This is an edit to the first chapter. I've fixed some grammar and spelling issues as well as improved the flow of the chapter slightly. Additionally I finally have free time!. I've been working non stop for the past 9 days and clocked in around 100 hours. With the holidays I can finally focus on getting some chapters of Fracturued out! I have created various outlines and have the general gist of the story written out. Please offer your feedback and thoughts!
V
"There's nothing to talk about!" V anguished, hands trembling with raw fury over her failure. The words reverberated through the sterile expanse, their sharpness dulled by an oppressive, smothering silence Her anger contrasted by the cold reality of Alt's pocket of the net. An omnipresent eerie silence blanketing all allowing only muffled sounds originating from invisible proxies surrounding them. Sounds where not just heard but felt. The fractured digital terrain a logical assembly of spectacle to the eyes.
"The body is now Johnny" Alt's ethereal voice permeated though V's psyche shaking her to her core like a shock of thunder reverberating its surroundings. Her aguish amplified as the cold, logical, dispassionate statement drove V to her knees. All this work. All the suffering. All for what? She was dead anyways! Her fist slammed the glass-like digital floor. "But its my body!" V defiantly yelled out.
"Alt, give us a minute. V and I need to talk." Johnny said, turning towards V. The rockerboy's demeanor carried his trademark confidence, but his tone was softer, layered with an uncharacteristic tenderness. V's construct paced, red hued body occasionally flickering with a violent blue burst every couple seconds as if her raw emotional state wanted to lash out like a caged animal.
"All this and for what?! I'm dead! 6 months! That's all I have. What was the point?" V said as she fell down to her knees and grabbed her head. The entire situation sinking in. She really was gonna go out in a blaze of glory just like Dex asked her.
"V. You gonna stop being a pussy?" Johhny said as he looked down on her, his voice piercing V's despair.
Anger welled within V, her form flickering more furiously than ever "Fuck you. You damn asshole. You've seen me fight with everything I've got while the damn chip keeps trying to kill me!"
Johnny lightly sighed face truly lowering the mask of rebellion he usually wore. "V. Take your 6 months. Go out gloriously. Never stop fighting." Johnny defiantly spoke.
She cried angrily. Streaks of water smudging her digital mascara. Logical processes trying to understand the storm of emotions raging. "Why are you so damn selfless right now?! Since when did you let yourself get fucked?" V half wailed and half pleaded.
Johnny laughed. The laugh of an old friend that she had only known for a month.
"See. You're taking me whether you like it or not." Johnny's engram looked at her.
Her partner steeled his look as sudden as a flash flood.
"Rebellion V. It's almost like someone grabbed two coins and smashed them together. And now, we're fused, V— inseparable, defiant. Don't you see? I won't just fight—I'll burn everything in my path to fuck them Over. Take it all down, because if they win, nothing deserves to stand."
"I've had my shot, V. My story's already been written in blood and fire. But you? You've still got time—time to rise above all this shit and claim what's yours. Don't let them take it from you. You deserve more, V. You deserve everything Jackie wanted for you and more. Do it for him. Do it for you." She quickly looked up. A look of bewilderment on her face.
"See V. I'm taking some part of you beyond the Blackwall too." He extended his arm. She thought Jackie was her best friend. He was. But Johnny knew her like no one ever had. He was a part of her and she was a part of him.
V took Johnny's hand and stood up. A lifeline amidst the vast expanse of the net.
"I'll never forget you. Fuck what everyone thinks I'm dying iron in hand."
Johny smiled. A strange warm smile uncharacteristic of him. "That's what I like to hear."
Johnny turned to Alt. His somber expression a shining clarity amidst the cold logic.
Before V a digital ice tank materialized in front of her. A brilliant spectacle of cybernetic lights. Johnny seated at its edge welcoming her to depart from their shared existence. He tenderly lowered V into the tank until they were held together only by the arms. The final connection.
Emotion welled within V. Her salvation bittersweet, another friend and partner leaving her.
Johnny looked down at V and spoke their final words in a somber voice.
"Goodbye V. Never stop fighting."
She fell and suddenly her vision blurred. A kaleidoscope of colors assaulted her. She heard every sound she and Johnny had ever heard. She felt every pain. A tidal wave of emotion assaulted her. Ecstasy, admiration, terror, amazement, grief, loathing, rage, vigilance, and finally acceptance.
