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KYBER-PUNK 22BBY J-I
🕑 Added 2025-09-19 23:09:36 +0000 UTC[JACKIE INTERLUDE: Just Another Gonk in the War-Machine]
— Jackie Welles —
Life on the Edge had changed in a way no one could’ve seen coming. Well, Jackie never would have, at least. But then, he knew he was something of a simple choom, a simple Gonk. He was muscle and chrome, not brains. It wasn’t his place to go around thinkin’ too much. But point him at a gig, and he’d get it done.
Sometimes, he couldn’t help his racin’, ponderin’ mind, though. He wasn’t the shiniest chrome at the ripper doc, but Jackie had thoughts and dreams and ambition galore. Especially these days…
The Gonk Cartel had taken over Night City. And they were taking over the whole moon, too. Jackie counted himself lucky that he’d seen the writing on the wall when he did. Sure, just about the entire city had joined up in some form or another at this point — from the streets to the stars —, but he’d still gotten in early.
It wasn’t just the Streetkids anymore. It was the Nomads and the Corpos, too. And all the indies and edgerunners and samurai and posers and boosters and chrome jocks and even lawmen in between. It was everyone, Night City coming together like he’d never seen before.
‘Gonk’ wasn’t just an insult anymore; it was a statement of allegiance, of unity, of belonging, and something bigger than any one of them. It was flying the flag of Night City. Now, they were all Gonks — real Gonks, with a Gonk mayor to bring ‘em together and a Gonk cause to lead the whole city to Legend.
Shit was only right. They were all cut from the same cloth, all from the same gutter of Hutt Space. And they all had a purpose now. Night City had always stood apart in Jackie’s eyes. There was nowhere like it. It was home, it was culture, it was theirs.
Now, the rest of the galaxy was seeing Night City — their home, their culture, them — with open eyes, most for the very first time. They were shown the violence, the chrome, the net, the lingo, the spirit, the Edge. All instigated by the Gonk at the top. Atom, that new Legend and hard-ass mayor who rallied a whole city — Street, Corp, and Nomad alike. Now was Night City’s prime time.
For the past month, they’d been movin’ hard, pushing to take turf and flatlining as they went. It wasn’t just a street scuffle; it was war. All of Night City was the iron pointed at the Hutts’ heads. And they were doing real damage.
‘Fuck a Hutt!’ was a battle cry. ‘Night City… Stands!’ was another. Jackie had watched that holo more times than he could count. It was preem. Nova. It was enraging and inspiring and unifying. The best kind of propaganda, with its scenes of destruction and violence and rebuilding in the wake of the Siege of Arasaka, when Militech and the Hutts allied to invade Night City.
The Hutts dared to come for them in their home, but they’d missed their first shot. The damned slugs wouldn’t get a second. The Gonk Cartel would make sure of that, especially with how the whole city rushed to join up and elect Atom as mayor.
Night City was up in arms. They had their enemy and the drive to flatline ‘em until none remained. The Hutts had brought everything that followed onto themselves. This fight was fraggin’ existential, and the slugs quickly learned that they should’ve never backed Night City into a corner.
All-out war in the traditional sense wasn’t something Night City knew. But they didn’t have to, not when they knew violence, practically spoke it as a second language. They knew iron and chrome and flatlining. So when that hard-ass new mayor of theirs declared it open season on any Hutt, the Streetkids, Corpos, and Nomads took that violence into their own hands, all unified under Gonk colors.
The Gonks at the top released a Hutt Hit List. Overnight, it became Night City’s bible. The scripture of the Streets, Boardrooms, and Limits. The Nomads treated it like their new creed. Corpos treated it like their new career. And the Streetkids, solos, and edgerunners treated it like their new gigs. For all of Night City, it wasn’t just professional; it was personal, too.
The Hutt Hit List changed the game, altered the Edge. It wasn’t enough to simply do gigs, build a rep, and go out in a blaze of glory anymore. Now, there was a new way to make yourself a Legend. Zero a slug. Flatline a Hutt. Hell, rack your K/D ratio up as high as you can! That was the new proving ground of the Edge.
