Retirement

V woke up feeling… actually pretty good, given her last memories. There was no throbbing headache or nausea threatening to make her puke. She even felt like she’d gotten a good night’s sleep, which was something that hadn’t happened in… a while. A small noise of contentment escaped her at the sense of relaxation.

“Hey there, sleeping beauty. Welcome back to the land of the living.” Jackie’s familiar jovial tones convinced her to open her eyes.

The first thing she noticed was the comparatively poor resolution of her vision. She could no longer zoom in or spot the individual details of his face like she used to be able to. Of course, they’d have had to replace the high end Arasaka cyberoptics she’d had before.

He handed her a glass of water and she drank greedily, wetting her dry throat.

“How long was I out?” She asked after a sigh of relief, looking around. It looked like a shady back alley ripperdoc clinic.

“A couple of days.” Jackie answered, nodding to the older dark-haired man in the sunglasses. “Vik had to pull a lot of that useless Arasaka junk out of you, then he noticed how messed up you were and decided to keep you under for a bit.”

“Doctor Viktor Vektor, at your service.” The ripperdoc said, holding out his hand for her to shake. “You were dehydrated and your cortisol levels were through the roof. Too many stims and too little sleep, I’d guess.”

“Yeah.” V grimaced, shaking his hand. Jenkins had been piling so much work on her recently that she had barely been getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. She’d been going through stimulants like crazy and feeling like shit for so long that it had become normal. “Thanks, Doc. I owe you one.”

“Don’t mention it.” He waved off.

“And this is Taylor, she helped me get you to Viktor’s.” Jackie introduced the last person in the room.

A teenage girl, skinny but tall and seemingly in good shape, her face framed by a fall of shiny black curls. She was dressed so simply that she’d fade into the background, but her eyes… That dark brown gaze was far too hard for any normal teenager. This was someone that had seen some shit. And… were those natural, organic eyes? How retro.

“I remember seeing you at Lizzie’s.” V said, holding out her hand.

“Taylor Hebert.” The teen said neutrally, reaching out to take the hand. “And yeah, I was there as backup for Jackie, just in case.”

V felt a momentary spike of irritation at Jackie for bringing someone else to the meeting, but it wasn’t like she’d stayed at the table with them. She took the hand, and noted that it was cybernetic, although well covered by RealSkinn.

“Nice meeting you.”

“Taylor’s pretty new to Night City. We’ve done a few gigs together over the past few weeks.” Jackie interjected with a grin.

V chuckled. Subtle, the big Latino was not. “Still dragging more people into your dreams of being a legend, Jackie?”

“Why not?” He retorted shamelessly. “With you on the team, we’d have three solos and T-Bug as our netrunner. We could take bigger gigs and score bigger paydays.”

“How about we let her get her feet under her before you get too excited?” Taylor suggested drily.

“You’re right, sorry.” Jackie rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “I’m just hyped. Been trying to get V out of that soulsucking corporate job for years.”

That he had. Frankly, V probably should have taken his advice and quit sooner, but she’d been too attached to all the luxuries. The fancy cars, the expensive clothes, the cybernetics, the apartment, the food, the drinks, the power….

Well, they’d showed her just how little power she really had and was all that other stuff really hers if they could take it away so easily? In hindsight, it had all just been puppet strings.

“Alright, Jackie, listen up, because you’ll probably never hear me say this again.” V said seriously, getting his attention. “You were right. I should have quit a long time ago.”

Of course, ‘quitting’ in this case would have meant faking her death and inventing a whole new identity. You didn’t just hand in your resignation when you were counter-intel, especially not when the boss effectively owned your ass.

Jackie didn’t say anything in response, but he did grin and puff out his chest. She shook her head and turned to the ripperdoc. “How much do I owe you?”

“A couple of thousand.” He made another dismissive gesture. “I had to remove your biomonitor and all the hormone regulators. That’s part of why I kept you under for so long – to let your body settle a bit. The cyberdeck and optics were also useless, so you’ve only got a basic set now. Reliable, but basic. I was able to salvage your monowire, though.”

“Honestly, that’s better than I expected.” V breathed, pushing herself out of the chair. It was only then that she noticed what she was wearing. A simple black T-shirt and a pair of synth-cotton sweatpants. When was the last time she’d worn something so casual? Jenkins always demanded that everyone look professional.

Thinking of her old boss, V figured that he was probably dead by now, along with the entire counter-intel department under him. Abernathy was a paranoid and vindictive bitch and wouldn’t respond well to an attempted assassination.

Actually, she wouldn’t respond well to her own goons’ failure to bring her in either, and the goons in question knew it. They’d probably neglected to mention that she was still alive and would make sure no reports of her continued existence reached their boss to protect their hides. Convenient.

“The clothes are mine.” Taylor spoke up, snapping V out of her thoughts. “We’re about the same height and Viktor had to cut up your blazer.”

“Thanks for the loan.” V nodded at her, taking note of the fact that Taylor’s eyes kept flickering to the way the shirt was stretched tight across her tits. “I guess I need to go shopping for clothes first thing. Help a girl out?”

The teenager instantly became a blank wall. “I’m not that great at shopping. Misty would probably be a better choice.”

“I just need someone to show me around, tell me which places are good and which to avoid.” V reassured. She could have done all that herself, but she wanted to get the measure of this very young mercenary. Stupid kids trying to become edgerunners were as common as cockroaches, but V would bet her last eddie that this one was different. Taylor’s eyes weren’t filled with cocky arrogance or naïve enthusiasm, but with the sort of cold distance that only hard experience could create.

She was someone to keep an eye on. Jackie always did end up meeting interesting people – just look at her.

“Sounds like a great idea.” Jackie quickly interjected. “I get to spend some time with Misty and you two damas can get to know each other a bit, then we can go to the El Coyote Cojo for some grub, so don’t snack too much. Oh, and V, my mama already said you could stay with us, so don’t worry about that.”

Trust Jackie to be so quick to offer her a place to stay. V glanced at Taylor to gauge her reaction.

“Fine.” The girl said, her voice completely flat and toneless, her expression utterly blank. It was easily the best impression of a stone wall that V had ever seen, and that was saying something in her former line of work.

Now she was just plain intrigued.

XXXXX

Despite Lisa’s best efforts, Taylor had never grown to enjoy shopping. She especially couldn’t enjoy it when there was an obvious ulterior motive.

Show V around? People had a GPS installed in their brains these days. What that ulterior motive might be was harder to guess at. Information gathering? Finding out what her relationship with Jackie was? Threats?

“Alright, what do you think?” The woman in question asked, stepping out of the changing booth.

Taylor turned to look and had to swallow down another burst of envy. V had elected put on a pair of tight synth-leather pants and a tight tank top with obviously no bra under it. She looked amazing and had the confidence to pull it off.

“It looks great.” She said honestly, forcing down her feelings. It wasn’t V’s fault her body issues were making a comeback now that she didn’t have anything more important to think about.

“Preem.” The older woman smiled in a way that made something squirm in Taylor’s guts. “Let me just grab a few more things and I’ll be good to go.”

“I’ll wait for you outside.” She said and escaped the store. That woman was going to be murder on her self-esteem, she just knew it.

