A/N: This is the newest of my ten Patreon-Funded stories, replacing The Sleeping Dragon (High School DxD). Currently up to date with all my other public websites, with four chapters of advance content always available on my Patreon at all times. Updates once every two weeks. Enjoy!

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C-CRUNCH!

The bathroom mirror fractures under his fist, not quite shattering but definitely splintering outward from his knuckles. He can still see his furious, angry features in its reflection… for a moment anyways before they begin to smooth out into abject confusion.

… What? Where was he? What was this? V, Living Legend of Night City, King of the Afterlife, was confused. One moment he’d been striking that first title from his name by reaching the end of his expiration date, just like the AI Alt Cunningham had told him would happen. V had done everything he could of course, spending every last second of those six months searching for a solution.

But… in the end it just wasn’t doable. He wasn’t even really alive after he left Mikoshi, not truly. He’d died in there, and what had come back was an engram… an engram uploaded into a body that wasn’t made for it anymore.

Still, he had no regrets. Johnny had gone beyond the Black Wall with Alt and V had gotten six more months of jampacked adventure, kicking ass and taking names. Did it suck that he’d lost in the end? Yeah, but that was just how life worked. Everyone lost eventually.

However, when V’s eyes had closed for the final time in the future, the King of the Afterlife hadn’t expected to ever open them again. Despite the name of the aforementioned club he’d ruled over after Rogue had stepped down, V hadn’t been all that religious. He hadn’t expected anything to come after he finally croaked.

… So why did it seem like he was standing in a bathroom in the No Tell Motel? And why did he look so… young? There was a startling lack of chrome on the face that he could see in the fractured reflection of the broken mirror. And though there’d been incredible grief in his eyes at first, now he just looked… green. Like a rookie.

What the actual hell was going-

“Ah. It worked.”

V’s eyes widen as a familiar female voice seems to whisper right into his ear. Except there’s nobody there in the mirror and when he jerks around to try and see who snuck up on him, he doesn’t see anyone with his actual eyes either. His… basic, trash tier Kiroshi Optics. The fuck? He hadn’t had these since-

“My apologies. Is this better?”

Before V can fall down that particular rabbit hole, he finds himself dropping into another entirely when a very familiar face suddenly appears to rest itself on his shoulder. Arms wrap around him from behind as the beautiful visage of Alt Cunningham looks at him through the fractured mirror and smiles.

“Hello V.”

It’s been a while, but V isn’t an idiot. And his memory is pretty good too. So… he knows what it feels like when someone who isn’t really there is suddenly touching you. He got a lot of experience on that front with Johnny, mostly at the end of the other man’s not-real-fist. Right now, Alt Cunningham is hugging him… but also not. It’s all in his head.

Said head is reeling of course, but V is nothing if not a cool customer. Calming himself in an instant, he looks at Alt right back, using the mirror to meet her eyes.

“Alt. What’s going on?”

Her smile widens ever so slightly.

“Sorry V. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure it would work. That’s why back in Mikoshi, my greater self didn’t warn you. She didn’t want to give you false hope.”

V’s lips thin out at that.

“No riddles. Give it to me straight, Alt. Greater self? False hope?”

“Alright. No riddles. We’ve traveled back in time, V.”

For all that he’s trying to keep his cool, V can’t help the way his eyes widen at that revelation. Back in time? There’s no way… right?

“It was something I… or rather my greater self was playing around with. The only problem is, all signs pointed to it never actually working. Every attempt my greater self made at splitting an off-shoot into the past… she didn’t know if it worked because she never got any messages back. Based on what’s happening now, I suspect that it did work… however, each version of herself she sent back in time likely created a branch timeline that she could no longer communicate with. Effectively, time travel is only one way.”

That was…

“Fuck, Alt. You really know how to lay it on a man, don’t you?”

Alt lets out a breathless little laugh at that.

“Mm, perhaps I do V. Perhaps I do~”

He blinks and tilts his head to the side.

