#spectredge

                 ❝ y'know, ❞ david murmurs, head tipping back, allowing the moonlight to pool in his baby brown eyes. ❝ there was a time i thought it'd be bigger. ❞

the vast sprawl of night stretches above them, black velvet punctured by distant stars, satellite ghosts blinking in and out of view. past the haze of neon, the moon hangs low, a silver coin tossed well into the dark.

                 ❝ my dumbass thought it'd eat up the sky. ❞

he continues. his voice slows, easing into the romance of the peace around them, the kind of peace that feels like a dream—a real thing, but too fragile to last. peace doesn't belong in night city. not really. it was a nice concept, but here, actually attaining without the means of drugs, b.d.s, or some other hardcore external vice? impossible.

but lately, he's been rethinking that. he had a good reason to, too.

he glances at her, grinning boyishly lopsided, soft at the edges, with somewhat of an old man's tiredness buried somewhere deep in his gaze. lucy does that to him—make him reevaluate things. life. the beauty in it. the things he never thought he could have.

he isn't much of a poet. not out loud. not without feeling stupid.

but he feels it. in the way the wind shifts, in the way her loose tresses catch the glow of the moon against her nacreous skin.

lucy's got starlight in her eyes and the whole damn universe captured in the curve of her smile.

               ❝ moon's just been chillin' up there, ❞ he muses, watching her instead, watching the way the city light frames her lithe silhouette—cool, distant, warm all at once. like the place she set her dreams.

he wonders if he can follow.

or if she'll end up somewhere he can't reach. he hoped he could follow.

❝ but it don't make the night brighter, no way. ❞ his voice quieter now, sounding somewhat sad. ❝ it's just too far. far as hell. untouchable. i dunno if I'm makin' sense, but.. ❞

he leans in—not much, just enough that her warmth brushes his.

               ❝ but you, luce? ❞

two secs. that's all it took.

the first punch cracked across david's cheek like a ballistic round, rattling through a frame designed for a technological god. shock absorbers ate the devastation, but his nerves roared anyway. his sandevistan didn't trigger—not for this. not for a fight that wasn't worth the time dilation.

if he had been flesh and bone, that hit would've caved his skull in. but chrome had changed him.

the arena lights pulsed a sickly neon, bathing the pit in flickering strobes of pink and blue, their artificial glow bleaching the fighters into silhouettes of metal and raw sinew. the cage wasn't just a ring—it was an altar, stained in old blood, streaked with cyberware malfunctions, reeking of sweat, ozone, and hydraulic fluid. the crowd was a hungry beast, a writhing thing of spliced meat and stimulant-fueled madness, their addict-addled screams wired directly into the pulse of night city itself.

david staggered back, boots scraping against the sweat-slicken, blood-lathered mat. his gorilla arms snapped into position—crossbones defense—chrome crushing come. the next strike crashed into his forearms, a piston-powered wrecking ball aimed at his chassis. a year ago, that hit would have crushed him. now, his reinforced ulna and radius absorbed the force with a metallic groan.

his opponent was on him again. no wasted movement. no hesitation. the kiroshis fed david real-time calculations, tracking the microsecond flex of synthetic muscle fibers, the calibrated recoil of mechanical joints. this wasn't instinct. this was pre-loaded aggression.

boxer freeware. auto-assist combat mods. a meat puppet running a script. david rolled his jaw, tasting iron. tasting something colder. he loved it. not worth a second of my sandy.

the thought came detached, clinical. he slipped low, dodging a brutal right hook that would've collapsed an armored car door. his vision sharpened, the world pulsing in calculated frames. the bastard's cut through empty air, leaving him wide open.

