Strong Enough 1.4 Interlude (Patreon)

Interlude: Goblin Mode

So sometimes a girl gets in a bit over her head; is that really a crime?

“Shit, gonks got fucking trashed, eh Brick?”

“Shut up.” 

Becca suppresses a wince, pressing her back against the inside of a depowered freezer. She was casing a torn up scav den when some ‘strommers rolled up in a car that had more in common with an APC than anything. Normally a blast first ask questions later kinda gal, Becs  didn’t like her odds against ten chromed-up chooms with even more guns.

Especially not with the dinky little Shigure SMG she was using to prop the hood of the freezer open.

Nothing to do but listen to their gonk asses tromping around flipping over flatliners like they were discovering the Bartmoss trove. Fucking shit always happens to her. And of course the only place to hide was the freezer, so her calls can’t get through.

“The fuck happened to Garnt?”

“Gonk got his neck blown out through his mouth!” The man let out a peal of hissing, metallic laughter that makes Becca want to claw her ears out.

Instead she tightens her grip around her submachine gun as a pair of boots stomp over to the freezer. If she angles her head, she can just catch sight of the gonk’s waist as he starts going through the drawers next to the fridge.

Across the room, she sees three more ‘strommers poking at a corpse before ducking down as the shortest one starts to turn.

“Anything over there, boss?”

The man next to the freezer grunts. “A big can of shut the fuck up.” He tosses something over his shoulder, and Becca has to suppress a snicker at the sound of it bouncing off the Tinhead who asked the question.

Ah well, at least she gets some preem entertainment before she kicks it. She shifts into a crouch as the leader gives a guttural roar and flips the whole table over.

“Geeze, issues?” Becca shakes her head at the sound of the particle board crashing into the far wall. She side-eyes the gonk’s waist, wondering if it hides the source of his anger.

You run with the Mox for a bit, and you get a feeling for what kinda choom ain’t actually packing heat.

“Who the fuck hit my turf!” He spins, leaving Becca with a view of an ass that definitely skips leg day. “You fuckwits find anything yet? Stop fuckin’ with Garnt’s dead ass or I’ll make you fuck his dead ass!”

Becca holds her mouth, shoulders shaking. Forget what she thought earlier, this is gotta be the best way to go out she’s ever gonna find in this fucked-up town. Now if she can just upload it all to the net, give her gonk bro somethin’ to laugh about after she’s gone in the wind.

“Just casings, Brick—I mean boss! Half of ‘em are from Garnt’s gun.”

Brick spits. “Fuckhead couldn’t even keep track of his own pistol.” He walks forward, putting his back to Becca’s fridge. “Anything else?”

“Feels like more than one person, boss,” a woman chimes in. Becca can see her kneeling down near the door, optics flashing. “But only one set of casings that match the guns.”

“Did they take anything?” Brick clenches his meaty fists at his sides. “The chrome, the drugs? I wanna fuckin’ know who zero’d a stash house this deep in my turf without a fucking word!”

“Just took the eddies on their chips, boss.” The woman jerks her head towards the bodies, and Becca ducks back down again. “Glimmer hasn’t been touched, some red riot is missing, but it was fuckin’ Garnt.”

“Gonk.” Brick snorts again. “The chrome?”

“Half missing, but the safe wasn’t cracked.” She hears a rustle. “Betcha Garnt sold it, but his shard’s gone.”

“Fuck!” Brick hit something else, sending it crashing into the wall. “Case the rest of the building. I wanna know the gonks that did this, and I’m gonna make ‘em WISH they were fuckin’ dead!” 

Becca lets out a deep breath, shifting into a ready stance. How many does she think she can zero before they get her? Two, three?

She decides to be an optimist and aim for four.

Idly, she tries to ping Maine one last time, pressing as close to the opening as she dares. Miracle of miracles, it goes through.

She almost lets out a sob at the sound of the big man’s staticky voice. “Becca? Calling for another job, choomba? I told yah that—”

“Maine, shut up, need help.” She sends the words as fast as she can think them. “Here, location, can’t get out. Gonna find me soon.”

“Fuck, Beccs, we’ll be there. Hold on. Who’s—”

“Boss! I got something!”

Becca cuts the call as fast as she can, clenching her teeth shut. 

“Eh? What?” Brick’s footsteps are too heavy to ignore. “A signal, a camera?”

“Uuh.”

“Spit it out, fuckwit.”

