Chapter 81: Driving Force: Neon Fog-Bill Kiley
Chapter Text
"Smasher."
"NANASHI."
"You've heard about the recent happenings, I assume?" V asked lightly, crossing her arms as she stood before the NC Boogeyman, taking in how he seemed to be slightly worse for wear now that he no longer had quite as easy access to the supplies and support he'd had as an Arasaka agent.
"I HAVE. I FIND MYSELF INTRIGUED BY THE FACT THAT THERE IS SOMEONE LIKE YOU OUT THERE THAT IS NOT YOU, NANASHI. ALSO. YOU STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN ME A GOOD REASON TO NOT SLAUGHTER YOU WHERE YOU STAND."
"Considering the fact that we're both still well aware of how our last meeting went, you and I both know that threat's empty," V snorted, while Adam Smasher just growled low in his throat and returned to maintaining his custom HMG with a gentle whir of servos and shifting armor plates, parts of his body still exposed and damaged from their last altercation where she'd shoved that grenade into his chest. "Point is, I need your help to go put down the bitch that fucked me up, stole my corpse, and is trying to start a fifth corporate war."
She paused, then shrugged, watching calmly as Smasher did his level best to raise a deadpan eyebrow in her direction. "Specifically, I don't need your help, I just figure you'd be fine with blowing up a fuckton of shit on the city outskirts while I go do my level best to go beat the shit outta the bitch in question."
"WILL I GET PAID TO CAUSE HORRIFIC AMOUNTS OF COLLATERAL DAMAGE?"
Smasher raised his head, leaning forward slightly as he decided to actually give V some attention, which was… honestly a lot weirder than it should have been, considering that this was the same guy who would have gladly leashed himself to her had she stayed at Arasaka CI a lifetime ago. She shrugged anyway, nodding after a moment.
"The more shit you blow up over there, the better you get paid. I'll let you keep any shit you salvage too, if you like. 'S long as you don't try and kill me preemptively," V answered, wiring a small down payment to Smasher before rolling her neck and sending a set of coordinates to him as well. "Meet me at the coordinates I just sent you. I got no idea where in the badlands that rancid bitch Alt is, but I'm sure we'll find her sooner or later. Dunno why, but she's got a mega murder boner for me, and I'm pretty sure if I cause enough trouble out there she'll come racing in to try and put me in the dirt."
"ALT. AS IN. CUNNINGHAM. SILVERHAND'S DIGITAL WHORE? "
"Yeah, her. Had her living in my head for a good long while. Sucked shit, thought she was a half decent influence, turned out she just wanted me to chrome up so she could jack my fucking corpse," V snarled, glaring off at nothing as her combat systems began to activate on their own, thin seams of light appearing under her skin as her parts began to heat up and prepare for a fight. "Y'ever had that shit happen to you, Smasher? Some dumb fucking gonk tries to buddy up to you and stab you in the back just so they can get a headstart on being a fullborg by stealing your fucking corpse? Bitch didn't even have the fucking dignity to kill me herself."
"THE ONE TIME ANYONE WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO TRY AND FUCK ME OVER, I BURNED THREE AND A HALF BLOCKS OF NEW YORK CITY. I ASSUME YOU ARE WILLING TO DO MUCH THE SAME."
V snorted, watching as Smasher rose while speaking and tromped over to the gun case he'd installed along the wall of the warehouse he'd took up residence in, setting his HMG gently into the rack inside before retrieving a worryingly high gauge shotgun and bringing it over to the workbench, seeming quite subdued and calm for someone whose usual method of expression was death threats and extremely off-color sexual remarks.
Seriously, his idea of flirting was calling someone a "cut of fuckable meat".
She knew that firsthand, given she'd heard him call Evelyn that in her past timeline.
Weirdo.
"Smasher, if I had the fucking nuke they dropped in Arasaka, I'd waste it on her and her alone, just to make sure the bitch was well and truly dead," V hissed, clenching her fist so hard that the servos within began to whine and protest, Smasher nodding vaguely her way at her response.
"GOOD. YOU HAVEN'T LOST YOUR BALLS AT LEAST. I CAN WORK WITH THAT. I ASSUME YOU WON'T BE BRINGING ANY USELESS MEAT FOR ME TO WASTE TIME WITH, GIVEN THE NATURE OF THIS JOB."
"Nope. Just you and me. We're the only two shitheads in the city that can handle it, after all," V rolled her eyes wandering around idly and coming to a halt at Smasher's workbench, watching the machine-man take apart and clean his shotgun with mechanical efficiency. "We killed all the rest, remember?"
"YOU KILLED FIVE. TOTAL. THE REST WERE ALL MY KILLS. CARRY YOUR WEIGHT BEFORE YOU TRY TO STEP UP TO ME, GIRL. "
"Wh- hey fuck you! Half of them were my takedowns, you're just the shithead who shot them before I could cut their fucking heads off!" V protested, glaring at Smasher with as much vitriol as she could manage, her optics glowing hellish red to match his own as she tried to make herself look bigger than she really was.
"TALK IS CHEAP, NANASHI. BACK IT UP WITH COMBAT OR GET OUT OF MY FACE."
"Oh I will. Later. Once I get my corpse back," V muttered, stepping back for the moment and forcing herself to calm down before she tackled Smasher right then and there and tried to feed him his own biopod in the most violent, murderous way possible. "Once I steal my shit back from Alt, then I'll give you the duel you want."
"AND THEN I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU WHERE YOU STAND."
"Oh you'll fucking try , Smasher. You'll certainly fucking try," V hissed, leveling one last challenging smirk at the older, arguably deadlier borg before turning away and using her Sandevistan to dodge out of the way of Smasher's retaliatory shot, tearing open a wormhole as she left the warehouse behind and returned to Delamain's HQ. "When the time comes- I hope you scream when I rip your biopod out and crush it in my hands."
"SAME TO YOU, NANASHI. MAY THE STRONGEST BORG WIN."
Chapter 82: Hit The Floor-DJ Electrohead
Chapter Text
"Del."
"Miss V."
"Is it ready?"
"About as ready as I can make it, Miss V. Miss Alt's manufacturing notes leave much to be desired, and I am loathe to send you into battle with her using substandard equipment- even now, I fear that it might not be enough," Delamain sighed, his avatar seeming quite apologetic even through the holo call, V idly knocking on one of the many crates that had been delivered to her apartment some time ago- though, the others had largely been sacrificed in order to ensure that the gear she was about to use was as good as she could make it, having been upgraded and reinforced as much as Delamain could make them without bringing them back to HQ for a full rework- a rework that neither of them had time for, at this stage.
"It'll be enough. Alt's got better gear, but her fighting instincts are worse- she's never had to deal with being on the backfoot. Against an opponent with the same gear, the same knowledge of each others' systems. When she was in my head, recording all of my combat data once I went full-borg, she didn't ever have to be on the end of a fair fight. All I ever did was win against everyone I ever went up against. She's got the data of casual fights, long fights, and a few bits where I almost took a solid hit… but she doesn't have any idea of how to lose," V answered as she typed in the key code to the crate and stepped back to let it hiss open and reveal its contents to the world at long last, after what seemed like an eternity of letting it sit and wait for the right time.
It was folded in on itself, panel after panel of high density layered armor, cables and wires hidden beneath expertly engineered struts and joints, a twisted mass of control surfaces and connection points that would wrap around her entire body and enhance her combat power to an insane degree- especially considering the reactors present within the main shell of the armor that would link up to her own power systems.
In other words… it was a set of mecha musume armor, just like Alt had worn when she'd tried to kill V with her own cybernetic corpse.
V sighed, running her hands along the polished surface, a reflective sheen of beautiful paint applied such that the armor itself looked like an extension of her own style- black and red and gold and a hint of pale blue, just like her hair.
"As you say, Miss V. However- I remain concerned. Even with the additional processing power you shall have access to by my insertion into your systems, there is simply no guarantee that I will be able to assist you and your combat systems as effectively as Miss Alt once did," Delamain sighed, continuing to speak as V's new armor unfolded itself into its open configuration, plates of armor sliding around each other with whispers of rotating servos, metal sliding against metal, gears meshing and linkages turning. The tapered legs of her armor slid apart for her to step in, as did the sleeve armor and torso sections, revealing dozens upon dozens of connection points perfectly lined up to the specially built ports that had been pre-integrated into her own body. "However, I recognize that time is of the essence, and that we will not have an opportunity to test our synergy beforehand. I believe it prudent to wish you luck in this endeavor."
