Time rewinds to the end of the second second.
At the start of that second, V had been disrupted and believed she had shifted into a defensive stance. Muramasa moved the moment that happened.
Without visual sensor input, it was difficult for Muramasa to confirm V's follow-up actions.
So V only thought she had changed into a defensive posture. In reality—
Little Octopus had moved V's arm midair, demodulated her auditory input, and run high-speed calculations.
The exchange had come in hard and fast—
but not faster than sound.
At the very end of the second second, V's left hand deployed her mantis blade and jammed it directly into Muramasa's movement path.
Maybe a little late—
but not that late.
The two mantis blades cut in through Muramasa's waist and abdomen, carving out a crooked V-shape.
The blades pierced the surface shell, and current immediately surged in on the attack, causing both of Muramasa's legs to lose control and completely wrecking its aerial balance—
Then the rockets detonated.
Boom!
V got blasted away. The burst of power and sudden sensory blackout left her unable to tell what had actually happened in that instant—
She fired webbing in an emergency to catch herself in midair, while Jackie got thrown off by the Centaur mech's jolt and smashed both fists into the road, sending spiderweb cracks across the pavement.
Dust burst everywhere. She twisted back anxiously, desperate to see what that mistake had caused—
but her body wasn't listening. It had no strength left in it. In the end, she could only cling to the webline and get dragged passively back to the wall.
[Little Octopus: Mom, I already burned through basically all the remaining power and fuel in the cyberware just now.]
[Little Octopus: But don't panic. Our tactic worked.]
V's brain was already going a little hypoxic from the cyberware dropping into low-power mode. She shook her head and looked down at the street.
And then she froze.
Muramasa's lower body had been completely torn off. Its whole upper body was still flying forward under the blast force from the rockets before slamming face-first into the ground—
Part of one lower leg was left behind, and the rest came apart when it hit, scattering across the street.
And the Legend hadn't been dodged by the quadruped war machine the way Muramasa predicted either. The truck drifted and slammed brutally into the Centaur war machine's rear left leg as it leapt!
Both the big one and the small one ate pavement hard.
But Muramasa quickly cleared the anomalous current while sliding, then drove its blade into the road and stopped the skid.
The Centaur war machine also struggled and managed to get back up—
But combat doesn't happen one beat at a time.
This unexpected turn forced Muramasa to recalculate and reassign the Centaur war machine's tactical weight, but during that less-than-one-second slide, the second wave of attacks was already building.
Jackie's impact with the road had been massive.
Which meant the recoil he took back was just as brutal.
The backlash left him mildly concussed—vision darkening, head swimming, thoughts blank. He knew he was fighting, but for a moment he couldn't even remember what he was supposed to do.
A brief memory wipe caused by concussion.
Recovery might only take an instant—
but that instant usually gets people killed.
Coincidentally, the strongest recent shock tends to come back first.
And the biggest recent shock Jackie had taken was the time he hadn't shot a kneeling full-conversion borg begging for mercy, which ended with that borg self-detonating.
And because of that, the barrel on the Ironhammer-30 had been bent slightly by the blast, which meant they had saved a single high-explosive armor-piercing round.
After Jackie had burned through all of his standard 14mm caseless ammo, that became the last round left in those gauntlets.
And it was exactly the weapon Leo had hastily retuned for him back in the truck.
This thing could blow the Centaur war machine apart.
No question.
The gauntlets were wedged in the road. Jackie immediately cut power to them, kicked on the Lizard berserk component, and ripped with overwhelming force, tearing the gauntlets free from the powered armor's connection points—
The gauntlets were replaceable parts.
And by design, they were built more for compression resistance than tensile strength.
Crack!
With a light snap, Jackie yanked both hands free. The front end of the powered armor opened, exposing his own fists, which he raised toward the massive Centaur war machine.
The firing mechanism wasn't in the collision gauntlet ends—
it was mounted at the forearm.
Some damage, sure.
But still functional.
Huge target.
Close range.
No need to aim.
Boom!
The round fired.
The recoil from the high-explosive armor-piercing shot slammed Jackie flat onto his back, and the flash-burn from the propellant flame scorched his face with pain.
But the effect was beautiful.
The shell hit the Centaur war machine in the rear. On impact, it kicked up a massive burst of flame, punched through the armor, and detonated inside the chassis, triggering a chain explosion!
The Centaur war machine—over three meters tall—instantly lost power. Muramasa could only watch as its vehicle burned and dropped to its knees.
