#poor Freckles thought of reading documentation and died

[heartofsnark]

Can You Feel The Sun? (Chapter Nine): Lazarus Rises

Notes: I’m on a roll with writing this. I’m honestly, a little nervous with sharing this chapter since i go more into Johnny’s backstory and like...my headcanon of it since CDPR gave us nothing. But hopefully it works. I also haven't written Johnny's voice in a while, so ahhhh. 

Word Count: 12098

Chapter Warnings:  Death, brief mentions of child abuse, drug use, alcohol, war, ableism, pov switches but not in the usual way.

If you haven’t yet, you can read the previous chapter here!~

 Oblivion wraps around her like a blanket. 

There is no existence. 

No pain. 

No world. 

No V. 

No Aidan. 

Every anxious little thought, every guilt soaked burden; swept away with the reaper’s scythe. Years of running and death has finally caught her. 

Then all at once it seems to let her go. 

It's a flicker at first, neurons firing up again, rewriting and rebuilding themselves. No true sensation or senses; just existence. World still dark and lost to her, but not she is not lost to it, or some version of her isn’t. 

Pain hits her before anything else, a crack in her skull, or where her skull should be. She has no sense of her body, only the vague notion she exists and is in pain. And when every sense returns, the world coming back…. 

It’s not her own. 

There’s a fog around her, a fuzzy filter muting it all. Like trying to recall a memory from too long ago. And she sees and she hears, in a body that isn’t hers. She’s smaller, the world seeming to tower around her. A blazing sun burning overhead in the bright blue of the sky. Playing outside on a sweltering day with bruised knees and grass stains on cheap children’s jeans. A mothers voice calling for Robbie to come home for lunch. She catches a reflection in a puddle, there’s a blur to it, but the dirt smeared face of a dark haired boy looks back at her...at himself… for a moment. 

The world shifts and with it comes a pain she can’t truly feel, a belt whipping through the air and welting a back that isn’t her own. Vision blocked by skinny arms marked with cigarette burns, hiding a face from the next lash. A boot gnashing into his side, the thick fog protecting V from the pain he feels. When he clambers to his feet, spitting blood she can’t taste, despite seeing vignettes through his eyes. He walks through a musty home, where the floorboards creak and threaten to break under his feet. A mirror showing a dark eyed boy with a split lip. 

Then she’s watching the hands of this boy she doesn’t know, playing guitar. He plucks and strums at strings until they bite into his fingers, until he leaves them speckled with blood. And then he plays more. Gifted an acoustic, stole his first electric but forgot to klep the amp alongside it. 

Playing in a musty crowded garage with a young boy with olive skin. Each playing away on instruments, the sounds and words all muffled to V. The pair play badly until they play great, she doesn’t hear, but she knows… 

Tequila and cigarettes before he’s old enough to buy them. V can faintly feel the burn of the booze and the warmth of the smoke. 

Stealing anything that can be tucked away in his pockets. Spray painting every wall he sees. Cherry bombs in mailboxes, picking a fight with anyone who sets him off and most people do. The faint burning of anger in his chest, she can feel it as if it’s her own. In and out of detention centers, a system that can put him away for petty theft, but never lift a hand to stop his father... 

Military reps scouting out young, poor troubled boys, seeing nothing but canon fodder when they look at him. 

Knocking on the door and that same olive-skinned, dark haired friend answering. She can hear the words but knows what’s being said without them. Both fog and clarity. ‘Robbie’ is enlisting, off to say his final goodbye to Kerry, a name she doesn’t know how she knows. He comes running down the street after him, before ‘Robbie’ can get too far away. Neither old enough, children. One made of lank and the other with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. But the military knows boys can take bullets just as well as men. They need bodies, age irrelevant. Forged documents with Robert John Linder scratched across it. That name...

Blurs of training, a mop of dark hair shaved from his head. Separated from Kerry, stationed in different platoons, finding another friend who sticks by his side; both hardened by the military. Lank becoming muscle. Give optics, interface plugs, tech he doesn’t want, but they pry open his skin and put it in anyway. Anything to make him a better soldier. 

Then they’re in combat, muffled gunfire. People brutalized; shot, blown apart and chrome shoved into whatever remains; treated cruelly both by the enemy and the corps that shipped them out there. The heat of Mexico and the smell of gunpowder. Enemy ambush, the faint ting of a grenade hitting the ground. Then Robert is on the ground, shoved there and the body of a friend draped over his own. A heavy boom, shrapnel tearing through his left arm and size, burns across the skin. But nothing compared to his friend…  A grenade meant for him is taken by another, the pair rushed away to medical attention when the air clears. 

He wakes up without a left arm and scars across his torso, pulling tight at his skin. His friend gone, remains thrown out and tags offered to Johnny, the man who died for him nothing but a number, canon fodder in the corp’s war. Not even a day passes before they’re shoving chrome onto what’s left of Robert’s shoulder, eager to give him another chance to die for them. 

So, he runs, deserting and heading to a Night City that V has never seen. He climbs into a dirty motel bed and refuses to crawl back out, watching a ceiling fan turn until Kerry pulls him out. Older, more weathered, still young but neither of them quite the children they were before they saw the war. 

And music becomes his life. Kerry and him scream their words into any microphone they can find. Blaring concerts, they sound as if they’re coming from three rooms over to the merc, but she can feel the energy through the memory. Long nights writing lyrics and melodies. A band forming around them, three more members coming into the fold. Grimy smoke filled clubs and a cramped pathetic excuse of a tour bus. Shows that turn into riots. 

Cigarettes and tequila aren’t enough anymore. He pops pills like candy, snorts anything that will go up his nose, drinks everything but vodka, and fucks any pretty thing that looks his way. 

A woman with freckles and blue mohawk kicks his ass when she catches him balls deep inside a groupie. 

A blonde thrown into the back of a van. 

An anger and rage burning like wildfire in his chest. 

It all blurs and rushes; V never fully feeling what’s going on. All senses are fogged, seeing the snapshots of someone’s life through his own eyes. But she doesn’t feel linked, still distanced from it all. Barely able to think or decipher what she sees through the haze of it all. Just watching blips of a life not her own flickering by, with knowledge she shouldn’t have. 

Its the feeling of graffiti covered steel pressing against hands that first pushes through the fog. Hands that feel like they’re hers, but aren’t. One inked flesh and the other chrome. V can feel the body move as if it’s her own, but she has no command of it, muscles flexing to open double doors. Surrounded by the halls of a grimy little club. She can smell smoke and sweat, she’d gag but she can’t seem too. 

There’s music somewhere, muffled by distance but nothing else now. 

Fog lifted, she's both connected enough to it to feel everything, but separate enough to question what the hell is going on? There’s a tangled mess of emotions in her...his…. Their head. Her own fear, anxiety, mingled with a burning rage pitting in his core. 

There’s a girl leaning against the dirty wall of the club, watching V...or whoever she’s stuck inside of as they walk down the hell. A little smile playing on her lips. Thoughts flitter around V, in a voice that’s not her own. Chick’s cute enough, might of been worth a quick fuck, if he wasn’t rushin’ for time. 

“Hey…” 

V wants to ask her what’s going on, if the girl has any idea, what the girl sees when she looks at her. But her hands don’t move to sign and when she feels her mouth move, a different voice, different words, come out. The same rough voice that thought of fucking the girl in a dressing room. 

“Hey.” 

“You all right?” 

No, none of this is alright. V screams inside a head not her own, but she can feel the pride rolling in his chest, a smirk on his face. There’s an anger mixed with it, he’s going to settle a score, leave a mark. Those thoughts and feelings rattling around. 

“Never been better.” 

“Sure don't look it…’

There’s a scoff in his throat, she’s got no idea what he’s got planned. He continues around the corner, a man at the end of the hall standing before a set of double doors. The letters above say its backstage. Green hued fluorescent lights only draw attention to the grime as his boots click over the floor. That smell of cigarettes and sweat still hangs heavy around her, she thinks it may be coming from him, the man she’s playing passenger in. Oh god, that smell is him, isn’t it… 

What the hell is even happening? Dex killed her, didn’t he? 

“I can't let you on!” The man yells out at him. 

The fuck he can’t. His anger flares, a sliver left arm brought up, slammed into the guy's throat as he’s shoved into a wall,  a gun held in chrome fingers. There’s a mirror against it and V can see the man she’s living life through now. And those foggy vignettes press at her, he’s much older now. Face angry and with a scruffy beard, dark hair grown to his shoulders. 

His name was Robbie..? Robert.. ? Something, like that.

“Hey hey, we're chill,” the man begs ‘Robert’. He certainly looks too old to be a Robbie.

‘Robert’ lets the guy go with sneer, furious the guy would ever try to get in his way as he marches towards the doors. Abandoned music equipment and the music shoots in volume, a man blocking ‘Robert’ from getting up to a stage. Where four people play what sounds like older dad punk rock.

‘That smack, drag drunken roll

Chips are bashin' in my top

Ridin' high, my slots are shot

Metal burnin' beneath my skin

I'm chippin' in, chippin' in’

V would wince if she had control of her face, his face, does she even have a face anymore? The music is good, but painfully loud, something she could enjoy if only she could lower the volume. Phantom limbs she no longer has urge to turn the volume down on hearing aids that don’t exist. 

“Heh… 'course you're high.”  The bouncer in front of the stairs rolls his eyes at ‘Robert’ then steps aside.

‘Robert’ climbs up the short staircase, music painfully loud to V but exactly where he feels at him, bright lights down on him. A familiar face, Kerry from ‘Robert’s’ memories, is the one who sings. 

Until he’s pushed out of the way, gun still in ‘Robert’s’ hand as he grabs the microphone. Looking out into a crowd of people who stare up at him, an entire club room of people cheering and yelling for him. Shirts with tha bright red demon symbol, Samurai across it. Adoring fans, hearing his words, people who know his message, heard it loud and clear. Common men and women beaten down by the corps that rule their lives, that tear them all down for the chance to make an eddie.  And tonight he’ll show them all there’s a bite to his bark; he’ll make his mark, topple Arasaka and do what he should have done years ago.  

“Tonight I'm…” he pauses, leaving that mark may be the death of him, he’s damn near sure it will be, “I'm here to say goodbye to all of you.

And he begins to play to the cheering crowd, a final show before he changes the world.  V would cry out if she had the mouth to do it. Music shakes the venue, ‘Robert’ playing guitar and screaming lyrics into a mic, completely taking the show from Kerry. He channels his anger, his fury, into his music. Screams his rage into the mic. And it's a cacophony for the merc tucked in the back of his skull. She can feel her own stress and pain, but she also feels his energy, his love of this. Even through the anger, he knows that this is the place he belongs. 

This is hell, she thinks as he sings. The idea that every hell is tailored to an individual, everyone has their own personal idea of torment. This is her’s. She died and now she’s doomed to live in the head of some foul smelling rocker who plays nothing but music her sort of ex liked. Surrounded by loud sounds, foul smells, and no control. This is hell, her own special little hell. And she’ll be stuck here forever, for being an atheist or bi or a whore or a murderer… one of those did it. 

After an agonizing hour, the show closes down. More sweat is now clinging to her current vessel’s body and V mentally screams at him to take a shower, but no panicked thoughts seem to reach him. He’s completely unaware of her...presence… in his head. Sweat slick, ‘Robert’ puts away his axe and lights up a cigarette; smoke settles in his lungs, the cloying taste of tar sticking to his mouth. But there’s a relief in him, a tension leaving him, nicotine soothing him if only for a moment. 

