Post by Veronica Strader on Apr 19, 2022 8:31:19 GMT -5
She was smiling as she imagined herself as
one more star in the sea of millions, and her
body decided it had had enough, and she
felt the exact moment when her power
source gave up and the hum of electricity
extinguished. But she was already vast and bright and endless.
- Marissa Meyer
- Marissa Meyer
Storage Garage
Rocky Ridge, California
April 19th, 2077
The plan was simple: from a secure location, Victoria and Veronica would assist Valerie in the destruction of Millitech. The only reason they even agreed to help was that Anders Hellman had promised them they could return home and Arasaka wouldn’t infiltrate their home dimensions, internet and worlds governments.
“We shouldn’t have gone back until we did this job.”
“Well, unfortunately, we did; nothing we can do about it now. You ready to do this? Just think afterwards, we can go home, in our very own bodies, and live our own lives. After I beat you to claim the Trans Atlantic Championship,” she says with a laugh, but it is Veronica and Victoria knows she’s deadly serious about taking the championship.
“You think you’ll take my belt? Hah!” she replies with a wink and a sneer that is returned like she is looking in a mirror. “I know we have like a million sisters already, but the thought of you, outside of my head as you have been, it would be amazing. I love you, Ronnie,” she tells her, placing a hand on her shoulder and pulling Veronica in for a hug.
“I love you too. I am sorry for all the rotten things Valerie manipulated me into doing… for sabotaging your relationship with Atara, throwing Cara off the OCW arena, and killing Scott.”
Victoria would be lying if hearing the things Veronica didn’t sting, but she heard the sincerity in her voice. Besides, she knew all too well what Valerie was capable of. Even watching her cousins, Tom and Jenny, and her dad’s own battle with their own Afflictions.
“I know,” she replies. “Let’s get this over with, get back home, and I can show our big bad cousin that I have what it takes to slay Goliath.”
“I know you can. If Birdman can do it, so can you!”
“I’m not a fan of him right now either, but we should try and move past it… he is the only father we got, ya know?”
Veronica rolls her eyes and shrugs.
“Yeah, Vee, maybe. Maybe….”
“Alright, I’ll let Anders and Goro know we are just about ready.”
Veronica nods and sits herself down in the netrunning chairs in the small garage in Rocky Ridge, a place both are familiar with. They look at each other one last time before submerging their psyches into the NET, but Veronica had no idea what Victoria was planning.
After the mission…
The mission had been a success; Arasaka officially dismantled Millitech’s mainframe using the Affliction turned AI with the help of Victoria and Veronica, as they both had become skilled Edgerunners/Netrunners. Veronica was talking to Victoria when she said:
“Tell mom I love her, and I’m sorry. Auntie Tee and Cara too.”
“Wait, what are you talking about? Why would I—”
Before she could finish her words, she briefly saw Victoria envelop Valerie followed by a large explosion of data and information. Veronica comes out of the NET and quickly sits up, looking at Victoria. She jacks herself out of the chair and bolts to Victoria’s side. She grabs her by the shoulders, shaking her.
“VEE PLEASE, PLEASE! ANSWER ME, DAMNIT!”
Veronica looks down at Victoria’s lifeless body as she holds her wrist, checking for a pulse, but there isn’t one. Her hand trembles as she moves some hair out of her face. She gently kisses her on the forehead, gently sobbing.
“Why did you do that? Why?!” she yells before she slams the netrunning chair with the side of her foot. She gently lays Victoria down and then wipes tears from her eyes with her forearm.
“Ok, um, Ronnie, breathe, just breathe… phew. Ok, yes, I got to get you out of here. You can’t stay in this place. Going to get you home. Mom would never forgive me.”
Veronica had Victoria’s lifeless body in the front seat a few minutes later. Once in the driver's seat, she turns to Victoria’s body.
“I need a cigarette,” she says to herself, placing one between her lips. She can’t find her lighter and looks beside her. “Sorry, sis, I need a lighter.” Veronica reaches inside Victoria’s Samurai synth leather jacket retrieving a lighter. When she pulls it out, she notices a Data-Shard is attached. Peeling it off the lighter, she looks at it by holding it out in front of her, the light of the moon through the windshield.
“Hmm, what’s on this shard? She never told me anything about a shard,” she utters aloud. She flips her hair back and slides the Data-Shard into the neural slot behind her ear. A file pops up through her optics, so she selects it and opens the file after a quick viral scan. It’s Victoria’s voice.
“I figured you might need a lighter. Glad to know I was right and know you as well as I do.”
Veronica takes a drag, closes her eyes and leans back as her right-hand reaches over and takes Victoria’s lifeless hand.
“If you are sitting beside my lifeless body in my car smoking a cigarette, then our mission from Arasaka was successful, and that mine to neutralize Valerie was indeed successful as well. I know there must be several emotions swirling through you right now, but it was my only chance to make sure that Valerie would no longer torture either one of us and that Arasaka couldn’t use her to wreak havoc on the people of this dimension. She was the last thing they needed between the dying planet and multiple famines.”
Veronica scoffs.
“At the cost of you?”
“Yes, at the cost of me.”
