HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Ever since his death, Richard Nixon's crystallised heart had remained in the possession of the CIA – until tonight. The full strength of the Demonic Neutralization Coalition smashed into the CIA convoy: hulking armoured veetolls blocked the neon skyway ahead, while military and civilian cabs alike crashed in from all angles.

Bootsy flicked her electric blue hair out of her eyes, gritted her teeth, and joined the fray, slamming her Charger up alongside a sleek black sedan. Before they could even trade paint, the sinister mirrored windows burst outwards in a hail of bullets, but the car was already empty. Going toe to toe with the suits was suicide, and the objective was elsewhere – she landed with a roll on the roof of the transport at the centre of the convoy, and cut her way through. Rain and bullets pelted the hull around her as she hurled herself into the belly of the beast.

Bootsy was outfitted with what had, until recently, been state-of-the-art military biointegrated hardware. Unfortunately, as it transpired, time wasn't linear, or even cyclical – it was just fucked, and her shining silver cyberpunk future had been flushed back into the avocado toilet of the 70s. Her wrist laser was already overheated from melting the roof, but she had just enough juice left to blind the guards and disrupt the heart's containment field. She snatched it from stasis with her intact hand, blew out the rear door with her dangerously unstable one, and leapt out.

The heart. She wanted so badly to crush it, if only it wouldn't blow up the planet. The colour of a blood clot, it seemed to throb in her hand the way a solid ruby absolutely shouldn't – dook dook dook, like an upturned bottle of whiskey.

When Nixon performed the Hellgate ritual to summon the immortal horde of dread Tha'tan, he hadn't considered that said ritual might not be intended for a human host. The unstoppable demonic army he expected to birth were entombed by a mystical gravimetric seal – as the aperture dilated, they passed through a sort of event horizon. In real time they spent a century gestating, but inside the heart, the seventies lasted aeons; The eighties, centuries; The nineties, a mere week; and the new millenium passed by in the blink of an eye. The chronopsychic shockwave when the first wave of demons breached was so intense, disco spontaneously came back.

The cab she was aiming for was veering erratically, presumably in an attempt to avoid the debris raining from above. Bootsy pinwheeled off of it awkwardly in a last-minute adjustment and landed hard on a starwagon in a lower lane, crushing the passenger side and popping the wooden panelling clean off. The startled driver slammed the airbrakes, and Bootsy pulled her gun-hand back together just in time to catch the front bumper. CIA lead punched holes in the engine, and the wagon lurched once, twice, then dropped like a stone into the neon canyon.

Bootsy wasn't one for causes – ex-PMC types like herself rarely were – and in many cases she could even respect a total bastard provided they were upfront about it. In this case, the villains were a spy organisation now staffed entirely by the wretched demonic spawn of Richard Nixon. As far as Bootsy was concerned, anyone who wore a suit was shady as all shit by default, and this is why she experienced no hesitation whatsoever when she ran the length of the falling cab, leapt up to the nosediving pursuit vehicle, punched through the driver's side window, and yanked the flightwheel sideways. She rode the spinning cab downwards through what, between the endless neon signs and the reflections of the rainslick streets, appeared very much like the end of Space 2001, at least until they crashed through a wall, and into a sea of flares, hoop earrings and big hair. Bootsy lost a couple dermal plates and skinned a knee as she skidded to a halt, sparks trailing as her cyberhand (vanes splayed, still cooling) clawed the dancefloor.
Black vehicles swarmed outside. Through the hole in the wall she could see her brothers and sisters in the DNC trying to reach her, only to be blown out of the sky. Suits began to pour in from everywhere.

All she could smell was smoke – not from the flaming wreck she rode in on, but cigarette smoke, the smell of the 70s. Once there'd been a whole world out there she'd wanted to see. Now there was just this. Bootsy was struck by the awful realisation she was going to die beneath a mirrorball.

She pressed her wrist laser to the heart and closed her eyes. Better an inferno than a disco, she thought.