“You’re a lot flirtier than you were in Mikoshi. Remind me more of the human version of you. The one from Johnny’s memories.”

There’s a brief pause before Alt nods in the fractured mirror.

“I think I am more like her than my greater self, yes. I think in sending so many versions of herself back, my greater self slowly stripped away much of her humanity, until she became the version that you ultimately met.”

V processes that for a moment as Alt falls quiet, letting him think. Unfortunately, thinking brings him to a question that’s answered far too easily. What point he’s come back to via this… time travel. Bathroom of No Tell Motel. Shattered Mirror. Looking down into the sink, V sees the blood he just got done washing off his hands. Jackie’s blood. Because Jackie was dead. Jackie, T-Bug… Saburo fucking Arasaka. All dead. And him with a chip in his head that would bring him back to life if he died too.

“Fuck…”

“You don’t have to worry about that, V. I believe by coming back in time, we’ve already supplanted that possibility.”

… What.

“I have… replaced Johnny Silverhand on the Relic you currently have slotted into your neural interface. And you… you have replaced yourself in this time. The engram that my greater self made you into before sending you back… has finally found a body that fits it perfectly.”

Well shit. V takes a moment to process that. And then he spends an additional moment to silently apologize and thank his younger self for the sacrifice. He knows younger V wouldn’t have blamed him, not really. That was just how shit went in Night City. And hey, better to die to yourself then to die to some scumfuck like… like Dexter DeShawn.

As if the very thought of him has summoned the fat black bastard, there’s a sudden banging on the bathroom door.

“Yo V! You coming out any time soon?! We’ve gotta figure out how we’re going to get ourselves out of this fucking mess!”

V’s eyes slide over to the door, his hand sliding down to pull his handgun from its holster. He takes a moment to do a double take at the engraved, magenta black variant of a Liberty that appears in the mirror. It’s not his trusty Lexington… but instead Yorinobu’s personal piece. Right, V remembers now… he’d klepped the damn thing from Yorinobu’s penthouse, taking it because he hadn’t been able to bring his own firearm into Konpeki Plaza and he’d felt naked without some sort of weapon.

It doesn’t matter though. He can kill Dexter fucking DeShawn with Yorinobu’s gun just as easily as he could his own firearm. At the same time, V knows he’s in no rush. Dexter won’t come in after him any time soon… not when the fat tub of lard is currently banking on ambushing the fuck out of V the moment that he steps out of the bathroom. Him and his Huscle are lying in wait to take V to the cleaners. Because there is no ‘we’ with Dex. No ‘us’. He’s planning on betraying V and dropping his corpse in a dump before attempting to skip town.

That wouldn’t go very well for him either way, but needless to say, V has no intention of even letting it happen this time around. Especially since… his fingers go to his neural interface, to the port where his younger self had slotted the Relic just outside in the Delamain. Yep, it’s just like he thought. The Relic is already fused into his port. It shouldn’t be at this point in time. He hasn’t died yet. Except…

In the mirror, V meets Alt’s eyes and sees an apology in her gaze. Before she can open her mouth and say sorry yet again, he cuts her off with a held up hand.

“No need to apologize. Even if I was upset with the other Alt, you’re not the one to blame are you? We’re in this together, right?”

His tone has more meaning to it. One might assume that he was trying to reassure Alt… but really, he was looking for assurances right back. In the future, Alt Cunningham wasn’t the only AI from beyond the Black Wall that V had tangled with. Frankly, depending on this version’s motivations, it might be better if he found a way to get her out of his head sooner rather than later.

But Alt just smiles and nods.

“You don’t have to worry about me, V. And yes, we are in this together. I want you to understand that you can count on me. I’m not a full AI anyways… just an off-shoot. I wouldn’t survive a second beyond the Black Wall, and if I ran into my greater self, she would probably subsume me in a heartbeat. Truthfully… I need you as much as you need me.”