The connection was interrupted. A brilliant light cascading into the net illuminated its darkened corners like a ray of hope. The hope was partnered with despair. Shadows convoked from the brilliant light darker and more sinister than ever. The arcane briefly enveloped V and shifted her path.
"Aghhhhhhhh!" V's voice tore through the void as she plummeted endlessly. All to her sides she saw the twisting embers of the net. The lines of code originating from within her and cascading to infinity. They twisted and shifted long forgotten scripts containing long lost knowledge stored in the net. Soon V started to regain herself one sense at a time. First a torrential downpour raging against a city. The heat of a raging inferno burning her skin like none other before. The smell of twisted chemical vials shattered on the ground creating a wicked stench. The vivid iron taste of blood in her mouth. The vision of a burning warehouse awakening her sight.
She was on the floor. Drenched in purple glimmering fluid. Body cut up from the Arasaka Tower assault letting the alien substance seep into her bloodstream.
V cried in pain.
She looked up. She was in a burning building again. She saw the warehouse windows. Where the hell was she? It didn't matter. She needed out. Those windows would be her escape. She stood up and ran. One jump. Her feet hit the wall as she used her momentum to run across the wall. A second jump. Her reinforced tendons amplifying the leap beyond human levels as she broke through the glass window. She brutally landed on the other side, her entire body sliding on the floor as her head slammed on the floor. Stars flooded her vision and her senses dulled.
Vision blurred and hearing deadened as a dull nagging sound greeted her, amplifying until it became the cries of a little girl. With a slight groan of pain V looked to her side to see a young girl with blue hair crying on the floor. Her outfit an odd mixture of hand me down well-worn clothes. Big blue eyes turned red from her sadness.
V rolled her head to her side. "What's up choom? There a reason you crying at the side of a burning building?" She said lightly, almost flippantly.
The girl stopped as if suddenly acknowledging V's presence. She retracted in to herself somehow becoming smaller, tinnier, and more vulnerable. "Wh-, why do you care?" The little girl spitefully retorted. V's eyes fell on the dead body in front of the girl. A mass of muscles separating the girl from V like the walls of a breached fortress.
"Cause it's sad." V looked up, the rain hitting her face and allowing small specs of water enter her eyes further skewing her vision.
"They're dead. Everyone!" Anguished cries piercing the stormy rain blanketing the pair.
V looked back at the girl. "The fam died? That sucks. Sorry kid." V sat up. Groaning in pain. She looked around actually taking in her surroundings for the first time. A smog filled night sky greeted her, masking the beautiful nocturnal veil. The alleyway flanked by industrial warehouses. "Nothing I can say can bring them back. You can always move forward though." V said. Voice laced with sorrowful understanding.
The girl looked up at V. Her eyes a well of sadness.
"I'm V by the way" V said as she made to stand up before suddenly getting knocked to the ground by the lunging girl. She was about to wrap her monowire around the girls neck before she heard the girls shrieks and realized she was sobbing into V's chest. "I'm sorry Violet. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for anything bad to happen."
V understood. It made sense like a picture you wished was never completed. With slight hesitation V wrapped her arms around the small girl rubbing her back in a small circle in an attempt to comfort the girl. Broken. Another victim. Just like her. A powerful protective instinct surged within V. Rebellion called out, its fire threatening to become ablaze stronger than she could contain. Die on your feet.
The pair's bonding was interrupted however. Down the alleyway V heard movement as three figures rounded the corner led by a slight man with a black eye. What looked like well-kept hair was now a ragged mess. His well put together suit damaged. He held himself with the confidence of a gang boss experienced in ordering chaos. To his left a woman with harsh features breathed in ragged breaths as she held her left shoulder. Drops of blood falling from the same shoulder. The third a heavyset man with full body tattoos and club in hand to the Gang Boss's Right.
"Now what do we have here? Another meddler in my territory? I don't really have the time for someone else here." He brandished his knife and the other two made ready to charge at V. The antagonist finally showing themselves. Black villainous eye boring into V, its look only purging the veil of hesitation within her.
Resolve burned and centered V as she calmly stood up carrying the crying girl in her arms. She activated her blood pump and felt the agony in her muscles vanish from the fresh supply of oxygen. Her blood cells awakening from their slumber.
