𝘎𝘏𝘖𝘚𝘛𝘚 .

# 𝑽𝑰𝑹𝑻𝑼𝑽𝑬𝑽𝑬 : vengeance is mine, says the lord, for i must always shelter. i will repay. now listen to this. you don't have to spend one scintilla of a second trying to get back at someone who did you wrong. i will repay. i will repay. voodoo boy v of cd projekt red's cyberpunk 2077, with varying creative liberties taken. written by : baptiste. black. he / they. 25+. alt blog .

          “ good approach . too many heroes as is . “ bitter in tone & palette , like acid running through vocals . heroism hadn’t suited him , at least not one outside the realm of gray - moralism , though even with such so often he’d gotten into far too many exchanges due to his inability to look away . only a few ended in bodies with burned out circuits , mostly . “ did a damn good job with this though . hope you aren’t expectin’ a tip though , ain’t carrying too much . “ half - truths as per usual , the eddies did exist , just in the form of the type - 66 parked a few streets away . 

          an exclamatory laugh came from as the transition to digital - scape occurred . the unexpected , though terribly honest , humor had always caught him out to enjoy their time together . the fade into abstracts , realms encased in metal & housed by code so far away from his particular flavor of interest crept into vision . just as the world moved into another , so did his mind , growing more quiet and observant . immediately cycling to auditory checks , paused & changed to heat registrations ; an exit visible , or an entrance if he played it right . “ tight security just means i can charge more . let’s keep her moving , need to check for where customers aren’t welcome . “ 

“ don’t know where you gon find much’a them, not out here. “  look out for your own, keep to your kin; that was a principle that saw him through each day to making it to his bed at night. he’d keep it that way, too. and so would vincent. though, he tread more the line of a lone wolf than he: v had a number of entanglements to see to that. he made his peace with it another lifetime ago; if it were to come to pass that said trappings were exposed, he’d simply handle it. that was neither here nor there, and it was not the time for introspection. attention’s refocused. critical was the eye scrolling through as raw a piece of footage as he could manage-- all aside the necessary audio scrubbing. 

@virtuveve​

Revenant was quite the feat of TECHNOLOGY - but he had never been very technologically savvy. He had only ever learned enough about computers to be able to use them, only ever learned enough about his own mechanical bodies to make minor repairs, or talk more experienced hands through where his more important bits and pieces were.

He had never been the hacking or engineering type.

But over the past few decades, he had come to be very familiar with Hammond’s buildings and databases and their SECURITY for both. He knew where they liked to put things. What they liked to name things. Including the parts of their past they swept under the rug. The many SKELETONS in their closet. And accessing all that information had gotten easier, over the years; torture enough little worker bees, and he got a good idea about the inner workings of the HIVE.

So he thought he knew where to go for what he wanted, but this was the THIRD location, now, where what he was looking for wasn’t here. His hands closed into fists. He had half a mind to smash the entire console into little more than nuts and bolts – but his head turned then for the noise of the electronic lock on the door. PERFECT. Some hapless Hammond employee was on their way in, just in time to provide an outlet for his anger.

enticing him into work, in relation to corpos was no difficult task. case by case basis, with the scrap behind to fund it. though there were a few alongside arasaka and militech that constituted getting his hands dirtier than he would have in other circumstances; hammond just another contender for highly placing on his proverbial shit list. it was a long-running beef, one he and others of his family inherited more so than established of their own accord. that was as good as any reason to even the field; corpo or not. despite his steadfastness, the level head in which he traversed all transgression, he was a man of spite. he was ruled by it. no short supply of men like him, more would take up that mantle should he fall and the one after that, the one after next; fatalistic but indomitable in it’s simple truth.

casing hammond. . . surveillance and networking all yielded useful information; an ajar door here, a back room there. they hadn’t changed much in the decades and longer between him and the last voodoo boy that so happened to become ensared by them; a true testament to their willfully ignorant pride. how ever they believed a system as defunct as the one he stoked would offer adequate protection was lost on him. truly. 

the only dealings out in the wastelands ravaged by hicks ( so far as he was concerned ) were high-grade gigs that crossed his network now and then. he and misty, however, the co-pilot for their current traipse into the sand and heat, was the deciding factor in their steady descent into no man’s land. it was no more than a glorified road trip; something or another about a just as avid fan of the occult and other esoteric dealings that he, while knowledgable in some, fell to the wayside in misty’s much more capable hands. she was a human-shaped database for that kind of shit. and that was just another factor in his deciding to tag along: he was endeared by her. wanted to help for the sake of it and he’d never sit well with leaving her down an extra body, eyes, a piece. aside his willing company, she was for all intents and purposes: his boss.

