DISCLAIMER: In the last chapter, I erroneously posted the last draft instead of the actual chapter. The only change though, was that I made a mistake with the number of original members of Maine's band. The chapter initially gave the wrong number, but it has since been fixed and now says what it should. I apologise for that mistake and thank the reviewer that kindly pointed it out. Now, have chapter 5!

TWO DAYS AFTER THE CONFRONTATION AT CLOUDS

"Lucy beat the shit out of that braindance techie?"

Falco's car was surprisingly clean for someone that spent his life running around in gunfights here and there, V thought. The covers for a few things did look like they had been changed a few times after a few bullets had hit, and the headlights were of different colours, likely for the same reason, but the car was otherwise impeccable. The only thing anyone could consider dirty would be, maybe, the smoke floating around from the copious amounts of cigarettes Falco went through even in the half hour drive to their destination.

"Beat the shit out of? Not really, but she knocked Judy's lights out. I thought she had killed her at first."

"Oh, she didn't?"

V raised an eyebrow. "That is what surprises you?"

Falco nodded. "Lucy has a mean temper and an even meaner right hook, especially if she is fighting someone that isn't prepared. And as far as I know, that girl, Judy, doesn't have any real combat implants. Either she got lucky or Lucy didn't want to kill her. Believe me, I would know."

"She broke her jaw. I had to carry her to her place unconscious!"

"So, she got knocked out after the first hit, was unconscious, and Lucy didn't finish her off? Yeah, she definitely didn't want to kill her."

"I tell you the woman that gave us this gig got her teeth kicked in by one of our partners, your partner, and that is what you answer?"

Falco didn't say anything. V laid back onto the back of his seat. He hadn't really looked kindly onto the idea of working with someone else. Not after Jackie had died. He figured he would just go around following what little leads he had. First Evelyn, then that other man Takemura had mentioned. Lucy had been a surprise, and not necessarily a good one at that. Even less so if she went around making things more difficult by destroying potential leads. The girl was a mess of a partner.

"I know what you are thinking."

"Enlighten me." chuckled V.

"You think she is just a nuisance, don't you?"

"Holy shit, you actually knew." answered V with a sarcastic demeanour.

"What happened? Was it out of nowhere?"

"Can't say it was. Not entirely at least. Judy taunted her." mentioned V, trying to recall how it all had happened. Things had gone south pretty fast after that taunt.

"What did she say?"

"We were inside Fingers' office. Everything was going pretty nice. He agreed to listen to us, Judy got the customers to agree to let us through first, Lucy got herself some takoyaki from some shop outside…"

"Takoyaki? She never liked the kind they make in Japantown."

"Does that matter? Anyway, Fingers was less than useless, so Judy got pissed off. He may or may not have called her a dog, an animal, and then Lucy asked Judy to leave the room."

"Asked?"

"Forced."

"Ah, I figured. Lucy really isn't one to ask for things." Falco took a turn with the car and opened the window to throw out his cigarette, immediately lighting another one. "She never asked for anything when we were a crew. Everything she needed, she got herself."

"Judy was waiting for us outside. When we made it out, she grabbed Lucy by the collar and shouted something about Lucy not knowing shit about how hard it was to lose someone."

Falco hit the brakes abruptly, almost making V smash face first into the windshield.

"What the fuck?! Do you want me to kiss that lamp post over there or what?!"

Falco sighed. "Of course she would lose her temper. That was a horrible thing to say."

V fixed his jacket a bit. It wasn't as if he couldn't imagine why it had ticked Lucy off. In fact, her being angry was completely justified. Everyone in Night City had something that would piss them off just by it being mentioned. Something that they didn't want to be reminded of. Losing people must have been extremely painful to Lucy. V had heard it a few days back, losing David in front of her own eyes without being able to do anything. He related to that thought, he had felt that same helplessness. But to beat who, in a sense, was your employer? That was just asking for problems in the long run. Most people just swallowed their pride and moved on. It probably wouldn't be an issue this time around since Judy was only a techie and not really anyone important, but that didn't gove V any peace of mind for future jobs, or with careful handling of people he didn't want dead.

"Listen, V. I know what I told you, last week at Afterlife. You seem like a good guy. And you think you understand, but you don't."

"I don't?" said V with a tense voice.

