Never Fade Away: No Save Point (ch. 33) (Patreon)

"Breakin' news, darlin's. Mayor Lucius Rhyne has been pronounced dead by city hall and the NCPD. I'd give you more deets, but for whatever reason their lips are tighter than a bear trap on exactly how Rhyne died. Quite a few are probably going to think L did it, on account that the last big speech Rhyne had was him declaring L 'Public Enemy Number One'. Not that it did anything - no cop with anything between their ears is going to do anything but turn tail if they saw L. But, I don't think L killed him. If he did, why are city officials hiding it?

In other news, Biotechnica has come forth with a statement that they have no plans of leaving Night City because of L. And that's a crying shame. Night City's full of snake oil salesmen, but Corps like Biotechnica take it further, selling snake venom saying it'll take your pain away. Remember the Securicine scandal? Nora sure does.

If any of that got ya angry and hankering for music to fight to, don't change the frequency! Here's Roundtable Rival."

~

I expected Goro to be out of the fight, honestly. Even if I didn't hit any important organs, I knew that I had hacked through a number of implants and even if that wouldn't kill him, it should have drastically diminished his combat effectiveness. All the same, he bared his half sword at me, his expression a pained grimace. "Saburo-sama, please vacate the building. Smasher-san and I shall carry out your will."

"Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass it's been hunting him down? You really think it's going to be that easy when he's served himself up on a silver platter?" I asked Goro, carefully positioning myself between them and Jackie. Yorinobu was visibly reluctant to leave, but he knew that there was no place for him here. He got on the hoverboard with some awkwardness, but all the same, both of them flew out of the window. "He'll be lucky if there's enough of him to identify when I'm done."

With them out of the way, I took a step forward, shards of glass crunching underfoot as the building trembled again, this time harsher. It was already falling apart. It just needed a little touch to send it crumbling. Goro snarled at me -- his nostrils flaring and his pale eyes narrowed into slits. "You must first get through me," he swore, battered but not yet beaten.

"That was the plan from the start," I told him before time slowed to a crawl and the three of us all burst into action -- Smasher came at me from the side while Goro came at me from the front. I slashed at Goro's neck, intent on taking his head off, only for him to lean out of the way of the blade while thrusting up at my heart with his stunted katana. Both of us were forced to back off when Smasher started blind firing, seemingly not caring if he hit Goro if it meant he got me.

I deflected the bullets before I saw a side compartment open on his bulky legs, letting a dozen odd missiles stream out. They were cloaked in biotic energy, half transparent -- I'm not sure what he did to them, but it made them fast enough that they moved quickly even with time slowing to a crawl. They shot at me, locked on, and I backed off before shooting at them with the laser in my wrist -- they exploded, destroying the room and kicking up a cloud of dust. My optics shifted, letting me see through it even as the floor collapsed under our feet.

The dust was dyed red when I took aim with the GBM, firing a shot at Saburo, who was being carried by Goro to safety. The blood-red beam bent again, tearing another long line through the ground and the building itself. That was less of a light push and more of a kick in the teeth over the edge for the structure. The building started to crumble, but even as it did, it fell in slow motion. The intense gravity that warped the beam pulled the debris to Smasher, giving me convenient footholds to launch myself off of.

The tip of my vibroblade caught him in the chest, sinking a half-inch into him with the initial force, and driving him down. With another push, I managed a quarter inch more, but I had to kick off of him when his massive arms nearly closed in around me. The armor was dense. Incredibly so. If the vibroblade wasn't working, then I would just use the GBM, I decided, kicking off of him and taking aim.

Smasher was prepared for it, his legs touched down on the floor below before biotic energy condensed in front of him -- a Charge, I recognized. He leapt up with enough force that the ground shattered beneath him, his massive body blurring as he raced up to meet the beam of red light before it smashed against his Charge, making the beam spill out in a half dozen streams that still tore through the sides of the building like they were nothing. With that, the building started collapsing even quicker as Smasher flew up towards me, an arm as big as a fully grown man lashing out to rip me in half.

