Chapter 1: Letting you down again...
*crash, clang rumble*
The sound of my mostly metal body, hit the floor as the hulking figure of Adam 'fucking' Smasher, stood over me. He had torn apart the anti-grav chassis of this cyber skeleton I couldn't stop myself from chipping.
My head was reeling and life started replaying like those shitty BDS I use to pass, how long ago was it. The days of me either scamming or being fucked with by those corpo cunts.
The shitty tuned headset update doc gave me, the one that got my mother called in to have a word. The tears, the disappointment on the ride home still vivid. Then...
Then the crash...
Trauma team leaving her to die and dragging the corp who was hit to their AV. The anger, the sadness and after that all that was left was exhaustion and a frustration that he couldn't shake.
A loud horribly far from ganic voice came from the tin can legend yet it was still laced in mockery.
" You thought YOU could touch ME? You and your fucking toys? PATHETIC!"
His voice from hell only briefly brought me from my cyberpsycotic state and afterwards the last couple months of my life started flying through my head.
Getting the sandy installed,
Finally meeting his Lucy, the love of my life or so I thought, she never loved me as much as I her though, I guess at this point she is all I have left, thank you Falco for at least that.
Getting wrung out by the big guy Maine, someone who was like a father to him, I want to thank him on the other side and then crack his chrome dome for all the trauma.
Meeting them all, the crew after our first gig. Seeing them all there, Kiwi who betrayed them for her own stable life she never got to live, Pilar the guy who lightened the suffocating atmosphere at points, only to be turned into the type of death one doesn't want to have to bring up. Dorio, the pillar that held Maine up from collapsing so long, only to die because of his own ignorance. And then Bex...
I felt the worst about her, I had all the chrome I could handle and more but I still couldn't save her. I was a legend at that point, I was supposed to make a difference with all that metal but all I could do was... Watch.
Just like I could only watch Mom when I was stuck in the mangled seatbelt, her injuries leaking more by the second, I thought that I had changed since then but it happened just the same with the murder gremlin who was always in my corner.
With all the corpses made from friends that this path I walked has made, I could only think in my last moments, as the brain in a tank stood atop me with his arm cannon ready to finish the job.
'would I do it all again, all the fame all the trials, all the chrome? Was it even worth it?'
The thought was too mindbloggling at the time and all that came from my mouth was...
"Like I give a damn." With my bright Martinez smirk, to not give the bastard the satisfaction. And die the punk I was. My drink better not be fizzy in the Afterlife.
*Bang*
~~~~~~~~~~
Their was no pain in dying, the bullet passed clean through his head and ended it instantly. However the oppressive pressure wherever I was nearly a suffocated soul with how heavy it was.
I looked around and noticed I was just a golden blob of energy in whatever limbo this is. I wasn't alone either as there were a few more humanoid looking outlines of light dressed in accountants clothes along with a light form in a suit on a bean bag watching something on a stupidly big screen.
The being in front of the screen clapped their hands twice and the other three who seemed to be chatting vanished and he was brought right in front of him.
"Damn kid, got some balls on you huh? Couple months and your fighting the big bad of your verse while going crazy. Too bad about that Becca girl though she made it pretty exciting, poor timing really."
The avatar or my soul or whatever gripped its small pudgy almost hand.
" Good show though man, if you focused on getting the crew stronger instead of just how many weapons you could use things wouldn't have ended so lonely, at least if Pilar was faster he would've noticed the hacked hobo pull his gun out. Or Dorio could've knocked Maine out before the cops killed her. Bex could've jumped out of the way had you kept all your limbs and weren't running out of steam because of your new implant. So many wrong choices, so many deathly decisions, you couldn't even tell when rock bottom was because of how many times you fell down."
I just couldn't stand it anymore and roared out, " THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW GONK!? WERE YOU THERE? DID YOU DO ANYTHING? DID YOU HAVE TO GO TH- "
The bastard made of light merely chuckled and his very soul was locked in place and silence.
He merely shook his head and said " Thats that rebellion only Night City can make, you remind me of silver hand, he was just as fun to let loose on the 40k verse. Bastard got so strong he tied in a bare knuckle brawlwith a primarch. Fucking silver armed menace I tell ya. Now then, your turn Martinez."