With that, Night City was playing for keeps. And Jackie intended to earn some of those ‘keeps’ for himself. He was going to flatline a Hutt if it was the last thing he did. He’d mark his name on the Hutt Hit List. He’d make himself not just a Legend, but a Gonk Legend.
The chances for snatching up those Legends were going quickly, though. Real quickly, with the Gonk Cartel surging through their final push to secure Nar Shaddaa. The Hutt Hit List seemed to shrink by the hour, driven to extinction by the Gonks. Jackie knew he needed to step up his game. It was now or never, Gonk Legend or bust.
He was back running with his old Valentino crew these days. Misty insisted. Said if he was going to war — “and you are, Jackie. I know you,” — he needed good chooms to cover his big ass. No toughin’ it solo against Hutts, or she’d be… peeved. And that was more terrifying to Jackie than any slug or their armies of mercs.
The Gonk Cartel worked all ‘hands-off’ like that. It was an overarching banner for Night City, but it didn’t really trickle down to any one gang or clan or corp within. They gave out the Hutt Hit List, called the big shots, and otherwise focused on their Core Gonks while letting everyone else operate as they already were. That free rein and independence were good things, though. Jackie couldn’t imagine trying to individually wrangle every faction in Night City, now united as they might be.
It wasn’t like that gangs, clans, and corps were fighting amongst each other beneath the Gonk banner, not when there was a real enemy to focus their energy on. Why zero an opp or rival when you could zero a slug? They were all Night City, anyway, all Gonks. And fighting over turf in Night City was similarly useless when there was so much now-free real estate beyond the Limits.
That meant that, as always, Padre was the one really calling the shots for the Valentinos. He had a direct line to the Gonks at the top and their Hutt Hit List, but beyond that, he was fixin’ as he always had. Fixers make for good lieutenants in a war, who knew?
The only real change was that these new gigs from the Hutt Hit List took the Valentinos and Padre’s other connections past the Limits to bring the pain, violence, and Edge to the rest of Nar Shaddaa. Like this one, Jackie’s most recent (and maybe last…) chance to zero a slug.
One of the last Hutts on the Hit List was hiding out in the Dark Lands district beneath the main Red Light Sector. They (chico or chica didn’t matter for a slug, in Jackie’s mind) had been keeping a low, low profile, likely hoping to weather the storm Night City brought onto the rest of the Hutts on-moon. Padre found them, though. He always did.
Jackie, with one of the Valentinos’ newly organized sicarios, was given the gig. There were only five of them: Jackie, Old Dez — who first broke word of the Gonks to him —, Maria — a competent chica Jackie’s age with a brutal rep —, and Paco and Ines — a younger mainline couple with everything to prove and the youthful enthusiasm to do it.
Only five chooms, but Jackie knew they’d be enough to get the gig done. Even after a month of war, the Hutts still weren’t prepared for Night City chrome and iron.
The Dark Lands district was a spooky-ass AO, though. High above, the Red Light Sector was alive with neon and illicit activity — pleasures of all kinds, for a price — even through the grip of war on Nar Shaddaa.
It was the only ‘sun’ the Dark Lands knew. All of the district’s power and light were redirected up there. Here, in the undercity below, there was only shadow and those tantalizing glimpses of neon through the gaps.
“C’mon, Gato, get outta that fat dome of yours. We’ve got work to do,” Dez half-jokingly called for Jackie’s focus.
“You know me, choom,” Jackie chuckled. “I’m chilled with it. Won’t be no problems, none at all.”
“Better not be,” Maria smirked. “I don’t want you old gonks to slow me down.”
“How old did you turn a month ago?” Jackie asked knowingly.
“22,” Maria answered without missing a beat, grinning like a shark with her exotic-modded teeth. “Always 22. You wouldn’t doubt a lady, would you?”
Instantly, Jackie denied the accusation, “Nah, Mama Welles raised me right.”
“I can see that, Chrome Jock~…” Maria purred. “Shame you’re mainlining that little goth chica. There aren’t nearly enough good gonks goin’ around, and a woman like me would hate to settle.”
“Alright, cut the chatter and get your optics calibrated for the Dark Lands, chooms,” Dez said. “We’re going in.”