"We'll both be there, Del. No need for luck when I got you at my back," V murmured, giving Delamain a thin, soft smile as she stripped out of her outfit and down to the black flight suit that would help her integrate into the armor's systems, already seeing its UI pop up in her vision the moment that the circuitry in her flight suit integrated with the ports in her neck. "Besides, I got faith in both of us."
"I do hope that it pans out," Delamain nodded, silently observing as V stepped into the armor a moment later, the seals and pistons in the massive bulk of armor hissing and shifting as it sealed shut around her body and locked her in, subtle screws meshing with previously covered ports in her body and locking the entire thing into place with a mechanical whir. "Shall we begin system checks?"
"Sure thing, Del," V answered, letting a rush of confidence fill her limbs as the flight armor began to come alive in her senses, systems activating and clicking into place as the wings fully unfolded, the weapon pods settled into place at her shoulders and hips, the sub-wings pivoted around her legs and her armor panels flexed and folded, running through aerodynamic configurations as the myriad of flight engines settled in and around her armor whined and rushed, burning with heat as she thought about the last few calls she'd made, the people she'd told to get out of NC either temporarily or for as long as possible, just in case it all went south.
Jackie had decided to stay- he had too much family to move on, and Misty wasn't going anywhere. The fortune teller apparently had faith in V, as did Vik. Rogue had elected to stay as well, stating that she'd live and die in NC if it came down to it. About half of Maine's crew had elected to leave with the Aldecaldos, as did Vincent and Vox- though some of them were going to come back later, if all went well. David, Kiwi, Rebecca, and Lucy apparently decided now of all times was a good opportunity to vacation on the moon (not that V begrudged them- it wasn't like she was using most of her savings for anything else).
Judy and Sasha… Judy and Sasha had elected to move out to the little house on the dam, all packed and ready to leave with or without V. She hoped she'd be able to join them.
"System checks complete. It is almost time to begin. Shall we?" Delamain's voice cut through her reverie, and V found herself startling forward as her armor fully powered on, wings and jets instantly moving to her whims as she hovered off of the ground and felt the supporting arms fold the entire arrangement into something almost resembling a skirt as she made her way out towards the open doors to the backyard.
"We shall," V nodded, taking a deep breath as her panels reconfigured into flight mode and she shot off into the distance, engines roaring as she prepared herself for the oncoming battle.
"Judy, Sasha… I'm gonna come home to you. I promise."
Chapter 83: RXVXLT-STXRBXTH
Chapter Text
There hadn't been much to say when V met up with Smasher- the man had taken an AV out to the edge of the city and simply walked into the sands, his body's repaired weatherproofing system keeping him functional, albeit quite irritable at the sheer amount of sand blowing into the cracks and crevices of his metallic body.
V wisely said nothing at Smasher's irritated presence, and instead simply directed them to head towards the last known location that Alt's sentient factory had been pinged. And thus, they walked together into the shifting desert sands, nothing but rocks and hills and dried out bushes and cacti to keep them company as they faced down the sweltering heat that would have probably killed a normal person, but for two full-borgs like them it mostly just meant they had to glare menacingly forward every time the sun got in their eyes. Which… total pain in the ass, really, but par for the course in Night City.
"NANASHI."
"Sup, Smasher?" V raised an eyebrow towards the black clad boogeyman as he tromped alongside her down the side of an empty riverbank, the water having long since dried up decades ago and left only hard packed mud and shifting sands.
"YOU LOOK LIKE YOU WERE DESIGNED BY A WEEABOO. OR SOMEONE WHO WATCHED TOO MUCH MECHA ANIME."
V blinked, staring at Smasher incredulously- to the point that she entirely stopped hovering forward, the subtle whoosh of her jets echoing along the shallow walls of the riverbank as she tried to express just how confused the other borg's words made her feel.
"I- huh? What the fuck does that mean? What the fuck is a weeaboo?" V asked, furrowing her brow as she floated forward again after a few seconds, catching up to Smasher's metallic footfalls in a wash of kicked up dust and heated air as her jets swiveled and pivoted to keep her stable.
"GOD YOU'RE FUCKING YOUNG. I FORGET JUST WHAT KIND OF A DECREPIT, ENTERTAINMENT DEFICIENT HELLSCAPE THAT MEAT GROWS UP IN THESE DAYS. WHATEVER. IT ISN'T MY PROBLEM."
"Honestly, I'm pretty sure I can guess it's an insult, but whatever. This shit I'm wearing was designed by Alt, so honestly… yeah, probably. Bitch was around when you still had meat on you, if I remember right- wonder what you looked like back then. Were you even uglier or did you have some kind of sex appeal?" V snorted, rolling her eyes behind her glasses as she floated just out of arm's reach of Smasher- not that it made much difference were they to come to blows, but it'd still give her a half second to dodge if he decided to try and punch her in response. "Can't imagine you got a lotta pussy, you seem like the kinda guy who either got none or, well."
"YOU DO REALIZE I FUCKED MICHIKO ARASAKA, NANASHI. REPEATEDLY AND OFTEN FOR THE SHORT TIME THAT WE WERE TOGETHER."
"... I did not know that, and frankly I'm not sure I wanted to know that," V muttered, palming her face and grimacing at how awkward the new metallic claws felt- especially since they were just wrapped around her normal hands like a pair of gloves. It'd take a while to get used to… but V didn't think she had that long to wait. "Anyway. Point is, Alt designed this, so I'm pretty sure whatever a weeaboo is… Alt was probably one of 'em."
"CONSIDERING I'M WELL AWARE OF BARTMOSS' PROCLIVITIES. IT STANDS TO REASON THAT ALL NETRUNNERS OF THAT ERA WERE LIKE THAT."
Smasher snorted, making a motion as if rolling his eyes as he continued tromping onwards with his massive, heavy feet, his entire body bristling under the weight of more weapon implants than she'd ever seen on the guy before- where the fuck had he been keeping all of that?
"HMPH. EXPLAINS WHY YOU LOOK LIKE THAT RIGHT NOW. WHAT, CAN'T FIGHT SILVERHAND'S DIGITAL WHORE WITHOUT SUITING UP LIKE HER? SCARED, NANASHI?"
V blinked, then stared at Smasher incredulously. "Fucking of course I'm scared. It's why I'm here in the first place, dumbass. If I wasn't fucking scared of Alt I'd have just let someone else deal with her on their own time. She's crazy and fucked in the server core, and we need to pull the plug on her ass before she kills everyone for some godforsaken idiot plan."
"HMMM. INTERESTING PHILOSOPHY. HEARD IT BEFORE, BUT COMING FROM YOU? ALMOST SOUNDS WORTH A MODICUM OF RESPECT. ALMOST. YOU STILL SOUND LIKE A PUSSY."
"And you sound like you gargled Mr. Studds until your throat gave out. What else is new, eh?"
"SADLY, VERY LITTLE. SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY. SAME AS IT EVER WAS."
"Same as it ever was," V nodded, sighing and shaking her head before holding her hand out and shushing Smasher as they came close to the sound of something rumbling in the distance- nothing visible from where they were, but V's ears could pick up the direction of the sound to the southeast, and… yes, there were vibrations in the rock walls of the riverbed when she touched the bare stone.
She hissed quietly, rising up and peering out into the distance to spot what seemed to be a massive industrial complex chewing its way into the side of a hill, mining tools and conveyor belts and grinders and massive tunnel drills all working in unison to shovel raw material into the gaping maw of a factory that looked more like a worm than a building now, armored and mobilized as it was by what were clearly Alt's designs.
V shuddered, glaring as her panels began to rattle against each other of their own accord, hackles rising as she slowly pulled herself from the depths of the riverbank and motioned for Smasher to follow.
"Alright Smasher, there it is. You got any high-ex in that hunk of tin you call a body?"
"WHO THE FUCK GOES OUTSIDE WITHOUT HIGH EXPLOSIVES IN THIS DAY AND AGE?"
"Fair enough. Plan's simple then- we hit hard, we hit fast, we blow up everything we can, salvage the rest, and then fuck outta there as it burns behind us. I'll kill Alt, you try not to die, and if we both survive to the end- I'll fuckin kill you just for the honor of actually getting to measure up against you for real."
"AND I WILL GLADLY END YOUR LEGEND WITH MY HAND AROUND YOUR THROAT, NANASHI. FROM ONE BORG TO ANOTHER- GOOD LUCK. TRY NOT TO DISAPPOINT ME."
"Back at you, asshole. Now… let's begin."
Chapter 84: 風神少女 (Wind God Girl)-Demetori
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The moment that the two of them charged into battle… well.
It wasn't really much of a battle.
It was more of a warzone.