I caught the blow with the edge of my blade, and found that his extremities were far less dense than his core, letting me cut through the arm like butter while I planted my feet on his chest as he shot upwards. We blasted through the top of the building before I kicked off of him. My arm detached at the elbow as the GN Drive jutted out of it, starting to spin and funnel out orange particles. With a slow back flip, I landed on my arm as if it were a hoverboard while the rest of my arm began to shift, lengthening to be a usable prosthetic.

Time resumed its normal pace as I looked up at Smasher, who only seemed to glow with more biotic energy. In my ear, I heard Becca calling out to me, "L! L, get the fuck out of there!" She shouted, sounding as frightened as I'd ever heard her. It was good advice, I thought, but I was stricken by Smasher. Or, rather, what he was doing.

I felt a pull towards him, but it was greatly diminished by the GN particles that kept me aloft. The same couldn't be said for everything else. I watched with a growing sense of awe as the rubble that had been in the process of collapsing began to rise in the air. Massive chunks the size of vehicles, then entire shattered floors, until it seemed not only the entire building was being held aloft, but dozens of vehicles were too.

'What kind of anime bullshit is this?'

Jack wasn't capable of something like this. It was like something I saw in one of the TV shows that she watched. The dust condensed into a singular point, crushed together by the intense gravity. The chunks of the building, the cars, and even the corpses settled in the air, bobbing slightly. I ran through the possibilities in my head, my grip tightening on my blade, but the answer was obvious when I stopped to actually think about it. The power of biotics, as far as we knew, came from eezo nodes in the nervous system, and the usability of biotics came from the amp.

Smasher had completely abandoned a human appearance. For Jack and Kaiden, the amp implant had severe limitations just for them to be able to use them without disastrous consequences like cyberpsychosis. A limitation that Smasher no longer shared. Add that to the fact I knew Arasaka was harvesting eezo nodes…

Smasher had to have five or six Jacks worth of nodes, and his body was a massive amp for his biotics.

'Smasher? That thing is Smasher?'

"I've been looking forward to this, L. Don't die too quickly," Smasher growled and, in response, the hand on my flying arm flipped him the bird underneath me. I heard him chuckle at that before the battle resumed.

I flew forward, going wide to dodge out of the way of a massive chunk of rock as the broken building swirled violently, becoming a chaotic mess. Weaving my way through it, I saw that Smasher had settled on the landing pad, overlooking my approach. It was an impressive display of power, I had to admit that much, but it was limiting -- holding everything aloft couldn't leave him much in the way of power to continue throwing around biotic attacks. He proved as much when I fired the GBM, punching through a half dozen chunks of building and he dodged out of the way rather than diverting it.

'Lots of places to hide in a minefield.'

A stray thought brought me up short just in time to avoid stepping face first into a trap. I banked up, doing a lazy flip to see a brace of micro missiles racing towards me, instead slamming into rubble and sending out chunks of concrete and metal. More than that, I saw Smasher wasn't just trying to hide missiles.

Down below, there was mobilization as well as from above -- planes sailed overhead, dropping mechs to join the fray. Some of them I recognized, like the Arasaka Minotaur. Others were unfamiliar to me but a quick look at the precursory data told me that they were called Cyberwalks. Urban military vehicles that looked like tanks with legs. A good dozen of each. They fell into the gravity well, aided by their boosters, and landed on chunks of the building, crawling around while they constantly vanished and re-entered my point of view thanks to the shifting ground.

The Cyberwalks were dangerous -- piloted by two people, closed network, 37mm autocannon and 12.7mm coaxial gun. Neither were calibers I felt comfortable deflecting.

"We're on our way, L!" Falco shouted, and I became aware of them closing in on my position. Too dangerous. I should tell them to get away, but I knew they wouldn't. So, I suppose I had to hurry and finish the heavy lifting before they got here. Taking in a slow breath, one of my eyes shifted into X-ray vision, revealing the hidden threats while my OS tagged them. The GN Drive spun to life as I shot forward, jumping into the thick of the battle.