“Finally!” Paco exclaimed. “Don’t slow me down!”
“Bet I’ll get there first, baby!” Ines fired back at her output.
“Ah, youth,” Jackie pretended to sigh. “So eager. It’s almost enough to make an old man step up his game. Neh, Dez?”
Dez smiled but didn’t laugh, “Nah, the only thing I’m stepping up is coverage of all our asses. I intend for all of us to close this contract and bombshell in one piece. No gonk shit, ya hear? I don’t want to see a single friendly flatline on my HUD.”
“Slammit on, don’t get slammed in turn,” Maria paraphrased. “We got you, OG. And hey, at least we don’t gotta worry about getting dirty with some Hutt lawmen, neh? Not like any more heat can fall on Night City’s head.”
“Don’t jinx us so early, choom,” Jackie warned.
Dez nodded, “We don’t know what’s waiting for us in there, so we’re gonna have to keep this op’ tight. Maria, Jackie, you two have the van’. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Both nodding, Jackie and Maria moved out as ordered. Paco and Ines, in all their eagerness, were practically riding their asses. Jackie kept his babies in hand — a pair of modified Nue heavy blaster pistols — and his head on a swivel as they ventured into the dark. Chrome filtered for what light there was, painting a picture of the world in dull tones.
Aside from the Dark Lands’ titular darkness, the district looked like any other part of the undercity. A natural development — as natural as Nar Shaddaa could be — of worn-down urban sprawl that made up all some sentients would ever know.
It was cramped in places and much too open in others. Clogged with debris and rubble, making navigation difficult. Layers upon layers of the city extended upward (and inevitably down, too) in all of Nar Shaddaa’s usual verticality, with muddled neon rays reflecting and snaking their way down to the bottom from the Red Light Sector above.
But the Dark Lands weren’t just dark. They were quiet. Almost painfully, dangerously so. It was a dead district in a terribly eerie way. Jackie didn’t even see many of the usual critters he was expecting. Here, it seemed they’d evolved and adapted to the darkness. Just like the sentients who called this district home…
Occasionally, movement flickered in the corner of Jackie’s chrome-enhanced vision. Those signs of life that were otherwise so starkly missing. Anything that lived in the Dark Lands was a scavenger, sentient or not. Fortunately so, ‘cause it meant their sicario was allowed to pass quietly as unknown and uninvited apex predators that the locals didn’t want to slammit on with.
Padre’s intel put the Hutt deep in the Dark Lands, hiding out where even the neon light from above didn’t reach. Getting there was all smooth star-sailing for the sicario. They passed through the choked-out streets, cut through pitch-black interiors, and were only stopped once by a local gang of confident (or desperate) sentient scavengers.
The locals came out of the ‘crete-work as the sicario was passing through one of the too-open areas of urban terrain. Belatedly, Jackie realized it was a perfect and prepared ambush spot. Even to chrome optics, they just seemed to appear from the darkness.
They were sickly-lookin’ things, frail and gangly. Not human, but near it. Humanoid, at least. The head shape was different, though, as were the pointed ears and almost feline-shaped, squashed noses.
Jackie didn’t recognize the species off the top of his dome. But he’d heard the stories that came out of the Dark Lands. None of them were pleasant. The most prominent of them claimed that an old, old species took refuge in the Dark Lands, the remnants of a people who once called Nal Hutta home, when it went by a different name.
Evocii, swindled and exiled from their homeworld by the ancient Hutts and supposedly driven to extinction in the undercity of Nar Shaddaa. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. Not completely. Now, the remnants of a once proud species stalked their sicario like a pack of primitive hunters, or worse, sentients mutated to something barely better than wild animals.
Just once, Maria flashed the flashlight of her blaster rifle. Here in the Dark Lands, the attachment was more effective than any shot. The locals hissed and recoiled, blinded as if the real sun had just been brought into their homes.
Jackie took over the negotiations from there, “Easy now. Easy, chooms. We’re hunting Hutts, not you. Just let us pass in peace and we pretend this never happened, neh?”
“Careful, Jackie,” Maria said seriously. “Don’t overextend.”
