Maybe for the people involved, this scene even had a touch of romance.
For everyone else? It was pure horror.
The Scavengers were cornered in a narrow alley — nowhere to run, nowhere to hide — just screaming for their buddies to open fire.
Now they regretted ever taking the Brainiacs' "easy money."
Explosions filled the surveillance feeds. That massive armored frame moved with almost human agility. Its roaring engine gave it more speed than the average person, bounding up and down the cramped alley like some cybernetic beast.
They'd thought the maze of side streets gave them the advantage. Sure, the guy was the infamous "Burger King," but this was Brainiac's turf.
How hard could it be to ambush him?
They never imagined he'd roll in backed by the NCPD and the Mox. He owned the place.
Anyone who's run with gangs knows the feeling — that paralyzing terror of being cornered, screaming for help that never comes.
That helpless dread when your enemy could snap you like a twig with a flick of his finger, and you couldn't even scratch him.
Ninety-nine percent of gangers are just cowards tamed by fear.
Now that fear had taken physical form.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
A Scav's partner howled to drown out his terror, his whole body spasming under a malfunctioning skill chip. An NCPD round scraped across his freshly replaced skull plate, throwing off a shower of sparks.
The Scav growled, hyping himself up — "They've got iron armor, we've got iron heads!"
BOOM!
A massive hand smashed through the cover.
Its fingers — glowing faintly red from the heat of repeated fire — clamped down.
The "iron head" melted like gelatin, leaving nothing but chunks and fluid in a second.
"Run for it! That tin bastard can't—"
CRACK!
A round from the gauntlet-mounted gun exploded his head. The wall behind him was painted red and gray.
The heavy XS-1 powered suit stomped deeper into the apartment block.
Behind it, the broken, limbless survivors whimpered amid the rubble.
Joestar stepped in, calling names one by one.
"Wait— you're Maelstrom?"
The Scav with half his face gone froze, raising his trembling hand as Joestar leveled his weapon.
Joestar blinked, but didn't lower the gun.
"What?"
"I—I'm one of your partners, man! Strategic cooperation! You sent me to snatch a few guys filming black-market Braindances vids, but when I got there, there wasn't even a—a freakin' editor—"
"What the hell?" Joestar frowned, trying to recall. "Hold on. Who sent you?"
"Uh… Brick?"
BLAM!
"Lying weasel. Run your mouth again, see what happens."
Brick ejected a spent mag and peeked around the wall —
Close call. Almost got friendly-fired.
The whole scene was caught by hidden cameras.
The "Golden Eye" optics made Joestar's figure flicker under the IR interference, but that was fine —
They'd already captured one Maelstrom member.
DoomDoom hung from the wall, limbs torn off, augments stripped, barely breathing — but alive.
That meant the control room could compare footage from a decrypted Golden Eye to the scrambled one, reverse-engineering Joestar's appearance.
"Not Brick."
Three figures sat before the monitors, identical frames under massive neural-boost helmets.
Only their voices and armor paint colors differed.
Each wore a glowing coin around their neck — an abstract brain etched on the front.
Cables thick as human arms snaked from their helmets, electricity arcing and crackling.
Leo — unusually — hadn't gone in through the Net.
That surprised the Brainiac trio.
Normally, "Burger King" would've tried hacking first.
This time, their carefully laid trap was useless.
Eren Street was crawling with micro-transmitters, enough to cripple any unprotected decker.
All military-grade corporate tech.
Anyone dumb enough to link in would have their neural modem fried in seconds.
Now the Brainiacs were stuck — just like their predecessors decades ago:
Their enemy didn't care about the Net.
He'd just walked through it in power armor.
[Sophie: The front line's breaking! These Scavs are useless!]
[Raymond: Don't say that. They're trying their best.]
[Sophie: You idiot, you defending them now?]
[Sophie: What's the mainframe's status? Any progress?]
[Raymond: Uh… nothing in the shallow layer. It's still running surgery for the guys at the Slaughterhouse. Deep dive might cause a cascade.]
[Sophie: Goddammit, Elio! How long for the patch?!]
[Elio: Almost done. Flashing firmware now. Two minutes.]
[Elio: These units are insane — with last time's combat data from the Riot Squad, I re-optimized the subframe and drive pattern—]
[Sophie: Shut up and finish! We still need to finish the city hall hack!]
Sophie glared at the feed — it locked onto Jackie's back as micro-grenades auto-detonated and intercepted bullets midair.
"Holy shit… if only we had one of those."
BOOM!
The building shook, dust raining down, lights flickering.
"What?! Speak up, can't hear you!!"
"I said, try not being such a jerk!"
"What?!"
The octo-arm swung wide — V and Leo swung into the building.
V landed smoothly, cold and precise, striding ahead.
But she'd swung too fast, letting go too early.
Leo stumbled mid-air, nearly face-planting, saved only by the octo-arm slamming down to brace him —
No one saw he'd almost eaten the floor.
He looked up at V, confused as hell.
Turning back toward the street, the cleanup was already done —
One hundred twenty Scavs dead. Grenades, rockets, mines, LMGs — the works.
This was as bad as urban combat gets.
You never knew when a grenade would roll out of the dark, when a sniper would pop from the shadows, or when a turret would rip you to ribbons from a rooftop.
But a unit like the XS-1 made alley warfare simple.
Of course, not everyone had Jackie's Lizard Serum, and mass-production XS-1s needed Atlas-grade synthetic muscle retuning.
All prototype data was logged, to speed up the manufacturing stage.
Cold light shone from the stairwell to the underground.
The Brainiacs—
utterly pathetic.
Leo, used to being the underdog, almost felt bored.
Still, for a gang just crawling back into relevance — and a noncombat one at that — this result wasn't surprising.
The only real surprise was how they'd managed to con over a hundred Scavs into working for them.
CRACK!
The octo-arm slammed down on a wounded Scav's shoulder, claws gripping his chest. Bones snapped under the pressure.
"Hhhkk—!"
Air hissed from a punctured lung. The Scav's terrified eyes met Leo's.
"What are you doing here?"
"Bu— buying— hhk—"
"Forget it."
THUD!
The body dropped limp.
Leo's holo display lit up with a new message.
[River: These sons of bitches.]
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