Luo Qi was asleep on a crescent-shaped boat made of banana leaves, drifting through a glowing fairy world that sparkled bling bling, weaving between towering ancient trees.
Then a renovation crew moved in next door.
Bang bang bang bang…!
Bam bam bam bam…!
Clang clang crash…!
It sounded like a beautiful symphony of steel and concrete.
Unfortunately, Luo Qi did not feel beautiful about being woken up by it.
The holographic display on the ceiling popped on.
Time: 04:21 a.m.
"Hrrgh—AAARGH!"
"You've got to be kidding me! Who the hell is making bobo chicken at this hour?!"
Luo Qi: ╯°Д°╯!!!
He had one hell of a morning temper.
"Lucky, watch out! Arasaka's people are heading your way!"
V's voice came through his earpiece.
Only then did Luo Qi realize he had actually left the earpiece on all night. No wonder something had been digging into him while he slept.
"Oh, okay, Arasaka…" he muttered, stumbling toward the sink with a toothbrush mug in hand. "Wait, what did you just say? Arasaka?!"
BOOM!
At that exact moment, his front door exploded inward.
Three bald men with glowing red eyes stormed in from outside.
Holding his toothbrush cup, Luo Qi turned his head and stared at them.
"ターゲット出現,攻撃開始! Target spotted. Commence attack!"
A mechanical synthetic voice rang out.
…
About ten minutes later.
Wearing nothing but a thin undershirt, Luo Qi sat in the back seat, gripping a Copperhead rifle and spraying bullets wildly behind them.
V sat in the front passenger seat with Yorinobu Arasaka's Kongou pistol, firing measured, precise shots one after another.
Jackie had the Relic case jammed between his boots and was blasting away with two gold-plated handguns.
"Damn it! After all this, why are you still showing up?!"
Luo Qi slammed a fresh magazine into the rifle and shouted at the man driving.
The driver was Goro Takemura, Saburo Arasaka's bodyguard.
The one person in all of Arasaka still trying to find proof that Yorinobu had been the real killer.
"I do not under-stand what you are saying!"
Takemura's thick accent made Luo Qi's head ache. Hearing it, he was suddenly reminded again of the disgusting sushi from that awful stand downstairs.
No—actually, he did not even have a downstairs anymore.
Who knew how many explosives those bald men with glowing red eyes had brought with them? In any case, both the floor above and the floor below Luo Qi's apartment had been devastated. The floor had collapsed, the ceiling had caved in, and two neighbors in the hallway had died on the spot. He had only managed to save his brand-new Copperhead and Saburo Arasaka's katana.
His customized pink, girly DS1 Pulsar was gone.
The limited-edition Gundam model that used to sit on his computer desk was gone.
Even his favorite Bobo Chicken x Fuyutsuki Electronics collaboration speaker was gone.
The pain in his heart was literally unbearable.
Blinded by grief and rage, Luo Qi braced the rifle on the flashy convertible's trunk lid and squeezed the trigger.
Ratatatatatata!!!
Bullets splashed across the Arasaka assassins chasing them, pinging off armor and cyberware all over the place. But only a handful actually did any real damage. Most of them just ricocheted.
Were their heads made of titanium alloy or what?!
Grinding his teeth, Luo Qi ducked back down. He had already emptied all his rifle ammo and still had not dropped a single one of them.
This was less combat and more exfoliation.
"Dexter's already dead! How the hell did you even find this place?!"
Luo Qi shouted into the wind.
"In Night City, there is no one Arasaka cannot find!"
Takemura sounded absurdly confident.
"Damn it! Look at what you've done! Huh?!" V said through gritted teeth, firing back with difficulty. "You brought Arasaka hit squads into a civilian neighborhood! How many people are you trying to get killed?!"
He and Jackie had returned home quietly with the Relic after escaping from Luo Qi's fight with MaxTac, hoping to lie low together for a while.
But before dawn had even broken, a man claiming to be Saburo Arasaka's bodyguard had shown up and tried to bring them back in to be handed over to Yorinobu.
Then Arasaka's assassin squads had broken in, and the firefight had gone from upstairs all the way to downstairs.