Burn, baby, burn.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

Ever since his death, Richard Nixon's crystallised heart had remained in the possession of the CIA – until tonight. The full strength of the Demonic Neutralization Coalition smashed into the CIA convoy: hulking armoured veetolls blocked the neon skyway ahead, while military and civilian cabs alike crashed in from all angles.

Bootsy flicked her electric blue hair out of her eyes, gritted her teeth, and joined the fray, slamming her Charger up alongside a sleek black sedan. Before they could even trade paint, the sinister mirrored windows burst outwards in a hail of bullets, but the car was already empty. Going toe to toe with the suits was suicide, and the objective was elsewhere – she landed with a roll on the roof of the transport at the centre of the convoy, and cut her way through. Rain and bullets pelted the hull around her as she hurled herself into the belly of the beast.

Bootsy was outfitted with what had, until recently, been state-of-the-art military biointegrated hardware. Unfortunately, as it transpired, time wasn't linear, or even cyclical – it was just fucked, and her shining silver cyberpunk future had been flushed back into the avocado toilet of the 70s. Her wrist laser was already overheated from melting the roof, but she had just enough juice left to blind the guards and disrupt the heart's containment field. She snatched it from stasis with her intact hand, blew out the rear door with her dangerously unstable one, and leapt out.

The heart. She wanted so badly to crush it, if only it wouldn't blow up the planet. The colour of a blood clot, it seemed to throb in her hand the way a solid ruby absolutely shouldn't – dook dook dook, like an upturned bottle of whiskey.

When Nixon performed the Hellgate ritual to summon the immortal horde of dread Tha'tan, he hadn't considered that said ritual might not be intended for a human host. The unstoppable demonic army he expected to birth were entombed by a mystical gravimetric seal – as the aperture dilated, they passed through a sort of event horizon. In real time they spent a century gestating, but inside the heart, the seventies lasted aeons; The eighties, centuries; The nineties, a mere week; and the new millenium passed by in the blink of an eye. The chronopsychic shockwave when the first wave of demons breached was so intense, disco spontaneously came back.

The cab she was aiming for was veering erratically, presumably in an attempt to avoid the debris raining from above. Bootsy pinwheeled off of it awkwardly in a last-minute adjustment and landed hard on a starwagon in a lower lane, crushing the passenger side and popping the wooden panelling clean off. The startled driver slammed the airbrakes, and Bootsy pulled her gun-hand back together just in time to catch the front bumper. CIA lead punched holes in the engine, and the wagon lurched once, twice, then dropped like a stone into the neon canyon.

Bootsy wasn't one for causes – ex-PMC types like herself rarely were – and in many cases she could even respect a total bastard provided they were upfront about it. In this case, the villains were a spy organisation now staffed entirely by the wretched demonic spawn of Richard Nixon. As far as Bootsy was concerned, anyone who wore a suit was shady as all shit by default, and this is why she experienced no hesitation whatsoever when she ran the length of the falling cab, leapt up to the nosediving pursuit vehicle, punched through the driver's side window, and yanked the flightwheel sideways. She rode the spinning cab downwards through what, between the endless neon signs and the reflections of the rainslick streets, appeared very much like the end of Space 2001, at least until they crashed through a wall, and into a sea of flares, hoop earrings and big hair. Bootsy lost a couple dermal plates and skinned a knee as she skidded to a halt, sparks trailing as her cyberhand (vanes splayed, still cooling) clawed the dancefloor.
Black vehicles swarmed outside. Through the hole in the wall she could see her brothers and sisters in the DNC trying to reach her, only to be blown out of the sky. Suits began to pour in from everywhere.

All she could smell was smoke – not from the flaming wreck she rode in on, but cigarette smoke, the smell of the 70s. Once there'd been a whole world out there she'd wanted to see. Now there was just this. Bootsy was struck by the awful realisation she was going to die beneath a mirrorball.

She pressed her wrist laser to the heart and closed her eyes. Better an inferno than a disco, she thought.

Burn, baby, burn.