Chapter 25
"Hey, Jugra—you’ve got all kinds of tech loaded into you, but how strong are you, really?"
Ugh, there it was—the classic "Oh, you’ve got fancy tech, so you must be unstoppable, right?" nonsense.
…Okay, David’s question was fair. And now that I thought about it, I’d never actually shown him what I could do in a fight.
We were slurping imported oil-soba noodles during lunch after a morning of back-to-back surgeries. He’d probably gotten curious watching Ripdoc install combat cyberware all day.
Mentally drained, a thought hit me: If I don’t prove myself now, I’ll get stuck on babysitting duty when things go to hell.
You know the trope—the OP ally who never fights because the story would end in five seconds.
Not happening.
So, half on autopilot, I dragged David into a job. We slid into my Delamain (basically my private car at this point) and briefed in the back seat.
"Mission details. Target’s a drug lab some Tyger Claws idiot set up. Product’s called Kirakira—sparkly, like stardust. Users get psychedelic euphoria, their vision flooded with shimmering lights. …This is personal. Method’s your call. But no vetoes. Erase it."
"…The hell?!"
"Relax. It’s just a job I’ve been saving. Thought we’d handle it together."
"Jugra, you can’t pick fights with the Tyger Claws!"
"You really believe that?"
"Huh?"
Probably worried about me, but I’d told Wakako a thousand times: Brains and drugs are the two things I can’t fix, and I hate them.
Actually, scratch that—just keep drugs off the damn streets.
Night City’s chaos on a good day. A drug epidemic? Seriously? Imagine every gutterpunk tweaking, killing for a fix. The city’d collapse.
Cyberware’s already rotting people’s minds. We don’t need this crap speeding it up.
I’d always planned to torch this place. But David’s question tipped me over the edge: If we’re doing this, we’re doing it right.
"David. I hate drugs. Hate them. No tech can fix what they destroy. Picture Main Street packed with junkies, hollow-eyed and violent. You want that?"
"That’s…"
"And now the Tyger Claws—the gang I’m stuck with—are peddling this shit? Unacceptable. I’m furious. Can’t feel it? Fine. I’ll show you."
David finally paled, throat bobbing.
The Delamain stopped in Little China outside a "auto shop." The first Kirakira production site—let this stand, and more would sprout like weeds.
Time to burn it down.
To civvies, it looked legit. But David spotted the Tyger Claws tattoos. My scanner lit up with bloodstains, vomit, and Kirakira residue.
Not that I needed proof. I’d already hacked their cameras with Megacon.
Basement held the production line. More than enough evidence to justify reducing this place to slag.
"Let’s go."
I grabbed the cloaked weapon trunk that’d slithered from the Delamain. Its mechanical arm handed me a grenade, and I hurled it without hesitation.
It rolled to the goons’ feet just as—
Crack.
An EMP blast fried every machine in sight.
"…The hell?"
"First strike."
The Tyger Claws with reflex boosters dropped like puppets with cut strings.
Next came F-GX frag grenades, then a CHAR incendiary.
Shrapnel shredded the room before flames swallowed it. Gas tanks blew, fire climbing the walls.
"Frags for cleanup. Fire for the rest."
Games make fires tame. Reality? They’re hungry.
Final touch: A MOLODETS bio-grenade down the basement stairs.
"No escapes. Gas finishes the job."
Then—boom. The building lurched as underground chem tanks detonated. Kirakira ingredients lit up the sky like twisted fireworks.
Almost… pretty.
A Tyger Claws ganger crashed onto the pavement in front of us—alive, barely.
I raised the modified Kang Tao L-69 Zhuo in my hands. The smart shotgun’s rectangular frame looked absurd, but the lock-on whir was unmistakable.
Five limbs. Five rounds. One corpse.
The Zhuo’s usually held back by weak range and damage. My mods fixed that. Eight slugs, perfect accuracy. Rumor said these things hunted drug dealers on their own.
"…What the hell is that?"
"My hobby."
"Where’s your Sandevistan? Mono-wire?"
"Need them for this?"
"…Point taken."
I emptied the mag into the body for good measure, then tossed the Zhuo back to the weapon trunk.
David finally noticed the invisible trunk, staring at where the shotgun vanished.
"Done here."
"…Yeah."
And that’s how I fight.
Grenades for efficiency. Overkill for the stubborn.
Why bother with blades when you can turn a place into a concept?
…Still wanna steal that grenade-nose guy’s recipes, though.
"Lesson learned?"
"…Yeah, I guess."
"Glad we're on the same page."
Let’s get one thing straight, David—I don’t spam Sandevistan like some chrome-junkie. When you know your enemy inside out, you can plan every move before they blink.
People ragged on the original David for "never learning," but my David? I’ll drill the lesson in properly. What’s there to learn from a cyberpsycho who just brute-forces everything? "Smashing through walls works until you die"? Please.
The anime David idolized that crap—mistook recklessness for strength. And look how that turned out.
…Wait.
Was that why he lasted longer as a psycho?
Those black-market BDs of actual cyberpsychos—flooding his brain with raw data until he built a tolerance.
Meaning those BDs could’ve been training. A way to prevent cyberpsychosis.
So David’s not just chrome-compatible—he’s resistant to rejection.
Shit. That changes everything. Gotta adjust his implant schedule ASAP.
"Mission complete. This’ll send a message: The Tyger Claws’ own Ripperdoc hates drugs. Maybe they’ll think twice now."
"Doubt they’ll forget this..."
"Rule of intimidation, David. You don’t warn—you show them. Make it brutal. Make them ask: ‘Do I want to die like that?’"
"…Fuck."
His disgusted mutter almost made me laugh.
This city romanticizes death, but how many gonks actually get a "beautiful end"? Two? Three?
They say cherry trees grow from corpses.
So how many bodies fed Arasaka Tower’s roots, I wonder?
I stole one last glance at that monolith before the Delamain’s door sealed shut, carrying us home.
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