"Relax. You don't. I am sure you are going through a tough moment. I was there when your buddy was ripped in half by Smasher. You will never see me deny how hard you, me, or anyone in this damned city has it. But you haven't hit the lows Lucy has. And for your sake, I hope you never do. I don't want to find anyone else like that. Not anyone I am acquainted with."

V frowned. The city wasn't a place for people weak of spirit or mind. If anyone found you showing any sort of weakness you would just be eaten up, especially if you are a woman, and especially if you had the kind of expensive looking cyberware Lucy had. Plus, she had seemed perfectly happy that morning eating her takoyaki, V could even discern a hint of a smile before she decked Judy in the face. Someone as unstable as that wasn't his ideal for a partner in crime.

"Just give her a chance, kid. Not everyone is as strong as you."

"I am twenty seven."

"I am more than ten years older than you. As far as I'm concerned, you, Lucy, that Judy girl, you are all kids. But I mean it. Give her a chance, please. Give her time to figure things out. I know it's not what you want, and it's not what she wants either, but keep her busy. Whatever it is so she doesn't get weird ideas."

"So our little princess doesn't want to be helped or taken care of. How wonderful."

"Kiwi's to blame for that."

"You are just going to leave it at that, aren't you? Zero proper explanations."

"Of course. One word over the line and Lucy would kill me. Give her time, and she may talk about it herself. Don't get your hopes up though."

"That's just amazing. When are you going to drive us to the place?"

"Why do you think I stopped the car? We are where we need to be."

V took a look outside. Falco was right. They had driven from Jig-Jig street to the old power plant at Charter hill, a sub district in Westbrook, near the city outskirts. The place was very run down for what not even ten years prior had been producing part of Night City's electricity, before the Satwave Power Plant was opened and took over every single minor plan's production. The windows were cracked, the entrance gate had been broken off, as if someone had run it through with a car, and then half assedly put back together. The cables that connected the generators to the power lines on the street had been ripped or cut apart.

A run down place with potentially dangerous machinery. Not dangerous enough to make the town hall focus it over other projects, but dangerous enough to keep civilians away, while at the same time not having anything of value to attract any sketchy gangs like Maelstrom or the Scavengers.

The perfect place to hide an illegal braindance recording studio.

"I have a plastic sheet in the trunk. Put it over the back seats."

V took the sheet Falco had told him and laid it over the leather seats. He probably didn't want to make a mess of the smooth-looking fabric. They were, after all, working on the possibility of bringing back a corpse.

"Give what I told you a thought, V. Message me when you find what you need."

Falco drove off. It was what they had agreed on, after all. He couldn't just stay parked while inside the car, or he was bound to attract unwanted glances. Once he disappeared behind a corner, V made his way to the power plant.

The way they had gotten there had been… questionable at the very least. After hitting Judy, she left for a few hours, only to call V and Falco at the fall of night to tell them where to go. V didn't have anything to trust but her word over a ten second phone call and Falco's reassurance that Lucy wasn't fucking with them.

He stopped near the entrance, peeking over the fence. Four people on the side of the building, near an open garage door. Two more further to the left, near some pile of boxes and rubble. And god knew how many inside the building. It was going to be hard to…

"Twenty three individuals total."

Any other person would probably have jumped in place and taken their guns out. Any normal person anyway, not used to working with a Netrunner. But V had a few weeks of expertise with T-Bug, he had gotten used to it after the first few days. Netrunners were always unsettlingly quiet in anything they did, the way they moved, spoke or acted.

"I count six outside. Are the rest inside? Any cameras?"

"How do you think I counted them? Nine outside total, twelve inside, two on the basement. That's probably where your woman is."

"Probably?"

"I scanned them pinpointing their cyberware. Hers are fried."

"Even the most bottom barrel punk has at least a chrome arm, sensor or chipset these days. We should still be careful." nodded V. It was that way in Atlanta. And when he came back to Night City, the first thing he saw was some nobodies stopping Padre's car. They were all chromed up. If even those had chrome, anyone they would find in there probably would too.

And anyone inside that didn't wouldn't pose much of a threat to a netrunner and a gunslinger with a sword.

"Let's go."

"Hold on a minute." V stopped Lucy before she could jump over the wall. He considered grabbing her hand, but he realised that he really would rather not lose it. "We have some things to talk about before we go in there."

"If you are going to lecture me about hitting that bitch, save your breath."

So she could make out what it was about, V thought. Lucy wasn't stupid.

"Lecture?" V shrugged. "For being angry at what Judy said? No. But your mood swings don't really give me peace of mind that you won't fry my brains if I do or say something you don't like."

"Then don't do or say something I don't like. Keep your opinions to anything outside the job to yourself."

"And how do I trust you won't just snap again?"

"The same way I do. Don't. Never trust anyone."

Lucy jumped over the wall, landing on the other side. Hopefully that meant she couldn't hear V sigh in frustration. He really couldn't bring himself to trust her. Something about her screamed unstable and dangerous. Part of it, V understood. Given what little he knew about her past, and her current motivations, whatever she had left fueling her was probably just anger or revenge delusions against Arasaka.

But that was enough of his mind wandering around, V thought. He jumped over the fence like Lucy had. The punks at the garage gate hadn't noticed them. V circled around the entire border of the plot surrounding the power plant, hiding behind piles of rubble, walls and some cars that were around.

"To the back there is some guy perched on a room with the security cameras. Take him out."

Lucy's voice came through to V's ears through a voice call. V looked at where she had said and sure enough, there was a man over there, staring at a screen with an expression of extreme boredom. It didn't take too much effort from V's part to sneak behind him and impale him through the neck with his Katana. The man fell to the ground with a surprised expression, trying to scream with the throat he no longer had.

"Woah, flashy." said Johnny. "Don't you have a gun? What's with this beta knife bullshit?"

"Why not? Let's shoot them through the glass." V pointed at the windows "I am sure that won't attract any attention from the people down there. Let alone the entire neighbourhood with the sound of the gun."

"Things sure have changed since we just blasted through everything."

"Look where that led you, mister terrorist."

"Take a look." said Lucy.

V peeked over the edge of the window. To the left of the big garage gate, a smaller door was guarded by a punk. At least it was until his chip port on his neck blew up with a nasty-looking shower of electric sparks. Lucy appeared around that corner, signalling V to go down there with her.

It took V no longer than half a minute to get to Lucy, after throwing the body to the back of the room, made easier since the people next to the garage door hadn't noticed.

"Did you fry this one for real?"

Lucy nodded. "They won't be missed."

"Know them?"

"Faraday made us work in a gig with them a few times."

"So that's how you knew where to look for Evelyn…What business did you have with people making illegal BDs?"

"You haven't been working for fixers here in Night City for long and it shows. Now let's get that woman out."

They entered the building. Moving through the insides wasn't too hard for V now that he had Lucy around. One machine acting up here, some optics resetting there, and before V could realise, they were on the entrance to the basement, without needing to take out anyone other than the two men outside. A relatively clean job by normal standards.

Inside the room, there were expensive braindance recording equipment, along with two men standing next to a console. And lying on the ground, next to the console, the woman they had been looking for. Evelyn, in a bloodied T-Shirt and seemingly unconscious with her back rested against the console.

"I'll take the scrawny one, you go for the bigger one."

V identified his target. A man standing almost two metres tall that could perfectly have worked as a bouncer at Afterlife. His muscles were bulging his clothes like a bodybuilder. Thankfully, muscles meant nothing when it came to stopping a sword from cutting someone in half.

Lucy lunged forward first, cutting her target's arm in two using her Monowire just as V started his sprint. One swing of his katana and the man fell to the ground in two pieces.

V didn't have time to feel proud though, as someone else tackled him from behind. For a split second, he thought Lucy had decided to turn on him. But that made no sense, she would just have used quickhacks. Plus, whoever had tackled him was a man as large as the one he had cut in half. The weight of what must have been a hundred and fifty kilos of man and chrome together drove all the air out of V's lungs as he struggled to try to break from the man's grip around his neck.

V couldn't remove the one hand the man was pinning him with as he reached for his belt to get his knife. He was blacking out, the burly man was going to cut him open…

Then all the emotion and rage left the man's eyes as he plunged his knife into his own neck, bathing V in blood and collapsing over him the second later.

"What the…"

Now that the man was a limp corpse, V could push the burly man aside to look around, holding back the sudden urge to vomit. Lucy was standing next to the mangled remains of the man she had attacked, split on several pieces across the floor. Then V saw a shadow move behind her. He didn't hesitate to raise his gun and fire at it.