if one were to splice hairs. she called the shots here. he simply drove, the ambiance of muffled radio stations interlaced with static feeding into the car, interrupted by the handful of bumps along the way and whatever unhurried chatter they fell into; it came and went, comforting enough that he allowed his hands to go lax at the wheel. in their rearview, the backdrop of the city had nearly faded along with it’s smog and digitized billboards; giving way to the meandering of a stark temperature drop, more sky and more stars than he’d ever rightly seen in person. it was with that clarity v spoke. “ so. “ a pause. his voice was soft, hardly a decibel over some top 40′s charted shit that had burrowed into his skull by now: “ y’said this guy. . . he got taxidermied animals? “

Through bright optics, V watches on like a saint. A little hopeless, sanctified by this city’s cruelty day after day, and Nihlus, undecided whether this calm is favorable over the constant tumult of jobs and gunfire, hums and repeats: “Tatwaj…” Like he’s savoring how it sounds, consonants coiled on the tongue; though there is no epiphany accompanying the term. He could guess at it, find the meaning with an entreating note, a touch full of wonder, but—there are some things better left as ambiguous in the universe. The answers will come, gentle and unexpected as any gift. “We’ve both have reason and meaning to our markings, don’t we? Bones etched on our skin, and it’s a clear symbol for death in my culture—as it is in yours by my guess.” Still, it’s clear that very few humans have similar designs; it denotes a unique practice that survives yet in this era of unforgiving assimilation. Above all else, it garners a sense of respect.

Mandibles twitching, mirroring V’s smile by a summer-bright green in the eye, Nihlus loosens his hold for some sense of propriety to return. “And what can I say? The alcohol is questionably good, and I blame you for introducing them to me.” Full-toned, teasing and lilting, his voice dances forth. “…If you’d like, I can ask again when we’re both somewhat sober. You’re a strange man in a strange city, V. But I do like what I see.” Such honestly slips easily between the serrated jut of his teeth, and he leans back against the graffiti splattered walls, silhouette smoothed out by the shadows.

and for his wonder he is rewarded in ample silence; but it is one steeped in mirth, all apparent in the wavering of laughter to follow, mostly to himself. it was airy  —-  hardly vocalized. he relented to him the care in which he parroted the word; it endeared more than impressed. . . that was the point in which he knew he’d drank more than bargained for in their joint effort of simply cutting loose. it was well deserved, wasn’t it? v didn’t or rather never took much time, nor stock, in falling to the wayside of guilt. there wasn’t much time at all to wallow in that regret; even if for something as simple as a night on the roof, drinks in hand. . . “ death’s just another part’a life. an’ i celebrate it, same as life. leavin’ the world’s scary for most folk ‘cause of it. . . but i don’t intend t’go without fightin’, even if it is inevitable. “ fear was primordial; it existed so long as life had been present in the ceaseless cycle of their planet, coming and going to the sea. he’d return there too, eventually, when he was ready to allow that gentle swell to take him under. 

that primordial fear, even if whole-heartedly anticipated, did not evade him.

on the topic of scarification: the practice has existed for so long, it is difficult to place precise origins aside the vaguely general: africa. there are many designs and varying ways in which the process is carried out that differ ( and are entirely dependent ) on the group and their respective shamans. shamans, are more often than not, elders that have preserved the old ways of those before them ( not only the practice, but of vocal passings on of history and other such priceless information ). this is where mixture of designs and their new meaning are borne, which has created an utterly unique array of styles in divergence.

it is important to note that scarification is a rite of passage just as it is what identifies their respective holders’ accomplishments, to what family / group they belong, and so on so forth. 

v earned his first assortment upon initiation into the voodoo boys; he was fairly young, only fourteen years old. the process was as meticulous as it was painful, but it is intended to serve as ‘growing pains’, the transition from childhood to adulthood. any other addition to follow was to note his place in the social circle of his group; or to make note of accomplishments as mentioned previously. these are not freely given and are unique to their culture.

He smells V before he hears him: all deep, wrapped up in sage and smoke and the metallic tinge of violence. It’s all a subtle flood, a fragment from some future sky, clear as the color blue before the breeze steals it away. The night air remains soft in spite of Night City’s sharpness, and from up here, on a rooftop clamped around several others, choked to the brim by city lights as numerous as the cloud-hidden stars, Nihlus welcomes his presence with a quiet noise in the throat—an animal rumble low as an engine’s purr. “Need me for something, V?” The improvised translator hitches, processes his alien tongue with a noticeable lag, but the meaning filters through after a beat. Courtesy a detour rather than a given, Nihlus remains bent over the railing, spine a simple curve of worn-out armor, dented. At V’s approach, he merely offers a tilt of the head, and as those hands—free of a weapon’s grip, for once—reach out, careful as they trace the bone angles and etched grooves of his features, a curious, trilling note emerges. “They’re like yours, almost,” he says, (slowly) growing used to a human’s touch one, one without harmful intent. This close, V looks like he’s in a daze, fresh from a fight with his blood singing, and Nihlus tuts. Enfolds his talons around the bend of his wrists, but he doesn’t guide those hands away.