“This.” Fabric rustles. Becca hears the rest of the ‘strommers turn, and she dares to peek out of the crack. 

On the far side of the room, one of the gonks holds something up. She can’t make it out from behind Brick’s lardass.

“You have two seconds to explain why I should care about a fuckin’ jacket, Ezx.”

“It’s not one a’ ours!” 

Becca tilts her head.

“What?”

“I didn’t notice at first, cause you said to check if anything was missing. But this isn’t missing, this is new.”

“So Garnt wasted my eddies on drip, what else is new?” Brick raises a hand, rifle flashing in the light. “Now—”

“No, boss! Look at the patch! Look!” The man holds the jacked in front of him like it will stop 5.56 rounds from perforating his skull. Becca just holds back a snort. Why wear clothes when you’re just gonna bleed all over them if you get shot? Better to die free and beautiful. 

Brick leans over, holding up the arm of the jacket. Becca cranes her neck to see the arm. There’s a circular patch on the shoulder, blue, with a white trident on it sideways so it looks like an uppercase D.

Brick curses. “...Deadman?”

Becca ducks as the ‘strommers glance at each other. She ain’t never heard of no Deadman before, and you gotta be pretty in tune with the streets to live on ‘em.

“Ain’t no way. Right, boss?” 

The woman grumbles, vocalizer fritzing. “Deadman and the rest of his gang got zeroed years ago. Ain’t no fuckin’ way.”

Brick grunts. “Shut up and let me think.”

“But if it was though? Deadman’s psycho borgs coulda done this, yeah?” Another gangoon lets out a nervous chuckle. Becca raises an eyebrow; never thought she’d hear a ‘strommer call anyone a psycho borg.

“Bet they have some preem chrome. Probably how they got away.”

“You think one—”

“I said shut the fuck up and let me think!” Brick slams his fist into the top of the freezer, and Becca can’t hold back a squeak as her Shigure slips and the top slams shut.

She clamps a hand over her mouth, the other scrambling for her gun.

With the lid closed, she can’t hear anything more than mutters. Then Brick’s voice cuts through the noise with a deep rumble. “Any of you gonks check the freezer?”

Aw shucks. 

Becca picks up her gun. It was a fun show while it lasted. She rises into a squat, aiming her rifle at the top of the freezer as the ‘strommers keep muttering. Five, she decides.

She’s gonna get five even if it kills her. 

Then the muttering stops. 

Becca waits. 

The muttering starts again.

Becca waits more.

Feet tromp, and Becca waits, and feet stop and Becca waits and Becca waits so long she’s just about to jack in the box jump these fuckin’ gonks for making her wait so long when Brick says,

“Who the fuck are you?”

Her face splits into a grin. Maine!

A gun fires.

Yelling. 

Becca pops out of the fridge. “Guess who!” She opens up, rounds raking up and down a skinny looking gangoon until his armor starts sparking and he keels over. “Take that, mother fuckers!”

In the chaos of the firefight, she can’t see Maine or Dorio, but that’s no reason not to leave a helping hand, is it? She digs her gun into the small of Brick’s back and dumps the rest of her mag.

The man roars, swinging behind him. It misses Becca’s head by a half inch, shortie supremacy. “Eat fuckin’ lead, asshole!” She flips him off, even as the cavernous barrel of his assault rifle fixes her between the eyes. 

Then there’s a woman standing next to him, white trench coat swaying in a nonexistent breeze. Her arm is outstretched, pressing a massive, fuck huge revolver into Brick’s temple.The etchings on the barrel gleam in the muzzle flares from a dozen gunshots.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the woman says.

It’s just about the baddest thing Becca’s ever seen.

Then she pulls the trigger.

Her arm snaps back, and Brick goes over sideways, folding in half at the waist as he crumples. Becca watches in slow motion as the woman wrestles the gun back down like it was a bucking stallion, aiming with two hands as she puts four more shots into Brick. The first shot had embedded itself into Brick’s implants, and the ones that follow blows them out the side of his skull in a spray of lumpy pinkish-gray brainmeats and sparking, twisted metal.

She flicks the revolver open, fumbling with it for a second before the spent casings fall.

The rest of the room spins toward her, already firing.

A heartbeat before Becca ducks, the woman vanishes again.

Rounds crater the wall behind her as Becca flicks her spent magazine out.

“Speed tech!”

“She got Ezx!” 