V's place had survived a little better than Luo Qi's.
At least it had not been blown completely to pieces.
"They were sent by Yorinobu to silence us."
Takemura said it flatly, through clenched teeth. His expression did not change much—his face was always like carved stone.
Luo Qi sneered. "Yorinobu Arasaka really did break his father's loyal hound's heart."
"I serve the Arasaka family's master. But I will not let the murderer walk free!"
Takemura's usually almost comical accent carried a rare gravity now, as if he would genuinely turn on Luo Qi if he dared joke about this.
So this car chase had come after all.
As long as Takemura came to find V, and as long as Yorinobu sent assassins to kill Takemura for knowing too much, this part of the story had always been almost impossible to avoid.
Only the location had changed—from the Badlands junkyard, the dam, and the Coronado farm roads in Santo Domingo to the very heart of Little China in Watson.
And the passengers had changed too: instead of an injured Takemura and a dying V brought back from the edge, there were now four perfectly alive people in the car.
"Shit! Where's Mo'er? Didn't she go back with you guys?"
Only now did Luo Qi realize someone was missing.
Being dragged awake before sunrise and thrown straight into bang bang bang boom boom boom ratatat street warfare had left his brain turned to mush.
"She got out before we reached home," Jackie said while loading the last magazine into his gun. "Said she had some 'personal business' to take care of. She also said… she'd contact you later."
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Luo Qi was irritated beyond words.
Not just because of the Bobo Chicken speaker—though that was definitely part of it.
After the brutal succession of fights from Konpeki Plaza to the motel, he had not even gotten a few hours of rest before being forced right back into fleeing through the streets at the edge of death. The mental exhaustion was piling up into real strain.
Fine, he had to admit it.
The speaker was absolutely also part of the problem.
It had been a limited-edition collab model!
He had gone through reservations, lotteries, and preorder madness on the official site just to get one!
Buying one secondhand online now cost a fortune!!
The red-eyed bald assassins riding their demonic bikes closed in again, drawing level with Takemura's car.
With those "pure" bright eyes fixed on Luo Qi, one of them slowly drew out his mantis blades.
That was a provocation, right?
That was definitely a provocation!
"You little shit! Go die!"
Grief turned to fury in an instant. Luo Qi yanked out the katana.
"Taste the sword of Bobo Chicken!"
The seemingly indestructible Arasaka assassin's head flew clean off, exposing the deeply modified mechanical neck beneath, with just a trace of spinal tissue and blood vessels still there.
His bike tumbled away and slammed into a roadside tree. The already riddled fuel tank exploded into fire.
"Watch out!!"
V shouted and unloaded at another assassin who had ditched his bike, rolled, and leapt straight onto the hood of their car.
Takemura's view was blocked. He jerked the wheel, and the whole car began fishtailing wildly across the street.
"Shit!"
Jackie grabbed the Relic case before it could fly away, barely ducking a mantis blade that shattered through the windshield.
That assassin clung to the car like some giant metal beetle, refusing to let go no matter how violently the vehicle swerved.
"You and your undying stubbornness, huh?!"
Teeth clenched, Luo Qi stood up.
With a full crescent slash from behind, he split the assassin's shoulder almost in half.
Electrical crackling burst out everywhere. Luo Qi followed with another swing, hacking him clean off the car.
Crash! Rattle! Bang!
The assassin's corpse slammed into the divider, rolled several times, and ended up buried in a pile of filthy roadside trash.
"Hah…"
Luo Qi finally let out a long breath and slumped back into his seat, utterly drained.
"We lost them!" Jackie cheered, still aiming his pistols. But after a moment he realized the enemy vehicles had fallen too far behind for any decent hit chance and sat down too.
"Jesus… damn Arasaka bastards." V cursed furiously, then caught Takemura giving him a strange, unreadable look.
The car kept speeding down the road, cutting through the sparse traffic of the early morning streets.
As for the NCPD, who should absolutely have shown up for a car chase and shootout like this?
Ha.
Yeah, right.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 119)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter79)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter125)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 73
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 55
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 66
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 63
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 55
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 31
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 31
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 31
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