❝ night-night, choom!—GRGH! ❞

david's fingers curled. gorilla arms primed. he launched a full-force uppercut straight to the jaw.

nasty impact.

the brawler's skull lifted clean off his shoulders—at least, it looked that way for a split second before his cyberware seized, locking mid-air. his jaw didn't just break—it unhinged, dislocated with a grotesque wet snap. a fine mist of blood, spit, and leaking hydraulic fluid hit the air before gravity reclaimed him.

the big bitch the ground like a dropped industrial machine, limbs twitching, circuits misfiring. won't be talking shit in russian again.

the crowd detonated into a frenzied roar.

david barely heard them.

he massaged his fingers, shaking loose the residual tremors from the successful hit. his optics zoomed in on the fallen fighter—tracking the erratic muscle twitches, the glitching bio-signals. the electrical currents licked across the man's big frame—cyberware shorting out, flesh caught between evolution and obsolescence. his chest still rose, uneven and ragged.

still alive. tough sonna bitch.

david stepped forward, his shadow swallowing the broken man whole. when the fallen was standing, he was a goliath compared to david. now, not so much. for a moment, david just stood there. watching. taking in a man who had once been human. a man that had his body rewritten by the will of the city.

just like him.

just like gloria's killers.

his breath came slow, measured. his hands didn't shake. his pulse didn't spike. he felt old weight work in his tendons—the one that never left, the one that lived under his skin, married to chrome.

being fueled by revenge is what led him here. it's what put him in the animal pits, what made him hunt them down one by one. if it wasn't for them, gloria would still be alive.

the chant hit his ears like a war drum.

"finish him!"

david looked down. and he felt nothing. no rage. no satisfaction. hesitation. just a job to finish. his foot came down—real fast, unimaginably brutal, final. a sweet crunch. a volcanic eruption of blood. the crowd lost their fuckin' minds, high on death.

david didn't share their euphoria.

he stepped over the ruin of what used to be a person, metal plating scraping against the blood-washed floor. the cage door was open. the exit was there. but every step felt heavier. it was then his once doe-eyed optics caught something. a familiar shape in the crowd.

lucy.

watching.

not cheering. not moving.

just watching.

her expression wasn't shock or glee.

it seems somewhat pained.

david didn't stop. didn't look back.

just had to keep moving. will see her at home. don't know if she'd want to see him like this. talk to him... like this.

the weather made no sense to him on this day. the rain—he was never much of a fan of it. maybe because it aroused too many bad reminders of the past. each memory threatening to swamp him with different intensities of color, until the only shade his world could process was black.

david never felt good getting fantastically angry over shit he couldn't control. no one ever really taught him how to regulate it better sure, his moms scolded him. school officials lectured him until his ears bled. even the occasional run-in with a half-bored badge who let him off with nothing but a warning, disparaging remarks, and a look that said "you're not worth the paperwork." but none of that stuck.

so when he was with lucy, things felt different. even in this depressing weather, the rain didn't touch him the same. she gave him a kind of gravity. focus.

when lucy finally responds—"what would you do if i said no?"—all he can do is blink, looking stuck-on-stupid.

she's fucking with him. that much he knows. but the question's still good. sharp. off-center. it sticks like glue.

he couldn't force her to talk. couldn't force anything out of her, let alone ask her to stay remain at his side. he could try to aim for a deep conversation, with her up under his umbrella he jacked from a vendor on 7th and talgon, protecting her from the desert heat in the badlands, dying of hunger and it could still not be incentive enough for her to be an open book.

what if she said no?

all he manages is, ❝ oh… uhm. okay. ❞

and then he awkwardly looks back at the night.

the rooftop slickens under the downpour, neon scattering like spilled chemicals in the dents of a rusted vent—beautiful, if you don't think too hard about it. behind lucy, night city cackles. drones whisper past, corpos glitter in chrome and destabilized lies. and she's just... still. looking out over it all like none of it matters. like she's immune. untouchable. like the world couldn't scrape her the way it did him. like she's not stitched into the thread on the bad end of life just as he is.

he doesn't smile at her joke. doesn't even try. his molars grind, jaw shifting—grit under the enamel, shame under the skin. what're the right words here?

                 ❝ then i guess i’d sit my dumb ass here with my mouth shut, ❞ he mutters, tone like wet gravel slipping off roof shingles. ❝ let the noise fill in the blanks. ❞ he said, with a clipped finality to the statement. he was ready to fold it up and steer the conversation elsewhere. but then she asked.

"so, what's it you wanna talk about?"

he figures she knows him well enough to understand it matters. maybe more than it should.

he doesn't answer right away. not because he can't. just taking the beat he needs. thumb pressing into the bone of his knee, the heel of his foot tapping the ground. his hands—surgically scarred, tensed with the wires beneath synth-skin. with his brown doe-eyes on her—well, more like through her, like she's both there and playing on an old memory reel.