Taylor leaned against the wall and glared over at the same bodysculpt clinic she always glared at the end of her workouts. The clothing store she’d taken V to was part of the same department store complex where she bought all of her stuff, and happened to be in sight range of the clinic. That hadn’t been something that she’d considered when she led the older woman to it, but now it felt like the universe was taunting her.

This was starting to remind her of Winslow in a very unpleasant way. Back then, she’d kept coming back every day out of some stubborn desire to not let Emma, Sophia, and Madison win. Was she doing the same with this bodysculpting thing, pointlessly torturing herself with something she wanted but refused to do out of some vague principle?

“Did that clinic do something to piss you off?” V’s bemused voice asked.

Taylor immediately stiffened. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she’d ignored the other woman’s location. Even if V wasn’t a threat, this was getting ridiculous.

“No.” She bit out.

“Then do you want to get some work done?” V guessed. “I can give you some advice if you want. Not all of this came from genetics.” She gestured towards her body with her free hand, the other one holding a bag of purchases. There was also a smirk on her face.

“You don’t say?” Taylor huffed. “Let’s just go.”

“Hey, come on now, don’t be like that. “ V quickly fell into step with her. “If you’re happy with your body then that’s fine. I was just offering my expertise on the subject.”

Taylor took a deep breath and exhaled. Why was she being so confrontational? From what she’d been able to gather since arriving in Night City, V’s offer was the equivalent of an older woman offering to show a younger one makeup tips. She was just trying to be friendly, at least on the surface. There was still that ulterior motive to consider.

“Sorry, it’s not your fault.” She said, stopping to look V in the eye. The former Arasaka employee had already changed the default blue pupils to her apparently preferred serpentine gold. “I’m just… not good with people.”

“You’ve had it rough, haven’t you?” The older woman said with some sympathy.

Taylor shrugged instead of replying verbally, not wanting to get into her circumstances.

“Well, just remember that you have people you can rely on now.” V brazenly draped an arm over her shoulder and pulled her into a half hug that made Taylor freeze indecisively. “Jackie has big dreams of being a legend, but he’s the kind of guy that’ll do anything for a friend and I get the feeling that you’re the same. Arasaka was full of ambitious backstabbers and I’m looking forward to having some actual friends. What do you say, Taylor? Are we chooms?”

Taylor relaxed as much as she was able while being hugged by an overly beautiful woman and nodded. “Chooms.”

That bit of slang was still kind of stupid, though.

XXXXX

V was more intrigued than ever. As a counter-intel operative, she’d needed to have an understanding of psychology. It had been one of the courses she took in the academy, even. She had a degree and everything, although Arasaka had probably canceled that, too.

And that knowledge was telling her that Taylor was suffering from PTSD, had body image issues, a repressed sexuality, and no doubt plenty more. Judging by the mix of longing and resentment with which she had looked at the bodysculpt clinic, she was actually the age she looked, which meant that this eighteen-year-old-girl had the markers of both a soldier and long term abuse victim. A lot of people in Night City were damaged, but not like this. And then there was that strange ability of hers to suddenly go completely emotionless, which she couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Where the hell did Jackie find her?

V wasn’t actually sure if what she’d said was true. She didn’t know if Taylor really did value friendship the same way Jackie did, but she was hopeful. The corpo life was a friendless life, and now that she was out of it she wanted to change that.

If it hadn’t been for Jackie, being kicked out of Arasaka, for something that wasn’t even her fault at that, would have been devastating. Instead, she had landed in the safety net that her friend had unknowingly set up with his daydreaming. V was determined to get set up into her new life as soon as possible, and that meant getting friendly with the new girl as well.

In pursuit of that goal, she continued engaging Taylor for the entire NCART trip to the El Coyote Cojo, shamelessly making use of the teenage girl’s obvious attraction to her to grease the wheels of her equally obviously disused social skills. Even if Taylor didn’t seem to realize that she was into other women, it was still working to make her more receptive to conversation. Using her looks to get results was a tactic that V was familiar with, but this time it was actually kind of fun. The teenager was just so adorably awkward with the attention, however good she was at hiding it.

When they arrived, Jackie enthusiastically introduced her to his mother and it was V’s turn to feel awkward as she was greeted more warmly than she thought she deserved. Mama Welles – as she insisted on being called – was really far too good a person for Night City.

“A toast!” Jackie declared loudly, raising a glass of tequila. “To Night City’s newest and soon-to-be best merc crew!”

“Are you trying to get yelled at by your mother again?” Taylor asked dubiously, looking at her own glass like it was a live grenade. “You remember what happened the last time I drank?”

“It’s just one glass, chica.” Jackie chuckled, a bit nervously to her ear.

“Oh? That sounds like a story?” V prodded with a grin.

“Not much of one.” Taylor denied. “I’m just a lightweight.”

“You’ll work up a tolerance.” Jackie dismissed. “Now let’s drink, to becoming legends!”

“To my retirement.” Taylor said with the same impenetrable stone face before knocking back her drink.

V’s ears instantly perked up at that. Retirement? Now didn’t that have all sorts of interesting implications for someone so young? She’d have to ask Jackie what Taylor meant later. For now, it was time to mess with him.

“To this!” She said, staring at him.

As predicted, he looked incensed and grumbled about how that wasn’t a proper toast. He should have realized by now that she only did it to fuck with him.

XXXXX

Taylor was in the middle of using a lat pulldown machine in the gym when her phone rang. It seemed a bit silly to use a machine like this with a cybernetic arm, but it still helped her organic arm as well as all the other muscle groups involved in using it.

“Jackie? What is it?” She asked. It had been about two days since V woke up, time that she assumed the former corpo had spent buying the rest of the necessities and getting fully settled into the Welles house.

“Got a gig offer from Padre, stealing a stolen car. You interested? V’s already in.” He explained with a pointlessly suave tone.

“Hey, Taylor.” The woman in question greeted.

“Hey, V.”

Taylor had some conflicted feelings about the older woman. Her first impression had been of a callous corporate bully, but the way things ended in Lizzie’s bar it looked more like she’d just been putting up a front. Then, after she woke up, V acted like a very different person. She was confident, relaxed and maybe even suspiciously friendly.

A dark part of her mind suspected it was all a ploy to manipulate her, but to what end? She might have suspected the confrontation with the Arasaka goons of being faked, but there was no way a megacorp would put on that much of a show to insert a spy as a friend to a low tier mercenary like Jackie. And if they had an inkling of suspicion about her powers, their efforts would have been much more… vigorous.

Plus, there was Contessa to consider. If her letter was to be taken at face value, then V was not likely to be a threat. That wasn’t something that Taylor was keen to rely on, but it was pointless to get paranoid. That hat-wearing bitch’s power would always win out in the end.

“And yeah, I’m interested.”

Not like she had been doing anything much besides sleeping, eating and exercising. To the average citizen, Night City might be a place with an infinite number of pleasurable distractions, but Taylor found the preponderance of sex, porn, and drugs repulsive. To say nothing of the braindances, she wouldn’t touch one of those with a ten foot pole.

That left only the occasional movie that Misty talked her into watching and books, but more and more Taylor instead found herself spending time in the gym.