The impromptu arena came alive at that moment -- a handful of the mechs started firing at me while I used the rubble as cover as much as they did. The powerful bullets tore through the massive slabs as if they were made of cardboard, smashing them apart and sending dust and pebbles flying, but that suited me just fine. Because, when I fired back, my GBM punched through their cover even more easily -- the first shot effortlessly destroying a Cyberwalk, completely vaporizing the body of it.

'What is that thing? Where's my Malorian?'

My bubble shield was in my hoverboard -- something that I sorely missed now as everything descended into pure chaos. I moved quick as lightning, dancing through the rubble, destroying my enemies as quickly as I possibly could. All the while keeping an eye out for Smasher. Attacks came from above, below, and from the sides, all of them trying to box me in.

Leaping off of my arm, I sprinted across a chunck of what had been a ceiling. My arm became a drone, firing an unrelenting tide of red lasers at the mechs to distract them while I leapt forward to the nearest Cyberwalk. It must have had quality sensors, I thought, to detect me with all of this rubble and the GN particles in the air. It pivoted towards me, firing its auto cannon and time slowed to a crawl again, letting me twist out of the way of the rapidly approaching bullets the size of baseballs. Closing in, however, something unexpected happened.

The Cyberwalk Blinked. Biotic energy glowed around the vehicle, making it faintly translucent, as it blurred to the side over to another chunk of rubble. My X-ray eye deepened how far it penetrated, and my stomach clenched when I saw biological matter -- eezo nodes. A lot of them. Enough to encompass a tank on legs. However, I also saw that even a brief Blink was killing the pilots, who were hooked directly into the machine. The biotic energy completely overwhelmed whatever safety measures that they had in place, and the over exposure to the raw biotic energy was as deadly as being exposed to the element itself.

My hand snapped out, firing the GBM just as it reappeared. A Shield briefly appeared, but it was punched through, liquidating what was left of the rock it stood on. The Cyberwalks had already seemed dangerous, but they just got a lot more so. Taking in another sharp breath, I saw a shadow pass over me from above just in time to see the arrival of Smasher as he crashed down on the rock I stood on.

"You're getting distracted," Smasher noted, making me clench my teeth as we clashed.

'That is Smasher. I know that smug prick anywhere. All metal, no meat.'

"I thought your entire deal was being all chrome. What's with the meat you're rocking?" I snarled at him, targeting his arms while my drone peppered him with lasers and plasma. It was dense, but it had poor heat dispersion, I quickly noted, seeing some parts glowing and simmering underneath the onslaught.

"Some meat is more useful than others," Smasher snarled at me, sounding as angry as I had ever heard him. I cut through an arm, only to see that part of it break off to reveal a secondary slender arm, much like the ones between his two oversized pairs, with mantis blades erupting from them. "The meat that I'm rocking now came from your choom, A."

I'm going to kill him. I was already going to kill him, but now he just made it personal. "I hope you can still feel pain," I snarled at him. He had obviously been trying to piss me off and it had worked like a charm. Time slowed to a crawl as both of us blurred into action -- he had adapted to the blade, I quickly noticed as Smasher and I traded half a hundred blows in a single second. He knew that blocking was damaging to him, so instead, he diverted or caught the blade with the flat of his thermal ones that rippled with biotic shielding. At the same time, he lunged at me with his additional arms, trying to overwhelm me with pure offense.

Another second passed and we eclipsed more than a hundred blows a second, standing on top of a floating rock in a sea of them. Smasher was overwhelming, I thought. Something truly inhuman.

'Gotta pace myself. Can't slip up because I'm tired.'

By the fifth second, my body was starting to burn from the effort of keeping up with Smasher's body of chrome and steel. It was almost a relief when the Cyberwalks reappeared, taking a shot at me with their autocannons and utterly destroying the ground that we fought on. I flipped backward, my arm falling under my feet, but a glow from Smasher warned me that he was in hot pursuit. Time resumed its normal pace to see him Charging at me while I backed off. "That meat body of yours already tapping the fuck out? Disappointing."

