Chapter 32: The Voodoo Boys

A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

Placide's no good very bad day.

-x-X-x-

The Voodoo Boys diverged from the rest of the Night City gangs in many ways. There was the fact that they didn’t actually exist in Night City proper, for instance. Their territory was Pacifica, the failed luxury district that the rest of the City wanted to forget even existed.

There was also the fact that they were more culturally distinct then the other major gangs as well. Groups like Maelstrom, the Animals, and 6th Street didn’t even care about that sort of thing. Groups like the Tyger Claws and Valentinos were Asian and Latin respectively, but not a specific nationality.

The Voodoo Boys weren’t just all black as some idiots might think. They were Haitian. Not just Haitian, they were the best of Haiti’s remnants, plain and simple… and they took significant pride in it.

Because frankly, their Haitian heritage wasn’t even the biggest thing that set the Voodoo Boys apart from the rest of the Night City gangs. Nor was their control over Pacifica the largest thing either. No, the unique trait that truly set the Voodoo Boys apart from everyone else in Night City… was the sheer number of Netrunners they fielded.

Everyone knew Netrunners were a force multiplier. Even a gang like the Animals had a couple of Netrunners and they were pretty much as far on the opposite side of that spectrum as a group could be. But the Voodoo Boys were different in that they were ALL Netrunners.

Even Placide, who was commonly considered Maman Brigitte’s iron fist, was more of a Netrunner than ninety percent of Night City could claim to be. Which was why none of this made any sense. As he stumbles through the halls, hunting for the intruders, Placide grits his teeth, trying once again to access the building’s security system, only to once again be soundly rebuffed.

The only group who had been poking around in the last while were the Animals. The aforementioned antithesis to netrunning. They were a gang that focused more on physicality than anything else. Building their bodies up and also ‘building’ their bodies up. They barely dabbled on the Net, and they certainly shouldn’t have had the know how to lock the Voodoo Boys out of their own systems.

And yet… something twinges at the edge of Placide’s mind. There’s something there that he’s not quite picking up.

Feeling a trickle of blood on his upper lip, he knows he’s developed a nosebleed from the strain. Gnashing his teeth, Placide rushes forward, DB-2 Testera in his hands. The Double-Barrel Shotgun manufactured by Rostovic has served him well enough over the years, and whoever is fucking with them now will find out just how well that is.

Finally, Placide makes it to the front of the building, where the fighting had been heaviest mere minutes before. By the time he arrives however, things have gone quiet irritatingly enough… so he’s not that surprised by what he finds there. Dismayed? Certainly. Surprised? Not remotely.

It’s a massacre. Blood and bodies everywhere… and every last one is a dead Voodoo Boy. Placide grits his teeth and grips his shotgun all the tighter, even as he snarls under his breath. He would have expected at least a few dead enemies among them, even if they were caught completely off guard and routed in mere minutes. But there’s nothing. Not a single one, which means there’s not a single trace of who the fuck actually-

Cut off mid-thought by someone hacking up blood, Placide whips around to see one of his men is still alive. Laid against the wall, bleeding from the mouth and a few bullet wounds in his chest, but still breathing. As he hurries over, Placide categorizes the wounds, taking stock of the damage. It’s immediately obvious that there’s not a chance in hell the other man is going to survive.

Well, technically there was one chance. If they got him to a Ripperdoc immediately, he would probably live. However, that would mean abandoning the base while it was in the middle of being invaded. He was as good as dead, and Placide can tell from the look in his slowly glazing eyes that the other Voodoo Boy knows it too.

Kneeling down beside him, Placide makes sure to clasp the other man’s hand in his own, giving it a solid squeeze and feeling the dying Voodoo Boy try to return the favor somewhat weakly.

“Brother. What happened here? Who has attacked us?”

Coughing up a bit of blood, the Voodoo Boy rasps out his words slowly.

“Slammed through… the front doors… like they were nothing. One was a short bitch with a shotgun… kept cackling. Others were more professional… all covered up.”

He’d heard that cackling over the call before, yes. But from the sound of it…

“Not the Animals?”

Tiredly, the dying Voodoo Boy shakes his head.

“No… not the Animals. They sped right through our ICE… hacked us and blinded us… took control of the turrets and shredded us to pieces before we could… react.”

