[Scanner Info:]
[Name: Centaur Rig (Modified)]
[Description: NCPD purchased a batch of exoskeleton units from Militech. These units lean more toward a linear frame than true power armor, using chained multi-battery packs to feed a semi-plasma electromagnetic cannon that can normally melt through 150mm of homogeneous armor, and carrying a composite shield.]
[Bryce's Note: You know this thing better than I do. Militech seems to have a software upgrade package for this platform.]
[On-site Scan Comparison: Reduced weapon battery packs, armor reduced across the board, alloy pulleys added to biped legs, shield removed, suspected addition of high-lethality melee weapon.]
Bang—
Jackie wasn't as fast as a chromehead running a Sandevistan, but he was still elite by baseline-human standards.
When he saw the power armor being dragged behind that truck, he froze for half a beat—his body lagging behind his eyes—just long enough to watch the rig finish charging.
It looked way too familiar.
The silhouette, the barrel profile, the red-hot glow during charge-up…
It was basically a Centaur rig's semi-plasma cannon.
And now it clicked: that armored Mackinaw had blown up its pursuers with that cannon. The heat of the blast was still rolling through the intersection like a hot wind.
"—Board 'em!"
But Leo didn't freeze.
And Little Octopus definitely didn't.
Two AIs, synced through Leo's neural link, dumped and shared data in a blink and were already executing a counterplay.
A long octo-arm speared out through the window slot. Its tip had been swapped for Chronititan claws, ground sharp—three talons that locked in and, using the collision force, punched straight through the armored Mackinaw's front plating.
The driver and passenger watched those claws sink in and felt their souls leave their bodies.
They didn't have time to react—
The claws splayed open and dumped a fistful of grenades into the front row.
Pff!
The armor bulged like it had grown tumors.
The blast shock and flame wrecked the internal battery pack feeding the plasma cannon; biomech gore—shredded chrome and meat—got sucked into the motor group. The power lines surged, unstable current backflowing through the feed conduits and frying the cannon hard.
The truck belched black smoke.
The octo-arm recoiled from the blast, talons still jammed into the armor, straining—trying to connect and drag two vehicles with a combined mass north of fifteen tons—stretching to its absolute limit—
And then a different force made that anchor irrelevant.
Jackie loaded power, then vaulted onto the now-uncontrolled armored Mackinaw.
With the XS-1 combat exosuit and the Heat Knuckles, Jackie's total mass cleared four hundred kilos. The Legendary Mackinaw dipped as his weight transferred; the enemy truck's already-warped armor—grenade-blown and bent—tore loose in a sick rip.
Inside the cab, the two occupants had been opened up by the blast, skulls cracked enough that portions of brain were visible.
Before they could even twitch, Jackie planted a boot on the roof.
The deformed roof plate snapped downward and pressed their soft, exposed brains into paste.
Jackie wasn't as twitchy-fast as V—his movement was steadier, heavier, deliberate—because weight like this doesn't do finesse.
The armored Mackinaw, already bleeding speed, lost its last composure. As Jackie rode the roof, the wheels detonated—tires popping—four rims grinding and sliding, velocity collapsing fast.
Jackie, held to the roof by static-adhesion gloves, raised his left fist—one shot—and popped the power armor's weapon.
Caseless recoil and heat piled into the left gauntlet; the right elbow's micro-turbine thruster began preheating.
Every swing from the Heat Knuckles was lethal. A killing blow demanded reading the opponent's line, especially when this Centaur rig didn't match Jackie's old memory of it.
And in that microsecond, caution paid off.
The tether behind the Centaur rig snapped free from the armored Mackinaw, and the already-damaged plasma cannon detonated in a violent secondary blast.
Shattered barrel parts became fragmentation, like a shrapnel grenade.
And with less armor on key zones—and no big composite shield—this Centaur moved way faster than Jackie's mental model.
Freed from the truck, the rig's legs flared with thrust and it lunged hard for the side.
A lighter build, a more experienced operator.
While moving, the pilot used the recoil of the cannon's explosion to raise an arm and grab a handle-like latch on the back-mounted case.
Shiiing—
A blade came out.
One point six meters long, nearly thirty centimeters wide, glowing red-hot.
The draw was so fast it threw off sparks and heated graphene flakes like fireworks, dazzling and messy.
And Jackie's scanner tagged the blade's temperature at over 2000°C.
Heat Knuckles—Chronititan-faced—peaked at around 2200°C in combat spec. Past that threshold, even high-end metal starts losing strength.
Jackie's elbow thruster, preheated and waiting, fired instantly. He read the trajectory and kicked off the roof—
The thermal blade's flat side met his left fist.
That blade cut the armored Mackinaw like butter.
And Jackie—
His right fist rose high.
He suddenly wanted to say something that sounded badass.
"Total apocalypse!"
Crack—
It didn't look much brighter than usual, but after multiple firing cycles, the Heat Knuckles' forward assembly was already above 800°C. The punch landed on the Centaur's shoulder like a blacksmith's hammer, throwing a spray of sparks.
The rig's impact-distribution system tried to spread the force across the whole frame.
It didn't matter.
The punch was too violent.
The exo-frame at the strike point snapped and shattered, and even the operator's body inside buckled—collapsed downward as the structure failed.
Through the fractured helmet, the pilot's savage face glared at Jackie. His blade arm, as the wrist safety lock failed, was forcibly twisted back by servo motors at an impossible angle.
The rig overclocked.
Limbs ground themselves inside machinery.
But not every suicide rush works.
Jackie's left hand shifted—fast—then reverse-gripped the sword's handle.
Compared to the Centaur, he was way more agile.
He ripped the blade free, and staring at the pilot's hysterical expression, Jackie felt an odd wave of emotion.
After everything, he was starting to understand that look.
The pain of losing a partner.
The helplessness and despair of facing a stronger monster.
The nerve-searing agony of reverse current burning through damaged systems.
Skillchips firing while combat chrome still forces your body to move.
And the hallucinations—your brain stacking all of it until your humanity burns out.
They were all the same kind of people.
Jackie just wasn't at that point yet.
He thought of a long time ago, when he used to go to church, watching a priest bury Valentino shotcallers.
"Que Dios tenga misericordia…"
The long blade, stolen, went in through the man's cervical spine and punched out through his chest.
"…de tu alma (may God have mercy on your soul)."
In the blink-fast violence, the Valentino kids still fighting—and the ones bleeding out on the pavement—couldn't track the mechanics, couldn't see the details.
But they understood that image.
Optics recorded it silently.
And it hit them like a stim shot.
When a warrior's soul gets fed, the body moves—does things beyond what it believed it could do.
A Valentino whose arm had been blown clean off saw it.
Above him, from a second-floor balcony, a human bomb in "Midnight Drop" gear jumped out and lunged straight for Jackie—
And the exhausted gang kid roared and threw himself forward anyway:
"Witness me!"