Veronica then laughs and shakes her head. She did know her well.
“Arasaka will believe it was Valerie that caused our destruction. I left data signatures identical to hers, so this won’t blow back on you. Get back to our dimension, tell everyone we love (and you tolerate) that I love them, then go into that jungle and put down Supreme Machine. Who knows, maybe defeat at our— your hands will give Tom a fighting chance against his Affliction. Remember, I’ll always be there, there in your heart. I love you, Ronnie.”
She takes a deep drag as she opens her eyes and lowers her head.
“I love you, too.”
“I know.”
Veronica laughs as the tears roll down her cheeks.
“Now stop laughing and crying, and get us home.”
The recording ends, so she starts the Quadra and heads towards the glow that is Night City.
West Wind Abandoned Hotel
Pacifica District, Night City
April 20th, 2022
“I miss you so much, and it hasn’t even been a day….”
Veronica didn’t want to go back to the apartment she shared with Victoria as she knew she would see her everywhere she looked. Whether it was making them dinner in the kitchen, Vee fleecing Ronnie in a billiards game, or standing at the bay window watching the debauchery on the streets of The Glen, it was going to be much to handle. The ladies had discovered this old hotel from a gig they had where they hunted down a Cyberpsycho for Arasaka. While it wasn’t exactly a clean and sanitary place, it wasn’t as bad as the Kabuki Slums where they remembered waking up in.
Arasaka lived up to their end of the deal and informed Veronica when and where they calculated the portal back to her dimension would open up and have her back in time (pun intended?) to face off against the Supreme Machine. Before coming here, she took Victoria’s body to a bar called The Afterlife, which used to be a morgue. She spoke to the owner, Rogue Amendaires, who was Night City’s best fixer and legendary solo mercenary. Veronica gave her the apartment and the one point two million eurodollars the ladies had earned to keep Victoria in cryogen on the off chance that Vee was alive somewhere beyond the Blackwall where she took Valerie. Veronica knew it was probably a waste of time and money, but it calmed her nerves.
Wearing Vee’s brown synth leather Samurai jacket, Veronica sat on a dirty mattress partially propped up on the wall, with her head back and eyes closed, taking swig’s from a bottle of Old Fashioned Tequila.
“How am I supposed to do this without you, Vee? It’s been you and me for two decades. If anyone should’ve done what you did, it should’ve been me….”
Veronica wasn’t sure when she passed out. Still, she did and awoke in the middle of the night to the sounds of a crowd gathered down on the dirty shoreline of the Pacific Ocean. She pushes herself up onto her feet and staggers towards the window that acted as the entrance since the door was blocked off. Stepping up to the solid concrete railing, she leans over with the tequila in her right hand and a lit cigarette in her left. She sees what the Pacifica residents called “Beat on the Brat,” which was a fighting circuit that took place all over the city. Still, it was the toughest of the tough in this district in these fights.
“Is that Ozob? That guy is crazy,” she whispers aloud, commenting on a Brazilian man with flaming red hair similar to Krusty the Klown, and had a live hand grenade for a nose.
“Vee, I feel lost without you. I guess I always took for granted that we would always be together. Without you, I wouldn’t even exist, and vice versa, I guess. I know you did what you did not just for us but for our loved ones, the people of Night City and everyone in our lives, but it wasn’t worth losing you, Vee. It wasn’t worth it.”
She takes a drag; the sound of the burning tobacco fills her ears before the swish of the golden nectar of the Spanish gods as she takes a swig.
“Now I have to go back, look mom and Cara in the eye and tell them you sacrificed yourself to not only save me but everyone from the Affliction, and let’s face it… they will have wished it was me that did that, and you came back home.”
Tears begin to roll around her cheeks and down her face as she stares down at the fight below that Ozob looks to be winning, and she sighs.
“Not to mention Cousin Dearest is now my problem. It’s not that I fear him, I don’t, it’s just that it was supposed to be you. It was to build you up; it was why I pretended to be you on the last Massacre so you could say you beat the number one contender for the Savage title and a Hall of Famer. Damn it, Vee. I should’ve seen what was coming, what you were planning.”
“FUCK!”
The bottle of tequila shatters off the ground to her right as she falls down the cement floor, sobbing into the arm of Victoria’s synth leather jacket. After a while, she picks herself, wipes the tears away from her rosy red cheeks, and makes her way downstairs to the shoreline where the fight is happening. She stands in the crowd, arms folded and takes a drag. Ozob finishes off his opponent with a cross-body punch.
“OZOB! OZOB! OZOB!”
“Who wants a piece of me next?”
“Yeah, me.”
The crowd starts to laugh, and Ozob smirks.
“Well, who am to deny a pretty face.”
Vee sneers as she takes off her jacket and pulls her hair back as she steps into the circle.
“Don’t worry, I won’t punch that… pretty… face of yours too hard, wouldn’t want your head to explode.”
“Oh, I like you. Heh heh.”
Ozob is undefeated, dangerous, and a bit of an unknown, but so was Veronica to a degree (her work as a mercenary in Night City did gain her a bit of a reputation). Ozob didn’t know it, but she was about to release a fury even hell would not be prepared for.
