Oh boy howdy, this is an interesting one. I don’t know muchabout cyberpunk, so I hope I’m doing it properly!
1) Argo’s a mechanical horse. Xena, tired of people betrayingher and wanting something that would catch people’s attention, created one thatwouldn’t. She literally put some of herself into the creation of Argo, mixingher blood with the oil, so Argo’s only loyal to her. Argo also requires a DNAscan in order for someone to ride her. She has an advanced AI built in,allowing her to think and react on her own, and never tires.
2) The world is ruled by The Council, which consists of the 13CEOs of the most powerful companies in the world. These are played by the gods-Zeus controls Lightning Corps, which literally controls the weather. Ares’company makes weapons, Aphrodite’s provides manufactured drugs that aresecretly given to people to mimic the effects of love so they’ll reproduce,Athena’s controls the company that puts out the most technological advances,etc. The only way to have a semi-decent life is to work for one of thesecompanies, and considering there’s only a couple million jobs within them, andthere’s billions of people, the companies actively keep most of the populationin horrible poverty. The Council is also functionally immortal, kept aliveby the most advanced technology out there. So they’re hundreds, almostthousands of years old.
3) One of the major issues within this world is that, becausethere’s so few resources available to the general public and The Council doesnothing to help, there’s a lot of raiding parties that go around and kill thecommunities that pop up in the underground for what they have. That’s whathappens with Xena- she was a street fighter at first, earning enough to helpkeep herself and her family fed by fighting in the arenas, but then a wanderinghoard found them. She and some others tried to fight, her brother was killed,and that’s what started her on her path. Only in this world, she’s less ofa “kill everyone just to see the world burn” kind of person and more arevolutionary. She wants to overthrow the government so that the people canrule themselves, so that those who work hard can be protected and fed, and thatthe only who will suffer are those who deserve to do so by bringing sufferingupon others.
4) This plays into her becoming the woman she is. She manages toget a job in Ares’ company, but she’s not there to work for him. She quicklyrises in the ranks, and ends up stealing the chakram- the most dangerous weaponever created. In fact, the plans for it were destroyed after only two werecreated, because it was deemed so dangerous. She managed to sync it to her ownbrainwaves, which is how she’s able to make it bounce around such impossiblepatterns. She steals it and leaves the company, finding herself the leader ofthe revolution.
5) Gabrielle is part of an experiment within Hera’s company. Herparents worked for Hera, and she was dedicated to the company when she waslittle. It’s been hundreds of years since the ‘nuclear family’ ideal washeld as true, and Hera’s trying to resurrect it, thinking that, if you cancontrol who gets married to/breeds with who, mainly for specific features (likewe breed dogs for certain features today), and then you take the children andraise them to be loyal to the companies, then it’ll be that much easier tocontrol the world. The population will be raised loving and fearing TheCouncil, and since more than enough children would be bred by the couples in hercompany, then they can just kill off everyone else in the world and gain thatmuch more control. Plus, without needed the common people to breed to keeppopulation levels steady, Aphrodite would be of no use, splitting power between12 instead of 13. So, Gabrielle is set to marry Perdacus after she completesthe final evaluations, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to marry himand spend her entire life popping out child after child. She wants to see theworld and find love and write and just be herself, but she sees no otherchoice. There’s no way out, and if she refuses to marry Perdacus and bear himchildren willingly, then she’ll just find herself fed Aphrodite’s drug to do soanyway. But then, one night, she finds that rebels have invaded the company,finds herself freed from the room she’s grown up in and never left, and findsherself in the arms of the rebellion leader, Xena. Gabrielle quickly joins Xena’sefforts to bring down The Council, and finds herself falling in love with hersavior and fast friend (and Xena falls in love with her too, but it’s one ofthose ‘if we live through this rebellion then we can be together but not before’kind of things.
So yeah! Cyberpunk Xena. Ihope you liked it! :D