Two women are settled down on the steps of the stage, in clinging tacky clothes. Groupies there to claw their way into the pants of anyone who’ll have them, entire fucking lives dedicated to riding the dick of someone more important than them.  Because playing fleshlight to a rockerboy is the closest they’ll ever get to making a difference in this world. 

“You're wastin' your lives, followin' us around like dogs.”

If she had hands she’d hit him. The women scowl at him, obviously taken back at the rockerboy talking down to them, like he hadn’t been thinking of fucking a girl just before the show. Like his eyes didn’t look over the curve of their asses and cleavage. If one of them asked he’d be inside of them in a moment, just has to make them feel like shit first. 

“What crawled up your ass?’

‘Robert’ sneers and rolls his eyes, walking past the stage. His fingers wrapping around the door handle, he was thinking about something he was going to do, toppling Arasaka. There’s a determination in his walk, a goal he’s marching off too, still hints of a soldier in his steadfast gait. The hell is he planning? How could some rockerboy take down a mega corp? There’s a faint but steady sound past the door, a whirring sound. 

“Johnny, wait up!”

He turns, answering to the name she hasn’t heard until now and it’s Kerry running towards him; chasing after him like he did all those years ago, when he followed ‘Robbie’ right to war. She’s not sure if it’s her or ‘Johnny’ remembering it. 

Kerry is older now than he was in the memories, though he looks younger than Johnny. A tall fluffy mullet of dark hair, a scraggly mustache, and a half finished sleeve of ink on his left arm. His hand wraps around Johnny’s wrist, pulling him the rocker closer. 

“Don't do this,” Kerry warns, “You can still change your mind.”

“Get over here man,” Johnny pulls Kerry in closer, a hand cupped to his friend’s face,“Fuck this band. Not your crowd, not your noise, do your own thing.’

They’re close enough to see the scar above Kerry’s lip and the freckles that dot his neck. Johnny taps his finger against Kerry’s chest as he brings his hand from the shorter man’s face. Kerry’s always cared more for the music than the message, more about fame than impact, Samurai more Johnny’s baby then his. But fears kept Kerry from chasing that solo dream as much as he wants, dipping his toes but never taking the chance to fully dive in. Kerry always needed a good kick in the ass to get where he needs to be, might be the last one Johnny can ever give him. 

“Bastard. Tsh… Gonna miss you something awful.”

There’s a softness in Kerry’s voice and smile, a fondness that only comes from lifelong friends. A soft warmth nestles in Johnny’s chest as well, for the first time she feels his lips pull into something she can almost call a smile. 

“See ya in the next life, friend.”

With that Johnny puffs on his cigarette and turns, leaving out the door, the whirring growing louder. The source of it shown; a helicopter landed outside the club, blades spinning and whipping up dust. A woman stands nearby, a wild teal mohawk, someone Johnny knows, fuzzy memories of a tumultuous past. 

“You're late,” she yells out over the sound of the chopper. Hands on her hips, eyes glaring at him. Always tries to play like she’s pissed, but never could resist him. 

“Love it when you're mad. Gets my southern blood pumpin',” he teases with a grin and V can feel the reality of his words, a throb in his dick behind his leather pants. And she doesn’t like that, her discomfort at feeling what it’s like to have a dick oddly mingling with his lust. 

“Get in. 'Fore I change my mind.”

Johnny makes his way to the helicopter, climbing inside, blades achingly loud. Two people already sit in the chopper. A man with chromed skin and fatigues, a woman fiddling with a computer. Her face is obscured by a helmet and visor, only black painted lips showing. 

“Silverhand,” the man greets him. 

Johnny...Silverhand… 

“Hey, Shaitan,” he greets as gears start to turn in V’s head, a head she no longer has. 

Johnny’s ex, Rogue, comes walking towards the helicopter as he turns back to the open doorway. Her name only known through Johnny’s thoughts skittering around her, but it sounds strangely familiar to V as well. Johnny extends a hand to help Rogue into the chopper, but she ignores him. Prideful bitch, he rolls his eyes. 

“Get us in the air,” Rogue yells to the unseen pilot, shoving a headset into Johnny’s hands, “here, put this on, and it stays on, got it?”

Johnny pulls it on and the helicopter starts to take off, the world falling further and further below them. The sign at the top of the club comes into view; The Hammer, Johnny taking another drag on his cigarette as Kerry steps out the back door. Silverhand flicks the out onto the cement as his friend watches the chopper fly off. 

As the helicopter flies through skyscrapers and towers, V struggles to take in where they are. Night City, but not. Towering buildings and screens blasting ads, par for the course in the city of broken dreams. But the ads are for products she hasn’t heard of or ones discontinued and no longer sold. The buildings look rougher, not quite the same slick clean look of the city she’s come to know. 

A city consumed by corps, a vile cesspit with ads as far as the eye can see, each desperate to wring out one last eddie from the masses. The entire system designed to crush people too apathetic to do a damn thing about it. Exploited, violated, used for a profit, and thrown out the second the corps get what they wanted. And the people just take it. No longer questioning why there’s no more farms, only land stripped for profits and nomads forced to abandon their homes. No longer questioning why real food is a rarity, why the priciest drink on the market is filth free water. No longer questioning why someone like saburo is pushing a hundred and the average Night City citizen won’t see forty. Corruption and apathy, best friends united to create the city of broken dreams. He’d burn it all down if he could, but truthfully can’t imagine himself anywhere else…

So… he’ll burn it all down, die for it if he must, and something better can be built in it’s ashes. 

A building in City Center holds a large holo-display showing the time and date; August 20, 2023… Fifty years in the past, the day Arasaka Tower was destroyed. And given his thoughts, she knows where Johnny is headed. That name, Johnny Silverhead, rattles through her. She’s heard it before, a few times. Half listened to conversations with Ava about music, where V would just nod and hope it earned her pity kiss. A name brought up by Jackie when discussing the tower being blown up, shots thrown back in… Rogue’s bar. The older woman with gray hair and the young adult with a wild teal mullet are one in the same. 

V is in the foul smelling, cigarette smoking body of a rockerboy turned wannabe terrorist on his way to set off a nuke that will kill over a quarter million people. 

“Piers're on fire. Pacifica's cut off, shut down. APCs on the streets of Watson,” Shaitan explains, stationed at the machine gun turret beside Johnny. 

“Sons of bitches.” 

“Skull-crackin' out there… that us?” A voice, the pilot maybe, asks over the headset. 

“Johnny's idea. Weyland's drawing Arasaka's attention away from the tower.”

“Collateral damage part of the plan, too?”

“This isn't the cub scouts, Thompson, Chew it up, spit it out,” Rogue tells him, no hint of fear or remorse in her voice as the chopper starts to come around a tower. 

A pillar of black metal with the Arasaka logo emblazoned at the top of it in silver. Levels of the tower get smaller towards the roof, from the distance there’s the bright red flash of holo warning signs forbidding entry. As they ascend higher and higher, the barrage of Arasaka soldiers and turrets atop the tower come into view. 

“Target range acquired.” 

“Make it rain,” Rogue commands and Shaitan begins shooting off the machine gun turret. 

Gunfire rings through the air, Arasaka soldiers yelling out as they fire back, automated turrets beginning to fire at Shaitan. The chopper stays rotating, hovering but never still, to avoid being shot out of the air as the chromed sniper works to clear the roof. Blood painting across the metal as Shaitan blasts through them. 

“Fuck!” 

Enemy fire, Arasaka fire, blasts through, Pinging against chrome and metal, practically sparking. A lucky shot, or three, ripping through Shaitan’s shoulder and he screams in pain, falling onto his back. Rogue yelling out as she kneels down to check on him, Shaitan convulsing in pain. 

“Taking over!”

Johnny takes over the machine gun, optics connecting with the turret sights. Arasaka soldiers flood the roof, nearly impossible to keep track of them; not even a moment passes before Johnny is firing off the gun. It's rapid and brutal, an onslaught as the reverberation of it shakes his body. But there is a hint of strategy beneath, taking out the automatic turrets first, blasting each one until they explode into shrapnel. Only when the final one is in sparks does he turn to the soldiers, Their sidearms can’t compare to the heavy fire. Blasted full of hole at rapid fire, blood and brains spraying. 

A body of corpses and shrapnel left across the roof. He pulls away from the gun, unzipping a duffle bag. A white constructed mechanism, wire, switches, and a giant nuclear energy warning across it. He’s about to plant a nuke in Arasaka. Fucking stop it, you idiot, all you do is cause more harm than good. She tries to scream inside his head, but nothing comes of it. The helicopter lowers down closer to the tower roof. 

“Murphy?” Rogue calls out. 

“Found our access point. Get moving.” 

“Johnny, remember the plan?” Rogue asks as Johnny zips the duffle bag and slings it over his shoulder. 

“Get the payload on the elevator,” he jumps from the helicopter, “arm it, let gravity do its thing. Explosion rocks the foundation, tower crumbles - chaos, screaming, roll credits.”

He pulls out a gun, a heavy duty pistol, Malorian Arms 3516, Last True Friend etched in it.He spins it between his silver fingers, flourishing and completely unneeded. It’s smartlink tech, synching with his cybernetic arm. And she can feel a sort of dampening of his feelings and emotions, that rage burning in his chest starting to simmer down, a colder more calculated anger taking over. 

Rogue and Murphy run ahead of him, across the roof, through the piles of bodies. Johnny follows behind them down a flight of stairs on the side of the building. 

“Exit window's gonna be tight,” Rogue tells him, brandishing her own side arm as she comes to wait by a door. 

“Jacking in,” Murphy connects a small computer into an interface, “Is grass green, do birds fly, do cats eat bats, do rats shit gnats?”

“Mainframe's not your playground, Murphy, c'mon. Evac announcement - broadcast it across all frequencies and let's get movin’.”

“Sheesh, who wrote this manifesto?”

“Really need me to answer that question?”

“Jesus, Johnny, you've gone of the deep end. And that's comin' from chairjock,” Murphy tells him, interface with a spider avatar drifting across the door, before it slides open. 

Johnny rushes through and down a flight of stairs as Arasaka guards running to meet him. He shoots the first in the head, point blank, brains splattering. The gun is powerful, devastating, sending a reverberation through Johnny’s silver arm. Enough that bone would have broken in the recoil. The guard no longer recognizable. 

The second guard stays further back, at the bottom of the second step. Johnny slams a trigger on the back of his gun, shooting flames out towards the guard. The man screams and staggers back, flesh burning as Johnny follows up with a shot through his chest. 

A third one follow, stumbling over burning remains, when three shots go through his skull, Rogue taking him down. The two continue down the spiraling stairs, stepping through blood and ash. The meet another guard at the end, who fires off his hand gun rapid fire. 

“Shred the whole fuckin' lot!”

The pair take cover behind the corner banister, Johnny reloading his gun with another twirl, before jumping back up. He shoots twice through the guards chest, watching the man fall in a bloody heap as they reach the end of the staircase. 

They go through a doorway and two more guards greet them, gun’s trained on the two edgerunners. 

“End him already! That’s an or-” 

The guard's yell is cut off by a bullet ripping through his shoulder, a second through his chest. His underling going down a mere moment later, with a headshot from Rogue; room cleared. Blood soaking into silver and marble floors. Johnny’s eyes focusing on the elevator across the room. 