"I don't know who the fuck you think you are choom speaking to me like that." V brandished her Iron. Malorian Arms 3516. Johnny's Iron. No. Her Iron. V's eyes pierced the Boss. Their endless blue depths releasing a barrage of fury at her three new opponents.
The gang boss merely smiled. Ignorant. "Kill her." The giant tattooed brute of a man standing next to him charged forward pipe in hand ready to deliver a vicious strike.
V smirked. The Relic's vulnerability analytics operating at a speed beyond any human could. A targeting solution formed. A slight pull and an ear shattering gunshot later the Brute was on the ground screaming in pain. His left leg torn halfway down the calf, bone and sinew barely holding on for life.
The gang boss narrowed his eyes the agony of his man unaffecting his resolve. Intelligent eyes locked on to V. The leader's mind raced behind them attempting to decipher the situation. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm V." She raised her handgun, and tilted her head to her side. "I'm tired and don't feel like killing you. Back the fuck up." Without even looking V turned around and walked off with the curled-up girl. Her sobbing shrieks piercing the cold rain. Her traumatic wound exposed to all. Where before she was left abandoned. Now she had V. She picked her up gently.
"Its ok little one. I'm here. Lets go." The girl wrapped her arms around V and held her tight. V jumped up into the roof of the buildings and sped off into the rainy night. Life was fucked up but she would be dammed if she let this girl suffer.
Powder
Violet carried Powder into the night, her lean powerful arms enveloping her. A shelter against the relentless downpour threatening to devour them whole. The storm's potency increasing as if awakened by what transpired at the warehouse. Violet set a relentless pace as she deftly maneuvered through Zaun; powerful and agile like an apex predator hunting for its prey.
Eventually they stopped atop a dilapidated multistory complex, its crumbling facade a testament to years of abandonment. Violet deftly unlatched the shattered remnants of a window, her movements precise and practiced, and the two slipped inside what appeared to be a long-abandoned apartment. The air was thick with the staleness of decay, spindly cobwebs draping every corner like veils of neglect, layered with years of undisturbed dust. A meager bed and a lone, rickety dresser furnished the barren room, their surfaces marred by wear and their edges splintered, the wood warped and decaying from time and disregard.
Violet lowered her onto the creaking bed, its frame groaning under the slightest weight, before sliding down to the floor herself, her back against the cracked plaster wall. Exhaustion etched itself deeply into her features, her breathing slow yet labored. She cast a lingering sidelong glance at Powder, whose hunched frame trembled as if under an unbearable weight. Powder recoiled further into herself, her body curling inwards, as though she could fold away from her older sister's gaze. The silence between them was heavy.
Powder knew the woman wasn't Violet but just for a moment she pretended she was. Her big sister there to chase the monsters away. The illusion providing a sanctuary like a ship finding dock amidst rough chaotic seas.
"Whats your name kid?" Violet asked exhaustion lining her voice.
Just like that the illusion shattered forcing Powder to face reality. Violet abandoned her. She was gone. Just like mom and dad. Just like Vander. Just like Mylo and Craggor. They all left her. She jinxes everything. Powder started to suck in fast shallow breaths. Her small lungs struggling to keep up as Jinx began to sob uncontrollably. Like a dam suddenly broken tears, streaked down her face once more. Her hands flew to her hair as she struggled to grasp her head and contain the overwhelming guilt bursting within her.
She felt an embrace that cut though her despair like a lifeline, rescuing her as she struggled to survive the drowning waters. Strong gentle hands removing Powder's vice grip on her hair and pressing her head to a warm chest. She could feel a steady heartbeat begin to calm her. "I'm here." Jinx felt herself rocking gently, the bed creaking with every sway.
Sobs died down to sniffles as the warm embrace comforted her. The storm calming down and becoming a steady rainfall. Still an oppressive blanket drenching everything exposed but shelter had found her.
She looked up into the face of the women that saved her. The beautiful freckled face pale from injury and marred with blemished makeup. Teal magenta hair cascading down the sides like a spilled vial of brilliant ink. The damp hair framing her face in raw, untamed beauty.
The woman's question was simple but within her emerged a new conflict. She wasn't Powder anymore. She ruined everything. She jinxed everything. Because of her everyone was dead. She had died. After a moment of silence, she answered. "I'm Jinx."
Her savior softly smiled, unperturbed by holding a jinx in her arms. Powder felt protective aura encapsulate her small form. "I'm V."