Jackie nodded, knowing any attempt at negotiation was a long shot. He’d prefer not having to gun ‘em down, but he was no stranger to the cold calculus of survival in the undercity. Still, he wasn’t even sure these Evocii remnants could even speak, much less speak Basic. The flashlight already had them wary and terrified, though. And in that terror, a miracle occurred.
One of the Evocii cautiously stepped forward and spoke in stilted, hissing Basic, “H-utt…? H-unt…? Kn-ow H-utt… Ssee-n H-utt… Sssho-w H-utt…”
At that unexpected development, Jackie relaxed and actually smiled as he addressed Maria, “See? Nothing to it. We can all be chooms here.”
Jackie didn’t see Maria roll her eyes, but he could hear it in her tone, “Just keep ‘em in front of us. We’ll follow, but not a chance I’m letting them at our asses.”
Back to the Evocii scavengers, Jackie made a universal sort of gesture, motioning for them to go ahead. Slowly, warily, the gang grouped back up and led the way. They weren’t at all comfortable; that much was visible. But then, Jackie wasn’t all comfortable, either. Theirs was an alliance — an allowance, really — to prevent unnecessary bloodshed. Nothing more.
“Poor wretches…” Ines said behind Jackie. Even as she said that, though, she was still holding her blaster at the ready.
“I don’t fuckin’ trust ‘em,” Paco grumbled, holding his monster of a scattergun in the same way.
“We don’t have to,” Dez said wisely. “They aren’t a threat. Not one worth worrying about. Not one worth wasting time to flatline, either, though.”
Jackie nodded in agreement, “All we’d do is give ourselves away for miles in this darkness. Save that fire for the real firefight, young-gonk.”
They followed the Evocii deeper into the Dark Lands. Escorted by locals, they weren’t bothered at all. Any movement Jackie had been catching the corners of his eyes before vanished. He could still feel other locals watching from the ever-present shadows, though.
Even their chrome optics began to struggle this deep in the Dark Lands. There just wasn’t enough light cascading down from above. It was like being fully underground. In many places, it straight-up was, the upper layers having long since become the actual ground as far as Nar Shaddaa was concerned.
Still, somehow, their Evocii escorts found their way through the darkness with unerring precision. It was all the sicario could do to follow and keep up. In his chrome bones, Jackie could feel them getting closer to their target, their prize. It was a certain tension in the air, trickling back from the Evocii they followed. If a Hutt was hiding out here, Jackie doubted the locals were comfortable venturing nearby.
Then, they reached another of the too-open spaces here in the undercity. It was spacious enough for a freighter to land in, semi-circled in shape, and ringed entirely by walls of different makes. Some were buildings and habs with long-abandoned interiors, some were built-up debris, and against the back was a wall of solid rockcrete. Most importantly, there wasn’t a hint of cover in the center of the space.
The lead Evocii stopped their progress from going any farther and pointed, “H-utt… Come… Go… Sss-oon…”
The words were hissed with millennia of sheer species-wide hatred. Jackie couldn’t blame them for that. The Evocii weren’t just exiled from their homeworld; they were forcefully evicted by the Hutts of Old. And they likely didn’t even know what happened to it after so long in Nar Shaddaa’s undercity. That kind of trauma didn’t just breed personal hatred; it bred hatred into the species’ very genetics, if he had to guess.
This wasn’t the Hutt’s hiding spot, Jackie gathered. But it was nearby, on the path to and from. Without even asking, the locals had set them up with a perfect ambush arena.
“Yeah? Thanks, we’ll take it from here, new choom. Feel free to stick around and watch professionals work, if you want,” Jackie joked.
The sicario spread out slightly, giving each other space to breathe, move, and work with. The lines of fire naturally made the center of the arena into a proper killzone. Then, they settled in to wait. They didn’t have to do so for long.
The Hutt’s arrival was jarring. Full-on spotlights chased away the ever-present blackness of the Dark Lands without care. Jackie’s chrome was quick to adjust, but by the sound of things, the Evocii weren’t so lucky. Just another reason for them to hate the Hutts, Jackie supposed.
In the darkness, the light preceded the actual arrival by minutes. But eventually, a convoy hovered into the ambush arena. It was all armored speeders, five of them, with the Hutt’s vehicle at the center.