“Murph?” Rogue calls out the netrunner’s name, her avatar showing on Johnny’s optics as she starts to hack the elevator. 

“She sought it with thimbles, she sought it with care, pursued it with forks and hope…” Poem finished, the elevator doors open.

“Johnny payload.” Rogue yells out, but Johnny’s already across the room, making his way to the elevator. He brings the bag down off his shoulder, placing it down, crouching,  and unzipping it. 

“Bushido II - bomb's name was what?” He asks, in a slow sly voice, entertaining at least himself if no one else. 

“Wrap it up, we gotta delta!”

“The ‘Demolitron’,” he sets the charges with a light hand, “we're good to blow.” 

He stands up and leaves the elevator, no hurry, only determination in him as he walks back towards Rogue. Like this is just a regular Thursday night. 

“'Saka elites incoming! Run for it!”

“Get the fuck out of there, Johnny,” Rogue yells as he steps away, “shoot the cables!” 

He does just that, blasting through the elevator cables, the carriage with the bomb dropping down through the lower levels. 

“Get the rotors spinning! We're on our way!” Rogue yells out to their pilot, but there’s something rattling around in Johnny’s chest. He’s got to save her.  It’s his only chance. 

“Not done yet still need to feed this to their subnet,” he waves a small handheld computer in the air. Rogue’s face twists and grimaces, infuriated. 

“I fucking knew it!” she swings her hand through the air, fingers clenched like she could strangle him, “This was never about "corporate colonialism" - this was about your groupie output wasn't it?!”

“Nah, you wouldn’t understand, Rogue.” 

“Givin' you four fuckin' minutes. Chopper's not gonna wait one sec longer.”

“Door lock breached. Arasaka sons-a-bitches incoming,” 

“Love you, Spider,” he jokes as he pushes through double doors, the woodwork of a lobby greeting him a moment before an armed guard can. 

“Whole world loves me.’

“Fuuuck!” He yells out, something between a frustration and excitement as he blasts a hole through a guard's chest. 

Johnny reloads before stepping out further, quickly having to pull back into the doorway for cover through the marble passageway. Two guards coming from a corridor on the left, a third from the right. The tower is made of rectangular balconies wrapping around, corners and curves to hide around. He fires around the corner at the guard on the left, taking a leg before a second shot takes their hide. 

A bullet whips past his head and he pulls back, guard coming to him, in front of the passageway. He slams his hand on the trigger, a plume of flames engulfing his enemy, before finishing them off with another shot. He rounds the corner and slams forwards into the third guard, knocking them off balance for a moment. Johnny swings his fist out, rings colliding against their jaw, they hit the ground. He fires a shot point blank into their head, continuing on his way. 

A staircase in the left of the room, across from the stone garden in the midst of the balonied section. He rushes up two sets of stairs, reloading along the way. It brings him to the upper level of the stacked balconies, a guard directly across the gap on the other side. The first shot Johnny fires splits the banister in front of the guard, the second shot rips through them. 

Three guards rush out from another room and Johnny pulls back, stepping down some steps, reloading. The movement forces the guards to come through the doorway, one at a time, letting him line up a shot that blasts through two at once, the third gagging as his friends' brains splatter and cling to his face. But he barely gets a moment to process before he’s dead too. 

Johnny runs up the stairs, stomping over corpses, as he goes around the corner. There’s a doorway that leads down to what looks to be a board room. One more guard down with a quick clean headshot, brains now sprayed across a vase of flowers on the table. He walks over them around the corner and towards a paneled wall. 

“Closing in on the access point,” he tells Murphy and the panel opens up, revealing a main frame. 

“Slot in.”

Johnny pulls out a little computer, stickers across the top of it. He flips it open and plugs it into the terminal. A little interface coming across his optics, Uploading Virus: Liberator.

“Sweet ICE-breaker,” the runner speaks up again, “Foreign, right? Just, wonder if we know anyone who can switch the subnet protocol…”

“Hilarious. You gonna help or not?”

“Do spiders spin webs? It's time we caught some flies.”

“Thanks, Murph.”

“Now, just for good measure…”Murphy trails off for just a moment, “Holy cybercow, we’re on TV! Take a look.”

A large TV mounted on the wall pings on, tuned to a news cast. Johnny shifts to the side to watch it. Brief clips of chaos flashing by in snapshots as the anchor talks over them. 

“And we turn now to Arasaka Tower, its evacuation ongoing after an unidentified terrorist organization released a manifesto threatening violence. The terrorists stating their desire to, quote-unquote, "topple a monument to corporate colonialism." Night City's mayor, Mbole Ebunike, has issued a statement declaring that he will bring the full force of the law to bear in response to any act of terrorism. Going now to our reporter on the scene at Arasaka Tower. Hopefully, he can shed some light on this situation as events unfold.”

People might finally wake up. There’s a swell of pride in Johnny’s chest, that this will finally send his message, finally change the world for the better. And V thinks of the rebuilt tower, now with remembrance monuments, but rebuilt and still standing proud fifty years later. The virus finishes uploading, Johnny unplugging his computer and tucking it back in his pocket. 

Took too long, but better than never. Stay safe, Alt. 

“All set. Now get outta there. They're movin' up! Hit the roof, quick!”

Johnny rushes through the board room and around the bends of the squared balcony, heading straight to the double doors on the other side. Just as he reaches it there’s a heavy blast, wood and metal shredding as Johnny is forced backwards. 

Pain shoots through his back as it collides with the floor, looking up where the door was blown through. A man stands in the destroyed remains of it. A tall man in heavily armored Arasaka garb, wielding a heavy duty shotgun. Cybernetic arms, a black cyberware jawed, and adornments of metal across his forehead. 

“Shit! That's Adam Smasher!”

Adam Smasher, the same borged out man protecting Yorinobu? He jumps down from the ledge, hitting the floor in front of Johnny with a heavy thud. He’s different than in 2077, more human, a healthy more flesh colored face behind the cyberware. Fuck, Johnny curses mentally and starts firing shots at Adam.  The devastation of his Malorian doing nothing as they fire into Adam’s cybernetic arms, the top of the line chrome holding up under each fire. 

“Johnny, run!”

He wants to fight, wants to teach Smasher a lesson the borged fucker won’t ever forget. Every fiber of his being screaming at him to stand and fight. But there’s a nuke on a timer, falling down to the depths of  the tower. There’s a helicopter getting ready to fly off. And while he doesn’t mind dying today, expects he just might, Rogue and Spider are waiting on him. He doesn’t need the last thing he hears to be their nagging… or for Rogue to make the chopper wait on him.  So, he swallows his pride, as foul as it tastes, and makes a run for it. 

Johnny pistol whips and shoots an Arasaka soldier on his way out the door, reaching the stairs back out to the roof. The door shuts behind him before any more soldiers can come after him. 

“Murphy!?” 

“Door's sealed, but it won't hold for long. Run, Johnny. Like the wind.”

He can see Rogue ahead of him running up the stairs. She should have been back in the chopper by now, she waited on Johnny. Rogue will bitch him out and nag until she’s blue in the face, but she’d never leave him behind.  Wrapped around his finger, no matter what he’s done. Johnny runs quickly up the stairs, to the roof, three steps behind Rogue as she jumps into the chopper, as it starts to lift off without him. 

“Johnny! Move!”

He jumps, grabbing Rogue’s outstretched arm, fingers wrapping tight around her forearm. Rogue tries to pull him inside to safety, when his fingers begin to slip. Something fires in the background a whistling noise, as his hand catches in Rouge’s, fingers twisting tightly together as she pulls. A boom rings out, hitting against the chopper with a spark and a shake, he slips right from Rogue’s grip, world going out from under him as she plummets back down to the tower roof. His back hits the metal with a crash, head bouncing against the cement, pain shooting through his body. Pain blurs his vision as the helicopter spins overhead, watching as the pilot regains control and they’re forced to fly off without the ill-fated rockerboy. 

Boots thunder against the floor around him, Smasher coming into view. Johnny’s silver arm shakes as he tries to reach for his gun, nerves on fire after the fall. Smasher throws down his heavy shot gun, kicking the gun away from Johnny’s fingers. 

“Smasher.” 

“Told ya, Johnny boy. Told you I'd end you someday,” Smasher all but snarls, a compartment in his cybernetic arm opening, Johnny’s staring down the barrel of the hidden weapon. 

Johnny holds his arm out, only for it to be shot, chrome sparking as it’s blasted. Vision going out as he passes out. It only feels like a moment, a blink and the world returns. 

The rattling of wheels against cement, strapped to a gurney. Bright and silver, a moon hangs high above the skyscrapers. Dirt and dust fly through the air, dancing around him like confetti. Faintly he hears sirens, hears screaming, hears cries. And when he shifts his head, to look further back, he can see the plumes of fire and smoke. 

“Yes, he’s still alive,” the Arasaka doctor wheeling him says, spoken in Japanese, but understood by Johnny...and by extension the merc tucked in the corner of his mind. Everything hurts, no other memory so sharp, so clear. Able to feel every bruise and cut, like she’s truly him. 

“Understood. We're en route,” the worker says above his head. 

And Johnny falls back into darkness again, unable to keep conscious, the sound of explosions and chaos erupting around him as he passes out. It’s impossible to know how long, black void blanketing it all, time losing its meaning and grip on them. 

It's a sharp slap across his face that wakes him back up, blood clinging to his lips. Blinking as he tries to take in his surroundings. He’s tied down to a chair, two guards standing before him. In a slick little room, a stretch of windows across the back wall, a bright mushroom cloud of destruction going off in the distance. Charge should have finished going off by now���

“Your associates - who are they? How did you acquire fissile material?” The guard questions him. 

“Gonna give good cop over there a chance to say something?  C'mooon…” Johnny sasses his interrogator, looking at the second quiet guard. 

Then the guard sucker punches him, knuckles slamming into Johnny’s gut with a sharp crushing pain. 

“Which terrorist organization do you belong to? How did you acquire fissile material?”

Another slap, backhanded and harsh against his face. His head forced to the side where he sees a man walking into the room; an older Japanese man, Saburo Arasaka. The corporate leader walks with his hands behind his back, a younger woman in all black following closely behind. 

“Old man don’t look too impressed with your efforts,” Johnny taunts. 

Saburo and the guards bow to each other, the old man speaking in Japanese, “leave us. I wish to look him in the eye.” 

“Hot damn,” Johnny rolls his eyes,  “done and gone.”

Saburo keeps his back turned to Johnny as the guards leave. The woman sets up a tech station by his chair. Her flingers click against a keyboard, looking at a screen before she finally speaks in a soft voice. 

“My husband died in that tower.” 

And Johnny’s stomach drops, pits with something akin to guilt. He can still see the burning clouds, the explosions in the distance through the window. Something went wrong, charges weren’t meant to be that strong. An evac announcement, charges just meant for the tower, a message. Not this. Casualties sure, everyone knew that was inevitable, but… 

“But there are fates worse than death,” the woman tells him, fixing a metal wreath over his head. Wires connecting it back to her computer system. 

“I… didn’t want him to die.” 

“Why did you do this?” Saburo asks in his native tongue. 

“To bring an end to the madness you wreak.”