As he finished his sentence and his dick measuring contest that kept my lips bound and my soul stuck ended. We're it not for what happened after he said such a loaded statement I would have lashed out like the emotionally drained punk I was.
His words envoked something in the surrounding void as an impossibly divided roulette table spanning what I could only comprehend as infinity or on the very cusp of it.
Some how I could feel the smirk grow on whatever that thing was' face at my astonishment. I couldn't even understand the magnitude of what was in front of me because nothing could compare, not the wastes of the outlands or the mega buildings and moon I stood on seemed insignificant to just how insanely far it stretched.
The light man snapped his fingers and a marble the size of the sun appeared on the table and steadily accelerated, ramping up more and more until I just couldn't follow it.
My stupor finally let me catch up to everything that started happening and I hollard out in this vast expanse,
"What the fuck is going on?!?!"
Light man just chuckled again and pointed at the table as the ball that had now spun around his vision as an afterimage of a blur started slowing, allowing me to actually read a few sections of the table right in front of me,
'Warhammer 40k? He mentioned that and silver hand in the same breath. Da fuq is it, and whats getting gambled here, like why the fuck is 'Left 4 Dead' an option. None of these sound appealing.' My questions and worries were completely ignored by who I could only guess was some sort of cosmic entity, as the result of the roulette came to land on a teal section that read boldly at the top,
MY HERO ACADEMIA
Definitely not as bloody as the other ones sounded, but it also brought up more questions that no one would answer. Fuck, just like Rogue leaves out little details that mean the most, until 'the times right' always grated at me. Faraday too but I had already killed him and settled the score. I only wish the bastard had suffered more.
The astronomically large pin ball stopped on the spot and soon enough...
*Pop*
The whole thing was gone. The impossible to measure table, the orb that should've had its own gravitational pull all off it, just poof and it was gone. What the actual fuck is happening!?
I had hoped for my people to meet me on the other side, in the Afterlife, this doesn't seem to be close to that at all. Or maybe this is limbo and I have to have my pride stomped on again before I'm sent to hell.
Light man as I now dub him, because I doubt his name was important in whatever he was doing, clapped his hands and a deck of glamorous golden and black cards. He gestured his hand full of the fan of cards towards me and said.
"Alrighty then, Martinez... Pick a card. I'm tired of your rambling." I was avidly against the notion because he seemed to be preparing to whisk me away just like that roulette and I couldn't not before...
"Wait! Wait no, before you do whatever you do, is my mom okay? Did she make it to heaven or is she stuck in some limbo like this? Maine, Bex, the rest of the crew where are they?" I hurriedly exclaimed.
Light man merely chuckled and made a zipping motion over his non existent mouth, vowing silence.
But I needed to know, to say how sorry I was. I needed to. After all that Maine had gone through and how I last saw him, distraut, confused and angry, so quick to lash out. That horrible far away look I shared with him in my final moments. And the disappointment my mother had at the weak boy who couldn't take half of what she did and tried running away from it.
Those were the last looks I saw from them? Forever they'll be engraved in my very soul for the pain I never got to apologize for.
From the very depths of my soul, my bittersweet being that had been trampled on by the movement of the world, I screamed, I thrashed, I even tried to lounge at the being playing with me only to smash headfirst into a barrier.
I wailed and punched and kicked, yet the sour taste of futility yet again exhausted me. I had raged at the world and it sent a hotter rage to quell me, this was just cold apathy that didn't even acknowledge it.
The deck of cards poofed in front of me held horizontal in front of me. I was just so damn tired, so drained from carrying the dreams of others while I had to leave them behind. I snatched the card closest to me and the rest disappeared into thin air.
My shoulders sagged and my very being ready to rest I flipped the card over to be met with an ace of spades that glowed a neon bluish green. The light coming from the card seemingly kicked into over drive and lit with the intensity of a solar flare until I felt something in my very being, shift and transform.
"Your crescendo was great last time, make sure the series lasts more than a season this time alright kid?" Light man again hit me with an incredibly loaded sentence but didn't give me time to comprehend as I was whisked away from the realm entirely.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone