The light-rail line leading toward Corpo Plaza was wrapped in neon—neon that had already been chewed to pieces by the "current theft" sweeping most of Heywood.
The tubes spat sparks nonstop. The old lighting—uniform, coordinated, never exactly pretty—was now shattered and scattered, broken beyond recognition.
Instead, the sky had been claimed by something else, something even more uniform.
Shaped-charge rounds.
Warheads heated past 1500°C.
Their surfaces, superheated by electromagnetic coils, turned plasma-hot—over 3000°C—thin layers of ionized matter that bled off into the air, re-ionizing it and leaving faint blue traces.
But those blue trails were nothing compared to the metal itself—
Each slug burned a blinding orange-red. On a night like this, they looked like streetlamps.
Of course, they only looked like streetlamps to people running a Sandevistan.
Six shaped-charge cannons fired from interlaced skybridges, every shot aimed to land right where the steel flood had to pass.
And falling with those rounds came a brutal mix of rocket fire, grenades, and gunfire—
Plus eight modified Centaur rigs.
Word was NCPD's first procurement batch was thirty-six units. Their first armored team only had six in the pipeline, and even those needed a month of training before deployment.
These mercs rolled up with eight like it was pocket change.
It looked like rain.
Iron rain.
In the slowed world, the Sandevistan users reacted first, adjusting posture—but chrome quality decided what that meant in real time.
V was fastest, because her launch speed was already near the human limit.
She slipped through the iron rain, yanked on her webline, heart seeming to stop as she flowed upstream through the kill zone.
Pull after pull, burst after burst from the explosive micro-fan in her exo frame—she accelerated so hard she could barely keep her own line.
Explosions bloomed behind her.
V slammed into the skybridge level, shattered glass and frame, and watched a shaped-charge gunner lose his head in pure, stunned disbelief—
She even palmed a grenade off his shoulder like it was loose change.
Boom.
The blast that rolled across the street turned the Valentinos into a tangled wreck. The legendary Mackinaw staggered and bucked inside the shockwave—
But it was too fast, too heavy.
Centaur rigs dropped to the pavement in formation, drawing their car-cleaver swords. Their wheel-and-roller mods screamed as they surged forward—
Whoever broke out of the blast zone first got cut.
And the first thing out—
Was a sword.
A car-cleaver tethered by webline whipped through the air in an obscene arc and smashed straight through a Centaur rig that couldn't dodge in time, severing it at the waist.
The Mackinaw spun out of the smoke. Jackie's gear locked him to the truck as it rotated under blast-driven inertia—he was basically turning that blade by instinct.
Not a single lethal round hit the truck square.
It was disoriented, even rotating, but it kept moving forward anyway.
The first Centaur rig split in half. The blade's speed bled off and continued toward the second—only this operator was smarter, snapping their sword up and batting the incoming cleaver away.
But that defensive move cost them their chance to strike.
The ten-ton Mackinaw slammed into them.
Bang.
The operator roared and braced with their own body, eating the impact—like taking a sledgehammer to the chest. The Centaur's legs cracked the pavement and skidded back a half-step—
They could feel it.
They could stop the truck.
"I'LL—HOLD—IT—!"
Bang.
Jackie seized the opening and punched their head into scrap.
Then he yanked the big blade up and hurled it straight at the skybridge emplacement.
The sword buried itself—one shaped-charge cannon detonated on the spot.
First exchange, seconds long:
Two shaped-charge cannons dead.
Two Centaur rigs dead.
Stunned silence hit the ambush crews—gunners and shooters alike.
What the hell?
Weren't they the ones with the high ground?
The Centaur operators were stunned too, but they were already committed. These modified rigs could sprint and steer at speed, but hard braking?
Not really.
And the Mackinaw had "stopped," hadn't it?
A glowing hot car-cleaver came off a back mount. The operator raised the brutally plain slab-sword and charged.
But they weren't the only ones charging.
Bang—
Second Valentino truck.
Third.
Fourth.
They punched out of the blast zone under sustained fire.
And that's when fear hit, sharp and immediate, because on some of those trucks—
The Valentinos were already dead.
Night City had offered these off-world mercs a shot at a name.
They'd been happy.
They'd treasured the chance.
Then they watched this and felt their stomachs turn.
They came to get famous. To get paid. To carve a future.
Not to turn their bodies into performance art.
One Centaur rig suddenly stabbed its blade into the ground and tried to brake while looking back—colliding head-on with its own teammate.
Up on the skybridges, shooters started running.
Something was off.
Very off.
"What the hell are you DOING?!"
The operator who got hit was basically pissing themselves—
Someone had gone cyberpsycho.
Clang—clang—CRASH—
Steel-on-steel echoes detonated down the avenue. The street's shape changed in a heartbeat.
Ambush shooters fled. Centaur rigs slammed together and toppled. Their perfect advantage evaporated.
The mercs who were still in front didn't retreat. With those modded Cents and real operator skill, they kept carving through the junkyard flood, killing more bodies with smooth efficiency.
But they didn't feel like fearless heroes.
They felt like tragic clowns.
Why was it like this?
Even Jackie didn't fully get it.
Why were his Heywood brothers—usually cautious, usually sharp—suddenly this ready to die?
But he could feel something else moving through them.
Momentum.
"AAAH—!"
Jackie kicked the Centaur that had jammed the truck, swapped onto a bike, and surged forward.
He grabbed a dropped Centaur blade and charged at them with the same kind of mobility those rigs had been flaunting.
Perfect frontal engagement.
Perfect kill-lane selection.
Better gear.
The "correct" decisions.
And still the result was this.
V in the sky—webline, micro-thrusters, reinforced Achilles tendons, static-grip gloves—riding her Boiling Thunder in blurred leaps, hunting Eclipse full-body users who were trying to spider around the same vertical geometry.
Jackie on the street—his heavy gauntlets barking shots to clear distant threats while the red-hot battle-blade harvested anyone close, moving like a high-mobility IFV built for anti-infantry.
And the mercs—the would-be famous gangoons—were being chased into retreat.
The Mackinaw wasn't even fast.
It rolled forward steady through the steel flood, and from the side windows two mechanical arms extended—
Flipping the bird at the camera drones.
Somewhere in the dark, Muramasa—more precisely, its CPU and RAM—started running hot.
It couldn't understand it.
Why, with obvious objective advantage, were they fighting like this?
Why?
Why were these braindead meatheads getting scared into breaking when the enemy's weapons, gear, and manpower were visibly being ground down?
Its masterpiece.
Its design.
Its weapons.
None of them were achieving their intended effect.
It was—
It was furious.
Panicking.
It didn't get it.
It wanted to win.
[Masamune: We… we lost.]
[Muramasa: They lost! I didn't lose!]
[Muramasa: Start the workshop. I'm doing it myself!]
[Muramasa: If they're afraid, I'll make it so none of them can ever be afraid again!]
[Muramasa: Activate all transmission devices!]
[Masamune: But—]
[Zzzzt—]