“I have found that people lie, most often deceiving themselves. Not So the dead…”  

Saburo finally turns to face Silverhand walking closer, stalking closer. And Johnny spits at him, blood and saliva now sticking to Saburo’s face, red staining the wrinkled skin. There’s barely a twitch to the old man’s face as he wipes the spittle and blood from his face. Disgusted but not stopped. 

“Fuck you!” Johnny yells out for good measure, voice rough in his throat. 

“The dead are so very, very loud,” Saburo scowls, “And yet, lying is not in their nature. It is so… humbling - to listen to the dead speak… Begin.” 

The techie turns a switch and Johnny’s optics start to glitch, distort. Cyan fuzz piercing through the world as a UI screen appears. Soulkiller Primed: Commencing Engram Transfer. An crackle of electricity starts to course through him, a scream leaving him as his body convulses, Neurons cracking and frying as the world around his shakes, trembles, then finally cracks apart.

And V dies, not for the first time. 

Darkness overtakes him, near oblivion. Only the vaguest notion of existence, suspended in time and reality. In a cold black choking void. Enough awareness, just enough, to know fear. Overwhelming fear, terror, trapped under the thumb of Arasaka. Never knowing when, if, there’s an escape. Never knowing what can, will, or has happened. 

Time loses all meaning in digital purgatory. 

And then sunlight starts to breach through. A haze over his vision, like watching sunlight through fogged glass. He can see the sunlight but he can’t feel it, maybe it’s an Arasaka trick. Trying to convince him he’s free, that he’ll ever see the sun again, just to rip it away before he can ever feel it’s warmth on his skin. 

Then the view shifts, like someone turning their head, seeing the world through someone’s eyes. The sun beating down on a campsite, nomads, but their cuts and colors unlike any he’s seen. Not the Aldecaldos for sure, that much he knows. Might be some sort of experiment? Corps have never been above testing shit on people, nomads seen as less than human by most folks in the city, means they get away with it. 

Someone calls the name Aidan, a mother calling for her child, the girl...he’s seeing the world through That feeling that knowledge seeping into him. A tent with an older woman and a young girl, a mirror in the tent catches a reflection, showing him Aidan. A young sunburnt nomad child with dark hair and gray eyes Nearly identical to the other child he’d just seen. 

And in a blink, like a slide changing, the world changes again. Training sessions for the nomad kids. Taught to be strong. The kids made to fight each other, to spar, and losing meant going without food for the rest of the day if they were lucky. A beating if they were considered particularly pathetic. Some nights she won. Other nights watching other kids eat. The worst nights spent in a tent, mother rubbing salve on her injuries. 

She’s taught how to load a gun, repair an engine, and kill without shaking before she’s seen her seventh birthday. 

Members of the ‘family’ culled before everyone. Because they were sick. Because they were weak. Because they were a burden. They could drag the rest of the family down, The Herd must be culled so that they can stay strong. For the best of the family.

Gareth, an older man of the nomad family, gets sick. cancer running rampant in his body, treatment available but timely… expensive.  He’d sneak toasted marshmallows to Aidan on nights she’d be made to go without anything…. 

He begs to die on his feet rather than his knees like most cullings. 

His wish is denied. 

Aidan’s father forces a dying man to his knees, pressing a captive bolt pistol to the back of his skull and killing him in front of the family. For their own good. 

And one day, Aidan gets sick too. Johnny can’t feel it through her, through the snapshots, too disconnected. But he gets a rumbling of it through her. Body aching, head in agony, world constantly spinning enough to make her puke. 

She tells no one. Refuses to be the next one culled, no doubt her father’s rules apply to her. Her sister, the same age and near a picture perfect copy, frets over her as they go to pick through a landfill. Instructed to spend evenings in search of anything useful to the family, to earn their keep. A ringing in her ears, world spinning as the noise builds and builds until silence strikes and she drops to the ground. 

The world has gone silent. She wakes up in a med tent, but can hear nothing. A world of noises and chaos now silent. 

And a stone faced father comes barging in, he’s saying something, but she doesn’t know what.  Flinching in threadbare sheets, knowing the signs of his cold anger, but not what’s driving it, not how to fix it. Nails dig into her shoulder, dragged from the medical tent and out into the midst of the camp sigh. Vision blurred by tears. She yells out what’s happening, but can’t hear the words. 

But she knows the press of the barrel against her head, the touch of the captive bolt pistol, how they cull the herd. She was weak, defective, broken. Nomad family gathered around, watching her cry and scream, unable to hear herself.  Weak and pathetic before them all. 

Then a pair of hands grab her, save her, pull her away and into a hug. Her mother holds her tight, crying, screaming, then kissing the top of her daughter’s head. Whispering words she knows won’t reach her. Aidan is saved, she doesn’t know what’s said. What spared her life. But she’s allowed to live on. 

Her mother and sister learn ASL with her; the only two who never shun her, protecting her too much if anything. The implication clear whether in kindness or anger, she’s weak now. Defected. But her father expects her to work harder, to prove his mercy wasn’t a mistake. That this child earned her right to live. 

She earns hearing aids years later[ and cries when she first puts them in; the world is too loud, too painful. Aidan keeps them low and continues using ASL. 

A homeless teenage girl in a town they ransack; long dark hair and heavy makeup. Calls herself Avarice, they call her Ava. She tries to sign to Aidan and the young nomad girl is in love that easy, desperate for someone who cares enough to meet her even halfway. Despite it all, she begs Ava to join The Herd. Because maybe hell is more bearable when you’re in love. 

She’s dragged to the med tent one night, told she needs a checkup, no rhyme or reason. Knowing better than to fight her father when he’s barking orders. They sedate her, clan doctor holding her down and forcing her into unconsciousness. She awakes with a scar across her lower stomach. Sterilized. So, she’ll never pass along defective genes. 

The next snapshot doesn’t feel much longer after, older but not by much, a year maybe. When The Herd is swarmed by an rival nomad clan, one they’ve fucked over one time too many. Aidan trying to drive one of the cars to get her sister and mother away from the ambush. When a rival vehicle slams into them, a screech of tires, the gnash of metal. Eira and Aidan safe, but their mother is pinned between a caved-in door and the center console, bleeding where shrapnel pierces deep into her legs. 

Trapped until Aidan’s father and a group from the family find them, The three women pulled from a crushed vehicle, the mother the only one gravely injured. Aidan follows as she’s dragged to an emergency medical set up. 

Legs too damaged, it'd require a double amputation, prosthetics or cyberware. Easily doable. Nowhere near beyond saving if they’d act in time, take the time. But they never do, never truly will. Aidan begs for her mother’s life, like her mother did for her. For her father to have mercy just one more time. 

And the bolt pistol is put in her hands. She’s told to do it. To cull her mother, to be strong, to put the family above the individual. A test of her strength. 

She refuses, screams, and points the gun at him. And he mocks her tears, mocks the way her hands shake. He rips the pistol from her hands, she fights and pulls with him. But he’s over a foot taller, stronger, leaves her black and blue; crying on the ground with his boot on her back as he takes the gun and kills her mother. 

And once her mother’s body is burned to ash, she runs.

Years of traveling, towns across NUSA, some faces are kinder than others. Eira and Ava sent to track her down, to kill the traitor. 

Eventually she finds herself in Night City, but not the one Johnny knows. Newer, slicker, brighter. But the corruption and apathy remain, chrome even more common place than it was before. Folks more metal than flesh, every ripper doc with back alley tech. 

She meets a friend, Jackie, Johnny knows his name despite never hearing it. A big ‘tino fucker covered in gaudy gold chains who helps her settle in. Taken into his home. Merc work, scummy nothing jobs, merc janitors at best. Jackie pulls her into a tight hug, the nomad unsure of what to do as his arms wrap around her, face pressed into his chest. 

Then there’s a sharp pain, nerves and neurons firing off as everything is suddenly real. No haze or glass between him and her memories. Face tucked in against fabric, a chest, but there’s no warmth. No heartbeat. Arms wrapped tight around a body that’s cold and limp, one hurting like it’s been ripped open. They feel like his own, it feels like it’s his body. 

He can feel the movement of muscles, the beat of the body’s heart. How the face is twisted up with tears running wet and hot down the cheeks. It feels like him, but it's not. Smaller, thinner. 

No more ‘chicas’, ‘jainas’, or the odd ‘mija’. No more smiles that outshine the sun. No more nagging her to look on the bright side. No more bear hugs or hands the size of her head ruffling through her hair. No more Jackie….

Thoughts not his own swim around his head, the voice feminine. What the hell is Arasaka playing at? Playing someone else’s memories, trying to make him sit in the backseat of someone else's life? An experiment, they going to try to twist him, fuck with his head?

“Mr. Welles has passed. Where shall I take his remains?” An AI voice asks, in some tech cab with a bleached digital butler staring at her. 

He’s got to find a way out, there’s got to be a way? But how do you leave someone’s head? 

The body, her body, moves without his permission. Able to feel it like it’s his own and he can see just who’s corpse she was clinging to. Jackie… The same guy who took her in, now dead in the back of a cab. There’s a pit in her stomach, a tightness in her chest; he can feel her pain… 

He’s both separate and intrinsically connected, his thoughts and feelings distinct enough, but her own still overwhelming. 

”W-what?” She says...what was her name Aidan, Brayden, Hayden, some shit... Frat boy name on a nomad brat. 

She stumbles over her words, sounds like she barely knows how to talk, might be the blubbering. Fuck if he knows or cares. Her grief, while he can feel it around him, surrounding him from where he sits in her head, is her own. He’s got bigger worries, bigger fish to fry. Former nomad, now a merc, but that doesn’t meant she can’t be with Arasaka. Corps hire mercs, use nomads as scapegoats, all sorts of shit. She could be in on whatever the fuck this is. 

He’s just got to figure out what exactly the fuck this is, what Arasaka’s plan is. A way to get intel from him? Prodding at memories by seeing if someone else’s sparks something?

“The Excelsior package provides for the disposal of passenger remains free of charge. I merely require a destination.”

“I…he-he’d want to be with his family.”

“Mr. Welles' closest blood relative is Guadalupe Alejandra Welles, proprietress of the El Coyote Cojo bar. I will make sure to deliver him safely. Mr. DeShawn awaits you in room number two-oh-four. ” 

Her hands are stained with blood, her forearm has a gash down it. He can see the traces of Mantis Blades, one ripped out. Something happened, flashes of dangling off an Arasaka branded hotel, holding her friend up. Red everywhere, fighting Arasaka guards. Doesn’t mean she didn’t work with them, how else would they somehow plant him in her head, in her memories. 

She squeezes her friend’s shoulders and presses her forehead to his, feeling the cold of his corpse. 

“See ya in the major leagues, Jack…”

She gets out of the back of the cab, she’s dressed like a corpo, he realizes when her eyesight catches her body. White blouse, stained red with blood, black slacks. Rain is pouring down on her, as she walks through a dirty alley. She doesn’t seem to notice Johnny’s existence, his presence in her head. Everything he thinks, tries to scream without a mouth, doesn’t earn him a response. 

Then again, if she is with Arasaka, might be told to ignore him. He’d be pulling his hair out if he had a body, if he existed beyond some former tarmac rat’s mind. She walks through a door into a filthy excuse for a motel, the No-Tell. There's chatter around them and he catches the rambling of a tv, something about Saburo Arasaka. But she doesn’t stay to linger, doesn’t let him fully hear it. Something about the old fucker’s life. 