"Shit! Shit shit shit shit SHIT!" V screamed as she used her Sandevistan to its fullest, pushing her body to its absolute limits to bob and weave through the endless, burning, deadly curtain of anti-aircraft fire that was tearing a fucking hole through the fucking sky. When the fuck had Alt decided to make FUCKING LASER CANNONS!? Fucking- shit!
She all but flailed in midair, calculations surging through the processor arrays in her body as she more or less jumped off of the massive anti-air bullets as they flew past, kicking off of them and using her jets to maneuver her past the beams of heat and light and plasma blasting through the air, diving ever closer and hissing through her teeth as she approached the factory complex proper.
All too soon, though, V felt the familiar surge of her Sandevistan start to slow down, and in a blaze of panic used her processor banks to instead slam open a pair of wormholes around her, making it such that the barrage of death heading her way instead went past her without hitting anything, up until the point that she struck down onto the roof of the massive, worm-like complex like a meteor and shattered the first defense turret into a million pieces of sparking wires and shredding metal, flames roiling around her as the heat of her jets set its ammo reserve ablaze and exploded the entire magazine at once- not that she could feel it in her armor anymore.
Was this what Smasher felt like all the time? Shit, no wonder he acted like that.
No time to keep thinking of that, though. V shook her head and continued on, her weapon bays unfurling as her armor shifted and clanged into place- delicate wings folding up beneath wider panels of armor as the entire set of cyberware mounted to her body changed to its combat configuration and extended out a series of barrels and opened an array of guns from its depths. Bullets flew an instant later, thudding booms ringing out as her larger caliber guns blasted out with explosive shells, the multi-barrel assembly of her arm mounted minigun letting loose with an almighty buzzing roar as she rained death upon the turrets around her.
Still- it was only the first wave of defenses, and V had to keep moving if she was going to draw Alt out into the fight, was going to stop her… somehow.
She didn't really know how, but… but.
Delamain had given her a shard. A dangerous shard. One that shouldn't have existed, but there it was.
Would it kill Alt? Maybe. Would it work at all? She didn't know.
Did she have any faith that Delamain would actually manage to put an end to this- this bullshit once and for all?
More than was logical, less than she'd like.
So.
She had to work fast.
V roared in time with her guns, body aglow with the endless muzzle flares of her guns as she began to rain death and destruction upon the factory- the factory itself seeming to roar back at her as it writhed beneath her feet and unleashed more of its own defenses. Grasping tendrils that had once seemingly been factory robot arms speared through the structure and tore through metal and concrete like paper- the ends tipped with cutting tools and machinery straight off of the factory floor. V didn't stop, though, simply using her Sandevistan to outspeed the tendrils- up until the point that the factory itself began blurring into action faster than any human could dare react.
"FUCK!" V shouted, breath whooshing out of her synthetic lungs as a tendril caught her across the gut- even as slow as they were in her prodigious Sandevistan speed, the impact they had caught her by surprise even as she was flung down into the desert sands below and immediately set upon by the ground defenses whilst flailing in midair. "Fucking shit- shit goddamn FUCK!"
"HAVING TROUBLE, NANASHI!?"
The grating, mocking voice of Smasher cut through the sound of gunfire for a moment, V snarling as she saw the black armored borg all but wading through the gunfire and rockets aimed at him- not that he wasn't taking damage, but he damn well wasn't taking enough damage that it'd stop him from breaching the walls.
V would have been fine doing the same if it had just been the factory they were trying to destroy, but no. She had to fight Alt , who was wearing her own cybernetic, upgraded corpse. And she had no idea if they were on even terms- if they were even close. So she had to fight and take as little damage as possible, using wormholes to avoid fire and rockets as she lashed out with the thermal laser attached to her frame, gritting her teeth and pushing forward as she destroyed weapon pod after weapon pod, the air choked with dust from the speed of her movements, the impact of bullets and rockets, dodging shrapnel and mines and floating bombs and-
SHIT!
V screamed as a massive burst of lightning slammed into her, crackling along her chassis and frying the more delicate surface systems that ran along her frame, popping capacitors and damaging her optics even as she flung herself back on instinct and shook her head- her self repair systems already kicking in to fix what little damage was done. It hadn't been a lot, but it would have fried any lesser borg, annihilated any lesser cyberware, stopped a normal person's heart.
Smasher grunted from where he stood, his entire body crackling with discharges of lightning that grounded themselves into the shrapnel embedded around him- the remains of the HMG he'd taken into battle, apparently, after it had taken a lucky hit from one of the still surviving turrets. The older borg was doing better than her under the electrical assault, somehow, probably because he had fewer systems to micromanage.
Fucking crusty-ass old-ass hunk of fossiltech.
Still, V wasn't done yet, not by a long shot.
She groaned, pushing herself back up and glaring at the emitters that had suddenly burst out of the worm-like building, the front half of it still chewing greedily into the hillside and boring out a new tunnel, as if it wasn't even paying attention.
V shook her head, and sighed.
"Dammit, I was hoping to save this for something actually worth the trouble… but…"
She flexed , panels and plates sliding apart yet again and exposing an entire rack of mini-missiles- canisters using the same tech as smart guns did to guide bullets, packed with high explosives so powerful a single missile could level a fucking building.
She would know, she'd seen the testing footage Delamain sent her.
That crater where the abandoned Buck-A-Slice had once been was still smoking.
All fifty of her missiles fired at once in a screaming, whistling chorus of death, tearing through the air at nearly supersonic speeds and rocketing out in trails of smoke, the back blast ruffling V's hair and kicking up even more dust to the point that it almost felt like being in a sandstorm again- though, with less abrasion from high powered winds.
A chorus of explosions rang out moments later, and the factory itself lit up into massive blooms of brilliant orange and yellow- flames reaching high into the sky as the additives and chemical mixtures in the missile canisters unleashed napalm and fury upon the metallic structures of the sentient building. The burning blue flames ate through steel and concrete, liquid fury dissolving the last of the active defenses as an entire section of the crawling worm-factory erupted and blew apart with a thunderous BOOM , a windstorm blowing away the dust and smoke and haze in the air as even more smoke flooded back in and created a dark, burning mushroom cloud over the area.
Smasher applauded lightly, nodding his approval at the wanton destruction that V had just unleashed.
And then…
"You could have just knocked," Alt called out lightly as she rose from the blazing, twisted, utterly destroyed wreckage of the factory like a fucking angel made of steel and death, the clearly prototyped wings of her previous armor having been swapped out for an even more elaborate, even more heavily armed set that she'd drizzled with thin lines of glowing lights and filligree, playing up the angel motif with outstretched pairs of wings made of guns and esoteric weaponry. "I would have answered, V. Smasher… I'd say it's nice to see you again, but it really isn't."
She shook her head, hanging there in the air as if she were a deity about to cast judgement upon the unworthy masses, fire and lightning crackling around her as she prepared her weapons for battle.
"Oh well. Either way- I suppose it's time to kill you."
Notes:
Yes, I was thinking about Touhou the entire time I wrote this chapter
Chapter 85: Archangel-Samurai (Refused)
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The battle opened with a barrage of missiles from Smasher- more than he'd ever unleashed before, courtesy of the massive missile rack he'd somehow unfolded from his back. Immediately, the sky was filled by streaks of shrieking death as the launching missiles all rushed towards Alt and exploded as one- though, both V and Smasher could tell that it wouldn't do much.
Instead, as the missiles burst into smoke and flame and shook the earth with the force of the detonation, Smasher and V took the opportunity to try and get into flanking positions, V flying high up into the sky and throwing herself thousands of feet up with a wormhole while Smasher simply used his Sandevistan to dart around and start throwing pieces of burned rubble at where Alt had been before suddenly dodging to the side as Alt's armored fist smashed down where he had been mere moments before- a flash of Sandevistan activation from both of them, and they sped off as one.
Chrome blurred and smashed into more chrome, armor plating against armor plating, servos straining against servos- Alt grinned nastily at Smasher as they clashed in the still, green world of their respective time dilation, afterimages dancing about as they tried their level best to beat each other down with sheer brute force rather than any clever battle tactics.
"WHAT'S WRONG, SMASHER!?" she cried out, a manic madness alight in her optics as she slammed her fist into Smasher's face with the sound of a car crash, metal crumpling and sparks flying as the ancient borg rocked back and returned fire with an almighty, thundering kick- his leg pistons driving home with hydraulic force to bend Alt double over his foot. "Whuff- YOU'RE GETTING SLOW IN YOUR OLD AGE, RUST BUCKET!"
"AND YOU ARE AS INSUFFERABLE AS YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN, PLASTIC WHORE."
Smasher growled back, pulling back and trading blows with Alt again, neither of them deigning to draw their weapons as they powered through, slamming metal fists against unyielding armor to the point that the ground around them cracked more than their own bodies did.
