*Bang*
Allen's bullet pierced the head of a member of the Tiger Claws, leaving everyone stunned for a moment.
The gunfire stopped, but this wasn't because they had seen one of their comrades die—that happened every day—but because the guy who shot him came out of cover and started cursing them out.
Even in a city full of insane people, this kind of suicidal behavior was quite unusual.
The muzzle of the modified .45 pistol Allen had obtained in HOTD was still smoking slightly.
"..." Allen watched the man die as his thoughts remained focused on Lenalee's advice.
At first, he had only traveled between worlds out of curiosity. He had a system and the chance to become someone incredible. He was also an enthusiastic young man excited by the possibility of visiting worlds he had only ever seen through screens, so everything had started with curiosity and anticipation.
Not long after, however, the journey became filled with problems, danger, and necessity. He no longer traveled because he wanted to, but to gather fragments of destiny, a means of avoiding death at the hands of beings whose power was beyond his reach.
During that stage, Allen matured and realized the many effects his presence had on the different worlds. Maybe there were good things he had done, but that didn't justify his selfishness. He himself had always consciously accepted that fact.
Then Lucifer arrived. With him, entering those worlds became practically mandatory, and from the moment he did, the fate of each world changed forever.
Saying that he regretted it would also be a lie, because Allen had met many irreplaceable people in those worlds. Nevertheless, he still knew that his existence had once again changed what was always supposed to happen, but even so, he had no other choice.
Not for now....
However, this time was different. Allen wasn't in Cyberpunk because of Lucifer. He didn't need fragments of destiny; there was no bet, no restrictions, nothing preventing him from shaping this world according to his will. There was nothing except himself.
But...
Allen didn't want to change this world, not when there was no need to. He had only come with Rebecca to pay his respects at her friends' graves; that was all. But out of nowhere, a group of cyborg gang members tried to kill him. There was no way he was simply going to let them shoot him!
Fortunately, the simplest solution came from Lenalee.
– When in Rome, do as the Romans do. –
If Allen was going to alter this world, he would do it according to its rules!
.....
"What the hell is wrong with you bastards?! You shot first, and now you're frozen in shock?! Fuck you!" Allen growled.
Gwen – Isn't Allen a little too pissed off?
Felicia – You'd be pissed too if someone tried to fill you with bullets for no reason, haha.
Wade – Bro, these guys are really violent. I mean, at least a hello and a coffee before trying to fill my holes with bullets wouldn't hurt.
MJ – WTF, that's disgusting!
Saya – This guy's ability to make any comment sound sexual or violent is incredible...
Wade – Thanks~
Saya – That wasn't a compliment!
Rick – I don't know! I don't care! Just shut up and let me watch the damn massacre! This is what I pay for internet for!
....
After being yelled at, the Tiger Claws were stunned. They thought Allen was crazy, or maybe he was a cyberpsycho?!
It was true that many idiots believed they were invincible just because they had some good chrome installed, but this guy clearly had nothing. How the hell could he start cursing out an entire group armed to the teeth and loaded with cybernetic implants?!
"Just kill the bastard!" someone shouted.
The bullets began raining down once again.
"Shit!"
Allen ducked back behind the dumpster for cover and looked at Rebecca, but she had buried her face in her knees and remained silent.
He didn't know this would affect her so much, but he didn't bother her. He decided to handle this alone.
[Hey, why are you hiding?]
Lenalee wasn't the only one confused by Allen's actions. The entire chat was just as confused. Aren't you the guy capable of turning the universe into a ping-pong ball? Why are you even hiding?!
"You were the one who told me to act like a Roman. Now what do you expect, Lenalee? Give me chrome!"
[...]
It was true that Lenalee had said that, but was it really necessary to take it this far?
[Wow, you're really a gamer. You're even playing on hardcore on your first try. Sigh. Fine...]
"Die, bastard!"
A gang member threw a grenade. It hit the wall and landed at Allen's feet.
"Fuck you!" Allen shouted as he grabbed it and threw it back.
The grenade exploded in midair, sending shrapnel flying and taking down three gang members. One of them died, another fell to the ground screaming with his optics damaged, and the third covered himself with his right arm, which was an Arm Gorilla-type implant, and withstood the shrapnel.
"What the hell is wrong with these people? How the fuck do they have grenades in the middle of a goddamn city?" Allen said in bewilderment.
Far from being frightened by seeing two more of their men go down, the gang members became even more savage, cursing and firing as if they had infinite ammunition.
Bullets struck the dumpster, the walls, and the ground, creating holes everywhere. Honestly, Allen was starting to get angry. He had come here just to pay his respects, so why the hell was he suddenly sitting in a filthy alley while a bunch of half-robot punk rejects were shooting at him?!
[Ready!]
"That was fast!" Allen exclaimed, but at that moment, his head began to hurt.
Before his eyes, the world became a moment that lasted an eternity.
Time—or rather, his perception of it—slowed down.
This didn't come from his physical senses, which were beyond human now, nor from any of the many different powers he had sealed away. It was something external, as if a supercomputer had taken responsibility for analyzing the world's information for him.
