kick the shit out of her sim and then blow up some shit until he burnt himself out. None of that had happened and her only option was to hide in the sim a bit longer.

Kinzie came back on. "Do I even want to know what happened? Because Johnny is throwing crates at Miller right now. And his aim is pretty good. He's a fucking beast." Kinzie seemed giddy at the prospect of Matt getting crushed. The following crash was so loud that Gill could hear it from inside the sim. "You'd better come calm him down before we have to tranq him."

"We have tranqs?"

"Exactly," chipper, with just the right hint of menace.

Shit, everything was her fucking problem always. Right, this was definitely her problem. No one else to blame here.

Jacking out, she was confronted with various screams and crashes. She didn't stop for Kinzie and jumped over the railing down to the cargo bay. Shaundi was already there trying and failing to get Johnny to stop. Girl just never had the physical presence for that kind of shit.

"Cut this fuckery out, Johnny. This was why we were in the fucking sim!" She wasn't strong enough to stop him, but she could sure as hell slow him down. Gripping his arm in both her hands, she wrenched his arm, causing him to drop the canister he was about to hurl at Matt. "What the fuck are you even doing? Stop."

Johnny knew well enough that it was an order and not a request. Still, he was pissed as fuck. Freeing himself from Gill's grip, he stalked off, leaving the other crewmates behind, including a very traumatized Matt, who had curled up into a fetal position trying to protect his head. Smart kid.

Gill left them all slack-jawed in the cargo bay and went after Johnny. CID was wandering the upstairs corridor, so Johnny had probably kicked it out of the private room. This was shit she had to deal with now. At some point there was an option to handle this like an adult, but that time had long since passed.

There were no locks on any of the doors of the ship, so Gill just strolled on in. Blood was smeared on the opposite wall in little patches. Not a lot of it, not enough to worry, but Johnny had probably broken at least one of his hands smashing them against the unyielding surface. Maybe it helped him feel alive.

"What should I have done? You know I don't know how these things are supposed to go." It was an honest question.

Johnny laughed bitterly. "Delegate, let someone else fight while you sat back and got all fat. But you weren't going to do that, were you?"

"That's not what I meant."

"I know. I guess you did the right thing by telling me." Johnny's back was against the metal wall, his head tilted up at the ceiling. Still frozen just inside the doorway, Gill wasn't sure if it was appropriate to sit with him. Blood dribbled down his knuckles but stopped just short of reaching the floor.

"I couldn't let the Syndicate get away with what they did to you. What we thought they did," she corrected. It was an excuse she told herself frequently in the first year. After that, she didn't really think about it anymore. It was a non-issue until Johnny showed up again, something in the recesses of her memory.

He patted the space on the floor next to him. An invitation to join that she readily accepted. At least he was a little calmer now. Who knew how long that would last.

"You were never gonna be that woman who stopped, were you? Once you set your mind to something you're a fucking hurricane." While the opportunity was here, she soaked up his body heat, their shoulders just touching.

"We have that in common. It's why you'd always pick Aisha over me."

Johnny shook his head and she knew she was wrong for bringing Aisha up. Socially unacceptable in this moment between the two of them.

"It's in the past now." He took off his sunglasses and set them on the floor. Turning to her, Gill instinctively turned towards him. Those fucking eyes. Pretty, human. "I just gotta ask you one thing."

Gill nodded, but she wasn't sure she would be able to answer his question, no matter what it was.

"Are you capable of love?" Honest question from one of the only people she ever managed to give a fuck about.

After the medication and the therapy and the experimental treatments, after her media reprogramming, she could still feel something for him. Sitting here, side by side, it was so much more intimate than anything she had experienced in the last five years he was gone. Deep under the layers she had used to become barely passable in society, there was the faintest glimmer of something authentically her. She felt authentically her and authentically pained looking at him now, open, honest, and a little crazy too. Without that little bit crazy, he wouldn't have even bothered with her. But here they were, bothering each other. Yeah, she was capable.

"No." This lie was so much more merciful than the truth.

He smiled and pat her on the back as he stood up and left CIDs room. The robot floated back in and found Gill still on the floor.

"Are you in need of my services?" Its digital voice chimed. "Kinzie found a new attachment for my chassis." It sounded way too excited.

"No, no." She gathered herself up and went to jack back in, not bothering to take anyone else with her.

After their confrontation, she didn't expect Johnny to come to her again, for anything really. At first he didn't. A twenty-four hour period elapsed without their crossing paths. But space on the ship was tight. When they ran into each other in the kitchen, Johnny, to his credit didn't act any different. He smiled and flirted and pat her on the back as he left. Another twenty-four hour cycle and it was like the whole thing never happened.

She jacked out of the sim and he was on her right away. They kicked CID out of the private room again much to its displeasure. He felt fucking devine between her legs, fucking her until his knees were raw from kneeling on the metal floor. The rivets used to bolt the floor together scraped against her back as she slid with his thrusts, leaving little red, circular imprints on her flesh between the stylized feathers of her tattooed wings.

Even though she knew better, she took off his glasses so she could look at him as he came. It was always her favorite part. Other than the fucking. The actual fucking was good too. Johnny tended to come with his eyes open. She liked that.

Heat built up inside of her, right in the pit of her stomach and the base of her spine, sandwiching her. The friction between them was just perfect; the way his hip bones cut into her was particularly delicious.

She couldn't help but convulse around him, lifting her hips erratically towards him, trying to hold on to every inch of pleasure she could reach. Then he was chasing after her, pounding her into the floor, looking for somewhere deeper to go. The muscles in his abdomen twitched and he flooded her. This was what had caused the problem in the first place, but they were still too stupid for each other, despite everything.

Johnny climbed off of her, panting hard. Maybe the years in the tank had been harder on him than he had let on at first. She smiled, she liked seeing him frazzled. She liked seeing him any way she could.

"Times like this, I really miss cigarettes," he laughed like it was a real great joke.

"Fuck, do you know, first day on the ship, I seriously considered trying a line of that powder from the showers, just to see what would happen."

He eyed her suspiciously, "You didn't."

"No, I'm actually not that much of a problem that I would snort weird hostile alien soap solution. Give me some credit." She rolled her eyes.

"Well, I'll see you later, Gillian." Before leaving he kissed her sweetly on the forehead, like this was the most normal thing in the world, like the last five years had never happened.

It was all Gill could have ever asked for from him.