The Gangoon
She felt completely numb as the four of them that were still alive rushed out the apartment building, so much so that she barely even registered the increasingly creative and vitriolic spew of curses directed at her Captain coming from the fullborg's maw.
Admittedly the open battle going on all around them made ignoring the grumbling quite a bit easier, but the synthetic growl still managed to cut through the noise despite it.
In her state, she failed to notice the borg suddenly stopping and rising his shotgun before simply deleting a nearby balcony, including the squad of strommers trying to set themselves up on top of it.
He didn't acknowledge her except for a small twitch of his head.
She felt a jolt of panic despite herself, but the cyborg seemed to be distracted by something again as he looked off into the distance, staring into something only he could see.
"Fuck it!" Magos cursed suddenly "Change of plans, we are grabbing the idiot and then getting the fuck out of here."
Mari and Chen bristled but the still fresh sight of what happened to Jun kept them quiet.
Senko on the other hand, found she just couldn't give a shit anymore.
Seeing Kei drop dead full of holes already shook her, but then seeing Magos rip Jun's head off like flicking open a fucking beer bottle without even bothering to ask for her opinion...
Suffice to say, she simply didn't care anymore.
"Sure you want to take another risk for an 'idiot'?" She snapped up at the cyborg.
Her two still living soldiers took a cautious step away from her.
While Magos simply stared down at her, before offering a singular, slow, deliberate blink.
Leaving her feeling like a complete fucking gonk.
But as he turned back to his vehicle, he did answer "Got to make sure my money printer is alive." He shook his head as his eyes flashed with the telltale glow of a call "Someone else might get it wrong."
'Right.' She scoffed in her mind.
Not giving her any time to actually respond, he pointed Mari and Chen to the back while waving for Senko to follow him.
"We are going in hot." He said clippedly as she took the co-driver's seat "You are manning the canon."
Senko's hand currently clutching Kei's bloody necklace halted as she ever so slowly turned to look at him "The fucking what now?"
The borg ignored her at first, starting the engine and getting them moving before pointing at the glowing panel in front of her she failed to notice earlier, just as the inside of the armored windshield lit up with a live display of what was going on outside.
The streets surrounding the building that held Totentanz were pure chaos, with Maelstrom reinforcements rushing in only to be intercepted by more and more arriving Tygers.
Both gangs appeared to have gone completely berserk in how they simply kept throwing bodies against each other with reckless abandon, uncaring for losses or the expense as entire groups disappeared each moment under sudden hails of gunfire or explosive detonations.
And the van Senko was inside of was currently hurtling straight at a group of borged out strommers that were setting up a barricade facing the main entrance and hosing any Tyger in their sights in deadly machinegun fire.
She was so taken by the sheer number of people butchering each other that she almost missed the controller-like device springing out of the dashboard in front of her, just as the blocky protrusion on the outside of her seat sprang out to reveal... a fucking autocanon.
Without her own prompting, her hands reached out for the controller as her eyes scanned the target display marking out every single 'strommer in sight in a red outline.
She didn't even notice it as she began breathing heavily and spared a quick questioning look to the cyborg next to her.
Magos merely winked, and grinned "Go wild."
'Apology accepted.' She grinned back and clutched the firing button like her life depended on it, the 40mm monstrosity belching out tracer rounds across the entire street and butchering everything in aiming distance.
"Oh fuck the hell yes." She found herself whispering, and pressed down again.
For that brief moment, as she ripped and incinerated everything in reach, she felt like she was on top of the world, like all the terror she was feeling was completely and utterly irrelevant.
Which only made the moment the van suddenly stopped and the shell belt clicked empty that much worse, the dazed Tyger Claw barely saved from smashing her face into the windshield like a gonk by the belt she didn't remember tying herself with.
A childish part of her felt like pouting.
But she was given no time to consider the injustices of the world as she was hit by a sudden wall of noise, head snapping to the source only to see that Magos had opened his doors and half-stepped out with his shotgun in hand and was currently butchering any Maelstrom psychotic enough to remain nearby after what she did to them.
Some fucking how, he managed to cause nearly as much destruction with a Crusher as she did with an autocannon.
The reason they stopped revealed itself mere seconds later, as a pair of heavily wounded higher rank Tygers burst out of the building, dragging a very familiar body between them.
The one-armed half of the bodyguard detail headbutted a 'strommer off the staircase as his comrade tossed a grenade behind them, the rest of the gangoons between them and safety rapidly cut down by the steady bark of an assault shotgun.