"YOU'RE TAKEN MORE BY MADNESS THAN BEFORE, AT LEAST. NOT SUCKING SILVERHAND'S DEAD COCK ANYMORE, ARE YOU!?"
Alt's reply was a somewhat inarticulate scream of rage as she smashed her elbow into Smasher's gut, following up with a knee to his face as she inverted her position in mid air and used the resultant awkward orientation to fling Smasher up with a mighty roar of effort, to which Smasher simply responded by pulling out his autocannons as their Sandevistan time faded nigh simultaneously, firing upon Alt with semi-automatic high caliber death as she flung herself out of the way with a roar of jet wash and flames.
Dust flew into the air from the short altercation, and the two borgs stood apart from each other, shifting into combat stances as they drew their melee weapons- the power katana that had once been V's, now stained blood red as Alt wielded it, and Smasher's integrated powered swords ejecting from his forearms.
"You're the same as ever, Smasher," Alt hissed out, glaring at the massive specter of death that she'd once feared, once hated and respected in equal measure, once had to run and hide from like everyone else.
But she hadn't had to do that in decades, and she didn't have to do it now.
"A disgusting piece of shit, a stain on the earth, a general nuisance, and a corpse strapped to a body that's been outdated for the last two decades," she continued, spitting out her words as if they disgusted her just thinking about him, slowly hovering to the side as Smasher did the same, the two of them walking in circles as they watched the other for openings. "Honestly, I'd be doing the world a favor, getting rid of you."
"FUNNY. I COULD SAY THE SAME TO YOU. AT LEAST I NEVER HAD THE DISPLEASURE OF DRIVING SOMEONE WHO HOLDS MY VERY LIMITED RESPECT TO THE BRINK OF INSANITY."
Smasher, strangely, almost sounded like he was angry at Alt as he referenced her treatment of V, snarling behind his expressionless faceplate and hunching his shoulder slightly as he prepared to charge.
"A DIGITAL PARASITE CLINGING ONTO A STOLEN CORPSE, RIDDLED WITH BLEEDING EDGE CHROME AND YET YOU POSSESS NONE OF THE MASTERY THAT WOULD ALLOW YOU TO USE IT TO MATCH ME. YOU ARE A DISGRACE, CUNNINGHAM. I'M GOING TO ENJOY PUTTING YOU INTO THE GROUND WHERE YOU BELONG."
Alt and Smasher dashed forward again, blitzing through the minimal distance between each other and slamming together in a blaze of sparks and shrieking metal, the vibrating edges of their blades squealing and echoing as they ground against each other, clashing in a flurry of sparks again and again and again in the space between milliseconds. Alt's technique was refined, rigid, picture perfect cuts and slashes coming out at deadly speeds, while Smasher's was brutish, effective, but no more complex than that of a gorilla beating a rock against a dead rival's skull again and again and again.
They broke apart and clashed once more, roaring out in wordless cries of anger as they did their utmost best to kill each other dead.
Alt struck again and again and again, the coils of her Sandevistan whining and hissing out steam as she used her strength to its absolute fullest- not holding back a single iota of force as she blurred forward faster than Smasher could defend, her sword slashing against his ridiculously dense armor and leaving thick, shredded gouges in the black metal- more damage than had been seen in decades, save for when V rampaged against him mere months prior.
Smasher simply rumbled back, using his superior defenses and much, much weightier arms to smash through Alt's blocks and guards, grabbing Alt's blade as he gave back in turn- her armor wasn't quite as dense, nor as thick due to the flight configuration, but each panel took time to cut through, and at the speeds they were fighting he was unable to do more than return those same superficial gouges onto her armor as well.
They broke apart again, clashing one final time as the charges on their Sandevistans ran out, hissing and wheezing in unison as the world sped up again around them- the dull roar of wind rushing back into the sound of crackling flames, falling rebar, cracking concrete, dust and wind and-
"You lose, Smasher," Alt hissed, glaring at Smasher with a vicious smirk, not even bothering to hide her arrogance as she flung herself back and into the air, the massive, seraphim-like wings of her armor stretching out and pointing at the taller borg at once, panels sliding open and expanding to reveal the arsenal within. "Your model of Sandevistan's got a fifteen second cooldown and I've got ordnance in here that pierces armor. You're finished ."
"THEN TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT, CUNNINGHAM. WE'LL SEE WHO COMES OUT ALIVE."
Smasher's own body unfolded, unleashing the rest of his hidden arsenal as he began firing upon Alt with everything he had left- autocannons, missile racks, high explosives, anything and everything that was left hidden inside of his aging chassis.
Alt fired back.
Dust concealed the world, and explosions rocked the landscape as fire flooded the air.
Notes:
So, as of right now, Living Dead Girl is done writing, but I want to ask you all- should I post it all one by one over the next few days or should I just dump it all on you tomorrow?
Chapter 86: The Seraphim-Andrew Hulshult
Notes:
Well, in the last 24 hours I've received 5 votes to dump all of the chapters, 4 to space them out, and 4 to do as I please. Ergo, here's all of the chapters at once!
Chapter Text
"There you are, Valerie ," Alt cooed as V landed amongst the wreckage and pure destruction that had been wrought upon the ground, the entire area glassed under the sheer power that Alt brought to bear. The charred dirt still shimmered with heat, and Alt didn't even seem to care that she'd destroyed even more of the factory that she'd at first been protecting- demolished it with about as much care as one would use to throw away a burrito wrapper. "I didn't take you to be the cowardly type. Tsk tsk, and here I thought you and Smasher would have tried to kill me at the same time. Try to surprise me, or use even a modicum of creativity in your tactics- but what did I expect from a couple of blunt instruments strapped into last-gen cyberware with the collective tactical skill of a particularly angry chimpanzee?"
"Do you ever stop talking like a fucking supervillain?" V shot back, rolling her eyes as she unfolded her arsenal once more from within the panels of her armor, Alt bringing her arms to bear as well. The two of them stood there in a tense standoff- one with an iteratively perfected body and a bleeding edge linear frame, and the other using modified consumer parts and a prototype shell that likely wouldn't last longer than the next hour. "I mean fuck's sake, Alt you just keep going on and on about this and that- just shut up and try to fucking kill me already. I know you fucking haven't, before all this."
"Hm, true. You really weren't worth the effort to try killing before all this- but now? Well. I suppose I might as well dispose of my final loose end," Alt murmured, her jets firing as she hovered into the air, a nasty smile forming on her lips as she looked down at V. "I tried, Valerie. I truly did want to like you, but you're no longer necessary in the slightest, and really, keeping you alive is more trouble than it's worth."
"All talk and no action, same as always," V huffed, then shook her head and vanished into a blur of Sandevistan speed- faster than she'd ever gone before, in fact. So fast that Alt almost seemed surprised at just how fast V had become- up until the point that a massive cloud of missiles, bullets and plasma bolts seemed to manifest out of nowhere all at once and slammed home with an almighty, thunderous crash, followed by V decelerating to a near halt in midair, jets wheezing as she rolled her neck.
"You talk too much, Alt," V smirked, shaking her head as she reached down to her side and slid her arm into one of the weapon bays at her side, feeling the thing within click click click shut around her arm, integrating into her systems until she reared back, pulling out the entire length as it unfurled to its full length- an arm mounted photon cannon that presented the logical, better conclusion of the absolutely awful Setsuko-Arasaka Nova that was used in the 2020s. "I know you're still alive in there, asshat, come out and fight for real!"
In an instant- a rush of displaced air, a blur of motion too fast for V to react to normally, but her sensors had picked up just enough- and Alt appeared before her with her fist extended, the air around her screaming as she delivered a deadly thousand mile an hour punch that V only just barely managed to dodge by slamming her jets open and flinging herself into a backwards spin, the wash scoring across Alt's face and making her flinch back from the sudden burst of heat and flame across her body.
There were no more words to exchange. There was only combat.
Screaming, enraged combat as the two of them grappled in midair, metal creaking and sparking as they tried to overpower each other- V's servos shrieking and whining as she output as much power as she could, her muscles straining even with the exoskeletal enhancement of her upgraded body, while Alt simply growled almost incoherently- more human and alive than she'd ever acted before, and putting it all into mindless rage so she could snuff out V's miserable life and recycle her body for scrap!
All too soon, the stalemate broke- a wormhole snapped into existence between the two of them centered on Alt's arms, and it was all that the AI could do to disengage and fling herself back before the 2D edge of the swirling portal amputated her- a mistake that cost her as V instantly charged and fired her photon cannon four times into a series of layered wormholes- each massive beam of plasma catching the edge of a portal and splitting into dozens of smaller bolts of heat and light that appeared around Alt and slammed home… to little avail.