                 ❝ i’ve been thinking about your opinion of me, ❞ he says finally. low voice, half-buried under the obnoxious vrooms of passing AVs. it irritates him, the way the sound cuts his words off at the edge—but he lets it pass.

                 ❝ when you look at me… what do you see? ❞he pauses, his stare remains, and his jaws locked. he continues, muttering, ❝ is this the version of me you like? ❞

nobody likes the haunting of words. words the dead had said. words that shouldn’t have come. words that never did.

funny — if nobody likes it, then why do we keep buildin’ our own graveyards outta unfinished sentences? why do we line ‘em up neat in our heads, like headstones we visit when we can’t sleep. replayin’ what was said. what wasn’t. what almost made it past the teeth. like if we keep standin’ there long enough, maybe one of ‘em’ll answer back.

david's mind was racing faster than the speed of light, it felt like, and he couldn't keep up.

he's sitting on the edge of the couch, elbows on his knees. hands clasped loose, but tight enough to turn his human knuckles white against his light brown skin. the apartment’s quiet. uncomfortably quiet. the city noise muted behind reinforced glass. the hum of the fridge louder than it should be.

“ i wasn't jealous. ” it comes out flat. his eyes keeps to the floor. there's a faint scuff mark near the coffee table, something from weeks ago.he focuses on that instead of her. he'd like to look at her, because he likes looking at her. but then there are times where he doesn't.

his jaw shifts sharply, almost as if it wanted to come off the hinges. “ not about pilar. not about that. i know what that was. you explained it before. i remember. he tends to cross lines. you handled it. simple. ”

he hated how defensive he was coming off. it made him feel small, and he knew it was irrational. he had to get this straight, before it away at any more of his self-respect. he exhales through his nose, peeved by the nature of the conversation, albeit she wasn't the cause for him feeling like that.

“ just.... sometimes i get stuck in my head. see somethin' and my brain runs it somewhere it ain't suppose to go. ” it's not about pilar. it never was.

“ do you think there's a happy ending for folks like us, luce?… or were we just born wrong… wrong city… wrong—yunno? ” david keeps his eyes on the sky when he says it. a listless watcher of the neon bleeding across the low clouds like bad rendering. AVs drift overhead, red tracking lights blinking slow, like a slow, dramatic prologue to a horror flick. somewhere below, a siren warps through the murky alleyways, probably nearly crushing a vagrant or a trick receiving timed services from a joytoy, swallowed by obnoxious bass and distant gunfire.

david wets his tongue quickly with the flat soda he was holding. he swallows once, and released a sigh. “ i mean... don't gotta tell you none that you don't already know. this place chews through people like rabid strays through scop dogs. everybody's runnin' some hustle, tryin' not to flatline before twenty-seven. ”

his fingers tap lightly against his bulky thigh. hs chrome knuckles faintly ticked, micro-servos correcting pressure he didn't consciosuly apply.

“ we wake up, we grind, we mod, we bleed. we do it for the eddies. the freedom. your moon. whatever keeps our brain from fryin' to shit. ” he finally glances at her then.

“ we're only here once, right? ain't like we were made immortal. not just the hurt. not just playin' survival games tryin' to keep up with corpos who don't even know we exist. ” the wind bows against gloria's jacket, tugging at the old fabric and pushing the faint smell of her perfume across his nostrils. the sensation nearly brought tears to his modified brown optics.

suddenly, he feels like he let the words hang too long. this was too honest of a conversation. he felt like he was asking too much. like he was hoping out loud, and if he were, that'd be more dangerous than any chrome he's slotted. or that's the kind of thinking his mind resigned to.

his throat works. he clears it as he crushes the can of soda in his palm, letting it fall to his side. then, he rose the same palm to the nape of his neck. “ erhm. never mind. dumb question. ”

he looks away again, like the skyline can absorb what she shouldn't have to.

Katsuo didn’t flinch at Lucy’s words, even though they stung a little. He could tell by the tightness in her tone and the way her body leaned away from him that she was already half a breath from walking. Fine. He wasn’t here to make friends. He was here because he needed answers no one else would give him. Keeping his hands loose at his sides, Katsuo met her eyes evenly, voice level. "Maybe we won't end up on the same page. But I'm not here to argue with you. I'm not here to sell you anything. I’m here because you were there when it happened. You know things I’m never going to get from the official reports."

