[TN: Sorry, been busy with class here the rest of this week, chapters]
The entire Colorado Farm was a boiling mess.
In fact, the number of vehicles in the area was still climbing. Plenty of people figured this was the perfect place to flex their combat chops.
Compared to the Badlands, Colorado Farm's terrain had a little more complexity. The roads were narrower. The small wooden houses broke the line of sight.
But those houses couldn't even stop rifle rounds. With a decent multimodal sensor suite, you could weave through the streets and still punch rounds straight through walls—clean, nasty, surgical.
Except…
What everyone expected to face was, at most: reinforced armor, vehicle-mounted heavy MGs, maybe an RPG launcher, maybe some military-grade explosives, maybe drones if someone was feeling fancy.
But that was the problem.
If that colossal monster from the Badlands really rolled into their sightline—could they actually threaten it?
No one knew.
The truth was, even Leo was sweating a little. They'd barely entered and already bagged one electromagnetic cannon—and he had no idea what else was waiting in the dark.
"How is it?" she asked.
Leo sat in the driver's seat, but the one actually driving wasn't him. It was the AI. Even his movement was being assisted by Little Octopus.
To be honest, you could practically call Leo disabled right now.
But the data throughput in his skull was anything but small. The Legendary Mackinaw's onboard chip had limited computing. If a netrunner pushed in, how much could they really stop?
That was a big unknown.
Especially since the enemy team had a rogue AI.
So Leo was running overwatch on the Net while he tore down the electromagnetic cannon they'd just scooped.
"High-tech," he muttered. "Even Rheinmetall probably can't build this thing anymore."
The EMG-85's restriction level was higher than the Nekomata. This was a heavy weapon for armored infantry.
But for the kind of output it could theoretically deliver, its form factor was almost cute.
Just looking at the acceleration array, it was only about a head larger than a Nekomata sniper rifle—yet the muzzle energy was more than four times higher.
The only reason you could do that was the materials in the acceleration array.
Real-deal military superconductors.
Too bad it was already shattered. None of the fragments still showed obvious superconductive behavior. And it was hard to reverse a full system from broken teeth.
They'd have to haul it back and figure out the rest later.
BOOM—
In the blacked-out sprawl of Colorado Farm, explosions and gunfire rolled nonstop. Leo stowed the cannon and pushed the plan to V and Jackie's HUDs.
So far, forty-eight vehicles had shown up in the zone. Thirty-seven were already disabled.
Their job was simple: clean up anyone who might still be breathing… and then move into the next segment.
With vehicles dead in the street, the "race" had turned into open urban warfare. Some mercs and gangoons had even started using the terrain to fight back.
Why not just quit?
This wasn't a legit race.
Santo Domingo wasn't like the Badlands. Out there, if you bailed, no one was coming to chase you.
But here? This was Sixth Street turf. One of Leo's objectives was to stabilize the positions of several gangs he'd influenced across multiple districts.
Anyone who'd entered this event was a lunatic with guts.
They had two choices: run like a dog with its tail on fire… or die here.
BOOM!
The Legend swung around a corner. In the middle of the street, wrecked cars were piled together like someone had built a bonfire out of scrap.
Sixth Street shooters were posted in buildings on both sides.
But the enemy was just as insane—
A cybered-up giant—over two meters tall—was clutching his head and charging into a building like a raging bull.
Every step spiderwebbed cracks into the pavement. Where calves and thighs should've been, superheated steam vented in violent bursts. Leo's scanner showed the guy's average temperature everywhere except the brain was already at sixty Celsius.
The steam venting off him was over one seventy.
Hot enough to scald flesh instantly.
BANG!
He smashed into a two-story wooden house. The place wasn't big, but the impact was. A thunder of destruction erupted inside—
Then the whole building started to collapse.
The bastard had shoulder-checked an entire house into the dirt.
"What kind of cyber-monster—" the watchers in hiding were pissing themselves.
Respect for huge strength is baked into biology. Put a human in front of a bear, they'll feel fear—can't help it.
A walking human bulldozer?
That was worse.
But humans didn't claw their way to the top of the food chain by doing push-ups. That kind of attack only proved one thing:
He was running on fumes.
