(Author's note: If you've got Nas — N.Y. State of Mind, it is highly suggested to play it.)
It started with a list.
Forty-three thousand credits worth of components, three procurement categories, one illegal depot run sitting at the bottom like a problem they'd agreed to solve later. Tyler had transferred the list from Sol's holographic display into his physical notebook in his precise, careful handwriting, cross-referenced it against the gray-market vendor networks he'd been quietly mapping for two years, and produced a procurement order that moved from cheapest-and-fastest to most-expensive-and-complicated.
He presented it to the group the morning after the summoning. "We start here," he said, pointing at the top of the list. "We work down."
Nobody argued. They just got to work.
They didn't form a syndicate. They didn't swear a blood oath. They were just Gut kids who had stumbled into the shadow of a god, and somewhere in the quiet hours of that first morning, they tacitly agreed not to walk away. To them, ARTORIUS was the ultimate puzzle. A rebellion built of steel and servo-motors. A middle finger to the polished, sterile skies of the Upper City.
By day, NeoKyoto demanded its due, but the margins belonged to the mech.
But to Zach, ARTORIUS wasn't just a project. It was a loaded gun. And repairing it required money they didn't have. He let the crew think he was scrounging savings, but every week, as his hidden wounds accumulated and the crew's silent suspicions grew, Zach was out there bleeding for it.
Week One belonged to Bambam and Johnny. Johnny hit the Gut's sub-level market—three floors down, accessible through a maintenance hatch behind the Dura-Weld stall. He came back the first day with two conduit components wrapped in recycled thermal packing, dropped them on the warehouse floor, and looked at Bambam. "You're up."
While Bambam spent four hours getting the conduit to light up in a clean, steady blue, Zach was preparing to leave.
Late at night, when Bambam and Johnny went home and Tyler fell asleep against the wall with his book open, Zach quietly slipped out of the warehouse. He pulled his hoodie up, sinking into the shadows of the Neon Gut.
The Sector 7 clubs were cordoned off by corp drones, so the fighting rings had moved deeper into the city's infected veins. Abandoned subway terminals. Empty processing plants. Places where the air tasted like rust and the crowds screamed for violence to drown out the noise of their own lives.
He walked through the alleys, neon rain slicking the pavement, the heavy thud of sub-bass vibrating through the soles of his Jordans. He wasn't just here for the credits. He was here to farm achievements for Ronin's Requiem. He needed to push his body to the absolute limit.
He entered an underground ring set in a gutted cargo bay. The arena was makeshift, bordered by heavy synthetic haybales soaked in fire-retardant chemicals that smelled like ozone and sweat. The crowd was a wall of noise and chrome.
Zach reached up and pulled off the hoodie, tossing it aside.
The neon strobes caught his torso. Lean, athletic, but heavily scarred from years in the lower-city meatgrinders. He didn't activate the full Blue Steel armor. He tapped his jaw.
The jette-black Oni half-mask materialized, locking over his lower face with a magnetic hiss. No chest plate. No gauntlets. Just the mask. It was scalable tech—the stronger he got, the better it performed. Right now, it flooded his nervous system with a clean, cold focus, overclocking his baseline physical stats by a flat fifty percent. Blue flames began to vent from the stylized teeth.
His opponent climbed into the ring.
The man was a mountain of muscle and illegal subdermal plating, looking like the terrifying pit boss Vi fought in the underground of Zaun. A brute fueled by stims and rage.
The bell rang.
Zach didn't rush. He fell into a cold, analytical rhythm. The two of them did one slow lap around the ring, sticking to the edges, eyes locked. The brute cracked his neck, the sound like a snapping branch, and cautiously moved closer.
Wait for the tell, Zach thought. There. Shoulder dip.
The brute threw a massive left jab. Zach predicted it a fraction of a second before the arm fully extended, slipping inside the guard to counter with a lightning-fast straight to the chin. The brute snarled, throwing a wild, decapitating right hook. Zach rolled smoothly underneath it, feeling the wind of the fist graze his hair.
He reset instantly. Philly Shell defense—lead arm tucked across his torso, rear hand guarding his chin. He started bouncing lightly on his toes, swerving his head left and right, turning his upper body into a ghost. The brute tracked him, disoriented by the erratic rhythm.