She still focused mainly on cardio, but with all this extra workout time on her hands and the nanomeds cutting downtime, she had started branching out into muscle training as well. The burn helped her feel less restless at least.

“Preem. Let me just call Padre, then.” Jackie said and did so.

The old fixer picked up promptly. “Jackie. Given the timing, I assume you are interested in the gig I sent you?”

Taylor always kind of liked listening to Padre talk. He had a very calm manner about him, even though she knew that he was a stone cold killer.

“That’s right. Lay it on us, Padre.” The only man in their crew said eagerly.

“Very well. The client is a corporate manager. He recently bought an expensive sports car for himself, a Quadra Type-66 Avenger, and decided he would drive through Vista Del Rey with it to rub his wealth in the faces of the poor.”

“Idiot.” V muttered.

“Indeed.” Padre agreed. “His sin of pride came into conflict with the sins of wrath and greed afflicting some young 6^th Street punks. They have been using it to take joyrides across the subdistrict and impress girls. Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time until they also catch the eye of the Valentinos. I would rather not risk escalating hostilities over some wheels. The gig is to steal the car and bring it to me. It is also time sensitive, so decide quickly.”

“I’m up for it.” Taylor immediately volunteered. She’d have to take a quick shower to wash the sweat off, but she hadn’t been working out long enough today to really strain herself.

“Sounds good to me.” V added.

“You heard the ladies, Padre. We’ll take it.” Jackie said enthusiastically.

“Excellent, I will send you the details.” The fixer said and hung up.

“I’ll meet you guys down in Heywood.” Taylor said and hung up as well, already packing up her stuff.

A few minutes later she left the gym, giving the bodysculpt clinic a habitual glare as she walked past.

XXXXX

V decided that she had to get a car as soon as possible, because going to gigs with public transport was just embarrassing. Jackie’s Arch could seat two in a pinch but it was definitely not meant for it and there were three of them in the crew now.

Well, four if you counted Jackie’s mysterious netrunner that she hadn’t met yet. Apparently T-Bug preferred to keep her distance… a long distance. So much distance that she couldn’t really be called part of the crew right now. Odds were that they’d never actually see her in person, and only hear each other for the sake of business.

She and Jackie met up with Taylor, who was unknowingly the subject of considerable curiosity on V’s part. She had asked Jackie about the teenager over the past two days and he had told her what little he knew.

Retirement, Taylor had called it. Two shots to the back of the head was the kind of retirement black ops agents got. And absolutely no chrome? It would lower combat effectiveness, but with electronic security focusing more and more on detecting cyberware…

This was the kind of mystery that would have her department crawling all over it if they caught wind of it. Now V just wanted to know for her own sake, but she would be patient.

“Alright, here we are. You ladies ready?” Jackie asked as they stopped just out of the range of a run-down apartment block in Vista Del Rey.

“Let me scout the place first.” Taylor said.

“Alright, but stay on the line.” Jackie tapped the side of his head.

“Of course.” And with that she left, looking like just another pedestrian.

V noted the professionalism in Taylor’s manner and appreciated it. Even in Arasaka counter-intel, where you’d expect people to always take their jobs seriously, they occasionally got gonks that goofed around.

She and Jackie chatted casually while Taylor did her thing. About ten minutes later, The girl came back and sent them both a file before unplugging herself from her phone and putting away the cable. So retro.

But V couldn’t think of teasing her because the file was a complete 3D blueprint of the building, with all the cameras marked and insanely precise information on the number of combatants, civilians, and weapons. Info so detailed and extensive that even the greenest of operatives couldn’t screw it up.

A picture was coming together in V’s mind. A black ops team with an unknown number of members, but one of them was a young black-haired girl, completely ‘ganic and unthreatening. That girl was somehow a monster of a scout, able to pick apart everything about a location with incredible speed and precision so that her more combat-oriented team can hit it.

Something obviously went wrong, Taylor loses an arm and possibly her entire team. Her handler tries to ‘retire’ her, only to run afoul the mysterious Contessa. Or maybe Contessa was the one to retire the team, but had a soft spot for Taylor? Either way, Taylor gets saved and brought to Night City with the implicit understanding that she was to keep her mouth shut about the past.

“She’s good, isn’t she?” Jackie grinned, seeing the look on her face.

“She’s incredible.” V said honestly, with an appropriately impressed tone. “This intel is just as good as anything Arasaka’s best could gather, but it’d take them at least a few days.”

The compliment made Taylor go blank again, which was rather amusing. She had a feeling that it was a substitute for blushing. It also added another point to V’s growing psychological profile of the teenager. Is not used to compliments.

Instead of answering, Taylor put on her sunglasses, spider mask, and leather gloves, going into what Jackie had humorously dubbed ‘Skitter Mode’.

“Are we ready to go in?” Skitter (V had had operational security drilled into her head so she automatically defaulted to thinking of Taylor as Skitter when the mask went on) said, her toneless voice raising goosebumps on V’s skin. Whether it was the spider mask, that emotionless state she went into sometimes, or a combination of both, the teenager suddenly sounded dangerous.

The notion of her being some kind of black ops was looking less farfetched by the minute.

“Ready.” Jackie and V both confirmed.

“Then let’s go.”

It didn’t escape V’s notice how naturally Skitter seemed to take command and how confident she was about it. There was no hesitation, no awkwardness, just decisive action. This was someone who had experience as a leader going into combat, someone who expected to be obeyed. Extremely interesting, given her age. Interesting enough that V decided to let it ride instead of objecting to taking orders from someone a decade her junior.

Besides, she wasn’t exactly at her best. Her heart was pounding , adrenaline surging through her veins. The sensation was unfamiliar after years of relying on hormone regulators to keep her cool. She felt jittery and anxious, muscles tensing up with the need for action that she knew wouldn’t be coming just yet. She had to take deep breaths to try calming down.

“You alright there, V?” Skitter seemed to notice immediately.

“Yeah, just a little keyed up.” She exhaled, professionally embarrassed by the lack of composure. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to go into action without cyberware to help me keep a cool head.”

“It’ll come back to you, hermana. All that junk was just holding you back anyway.” Jackie said confidently as they entered the building. Some of the people squatting around it gave them a wide berth. “But you know, we’ll probably have to kill them?”

“I know.” Skitter nodded. “Don’t worry, Jackie, I’ve had time to… adjust my morality since coming to Night City.”

V listened to the subtext and was confused, her mental image cracking. Black ops wasn’t known for its pacifism and respect for the sanctity of life. If Skitter was a burned black ops operative, then why would she need to adjust to a more lethal attitude?

This riddle was getting more interesting with every new nugget of information.

“However…” Skitter continued, her tone suddenly glacial. “I won’t accept civilian casualties, so mind your fire.”

V was starting to think it actually wasn’t a corp behind this – they wouldn’t have given a shit about civilian casualties if they were making some kind of black ops super ninja. Or was Skitter overcompensating after being forced to kill civilians in the past?

“Don’t worry, chica. We do this clean.” Jackie agreed easily.

“I imagine that Padre wouldn’t be too happy with us if we gunned down a bunch of civilians anyway.” V added. “I’ve heard stories of fixers flatlining their own mercs if they get too messy.”