But she’s at the door of a hotel room before he can hear much, bloodied knuckles knocking against the door. 

“It's V,” She says, knocking again when there’s no answer. V? Since when is she V? Where the fuck did she get V from? 

The door opens and a guy comes out, giant fucker around a foot or so taller than her, so was her newly departed friend. Which begs the question, how tall is she?

God, he’s stuck in the skull of some munchkin merc, isn’t he? 

Everyone, everything is… bigger. A hand on her shoulder, nearly the size of her head stops her from stepping forward. And he hates it, someone putting hands on him, controlling him so easily, he tries to force her hands to punch the ugly fucker. But it doesn’t happen, hands clenched at her side. How the hell does she fight anyone like this anyway, she’s half the height of everyone she meets. 

“He waiting.” 

V, Aidan; whatever dumb fuck name she has is allowed into the motel room. A man inside, puffing away on a cigar, watching the news. He can feel her worry swelling inside of her as she clears her throat, the man doesn’t look Arasaka. But the little runt of a merc has to be attached to them somehow. He’s not one to give Arasaka too much credit, be none if he had his way, but they’re not dumb enough to put his engram in any klepto punk’s head. 

Arasaka uploaded his engram, scorching him with Soukiller, he remembers that. Mikoshi is where they store them, digital souls tucked away, where they got the tech to play with the human mind. If she made it there, they had to have trusted her. 

“WNS… N54… Even the pirate networks… You blowin' up everywhere! And the Jackster? He out in the car?” 

“He’s...dead.” Having to say it, having to hear it from her own lips. Stuck in the whiny mind of an Arasaka asslicker, wonderful. 

“Condolences friend and the relic?”

The relic? Arasaka’s ultimate project, what they needed Soulkiller before. There’s always been a constant murmur about it, Arasaka looking to commodify the human soul. Must have finally rolled it out after they fried him. 

“Here,” she explains by tapping her chipslot, is that how he’s here? 

“Hmm, I was afraid of that…” 

“What?!”

But the relic, they advertised it like imaginary friends, or some shit. If he was on that, she’d be able to see and hear him right? Unless Arasaka fucked up… 

“Saburo Arasaka,” the man, Dex, paces, “Dead…?! You got any notion of the shit you pulled me into?! You offed the fuckin' emperor! His majesty! Anyone with so much as a pinky toe dipped in this mess is as good as dead!”

Saburo’s dead, old sack of shit finally kicked it… and Johnny’s in the killer’s head. Memories, her’s, creep up. Ones he didn’t get in the brief glitches of memories before. Saburo’s body, dead limp and collapsed on a hotel floor. Ripping the dogtags from his bruised neck. Means Johnny won’t get the satisfaction of offing the bastard himself.  

“I didn’t kill Saburo! I- I-”

She stumbles and trips over every word; can she act like she didn’t fuck up any of this? Like she has no role in Jackie and Bug’s deaths… He’d gag on her feelings if he could, a blubbering child, those memories may be a mystery to him right now. But he buys it, if he couldn’t manage to kill Saburo, he doubts some miserable little half pint could, chick can barely get a sentence out. Which means he very well may still be tripping around in the neurons of some shitty nomad turned bootlicker. 

"No shit?l Tell that to the ‘Saka ninjas they send after you!”

“We...we got to leave Night City.”

“You don’t say.” 

“Call Parker, we close the deal, collect our eddies, and go off the radar.” 

“A’ight, settle down, Gotta be tactical about this. Parker, eddies, then we leave the city limits behind. But first… Your face… got blood all over it. Bathroom's there. Go get yourself cleaned up.”

She nods and makes her, their, way to the bathroom. Dex is going to trick her, pull some shit, Johnny can see it a mile away. Chick’s outnumbered, outstrength, if they think she’s a risk and Dex made it clear he does, he’ll drop her. But she doesn’t see it, walking into the bathroom and settling at the sink. The mirror lights up, showing her face, giving him the first good look at her since those foggy memories of childhood. 

He sees traces of that kid; gray eyes and her face is soft. Young, delicate, but with a heavy layer of blood coating iit. 

Her blood and Jackie’s.

He can taste the bile in her throat, as if his own, can feel the burn of it and the churn of her gut as she pukes into the sink. It's not the first time he’s ended up with the taste of someone elses puke in his mouth, though it’s her mouth, he supposes. She pushes her bleached blonde hair off her face as she retches, streaking blood through it. 

If she would have refused the job. 

If she had gotten them up the ladder. 

If she had been stronger. 

If she had been stealthier.

If she had gotten them through the lobby quicker. 

If she could have convinced Delamain to get him to a doc.

If she knew better first aid. 

He tries to shut it out, the knots in her guts, the ache in her chest. Her thoughts spinning around her head and what feels like his. Surrounded by the feelings of another, he can’t fucking live like this, there’s got to be a way out. 

She washes the blood from her hands and face; Jackie wanted this for her, one of the only people who ever wanted anything good for her. If only for him, she owes it to him to finish this job.

Can she fucking hear him? He tries to mentally scream at her, he’s going to find a way out of this, if he has to claw his way out of her damn head! Slamming him in the head of some grieving merc, that Saburo’s idea of a sick final joke? Making him feel someone else’s pain meant to make him talk? Meant to give everything away? If hell exists, Saburo better be burning or Johnny will set the son of a bitch on fire himself. 

Nothing works, nothing seems to draw her attention. Johnny thinking to a void as she leaves the bathroom. 

She’s punched clean in the head as soon as she steps out the door, to the surprise of no one but her, the rattling of her skull and shock of pain hitting Johnny like it’s his own head. The merc is knocked to the floor and a boot kicks into her gut for good measure. Her head stomped on, beaten to the ground like all five feet of her is a truly dangerous threat. 

“Can’t risk it, V,” Dex levels a pistol with her temple as she writhes on the ground, “‘Member our first convo?”

“I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Seems I've chosen the quiet life, after all. No blaze o' glory for me.”

And Dex pulls the trigger, a bang in the dirty motel room as he fires a shot into the merc’s head. Agony and terror, gagging on blood, darkness, cold, and fear… then nothing. 

And Johnny dies, not for the first time. 

Death relived, but through the eyes of another. The bullet hits. Soulkiller scorches. And the world around the two rewrites at the moment of their second deaths. Reconstructs and digitizes. A liminal space within the net. Structures like the squared mazes of balconies and stairs within Arasaka Tower of 2023. 

But everything made up of digital matter, pixels of color collected loosely to form the shapes against a black backdrop. Nearly everything a shade of blue, but hints of red bleeding through. 

Nothing moves or feels like reality, floatier, less certain. And it all moves, pixels twitching, it all shifts, all seems… alive. 

That where V finds herself, dying again but through Johnny, an echo of the pain from his torture still seeming to stick to her. But when she looks down, it’s her, but not. Like the world around her she knows seems to be constructed of these pixels, data, a bright red hue to her But it all forms to be her. Her arms, her painted nails, her freckles, her scars. They move with her permission, no one else’s. 

But what is happening? 

The biochip, maybe? But it’s meant to show someone like an imaginary friend, not put you in their lives, then send you to the net. At least she thinks this is the net, remembering descriptions Bug had given her. And by all intents and purposes, she should be dead. 

Data around her shakes, reverberates, brightens and stretches across the hall around her. There’s a thrum to it all, that she can hear, no physical limitation in the net… Then it stops only to reveal something new. A flash of bright red, standing out in a sea of blue data. It forms the shape of a person, composed of red data and negative space, their back to her as they lean forward on the banister. 

V signs from instinct, but finds no translator, forcing her to speak, “Hey!” 

She rushes towards the figure, they don’t answer her call, maybe they know what’s happening? But as she gets close, they push off the banister and turn. Their figure blurs as they move away from her, but she sees a closer glimpse. 

It’s a man, not as tall as Jackie, but still over a foot taller than her. Shoulder length dark hair and what looks to be the outline of sunglasses on his digital form. Even in the strange form, she recognizes him. The man’s who’s death she just lived, moment after her own. Johnny Silverhand. He blips away as he turns. 

The flash of red, his form, now further away, on the stairs of the lobby. 

“Hey, sir!” she calls out again, trying to sound vaguely polite as she rushes towards the stairs, he has to know what’s going on. He stands from the stairs and blips away just as she reaches them. 

She runs up that first set of steps seeing his form sitting on the second, “Johnny!” 

And he’s gone as soon as she reaches him, like they’re playing some sort of game, does he not hear her? She knows damn well he’s not deaf, if she can hear in this place, he should be able to. She reaches the top of the stairs, reaching another balcony railing, him around the corner on the adjacent side of the square floor. His back is to the banister, hands on it. Paying her no mind. 

“Robert!” She yells his full first name, remembering seeing it scrawled in chicken scratch across an enlistment form. But she turns the corner and he’s gone. 

But when she turns her head she sees his back again, down a narrow passageway made of more negative space than blue data. She walks across the negative space, hands skimming the data that forms it’s walls, each step taking her closer to him. She heard three different names, unsure of which may earn her an answer. 

“Robbie! Robert!”

Neither name spurs a reaction, he doesn’t turn, doesn’t speak. Only stands at the end of hall, shifting in pace,  as she continues her way to him. And she stops when she’s within arm’s reach, he hasn’t blipped away, hasn’t ran off.  Able to see fully now, the red data particles that form a bullet proof vest, the cyberware left arm. V reaches out and taps a finger against his shoulder. 

“Johnny?” 

He turns to face her and she doesn’t know if she should feel relieved, or terrified. 

“And you? Who are you?” 

Her answer catches in her throat, mouth half open when it hits. White hot blinding pain ripping through every nerve, head and world shattering as she screams. Like she’s been torn open, every part of her stripped raw and set on fire. Everything vanishes from her sight as she cries out. 

V’s contact UI blips, blurry as data fills it, system reboot. Her senses return to her, slowly and steadily as systems reload. The arm her blade was ripped from burns, open nerves exposed to the air. Her head feels shattered, aching as if it’s been broken apart. There’s a stench of trash and filth around her. There’s a weight on top of her, heavy, firm, crushing down onto her lungs. The warmth and stick mess of blood clings to everything. Caked across her skull, down her neck, her arm. 

The diagnostics flicker away, but her vision still struggles. A cyan fuzz clings around and distorts it all. Her depth of field is cut off, half her vision seemingly gone. Not aided by the fact that it’s dark, looking around she can see trash thrown atop her. a cold sheet of metal lays on top of her. Metal and plastic of discarded goods lay beneath and around her, jabbing uncomfortably into her flesh. 

A landfill, if she were to wager a guess, Dex tossed her out like trash. How is she not dead? How hasn’t she bled out?

She doesn’t know the answer, but she knows if she doesn’t do something, she’ll die anyway. Favoring her left arm, the right still damaged, she pushes up on the sheet of metal. Muscles scream in protest, pain shooting through them as she forces herself to put her weight into it. And she rolls it off of her and she can breathe a little easier, move a little better. A bit more light allowed on her. But she still can’t see very well, like her right eye is closed. 

Tempting fate, she presses her hand to it, sees nothing, when she closes her left. The world goes black. She touches the lid, feeling the blood that mats her eyelashes, she pries her eyelid open with her fingers. Nothing. Down a blade and an eye, she needs to move. Vik can fix those, he can fix this. 