I was familiar with nose bleeds at this point, which is why I knew a small one was leaking out of my nose. The Sandy was fine tuned to my body, but it was still a dangerous tool to overuse. Meaning that the safest thing to do was to keep my distance. Which was why I closed in on Smasher, flipping over him as he streaked through the air and sent actual tons of boulders at me, smashing through the streets below. He was completely uncaring of the destruction around him, even as he ended up hurling mechs at me that were destroyed when they crashed.

I took another shot with the GBM, something that he had expected me to do, and the blood red laser splashed against his body again when he pivoted to block. It opened him up to an attack from behind.

Becca and the others announced themselves with a powerful explosive blast that struck Smasher from the back while missiles streamed out of the Javelin by the dozen. They streaked out, smashing into rubble before expanding into singularities that drew in the rock, steel, and people. Smasher, despite taking a solid hit, kept a fine control over the mass effect field we were submerged in and diverted the singularity missiles away from him. The shell that struck him was a high yield explosive that was shrunk down to the size of a normal tank shell when it was actually ten times that size.

'Nova, reinforcements. Rogue? That you?'

Smasher was obscured by smoke for a moment before I spotted him with thermal imaging. Racing forward, I dove into the smoke and slammed into him. His armor had taken a solid hit, but while it was battered, it was still mostly intact. I couldn't hack through it with a single slash, so I would have to chip away at it, I decided, thrusting the tip of the blade into the hole I had already made. The blade sank deeper as my momentum carried us both out of the smoke entirely. The explosive shell had destroyed the arms on Smasher's right side.

"You aren't the only one with back up," I snarled at him holding my arm out for the drone arm to slam back into place at my elbow. The GN Drive whined, spewing a flurry of particles, charging up the voltage as I released the safety limiters. Grabbing the vibroblade that was half buried in his chest, I sent seven hundred million volts of lightning directly into him -- my vibroblade glowed red hot before quickly being reduced to slag, but it still carried the volts directly into the depths of Smasher's core. The rocks began to fall out of the sky, his control over his biotics suddenly shit thanks to millions of volts of electricity.

"You-" Smasher started to snarl, his back hitting a slowly falling piece of floor that cracked under his weight. His body was so heavy that he couldn't move under his own power, I realized. Completely dependent on his biotics to move.

"I can't be bothered to hear your last words," I told him, pressing the GBM directly to the glowing red mass that was his chest and pulling the trigger. My arm snapped back, a few alerts telling me that I had broke something inside of it, but nothing too important. Smasher, on the other hand, had a massive hole blasted through his chest. I knew he was dead because not a second later, everything started to fall to the ground with thunderous force.

'Fuckin' a. Good riddance.'

Falco swung the Javelin around, letting me leap onto it. Falco swerved between the falling debris while Becca was chewing me out. "We need to jet out of here-"

"Falco! The hovercar!" I cut her off, spotting where Saburo had gotten off to. He stood in the middle of an open door, not even braced against anything.

'Not his style. Smug asshole, but he ain't stupid. He's bait… and I'm fucking biting.'

"We're getting out of here!" Becca shouted in response, and the Javelin began to bank, telling me that Falco was listening to her. I grit my teeth and made a snap decision -- it was a trap. I felt it in my gut, but it was a trap I was going to trigger if there was even the slightest chance that I could kill him. Kill him and Arasaka splinters. My arm popped off, becoming a hoverboard that I leapt on to fly off at Saburo, who seemed unbothered by my approach. "L! Get your gonk ass back here!"

I was going to get yelled at, I knew, but that didn't matter as I rapidly ascended. I closed in, and it was then that Goro revealed himself with the crack of gunfire, a bullet shattering off of my temple. Subdermal implants. A rather useful thing considering how often I got shot at. Goro didn't get the chance to pull the trigger again before I was inside of the hover car.