“It happens.” Jackie confirmed. “Usually only when a solo goes cyberpsycho, though.”

“Look sharp, this is the floor.” Skitter abruptly said, stopping on the stairs. “Camera over the door.”

“I’ve got it.” V said and fired off a quickhack at the camera to shut it down. She was no dedicated netrunner and wouldn’t be breaking into any data fortresses (especially not with this crappy cyberdeck), but she was competent enough at the surface-level stuff and the combat applications.

“Jackie, take apartment 302. V, 304. I’ll take 306. Do it quiet, then we storm 301, 303, and 305 together.” Skitter quickly ordered.

V consulted the 3D model she’d been sent earlier and noted that the even numbered rooms seem to have been turned into some kind of ‘private’ quarters, while the odd numbered rooms had walls blown open to make a single large ‘common’ area.

Considering the presence of civilian women, she could guess why.

The doors to the common area were open, which made it risky to just walk past, but Skitter confidently signaled them forward. Jackie slipped into room 302 without notice. The two women moved further down the hall, but Skitter held up a closed fist in the universal military sign of ‘freeze’ and V froze automatically. They waited for a few seconds and then V was waved ahead into room 304.

Before she went, she took a look into what was once room 303 and just barely caught a glimpse of one of the Sixers moving past. Skitter had known his exact location. She was somehow tracking people in real time without cyberware.

Putting that mystery to the side for now, V carefully observed the apartment she had just entered, thankful for the nearly silent electronic door. She was in a short entrance hall of some sort and there was a television blaring somewhere further in, probably where she would find her quarry.

That supposition turned out to be correct. The Sixer was sitting on a ratty old armchair, stupidly turned away from the door. His gun, silly cowboy hat, an inhaler that looked like it was full of Black Lace, and a beer lying on a table next to him. The apartment had largely been gutted of everything else except for a bed in the corner.

V approached cautiously, left hand holding her Unity pistol just in case, but her right carefully unsheathing one of her favored neurotoxin knives. She wasn’t going to risk just knocking him unconscious. She was about five feet away from him when it became clear that it wasn’t just him in the apartment.

One of the women Skitter had mention was kneeling between his legs and bobbing her head over his crotch. With a brief eyeroll, she stepped closer and slipped the knife under his jaw, making sure to nick the skin.

“Easy.” She whispered barely audibly, digging the knife in just a little more.

The gangoon froze, not knowing that he was already dead as the neurotoxin made its way into his brain. The girl didn’t notice anything, keeping up the blowjob until the guy went soft in the chair and her mouth.

She looked up with the most amusingly indignant expression V had ever seen, which quickly froze in fear at seeing the gun pointed at her head.

“Stay quiet.” V ordered softly. “I’m not here to hurt you, so just stay here and keep your mouth shut and you’ll be fine. Understand?”

“Y-yeah!” The girl stuttered.

“Good.”

V put the girl out of mind and picked up the gun of the recently dead gangoon. A D5 Copperhead, basic and reliable.

“I’m done here.” Jackie reported.

“Me too.” V replied.

“Alright, go stand by the doors. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to go back to the hallway.” Skitter was also apparently done.

And just like before, she demonstrated nigh on supernatural spatial awareness. A Ping quickhack could tell you where people were by pinging every electronic device in the local subnet, but it wasn’t 100% reliable. There were people whose ICE repelled it and some who were paranoid enough to not connect. And even when it did work it didn’t tell you where people were looking, just their location. Skitter was way too confident in her knowledge to be a Ping spammer, even if she had the cyberware for it, which she didn’t. Not to mention that Ping spams would get noticed.

V and Jackie waited for Skitter’s word on when they could leave and sure enough, they got out without being noticed. Now all three mercs were standing just outside the doors for the connected common area, ready to charge in and cause a ruckus. V noticed that Jackie had also picked up a Copperhead of his own.

“We hit them in a staggered wave. Jackie goes first and pulls back after three seconds. Then V does the same and I do it last. We should be able to get most or all of them on the first hit. Jackie, you have four of them playing darts at two o’clock from the door. Two civilians are with them. V, three of them watching TV at twelve o’clock. One civilian is with them. The last of them are on my end.” Skitter whispered. “Go in three, two one…”

“Buenos dias, motherfuckers!” Jackie hollered as he burst in, letting loose with the Copperhead a moment later. The men cursed and the women screamed. Then Jackie pulled back and it was V’s turn.

She was too much of a professional to repeat Jackie’s ‘greeting’, but it was admittedly tempting.

The men had already gotten up and grabbed their guns in the three seconds since Jackie’s entrance, but they were looking the wrong way. Even better, the woman had thrown herself on the ground in a display of better-than-average Night City common sense. V had seen civilians literally run into a crossfire in a blind panic before. Then again, those had been corpos.

The Copperhead bucked in her hands as she unloaded on them, managing to gun two down before the last dodged for cover. Remembering the plan, she ducked back into the hallway.

Skitter went in then, the bangs of her Liberty cutting through the yells of the Sixers and the screams of the women.

“V, go!” Skitter ordered and V didn’t hesitate to obey. The remaining gangoon had repositioned to be in cover against Skitter and was now wide open to her. The Copperhead cut him down easily.

“Jackie, go!” Another order came before she even finished, heralding another flurry of gunfire from the room to her right.

Then all was silent except for the whimpers and cries of the civilian women.

“All clear.” Skitter said, stepping through the hole in the wall. She was still holding on to her gun, though.

“Madre de Dios, we fucked them up good.” Jackie laughed, also coming into the central room.

That they had. Frankly, this operation had gone off just about perfectly, on account of the incredibly precise intel Skitter had gathered beforehand and during the gig. If they’d charged in here without knowing the exact numbers and positions of the gangoons, it would have been messy as hell.

V’s body was still burning with the adrenaline rush. She wanted to keep on fighting, but the fight was over, leaving her feeling distinctly unsatisfied.

“Y-you won’t get away with this!” One of the downed, but apparently not dead, gangoons gritted out. “6^th Street is gonna fuck you up.”

V swung the Copperhead at him, but it was clear that he wouldn’t be causing any more trouble. His gut was riddled with bullet holes and his cybernetic right arm was a sparking mess.

“Sure they will, choom.” V shook her head, ditching the borrowed Copperhead.

 “T-t-they’ll find you!” The dead man kept on talking. “They’ll kill that Valentino fuck and rape you bitches until you bleed!”

V had just about had it with him and was about to waste one more bullet on shutting him up. She saw that Jackie was already redrawing his guns as well. They were both beaten to the punch by Skitter, who coldly aimed her Liberty at him and pulled the trigger.

The gunshot made the civilian women panic again and probably assume that they would be executed, so they broke into a panicked run. V almost fired on them from sheer reflex, and she saw Jackie huff in annoyance as he almost did the same.

Conversely, Skitter hadn’t so much as twitched.

“Let’s find the keyshard and get out of here.” The spider-masked young woman said, putting her gun away.

The cold-blooded ruthlessness, the absolute focus… no, whatever that thing about adjusting morality earlier had been, Skitter was definitely no stranger to killing. Any mercy was an entirely personal choice.

The biggest missing piece of the puzzle now was which group was responsible for creating this very deadly young woman? V wasn’t going to ask, but she would be paying very close attention.