The turrets! Placide stiffens and looks back over his shoulder… but the danger is passed for the time being. Every turret in the building’s entrance hall has been destroyed. He’d assumed that was because the attackers did so, but either his Voodoo Boys had gotten them as they’d gone down, or the attackers had caused them to self-destruct once they were done with them.

Either way, it made as much sense as the rest of this. Meaning, little at all.

“Which way did they go, brother?”

Ponderously slowly, the dying Voodoo Boy raises an arm and points. It’s the last thing he does as that arm then flops back down and he slumps entirely, the light leaving his eyes. He goes from being a brother to being a corpse in a single split second. Even still, Placide gives the now limp hand one last squeeze before he rises to his feet and turns towards the hallway the other man had pointed to.

Fuck. Of course. Nobody should have known the layout of their base. But then, nobody should have been able to beat them in a battle of Quickhacking and Netrunning either. Disabling their cyberware, taking control of their turrets, locking down their security camera network… Placide should have known.

Letting out a curse, he grips his shotgun tightly and begins hoofing it down the hall, double-timing it in the direction of Maman Brigitte and Ti Neptune’s unresponsive bodies, hoping that it’s not already too late.

-x-X-x-

“I mean… kicking in some gonks’ teeth and shooting them full of holes while they shot back at us is one thing, but this feels a bit more… iffy? They’re literally helpless, right? And we’re just going to put a bullet in each of them and call it a day?”

“They’re Netrunners, Rebecca. Sure they’re helpless out here in the real world, but take it from me, they would be raining hellfire down on you right now if they could. It’s like… it’s like if you managed to disable a Militech Minotaur and found the remote operator close by. Are you just going to let that gonk live because he’s not conventionally armed?”

“Well no, but…”

Fortunately, by the time Placide makes it to the innermost sanctum of the Voodoo Boys’ base, the attackers have stopped to argue over the morality of killing Brigitte and Neptune of all things. Clenching his jaw and gripping his double-barrel shotgun a bit tighter, he creeps around the corner and finds himself at the back of a pair of women, one short and cradling a pink and green shotgun and the other taller with her hands on her hips.

For a brief moment, Placide considers just lifting his shotgun and ending it. But the need for vengeance runs deep. Haitian blood has been shed by the buckets today. Slowly, he fits his shotgun to the magnetic clip on his back and instead draws his cleaver from its holster. Then, he begins to creep forward, intending to rend the short one limb from limb first and then perhaps take his time with the one who had no visible firearms.

Before he can get close enough to make his fantasies a reality however, there’s a click and the feel of a hot, recently fired gun barrel pressing against the back of his head. Placide freezes mid motion.

“Hello Placide.”

The two women whip around as well, shotgun coming up and pointing in his direction. If they weren’t there, he might have taken his chances with the man behind him. But they are there. And so are Brigitte and Neptune. Still alive… for now. Slowly, Placide drops his cleaver and lifts his hands up in surrender, even as his mind races. He’d had his suspicions for a while now… nothing he’d voiced out loud though. And yet, it’s all finally starting to line up.

That’s why, when he slowly turns around to face the man behind him, Placide doesn’t let the appearance, which screams mercenary, solo, and edgerunner, fool him. He keeps his head high and grunts out a single accusation.

“NetWatch.”

The man pauses, all but confirming it for Placide. How else could all of this had happened? How else could Brigitte and Neptune have wound up locked up on the Net like they were? It wasn’t the fucking Animals, that was for sure. No, the Animals were just dumb brutes… muscle in a very literal sense of the word. NetWatch had hired them to provide security over at the Mall, so that they could make their move on the Voodoo Boys. Which meant they knew about Maman Brigitte’s ultimate plans to reach out beyond the Black Wall to make some unorthodox allies.

“Excuse me?”

Placide growls as the man tries to play dumb.

“There is no need for further games. You are NetWatch. Why are you here? What do you want?”

Of course, just because he says there’s no need for further games doesn’t mean Placide isn’t above playing a little dumb himself. On the very small off chance that NetWatch didn’t know what they were really after, Placide might be able to make a deal with the corpos that would secure Brigitte and Neptune’s lives.

The man smiles at him and of all things, the smile almost seems… nostalgic.

“Funny, you almost sound cowed. Almost. I guess this is how you act when you’re on the backfoot and think you aren’t just dealing with a bunch of ‘ranyons’ eh?”