Seeing the armor they were up against, Dez pinged the rest of the sicario with orders. Jackie placed his babies down where he could easily snatch them back up and palmed a thermal detonator. He knew the others did the same.
Beautiful, beautiful things, these thermal dets. Rare and expensive, too. But the Gonk Cartel blasted those doors of acquisition wide open. If you were hunting Hutts (and everyone in Night City was), you got the best of the best. Thermal dets, heavy blasters, and even shiny new chrome that Jackie had Vik slot for him.
Another ping from Dez counted them down as the Hutt convoy entered the Killzone. Jackie tapped his foot in time with the ‘beat’, just like his mama taught him. His shiny new chrome HUD calculated the arc and angle of his throw. Then, the signal came, and five orbs of complete destruction were flying through the air into the Killzone.
Even as they flew, Jackie was picking his custom Nues back up and taking aim. Blaster bolts streaked through the darkness from five angles. They blasted into the convoy’s spotlights, seeking the exposed gunners on two of the armored speeders. Half of Jackie’s initial volley went wide, but the other half — along with a pinpoint volley from what had to be Maria’s blaster rifle — struck true.
Coordinated fire vaporized the exposed top half of the targeted gunner. In an instant, flesh turned to ash and open air. Then, thermonuclear fury detonated amongst the convoy.
One of the speeders was suddenly missing half of its hull. The driver actually fell out the bottom of that one. Another two were sent tumbling as their repulsorlifts failed, but ultimately remained functional. The last non-Hutt speeder got away unharmed, but the Hutt-carrying one in the center was torn apart by overlapping fields of thermonuclear fire.
The Hutt lived. Of course it did. The thermal detonators had gotten all speeder and no slug. And three of the armored speeders were still much too intact for Jackie’s liking. He swore as he let loose a second volley of blaster bolts and ducked down to reposition immediately.
The ambush pushed the convoy into chaos, but no retreat. The Hutt’s guards were professional, and the Hutt itself was enraged. When Jackie popped his head back up in another spot, he saw that the fallen driver was slumped over dead, the two immobile speeders were still able to open fire, and the Hutt had outright torn the heavy blaster off the half-destroyed speeder to wield with its two slimy hands.
A veritable storm of blaster bolts answered their ambush. Heavy blaster bolts slammed into the arena’s walls like they owed ‘em money. The sitch turned back on them hard. Immediately, the Dark Lands turned well-lit. No plan survives contact with the enemy, especially not competent, professional, and undoubtedly enraged enemies.
They were pinned down by the sheer weight of fire. The only thing that saved the sicario’s collective skins was that the convoy was firing mostly blind into the surrounding darkness. But soon enough, one of the Hutt guards had the good idea to start scanning with those damned spotlights.
Everywhere it went, the convoy’s remaining guns focused fire, and Jackie knew that if he or his chooms got caught in that light, they wouldn’t get the chance to regret it.
“COWARDLY LESSER SPECIES!” The Hutt roared. “Striking from the shadows, LIKE RATS! Is this the only way you can win against your betters?!”
It punctuated its taunt with a steady stream of pulverising plasma from its commandeered heavy blaster, ripped right from the destroyed speeder’s mount.
*DOOM-DA-DA-DA-DA-DOOM!* Potential cover crumbled, ‘crete and steel alike evaporated, and the heavy blaster bolts kept coming. Jackie kept his head well down. His chooms did the same. But that didn’t fix the storm of suppressive fire they were now weathering. If something wasn’t done quickly, they’d never stand up whole again.
Jackie moved. He crawled below the cover line until he reached a place the spotlight had already scanned. For just a moment, he peeked his head up and over. Just long enough for his optics and HUD to get a lock. Then, he was back down and moving again, just to be sure.
A second thermal det fell into his hand. With the arc drawn in his HUD, he chucked it up, over, and into the convoy’s midst. It was set to detonate on impact, not a timer, and Jackie heard it plink off one of the immobile speeders for just a moment before thermonuclear thunder took over.