In terms of aesthetics, Allen's pupils gained a mechanical glow.
In terms of vision, he began seeing everything through a scanning interface.
Allen smiled and stood up. Bullets flew past his body, but none of them hit him.
When he turned toward the gang, his new optics displayed information: the names of his enemies, their implants, and, more importantly, the available options.
Allen smiled.
[Weapon Glitch]
The gun of the woman who had been firing while cursing suddenly stopped working. She thought the cheap piece of junk had malfunctioned, but an instant later it exploded, blowing off her hands. One of them was an implant, but the other was her real hand, so she fell to the ground screaming.
"Shit, he's a Netrunner! Everyone be careful!"
The remaining gang members tried to hide behind obstacles, but Allen scoffed.
[Synapse Burnout]
"Ahhh!"
A man with visor-type optical implants emerged from behind the wall, clutching his head, smoke pouring from it due to overheating. Everyone stared at him in horror before he collapsed to the ground.
"Synapse Burnout..." someone said fearfully. "That's high-level hacking. What the fuck?!"
A woman with a cybernetic jaw drew her katana. "Who cares if he's a Militech Netrunner? The guy's right in front of us. Just kill him!"
Netrunners were essentially hackers in a world where people had chips installed directly into their brains. It's easy to see how dangerous they were. Of course, directly killing someone as quickly as Allen had done was something not many Netrunners could accomplish, but the truly terrifying thing about Netrunners was that you would never see them on the battlefield.
Allen's presence made no sense at all!
It was like having a systems engineer hacking in the middle of a firefight!
Realizing this, everyone regained their fighting spirit.
"Fire!"
The woman with the katana lowered her center of gravity, her legs—equipped with acceleration implants—and her spine—also replaced to maximize close-quarters combat—tensing.
"Ah!"
The woman screamed before becoming a blur, while a rain of bullets accompanied her in Allen's direction.
"..." Allen was speechless. This crazy woman had ordered everyone to fire while she charged into melee with a sword. Wasn't she afraid of friendly fire?
And he was supposed to be the crazy one?!
Allen shook his head, raised his pistols, and fired.
The woman's eyes widened before Allen's bullets shattered her cybernetic legs. She fell to the ground and cursed.
Allen ignored her and looked at the remaining gang members. His optics marked the three remaining gang members.
[System Collapse]
When he activated the quickhack, all three collapsed to the ground at the same time.
"Impossible..." the woman said. "Total system collapse at the same time. Who the hell are you?!"
"I was just a goddamn passerby. You bastards forced me into this." Allen snorted before turning around.
The woman, her eyes bloodshot, grabbed a pistol and aimed it at Allen, but before she could pull the trigger, her brain melted down.
[You're welcome...]
Allen shrugged. He didn't like killing enemies who couldn't fight back, which was why he had considered letting the last one live, but she had wasted her chance.
"Thanks... technology always makes things easier..." Allen smiled as he admired the world through his eyes. It was like a video game. "By the way, Lenalee, what implants did you give me?"
Since Allen had decided to play by the rules of this world, it was only natural that his upgrades would be something obtainable within it.
"Yeah, of course."
The specifications of his implants appeared on Allen's interface.
Optics – The Oracle.
Use: Enhanced critical hits, zoom, and scanning.
Origin: Kiroshi Opticals.
Cost: €$40,000.
"...?" Allen raised an eyebrow but did not comment until he finished.
Operating System – Tetratronic Rippler Mk.4.
Use: Designed for advanced quickhack usage.
Origin: Tetratronic.
Cost: €$47,197.
"Hm?..."
Nervous System – Kerenzikov.
Use: Allows time to be slowed during certain maneuvers.
Origin: Kerenzikov.
Cost: €$35,000.
"Lenalee-san..."
[Yes, Allen-kun?~]
"Why does the cost appear next to every implant? What's the point of that?" Allen smiled, but inside, he felt a chill. He had a very bad feeling about this.
Allen could almost see Lenalee blinking innocently.
[Of course. Since you decided to take this to hardcore mode, I did the same. It would be unfair for your implants to just appear out of nowhere, so I took them from somewhere and charged them to your account...]
"What do you mean MY account?" Allen said, trembling.
[By the way, you're already registered in the system, so you're officially a citizen of this beautiful city. You don't have to thank me~]
"Thank you?!" Allen shouted. "Fuck that! Are you telling me I've been here for less than five minutes and not only did someone try to kill me, but now I owe more than a hundred thousand dollars?!"
[Nope, in this era they're called eurodollars, or eddies.]
"I don't give a damn what they're called. You know damn well I hate debts. They're my trauma!"
[Hey, you're the one who started this whole thing about wanting maximum realism in your experience in this world. Don't blame me!]
Allen gritted his teeth. It was true that he had been the first to say something like that, but the cost of these implants was ridiculous. They were just some damn optics and a couple of other things.
"Fifty K? What's so expensive about them?"
[Of course! The three implants are legendary. What did you think I was going to give you, scavenger trash?]