She shoves a TV off of her legs, twists up s to see the sky. Silver and orange light color the world, moonlight and fire, plumes of dark smoke coming from somewhere she’s in some sort of pit or ravine within the landfill, a wall of dirt and trash around her. An upward climb to save herself. 

V forces her body to move even as it aches and screams in pain, forces her shredded arm to grip even as she can see the tendons twitching through the mangled remains of it. She forces blood soaked fingernails to dig into dirt and grip abandoned pizza boxes for traction, slips her aching feet in between wires and appliances for foot holds.

“Fuck!” she screams out loud, but can’t hear it, as she loses her traction and starts to slip. She extends her left blade, sinking it into the wall of muck and trash. Her right arm stings, throbs, begs to release a tool it no longer has. 

She uses her blade to help pulls herself, dragging herself up and up with every sink of it into the muck. V’s thankful she’s lost her hearing aids in the process, hell maybe Dex stole them back to recoup some losses, but it means she can’t hear her own curses, her own groans of pain, her own rattling breaths with bruised lungs

And she reaches the surface. Rusted remains of god knows what surrounds her and a trashcan fire burns not far away, but she’s out of the pit. She pulls her feet under her and she tries to stand, body shaking, swaying, trembling with blood loss and pain. 

But for a moment, she rises.

She stands, looking out across the landfill of trash, cyan fuzz still glitching around her,  and for a moment...maybe she’s okay. Maybe she can walk out of this, find Vik, maybe she can be okay. 

V collapses with the next step, body all at once going out from under her, mocking her hope. Mocking her moment of stupid fucking hope as her back meets the mud. It mingles with blood, collides with her gore, and sticks to her open wounds. She lays there in muck, just breathing, her lungs ache with the strength needed just to do that. Each one feels fainter than the last. Her eyes start to close, feel too heavy, her right one might very well already be shut… she wouldn’t know. A mangled mess of who she once was, now laying in filth, surrounded by trash. 

Maybe she’ll not move again… maybe this is a fitting end. A childhood of scavenging landfills, thrown in a dumpster her first night in the city, and dying in a landfill; maybe the world has been trying to tell her something all along. She’d never have to face Mama Welles, Misty, or Vik; never have to tell them she failed Jackie. Maybe she’ll just let all go, never even have time to grieve, maybe it’s best to just let it all go… 

“Wake the fuck up, Samurai. We got a city to burn.” 

A rasp of a voice rings out and she gasps, opening her eyes. A man kneeled over her, one she knows well, but he’s no longer digitized and she’s not looking through his eyes. Silver fingers pull his aviators off of his face, dark brown eyes scrutinizing her. His form isn’t solid, glitches like old vhs footage. 

But...

She heard him. 

[wolfpawn]

The Art of Survival

Chapter 7

Summary- Fianna wakes up and conversed with Charlotte, leading to some warnings and explanations.

Fianna woke and groaned. Her head was hurting and her vision was almost fuzzy. Laing had woke her several times during her sleep, much to her annoyance throughout the night but he stated that it was for her safety, to ensure she could wake. All she wanted was to rest. As well as her head hurting terribly, her muscles ached all over her body; from her chest to her legs, everything felt as though she would never be pain free again.

All night long, Laing kept her against him, smothering her in the affection his mind had been obsessing with, finally being able to avail of the opportunity to do so. She could not recall much from the night but she recalled his arms around her for the entirety of it. On this waking, she noted Laing was nowhere to be seen.

She meekly got out of the bed, hissing in pain as she did so and got to her feet. Her progress across the room hampered by the fact her vision was hazy and in her mind, the room was spinning. She crashing painfully into the door frame and grabbed onto it, knowing she would be bruised on her shoulder as a result.

'Well, that went well.’

Fianna focused on Charlotte's oncoming form, knowing that the fact the other woman was doing so in a manner that was neither straightforward or easy to follow may possibly have absolutely nothing to do with her current concussed state. 'As well as can be expected, all things considered.’ She retorted.

'Is that why you crashed into the door?’ Charlotte smiled.

'Better that than onto the floor.’ She leant against the door, feeling her body feel too warm and finding it hard to catch her breath. 'Where is…?’

'Checking your traps, apparently. I was told to stay here in case you woke to tell you to stay still.’ She inhaled deeply from her cigarette, allowing the smoke remain in her body for a moment before exhaling again. 'And here we are.’

'I am surprised you did as he said.’

'Well, you dying would be rather inconvenient, you are, after all, the food provider around here.’

'Yes, that, and however would you get cigarettes from Arthur Byrne otherwise?’ Fianna chuckled. Charlotte looked at her bewildered by her knowledge of such things. 'I pay Mr Byrne in cigarettes to pass his floor. I pay him specifically in those cigarettes, the ones you are smoking at present.’

'Anyone could have these.’ Charlotte pointed out.

'Before this, yes, but I control the supply of cigarettes here now and I specifically give only that brand to him, the same as I only give certain other brands to other people.’

'Why?’

'To keep an eye on the lay of the land. Who barters with who, who is in cohorts with who.’

'Bullshit.’ Charlotte declared, half in shock, half in amazement.

‘To know what people want, so I can ensure I also can give it to them, I need to know what they have access to. It makes it easier then. So you having them tells me you liaise with Byrne.’

'You really are something else. What are you, are you in the military?’

'Just observant.’ Fianna shrugged.

Charlotte said nothing for a moment before commenting again. 'The day I first met you, who was that guy?’ Fianna looked at her blankly. 'Tall fellow, weird accent.’

Fianna shook her head. 'Just some delivery guy. Why?’

'Looked like you knew him. He was a good shag.’

Fianna could not help but look at Charlotte and laugh. 'You really would shag anything.’

It was not said with malice, which Charlotte realised immediately. She shrugged. 'He was good looking. I'm surprised you didn't.’

'Not my sort of thing.’

'You don't like men?’

Fianna scoffed. 'No, I like men, that's not an issue. It's the laissez faire approach to fucking random men I just don't see the appeal of.’

Charlotte leant against the wall. 'I thought you'd be too stuck up to say “fuck”.’

'I'm not, evidently.’

'Robert will be delighted to hear you like men. I think that's been bothering him.’ Fianna gave an bewildered look. ‘He is obsessed with you.’

'I'm sure.’ Fianna dismissed.

'Believe me or not, I don't particularly care, but he is. All he does is look for you, write about you in his little notebooks and even wank to the idea of you. It's almost pathetic really, throw the poor guy a bone and let him fuck you. He's good at it, he's the best there is here even before all of this.’

'I am not going to fuck him.’

‘Why not?’ If anything, Charlotte seemed offended.

'Well, for one thing, the last thing I need to risk is getting pregnant in this.’

'Wait, you are still bleeding? In this, really?’ Charlotte asked curiously.

'You've….?’

'Well, I got my tubes tied after Toby, so I don't count but you must be the only woman here that is.’

'No, that's not possible.’

'I beg to differ.’ Charlotte smirked. 'Lucky you.’ If she did not feel like death warmed up, Fianna would have argued more. As it stood, she could barely stand. 'Come on.’ Charlotte urged. Wearily, Fianna followed her to the balcony where Charlotte indicated for her to sit down. She did so and was handed a pot of stewed pigeon and some tinned vegetables. She looked at Charlotte worriedly. 'I haven’t poisoned it.’

'I know. You're not stupid.’

'Then why the distrust?’

'No one willingly leaves food around.’

‘You need to recover. Like I said, you are the food source here.’

Warily, Fianna leant forward and gently took a spoon of food. As soon as the first mouthful was finished, she shoved another spoonful in. Before long, she wolfed the entire contents, Charlotte saying nothing as she smoked another cigarette. When she finished, Fianna leant back and sighed. It was as though she could feel the food entering her veins to help her body. 'Where is my dog?’

'Robert has it.’

Fianna nodded her head. 'Thank you.’

'I think that's the first time I have heard that from anyone in six months and the first time ever from you.’

'We never had reason to speak, much less for me to be grateful to you for anything.’

'Do you dislike me that much, Fianna Butler?’

Fianna looked at her and huffed slightly. 'I don't hate many people, Charlotte Melville and I am sorry to disappoint you but you're not on the list.’ Charlotte chuckled slightly. 'That's what I dislike about you though, the sneakiness. The need to snoop others while making sure they know as little as possible about you.’

‘I love to talk about me, what do you want to know?’

'Nothing, I don't give a shit, never did.’ Fianna responded. 'I was curious for a time, how a woman with no visible employment could possibly afford a better home than even dentists and college lecturers but then I realised how and I realised, I just don't care.’

'How did I do it so?’ Charlotte asked, curious to see what Fianna had figured out.

'Toby's father.’

Charlotte found herself smiling slightly and nodding. 'You're right.’ She conceded. 'He gave it to us. And do you know who he was?’

‘No, and I don't care. I realised after I got that far that it is none of my concern. I just don't care about it.’ Fianna stated, leaning back in her chair. ‘My business is me.’

'You're better than most here were. They never stopped trying to figure it out.’

'Is that why you did nothing upstairs, you didn't want to be around busybodies?’

'Among other things.’ Charlotte answered. 'Ann Royal had plans for me, to have me be demeaned and scorned at. I had my share of her and her attitude before the world fell apart, looking down on me and acting as though me and my son were nothing more than a dirty mark on her and her husband…’ The was vitriol in Charlotte's words that were more vicious than could be deemed normal in general conversation and it caused Fianna to realise the missing part of the puzzle.

'I see.’ Charlotte looked at her. 'I see the logic in your reasons.’

Charlotte pursed her lips. 'You're the only one.’

‘You don't have to explain it to anyone. Your reasons are yours.’ She paused for a moment before laughing. 'I know you better now in this few minutes than I did the whole time I lived here.’

'I thought I knew you.’ Charlotte commented.

'No one knows me. The only people who ever did have died, even before this.’ Fianna stated bitterly.

'Did those boys do that to you?’ Charlotte indicated to Fianna's injuries. Fianna nodded. 'Did they do more?’ Fianna shook her head. 'You're lucky you're so strong.’

'You looked worse after Wilder. To keep standing after that, you're even stronger.’ Fianna looked at Charlotte, still not able to see her properly. 'Did you help kill him?’

'Yes.’ There was a hint of pleasure in her tone.

'Good.’ Fianna rose to her feet again feeling a little better. She stumbled slightly but made her way inside, Charlotte remaining on the balcony.

She looked around the clean apartment, her eyes not able to focus on much but her thoughts going back to what Charlotte had said about Robert and his desires. She sighed. In a different world, perhaps Laing would be someone to consider but she always wanted a proper partner, not a bed partner and from what Charlotte had said, he was not a man for such things back then, she heard from Wilder's wife also of his escapades but in the current climate, with the risks as they were, it was not an option. He was good looking, but not enough so to make stupid mistakes. She walked over to his table of notes and looked at it.

Laing had not even attempted to tidy it away. There in front of her, were detailed notes about her that even Fianna had not taken notice of in her own appearance. Her freckles were documented, even her acne scars, everything was noted. She looked through the notes, focusing in her dizzy state on the ramblings of words. It was startling. Charlotte was right, the notes were there, including some that seemed to be in shorthand code. She tried focusing more in hopes of it just being her current dizziness that was preventing her reading it but she just could not make it out.

'Fianna, what are you doing out of bed?’ Laing's tone was barely on the polite side of angry.