Becca pops back up just in time to see the woman bring her foot back down on Exz’s face, shattering his optics into a twisted, bloody mess.

Then she flips her reloaded revolver shut with a flick of her wrist.

“Hey chooms!” Becca shouts. “Don’t forget about me!” She fires to the left, the woman fires to the right, and the pin the ‘strommers in between. Every time they draw a bead on the woman, she’s just not standing there anymore, instead she’s halfway across the room, sweeping some poor gonk’s feet out from under him.

Becca’s cover is a little less glamorous, but popping in and out of the freezer like a demented jackrabbit has a charm all its own.

She gets four in the end, and it takes all of her bullets, but hell if she isn’t grinning so wide her cheeks hurt.

“That was fuckin’ wild, choomba!” Becca hops out of the freezer for the last time. “Thought I was a goner ‘till you showed up.”

The woman glances up from across the room. She’s rubbing her wrist, glaring at Becca with red eyes that are only a shade darker than her own. 

“Strong, silent, type, eh?” Becca shrugs. “I get it, I get it. Wrists hurt? I think I got a pick me up in my jacket or something.”

The woman tilts her head, and really, now that the haze of gunsmoke is clearing she looks a lot younger than Beccs expected, but still, with legs for days and that big old iron between them, she looked old enough to be kicking ass and taking names Night City style.

“You’re green.”

Okay, she looks less hot with a bit like that in her mouth, but she also capped like, six gangoons for Becca so she’ll let one slide. “I’m electric-alice blue, thank you!” She presses her hands to her skin-modded cheeks, slinging her Shigure over her shoulder. “I paid a lot of money to look like this, choomba.”

The woman blinks once. “Right. Electric-alice.” She holsters her revolver. “And…aqua?” 

“Close.” Rebecca curled a finger around her hair. “Turquoise blue.”

“Preem.”

“You’re not bad yourself, choom!” Rebecca prances over. “Some sweet scarlet eyes you’re rocking there.” Just the irises, but hey, you don’t judge a girl for expressing herself.

The woman blinks again, still cradling her wrist. “I picked this color because I hate it.”

“Why’d you do something like that?”

She opens her mouth just in time for Maine’s massive boot sends the door flying halfway off its hinges into the far wall.

“On the fucking ground!” he roars. The Militech Crusher shotgun in his hand comes up, its safety off and his finger on the trigger. 

“No, wait!” Becca throws up her hand. “This—”

The woman vanishes, and then she’s right next to Maine, reaching for her gun and Becca’s heart jumps into her throat as she imagines the woman zeroing her boss like she did the ‘strommers.

Then the woman flinches with a gasp, hand flying to her wrist and revolver clattering to the ground. She staggers away, then a clawed grip wraps tight around her neck.

“Stop!” 

Rebecca’s scream brings the action to a halt like she hit pause on a braindance. Everyone turns to look at her: Maine half tilted over from where he jerked away from the gun, Dorio blocking the door frame with her broad shouldered jacket, and Sasha with her fingers wrapped around the red eyed woman’s neck, ready to rip her throat out.

“Why don’t we all calm down, eh?” Rebecca picks her way across the room, taking a little jump over Brick’s big dumb corpse. “This is my new choomba, not the gonks on the floor she saved me from.” Reaching out, she gently peels Sasha’s hand off of the womans’ neck, taking care not to cut herself on the blades sprouting from the fingertips.

Maine grunts, righting himself. The massive man lowers his shotgun, resting his finger along its frame just above the trigger. “Saved you, Becca? Why’d you call in the cavalry, then?”

“God, you fucking gonk.” She socks him right in the junk. “I called because I was hiding in that freezer, and if Scarlet here had shown up a minute later, these fuckers woulda flatlined me!”

He groans, half doubling over. “Fuck, coulda just said so…”

“You okay, girl?” Becca asks.

The woman grunts, straightening. “Think I broke my wrist.”

“Shit, you was firing that hand cannon with ‘ganic hands?” Becca holds out a BounceBack with a grin. “How about I buy you a drink?”

Scarlet, as Becca has already started to think of her, looks at Rebecca with narrowed eyes, before glancing at the other three edgerunners half surrounding her. “Do I get to say no?”

“Don’t be like that!” Becca slaps her on the shoulder and forces the inhaler into her good hand. “We got in a shootout together, that makes us blood sisters, y’know!”

“Blood sisters. Sure.” 

But she takes the medicine.