 “Found it!” Jackie exclaimed, holding up a fancy-looking keyshard and snapping V out of her thoughts. “That means I’m driving!”

“Sure, Jackie, just try not to crash it.” V rolled her eyes. She’d driven plenty of expensive cars before and wouldn’t begrudge him the experience.

Down in the garage, they discovered a new problem. Namely, the Quadra Type-66 Avenger was a sports car and had only two seats.

“I can just walk to the NCART station?” Taylor offered, having removed her gloves and mask, but not her sunglasses.

“No way.” Jackie immediately denied, making an X shape with his hands. “We’re going to get lunch and celebrate. I guess I could call my bike and you two can take the car…”

The reluctance in his voice was obvious. Though Jackie preferred bikes, he had clearly been looking forward to driving the Quadra.

“Taylor can sit in my lap.” V suggested, throwing a small teasing smirk at the younger woman. “How about it? I promise I’m comfortable.”

Again, the younger woman went blank Yeah, that was definitely a substitute for blushing. Was she actually a virgin, at eighteen? In Night City, that would be like finding a unicorn.

“That’ll work.” Jackie laughed, obviously amused. “Come on, let’s go.”

“But…” Taylor tried to protest, but V had already grabbed her by the hand and tugged her over to the car.

A minute later, V had her arms around Taylor’s waist, performing the function of a seatbelt. They were the same height, so she couldn’t quite whisper into her ear, but she still gave her a squeeze as she spoke. “Comfy?”

“… This can’t possibly be safe.” Taylor muttered, visibly embarrassed.

“Don’t worry, chica, I’ll drive slow.” Jackie grinned and threw a wink their way.

XXXXX

Riding an expensive car in a beautiful woman’s lap was a new experience for Taylor and she really wasn’t sure how to feel about it, so she did as she often did when faced with uncomfortable questions and pushed it aside in order to focus on something else.

What she’d told Jackie before they went into the building was true, she had adjusted her morality since arriving in Night City.

Life on Earth Bet already had a skewed value thanks to Cauldron’s bullshit. Capes were more valued than regular people because they wanted as many of them as possible to throw against Scion. They’d think nothing of sacrificing a thousand innocent normals to preserve a single useful villain. They had done exactly that more than once, no doubt.

In Night City, life was even cheaper somehow. Taylor hadn’t wanted to become an indiscriminate killer slaughtering her way through the gangs, but trying to play by an Earth Bet rulebook wouldn’t work. The prisons were full and the justice system so corrupt that it couldn’t even be called a ‘justice’ system anymore.

Frankly, the more she thought about it, the more Night City reminded her of Brockton Bay after Leviathan. Effectively, it was being controlled by petty warlords in the form of the gangs, with the only thing preventing a descent into open war being the omnipresent threat of the all-powerful megacorporations deciding that a purge was necessary.

With that kind of perspective shift, Taylor found that it really wasn’t too hard to slip back into her old warlord mindset. That was why she’d been able to execute that 6^th Street gangoon so easily.

She was still waiting to see if there would be any guilt showing up for it, but for now all she felt was relief. Maybe all the shit she’d been through had damaged her conscience enough that killing hardened criminals no longer registered? Or maybe not all of her had come back from merging with her passenger. Maybe she was just tired and burned out.

That was probably why she’d decided to risk exposing a glimpse of her powers to V. Tiptoeing around it sounded exhausting and it was hard to give a shit. If their new teammate was going to betray them, then it was better to get it over with.

“Here we are.” Jackie said, bringing her out of her ruminations.

He turned into a wide alley that had quite a few Valentinos and one older man that she could immediately tell was in charge hanging around it. He drove into an open garage and turned the car off.

“Time to meet the big man.” V muttered, giving her legs a squeeze.

Taylor wasn’t sure what to think about that, so she said nothing and simply slipped out of the car, keenly aware of the remnant heat from V’s body. She wasn’t going to think of how nice it had felt.

“Padre!” Jackie greeted the old, bald and mustachioed man enthusiastically.

“Jackie.” Padre returned the greeting with more reserve, but she could hear the warmth in it. “And these lovely ladies are the new solos you’ve so recently partnered up with, I presume?”

“That’s right.” Jackie grinned. “You already know about Skitter as she prefers to be known on the job. And the new one is my old buddy V.”

“A pleasure.” The old man said, nodding in their direction. “I am Sebastian Ibarra, but you can call me Padre. I have heard good things about both of you.”

“And we’ve heard good things about you.” V smirked. “Jackie does like to talk.”

“That he does.” The fixer agreed with a smile.

Taylor was already feeling uncomfortable and out of her element, a feeling not helped by the assessing looks the Valentinos were giving her. Knowing that she couldn’t afford to show weakness, she shunted her reactions into the swarm and stood tall, keeping to herself while Jackie and V talked to Padre.

But that plan didn’t last long. Through some kind of silent agreement, one of the female Valentinos was apparently picked to approach her and swaggered over – that walk really couldn’t be called anything else. Like many of the gang members Taylor had seen so far, she was a living advertisement for it. Aside from the fact that she was a Latina, she had gold cross earrings, a gold chin-plate and was absolutely covered in tattoos. Tattoos which were easily visible because she was only wearing some jean booty shorts and a tank top that had obviously been deliberately damaged to cover as little as possible.

“Why do they call you Skitter?” She asked directly, speaking in Spanish. Fortunately, the sunglasses translated it.

“It’s a long story.” Taylor evaded.

“We got time.” The Valentino woman pressed.

“Not that much time.” She stood her ground. “And no offense, but it’s not something I share with just anyone.”

The Latina looked a little annoyed by that, and Taylor was starting to feel a bit annoyed by the prodding as well. Before anything could come of it, V was suddenly there, throwing an arm over her shoulder.

“Hey there, you mind if I borrow my choom for a second?” She said to the Valentino woman, barely waiting for a confirmation before leading Taylor away.

“What the hell was that?” The parahuman asked, confused and feeling as if she’d missed something important. Also, V was a lot stronger than she looked.

“That was me saving you from making a mistake.” V said, sliding her arm down Taylor’s back until it rested at the small of her back. It felt warm through her clothes.

“What do you mean?” She asked, even more confused.

“I don’t have time to explain right now, so I’m going to ask you to trust me, okay?” V said seriously.

Taylor clenched her jaw and pushed down her misgivings. There was no reason why the older woman would want to screw her over. “… Alright.”

“Okay, good. First thing I need you to do is relax. The way you stand and walk is practically screaming that you think you’re better than everyone here.”

“But I don’t think that!” Taylor protested in shock and some indignation.

“I know, but that’s what it looks like to the Valentinos. Being Jackie’s friend  got you through the door, but that bit of good will won’t last long if you keep standing like you’re afraid you’ll get their germs on you and refusing to interact with them.”

“Oh.” Taylor hadn’t even thought about that and her mind flashed back to how V’s body language changed since she’d first seen her. Back when V landed on top of Lizzie’s in that Arasaka AV, she had walked, talked, and acted like a massively arrogant cunt, but now she was dressed not much different from these gangers, moved with exaggerated motions similar to Jackie, and talked to people with easy grins.