[HEAP rounds remaining: 5]
The giant burst out of the wreckage and charged another building. Sixth Street inside panicked, scrambling for windows, trying to bail.
But the Legend accelerated around the corner at the same time.
"We'll spend the last rounds," Leo said.
THUMP.
The HEAP round left the barrel—so fast the giant didn't even have time to turn and see what was about to hit him.
BOOM!
The blast hit. Sixth Street, still half-blind with shock, realized their building hadn't collapsed. They leaned out to look—
A decent crater had been punched into the street, like someone had planted C4.
And the giant?
Nothing left.
If you looked real close, you could spot familiar components hanging from rooftops and distant structures like grim decorations.
When the second target came into view, Leo saw him carrying his buddy with one arm while firing an assault rifle with the other—covering the retreat.
The man wore heavy plate across a broad frame, enough to shrug off most small arms and even some blasts. Raw strength meant that once ammo ran dry, he could rip apart a small apartment block and loot weapons right off Sixth Street corpses.
It would've been touching, if it wasn't Night City.
But it still didn't beat one HEAP round.
[HEAP rounds remaining: 4]
Then there was the cyberpsycho who only cared about tearing down buildings.
[HEAP rounds remaining: 3]
Then the one who kept hurling chunks of metal like a human trebuchet.
[HEAP rounds remaining: 2]
Then the guy who actually managed to jack a vehicle and make a break for it.
[HEAP rounds remaining: 1]
But after getting jumped once, all of them were only one HEAP round away from flatlining.
In ten minutes, the Legend rolled through every remaining holdout and blew their bodies apart.
Sixth Street watched the Legend disappear into the dark, stared at the craters it left behind, and sat down hard on the pavement.
Death had looked at them—
Then the Legend had slammed it off the road.
Awe, and more awe.
The last one… when Leo found him, he was kneeling in the road with his hands over his head, huge body trembling.
Behind him was a busted car, and inside were a few people still barely alive.
"Leo…" Jackie's voice softened. He'd caught a thread of mercy he didn't expect.
"Blow him apart." Leo's tone didn't change, but it sounded cold enough to frost glass.
Even V looked away, suddenly uncomfortable.
"Mano, they—"
"Their full-body chrome has been tampered with," Leo said. "If you can't do it, fine. The explosion threshold won't breach our armor system."
Jackie didn't speak. In the targeting feed, the reticle was already centered on the kneeling man.
The man lifted his face—tears everywhere. The expression was pathetic, like a street beggar.
And for some reason, looking at him, Jackie felt like he was staring at himself—at the version of himself that once wanted to be legendary.
Or maybe it was every merc and ganger who'd ever dreamed of making it big. Tonight, they'd seen them all. Every single one of them looked like him in some way.
Not that Jackie had ever knelt like that.
Just…
He hadn't expected that even if he wanted to let them go, the client would never allow it.
In that heartbeat of hesitation, the Legend had already reached the man.
Unlike V—who'd turned away—and Jackie—who'd sunk into thought—Leo never took his eyes off the man's face.
Regret. Humiliation. Pain. Fear. Terror.
Even something like hurt feelings—childish, wounded indignation—was there, raw on his features.
Then, in the final firing window, every expression froze.
Anger and disbelief surfaced—
But at the same time, the tears kept pouring harder, uncontrollable. Coolant began spraying out of the man's chassis in violent jets.
This was the backdoor Leo meant.
While analyzing this kind of full-body frame, he'd found some interesting details.
The Samson platform ran at high output. It needed serious thermal management.
But if cooling failed—and you overclocked the system, locked the moving parts—the locked components and the Samson's outer armor would form a rigid shell.
Inside that shell?
A core whose temperature and pressure would keep climbing.
Like a bomb.
And Little Octopus had found something else in the debris: remote control hardware that wasn't strictly necessary.
Leo felt Jackie's hesitation. He knew Jackie would pull the trigger at the last instant—
"So we'll save a round," Leo said.
[The Legend: Hammer-30 vehicle cannon offline. Explosion defense mode adjusted!]
[The Legend: Impact incoming!]
The shockwave swept through the entire street.
(End of chapter)