One more down. It still wasn’t enough. Quick as a blink, the last intact speeder swung its spotlight toward the source of the destructive orb. The suppressive fire focused with the light, raking over and all around Jackie’s position. Instead of merely repositioning once more in that lethal hail of plasma, Jackie pulled back into the darkness.
As fast as he could manage, his fat chrome ass mil-crawled through an abandoned hab unit. The front half of the unit went up in so many burning blaster bolts that the very air was stolen from the area. In the hallway behind, Jackie found the Evocii waiting for him with wide eyes, frantically terrified energy, and still, the will to help against the Hutt.
Hurriedly, they beckoned for him, and Jackie followed as they led him to a better position. Good people, Jackie thought. They might not have had the heavy iron to stand up to the Hutt convoy, but they were doing what they could.
“P-ack… Sss-afe…” The lead Evocii hissed.
“Good lookin’ out, choom,” Jackie nodded back. “Keep your heads down, though. You don’t wanna get caught in the middle of this shit.”
With a new position, covered and concealed once more, Jackie looked out over the arena. It wasn’t an ambush anymore; it was a slog that was shaping up to last for a while. His chrome helpfully pinged the rest of his sicario and showed Jackie their positions. They were safe, but progress wouldn’t be made easily from there.
Jackie scowled. Charging in was a suicide mission in the making. They didn’t have the time or space to set up another trap, and no way to drag the convoy into it, anyway. And while they had four more thermal dets to their names, Jackie was now out of the heavy ordinance.
“My rep for heavy iron,” Jackie chuckled to himself.
He said it disparagingly — a futile wish in a tough sitch. He certainly wasn’t expecting it to come true then and there, and so dramatically, at that. But there in the Dark Lands, reinforcements fell from the ‘sky’ like his wish had been upon a star.
There was a great rush of speed and displaced air. A flash of light, not from the convoy’s spotlights, but from above. Then, a monstrous example of heavy iron descended directly onto the convoy.
*CRA~AA~ASH!* The last intact speeder of the convoy was smashed into the rockcrete below. Tons and tons of something landed right on it with no mercy at all. The speeder shattered under weight, momentum, and all-around force.
At first, the reinforcements came as a blur that Jackie couldn’t make out, not even with chrome optics. Dust and debris spilled up and out from the point of impact. The spotlights illuminated it all, even if they couldn’t pierce the plume of destruction. They did, however, silhouette everything within.
Jackie saw a humanoid figure in the smoke. A massive motherfucker, he thought, bulky with armor and standing victoriously over the remains of its initial prey. As the smoke cleared, Jackie saw more. And his jaw fell open outright.
It wasn’t flesh; it was steel. It looked like a battle droid, but not any kind he’d ever seen. Even the most terrifying droids didn’t stand seven meters tall and what had to be three dozen heavy-ass tons of lethal engineering. Its form was gun-metal gray and armored to Hell and back with practical lines of design. A cyclopean red optic glared out from an almost beaked head, and it carried all of the heavy iron Jackie could’ve asked for.
There was a massive and terrifying gun in one of its hands, a mounted, dual-barrel heavy blaster on one shoulder, and what looked to be a multi-tube missile pod on the other. The shoulder-mounted weapons tracked with that glaring red eye. The gun in its hand — nah, a cannon — almost casually rested at the ready as it assessed the scene it was intruding upon.
The arena fell into a sharp and tense silence. Everyone held their breath in the face of a battle droid built to kill gods. Then, the beast of a droid moved.
The gun was raised and aimed. When it fired, however, it didn’t pop off with the blaster bolts — heavy as they would’ve been — that Jackie was expecting. Instead, there was a whir of tech and a stream of sound-barrier-breaking snaps. Carefully concentrated in bursts, actual projectiles tore into each of the remaining armored speeders.
The vehicles were ripped to shreds by pure and absurd kinetic force. Handheld, heavy artillery overpenned again and again, like the speeders’ armor was made of flimsy. The rockcrete ground shook where they struck through.
The speeders’ merc crews — those that survived to do so — tried to scramble away from the destruction. Then, the shoulder-mounted, dual-barreled iron spoke up. That one barked blaster bolts, as expected, but it did so like a scattergun. The spread overtook the survivors in an instant, and to a merc, they ceased to be.
