What woke Rebecca up was the unimaginable pain, shooting through every single nerve in her body, from her fingertips to her toes.
It took her Kiroshi a second to adjust to the brightness of the flames around her. Her dermal implants brought the heat a second later, and kept it just below unbearable. From the relatively dark night above, to the smouldering heat of the crumbling structure that had once been the glass flooring of Memorial Plaza. Everything felt upside down.
What had happened? She remembered shooting up, seeing Adam Smasher fall towards her, something pushing from her side strong enough to make her entire body ache, as if somehow her weight had multiplied by three, but instead of falling downward she had fallen to the side… had she managed to stop Adam from going after Da….
"David!" She stood up with a groan, and only then she realised that her right cyberarm was nothing but scrap metal barely hanging from the remains of her upper arm. And by how it felt, whatever bone was left in that upper arm was broken. Still, she paid it no mind, frantically looking around, until she found what she was looking for, a few metres away.
A barely conscious man, strapped to a metal machine. He didn't have no arms nor legs anymore, he was just a torso. But he was still immediately recognisable to her.
"David!" She yelled with a dry voice as she approached him. Lucy wasn't with him, but she probably wasn't too far away. "Get the fuck up, we gotta leave!"
"L-Lucy…?"
Her throat clenched into a knot. She knew how badly the psychosis had progressed. But she couldn't force herself to break the reality to him.
"Yes, David, I'm here."
"Thank god. I… don't think I have much time left."
She wanted to scream, say that she disagreed, that she would drag him to a ripperdoc, or find anyone who could reverse the psychosis. But she knew how it had gone with Maine. And worse, she knew David had been there, seeing how it had gone with Maine. He coughed, splattering blood on Rebecca's face.
"Take this…" his eyes shone blue briefly, and Rebecca saw an exorbitant amount of eddies pour into her account. "That trip… we spoke of… you're gonna have to leave first."
Rebecca knew what he was talking about. She had heard Lucy and David speaking about it before. It was Lucy's dream to go to the moon. And David wanted to give her just that.
"...ah, tell Becca if you see her…"
Rebecca's remaining fist clenched so hard that part of the metal screeched in protest.
"... tell her I said thanks. I don't… remember anything after… installing the Arasaka armor but… I know she played along… She is like that."
"She will be fucking glad when she hears." Said Rebecca between her teeth.
"Tell her she can… keep my Lexington, it's back in the trailer…"
Something behind them screeched. A quick glance revealed that Adam was freeing himself of debris that had fallen along with them.
"Go, Lucy… I love you."
Rebecca knew those words weren't aimed at her. She wasn't Lucy. She was Rebecca. The pipsqueak, the solo in the team. She wasn't the cool, composed netrunner, she was the trigger happy shotgun girl.
And even then, her legs reacted before she did.
She ran for it, not bothering to look back. She had wanted to stay, but she knew it was for nothing. That back there had no chance of remaining 'David' for more than a few extra minutes at best. She knew that ever since he looked directly at her and called her mom, before they were even in the damn Memorial Plaza, with a Night City legend on their tail.
She grabbed Guts along the way. Her trusty shotgun. The one that had accompanied her for more hits that she could count with the arm she had left. And she ran. Ran until she saw the first cars, barely a hundred metres away. Cars at which she aimed her shotgun, jumping inside however she could.
"D-Don't shoot! I have a family!"
"Fuck if I care! Get me out of here! Outskirts, downtown, anywhere quiet!"
Author's notes
CARE, SPOILERS FOR CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS BELOW
Well, this is a thing now. Apologies for the long notes ahead, but this is the first chapter, the rest will be shorter xD
I haven't been into the Cyberpunk fandom for long. Due to who this first chapter has as its main character, you can imagine which piece of media brought me in. That's right, Edgerunners. I am sure that wasn't a hard guess xD
You may ask, though, why. Why did you decide to write this story?
It's quite simple. Watching the anime and playing the game, I fell in love with the world that CDPR had crafted, the way the characters interact with the world, and the way the world interacts with them. That could pass off as a decent reason, couldn't it?
Well, no. Because if not evident already by the events in this first chapter (I don't know how many this will have, but certainly more than one), the main reason that pushed me to write this fanfic was pure, unadulterated copium. I don't think the anime is bad, by any means, and I of course won't pretend that what I will write here is in any way better. But I will say that I find myself incredibly disappointed with Rebecca's death. Not because I am against the death of characters I like (I thought Maine's death was a spectacular chapter), but because of the way it was carried out.
Maine and David, for example, were ultimately unavoidable. They were consequences of the plot, and of cyberpsychosis. But Rebecca's death was a major disservice. You had a girl smart enough to survive in Night City, and the best thing that comes through her head is to stand directly below and shoot upwards at a 300 kilogram metal man as he falls onto her? I understand that they had to show Adam Smasher to be an unstoppable force, and it may have been in-character, but that just wasn't it for me. They did her dirty in my eyes.
So now that my copium reserves are full, I plan to put them towards this fic. Expect what you got in the game: hurt, broken people, PTSD, fights, flashy explosion moments and things like that. Also, the story won't be entirely focused on Becca, even if she is a relevant character.
Things I should mention that do differ from the established timeline, for the sake of the story.
.- Rebecca wasn't turned into a meat pancake (duh)
.- The story (starting next chapter) takes place exactly one month after the events of the last episode of Edgerunners
That's enough for now, otherwise there are some spoiler risks. Feel free to throw any criticism my way, I don't have that much experience writing outside of another fanfic I do have published and college essays xD Any critique is welcome. Sorry for the long introductory notes, and hope you like it!