New Manhattan was the first time myself, Rosalie, and Rosalind hooked up after the Shang brought Yosemite Station down on us. We’d helped stop the bombardments, but there was still all kinds of damage all over. We helped in the cleanup, and we worked together to deal with some individuals who wanted to profit from the whole affair through less-than-legal means. It got a bit complicated, but we rolled the bad guys real good. Just like always. Those girls were amazing. I offered them a spot in the Cowboys right then and there. I wanted them on my team again real bad. They didn’t say yes, but they also didn’t say no. You could say they left me wanting more, but they promised to think about it. And they always followed through on a promise like that.
Rosalie and Rosalind were truly identical twins, like they split one soul between two bodies. They never made a choice they didn’t both intend to pursue with all their hearts. And they always did it together. Whatever you did with one, you did with both. It’s how they worked. Not that they were interchangeable, you understand. Anyone who made the mistake of treating them like that got shown through the door real quick let me tell you. But they were always a matched set, starting and finishing sentences for each other, and all kinds of jazz like that. The whole, life, death, and cyber thing did not change any of that a lick. As I found out when we hooked up on New Manhattan.
You need to understand that Rosalie and Rosalind really were identical twins. Some twins work hard to be different, to be individuals. Create different hairstyles. Study different subjects. Those two girls did not. Oh, Rosalind was a blue jean and t-shirt girl, while Rosalie went for pinks and blacks, but that was more for defensive coloration. I can’t tell you how many times one dressed up as the other to do something the other was supposed to do. Seriously. Can’t tell you. Even I had trouble telling them apart when they decided to get tricksie like that. And sometimes they went all black just to really confuse people. That’s how the name Rosa happened. It was short, at least one of them always answered to it, and when I had one, I had them both.
Rosalie looked me dead in the eyes when I hugged her and told me that Rosalind was her sister. It was easy for me to recognize the signs. She meant it. She HAD to mean it. If she ever questioned it, she wasn’t certain how she could handle it. And if I questioned it, she might question it too. So I looked at Rosalind and saw the person who chose to be born so she could save one of my best friends in all the worlds from just fading away. I’d be an awful poor friend if I failed to recognize that. Act on that. So I apologized to Rosalind, opened an arm to invite her into the hug, and told her to never let me hug just one of them ever again. She smiled and hugged me back.
We Cowboys had been scattered all over the Core Worlds after the New Washington Winter Contingency, trying to stop more Shang bombardments from wiping us out. I came into the New New York system on the German cruiser Dresden in time to help defend that system. Myself, Rosalie, and Rosalind absolutely did not fight together, but we hooked up on New Manhattan after the Shang tucked their tails and ran. I started the whole affair by hugging Rosalie. Rosalind was dead and I wasn’t certain how to handle the cyber standing in her place, doncha know. Those two girls did not have an ounce of uncertainty though, and they put me in my place real quick. They were always good at that, and I loved them for it.