In bare, professionally done seconds of overwhelming firepower, the convoy’s remaining defense was obliterated. Only the Hutt at the center remained.
It tried to fight back, of course. The commandeered heavy blaster in its hands poured plasma into the battle droid’s center of mass. The barrage slagged armor, but barely, and nothing more. It certainly didn’t penetrate to anything important.
Half of the barrage went wide, too, as the battle droid reacted. It slid over the ground on its two feet, seeming weightless for impossible moments. In a fraction of a second, it was in front of the Hutt. The slug was snatched up by the droid’s free hand, dangling above the ground by its tail.
The Hutt didn’t react well to the sudden shift in its sitch, “WHA-?! This is impossible-! Who-?! WHAT are you?!”
The droid gave it a flinging sort of shake by the tail. The Hutt was effectively silenced (and sickened, by the look of things). The Evocii came forward to watch the scene beside Jackie. Where he watched with awe and some small horror, they did so with rapture.
“Me-tal g-od…!” The Evocii exclaimed.
Jackie couldn’t dispute the statement. The impossible droid certainly seemed like one. Until it spoke, that is, and Jackie recognized both the voice and the lingo.
“Yo, chooms, you still want the rep for this Hutt hit or what?”
Slowly, Jackie came forward from cover. The Evocii were quick to follow him, and his sicario eventually revealed themselves as well. He walked into the wake of abrupt destruction, bewildered but too curious to resist.
As he came to a stop in front of the Hutt-holding ‘not-droid’, he asked, “V…? Is that you in there, choomba?”
The armored shell obviously couldn’t smile, but Jackie could hear the expression in the reply that came, “Jackie? Jackie Welles! Long time no see, choom! What’s up, man?!”
“I’m chilled, I’m chilled…” Jackie almost absently replied. “Right, uh… Right back at you, though. You go full ‘borg or something since I last saw you?”
“Nah, I’ve still got my meat,” V laughed. “I’m still as preem and sexy as ever in here, much to Smasher’s annoyance!”
“Smash-…?” Dez muttered half a worried question in the background.
Jackie was still focused on V, though, not hearing more about her ‘Saka job, “Then… what is all this, choom?”
Once again, he could hear her expression through the armored shell: a smug-ass smirk that was all V.
“Heh, you’re lookin’ at the future, Jack. The Gonk future, straight from Atom and Arasaka. This, choom…? No ‘Borg, no droid, no tin can, not even heavy iron. This is steel. This… is Mekton.”
IIIII
[AN: So… You can thank Brosef on QQ and his ‘Mekton Effect’ story for putting this beautiful possibility in my mind. Also ‘cause I saw some comments wanting more traditional applications from the Atom’s Inspired Inventor system. While I’m trying for a somewhat unique take on II in this story, I’m not opposed to some tinkering. And thus, Atom is bringing true mechs into the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
We’ll hear more about that process and the mechs in general next chapter. While I don’t know that much about Mekton Zeta, I think it can essentially be considered Cyberpunk 2180 in a way. It’s not a true successor, but Mike Pondsmith (the Cyberpunk creator) did connect the lore of his two settings. Mekton Zeta is very much more Gundam than Cyberpunk, though. Mostly, I’m just using the connection as an excuse to introduce mechs. ‘Cause mechs are cool. This is fact.
Here, I’m going for my own take. Atom’s Mektons won’t be full-on Gundam, but they’ll be more ‘anime’ than something like Battletech mechs. I think I’ll be taking more influence from Armored Core and Lancer than either true Gundam or Battletech. The end result will be something that’s still mostly grounded in the Star Wars galaxy (NOT at all to Gurren Lagann scales or anything that anime lol), yet still something that Star Wars has never seen before. We altering the battlefield paradigm with this one, gonks, just in time for the final push for Nar Shaddaa!]
IIIII
Bonus Pics (sauce below)
Comments
bleachballed
It's not on the immediate docket for me, unfortunately, but it's certainly not dead, either. It'll come back around eventually, with a bit of patience
Peyton Howard
Please deade end
Kz3838
Thank you for the great chapter, stay safe out there and keep up the good work!