It really drove home the fact that she had basically been the corporate equivalent of a CIA agent. She was a social manipulator and that realization immediately made Taylor very uncomfortable. She tended to have bad experiences with social manipulators.

“Hey, relax!” V’s arm snaked all the way around her waist and pulled her into a half-hug. It was an order, but the tone was still friendly. “Now, we’re going to circle back and you’re going to give that girl a story about why they call you Skitter. Doesn’t have to be true, just make it sound badass.”

“Okay.” Taylor forced herself out of the swarm and relaxed into V’s hug despite her instinctive wariness once she realized what the older woman was doing.

V led them back and smiled at the Latina girl that had continued to wait there. “Sorry about that, my young friend here had a close call during the gig earlier and she was still a little tense. You said you wanted to know about her handle?”

It was a lie and they all knew it, but the Valentino woman – who really didn’t look much older than her – let it go. “Yeah, it makes you sound like a bug and I wanted to know why you’d call yourself that.”

Taylor might be socially inept in most ways, but she had a keen sense for when she was being insulted and knew that this was a small bit of revenge for whatever offense she’d unknowingly given earlier. She was long past the point of being hurt by bug comparisons, though.

“Funny you should mention bugs.” She began, picking out which story to use. Something badass, V had said? Gangers tended to like violent stories and she had just the one. “They started calling me Skitter after I killed a couple of people by shoving bugs down their throat.”

“Really?” The Latino woman was impressed rather than horrified the way a normal person would be. “What’d they do to deserve that?”

“They murdered a few of my friends.” She condensed the truth. At the time, she really had thought that’s what they were doing, after all.

To this day she was still pretty conflicted about what she’d done to Alexandria and Tagg. On one hand, it had been murder and a particularly horrible kind… on the other, they had been fucking asking for it.

“Sounds like they got what they deserved, then.” The Valentino nodded approvingly. “Bet nobody else tried to fuck with you after that, eh?”

“Not for a while.” Taylor forced out a chuckle. The Chicago Wards team had certainly been walking on eggshells at first.

The social interaction was more stressful than the gunfight had been and she nearly breathed a sigh of relief when Jackie came sauntering up to them.

“Alright, we got our pay. Let’s go get lunch!” He said enthusiastically, his eyes briefly glowing as he sent over their share of the money. Taylor felt her phone vibrate in its pouch.

“We can walk to the Coyote.” V suggested. “It’s close and it’s a nice day.”

It should be winter, but the rampant environmental damage meant that it was no more than pleasantly cool. Taylor dreaded what summer in Night City was going to be like.

V put some distance between them as they said goodbye to the Valentino woman and set off for Mama Welles’ bar, but the warmth of her body lingered for a while.

“Are you going to explain what that was all about back there?” She asked.

“Something happen?” Jackie asked curiously, obviously having not even registered anything odd.

“Nothing much, I just realized our young friend here needs some serious tutoring on how to talk to people.” V answered him and then turned to Taylor. “Look, I don’t know where you were and what you’ve been doing before you came here, but there’s more to surviving this meat grinder of a city than just being able to fight.”

“You should listen to V, chica.” Jackie chimed in. “I wasn’t going to say anything since I figured you just needed a little time, but you do come across a bit….” He trailed off, obviously looking for the right word.

“Off-putting.” V offered.

“That’s it!” He snapped his fingers.

Taylor could only stare at them with thinly veiled frustration. Fuck, this was seriously turning out just like the start of her cape career, where she went in thinking she knew what she was doing, only to immediately make every mistake in the book.

“Don’t worry about it for now, Taylor.” V reassured. “This is stuff that’s better shown than explained and if you’re as clueless as I think you are, then it’s going to take us a bit to get you up to speed.”

“Right…” The parahuman sighed and shook her head, deciding to forcibly change the subject. “What’s Padre going to do with the car?”

“Probably return it to the gonk who lost it for a ‘finder’s fee’.” V snorted. “This kind of thing happens all the time. I once heard about this mid-level Arasaka exec that had his car stolen four times in one year. Turned out that the fixer he was paying to get it back was also the same one that was paying to have it stolen in the first place. That didn’t end well for anyone, not the fixer and definitely not for the idiot who fell for his scheme.”

“Dumbasses.” Jackie snorted. “Padre’s too smart to pull something like that, and he likes to keep the streets calm. If the corpo doesn’t want to pay to have his car returned, then he’ll probably have it sold for parts.”

The topic reminded Taylor of something she’d been meaning to ask. “We need a car, right? Why don’t we just steal one from the gangs?”

The times when she would be morally opposed to such an action were long past. However, the looks Jackie and V gave her in response made her think that she’d just said something extremely stupid. “What?”

“Taylor, we aren’t friends with any techies.” V said patiently, as if that explained everything.

The smart thing to do would probably be to drop it and research this later, but she’d already exposed her ignorance on the topic so there was no point hiding it. “So what?”

“Chica, Night City is full of scanners constantly running checks for stolen vehicles.” Jackie’s tone was amused. “You need to really get into a car’s guts to change the registration. If we klep one, the gangs will flag it as stolen just to spite us, then NCPD would seize it and either return it for a fee or sell it themselves. It’s how they make most of their money. Think of the badges as a mix of fixers and mercs that work for the city.”

Right, because the megacorps had fucked things to the point that people thought even the goddamn police needed to turn a profit. She dreaded to think of how the firefighters operated. Did they moonlight as arsonists and hold the city hostage if people didn’t pay? Hospitals… actually hospitals probably operated more or less the same as they did back on Earth Bet, just more blatantly.

“Right…” She didn’t ask any further, guessing that paying a techie to change the registration was basically what buying a used car meant in Night City.

Used car dealerships and chop shops were going to end up being the same thing, weren’t they?

They continued talking as they walked. Or more accurately, V and Jackie talked while Taylor occasionally offered up a comment. Still, she didn’t feel like a third wheel since they both made an effort to include her.

It was nice.

Once they made it to the El Coyote Cojo, they quickly settled at a table and ordered their meals. Jackie also ordered a round of tequila shots.

“Jackie, are you trying to turn me into an alcoholic?” Taylor asked, torn between amusement and irritation.

“What kind of solo can’t handle their liqueur?” He fire back rhetorically. “You gotta train your body up!”

“He’s not wrong.” V backed him up. “Being able to knock back a few shots without getting tipsy can be vital. There’s some situations where not drinking would be considered rude and they’ll take advantage of you if they know you can’t handle it.”

“Seriously?” Taylor asked in disbelief.

“Dead seriously.” V confirmed. “If you ever end up having a formal meeting with the Tyger Claws, for example, they’ll definitely insist on sake and take it personally if you refuse. Some corpos are like that, too.”

“Valentinos also like to talk biz over drinks sometimes.” Jackie added. “And if people are drinking in someone’s honor, then you’ll insult them if you don’t join in. And that’s not even mentioning the Afterlife.”

“The merc bar?” Taylor asked with a frown. She had read about it while researching her new profession, but didn’t see what the big deal was. “What about it?”

“They only let you in when you’ve got enough street cred. If a big name buys you a drink, are you gonna turn it down?” He asked pointedly.