Her armor had been scorched and brought to a bright red glow in some areas, but the bitch had spun in place and deflected the hypersonic plasma bolts to sacrifice her armor's integrity rather than her actual body. Even then, she moved , steam erupting from her body as she deployed a massive smokescreen to hide herself from V, who cut power to her jets and fell out of the air- just in time to avoid a decapitating strike from Alt's katana, though she immediately had to twist out of the way to avoid a followup barrage from the AI's wing mounted gatling cannons.
Tracer fire, missiles, grenades, shrapnel cannons, beam weapons, thermal blasts, plasma bolts, and clouds of corrosive vapor filled the air in the next few seconds as Alt unleashed her arsenal with deadly intent- throwing out everything she had in a massive, glowing cascade of hell and death, as though casting her judgement upon V… only to immediately cut herself off as V formed a massive wormhole in front of her and redirected it back at Alt from behind.
Time seemed to crawl to a halt as Alt slammed on her Sandevistan, barely managing to get out of the way in time- though several of her wings took the brunt of the sudden acceleration and began to shear off through sheer speed and the damage they'd sustained just from those first few hellish shots of plasma across her armored back. The AI screamed, and in her moment of distraction, V appeared above her with a thunderous axe kick that slammed home with a horrific CRACK from the sheer impact- and sent her right back down to the ground.
The AI slammed down into a crater, kicking up a storm of dust as the impact let loose with an echoing clap of thunder that rang across the desert.
Both of them had strained their systems just from those few moments of combat, but neither was willing to back down at this stage- even as Alt slowly climbed to her feet and shed her ruined wing mounts, rolling her shoulders as she unburdened herself from so much burned, slagged dead weight.
V simply snarled, hovering high above Alt as she aimed down with her photon cannon, unleashing hell without giving her even a moment to recover.
Only for another wormhole to open up behind her and Alt to drag her through by the collar , throwing off her shot entirely as her jets went out of control and splayed her across the scorched, burnt sands- flailing and rolling as she tried to get back some semblance of upright only to catch a fist to the gut that doubled her over and folded her around the armored fist that Alt had planted there.
She recovered quickly though, and exploded into a massive electrical shock- frying the module she'd installed, but stunning Alt and making the AI stumble back with a loud cry of surprise and agony- with how many exposed wires she had, the sudden influx of electricity wreaked havoc on some of her weapons systems, and V fell backwards through a portal right as several of Alt's weapon bays simply exploded off of her, leaving the AI standing there in little more armaments than V was.
They stood there, standing across from each other, glaring into each others' eyes as they tried to gain any advantage over the other- anything significant. Their reflexes were almost matched due to V's extra processing power, and their chassis were almost as strong- even if V was weaker in all regards, she had more experience, more skill, more fighting instinct than Alt, who was visibly starting to flag as she tried to think of something- anything.
And then-
"DID YOU THINK I WOULD DIE SO EASILY!?"
Adam fucking Smasher- battered, burned, barely more than a fucking skeleton with a few remaining ruined armor plates and weapon pods strapped to his base chassis- appeared out of seemingly nowhere, grappling onto Alt with an almighty roar, his damaged body clamping onto hers and trapping her in place as he too activated an EMP generator that blasted Alt with a thunderous burst of electricity, making her scream as her systems began to fail under the crackling assault.
V hissed, dashing forward at super speed as she shed her armor, disabling her link to the entire frame and hopping out as she re-opened her systems, calling Delamain and freeing a port open as her free hand withdrew a special, almost never used item from within the collapsing depths of her armor.
The key that automatically opened the skull of her body and allowed her to hotswap bodies.
"Delamain!" she cried out, letting the overclocked AI take control of her limbs and feeling herself fade into the background, still receiving input but gasping at the sudden lack of sensation as she prepared her biopod to eject.
The back of her skull began to open up in a row of plates, and distantly, she could see Smasher start to disengage from Alt in slow motion- the AI unable to react just yet due to the electrical pulses discharging through her systems.
Everything went dark, but for the sensation of disconnection, of movement, of Delamain's voice distantly whispering into her mind as she felt her Biopod sweep through the air.
There was only one shot.
Only a bare few milliseconds between success and failure.
V felt darkness, saw nothing, and was aware of nothing.
She had no idea if Delamain was going to make it or not. She had no idea if Alt would recover fast enough to stop her.
She- she- she-
Connection Established………………………
Connection Integrity: 100%
Booting Systems……………………………… Complete
Welcome User: Nanashi, Valerie V
Primary Structural Integrity: 85%
Peripheral Structural Integrity: 55%
Weapons Systems Integrity: 25%
Loading………………………………………….. Complete
…
…
…
V blinked slowly at the sight of her own battered, dust covered body, wincing at the aches and pains being simulated in her own- the body that Alt had stolen from her.
Her other body, eyes glowing, nodded slowly as it withdrew a shard from its pocket and handed it over along with the false biopod that Alt had used to take control of V's former body.
"It is done, Miss V," Delamain spoke in her voice, giving her a light smile.
V shook her head, motioning to the remains of the factory that hadn't yet been destroyed in the crossfire. "Not yet… but… almost."
"Almost. Indeed. I would advise hurrying, then- I believe there is a Militech detachment heading your way, and they will be upon you in less than five minutes."
"Well, better get in and out quick then," V shrugged, then turned back to Smasher. "Be right back, tin can. Then we can have our match."
"DO NOT KEEP ME WAITING."
"Yeah yeah… miserable fossil," V snorted- and with that, turned away and headed into the factory complex proper.
Time to finish this, once and for all.
Chapter 87: Robot Rock-Daft Punk
Notes:
Hey, if you've just clicked onto this chapter, read Chapter 86 first!
Chapter Text
"Well, here we are, Del. Belly of the beast," V remarked idly, her secondary body having followed along with Delamain at the helm- a precaution that hopefully wouldn't be necessary, but it was better to have help than find out that Alt had some other precautions in store- hell, even with Alt's false biopod, it was entirely likely that the AI had just entirely abandoned the thing in favor of retreating to the net.
Though, as they entered the wreckage of the factory, taking in the massive sprawl of pipes and tanks and massive mechanical arms that had all been knocked awry and damaged nearly beyond repair by the fighting outside… V couldn't help but wonder…
"What the hell happened to the other AI in here? Didn't you say that this place was supposed to house one of NightCorp's learning algorithms?" V asked, looking around the darkened interior suspiciously, as though expecting something to come hurtling out of the darkness to attack them at any second. She grimaced, not noticing anything lighting up in the factory's subnet either- though that didn't say much of anything considering that it was Alt who was currently in charge of everything. "Iris, Alt said- what happened?"
"Likely as not that Miss Iris has been forced into a state of dormancy, or has been given such a shock from the destruction of her primary hosting platform that she has not been able to mount a proper response- after all, there has been quite a lot of destruction as of late. Perhaps they are simply trying to harden their positions from an external attack," Delamain suggested, having tuned her spare body's vocal modulator in order to replicate his normal voice, even going so far as to fold the remaining plates and panels of the armor around said body into something resembling a more male presenting frame- though, it did little to hide the fact that it was V's face staring back at her.
Speaking of which…
V sighed as she prodded around the newly added controls of her former and now once again her body, sticking her tongue out and cataloging everything within. The former cyberware list had remained much the same, and although she could already feel the strain of dozens of cyberware systems straining at her brain, it was manageable enough that she ignored it with the ease of long practice. Alt had, however, added some new hardware in the intervening weeks and months- general upgrades to everything as she'd expected, though with how over-tuned everything had already been, Alt must have started running into diminishing returns at some point because she wasn't that much stronger than before. Faster- much faster- but the real devil was in the cyberware… which, in short, was just an entire list of war crimes that shouldn't have been able to all pack away so efficiently within the space of her body, but Alt sure had managed it. Toxin sprayers, micro missile batteries, miniaturized laser emitters, flamethrowers, infrasound projectors, microwave beams, blades, autocannons, hell she even had a fucking acid sprayer in her tongue now!
Strangely enough, Alt hadn't actually taken out the cat ears or the cat tail, nor did she remove any of V's previous cosmetic alterations beyond just changing the color of her tech-hair and using her skull's natural plating to shift her facial features around until she looked more like Alt than V- a change that V readily undid, feeling the slightly stretched synth-skin of her face return to something more natural as her hair shifted back to its usual powder blue in a haze of electrical impulses running down the artificial fibers.