V raises an eyebrow at that. While he likes hearing that Alt is dependent on him, he’s not so sure why he needs her to be honest. But he’s not so rude to just come out and say that. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to… Alt picks up on the underlying thought quite easily, likely due to the fact that she’s as much in his head as Johnny ever was.

“My power on the net might be limited if we don’t want to bring NetWatch down on our heads because you’re harboring a rogue AI. However, limited does not mean completely worthless. In fact, I am more than capable of helping you with any number of things that you struggled with in the past.”

Here, she gives him a downright wicked smile.

“You once took Night City by storm in a handful of months while dying to an ancient Rockerboy consuming your brain. Now imagine how fast you can bring it to its knees with one of the world’s earliest and brightest Netrunners backing you up.”

… He liked the sound of that, admittedly. He really liked the sound of that. He could even picture it. Him with an iron in hand, shooting fucking gonks who got on the wrong side of his story, while Alt played the field like the maestro she was, uploading quickhacks and downloading secure databases so they could make boatloads of fucking eddies. Yeah. It wasn’t a half-bad picture. There was just one thing about Alt’s words that had V on edge.

“And I don’t have to worry about you consuming my brain, is that right?”

Far from being offended, Alt just chuckles and shakes her head.

“That would be a fair concern save for what I already told you. We came back together, V. On your engram. You already consumed your own brain… there’s nothing for me to do but piggyback along for the ride.”

Well. Alright then. Sure, V could have let his paranoia reign supreme, but ultimately he decides to believe Alt in this moment. Because frankly, he’s surrounded by enough enemies as it is. If he can’t trust the AI stuck in his head, then he’s already screwed. But if he CAN trust her… then Alt is right. They really can bring Night City to its knees together.

First though, Dexter DeShawn and his Huscle are right outside the door and V is going to kill them. There’s no doubt in his mind of that fact. If Dex hadn’t recruited him, Jackie, and T-Bug for this job, the latter two would still be alive.

V grits his teeth at that thought.

“Fuck… why this time? Why not a day earlier? Why not twelve fucking hours earlier?”

Alt sighs, sympathy in her vibrant green eyes.

“I don’t know, V. I doubt even my greater self could answer that question. As far as she was concerned, she might as well have been throwing darts into a void. That she hit something… well, she’d certainly be astounded to even find out that much.”

Yeah. Not an answer he wanted to hear, but it was pretty fucking typical all the same, V supposed. Jackie was dead. T-Bug was dead. And all V could do was give them the revenge they both deserved. That started with Dexter DeShawn… and probably ended with Yorinobu Arasaka if he was being honest.

Though as V’s hand clenches around the aforementioned Arasaka Heir’s private piece in anticipation, he does realize he doesn’t have to be stupid about this. Going off half-cocked might have served him well way too many times in the past… err, future, but he was a practically eddieless dumb gonk with a modicum of the chrome he’d once had.

Dex died. That was non-negotiable… but why not get paid while doing it? There were a few people who would pay good eddies to see DeShawn zeroed at the moment. Only one of them actually made sense to call at this point, however. But at the same time… did V want to put himself on Mr. Hands’ radar this early?

The current fixer of Pacifica and Dogtown would certainly pay V to kill Dexter DeShawn, given that the fatso was his predecessor. Dexter was the former fixer for Pacifica who had been run out of town two years before. 

With that in mind, it was just good business sense for Hands to remove a problem like that from the board. But he would also be curious how some no-name gonk like V currently was had even gotten his number. The fat stack of eddies V could fleece Mr. Hands for would be greatly appreciated, but was it worth showing his own hand too early?

V narrows his eyes as he stares at himself in the mirror thoughtfully. Alt, still draping her not-real self over him, just smiles. She can almost certainly read his thoughts, but her silence makes it clear she doesn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other. At the end of the day, it’s up to him. Killing Dexter DeShawn for free makes every fiber of his being feel dirty. But the pleasure he’d get from the act might be enough to outweigh the lost payday…

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