"Well-" Saburo started before I silenced him by grabbing him by the face and smashing his skull against the wall. Blood splattered up the wall and across my face, but I instantly knew something was wrong. Mostly because Saburo was still looking at me with white static around my wrist that was still in his face. "I see. You are not one for gloating, Shepherd-san."

'Shepard? Who the fuck is Shepard? Fuck. I can't even kill this bastard in my dreams?'

"Suppose it was too much to hope that you'd be here in person," I said, letting the corpse slump to the ground. It was shaped like Saburo, which is why I hadn't noticed the projector that was layered over him.

"You honor me by thinking I would be so brave as to stand in a room with you, Shepard-san. You are a considerable foe. Goro-kun and Smasher-san have been my favorite tools for decades for good reason, yet they broke on you just as the wave broke upon the cliffside," Saburo said, and I expected there to be hate in his voice. Anger. Rage. Instead, Saburo sounded… alive. "No. I am not so foolish as to be in the same city as you. In truth, I find it discomforting that we are on the same planet."

My eyes narrowed to slits at the projection of Saburo Arasaka, who still stood before me. "Am I supposed to be flattered?" I asked him, unsurprised that he wasn't here, but it was disappointing nonetheless. How Goro and Smasher acted -- that was likely for this, so I would chase after him in an attempt to put him down. It was all to convince me that he was here at all.

"You may take it however you wish, but I do honor you. If there is anyone in this world capable of killing me, then it is you," Saburo told me without a hint of shame. "I had hoped that the upgrades to Smasher-san and the new line of Cyberwalks would be enough to kill you, but you have prevailed. Again. The data shall be most useful in the next attempt."

'Gloating. This ain't a dream, it's a fucking nightmare.'

"What makes you think there will be another attempt?" I asked him, making Saburo tilt his head. "You overplayed your hand. I know what you care about now. Japan, right? The Japanese Empire? How about you hand yourself over to me and I won't sink those islands?" I half snarled at him and I saw his eyes narrow ever so slightly.

"You may do as you wish, but it will be a pointless endeavor in any case. You have dashed a century's worth of plans, Shepard-san. With this latest public failure to kill you… it is disappointing, but I was prepared for this possibility. You have been targeting my company's public interests. Pulling the fraying thread at the seams to unravel it all. No longer," Saburo told me, and my guy clenched, knowing I wouldn't like what I was going to hear next. "Arasaka Incorporated… is no longer a publicly traded company. Our investors have all been bought out or murdered. All unnecessary employees have been fired, and those that retain their employment will vanish alongside me. You have defeated my company."

He gave me an ugly smile, "However, you have yet to defeat me. Take pride in this victory, Shepard-san. It will be the last."

With that, he vanished and I threw myself out of the hover car a few seconds before it exploded. I felt heat wash over my face as I free fell down to the ground, frustration welling up inside of me. Saburo had changed his company in order to survive me. First with the closed network, and now by privatizing it. He hadn't said it, but I knew what his next steps would be -- Arasaka Inc. would become a shadow organization. Insulated by proxies and only making contact with a select few.

I clenched my jaw as I flew down to the Javelin, Becca was poking her head out of the hatch, her expression livid. It fell when she saw mine. "Another body double, huh?" Becca asked me, blowing out a sigh while I wiped away my bloody nose. Looking away, I saw nothing but a pile of rubble. There was no trace of the once proud and rich building beyond scraps of gold glittering in the sun. Off in the distance, I heard sirens.

'Blue balls is what it is. What… what is this?'

"Yeah, it was a body double. And…," I trailed off, a sigh escaping me. "Sorry."

'Who is sorry? It's not fucking me. What… this…'

My head throbbed as I massaged my forehead, "Let's just head back to base," I said, starting to walk forward as my arm returned, locking into place. I had overused the Sandy-

'Oh. Yeah-

-"I died, didn't I?" A voice echoed out in my head, catching me flat footed. The pain in my head skyrocketed, earning a grunt from me. "Then… who are you?"

I didn't get a chance to answer before everything went dark.