Welcome to Hell (Pilot)

You were a normal to small sized lady, probably 5’-5”, very long legged and had two giant side tails of jet black hair tied up by ribbons.

In the old times, you would have been wearing a cute tight fitting corset like dress with frills, ribbons and all sorts of accents with elbow gloves and thigh high boots.

Normally of course, your hair would be in side tails flopping all about, but you had tucked them into the bland and generic corporate logo’d hoodie you were wearing to appear both inconspicuous and give less of a handhold to possible opponents. The center pocket of the hoodie weighed heavy with the weight of a fully loaded Glock 19 and a knife, you hated guns but it was a necessary evil in the face of what happens these days. A stranger came up to you, asked for some product and you soon sent him off, your cash strapped wallet a little heavier. You were waiting for customers in the outdoor bustle of a street corner outside of a typical convenience store, smoking a Nepboro Rouge.

It was a terrible habit, you really should quit but the recent stress had made it very difficult to even get the effort up to try.

=============================================================================

Here is part of your story and how everything went wrong. A story, that to be honest and utterly depressing and worst of all, is not all that long.

CyberConnect2, or CC to be short, was a great friend of yours, an energetic girl as quick on her feet as the tongue. When the depression hit, she was one of your first dealers. The depression that struck Gamindustri was so bad that to describe events was easier than to put into words the despair inducing conditions. Planeptune had not had a newly minted CPU in 17 years, almost to the month. Your nation, Lastation as well as local Leanbox had awful corporate decisions in a changing market and a significant lack of Makers willing or able to work on your recent CPU Candidates’ games, Leanbox was so severely shaken by their singular attempt at advancement that they nearly dropped out of consoles entirely, opting for a “modular console” which in reality was just a gimped PC.

The dread of the bunch though, was Lowee. They were stuck with Mascots whose power very rarely worked in this new era and an increasingly sick main CPU who could not regain Shares to even save her own life, falling prey to increasingly common hardware “updates” just to retain an ever shrinking market. Her Candidates were even more subject to hardware updates and had become fragmented in power, losing and gaining ability by the day in swings of Share Energy.

The few shards of power left vested in you few goddesses remaining was in small but vibrant and dedicated niche user groups who often emulated your consoles or scratched by on archaic models that were either no longer produced or repaired by handymen. Needless to say, this little faith kept you alive but made you no different from an average human besides lack of aging.

However, Gameindustri was no different from the real world in a few ways, and when people were laid off in mass and sent to the poverty house for scraps from an ever weakening government now down to essentially just their Corporate body after tossing you and your counterparts aside for failed new models, they turned to an improvised economy of sorts. The real cash, was what you pursued, in hopes of upgrading and returning to restore what was rightfully yours.

Drugs and Microtransactions ran your world, and the few people you knew still around were the best damn workers in the world at this stuff. Most of your favorites were really just expert drug cooks like Compa and IF, but the true microtransaction whores like Overkill pretty much never left the basement of your rundown group home. It would take a miracle and much more to save you all at this point but you decided it was worth a shot.

So CC had been out on the corner, trying to earn her keep when some fiends got paid off by some other gang to come get you. You were one of the last people to see her walk out the door that morning and was the first to see her pulled into an alleyway, stripped,raped and robbed of anything of value. This wasn’t a rare occurrence these days, you had heard of others that had similar done to them. The only words left on the set were “ORIGIN” in all caps, cut into her skin.

Something like this meant war.

“Nee-chan, I’m hungryyyy…” Uni complained.

You would get her some ramen or something after this job you said, Uni just had to get a few others together. The beat up Dodge minivan had 5 people in it including yourself, Uni, Nepgear, MAGES, and a nervous 5pb. No one here knew how to really use a besides Uni and IF was too valuable to bring to the frontlines. As much as you hated to think it, you CPUs were damn near disposable these days.

The van stopped and Uni got out, acting like some kind of tough girl asking these guys from the other side, Origin or whatever what side/allegiance they claimed. When they said just said the first syllable, the sliding door of the van dropped.

Three girls armed with a pistol grip pump action 12 gauge shotgun, fully automatic AKM and a stolen AR15 opened up, covering the three in fire after Uni had jumped out of the way, quickly brandishing a badly worn Colt .45.

Uni jumped in.

Tires screamed.

You turned and twisted the car through back alleys.

A right. Another right, then a left.

Sirens, horns, lights.

All of these in the…

MAGES and 5pb high-fived.

To think, you had just killed three people and now were laughing about it.

One lucky night and the war was on.