Extra 3

Stuffing their mouths with piping hot tamales, the five of them fell silent for a moment, each wearing a satisfied smile as they enjoyed the meal.

With the quality of ingredients having improved from before, the pleasure of eating had increased as well, and they couldn't help but drink more beer.

Then, Jackie drained the remaining beer from his bottle in one go, exhaled deeply, and held the bottle out toward David.

"So hey, that thing about Jug being a reincarnator—wasn't that in that so-called will chip? Said this world was like a game or a cartoon or somethin’, right? Then what I wanna know is, if Jug hadn’t gotten involved, how were we originally depicted?"

"Hey now, Jack, you've had too much. You're slurring your words a bit. Maybe we should order you some water... But yeah, I get it. I’m curious too. We only got bits and pieces from Kagura, not the whole story."

"Ahh... well, the will only really talked about the anime. I only heard about the game stuff every now and then. So if there’s some stuff off, don’t hold it against me, alright?"

"Hah, sounds good to me. Let’s critique how well that girl did, see how much of an impact she made."

Johnny let out a cackling, drunken laugh as he egged David on to continue.

Holding his beer-buzzed, swaying head and accepting the water Vincent had ordered, David began to explain.

"Uh, let’s see. Apparently, in terms of timeline, the anime comes before the game. The anime was called Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. And the game—the story of a protagonist who goes by the name V—is called Cyberpunk 2077."

"Huh, ahh, so that’s why Jug clutched her head when she heard the names Vincent and the rest."

"Yeah, seems like it. In the game, you get to pick between three life paths—"

"Let me guess—Corpo, Street, and Nomad, right? Vincent, Victoria, and Valerie! Every damn one of them started off callin' themselves V!"

"Correct, Jackie. You could choose male or female, and those names were Vincent and Valerie. Even though it was technically just one person, in this world there were three of them, so yeah, she was seriously confused."

"Yeah, no kidding. So what’s the anime, the one where you're the main character, about?"

"Oh, you picked up on that? Yeah, she said that’s why she trusted me. Back then, I kept wondering why someone like her was being nice to a street rat like me... but once she told me I was the protagonist of the anime, it all made sense."

"Ahahaha! Then you must’ve had it rough, always being compared!"

"Well, it starts out differently anyway, so honestly I didn’t feel much about it at the time."

As the focus of the conversation, David sipped some water to wet his throat, bit into a tamale, then continued.

"Okay, so, according to Jug, it’s like a rags-to-riches story for me. But the beginning's mostly the same. I guess I didn’t meet Jug—I went to a ripperdoc to get my implant upgraded, and sure enough, I wrecked one of the Academy’s lessons and got billed for the repairs. Then, on the way home in Mom’s car after she came to the Academy, we got caught up in an Animals’ attack... and Mom died..."

The unexpectedly heavy development made the other four grow solemn.

Of course, they had seen and spoken with David’s mom, Gloria, back when she used to visit the clinic. She was a familiar face.

To think she died right off the bat—well, remembering how bad Night City used to be, it did seem plausible enough to swallow.

"...And inside her belongings, there was a military-grade Sandevistan hidden in the lining of a paramedic’s uniform. At first, I tried to sell it, but got beat up at the Academy. So I went to the ripperdoc and had it installed to get back at them."

"You’ve gotta be kidding me... That thing was supposed to be a prototype made for Adam Smasher, wasn’t it?"

"Yeah, apparently I had some resistance to it. Seems like I even ran it in bursts repeatedly. Then I met Lucy while she was picking pockets in the metro, and when I showed her the Sandevistan, she realized I was using it. Then after some back and forth, I got tricked into meeting Maine. And since I had the Sandevistan Maine was originally supposed to buy, I asked to join the team, wanting to break free from my current life. That’s how it started, I guess."

"Wow... well, good for you, David. Gloria's alive and well here."

"Yeah. Seriously, thank God. No way should Mom have died over something so pointless... In that sense, Jug really is a lifesaver—for me and everyone, really."

"Oho, now that sounded loaded. Things are getting interesting."

Johnny grinned as if saying someone else’s misery made the beer taste better.

Judging by the look of him, he’d secretly ordered tequila and was already plastered.

"So anyway, I start taking jobs as a rookie cyberpunk. And, well, in the anime, it seems like I get into a relationship with Lucy, and a lot of stuff happens. ...Maybe that’s part of why it was hard for her to accept how I felt. She knew there was a future like that."

"Hmm, now that’s an interesting twist. I mean, Lucy acts all aloof, but she did warm up to Kiwi, so she’s actually kind of lonely. With a serious, passionate guy like you around, it’s no surprise she’d—oh."

David blatantly looked away, reminding Maine that in this world too, Lucy had feelings for him. Scratching his cheek awkwardly, he looked guilty.

In truth, it wasn’t uncommon for teams to fall apart over romance, and Rebecca also seemed to have a crush on David. If he had chosen one of them, things probably would’ve gone south fast.

From Maine’s perspective, the fact that David had stayed loyal to Jug this whole time was something to be thankful for.

"So anyway... I guess things were going well as a lively rags-to-riches story for a while, but after Pilar got killed by a cyberpsycho, the team started to fall apart. Eventually, Maine took on too much chrome trying to carry the burden, went cyberpsycho, and died along with Dorio. Then, the team continued with me as the new leader."

"You just casually killed me and Dorio off, huh? Wait, seriously? I was dead in that future too...?"