‘Ranyon’ was Haitian for floor rag, otherwise known as a disposable mercenary, that the Voodoo Boys could care less about the continued health of. Placide’s eyes narrow at the man’s use of it. That almost sounded personal.

“I thought this would be more amusing; truth be told. But seeing you just makes me angry more than anything.”

The sudden shift catches Placide completely off guard. One moment the gun pointed at his head is rather loosely hold, almost like a casual threat of death. And the next, the threat of death is no longer remotely casual. Placide’s eyes widen in the half a second as the trigger is pulled.

“Wai-!”

BLAM!

And then the Voodoo Boy knows no more.

-x-X-x-

V watches as Placide falls back, a smoking hole in his forehead. Honestly, he should have known better than to try and play with his food. But Placide and indeed this entire chapter of the Voodoo Boys in general… he disliked them greatly. They’d fucked with him, they’d fucked with Evelyn, and ultimately, he’d wound up slaughtering them all in the previous timeline for their crimes.

This time around, they’d only fucked with Evelyn, but that was still more than enough to earn V’s ire. Especially when their ultimate goal was Alt and he had a fragment of her secured in his head. Speaking of which…

“All good on the home front, Alt?”

Flickering into view, the blonde smirks.

“We’re fine, V. So far so good… our NetWatch Agent over in the Grand Imperial Mall has no idea anything is happening over here just yet.”

V nods at that, before glancing to the other two women in the room. Lucy seems completely unbothered by it all. She’s just as ready to kill Brigitte and Neptune as she was before Placide showed up in fact. No honor slash love among Netrunners, V supposed. Rebecca though, she hesitates for a moment, looking uncertain even now.

She’d been having fun earlier. Slaughtering their way through the Voodoo Boys had been a transformative experience for the shotgun toting gremlin. But now… she seemed unsure of herself once more. V catches her eyes and then nods to the cleaver Placide had dropped onto the floor.

“He was going to dismember you both with that, you know. Or at least try anyways. He likely would have gone for you first Rebecca, and he would not have been expecting a reinforced Gemini Frame I imagine. Still… he wasn’t a good man. And neither are they.”

Stomping forward, V comes to a stop over Brigitte and Neptune’s ‘sleeping’ forms. The two Netrunners are completely unresponsive because they’re both trapped in Agent Bryce Mosley’s black ICE on the Net. They’re helpless like this. He understands where Rebecca’s recalcitrance is coming from, really.

Looking over at her, V considers his options for a moment. In the end, he flicks over a recording he’d taken a while back… of a situation in a certain club called Clouds that he and Judy had just managed to subvert.

Rebecca’s Gemini eyes glow blue as she watches the recording back, growing stiffer by the second. When she’s finally done, she looks at him with a look of ‘why would you show me that?’.

“What you just saw, Rebecca… was caused directly by the two Netrunners you see in front of you. They sent a virus through the Net to try and kill that woman, Evelyn Parker, solely because she was a loose end. Not because she’d acted against them… quite the opposite. She was a disposable tool of theirs, a ‘ranyon’ that they considered themselves done with. So they tried to clean her up, tried to do away with her. We stopped them, but Lucy is right… Netrunners only look helpless. They’re never truly helpless.”

Only a half-lie. Right now, Maman Brigitte and Ti Neptune were basically as helpless as you got. Locked down in black ICE from NetWatch, and undefended in the real world with all of their Voodoo Boys slaughtered and dead.

Still, it does the trick. Rebecca’s concerns slowly melt away in the face of that recording, and her jaw clenches as she gives him a nod. V smiles and nods back… before lifting his gun.

BLAM! BLAM!

Just like that, there are bullet holes in both of the unresponsive Netrunner’s foreheads. They aren’t coming back to their bodies… not ever. Of course, they were still Netrunners. There was a slim chance that they might survive on the Net in spite of their corporeal deaths.

That led to the next decision V had to make, one him and Alt had been considering between each other since before even launching this attack. Destroying the Voodoo Boys’ Data Fortress and wiping it of all relevant information regarding Evelyn was obviously a priority. Cleansing what scraps of Brigitte and Neptune still existed on the Net would also be nice, but it might mean alerting NetWatch to their presence.

The question was, how did they want to approach that? Did they let Agent Mosley know a truncated version of the truth? Or did they leave him guessing completely?

[ ] Leave the NetWatch Agent guessing what happened here - 39%

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