'I needed to go to the bathroom and I had something to eat.’ She explained. 'I also have outstayed my welcome and need to get back to my own home.’

‘You have to stay until your concussion ends.’ He insisted, putting his arms around her. 'It's not safe for you right now. What would you do without someone watching over you?’

'Regardless of someone watching me, if things go bad, I am a goner anyway.’ She pointed out.

'Don't say such things.’ Laing reprimanded, his nose physically in her hair, him inhaling deeply. 'That is a terrible thought. Here I can help you, this is my specialty, after all.’

'Robert…’

‘I love the way you say my name.’

Fianna felt slightly concerned by his behaviour but her dizziness, mixed felt with food made her severely nauseous and a moment later, she was rushing to the balcony and vomiting violently.

Charlotte watched boredly, noting the waste of good food as Laing tended to her before taking her in his arms and bringing her back to back to his bed. His comforting words reciting once more.

Fianna felt terrible as he spoke but unlike the night before, she heard the words being spoken to her and with him getting in beside her and bringing her body to his, she realised the one word being repeated over and over more than any other was “mine”.

[ceslatoil]

Fiddleford in Fairyland, Part One

My first entry this week for @fiddleford-appreciation-month is a story about an expedition Parallel Fiddleford takes into an alternate dimension called Faerie. More under the cut!

Fiddleford had read plenty of stories about folks finding themselves in magical, faraway lands as a kid. He’d read each of the Narnia books over and over again, and had even kept an old, battered omnibus of the Oz books in his current private library, though in truth, he’d been more interested in all the strange, mechanical people like Tik Tok and the Tin Man than Dorothy’s silly adventures.

All the same, when the International Institute of Oddology had managed to discover an interdimensional access point to a place just as odd as Narnia and Oz right in the Oregon woods outside town, Fiddleford surprised everyone by volunteering to head the expedition. There were, of course, some doubts about this; though Fiddleford was a brilliant scientist and an integral part of the Institution, he was still a very anxious person, and his last journey, which had ended with an entire dimension disappearing all together, had left him shaken.

But, to his own shock, he insisted on going. He had grown used to the strange anomalies since he’d arrived in Gravity Falls some thirty years ago, even if most of the monsters and creatures that were drawn to this town were quite frightening. Magical creatures always seemed so charming, with the possible exception of Unicorns, who were just plain jerks. How scary could this magic dimension be?

So, after saying goodbye to Stanford that morning (a rather hug filled, warm affair that made Fiddleford second guess leaving), Fidds took a group of security officers and a few researchers and headed to the site that lay deep in the woods. It was a large, stone doorway in one of the deepest parts of the forest; strange ruins in a language none of the scientists had been able to identify were carved all over it, and an image of a sun and moon in eclipse loomed at the very top. Staring at this carving for too long sent a shiver down Fiddleford’s spine, which was not helped by the fact that nothing could be seen on the other side of the door.

Gulping, he reluctantly lead his team into the darkness, and for what seemed like hours they marched through the gloomy corridor, until they came across a bright light twinkling in the distance.

“Finally,” mumbled one of the security officers. “My feet are killing me.”

“I dunno,” whispered one of the younger officers, Cadet Corduroy, “You ever heard of looking out for oncoming trains when you see lights at the end of tunnels?”

It wasn’t exactly encouraging.

When they stepped out into the light, however, they were greeted by a lovely field of poppies that lay just by a river; beyond that was a large swath of farmland, and beyond that, a massive, dark forest.

“Golly, this is just beautiful,” said Fiddleford softly; the research team at once began to snap photos for documentation. “Just fantastical! Though I cain’t see where the reports of it being a magic dimension came from—”

Barreling from the woods came a monster, one that looked like a giant man with terrible, misshapen muscles and a lumpy, pale face with one eyelid drooping. It took one look at the tiny research team and let out a terrible, creepy cry that sounded like laughter before it lunged at them. Several of the researchers cowered and lost their heads entirely out of pure fear, but the security officers were made of tougher stuff, and took aim at the beast with their laser guns. Though they made several incredible shots that would have taken down a lesser foe, the terrible giant was completely unaffected by their attack.

“Fvb’yl qbza h spaasl jopjrlu, Jollw, jollw, jollw, jollw,” the beast snarled down at the security officers. The giant reached out one of its muscular arms and snatched Fiddleford up within the iron grip of his hands.

“Help!”

The beast leered down at Fiddleford with a dangerous look in its eyes. Or, maybe it was just sleepy. It was hard to make out facial expressions, as the giant looked like it had eaten a hive of bees and washed them all down with cold medicine: the result was a pale, lumpy faced giant who was even more terrifying up close than he was at a distance.

“Vo ohp Thyr! Ovd'z fvby zle spml,” the beast roared at Fiddleford, and just as the poor scientist thought he had reached his doom, a large rock slammed against the giant’s face.

“Kvu'a avbjo tl tvaolymbjrly,” the beast growled down to the ground. From what Fiddleford could see, a small girl in a yellow dress was flying at the monster, raising her arms and making boulders ten times her size fly at the giant’s face.

“What in tarnation,” Fidds cried, the girl continued to attack and scream profanities at the giant while the beast still kept its grip around him. Soon, other strange, flying girls began to attack the giant; a girl with wild, magenta colored curls was throwing large cherries that exploded when they made contact against the giant’s face, and another, her dress as black as her skin and hair was a ghostly, inhuman white, lobbed arrows into the giant’s eye. The giant laughed creepily once more, the arrows were about as effective as the lasers had been.

“Unhand this man at once,” commanded a powerful voice near Fiddleford’s right, he couldn’t turn his head to see who was speaking.

“Fvb svvr zv zlef Ahufh!” The giant offered the speaker an eerie, wooden smile that chilled Fiddleford to the core.

“I don’t care; you will leave these visitors to our land in piece, now let him go,” the voice snapped at the giant.

“FVB HYL ALHYPUN TL HWHYA, AHUFH!”

Enraged, the beast suddenly released his tight fisted grip on Fiddleford, and the man felt a terrible lurch as he began to hurtle towards the ground, which was roughly sixty feet in the air. Before he gained too much momentum, however, something else snatched him up around his armpits and held him aloft. He hadn’t even been able to register the thought of who or what had caught him when a sensation like being sucked into a vacuum began to consume his whole body, and he found himself being laid down upon the ground.

“Boss!”

Cadet Corduroy knelt down next to Fiddleford, who was shaking and pale, his knees bouncing together uncontrollably, but otherwise seemed perfectly unharmed. Fiddleford looked up to see a winged creature in white and gold armor looking down on him as well as the young cadet.

Good lord, what am I even looking at right now, he thought dizzily.

“Keep him safe while I get rid of the giant,” the armored creature told the Cadet, who nodded. Cadet Corduroy gently sat up the older scientist; Fiddleford looked up to see a flash of brilliant, sparkling light, one last scream from the Giant, and it was at this he lost consciousness at last.

*  *  *

When he woke about five minutes later, a tiny green creature that looked like a humanoid moth was flicking his nose with a stick.

“D’you think he died?” squeaked the creature to another, the pale, slender archer from before.

“I ain’t dead, get off my nose,” grumbled Fiddleford, who shooed away the green girl with a wave of his hand. Fiddleford still felt dizzy and disoriented, so he laid still while the others around him continued to talk.

“He has terrible grammar,” sniffed the white haired girl, who narrowed her black eyes at him disapprovingly. “Are you sure he’s really supposed to be a brilliant scientist?”

She had directed this question to Corduroy, who was a little disturbed by this strange creature, in no small part because she looked a bit like the ghost in the Japanese Horror franchise The Creepy Woman and Her Cat-Son Who Yelled at American Tourists Until They Went Crazy.

“He is brilliant,” Wendy managed to choke out tersely, “He just gets a little freaked out by some of the larger monsters. He had a bad experience with one of the cryptids he and Dr. Pines encountered when they were younger; something called a Gremoblin tried to kidnap him, it shook him up a bit.”

“Yikes. Say no more,” said the girl in the yellow dress, the one who had thrown rocks at the giant’s head. Her entire body was made of different shades of orange and yellow, from her sunset colored skin with bright yellow freckles to her lava-red hair, which she wore in several small braids across her head. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of Gremoblins in the past and I’ll say one word: Daddy. Issues.”

“Those are two words, Mustardseed.”

“Can it, Cobweb!”

“Both of you move,” said the woman in white armor sternly. The three strange girls hovering over Fiddleford dispersed as the woman knelt down next to him. She removed her helmet; the woman had a lovely, dark complexion and curly hair the color of pink champagne that she kept bound up in a bun.

“Wow,” whispered Corduroy, “She’s pretty cute.”

“That’s Queen Titania,” hissed Mustardseed, “You can’t call the Queen cute!”

“Wow, ain’t you just the cutest thing,” Fiddleford loudly told the Queen. She laughed, a warm, friendly sound, thought Fiddleford, as she helped him to his feet.

“Well, it sounds like you’re not any worse for wear,” said the Queen, looking the old man over, “Let me know if you’re feeling any pain so we can get you medical treatment. Not everyone who faces the Gurrero Street Beast gets off so easy.”

“Well golly, I sure am grateful ya saved me ladies,” said Fiddleford, addressing the six women with good cheer.

“Sorry your first trip to Faerie had an overly exciting beginning,” said Titania, shaking Fiddleford’s hand. Midway through, however, she paused as she examined his face; suddenly, her eyes went wide and she shot her hand to her chest, as if she had seen a ghost.

“Oh my stars,” she whispered; turning to the other fairies, she cried, “I don’t believe it—it’s McGucket!”

Fiddleford and Corduroy shared a bemused look. How did the Queen of the Fairies know Fiddleford’s name?

“What? Come on Tanya, this guy looks nothing like McGucket,” said Mustardseed dismissively.

“My lady, the fight with the Gurrero Street Beast was exhausting,” chimed the girl with magenta hair, whose name was Peaseblossom. “Perhaps you’re just confused.”

Titania shot her servants a glare. Without a word, she pulled a wand from a scabbard at her side, and, after giving it a flick, she made a long, white beard and a floppy hat appear on Fiddleford’s face and head.

At this point, Fiddleford couldn’t think of anything to say other than, “Why does my beard have a bandage on it? Weird.”

The other four fairies screamed.

“Face stealer!” cried the green one, Moth, who began to kick Fiddleford in the shins.

“Ouch! Now you stop that,” chided Fiddleford, lifting the tiny winged girl into his hands. “Yer actin’ like a conswalloping hogwash salesman on the fourth of july!”

“… Yup, it’s him,” Titania nodded her head in triumph. She made the beard and hat vanish by waving the silver wand carefully, returning Fiddleford to his normal state.

“I don’t understand… how can this man still be McGucket,” said Peaseblossom, scrutinizing the older scientist with narrowed eyes.

“I told you, he’s a face stealer, Duh,” squeaked Moth, still waving her fists wildly at Fiddleford.

“Well, my name is Fiddleford McGucket,” he admitted, “and my team and I are from an institution that studies the oddities of the universe—in fact, we came all the way from our world to study yours! I think we’re the only version of our dimension that can travel to different worlds, but it’s entirely possible that you ran across a version of me from an alternate dimension?”

“We did recently open up a permanent portal to Earth,” said Titania slowly, “It’s entirely possible that the portal is available to all the different possible earths as well?”