"...And after a while, Arasaka found out I was using a military Sandevistan and figured they could use me for some experiment. Lucy found out, and tried to handle it alone by assassinating a bunch of Arasaka netrunners. Then Faraday—yeah, Kiwi’s ex—got hired as a fixer by Arasaka. He used their past relationship to make Kiwi betray us. We got tricked during a job to steal Militech supplies, and they forced me into this defective experimental powered suit called the Cyber Skeleton. I almost went cyberpsycho while tearing through Militech forces, and then stormed Arasaka HQ to rescue Lucy, who’d been kidnapped."

"Whoa whoa whoa, too much info. Slow down and think before you speak."

"I can’t help it! I only heard all this secondhand from Jug, so of course I don’t remember every detail. Kiwi confessed the betrayal right before dying, and that led to the final assault on Arasaka. Then... Rebecca got crushed to death by Adam Smasher, and I got torn to pieces and died too. I told Falco to get Lucy out of there, so only the two of them survived."

Once again, like the icy chill of a fresh beer, the mood turned cold. The four groaned and held their heads at the grim but all-too-plausible turn of events.

After all, this was during the era when corpses rained down instead of rain in Night City.

And without Jug’s influence, Arasaka had free rein—of course things would turn deadly.

“Well... it’s Night City, after all,” they all muttered in grim acceptance as they drowned their thoughts in booze.

"So that means... Jug saved all the Edgerunners?"

"Hmm, well, I dunno about that. I asked Jug the same thing, but she just told me there’s no point in talking about 'what ifs'. According to her, it was just a possibility, not something that actually happened, so there’s no need to thank her. She did say she was glad things didn’t go totally off the rails, considering there were three different V’s when there was only ever supposed to be one."

"Ah... I see. So it’s a problem even before the butterfly effect kicks in. The world doesn’t progress exactly like the anime, so this is more about parallel timelines, huh."

"Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?"

"It means there could be a world where you don’t end up with Misty and end up with someone else instead."

"Ah... so that’s what you mean."

Jackie finally understood—that time when Mama Wells tried to set him up with a girl she liked. There’s a world where that worked out, and one where it didn’t. That’s the idea.

With the anime explanation done, a tired David refreshed his throat with ponche, a sweet Mexican juice made from stewed fruit.

"So, what’s the game like? I get a big role, right?"

"Uh, well, Johnny ends up inside V just like now, and eventually becomes this back-to-back partner kind of deal. By the way, apparently at first he tried to kill V to take his body."

"Game-you is way too dangerous."

"Ahh? I thought it was a pretty gentlemanly approach, Vincent. Must be your imagination."

"Ah—well, the thing is, the game’s got a crazy amount of content, so I’ll stick to just the story. No matter what life path you pick, V always starts off with a failure. Corpo V gets dragged down by a boss’s mistake, Streetkid V messes up a car theft, and Nomad V’s smuggling job half-fails, I think? But in all the routes, V meets Jackie and they end up becoming a mercenary pair in Heywood."

"...So that means the boss was already scouting us out, huh, Jack?"

"That’s how it looks. And apparently, since Jackie dies later in the Konpeki Plaza job, she was keeping a close eye on him."

Jackie blinked at David’s matter-of-fact tone but soon started laughing, maybe because he’d just heard about what happened to Maine earlier.

"Haha! So I die too! Man, Night City really doesn't pull its punches. How do I go out?"

"Uh, in the game, there’s a job to steal the 《Relic》 from Dexter DeShawn. V and Jackie head into Konpeki Plaza with help from someone named T-Bug, sneak in Flathead, and go into Yorinobu’s room. In that version, there’s no 『Machine Dragon』—Yorinobu just strangles Saburo to death. Then, when the two try to escape after witnessing it from behind a monitor, Jackie gets injured by a MaxTac sentry gun. They make it out, but Jackie bleeds out inside Delamain. He gives the 《Relic》 to V before he dies. After that, in a shocking twist, V gets shot in the head by Dex at a motel, dies, the 《Relic》 activates and revives him, then he gets dumped in a landfill and Takemura picks him up. That kicks off the main story where V struggles to remove the 《Relic》."

"...No way. I never thought I’d hear T-Bug’s name again."

"Apparently, the original V’s 《Relic》 didn’t activate the right way, and they ended up gradually getting overwritten by Johnny’s engram from the start. Something about the correct activation requiring cardiac arrest. Since the bullet was small and the wound shallow, there’s a high chance V was actually brain-dead, and the 《Relic》 forced a buggy activation. So Jug said... um..."

"...Hnn??? Did you just say something we can't ignore, David?"

"Well, uh... you see, they couldn’t retrieve Alt without activating Johnny, so it was a necessary sacrifice, I guess, you know…?"

"'You know…?' That doesn’t cut it. ...Hah, no wonder everything was so damn convenient. I guess thanks to that, I didn’t die even with Johnny leeching off me. Alright, I’ll accept it as some kind of extreme treatment."

"Hah hah hah! So that means there was even a possibility of me taking over Vincent’s body in the end!"

"Yeah, I heard that actually happens in one of the endings. In the game, they connect to 『Mikoshi』, send Johnny to Alt in the Net, and use Soulkiller to turn Vincent into a memory engram, then re-house him in the 《Relic》 as a treatment. Though, that route apparently gives him only six months to live."

Hearing such a brutal behind-the-scenes story about his drastically shortened lifespan, Vincent instinctively crossed himself and offered a prayer of thanks to Jug.

To sum it all up: because the heart-stopping condition was properly met, the 《Relic》 activated the right way and stopped halfway due to a system error. Vincent, who had essentially died from his heart being blown out, realized that if he hadn’t been revived with a biotic heart made from his own biological data, he’d have long since been resting in a memorial altar.

The one who caused it all—Johnny—drank tequila straight from the bottle with a guilty look, then quickly shrugged it off like it wasn’t his fault at all.