The man that had been hiding with his own katana raised to chop Lucy in half reached for his own throat, where V's bullet had pierced him, as if that was going to prevent him from drowning in his own blood. Lucy blinked a few times and looked behind her, at the punk now dead on the floor.

"Turns out there was someone else, huh?"

Lucy's gun was pointed at V for a few seconds before she finally lowered it. She kicked the body on the floor with disdain. "No implants, no cyberware, nothing. I couldn't see him."

"It's rare, but there's still people around like that. The new recruits for the gangs, or rich kids that can afford not being chromed in order to just survive."

V shuddered for some reason. The thought that they had almost been done in by the lowest ranked member of a gang that didn't even specialise in combat was humbling. Or terrifying. Maybe both. He stood up and scanned the room for more threats.

"How come they aren't coming back down after the gunshot?"

He then noticed that Lucy was staring right at him. So hard it made it awkward.

"What?"

She said nothing and moved towards Evelyn, checking the cable that connected her to the console.

"I pushed a quickhack to disable auditory systems on everyone upstairs, they didn't hear anything. At the count of three, cancel the program on that console."

V did as he was told, and a few moments later, Evelyn was unplugged. He shook her lightly, but as Fingers had said, there was no reaction whatsoever. He also tried snapping his fingers in front of her eyes, but nothing.

"We don't have time for you to try to wake her up now."

Lucy pointed to the entrance to the basement. V picked Evelyn up on his back and aimed his gun at the entrance. He couldn't afford being defenceless. But thankfully, due to a few optic reboots from Lucy, they managed to sneak out of the power plant and call Falco. His car arrived a few minutes later.

"Woah, you sure took a beating." he said, throwing V a towel. V let out a sigh of relief once he used his free hand to wipe his face from the worst of the man's blood. It had also soaked his clothes, but there wasn't much he could do about that other than taking his shirt off. Which he did after having Lucy take Evelyn from him. Since he was still filthy, V entered the back door of the car where the plastic was, next to the still unresponsive Evelyn.

"Blood ain't mine." he faced Lucy in the front seat "That was you, wasn't it."

"Let me guess." said Falco. "Guy blew his head up."

"Oh." complained V with a deadpan "She's done that before."

Falco just laughed at V's momentary misery as he started the engines once again and drove off. V had a lot to think about. The mission hadn't gone horribly bad specifically because Lucy had been there. Intel on the number of enemies, their locations, convenient distractions and disabling of enemy cyberware… Netrunners were awfully convenient. And one without qualms about harming people was even ten times as useful as a normal netrunner.

V recalled his last normal job with Jackie, about rescuing a woman that had her Trauma Team chip disabled. T-Bug had been there, that was true. But she had limited herself to giving advice and directions. No combat interaction at all. It had never truly been a setback. But V had never been able to realise how much more a netrunner could be.

But that night had shown him. If he could get Lucy and himself to trust each other…

"Plug her in."

Lucy was offering a cable to him. Thicker to any cable he had ever used to plug into anyone.

"What are you going to do?"

"Have you seen her condition? We don't know how long she will last. I'll run a quick scan and then that bitch can do whatever deep digging she wants."

V was hesitant to force a netrunner into Evelyn in the state that she was. But Lucy was right. He plugged the cable into her neck slot.

"I'll go slow. Try to not have her move around too much." said Falco while taking a soft turn "We'll be at Judy's house in half an hour."

"And bring me home afterwards." groaned V "I really fucking need a shower."

Author's notes:

That's the fifth one done and dusted!

This one was strange to write. I am not sure how to write action scenes, and overall, my lack of writing experience shows in the flow of the overall chapter. That is something I would like to be able to improve on. But that is part of why I am here!

As for Lucy breaking Judy's jaw… well, what Judy said was, even if she was unaware, very insensitive. Especially for a Lucy that has her nerves on edge. Also, Lucy uses the Monowire, a weapon that in the game scales with the Body stat. That's the reasoning behind her being rather strong physically.

But man, Lucy really doesn't trust anyone. I guess Kiwi's lessons stuck a bit too well on her, probably cemented by Kiwi's betrayal. It will take a bit more before our female protagonist can truly allow herself to rely on others.

Finally, the gap between the last chapter and this one (in real life time i mean) is closer to what you can generally expect for my schedule. I'd love to write all day but my masters won't study itself! That, and the fact that I also have other hobbies.

I hope you enjoy this chapter. Until next time!