The bombardment hit — and at the same instant, the entire street went dark.
Each body had been rigged with a charge equivalent to five hundred kilos of TNT. The aerial blasts rocked the Mackinaw violently. Inside, the trio could see nothing but cascading fire through their visual feeds.
Even Leo hadn't anticipated suicide bombers on this scale.
Glass and metal shards tore through the flames. From the shadows, a mercenary roared as he slammed down a control lever.
"Activate the pulse gun!"
Thoom!
Half of Haywood's lighting grid died instantly.
As the explosions bloomed, the hidden high-frequency intrusion rigs that the Brainiac gang had seeded across the district all came online, siphoning power from both wired and wireless sources, feeding it into electromagnetic pulse emitters concealed in buildings, on sidewalks, even buried beneath the asphalt.
Calling it a "gun" was generous.
It was a system — an array. Microwave waveguides, coils, directional antennas — deployed from multiple angles, locking onto the oversized armored truck.
A city-grade weapon. A mid-range directional EMP platform. "Gun" was just a convenient label.
Capacitors finished charging.
A shrill detonation cracked the air.
Coils glowed red. Blue-white arcs bled into the ionized atmosphere. Massive cooling arrays roared to life.
Electromagnetic waves distorted the air itself. Even the flames from the body bombs warped along the pulse path.
Hidden mercs stared through enhanced optics at the Legendary Mackinaw, which had barely flinched from the TNT blasts.
That level of explosive force could qualify as air-dropped ordnance.
And the truck was still intact.
If they couldn't cripple its armor system, what the hell were they doing here?
Muramasa did not disappoint them.
The Legend slowed.
Armor plates shifted subtly — no longer perfectly aligned.
Gaps.
Gaps meant weakness.
Weakness meant opportunity.
"Got it! Move!"
Vehicles hidden in alleys dropped electronic camo and surged toward the slowing Mackinaw.
But they weren't the only ones waiting.
Valentinos were closing in too.
Drones fell like rain — destroyed, replaced, destroyed again.
Media crews had rented apartments overlooking the fight. Cameramen scrambled to swap backup rigs, watching their flanks in case rival crews tried to jack their vantage point.
"The Legend vehicle's armor appears destabilized!"
"Midnight Sudden Death!"
After a brief blackout, the broadcast came roaring back online. Stanley's voice cut through the chaos.
"Witness them! Witness these brain-dead performance artists strapping bombs to their chests!"
"The armor is breaking!"
"Valentinos is entering the melee! Let's see if these no-name mercs, these street punks of Haywood — or the Mackinaw — can carve a path through the carnage!"
[WARNING]
"Electromagnetic lock integrity collapsing!"
Inside the truck, Jackie and V finally understood why Leo had insisted on the absurdly powerful internal audio system.
Without it, they wouldn't hear anything.
Leo's gut twisted.
The suicide strike was unexpected.
The system degradation was worse.
The electromagnetic lock system was failing rapidly — and not because of the explosives.
That much TNT still shouldn't have matched the hammer strike.
Leo's neural link to Big Mac flared violently — then severed.
The port spat sparks.
Circuit overload.
EMP signature.
"Faraday cage structure compromised. EMP—"
Fzzzt!
Interior lighting died.
Dash systems blacked out.
The electro-control platform took a catastrophic hit.
Leo grabbed his smoking neural jack, the smell of scorched insulation rising from his scalp.
All five of his limbs — two organic, three mechanical — tore open the lower paneling and dove into emergency restart procedures.
He'd planned for EMP.
High-current sections were protected by transient voltage suppressors, isolating destructive surges. Low-current circuits were filtered. Core systems — Big Mac's main server cluster and CPU core — were mechanically sealed inside a hardened Faraday cage.
Leo had to manually disengage that safety layer, switch to auxiliary power, and reconnect viable subsystems.
But would they get the time?
Boom!
A blast cratered the street.
The Mackinaw clawed its way out of the hole, bouncing once.
And beneath that explosion—
[Little Octopus: Boss! Ambush!]
Leo roared while splicing circuits.
"Override safety locks! Pursuit mode!"
With the electromagnetic lock system down, the modular Chronititan plates defaulted to mechanical locks — fixed armor, no micro-adjustment.
Jackie and V knew the drill.
In a street fight, a turtle gets flipped.
V popped her side first.
Jackie's side jammed.
He punched the lock.
Mechanical latch shattered.
He looked up — four bikes already encircling them, tech rifles up.
He ripped off two armor plates and shielded his head.
"V!"
"On it!"
She ducked back inside.
Rounds slammed into the armor.
Without electromagnetic deflection, the Chronititan dented under impact.
But the celebration was short-lived.
Jackie ripped the detached Hammer-30 cannon barrel free and hurled it like a javelin.
One rider swerved and the barrel smashed asphalt instead.
Another wasn't so lucky.
A single shot from Jackie's thermal knuckles erased his skull.
"Got one!"
"Big Mac online!"
Leo whooped.
Big Mac's external speakers blasted at full volume.
One biker flinched like he'd taken a sonic grenade.
The Mackinaw's wheels micro-adjusted.
The truck side-slid at high speed and crushed one bike under its flank.
A mantis blade flashed from a seam and severed Rider C's spine.
On Leo's side, Rider D closed in and slapped a bomb onto the armor—
An octo-arm burst from beneath the chassis and yanked him off the saddle.
"Gah!"
The bike flipped.
Rider D tangled in the wreckage and cartwheeled into Rider A.
Jackie put a round through the tumbling bike.
Boom.
Two more gone.
"Legend weakens, but still rules!" Stanley shouted.
"They're compromised — but these street rats aren't getting stronger!"
"Wait — anti-tank launcher!"
Another Anvil-2 missile screamed down the avenue, targeting the Mackinaw's exposed rear bay.
Defensive micro-bombs detonated midair, prematurely triggering the forward charge.
But without a full armor matrix—
The missile kept coming.
"Jackie!"