“This is another one of those things you say I need to be taught, isn’t it?”

“Yep.” V nodded.

Taylor sighed, conceding defeat. Apparently, she was taking up recreational drinking. Dad would be so proud.

Wow, there was still some bitterness in that thought. Her father had never quite reached the point of being a drunk, but he’d come damn close after Mom died. It had been something that she’d silently resented for a long time and never quite dealt with. Even after they tried to patch their relationship up, bigger things had always gotten in the way.

“To our first successful gig together!” Jackie toasted enthusiastically.

“To a job well done.” Taylor chose something more reserved.

“To this.” V said with a smirk, shooting Taylor a wink as Jackie let out a stream of grumbling Spanish. An alien sensation crawled up her throat that she belatedly recognized as a giggle, which she reflexively shunted into the swarm.

They knocked back the shots and Taylor once again had to suppress the urge to cough as it burned all the way down. At least it was getting easier, though.

“So, you two got any plans for tomorrow?” V asked afterwards.

“I’ve got a date planned out with Misty.” Jackie said in an unnecessarily suave manner, as if the woman in question was here and he was talking to her. “A walk through the park, a ride out of the city limits, dinner in a restaurant…”

“Should I make myself scarce?” Taylor offered, not wanting to get in the way of their relationship. “I could spend a night in a motel or something.”

It would be a waste of money, but she was willing to do it for Jackie and Misty.

“Shhh!” Jackie hissed, hunching over and looking around as if he expected an armed hit squad to smash through the walls. “Don’t say that kind of thing around here! If Mama hears that you spent the night in a motel when we have room at our house, she’ll kill us both.”

“Your mother is one of a kind, Jackie.” V chuckled, obviously amused.

Taylor only smiled, but she was also amused. Mama Welles really was something else.

“That she is.” He agreed, chuckling as well.

“How about this, then…” V began. “Taylor and I can have a girl’s day for ourselves and come spend the evening keeping your mother company, while you and Misty go over to her place.”

“Yeah… yeah, that sounds great!” Jackie warmed up to the idea rapidly.

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Taylor wondered, not too upset. Now that V had taken up a quasi-mentor role, she was reminding her more of Lisa than any of her enemies.

“Probably best you don’t.” Jackie nodded sagely. “You spend more time working out and doing gigs than I do, Taylor. V can get you to slow down a bit.”

It was true that she’d been intending to spend the day in the gym and maybe doing a gig for Regina if she sent one…

“I’d be good for me, too, if I’m being honest.” V added. “Haven’t done any proper relaxing in months.”

“Okay, I guess…” Taylor capitulated. For her, Night City had been relaxing in comparison to the apocalyptic shit she had been dealing with on Earth Bet.

XXXXX

“Everything looks good.” Viktor proclaimed, clapping her on the cybernetic arm. “No glitches, no pain, no numbness. As far as I can tell you’ve adapted to it perfectly.”

“Sometimes I forget it’s cybernetic.” Taylor admitted, rolling the arm around in its socket.

It wasn’t her first checkup, and she attended them religiously. The natives of this Earth might think nothing of implanting cybernetics, but she was going to treat it with the caution it deserved.

“That’s how it should be.” Viktor nodded, pleased. “You’re in good shape and you exercise regularly. A lot of people think it doesn’t matter, but it does. Reinforces the nerve connections.”

“A healthy mind in a healthy body?” She quoted the old adage, though she wasn’t sure if her mind could be called healthy.

“Exactly. If you’re interested in chipping in more chrome, then you’ve got my approval.”

“I think I’ll pass on it for now.” Taylor was still leery of the practice.

“Suit yourself, I’ll be here if you change your mind.” Viktor shrugged. “How are things going with Jackie and V? I heard you had a gig yesterday.”

“The gig went fine, but apparently I need to learn how to talk to people or something.” She grumbled a bit. “V’s going to be coming around soon to take me on a ‘girl’s day out’.”

“That’s nice of her.” He said neutrally.

“I guess.” Taylor still wasn’t 100% sure what V’s angle was.

“Look, kid, I might not be the best choice for this, but if you need someone to talk to, then I’m here for you.” The ripperdoc offered, looking a bit uncomfortable but genuine.

Something painful squeezed in her chest and she suddenly wanted to see her dad again. Had he even survived Gold Morning? There was a small urge to take Viktor up on his offer and confide in him, but it passed quickly. She was just not comfortable trusting him that much yet. Maybe one day.

“Thanks, Vik.”

Checking the time and seeing that it wasn’t long before V was supposed to show up, Taylor decided to wait in front of Misty’s Esoterica. The store owner was already gone, Jackie having showed up a while ago to pick her up.

Less than ten minutes later, the former corpo came striding down the street and Taylor had to swallow a familiar surge of envy.

V was wearing what had apparently become her favorite outfit – tight leather pants and a tank top with no bra that showed off a lot of cleavage and side boob. Her black hair was bound up in that same high ponytail that brought her beautiful face into sharp relief. The golden serpentine eyes locked on to her and Taylor pushed off from the wall, ready to greet the other woman.

Her intention had been a simple hello, or maybe some kind of handshake if V initiated it, but she was left completely off-balance when the older woman instead engulfed her in a hug.

“Hey.” V said, breath tickling at her ear.

Confused, Taylor mechanically returned the hug. “Hey?”

“Come on, let’s go.” V disengaged and grabbed her by the wrist. “I’ve got our day all planned out.”

“Okay.” The response was embarrassingly meek, but Taylor felt way out of her depth right now and had no idea what was going on, so she was just going to let V take the lead unless something weird happened.

XXXXX

“What the hell is this?” Taylor demanded.

“A biosculpt clinic.” V answered the rhetorical question unrepentantly.

It wasn’t the same biosculpt clinic that she spent so much time glaring at. If anything it looked a little fancier.

“I mean, why are you taking me here?” She ground out, trying to stop in place. Trying being the operative word, because whatever cybernetics V had gave her a not-insignificant Brute rating.

“There’s some work I want to get done and I figured you might want to get a closer look at what goes on in these places.” V remained unrepentant. “Come on, stop struggling. You’re making a scene.”

The roaches around them attacked each other as she allowed herself to be led inside. It was very clean and sleek, a sharp contrast to the otherwise filthy state of Night City.

“Welcome to the NuLook Biosculpt Clinic!” The perky receptionist greeted with an overly bright smile. “We have a two-for-one special on offer today!”

“Really?” V’s tone was surprised, but Taylor didn’t buy it for a second. The sneaky bitch had definitely planned for this. “It would be a crime not to take advantage of that kind of offer.”

“It would!” The receptionist agreed. “The offer only covers basic cosmetic procedures. No surgeries, no skeletal adjustments, no time in the biosculpt tank, no identity changes.”

 “That’s perfect, we’ll take it.”

“Great! That’ll be one hundred and ninety-nine eddies, with a forty-five eddy sales tax.” V sent over the money, which Taylor knew for a fact was at least 25% more than an individual session thanks to the inflated tax price. Two-for-one my ass. “You’re in booth 3. Enjoy the NuYou!”

Looks like cringy slogans were the same no matter what world or decade it was.