Allen thought about it for a moment and accepted the explanation. It was true that he wasn't going to replace his eyes with something pulled out of a corpse.
"By the way, what about my real eyes?"
[They're being stored so I can return them to you whenever you want.]
Allen nodded.
He had agreed to act like a Roman, but he wasn't actually going to mutilate himself. It wasn't worth losing his perfectly good eyes just to stuff cybernetic junk into himself. Of course, Allen could regenerate, restore, and practically recreate his body from absolute nothingness, but those were his original eyes—he wasn't going to just get rid of them as if they were nothing.
"Hahahaha!"
Rebecca could no longer contain her laughter and burst out laughing again, but this time the shadow from before had disappeared.
"Rebecca?"
"Hi, darling~" Rebecca jumped at Allen and clung to him like a koala before kissing him.
The warmth of Rebecca's lips had a slightly salty taste, which made Allen hug her tenderly. They remained like that for a minute before separating. She climbed down from Allen and walked among the corpses to pick up her shotgun.
"Thanks. I'm okay now." Rebecca smiled, placing her shotgun over her shoulder.
During her time with him, Rebecca had changed. Not because of her slight increase in size and attributes, nor because she now preferred to wear her hair loose, but because of the more mature, confident, and reliable look in her eyes.
She was grateful to Allen because he had been her refuge when she lost everything.
He was grateful to Rebecca for always being there for him.
They looked at each other in silence, yet exchanged a thousand words.
[Hey, sorry to interrupt your romantic moment in the middle of several dead cyber-gang members, but what about the police?]
"Shit, we have to go!" Allen exclaimed.
Rebecca shrugged mockingly. "Come on, baby. We'll be lucky if they get here before dinner."
Allen blinked and realized that after such a commotion, not a single police officer had shown up.
"What the fuck?" Allen said in frustration. He had been worried for nothing.
This was Cyberpunk. This was Night City!
The police here preferred to deliberately wait things out in situations like this. Why? Because picking up corpses was easier than getting involved in firefights.
"Doesn't matter," Allen said, looking toward one of the Tiger Claws' motorcycles.
[Yaiba Kusanagi CT3-H — Modified]
Allen and Rebecca exchanged knowing looks.
....
Sirens sounded behind Allen as he drove the Kusanagi through the traffic, weaving around every vehicle he saw as he left Watson.
"Take the avenue! We need to get to Westbrook!" Rebecca shouted while firing at the NCPD.
"Hey, is it okay to shoot at them?" Allen asked. Fighting gangs was one thing, but the police?!
"Of course not!" Rebecca laughed as she grabbed a grenade and threw it.
The grenade hit the ground and exploded just as a patrol car drove over it, sending the vehicle flying before it landed on another parked car.
"But if we don't lose them quickly, we'll have MaxTac on our asses, hahaha!"
Allen remembered that elite unit called MaxTac, a bunch of bastards equipped with military-grade cyberware capable of suppressing most cyberpsychos.
Even V, the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077, couldn't face them unless they had finished the game and reached maximum power, and even then, taking down just one of them was extremely difficult. They were incredibly strong.
"Shit..." Allen paled, not because he was afraid of those guys, but because if he encountered them, he'd have to resort to more implants, which would be very expensive and leave him even deeper in debt.
The Kusanagi accelerated even further, leaving the NCPD behind, but it wasn't enough, so he hacked the traffic lights.
This nearly caused tremendous chaos, but it stopped the police vehicles and allowed him to escape.
"Whoa, good thinking!~" Rebecca shouted as she pressed her cheek against his, without fear of making him lose control and crash.
"Hey, couldn't you do that yourself?" Allen grumbled.
This girl was experimenting with YoRHa technology that was centuries ahead of Cyberpunk's technology, yet she was pretending to be nothing more than the same shotgun-loving Rebecca from the beginning.
"I'm not going to..." Rebecca smiled as she leaned against Allen's back.
He said nothing and kept driving. Twenty minutes later, they reached their destination.
– North Oak Columbarium (Westbrook)
When they got off, people watched them, since Westbrook was a more affluent district, basically the place where the rich lived. However, Allen ignored them, parked the motorcycle, and looked toward the entrance.
It wasn't a building. The entrance was an arch made of thick columns, followed by several more arches.
Rebecca, with her hands in her pockets, walked toward the stairs, and Allen followed her.
"When you die, there are no graves, only a holographic name engraved on a wall. That's all the proof that you ever lived. Of course, someone has to be there to do the remembering, because only the living can remember the dead..." Rebecca smiled faintly.
"I see. It's a little sad," Allen said.
"No. It's just reality. In Night City, there are no happy endings..."
Those words resonated with Allen. He knew Rebecca couldn't forget everything she had experienced in her world, but he hadn't expected it to still be so present.
"..." Allen remained silent as he watched the solitary figure walk away and clenched his fist.
[Hey, don't do it...]
'Do what?'
[Don't play dumb. I know what you're thinking! You want to reset the world, don't you?!]
"..." Allen smiled faintly, but the smile never reached his eyes.
====
A/N: 👀
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