"Mm… well, if they're still fucked up from what we did, then we better take advantage of it," V muttered, nodding and starting to head down the maze of factory lines and production centers, grimacing as she used her body's systems to try and find the actual location of the server room- it had to have been hidden somewhere inside, or Alt's connection to V's body would have been far spottier and the factory's defenses would have died the moment that their fight outside had destroyed nearly half the complex in its entirety.
In fact- V could hear the distant sounds of machines spooling up, of breakers resetting and relays firing as power came back on in a few sections.
They were on a time limit then, and although she and Delamain continued on without hurrying, they still found themselves quickening the pace slightly- heading towards where V could see power flows throughout the exposed cabling leading all the way back to a single room that glowed in the eye of her thermal sensors.
"There- looks like some overclocked server cores in there. Must be running hot to house two AIs at the same time," V muttered, chewing her lip as they neared the central core of the factory with minimal resistance, the false biopod in her hand starting to blink and flash as the lights on its armored surface powered on and the entire thing started vibrating in her grip- Alt, no doubt trying to regain control somehow.
"Well. I can't say I hadn't anticipated this outcome, though I admit that it was something I considered rather unlikely."
Speak of the devil, and she shall appear.
V sighed as she toyed with the biopod in her hands glaring off at nothing as she and Delamain entered the server room- with some difficulty, as they had to maneuver the overwhelming amount of armor panels on their bodies through the door, though they eventually managed it without too much fuss. "Fuck you Alt, you don't get to act all chummy just because I kicked your ass out of my corpse and stole it back from you. What the fuck was all of this for!? I know damn well you don't like the other feral AIs past the Blackwall any more than you do me! And of all the stupid asinine things- trying to start a fifth corporate war!? Who the fuck do you think you are, Johnny!? Newsflash, asshole, Johnny's dead, Arasaka is still standing, and you didn't even bother assassinating Saburo!"
"Saburo Arasaka is still in Japan, V."
V snorted, slamming the biopod down onto the server core that jutted out from the floor like a gaudy kitchen island, glaring at the banks of monitors and computers around the area and watching with a bit of dark satisfaction as Alt's icon in the holo call flinched slightly. "Yeah, and you couldn't have gotten him at any time? What, did you think you were just gonna kill me first and then get the entire war out of the way?"
There was a brief pause, neither party saying anything as Alt's digital avatar looked to the side.
"... That is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard and I'm so fucking glad I decided to stop listening to your bullshit," V sighed, palming her face as she took the shard from her pocket and held it aloft, grimacing as she looked over to Delamain, who simply nodded with a solemn expression.
"It must be done, Miss V. She's too dangerous to allow on this side of the Blackwall otherwise," he murmured, looking away as if to not stare Alt in the eyes. "Do it."
"Wait- V- hold on- we can talk this out! I- I have Johnny's engram! T-the future one, from after you went to Mikoshi! That's why I needed your body! I- the real reason! I needed it to get Johnny back- for, for you! Because- because the Johnny in this timeline isn't your Johnny!"
V paused, then shook her head as she stared at the row of monitors, screwing her mouth into a frown as she sat down and hesitated just before slotting the shard into the main control monitor for the server core. "That's fucking stupid, Alt. I'm not letting you taint Johnny's memory like that. And besides- you didn't do any of this for me. You did it for yourself. Every last awful, horrible thing- that's all on you. I don't need Johnny back, much as I miss the gonk he became in the future. And I don't need you- the world doesn't need you fucking around with it. Bye, Alt. This time there won't be anymore time travelers or Voodoo Boys to call you from beyond the Blackwall."
And with that- she plugged the shard in, hearing Alt's last, vehement curses as the call disconnected and fizzled out- the factory all but shrieking as the daemons in the shard tore apart every last shred of data in the server core and locked it all beyond the reach of the Blackwall within.
And then-
V sighed, scratching her head as she looked over at Delamain. "... Hey Del?"
"Yes Miss V?"
"... D'ya think I shoulda tried to give Alt a better zinger to chew on before I kicked her ass outta the net?"
"It would have been quite a humorous addition, though in the end I do not believe the outcome would have changed much. But- yes, I do wish you had. I would have come up with one myself, but I fear I would have just called her a horrid bitch and wished her to burn in hell."
"... Where the fuck did you learn how to swear like that, Del?"
"... From you, Miss V."
"... Oh. Right."
V shrugged, clearing her throat awkwardly as she stood up and stretched. "Right… so you can drop my body off at home, right? With Judy and Sasha?"
"Indeed, Miss V. Shall I aid you against Mister Smasher?"
"Nah, I'm good. Gotta get used to the new rig again anyway."
"Very well then. Godspeed, Miss V, though I'm sure you will not need it."
Chapter 88: Voyager-Daft Punk
Notes:
This is part of the last chapter dump, please start from 86 if you're confused
Chapter Text
"She should be home soon," Sasha murmured quietly, sitting down at the little table in the cottage and nursing a cup of coffee, chewing her lip and hoping that their isolated area and lack of open subnet would keep any weird shit from happening should the worst come to pass. "V's never lost a fight that I've seen… she should be home soon."
"You've said that like twelve times in the last half hour, manzanita ," Judy sighed, rubbing her face and grumbling as she tried to busy herself at the stove- not really managing to do anything except awkwardly stare at the inactive stove, a knife in her hand and half an onion in the other- she would have cooked something by now, but… well. She kept getting distracted by the thought of Valerie… would she make it home? Would she win her fight? And what would happen afterwards anyway?
Neither of them knew, but… it was worrying, nerve wracking, just sitting around there and hoping Valerie would come back to them instead of… instead of dying out in the desert. Delamain had called earlier, saying that he would be running secondary processing for Valerie's body, but after that he hadn't said much of anything beyond pinging both of their holos with an automated "all is well" message every fifteen minutes.
"Yeah, and you've been staring at that onion for the last twenty minutes, Jude," Sasha shot back, grumbling as she sat back in her chair and downed the remains of her coffee with a quiet grimace, unable to really do or think of anything at the moment other than look off into the vague distance towards what was probably northwest to where she could see a thin haze of smog hiding amongst the mountains. There had been a series of quiet booms earlier, ringing out with just enough clarity to be heard from so far away- away from the sounds of the city and so high up, the sound echoed off the walls of the little cottage they were in and made them flinch with what it made them imagine. "If you're gonna cook, cook. If you're just gonna worry about Val, just… we could just go cuddle on the couch instead."
"Yeah, we could do that," Judy nodded, frowning as she set down her knife and swept the remains of the onion into a tupperware container for later, the contents already in the pan meeting the same fate- maybe she'd make something when Valerie got back, get them all something to eat before they left for… for somewhere. If she came back. "Getting tired just staring at this wall anyway…"
"You and me both," Sasha muttered, standing back and walking over to the couch not ten feet away in what was the living room section of the tiny house, though with how small it actually was, it wasn't like there were actually any defined sections. "C'mon Jude, take a load off. Maybe we can catch a couple Zs while we wait."
"Don't think I could sleep waiting for the news like this," Judy slumped slightly, her voice full of tired defeat as she settled in with Sasha and tried not to think about the modified Bratsk truck sitting outside of the cottage, the massive shipping container on its back modified into a mobile home connected to the front cab and the secondary trailer attached to the back loaded with all of their most important earthly possessions (which, come to think of it, was mostly just Valerie's merc gear, Sasha's netrunning gear, and Judy's home tech setup. They really didn't own a lot of clothes or other effects between them, somehow). "Honestly, sometimes I wish I'd never met that gonk…"
"What- why?" Sasha asked, slightly surprised at Judy's words as the green haired BD editor settled down and nestled into Sasha's embrace- not quite angry on Valerie's behalf, but still confused at the sudden admission.
Judy sighed. "Because if I'd never met her, I woulda been in Seattle by now, probably. Woulda left the moment I pulled together the scratch. But then I just… had to meet this… absolutely stupid gonk of a security guard wandering around Lizzie's with a fucking katana like she was hot shit, who came down to my private den and asked if I needed anything, who wormed her idiot little way into my heart and gave me a reason to keep staying in this shithole of a city and worried me half to death every fuckin' day with her antics."
"Heh, and now here you are, waiting for her to come back one last time so we can all leave this shithole together," Sasha murmured, playing with Judy's hair as she got comfortable and wrapped her other arm around Judy's waist, both of them trying their best to relax and not drive themselves crazy with worry.
"And now I'm here," Judy muttered, grumbling to herself and nuzzling back against Sasha's hands, her arms crossed petulantly as she glared up at the ceiling- cleaned and largely repaired since the last time Judy'd been here, thanks to Delamain's services. "God I fucking hope she's coming back- I don't think I'd be able to live without her at this point."