Booth 3 was a relatively spacious box room with a computer terminal built into the wall and a scanning pad in the middle. The only other feature was an uncomfortable-looking chair in the corner, which was where Taylor intended to spend her time while V did her thing.

At first, that went exactly to plan. V stood on the pad while the scanner panned over her body and uploaded her data to the computer. But then the pushy woman beckoned her over.

“Taylor, come on over here. I want your opinion on this.” She said.

“I don’t know anything about biosculpting.” The young parahuman said warily.

“You don’t need to, come on.”

Huffing and giving in to the inevitable, she stood up and approached the terminal. The very first thing that popped out at her was the embarrassingly accurate 3D model of V’s body. The second thing, however, was the sheer number of obvious modifications and augmentations she had, which drove any embarrassment into the background.

“What is all that?” She found herself asking, stunned.

“Titanium reinforced bones, bioplastic blood vessels, muscle and bone lace, biomechanical tendons, bionic joints, monowire.” V rattled off, chuckling. “I guess I never trusted Arasaka all that much, because I only chipped in the bare minimum cyberware that the department demanded and stuck to bioware otherwise. I’d have gotten more if they didn’t put a ban on using another company’s higher end products. Fucking corpo politics.”

Oh… that would certainly explain how she’d been able to so easily smack around those basketball players on top of Lizzie’s when they’d confronted her, and why she was so strong.

“Uh, so what did you want my opinion on?” Taylor decided not to comment.

“I want to get a tattoo, a big snake coiling its way around my body.” V said, a hint of eagerness entering her tone. “I could never get one before because it’s considered vulgar and low class among corpos, but that problem solved itself.”

She hadn’t known that, but it made sense. “And you want me to…?”

“Help with the design.”

And so she did. Originally, it was supposed to be as simple as V had imagined it, just a snake coiling around her body, but as they played with it the design evolved. The finalized tattoo turned out to be two snakes winding their way down V’s arms, their mouths open and fangs extending down her index and ring fingers. On her back, their tails coiled around the hilt of a sword whose blade was thrust into a skull. It was a pretty impressive design and in spite of her original misgivings, Taylor actually had fun with it and was able to relax. The older woman’s obvious excitement to get the tattoo done was rather disarming, even if she didn’t personally see the appeal.

Of course, it couldn’t last and V inevitably did the thing that the two-for-one offer had obviously been for.

“You sure you don’t want to at least get a bioscan?” She asked leadingly.

It was tempting, especially after seeing and helping V with the tattoo, which was probably the point even if the older woman’s desire for a tattoo was genuine.

“Why do you want me to do this?” Taylor asked instead.

“You are the one who wants to do it.” Was the blunt retort, all trace of coyness vanishing like morning dew. “I can only guess at why you’re holding back, but it’s not going to do you any favors in Night City. Part of the reason the Valentinos were so curious yesterday is because you didn’t make sense to them. Their best guess based on the way you walked, talked, and dressed was a corpo princess trying to slum it with the plebs.”

“What?!” Taylor sputtered in surprise.

“What did you expect?” V raised an eyebrow. “Everything from your stance to your mannerisms is too stiff to belong to a street kid, and you dress too conservatively.”

“I’m not going to flash everyone just to appease a bunch of gangoons.” She retorted flatly.

“You don’t have to. Solos are pretty much by definition individuals – it’s even in the name – but you gotta stand out from the masses.  You need to get yourself a look and you need to own it.”

“I have a look.”

“No, you have two incomplete looks bleeding into each other.” V corrected. “You have Skitter, stone cold professional and Taylor Hebert, harmless civilian. Thing is, you’re not a soldier or a corpo hitwoman, you’re a solo and you’re very young for it. If you were in your forties, you could get away with being an unapproachable hardass that doesn’t give a shit about her looks. At eighteen, it just gives off the wrong vibe.”

Aggravating, but she could see the older woman’s point. On Earth Bet, people knew not to judge parahumans by their age, and she’d built a fearsome reputation early on in her career. In Night City, she would have to keep her powers on the down low, so fear and respect would be harder to come by.

“What’s your look, then?” She went on the offensive, because she wasn’t sure what else to do.

V adopted a threatening, closed-off posture and spoke in a frigid tone. “I used to be V, ice-cold Arasaka counter-intel operative, as cruel as I was beautiful. You try to screw me over and I’d have your entire family killed. I liked snakes and enjoyed killing people with painful neurotoxins.”

Her tone and body language relaxed as she continued, smirking. “Now I’m V, badass up and coming solo. Sexier than ever, but less of a bitch. I’ll still kill you if you screw with me, but otherwise I’m pretty chill. I still like snakes and neurotoxin knives, though.”

“And getting a biosculpt will help me?” Taylor injected some skepticism into her tone.

“You can’t own a look if you don’t like it.” V reasoned, and it was a pretty compelling bit of reasoning, admittedly. “Right now, what you’ve got going for you is a dangerous presence and an air of mystery, but people need to know you a bit to learn about those. What you have against you is your age and your subdued style of dress. It’s not safe to be a solo if you don’t look the part.” Then she paused and amended. “Well, it’s not safe either way, but the right look will ward off a lot of bullshit.”

That reminded her of Brian’s talks about villain rep. By the end of her time in Brockton Bay, Skitter had accumulated a fearsome reputation. People thought twice before fucking with her. Not so for Taylor Hebert, who had continued to be a target for bullies even well into her villain career.

She had initially been proud of her costume, which she had made by herself, never even considering that it made her look like a villain. She had liked it because it was hers, and she had hated the one the PRT made her wear, because it was theirs. She had owned Skitter in ways that she had never owned Weaver, despite operating under that name for much longer.

Her resistance already weak from her own desires, the practical justification pushed Taylor over the edge. With a bracing breath, she stepped on the bioscanner. “Okay….”

V’s approving grin further eased her doubts.

XXXXX

The two women walked out of the biosculpt clinic. The younger was relieved at finally having her internal conflict tipped over, especially since it was in the direction she had been not-so-secretly hoping for. The older was plotting. Today had gone well, but there was plenty more work to do.

V wouldn’t normally invest this much time and effort into another person, but Taylor was worth it. Quite apart from the fact that Jackie had adopted her into his social circle with his usual aggressive friendliness, she was a rare gem. The mystery of her abilities continued to intrigue, but the promise of a reliable partner with those abilities was the true prize.

Once upon a time, V had ambitions of clawing her way through the cutthroat corpo world, eventually becoming Arasaka’s director of operations. That dream had gone sour somewhere in the past few years and she’d only stuck with it out of inertia. Now she was going to make it big in another way, the same way Jackie had been dreaming of.

He was a gonk and probably didn’t have the clearest idea of how to actually achieve his goals, but he had a lot of heart. It would make him perfect to act as the glue that kept the team together. Taylor was a mixture of grizzled war veteran and clueless teen, but she had the potential to be a monster of a solo once her rough edges were polished. V herself intended to bring some much-needed intelligence and perspective to the team, on top of her own skills of course. Together, the three of them might just be able to shake some serious eddies out of Night City.

She only felt a little bad about exploiting Taylor’s repressed sexual attraction towards women to manipulate her. It was for her own good and V wasn’t averse to putting out eventually, if that’s how things developed.