Chapter Text
Cherri stopped outside the city to take one last breath of desert air. 239. He’d fired 239 shots and killed 239 BLI motherfuckers. BLI wouldn’t stop him, not even when he got to the soulless center of their headquarters and tore whatever kept the city running out with his bare fucking hands… well. Hand, now. He’d lost it between 3 and 2. It didn’t even hurt, really. Not really. He could do this. Easy. Get in. Kill as many of them as he fucking could. Get out (optional). D had called this little revenge mission of his suicide, and y’know what? Maybe it was, and maybe Cherri was okay with that. He couldn’t die. The Witch wouldn’t let him. How bad could it be?
Cherri quickly found that it could be worse. So… much worse. He was pinned, there were just too many of them, he was a perfect shot but he was down to one arm and he’d only ever had one gun to begin with. And the dracs didn’t… shoot him. Cherri waited for the gun to the back of the head, for the bright flash of death, for the Witch to scold him. To tell him he was acting irrationally, to tell him he had a job to do. But there was no gun and no death and no Phoenix Witch. No. Not for Agent Cherri Cola.
Instead, his gun was taken, then his mask, then his jacket. Everything that made Cherri Cherri was stripped off. He was held down while they bleached his fucking hair and he watched the blue he loved run down the drain, replaced by awful blonde. Going, going, gone. He was too angry to cry. Too angry to think about the killjoys out in the desert, the worried once who hadn’t heard from him in… how long? There were clocks, white against white walls and bright white flourescent lights, clocks reading 9. AM? PM? How many days had it been? Had it been days yet? Cherri was dressed in white, scratchy clothing. It had been bleached, like his hair. His eyes hurt. Had he slept? Eaten? Drank? He prayed for the Witch to save him, but she probably couldn’t reach him here. Not among these… pretenders masked as people.
At some point he was taken down a white hallway identical to every other white hallway and put in a white room identical to every other white room. There was a bright flash, but not of death. No, it was… it was… it…
Clarity. He had found clarity. Battery City was a good place, a clean place, full of good, clean people who did their jobs. He needed a job, and a name, he was told.
Thus, Gary Levko was born. And he was so… so… happy. Gary Levko smiled, because he was happy.