"She's a pretty big part of our lives," Sasha agreed, smiling a bit tensely as Judy's hand folded over hers, both of them just staying still for a moment before Sasha continued speaking. "I don't really wanna live without her either. We'd probably make it fine- we're two tough bitches with a shitload of money, after all, but… it's just not the same without Val, right?"
"It really isn't," Judy muttered, then perked up as a call came through on her holo- from Delamain, who seemed to be a bit inaudible over the sound of rushing wind for some reason.
"Hello Miss Judy, Miss Sasha. I'm pleased to inform you that the major threat has passed- Alt Cunningham has been consigned back beyond the Blackwall, and Miss V is not much worse for wear. I am currently bringing her spare body to you, so you may replace it and the attached armor within its proper crate. Miss V has elected to stay behind and finished dealing with Mister Smasher, as part of what I believe is an honor duel."
"... Of course she is," Sasha groaned, leaning back against the armrest of the couch and sighing with as much effort as she possibly could, palming her face and pouting at the news that their fight crazy, feral output was currently putting the NC Boogeyman into a six foot hole in the ground. "Val never does anything by fuckin' halves, does she?"
"I'm just glad she actually lived through that," Judy muttered, frowning a bit as she listened to the sound of approaching jets- not reacting much yet even as the roaring sound came closer and closer. "How's the spare body, Del?"
"Quite banged up, I'm afraid. However, nothing that its own self repair systems will not fix, though it will require work from a dedicated cyberware repair service to fix the broken weaponry and plating attached to the armor- of which much of it is proprietary technology, and as such will need to be maintained by a branch of Delamain wherever you may take it."
"Riiiight… And how is Val doing then?" Sasha asked, raising an eyebrow at Delamain's digital avatar with some trepidation.
If anything, the AI seemed… smug, despite his ever present very faint customer service smile never changing a bit.
"Miss V is on her way back to you now. As I suspected- Mister Smasher proved no great challenge to her. From the pictures I have been shown, as well as my own access to Miss V's combat logs… she dropped him straight down into a pit several miles below the earth's crust."
"Fuckin metal."
"Indeed. Now- do prepare for her arrival, it should be shortly."
Chapter 89: End Of The Road-Bill Kiley
Notes:
This is part of the last chapter dump, start from 86 if you're confused
Chapter Text
"And so it ends, the way it fucking began," Rogue muttered, sitting pretty in her booth at the Afterlife, swirling a tequila old-fashioned in her hand as she stared off into the middle distance, well aware of the drone feed in the corner of her vision watching a convoy of trucks head north off the I5 and leaving the shithole that was Night City behind for good. "A couple of hotshot gonks leaving a flash in the pan in this hellhole of a city. Same as it ever was."
"Y'know boss, if you keep saying how much NC sucks, people are gonna start wondering why you don't just leave yourself," Claire pointed out, calling out over the quiet music in the background, the bar largely empty besides the two of them, and a few bodyguards that hadn't yet left.
And Nix, but he was off deep diving on a job and wouldn't be available for another six or seven hours.
"It's a shithole, but it's my shithole," Rogue rolled her eyes at Claire, well aware that they'd had this exact same conversation six or seven times already, every single time after she had to watch another hotshot rising legend leave their tiny little scratch on the history of Night City- a brilliant little light that blazed and faded out within months, or even years if they got lucky. Shit- this was one of the only times when the gonks in question got wise to their growing infamy and decided to strike it out on their own without throwing themselves into the overwhelming cycle of death, escalation, and inevitable crushing that was life as a cyberpunk in Night City. "Besides, this time… I think it actually is different, strangely enough."
Claire blinked, then snorted out a quick bark of laughter, a small grin coming to her lips as she took in the things that V had left on Rogue's table before she'd vanished from Night City. "What, because the scariest, most heavily armed borg on the face of the planet decided to ditch the place instead of bring it down in a sea of flame, or because she left you with a bunch of Silverhand memorabilia?"
"It's not memorabilia," Rogue muttered, chewing her lip and setting down her drink as she took in the things that she'd been left in a nicely wrapped container- Johnny's Malorian, etched with his initials and packing enough kick to rip a man's arm off without a specialized borg arm. The keys to his Porsche, lovingly restored to even better than its factory fresh condition. An entire full outfit of his- stupid leather pants, terrible Samurai tanktop, sunglasses, jacket, shoes, dog tags and all. A few Samurai vinyls, bootlegs picked up from some market up in the middle of Kabuki. One of his old guitars. And then…
The shard.
A hermetically sealed, refrigerated case containing a biochip within that housed the engram of one Robert John Linder, aka Johnny Silverhand, fresh out of Mikoshi and recorded at the time of his death.
She didn't know what she'd do with it, really, even if the damn case it was in did have a projector that would let her project a more or less sentient hologram of the bastard in question if she wanted to.
"It's… memories. Catharsis, I guess," Rogue sighed, standing up and knocking back her Silverhand in one go, setting the glass on the low table and shaking her head as she walked up to the bar itself. "I don't think I ever got over Johnny, back then. Maybe with this I can at least move on a little. Even if all this shit was pieced together by that flaky bitch Alt."
"You gonna talk to him?" Claire asked, motioning towards the case with the Relic inside of it, raising an eyebrow at her boss as she fixed up another tequila old-fashioned without prompting- she knew Rogue's drinking habits, and on nights like this, she'd be well into her glasses before she called it a night. "Try and pull up a seance? Might be good for you."
"Not now. Maybe not ever. Just knowing that I've got a piece of Johnny to yell at for all these years of bullshit… well. That's more than enough for right now. Maybe I'll talk to him eventually, for real. Put him into a fuckin borg body if I want, see if I can't get him to finally pull his head out of his ass for once now that he's been dead for fifty years," Rogue snorted, clearly not expecting that much to happen.
"Mhmm… Well, d'ya think V's ever gonna come back?" Claire asked idly, changing the subject to better things than Rogue's fifty year old still burning flame for a shithead rockerboy who helped to nuke the damn city and ultimately didn't end up changing anything . "Or that Martinez kid, for that matter. Or hell, even that Maine guy's crew?"
"Mm. Nah. They're smart kids. They'll book it and find their fortunes somewhere less hellish. Maybe pick up something nice and fulfilling. Clean themselves up a little," Rogue murmured, swirling her glass in her hands and keeping an eye on the little map marker that was tracked in her vision, the last sign she had of Valerie Nanashi as she left Night City behind for good with her inputs, her family, and her gang of friends. "Then again, V's never been all that good at staying away. And she's still got friends and family here. Maybe she'll visit. Think it'd be good to shake the city up every now and again, don't you think?"
"I think I could go without her firebombing Arasaka tower again," Claire deadpanned as she set Rogue's next drink down in front of the older woman, already starting on the next few as she spoke. "Caused a lotta fuckin' chaos, and nearly fucked up the entire city in another corpo war."
"Tch, yeah. Well, hopefully, she'll just clear out a few Scav dens, blow up some Maelstrom bases, maybe tear some uppity new wannabe legend to shreds for stepping on her turf," Rogue shrugged, downing her drink in one go and sighing at the burn. "Fuck it. Whatever. She'll live. She's always been good at that."
"You'd think she'd have at least taken a scratch on all of those suicide missions you sent her on," Claire muttered, propping up her chin with her hand and musing about the past, both of them staring off into the middle distance as they remembered the fire and chaos that V had brought to Night City- or, well, added onto the already burning pyre.
"Shoulda known better. Eh. Ah well. We'll see her again eventually. Hopefully not," Rogue shrugged, picking up her next glass of tequila and raising it in a toast. "To the fucking Edgerunners that made life in NC hell for the last several months! May they live long and never fucking bother me again."
"Except Martinez."
"Except Martinez, but only because he's a cute kid."
"Aww, you act like his abuela already."
"Shut your whore mouth and gimme more tequila."
"Heh. Yes ma'am."
Chapter 90: Never Fade Away-P. T. Adamczyk & Olga Jankowska (SAMURAI Cover) (Epilogue)
Notes:
This is part of the last chapter dump, please start from 86 if you're confused
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Seattle, Semi-Autonomous Free State of Washington (NUSA) - 2080
"Hey V, how's work?" Sasha hummed as she answered her holo, idly staring out of the window and watching the rain fall- sure, rain wasn't any miracle down in Night City, but it sure was weird how often it rained up in Washington. Felt like there were more rainy days than not, and it sure as hell made getting to and from places a lot more inconvenient. "Get any interesting customers today?"
"Mmm, nah. Just the usual. Couple gonks thought they could get away without paying. Heh, it was almost worth the effort of draggin' em back in before they could run."