“It’s a shaky theory, but the only one we have to work with in the present,” nodded Fiddleford. He frowned, however, when he realized that at any moment, an alternate version of himself could come waltzing into Faerie and possibly destroy the entire dimension should they accidentally run into each other.

“We should probably leave,” Fiddleford turned to Corduroy, “The risk of dimensional collapse is too high if an alternate me is on the loose—I couldn’t bare to repay my rescuers by accidentally destroying their home!”

“Nonsense,” said Titania, clapping her hand on Fiddleford’s shoulder. “McGucket rarely visits this dimension, and surely we can find a way to send a warning about the possible danger. I’ll have my servants send a letter explaining the whole thing. In the meanwhile, why don’t you and your team stay at my old family home? You’d be able to set up base and have access to our library if you needed to gather some research on Faerie’s history and culture.”

“You’d really do all that for us?” Fiddleford asked excitedly, hardly believing the institute’s good fortune.

“Anything for a good, old friend,” said Titania warmly. “Who, now that I think about it, is actually a new friend? A new old friend, perhaps we should say? Oh, who cares, everybody back to Eclipse Manor for a feast!”

                                                      *  *  *                                                                  Eclipse Manor, a country chateau just outside of a small village in the woods, was quite beautiful with a quiet, comfortable elegance. The research team immediately began snapping photos and writing down descriptions of the comfortable, elegant mansion, and didn’t stop taking notes until Fiddleford chided them into putting those things aside when the Queen called them all to dinner.

It was a wonderful feast of roasted chicken, baked sweet potatoes, buttery dinner rolls and a spinach salad—it reminded Fiddleford of Sunday dinners with his family when he was a child. There was, however, a slight incident when one of the security officers refused to take a bit.

“Would you like something else,” asked the Queen, offering security officer Ramirez a concerned look, “I’d hate for any of my guests to go hungry.”

“Um…” Ramirez looked highly uncomfortable, Fiddleford could see beads of flop sweat beginning to drip down his forehead as the table turned his attention to him.

“What, do you think our food sucks or something,” said Mustardseed aggressively. Titania shot Mustardseed a nasty look as Ramirez recoiled at her accusation.

“No! Um, no I really like food, little fairy dood,” said Ramirez nervously.

“Then eat up, Ramirez,” Fiddleford said, raising his glass of wine with good cheer, “I wasn’t raised to let anyone waste food at the dinner table.”

“Yeah but—oh man, what if the food turns out to be enchanted and we get stuck here forever like in all the fantasy books! This place is nice but I’d miss my grandma!”

Fiddleford grimaced, he thought for sure the Queen would have been offended, but she merely laughed again.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Titania, patting a now mortified Ramirez’s arm kindly. “I assure you, food chain spells have long since been made illegal in this land, but if you would like, I can get somebody to run back to your dimension and get you something else.”

Relieved that the Queen wasn’t mad at him and that dinner wasn’t cursed, Ramirez assured her that he’d eat what was put out in front of him, and soon everyone was tucking in.

In addition to the fine food, the research team’s hosts were all lively conversationalists: Mustardseed and Corduroy were arm wrestling each other once the dishes had been cleared away, Moth kept daring Ramirez to try different kinds of food, a challenge he approached with unwavering bravery no matter how odd the dish was, and the researchers hung onto every word of Peaseblossom’s stories about the history of Faerie, which kept getting interrupted by Cobweb, who would add bawdy, off-color comments about the story much to her embarrassment.

Meanwhile, as all this was happening, Titania and Fiddleford were quickly becoming the best of friends; she asked him quite a few questions about the Institute and listened intently.

“Fascinating—so you run the robotics department? Whatever made you decide to lead an expedition,” asked Titania, who was trying to urge her small son, Daya, into finishing his sweet potatoes as she spoke to him.

“Well,” said Fiddleford, taking a swig from his wine glass once more, “I guess you could say I was curious—we used to read fairy stories all the time at my house when I was a kid, and I guess I just wanted to see what it was really like.” He smiled at Daya, who was scowling at his sweet potatoes with unmingled dislike.

”Well I certainly count myself lucky to meet you today,” said Titania, who’s smile faded to a frown when Daya rudely stuck his tongue out at the hated sweet potatoes. “Come on baby, eat!”

“No!”

“I’m glad to have met you too,” said Fiddleford earnestly, “I probably would have been eaten up by that giant, completely unlike how this little fella ain’t eating his taters.”

“Tatoes are yucky,” screeched Daya.

“Well, if you don’t want ‘em, I’ll steal ‘em for ya,” said Fiddleford, reaching his fork over to Daya’s plate.

Daya’s eyes grew wide, and without any warning, he began to shove handfuls of potato into his mouth to keep Fiddleford from grabbing any.

“My taters!”

“Well, darn, guess I’ll go without,” said Fiddleford with mock disappointment as he winked at Titania.

“I should invite you over more often,” said Titania, impressed. “Maybe then Daya would eat his vegetables more often.”

“Comes with lots of practice—the institute offers a childcare program to any wayward interdimensional refugees that come across our part of the universe,” said Fiddleford brightly. “I’ve had to coax my fair share of kids into eating their veggies than I can count!”

“Perhaps I’ll give you a call when Daya’s old enough to start school then,” said Titania warmly.

“We’d be happy to have him,” said Fiddleford, just as kindly.

“Now, would you mind joining me in the library? I want to show you the place where you can keep your research handy while you’re staying here,” said Titania, standing up from the table.

“Sure shootin’, lead the way,” said Fiddleford, and the two, along with Daya, who had sweet potatoes smeared all across his face, left the rest of the researchers alone in the great hall.

                                                      *  *  *

           The library was a magnificent place, filled with large, mahogany bookshelves that towered over Fiddleford and the Queen as they walked through its aisles, the sweet, comforting scent of old books filling the air like gentle incense. At the end of the room by a roaring fireplace was where the reading area had been arranged—polished wooden tables and comfortable, chintz chairs lay out before them, and the two took a seat opposite one another on the chairs.

           “Care for a chocolate?” asked Titania, indicating a box of chocolates on a nearby coffee table. “And by that I mean please eat them so I won’t. I have enough trouble getting my kid to eat vegetables as it is, what will he think when he sees that I’m constantly eating chocolate.”

           For his part, Daya was slowly starting to doze off as he cuddled close against his mother’s side.

           “Well, I guess I got room for more,” said Fiddleford, reaching over to open the box. He spied a photograph that was kept on the table next to the chocolates, and gasped. He recognized quite a few people present—Ramirez and Corduroy for one, along with Ford, who looked much grayer and rugged than his own Ford back at home, two kids that looked like Ford’s own little niece and nephew from Piedmont, and another man, who, though a bit thicker around the middle and with a more mischievous glint in the eyes, could have been Ford’s double. Titania and her girls were also in the picture, each smiling and laughing over something just off camera.

           “I’ll be,” whispered Fiddleford, “It’s Ford’s family!”

           “Yes,” nodded Titania, a slightly worried tone tinting her voice as she spoke, “Your… partner, correct?”

           “A little bit more than that,” said Fiddleford proudly, indicating the ring on his left hand with a smile. He pursed his lips as he gazed at the photo, pausing at the two twin brothers before saying, “I take it the Ford you know is on better terms with his twin than mine is?”

           “Oh? Are your Pines twins not getting along,” said Titania with a frown.

           “Well,” said Fiddleford sadly, “I tried getting Ford to talk to Stan for years, or at the very least, invite him to our wedding, but we haven’t been able to find him. It’s like he fell off the face of the earth.”

           “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Titania, who hugged her son tightly at this confession, “I know how difficult it is when a family member to go missing. I hope you’ll be able to reunite with him.”

           “Me too, at least for Ford’s sake—he wasn’t on the best terms with him, but I think he’d take it hard if he never got to speak with his brother again,” said Fiddleford quietly. He then smiled and held up the photo as he said, “but this proves that it’s possible, don’t ya think? That they could work everything out.”

           “Of course it is,” said Titania, who at last gave into temptation and grabbed a piece of chocolate from the box. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a family I’ve liked more than the Pines in a long time. I’m sure your version could be just as happy in time. By the way, if you ever do meet Stan again, don’t tell him I said that. I have a reputation to maintain as the best head of our respective found families, and I can’t have him strutting around knowing I said he was better at something, I wouldn’t bear it.”

           “It sounds like you’re awful fond of him to me,” said Fiddleford, wagging his eyebrows knowingly at the Queen. She playfully tossed the piece of chocolate she was holding at him, but he quickly caught it in his mouth.

           “While we’re on the subject,” said Fiddleford, his mouth full of chocolate caramel as he spoke, “Do you mind if I ask about my alternate self? I’ve been meaning to gather information about alternate timelines and how different dimensions compare and contrast, but it’s too dangerous of a risk to meet up with an alternate me! We know of one fella who was able to jerryrig up a whosmajig to keep himself from dissolving along with alternate versions of himself, but he ain’t saying anything to the institute—he has some sort of silly gentleman scientists feud with Stanford for some damn fool reason. So, if’n you don’t mind me asking, your majesty… what am I like?”

           The Queen’s smile faltered, and she grew quite pensive until she finally spoke.

           “You’re a bit balder… and with quite a few less teeth,” she said, looking away for a moment.

           “Oh,” said Fiddleford, frowning. He figured that at least a few different versions of himself wouldn’t age quite as well as he had, and besides, his habit of tearing out his hair when he was anxious probably hadn’t done him any favors. But why did the Queen look so sad?

            “Is something the matter,” asked Fiddleford.

           “Well… I don’t know if I’m the best person to tell you this,” said Titania, who began to stroke her son’s hair nervously, “after all, I only know a little piece about what happened from the version of Stanford I met. There was an incident when you were younger where you fell through a portal; some kind of accident that left you traumatized. You… made a gun that erased memories.”

           There was a trickling, icy sensation that shot down Fiddleford’s back. He had remembered the fight with the Gremoblin, the horrible things he had seen—he had wanted it all to go away so badly, and he thought the gun would be the perfect solution. At Ford’s constant insistence about the possible, dangerous side effects, however, he allowed Ford to destroy his invention.

           “What happened,” said Fiddleford, gulping.

           “It took a severe toll that affected your mental health for decades,” said Titania, her voice soft and full of sorrow. “It took ages for you to recover. You were living on the street.”

           Fiddleford couldn’t describe what he was feeling in that moment exactly—just a sort of lingering shock that a person who narrowly missed being hit by a car would have felt, the dreadful horror of what could have been.

           “… How am I now?” asked Fiddleford slowly after a long time.

           “Well… the Fiddleford I know is now living in a mansion after earning a fortune in inventing patents,” said Titania, who took Fiddleford’s hand and gently squeezed it as she spoke, “He has lots of close friends, and I’m fortunate enough to consider myself one of those friends. Furthermore, just about a week ago, he finally got engaged to his version of Stanford.”

           “He waited that long? Figures he’d take near about forever to get around to it,” said Fiddleford, and for a moment, the mood was light again, and he and the Queen shared a good laugh.

           “It’s getting late,” said Titania, eying the clock on the fireplace mantle. “I need to get my son to bed, and I’m sure you and your team need the rest. I’ll show you to your rooms, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call on any of my girls.”

                                                              *  *  *

           The bed was soft, and his stomach was full, and though his mind was still churning from what the Queen had told him about his double, Fiddleford McGucket easily found himself in a deep, comfortable sleep in his first night in Fairyland.