Waking up from her canon-induced daze, she reached for her own gun and readied herself to join the fight, only to feel her seat twist and find herself suddenly staring into the interior of the van, her subordinates once more directing her with weirded out looks.
This time she did pout.
Michael 'Magos' Sobronov
The instant the two bodyguards dragged Jugo's bleeding and broken body inside, I mentally slammed the doors shut and floored the gas, launching my Mahir like a springboard and through a freshly arrived Maelstrom biker.
"That is going to be a bitch to clean." I grumbled as I twisted the steering wheel, sidechecking another 'strommer off his bike and drifting into a narrow street nearby and speeding down it just as the distant roar of AV engines began filling the air.
Hopefully Jugo's lieutenant could disengage most of his men before the impending MaxTac slaughter began in earnest.
Now usually Night Corp wasn't supposed to get involved in gang warfare, but this shitfest was too loud for them not to pretend not to pay attention.
A bunch of gangers killing each other en masse was one thing, two apartment buildings collapsing before the fight started in earnest?
Well, they needed to maintain their authority over the city somehow.
When he recovers, I am hitting Jugo in the dick.
'Bold plan, my chrome fucking ass...'
Meticulously memorizing plans of future violence, I split my attention as the city blurred around me, commanding my Mechadendrites to whip out behind me and into the van's interior as I got to work.
"Flip him over." I ordered and the gonks who thought it was a good idea to lay their boss on his bleeding back rushed to listen to me.
As I patched Jugo's fucked up behind up, my Artifex picked up a pair of healing aides and offered the first to the one-armed bodyguard while just straight up spraying the other directly in the face.
Most of his nerves had been scraped off anyways, he didn't feel a thing.
"You." The Artifex pointed at the one with the fucked arm, making him flinch minutely "Deactivate the Cyberarm, the signal is starting to scramble and you won't like what happens if you don't."
"Hai." The man dutifully grunted and did as I asked.
"Good." I said as I drifted through another street "Anyone know how to stitch a wound?"
Senko slowly raised her hand.
"Congratulations." I smirked to myself "You are helping me sew your boss's ass together."
Every single Tyger Claw blanched as we got to work.
Some five minutes later, as I was halfway through extracting every shard of shrapnel from Jugo, I had to focus harder so he wasn't left with bits still in him, and ended up missing a tiny ping on my internal map.
Which inevitably meant I ended up driving up to a small NCPD barricade.
My eyes narrowed in consternation as I eased my Mechadendrites' work.
My cargo was too valuable to just punch through the group, and I had installed a camera scrambler onto the van as a whole, meaning there was no way for them to have recognized me.
Choosing patience, I slowed the van as one of the officers waved me down, and ultimately stopped a few feet in front of their barricade.
Whatever the poor fucker expected to find inside wasn't it, because the moment I lowered my window his face turned sheet pale.
"Evening." I greeted "How can I help you tonight, officer?" I asked, purposefully adding a subtle threatening growl to my voice, the frequency of which was designed to induce a minor uncanny valley effect on the human mind.
And it worked like a charm~!
All seven of his buddies now had their hands on their handguns, sweaty, twitchy hands.
But none drew.
They weren't that stupid.
"I-" The policeman began and then stopped, slowly licking his lips as he looked up at me "Sorry-" He choked on his own words "You uh... wouldn't happen to know anything about the..."
"The gang war?" I asked, waving my hand 'lazily' and making him flinch away a good foot in fear.
"Yes!" He practically shouted before quickly clearing his throat "I mean yes, that is right. The gang war. Tyger Claws and Maelstrom killing each other in Watson like its Pacifica, that gang war."
"Afraid not officer." I said after pretending to genuinely consider the question "Was on a job up north just now, and I'm not stupid enough to get bogged down in gang bullshit. Bad for biz that."
"Right, right, of course." He nodded a few times, muttering "Why the fuck would a fullborg work with them anyway?" To himself.
Seeing me staring down at him he cleared his throat again.
Did he have some kind of lung disease?
Fucking corps couldn't even give their workers proper healthcare.
"Anyway. Night Corp put out bounties for the orchestrators. You find any information that leads to a capture? There is a pretty big stack of eddies waiting for you." He said, trying to look at me 'meaningfully' "Goes without saying that performing a citizen's arrest will pay out a lot more."
"Of course." I nodded lightly, snapping a few pictures of the sweating Tyger Claws behind me for posterity "If I do find anything, Night Corp will be the first to know. Anything else I can help you with this fine evening?"
He went to speak again, but I was starting to be slightly annoyed by his delaying action and offered him a 'polite' grin, and the moment he looked up he very nearly pissed himself.