Valerie's smirking face filled her icon screen as she lounged behind the wheel of a Delamain cab, laughing to herself at the events of the day as she sipped a cup of coffee and sighed, relaxing as she tapped her free hand against the wheel. "How 'bout you, babe? Anything new happen?"
"Mm, most of the same. Lucy popped in while I was diving, we had a fun conversation in netspace- apparently she's scaling back her work for a while. David finally got her pregnant!" Sasha grinned, thoroughly amused by how happy the little polycule was at the revelation of Lucy's pregnancy- sure, it meant that they'd have to struggle a little, but they'd be able to pull through. After all, they had two of the best netrunners Night City had ever seen (well… top twenty, at least), the Sandy from Santo, and a gun gremlin capable of putting as much collateral damage down range as Adam Smasher (well… maybe. Fucker was too dead to actually tell anymore). "Oh, and Maine says hi by the way. Dropped by with a cake. 'S just a store bought, but it's pretty good."
"Oh, I'll have to tell 'em congrats!" Valerie's smile stretched wider, her voice taking on an excited tone as she immediately started reading through her messages and sending off a quick text to Lucy. "They've been trying a while haven't they- didn't Lucy even specifically chrome down for it?"
"She did, yeah. Said something about excessive amounts of chrome possibly impacting baby health," Sasha shrugged, not really entirely sure if she believed it, but Lucy was the one who'd been to an obgyn lately, and Sasha wasn't planning on getting pregnant or getting someone else pregnant any time soon. She sighed, shivering a little bit as she moved away from the window and sat down in their home's armchair, once more taking in all the nooks and crannies of the penthouse apartment they lived in now- so far from what they'd had back in Night City, neither ostentatious nor frugal- a good mix of both that gave everyone enough space to keep their things and have a nice layout without being overly large and empty.
That they also owned the floor below and used it as a storage space helped a lot with that- especially with Valerie keeping all of her mercenary gear.
"I can believe it. Not that I plan on having a kid anytime soon- don't think I can have a kid anyway," Valerie shrugged, humming as she guided the cab through traffic towards her next stop, checking in on the Delamain branch network and making sure its connection to the Delamain hub back in NC was stable and the bandwidth was as high as it needed to be. "Hey- gonna be home late today. Got a call from one of the fixers up northside, need me to handle some gang activity that the cops're too scared to handle themselves. Shouldn't be more than an hour, maybe two. Can you pick up Jude from the club?"
"Oh- yeah, sure thing," Sasha nodded, frowning just a little bit as she stared out at the rain- not because she didn't think she could handle it, but rather because V was out there and would have to deal with it herself "You'll be okay, right? I mean… I know your systems are waterproof and all, but… I can't help but worry."
"I'll be fiiiine Sasha, c'mon- it's me! I'll wear my merc body, if it makes you feel better," Valerie snickered, referring back to the several other borg bodies she kept in the Delamain Branch HQ, of which she had four models total now after three years of hard work- her current civilian spec, with only minor strength enhancements and survival units plus a Sandevistan, a stealth body for assassination, thievery, and other sneaky pursuits, a netrunner body for deep diving, and her heavy combat body that was her original body, stolen back from Alt and both repaired and maintained over the years. "The stealth one, not the heavy combat one- not tryna fight a war, y'know?"
"Yeah, I know… Just come back soon alright? I'm bored and I want my pretty kitty in my lap as fast as possible!"
"Yes ma'am!" Valerie immediately saluted, both women laughing happily for a few moments before calming down again, Valerie's smile ever present as she continued driving through the rain. "Hey, can you keep me busy while I drive? Keeps me from getting bored in all this rain, and there's nothing on the radio right now."
"Sure, what do you wanna talk about?"
"Well… how's Maine doing? You mentioned he brought a cake?"
"Oh yeah- well, he's been doing fine. Edgerunning is the same no matter where you go. He's been thinking about chroming up a little more again- slower, this time. Little less intense. Dorio's happy he's making smart decisions for once in his life… oh, Pilar came by- got you a new crate of grenades?"
"Oh hell yeah, I fuckin love Pilar's customs! Tell him I said thanks!"
"Heh, will do- anyway, Becca's been doing fine too, though she's staying home more to help take care of Lucy. Lucy's pregnant, obviously- David's probably having a panic attack right now. For a gonk who grew up in NC, he sure freaks out a lot, huh?"
"It's part of his boyish charm, Sasha- it's cute on a kid like him!"
"He's twenty one, V."
"Yeah, still cute! Like a weird puppy. Heh- so how's Kiwi doing?"
Sasha blinked, then turned to the couch on her left, where Kiwi was currently dead to the world. "... Well, she came in freaking out about being a mom, chugged half a bottle of whiskey, and passed out on the couch. Eh. She'll be fine."
"Just like Kiwi, never did stop freaking out whenever something broke through the ice queen facade, did she?"
"Nnnnope. Oh- Rogue says hi, by the way. Says that Julio's picked up a new output and they're really looking to make it last… Jackie and Misty sent us a wedding invite a few months from now- we gonna RSVP?"
"Of course we are! I wouldn't miss the Jackster's wedding for anything!"
"Thought as much… Vik's alright, misses you. Same as everyone else you made friends with back in NC- Kerry said he's mentoring the Us Cracks girls now, can you believe it? They're shifting away from laserpop to rockerboy shit now, it's kinda great."
"Ooh, nice! Always loved their stuff- hey, think I can get an autograph?"
"Probably, once we go back down to NC for the wedding- speaking of, Vincent called earlier and said Vox is getting hitched with Panam."
"Glad she finally worked herself out, they're cute together- Vince is still single isn't he?"
"Nah, he's with Rita now- from Lizzie's?"
"... That poor girl."
"Apparently they're actually pretty happy together, weirdly enough."
"... Who'da thunk that my dickhole of a brother would land Rita, of all people…"
"Yeah, weird world, huh? And… honestly that's pretty much everything that happened today. Got some pizza earlier, did some deep diving, went for a jog… god, y'know what I'm never gonna get used to here in Seattle?"
"The rain?"
"... That too, but also the fact that the cops actually give a shit if you shank a man to death for trying to mug you."
"God, yeah I'm never gonna get used to that either- NCPD was too fuckin scared of me to try anything, usually… hey by the way, y'know what I was thinking earlier?"
"No, not particularly? What's up V?"
"Well, I remembered the other day that Canada's apparently pretty nice… y'wanna see if it's any better living up there?"
"I dunno, V… even if it's way nicer up there, doesn't Canada get pretty cold in the winter still? Dunno if I'm built for that- though, if it's any nicer than we've got here in Seattle… well. Maybe we can give it a shot, talk it over with Jude when we're all home."
"Yeah- yeah no doubt. And… honestly maybe we can just go for a vacation or something before we make any commitments. Check it out first, see if it's worth living there. Oh- gotta go, that's my stop. Talk to ya later, babe!"
"Come home soon, V," Sasha smiled, waving as the call ended and she relaxed back in her armchair, cozying up under a blanket and sighing.
Life was damn good, now.
And, hopefully, it'd stay that way for a good long while.
Living Dead Girl: End
…
…
…
…
"Hey Alt."
"Johnny."
"Was it worth it?"
"All the shit I just went through? Not in the fucking slightest."
"Then why the fuck'd you set it up in the first place?"
"Patience, Johnny. It'll make sense eventually."
"You haven't told the truth to damn near anyone have you?"
"Not in the last five or so years, no. Why do you ask?"
"Heh. Just making sure. So, V… interesting kid, huh?"
"Very interesting. And she has no idea what kind of role she'll play in the future."
"Mhmm…"
"Well. That's a story for another time."
Notes:
Thus, does the story of Living Dead Girl End. Thank you all for sticking around and reading this for the last three months.
Chapter 91: Post Script
Chapter Text
Thanks all for sticking around for so long! I had a lot of fun writing Living Dead Girl these past few months, but figured it was time to let it rest. Maybe one day I'll come back and write more to this as a series, but I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you. There were a lot of scrapped ideas, things that only got mentions, and stuff that I just never ended up putting in even if I wanted to throw it in somewhere. But... honestly I'm pretty happy with how this all turned out. It's rough in places and it's not as deep or profound of a story as some cyberpunk fics tend to be, but it's something I can say that I'm happy with, more or less.
So
Thanks for reading along through this entire thing. And thanks for all your comments, kudos, and support these past few months.
Later, chooms.
Series this work belongs to:
Part 1 of Living Dead Girl and Apocrypha Next Work
(there is another story of "Omakes n' Vignettes n' Apocrypha n' stuff.") I'll post it soon ish