Once Riku confirmed the person in front of him was the Street V, he roughly pieced together the current timeline.
"By the way, it's October 2074. This yabai year is finally almost over," Pepe said, finally catching up and giving Riku the time.
Riku nodded, but inwardly, he was rolling his eyes so hard they nearly hit the ceiling. Talk about a late response, dude! Still, the date lined up with his guess—maybe a bit later than he'd thought. Based on his calculations, it was at least six months before 2075. Street V had spent two years in Atlanta before coming back, then teamed up with Jack Wells for about half a year before hitting the main storyline in January 2077. Working backward, V's trip to Atlanta as a "trainee" started about two and a half years earlier. So, V's "two years" wasn't exact to the day—she was just about to head to Atlanta now.
"Why Atlanta?" Riku asked, curiosity piqued. He remembered V didn't exactly shine there, slinking back to Night City with her tail between her legs.
"To chase opportunities, obviously! Gotta strike out and make it big while I'm young," V replied with a grin, her confidence unshaken, like a shounen hero ready to take on the world. She was a classic Heywood street kid, dreaming of becoming a legend, just like every other punk in Night City. Their motto? Better to burn out in a blaze of glory than live a lame life—like Johnny Silverhand, the ultimate rockstar rebel from Cyberpunk 2077. Of course, step one was living the high life with fame and okane (money), which meant pulling off a big score.
"Atlanta… it's tightly controlled by New America. All I know about it is that it's got a massive landfill—forty-plus square kilometers of toxic waste and biohazard junk," Riku said, recalling a news snippet from the game about Atlanta's landfill catching fire and burning for two weeks straight. A city of 350 square kilometers with a ninth of it being a toxic dump? No wonder it took forever to burn out—it'd probably take two months!
"Huh? For real?" V said, scratching her nose awkwardly. She clearly hadn't heard about that.
"You don't know anything about Atlanta?" Riku asked, stunned. Was she seriously about to head there without a clue? Talk about V no baka (V's recklessness)! No wonder she was the legendary V—her heart was as big as a mecha cockpit!
"You really don't know anything?" Pepe chimed in, just as confused. He'd assumed V had some hot lead for making bank in Atlanta. Why else go that far? There were plenty of closer cities to try her luck—San Francisco, Los Angeles, or even Sacramento, the capital of Northern California. Any of those would be better than Atlanta, and they weren't halfway across the country.
"Don't look at me like that!" V snapped, annoyed by their weird stares. "You know we're in the Pacifica Zone, and Atlanta's in the Rust Belt. Info about that place is hard to come by!"
She had a point. The Pacifica Zone covered the West Coast and most of the Pacific Basin, while the Rust Belt spanned the central and eastern U.S. Each network zone was ruled and monitored by corporations and governments, with smaller sub-zones under their own local bosses. Information between zones was locked down tight, like a digital dystopia straight out of Ghost in the Shell. People's knowledge of the outside world came solely from whatever news the powers-that-be allowed.
This whole fractured network mess? Blame Rache Bartmoss, the netrunner who thought he'd free humanity by smashing the internet with his "RABIDS" virus. Sure, his heart was in the right place, like a rebellious hacker hero fighting the system. But his execution? Totally irresponsible. The net was like a mirror reflecting humanity's thoughts and dreams. Corporations used it to control everything. Bartmoss thought shattering the mirror would stop them, but all it did was create thousands of smaller mirrors, each controlled by a company, government, or gang, ruling their own little digital fiefdoms with iron fists.
"That makes sense, but now that you know a bit, you still wanna go?" Riku asked. No wonder V flopped in Atlanta. Showing up blind as an outsider? If she made it back to Night City alive without getting chewed up, that was already sugoi (impressive).
"I'll think about it. Someone told me Atlanta's full of opportunities, but now I'm gonna have to grill them," V said, scratching her head with a scowl, letting out a frustrated "Kuso!" (Damn it!) Riku's info wasn't much, but a city with a ninth of its land as a toxic waste dump didn't exactly scream "promised land."
"Maybe reconsider. You might find that no matter how rough Night City is, it's where you belong. It's got your memories, your life," Riku said, his words carrying the weight of a heartfelt shounen speech.
V looked at him, surprised. "Damn, you're good with words," she said, genuinely impressed. She'd pegged these muscleheads with their crazy body mods as brain-dead bakayaro (idiots), but Riku was proving her wrong.
"Then why didn't you stay in your city?" Pepe asked out of nowhere, hitting Riku right in the feels. V's curiosity perked up too. After that deep speech, Riku must have a story—what made him leave his hometown?
"My city… I can't go back," Riku said, feeling a pang but brushing it off quickly. Honestly, he didn't have much tying him to his old life. He was a lone wolf—a classic tensai kokosei (genius loner) archetype.