“Enough of that, hmm? I reckon I should return the favor…” Distinct, intricately scarred, inked, and augmented, V’s appearance will always be a marvel, a mix of danger, and—perhaps something familiar beneath it all. Nihlus catches a glint in his eyes, bright as any constellation, and flicks his left mandible, grin crooked. “If I may, of course.”

his bravery relied heavily on adrenaline and inebriation both. it’s by no short sum of unadulterated luck they’ve made it this far, though they had not traversed that danger without paying just dues; everything was poised to unravel at a moment’s notice and in spite of that cruel futility, fate, they persisted. but. . . for that moment in time it was all the rippling of tension on water. far enough that it hadn’t quite reached them. not yet. “ like mine? “ the waver of his voice fed into the measure of it’s inflection  —-  one too many drinks while they entertained stargazing. nihlus told of constellations in his galaxy, names that were beyond his human tongue. v could not imitate the purr of subvocals and neither did he entertain any attempt to do so. “ mm. the tatwaj. . . that what you mean? “ his fingers flexed of their own accord a signaling that he might have pulled away if not for his hands coming ‘round to hold him there.

it  was  all  a  matter  of  forced  hands,  twisted knots,  accelerated circumstances that clashed two worlds when they were never meant to touch .  all of this city she has learned to ignore since the kujira landed in the bay,  since she advised her father to let this monolith stand for a little while longer,  against the silken light on which her & her family walks down .  witnessed through the view of an aerodyne as she is flown past what was once a radioactive crater,  no better now then when bombs brought arasaka tower down & took twelve thousand lives with it,  a show of impotence that merely delayed the inevitable .

in days of old the only way one of night city’s petty thieves could stand in the same room as an arasaka is if they kicked down the door,  handled their security,  survived everything her family has built between themselves & the rest of the world .  an imbalance of power,  a scale tipped in their favour,  she had never been the single arasaka protected from the truth .  

now she invites one of her own accord,  makes use of their services,  places some modicum of trust that they will carry out her vision .  all done for yorinobu,  her brother whose side she stood by since their mother’s passing,  offered him shelter from their father’s wrath,  a roof for flaming arrows because family is what binds them,  what strengthens them .  even her father could see,  could forgive,  a man who deals in death as a simple pass-time & yorinobu would throw it all away to usurp the throne,  & it hurt to know she would not be an exception .  after everything she has done for him,  her plan is a muted response .

she stands a few inches taller,  helped by golden heels & the rise on which her piano sits,  & her hands continue fidgeting in a subtle,  uneven mission .  the grasp of anticipation .

“  before we discuss details,  i feel i owe you an explanation .  i must tell you why i changed my mind & wish to help .  ”  words rolled off her tongue like polished porcelain,  a plot to strike at family that grows thorns into her skin,  but if she must trade one family member for another it is a sacrifice she is willing to burden .  all for the arasaka name .

arasaka was well above and beyond him. the gargantuan undertaking of the company, it’s ceaseless webs that ensnared the people of night city and yet still further. it was an inevitable and ever looming truth; if the tower were to fall another would rise in it’s place: a proverbial hydra. yet another mega corporation to deal in the service of serializing, comodifying human life. it was in that truth that he saw her for what she was. there was an insidiousness coiled within her, that viper; she was not a woman complacent nor removed. she acted and schemed with precision. goro’s perception, in the end, would have done him very little favor. his vision was clouded for he still saw a little girl who fancied herself a princess. . . when that was, simply, a lifetime ago.

her fidgeting manifested in the earnest wringing of hands while he tucked into the high roller whiskey lined neatly on the obsidian of that bartop; he let it set on his tongue and burn as it scoured the back of his throat in tandem to the consistent pulsing of his skull. when next she spoke, it came in a warbling of sound he could hardly pick apart. the migraine that had so settled in only persisted, scaled to such heights his knuckles strained over the glass. “ an’ you’re thinkin’ i’m just gone take your words for honest? “ to what did she owe v anything? and to what did he owe her? it was a bitter pill for them both. and he ventured that they’d both rather choke.

for now, in their cease fire, he allowed her his reluctant patience.