He paused for a beat, letting the weight of it hang between them. He could see her bristle, defensive, and he couldn't blame her. In another life, he might have reacted the same way if someone like him came knocking. But this wasn’t about loyalty to Arasaka, or about saving face. This was personal. Painfully personal. Katsuo's voice dropped a little lower, quieter but firmer. "My father… He was a lot of things. Some of them, not good. I know that better than anyone. But I need the truth about how he died. Not the propaganda, not the half-assed 'investigations.' Just the facts. Whatever you saw. Whatever you heard."

For a moment, his mask cracked, and a flash of raw emotion crossed his face — not sadness exactly, but something more desperate, more hollow. "You have no reason to help me. I get that. You don't owe me a damn thing. But…" He forced a breath through his nose. "I’m not looking for revenge. I’m not looking to spin this into some corpo sob story. I just—" He cut himself off, setting his jaw tightly. "I just want the truth. Closure. Whatever scraps I can get."

Katsuo shifted his weight, pulling his jacket tighter around himself like armor. He was trying hard not to sound like he was begging, but a part of him was. He had exhausted every other avenue — police stonewalling, Arasaka PR burying it under layers of legal bullshit, his own contacts too scared to dig deeper. Lucy was the last thread he could tug. "You can tell me to fuck off after if you want. Hell, I’ll even disappear after this. But please…" His voice nearly cracked, but he steadied it. "Please just tell me what you saw."

He didn’t expect sympathy. He didn’t even expect civility. But there was a small, fragile part of him that hoped maybe — just maybe — Lucy understood what it meant to lose someone and be left with nothing but lies. Maybe she'd had her own moment of reaching into the dark, desperate for even a broken piece of the truth. Maybe that was enough. "No corpo bullshit. No games. Just two people, right here, right now. You have my word."

039. What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? 051. If they knew they would die tomorrow, what would they do today? 065. Is your character better at leading or following? Which do they prefer? 079. How easy is it for them to read the emotions of others?

@spectredge

039. to make them lose their memory. to become a construct [ if he was aware of the soul-killer program, he would not be down for it. ] killing someone is one evil, but hollowing them? scraping out the meat and bones, extracting the soul and amalgamating that with the machine that strips them of their will, purpose, past, rage, until all that's left is compliance dressed up in a neat corporate bow is a chilling thought. it's not even death. it's becoming a tool without the capacity to rebel back. another silence in a city full of ghosts and societal disconnect in the age of evolving technology.

051. they'd want to feel everything one last time. throw down until a couple of jaws broke in his fists, leaving a few shards of shattered teeth in his mechanical knuckles. unfreeze the last meal his mom made and drink a bottle of water (he long stopped drinking alcohol to blend in withthe older edgerunners after maine, dorio, and pilar's death) or flat soda.

he'd probably polish off rebecca's shotguns and sort out her belongings and see what he could past down to a new crew member, if one had joined his at the time.

with lucy, he'd hold her, if she let him. wouldn't say anything poetic because that's just not his style and he was never one for flowery words. he'd leave gloria's jacket to her and write something for his crew like, " i didn't waste what you all gave me. appreciate it, chooms. " in reference to the family unit and purpose.

065. although david assumes maine's role in the crew, becoming the defacto leader, he doesn't lead in the traditional sense. he carries. he doesn't bark orders—he'd be the one bleeding first. the first on the field, the face, the tank, the shield, carrying all the agro. people follow that. they trust what doesn't flinch under the pressure of danger.

but in his heart of hearts, he'd rather follow—if the cause is right. if the leader bleeds honest, and the goal isn't just bloodshed for the sake of it. but most of time, he ends up at the front anyway, not because he wants to be.... but because no one else is built like him—a guy designed to take the hits.

079. too easy, sometimes. that's part of the problem. because he can be aloof, or if he's well in-tuned with the moment, he can read 'em like static-coded braindances. he sees the guilt behind fake smiles, the fear behind twitchy fingers. maine was former military and taught david some signs to look out for. but his own trauma filters his perception.

he can tell when someone's in pain, but he naturally assumes they won't want his help. he may make it worse if he's close to that person and believe they just want personal space and create what he thinks is a respectable distance between them, if they don't say nothing.