The footage of Jackie executing the Centaur rig was caught by reporters and "wild photographers" hidden inside the buildings. People were completely absorbed in the moment.
The course info was basically public. Plenty of folks had made a quick stack of eddies off it. A "golden shooting spot" was worth real money.
After tanking human-bomb strikes, tanking electromagnetic pulse hits, tanking rockets, bullets, and grenades flying in every direction—
They'd finally captured a scene like this.
But some of them quickly realized something was off.
In the dark stairwell, V—wearing a full tactical helmet—moved like a blade in the night. Her sensors reflected a faint glimmer as she cut through the darkness as fast as the wind.
The noise snapped everyone out of their hero-montage trance. This was still a warzone. Being alert was the smart move.
A one-eyed reporter with a recording rig nearly pissed himself when he saw what the scanner was picking up.
Dim light plus V's absurd speed—what he perceived was a ghost.
A ghost chasing a hard-to-see mosaic.
Blade met blade in the dark corridor, throwing sparks that turned into a shimmering blur—
Every time the blades touched, V's mantis blades tried to spike current into the contact point and jack in. The contact window was too short for a clean breach, but it still heavily disrupted the opponent's advanced optical camo.
"A ghost—ugh!"
Finally, V found the opening and sheared through the other blade.
The broken edge ricocheted—right into the reporter's shoulder.
Lucky for him, it was the spine of the blade that slammed him, not the edge. It hurt like hell, but it didn't kill him.
Seeing the break, the Eclipse full-body cyberware modder kicked back hard, stamping a small gouge into the floor, grabbed the wall and started climbing—
Bang!
A massive red-hot car-cleaver flew like a missile and pinned him to the wall.
On a battlefield, the people in it feel the shift first.
Jackie was briefly stunned: why did the Valentinos suddenly look like they'd been shot full of combat stims?
The ones who'd already committed to staying down rose back into fighting posture. If their wheels still turned, they drove.
Bumper hanging and scraping the ground? One kick—gone. No bumper.
Door bent and won't close? One kick—gone. No door.
Roof sliced off by a thermic cannon? Convertible. Perfect. Better firing lanes.
The suicide bombers had genuinely startled Leo at first—but he quickly noticed something weird:
The bombings looked like they were aimed at them…
But a lot more detonations were happening inside small corp office buildings.
When people know they're going to die, plenty decide: "Fuck your gang. Today I'm blowing up the people who made my life miserable."
Bosses. Coworkers.
In the chaos, the damage radius—supposed to be limited to riot participants—started spreading.
"Jackie!" Heavy metal sound came from inside the vehicle. Octopus arms extended from the window, unwaveringly painting V's path through the building with a spotlight.
Inside, V's fight wasn't as flashy as street-level carnage, but it still kicked up wave after wave of sparks—
The enemy couldn't hold against Croni-titan-forged mantis blades. Forced back, step by step, driven toward the windows.
Jackie understood immediately.
He stomped down, twisting the Centaur rig beneath him into warped scrap, then leapt back into the Legendary Mackinaw's rear bay.
Under the Valentinos' excited stares, Jackie reversed his grip on the sword, planted both feet wide on the cargo edge, and assumed a textbook throwing stance.
Motors spooled. Muscles tightened. Boosters howled. Power loaded—
The humanoid mosaic jumped out the window, both hands locking onto the wall as it tried to reset its posture—
Bang!
The red-hot blade cut almost a straight line through the air. It was hard to believe a forty-kilo slab of metal could move like that—
But the Eclipse full-body modder pinned dead to the wall, and the spiderweb cracks blooming outward from the impact, reminded everyone it was very real.
Nobody noticed the thin white filament tied near the hilt.
V jumped out barely a second later and saw her target nailed to the wall. She could only ride her webline down and land on the moving Burnout Sprintbike—
"You stole my kill!"
V flicked her mantis blades.
Jackie chuckled, patting the roof. "Mano! We—"
"Hold on!"
Ahead was a perfect ninety-degree turn.
The Legendary Mackinaw snapped the wheel. The throttle, shifter, and handbrake started jerking like they were possessed.
The integrated electronic control platform was wrecked. From this moment on, the Mackinaw could no longer run pure direct-drive control—no more clean motor-and-drivetrain command.
It switched to something that felt like taking off your pants just to fart:
Big Barley's core control system was sealed inside protective housing. Power no longer acted directly on the vehicle—power acted on a series of mechanical control levers.
Put simply: Big Barley was now like a real human driver.
Half the sensors, trying to make sense of the world, simulating a human driving method—using dozens of levers to mechanically control this ten-ton monster.
The remaining static-grip system could no longer fully bite the asphalt—
But it could still tear chunks of roadway loose.
The truck began to turn. Under Big Barley's control, the wheels angled sideways; the chassis began to translate, to slide, to drift—just a little.
These wheels weren't normal. Croni-titan and other alloys made up the hubs and internal frame; at heart they were solid tires, with only a surface layer of polyurethane and aramid fiber compound—Thunder Company lab stock—added to raise friction.
With the static-grip system, they almost never slipped, and wear stayed low.
Now?
A scorched track streaked the road—black and faintly red, and in the worst spots you could even see little tongues of flame.
With electromagnetic suspension and static grip largely down, being inside the vehicle felt like getting thrown into a tumble dryer.
Seatbelts felt decorative.
Explosions. Wild shifts in acceleration. Screeching friction noise. The stink of burning rubber and scorched road—
Too much interference. Leo's senses were nearly overwhelmed.
He shut his eyes and processed the data packets from Little Octopus and Big Barley in chunks, like raw telemetry—
[Szzzt—]
[Valentino hitter: More mechs!]
The vehicle completed the turn and a broad, clean avenue opened ahead.
Haywood's slums had been left behind.
Now they were entering the prosperous stretch of Haywood.
Leog didn't even need to look.
Up in those tall pedestrian overpasses, anti-armor weapons would already be set.
But behind the Legendary Mackinaw—
They had numbers.
The Midnight Drop bombers had "dropped" just like their name implied.
The Valentinos hadn't.
From the light-rail lines and skybridges, one mech after another slammed down from above. Nobody knew where Muramasa had sourced so much hardware, but from this road onward, the firepower would turn lethal.
"I fucking love this race—"
V's palms started sweating. She flashed a nervous grin, fired her webline, and used the sprintbike's momentum to sling herself back up onto the wall—
And Jackie yanked hard. The car-cleaver stuck in the wall ripped free.
He swung it with the pull like a meteor hammer.
The Valentinos had never been this united.
A tide of battered armor and junked vehicles surged forward, pushing the race into its true crescendo.