"Nothing, nothing at all!" He squeaked "Have a nice evening!"
"You too officer." I chuckled darkly, and rolled my window back up.
The way all eight NCPD officers scrambled to get out of my way was particularly soothing to my irritated mind as I drove past them and got back to my work.
---
My way back to the megabuilding went almost bafflingly undisturbed after that, so much so that by the time I was satisfied with my job on Jugo, I began tuning into the Tygers' internal channels more directly and listening in to what was happening across the 'front'.
There was a lot of raging and accusations but the bunch of gangoons were surprisingly disciplined despite their boss being out of commission and managed to organize a retreat while making it out like they achieved some kind of grand victory.
Despite more than two hundred of their comrades ending up flatlined in less than an hour.
Shobo's lieutenants were particularly mouthy, and twitchy.
By the time I decided to pipe in, they were already scrambling to grab any tiny scrap of power and influence they could before the proverbial dust settled, but my sudden announcement that their newly collective boss was still very much alive and stable had them shutting the hell up right then and there.
Which allowed them to focus on more important things, like say running away from fucking MaxTac! Which they did... competently enough I supposed.
They didn't manage to disengage fully though, and even before I reached my destination the net was already bursting with multiple compilations of MaxTac gunning down both Tygers and Maelstrom and making it look effortless.
And yes, the NCPD's 'special forces' did in fact upload select videos of themselves while 'on the job'. It was a particularly insidious strategy for keeping the populace nice and compliant, while under the guise of being 'recruitment material.'
"Fucking corpos." I grumbled uselessly as I eased my way into the garage.
"Right then ladies and gentlemen." I leaned forward against the steering wheel and spoke up, my voice easily carrying through the whole vehicle "I've had a long fucking day and frankly I don't feel like spending the rest of it yapping with all of you so kindly, do get out of my van."
There was a lot of grumbling, especially from the bodyguards, but they were just as eager to get back to base as I was to go home, and had no real reason to protest as they started shuffling their way outside.
Only for the asshole currently pretending to be unconscious to decide this was the perfect moment to speak up.
"Give us a moment." Jugo rasped up at his goons, all of whom up to and including the bodyguards jolted in surprise.
Senko and her goons listened immediately, almost rushing outside while the two bodyguards took some staring before they both nodded and left him behind.
"So." Jugo spoke as he tried to roll onto his back, only to hiss in pain as he felt his everything feel like it had been set on fire "How much did I fuck myself up with your sandy?"
Had I veins in my head, they would be twitching right about now "Despite acting the gonk." I practically spat "You stopped just at the limit."
For a split second, every single muscle in his body stilled, before he laughed "Shit, really? And here I thought I was killing myself!"
"Shut the fuck up." I snapped "If you weren't being a fucking weeb you wouldn't have had to go and 'kill yourself'."
"Aha!" Jugo was still laughing "So you do care!"
"I wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire." I fired back without an ounce of hesitation.
"You keep telling yourself that, kid." He chuckled before turning serious "How bad is it?"
I quickly explained the whole situation to him to which he simply nodded "Good."
I did not quite sputter but it was a close thing "Good?" I parroted "How in the fuck does drawing Night Corp attention, losing so many men, and nearly dying yourself in one single evening make things 'good'?!"
"Means I won't have to pussyfoot around, Mike. Do keep up." The man replied with a smirk and a wince of pain "Casualties would have been just as bad otherwise, this just skipped all the bullshit."
Staring off into the wall of the garage, I couldn't help but mutter "Why did I save your ass again?"
"Because you like me!" The man smirked.
"I want a raise." I deadpanned.
"Done!" He didn't miss a beat.
"And a favor." I pressed out of sheer annoyance.
"Yup!" Again, he didn't hesitate.
Eye twitching, and feeling particularly spiteful I added "And when your choom Saigo disappears for having me dirty myself with human trafficking, you ask no questions."
This time he did stop, staring into the floor of the van for a good few seconds before exhaling "You've made your point."
"I wasn't kidding you know." My mouth twitched.
"Of course you weren't." He retorted with surprising gravity, somehow managing to stare directly into the camera I was using to observe him "No comrade of mine would speak empty words, right?"
Forehead smacking into the steering wheel again, I sighed "Just get out of my van already. I've had enough of you for a year."
By the time his bodyguards dragged him out, and I got a very satisfying notification from Regina, Jugo was still laughing at me.
-------
The cult demands a fresh tribute of raw material to power its production lines.
Failure to comply will inevitably result in your joining of said production lines in a more productive form.
Praise be to the machine spirit!
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