The legendary Mackinaw rounded the corner and came to face Muramasa—
And stopped.
Leo also dropped out of direct octopus-arm control. All three mechanical arms went limp at once, and with just his legs, he was a little unsteady on his feet.
One of the three stood on the truck, dragging three octopus arms behind him.
One clung to the walls on either side of the street.
And one climbed up out of the crater he had personally punched into the road.
The gigantic Centaur war machine lay burning on the ground.
Muramasa's upper half stood alone in the street, propped up by its arms.
Honestly, even with only its upper body left, it still had four arms. It could move. If it had to, it could still fight.
But there was no way it was beating those three now.
And losing half its body, on top of having so many cables burned out by Little Octopus, meant its total sustainable power output had dropped massively.
Less output—
meant less combat capability.
At roughly sixty meters away, Muramasa looked at Leo, then glanced to the side—
At the end of the road was a turn.
Beyond that turn—
the entrance to the Afterlife.
For the first time, it spoke aloud:
"Why choose that place as the finish line?"
Muramasa turned and stared at Leo.
It had never been to the Afterlife.
Leo swapped out the claw head on one of the octopus arms and answered in a calm voice, knowing Muramasa could read lips:
"Everybody else likes it there."
Vroooom—
The Legend's engine roared again. Muramasa's hearing, thermal sensors, olfactory sensors—every system it had—could tell that this armored truck was nearly dry.
Maybe less than 10% fuel left in the tank.
The electric platform was completely wrecked.
All that remained was reliable, simple, imprecise mechanical control.
A vehicle like this couldn't use smart driving.
Not unless there was an AI inside that could drive like a human.
Well, damn.
Looked like three people.
Actually two people, two AIs, and one thing that was neither human nor AI.
Muramasa adjusted its posture.
One high-temp short blade in each hand.
Its upper body crouched low to the ground, preparing to launch itself by arm strength. The extra mechanical arms on its shoulders swapped over to some kind of high-temperature welding torches.
There wasn't much left to calculate for the final sprint.
There weren't many tools left in its kit.
No need to overdescribe it.
The end result was simple:
Muramasa launched its final charge at the Legend, two compensatory arms crackling with current as they slapped the ground and hurled it forward, while the added shoulder arms blasted fire behind it.
It jumped high.
Over two meters.
Fast enough—
but clearly lacking variation.
The octopus claw fired a spike-tipped blade connected to a filament cable straight from its center.
It punched clean through Muramasa's body, halting its forward momentum, and a massive current flooded in, physically locking down Muramasa's thought processes.
Then the octopus claw casually reeled in the half-body Muramasa and grabbed it.
Capturing a rogue AI was never easy work.
But a clean capture like this?
That was rare.
A sense of frustration—an emotion an AI wasn't supposed to have—rose inside Muramasa.
"Did I at least give you a good fight?"
"No."
Leo shook his head.
Couldn't be helped.
That was the effect of the Heart of Evolution—artificial creations simply couldn't impose any psychological influence on him.
Leo used the octopus arms to drag V and Jackie back onto the truck. Their cyberware was completely out of power and out of fuel, heads heavy and foggy—
and yet both of them were hyped as hell.
"Hah… if somebody told me a few years ago I'd be booking out the whole Afterlife by myself, I'd have smacked the shit out of him for clowning me…"
Jackie lay sprawled in the truck bed.
V got placed in the passenger seat by Leo, half-reclining there.
"This ain't just the Afterlife. Tonight we basically booked out half of Night City."
As she said that, V threw one leg up onto Leo's shoulder. Her busted mechanical toes stuck out of her ruined shoe and kept swinging around, nearly brushing his face.
Leo glanced at her.
Her pants and jacket were shredded, exposing a chassis underneath that was just as battered.
For tonight—
he'd let it slide.
A high-definition drone from several hundred meters up recorded the final battle.
Half of Night City had gone dark during the fight. The chain explosions had everyone on edge. Even the radio commentators, who should've been screaming the final result with maximum hype at the most important moment—
all of them had fallen silent.
They couldn't understand the back half of the fight.
And they didn't dare improvise.
Even loudmouth Stan pretended to take a drink of water.
Outside the Afterlife, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
That century-old institution had never been so empty—
and never so crowded.
The legendary Mackinaw carried its masters forward.
And the loyal underworld of Night City welcomed its emperor.
The visible trophy was Muramasa.
But more importantly—
the invisible prize had also fallen into their hands.
"This gig's closed."
[Unstable energy surge imminent—]