The Tyger Claws' bike squad looked like they'd slammed combat stims straight into their bloodstream.
The motorcycles tore through the streets at full throttle. In their hands—katanas and single-shot long-barrel pistols. Micro-missile bombardment rolled in wave after wave; all they could do was dodge.
But the enemy were full-blown cyberpsychos.
Some even used the blast force itself—diving headfirst into the fireball, bursting out engulfed in flames—
Bang.
Maekawa's forearm snapped open, revealing a Militech-manufactured bullpup borg rifle. One armor-piercing round erased the psycho's brain—
But the rest of the Claws weren't so lucky.
Their movements were razor-edge precise, but the conditions were abnormal. The moment the EM shielding layer on their cyberware cracked, the malfunction spread like a virus.
Leo could delay Muramasa burning them out, forcibly shutting down cyberware functions—but that wasn't a solution.
Some gangoons could adapt to partial system loss.
Others couldn't.
Their movement patterns collapsed mid-action, and they dropped dead on the spot.
Bang—
An enemy burst out of smoke, trigger pulled, rounds spraying.
Maekawa fired and slashed simultaneously. Bullets deflected off his blade. He threw the katana in one smooth motion—straight through the enemy's chest.
Monofilament cable yanked the blade back into his hand.
More explosions rolled in.
He stopped fighting and accelerated through the smoke toward the Mackinaw.
"This isn't working…"
In the chaos, he didn't notice another merc already closing in behind him—charging straight through the flames.
Bang.
Jackie blew the merc's head apart and grabbed the corpse, hurling it aside.
Maekawa leaned toward the driver's side—
And nearly pissed himself.
Inside the vehicle, two Octo-arms braced diagonally against the chassis, twitching like seizures to counter excess vibration from the battered suspension. A third arm was ripping apart the vehicle floor—
The Mackinaw's interior wasn't luxurious. It was modular. Most components were field-removable—if you had the skill.
But Leo's state—
Maekawa had never seen a man with smoke coming out of his skull and still functioning.
Leo's cranial plating smoked. One cyberoptic blazed electric blue. His body jerked intermittently from internal arc discharges. Red lightning crawled between Octo-arms and chassis wiring.
Maekawa didn't know about rogue AIs.
He just thought: this is straight-up haunted.
One Octo-arm shot out through a blasted seam in the armor—
And slammed upward.
V dropped from above, grabbed the arm midair, and force-landed onto the roof with brutal impact.
The thud alone commanded respect.
But what followed earned more.
The drone bombardment stopped.
The vehicle punched out of the smoke, and when Maekawa looked up—
Motorcycles and drones were slamming into buildings on both sides.
That's it?
V dropped to the roof, lay flat in sync with the Octo-arm, and stuck her head through the window gap, pounding on the roof as she yelled.
"It's changing shape!"
Maekawa caught fragments of it. He turned—
The pursuing Centaur mech emerged from smoke—no longer the same silhouette.
The battered half was now encased in fresh structural plating. New frameworks welded onto old scars, sparks flying at the seams.
Inside, the pilot was charred black.
A flickering HUD line flashed in Maekawa's optics:
[Leo: Just run.]
The Centaur mech—
No.
The Centaur robot—
Lifted the dropped armor crate from earlier and pulled out a massive, clearly outlined electromagnetic cannon.
Leo's optic scanner locked onto it.
Muramasa intended to upgrade the Centaur on-site—evolving it into a true heavy combat platform.
If it completed assembly, they were done.
Not just them.
Corpos would start sweating too.
Leo scanned through the electromagnetic distortion, punching through the mech's assembly space, extracting structural data.
Before the shoulder-mounted EM cannon finished locking in, he'd isolate weak points.
But weak points vanished one by one as internal drone welders sealed seams.
Meanwhile, Leo's Octo-arms rewired the vehicle's exposed power control matrix.
One chance.
Maximum output.
"Electromagnetic cannon!"
Mackinaw's amplified voice startled V on the roof—but she understood immediately.
Before anyone else processed it, V tossed the Nekomata rifle into the cabin.
"Full throttle!!"
Mackinaw's voice drowned out blades, gunfire, detonations, screams.
Tyger Claws got the message.
The Mackinaw floored it.
The bikes followed—full twist throttle, pulling out of the engagement zone.
The mercs weren't superpowered—just psychotic. Their broken vehicles fell behind as engines roared in retreat.
Inside the Mackinaw, the interior was gutted.
Seats shoved aside.
Bare circuit boards exposed.
Leo dismantled the Nekomata in seconds.
He knew this rifle intimately.
It hit hard—enough to punch through borgs and light armored vehicles.
But against a three-meter-tall evolving mech?
Insufficient surface damage.
Fortunately, electromagnetic weapon architecture followed predictable principles.
The Nekomata and the EMG-85 shared similar acceleration concepts.
The EMG-85's superconductive circuitry had lost superconductivity—but remained highly conductive. Its barrel was ultra-heat-resistant, ultra-durable.
The vehicle's central power control system was damaged—unsuitable for drivetrain control.
But electromagnetic discharge required only short-duration, high-output bursts.
And such discharge was nearly impossible to hack mid-cycle.
Octo-arms repositioned components under Leo's control—mounting the cannon barrel and Nekomata internals directly onto the exposed power platform.
This improvised weapon wouldn't match factory EMG-85 performance—
But it could buy time.
If Leo completed assembly before Muramasa did.
The towering mech vibrated with a low-frequency resonance that skipped heartbeats—
As if laughing.
Two gunslingers.
Weapons disassembled on the table.
Race to assemble.
Street gangoons usually reassembled simple pistols.
They were assembling rail accelerators pushing 3000 meters per second.
War-grade superweapons.
In Leo's slightly reddened scanner view, ghostly red arcs formed twisted glyphs above Muramasa's chassis.
[I enjoy this duel.]
Leo smiled.
The last one who'd enjoyed a draw-and-fire showdown with him—
By the calendar—
Was probably about ten months from being born.