Zach found the opening. He launched a vicious 3-4 hook combo—a cracking blow to the temple, immediately followed by a brutal dig into the solar plexus.
The brute gasped, swinging a desperate combo in response. Zach rolled the first punch, caught the second on his shoulder, and fired back: a crisp 1-1-2 combination to the head, blinding the giant, before dropping levels and unleashing a blinding flurry of punches directly into the bruised solar plexus.
Enraged and unable to out-box him, the brute roared and lunged, trying to wrap his massive arms around Zach to slam him into the concrete.
Zach didn't fight the grapple. He dropped backward onto the mat, wrapping his own ankles tightly behind the charging brute's legs. He used the giant's own forward momentum against him, tipping the fulcrum. The brute crashed hard onto the floor.
Zach was a blur. He scrambled up, took side control, isolated the brute's thick arm, and locked in a textbook armbar.
But the stat difference was too high. With a roar of pure chemical fury, the brute managed to plant his feet, deadlift Zach entirely off the ground while still caught in the hold, and slam him down onto the unyielding floor.
The impact knocked the breath out of Zach's lungs.
He rolled away, scrambling to his feet. He didn't back down. Instead, he dropped his guard completely. He put his hands behind his back, tilting his head, offering his chin. Enticing the giant to end it.
The brute took the bait. He charged like a freight train, dropping low for a double-leg takedown.
Zach waited until the absolute last millisecond. He side-stepped, using the brute's massive forward momentum as an anchor. He planted his hands on the mat, snapping his body into a fluid, rotational Capoeira kick. His heel connected squarely with the back of the brute's skull with a sickening crack.
The giant staggered forward, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the haybales. But the pain only drove him into a frenzy. He spun blindly and swung a backhand like a falling tree trunk.
It was a lucky blow. It caught Zach squarely in the side.
Zach felt the ribs crack. The pain flared white-hot, stealing his breath, nearly dropping him to his knees.
But behind the mask, his expression didn't change. The Oni mask simply vented a sudden, fierce jet of blue flame from its mechanical jaw. It looked like the devil was smiling.
Zach ignored the broken ribs. He exploded forward.
He ran straight at the staggering giant and unleashed absolute hell. A flurry of strikes too fast for the brute to track—stiff jabs, looping hooks, a slashing elbow that opened a cut over the giant's eye, followed by a spinning backhand that scrambled his equilibrium.
The brute's eyes rolled back. His massive frame buckled, dropping heavily to one knee.
Zach didn't stop. He took two sprinting steps, planted his foot directly onto the brute's elevated thigh, and used it as a springboard. He launched himself into the air, twisting his body into a devastating 720-degree kick.
His shin connected with the side of the giant's head.
The brute collapsed like a demolished building, hitting the mat and staying there.
The crowd erupted.
Zach landed lightly on his feet, his breath ragged, his side screaming in agony. He swiped away a drop of blood from his collarbone.
3,000 Credits Transferred.
He pulled his hoodie back on, hiding the blue flames, hiding the way he favored his right side, and walked out of the Pit to get back to the warehouse before morning.
Week Two was about integration. Or the lack of it.
Zach tried to pilot ARTORIUS for the first time. It went badly.
He was operating on two hours of sleep, his ribs a sustained complaint from the brute's lucky backhand the night before. When he overcorrected a step to favor his cracked side, the mech lurched sideways—just slowly enough that the only casualty was six feet of the clearing's perimeter fence and Kai's pride as the person who had been standing closest to it.
"You could have warned me," Kai said, from the ground where he'd landed after throwing himself clear. "I did warn you," Sol said through the external speaker. "I said 'step, not lurch.' You chose to stand there." Zach, inside the cockpit, tried not to laugh, which turned into a wince as his ribs flared. The sound came through the external speaker distorted and significantly too loud. Kai glared at the helm. The helm tilted downward. Approximately the angle of an apology. Kai looked at it for a moment, then the corner of his mouth twitched.
But later, when the cockpit popped and Zach climbed down, the bracelet hummed against his pulse. "Your heart rate is elevated," Sol murmured, just for him. "Your left intercostal muscles are inflamed. They bear the markers of hairline fractures. You are fighting angry, Zach." Zach wiped sweat from his forehead. "I'm fine. Just making rent." "You are making war," Sol corrected softly. "Do not let it blind you."