The Battle of The Crossroads

"Okay, what the hell did you do to make this happen and why don't you already own Night City?" V asked as she held her phone up to scan my cock for cyberware again.

"Downstream benefit of one of my experimental implants." I told her in regards to the twenty percent increase in the dimensions of my genitals.

I suspect it was from the Charisma Implant. Over the last month I'd become even more ruggedly handsome, and even my cyberware had a certain charm to it. Hair came in thicker with a natural shine and softness that makes people stop and ask me my secret on the streets. Thank God I have the Intelligence to give them good advice. Making the world more beautiful one set of ears at a time. You're welcome~!

"You just made an implant in your free time that'll grow a ganic cock without a scalpel ever coming near it in your free time?" V chuckled and gave it a good shake, "They'll melt down all those four armed statues around town and recast them in your image."

"Like I said, downstream benefit of something bigger. And I'll be keeping it as a part of my private reserve." I informed her.

As much as I'd like living in a world with everyone getting twenty percent more beautiful, don't want to hand away the benefit of clear articulation to just anyone. Conmen, lawyers, and politicians the world over would be even more unstoppable.

"Benefit, huh. But now I can't get down to the base." she smirked as she gave the head a kiss.

"We'll just have to practice more. I believe in you, V." I grinned as I grabbed her hair and helped her out.

After all, protagonists don't quit.

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I stood in my kitchen staring at the fridge with a beer in my hand, thinking about the woman passed out in the bedroom nearby. She's definitely more than a tight body and a slick set of skills in the bedroom. She's got cunning and drive - something missing from just about everyone I sleep with - but do I love her or am I just friending real hard up in her guts?

It's a legitimate question in a world post sexual revolution. Even more with the conflated views of love and obsession that bombard people constantly in the entertainment sector.

Ultimately V doesn't know where to go with her drive. She knows she wants more and is willing to put in the work to get there, but where that more is she doesn't know yet. Lots of young people are like that, spinning their wheels waiting on some kind of sign. Losing potential a little every day rather than cut it off and focus on one path.

It's rare for people to be like my brother, to find their passion young and to know where they want to go if not yet how to get there. My own path was set in stone. To unlock my full potential I had to become a living legend of Night City.

An alert from El Coyote Cojo made me regret an earlier boast about how the bar was ready to fight in the Fifth Corporate War. I had not expected those words to come back to bite me so soon or to be so on the nose as the early warning camera's I'd set up along the roads that formed the major intersection nearest the bar showed hundreds of Arasaka underworld proxy soldiers coming our way in the form of the colorful Tyger Claws gang.

On their angular motorbikes and in their sporty little cars they came in force wielding guns and cyberware straight from the megacorp, many even trained first hand by them as street level assassins. At least a hundred of them came from each direction of Los Lobos Street and Pacific Boulevard, handfuls breaking off down the side streets and alleys.

I manually activated all the defenses I built up for El Coyote Cojo over the years. The patrons felt the shock of the alarms blaring and steel plating descending down over the window and doors. On the roof a dozen heavy turrets activated raising up over the parapets as scores of stolen and repurposed police drones took to the air coming from every adjacent building.

The sounds of automatic gunfire and explosions filled the night like a continuous roar, theirs and mine.

V no longer slept as I rushed into the bedroom and started pulling on underpants and my holsters and ammo belt.

"What's going on?" V shouted with a wide look in her eyes.

From a shelf in my closet I pulled down a heavy double pump shotgun, turning the safety off and then with great reluctance I handed it to her.

"Gang war. Stay here and shoot any slant eyed fuckers you see. Shoot first questions never." I told her before I turned to leave.

"Where are you going?" V yelled and stomped after me.

"To kill enough Butterheads to stack 'em up and build a wall eight feet high between here and Japantown so they can't ever do this again." I answered, not stopping when she grabbed me.

I went out the front door and saw a trio of Tyger Claws rolling up so I slammed my door shut and shouted, "Stay inside!"

The Neon Nips lifted their Smart Rifles to riddle me with lead, but I got to them first. The Sandevi-zerk activated and Juan D. Welles faded into the background. I wasn't a cool dude working on cars with my homies or flatlining nobody gonks with my brother. I was a cyberbeast. A metal gorilla on the wings of a peregrine falcon.

Whether the onrushing gangsters slowed down to a quarter of their speed or I moved forward four times faster than my already superhuman running speed didn't matter. Punching the head off the first gonk I hit did. Fast or slow we all experienced the same thing if at different rates and it was nova as fuck.

Not that the other two got to appreciate it for very long before their pulped bodies joined his on the street.

The Sandevi-zerk wore off by the time I encountered the next crew of Tygers, tracking them through the alleys by sound even with the hail of machine gun fire still going on not far away. Despite this my hand stills moved at a speed they couldn't keep up with as they'd barely even understood the sight of me by the time I'd cleared leather and the first bullet ripped landing right in the sternum of the lead man and blowing his ribs apart inside his chest.

I had the second and third shots down range by the time the fastest of them responded and after a brief exchange of gunfire six more Tygers were bleeding out on the ground. Moving on I reached the main road and witnessed an awesome ballet of death play out in front of me.

The Tyger Claws in their hundreds lit the night time street up with streams of small arms fire even as the lights up above got shot out one by one and the neon and holographic storefronts and advertisements burst in hails of bullets and grenades.

Overhead my networked drones conducted strafing runs, blasting the gang bangers down below with machine guns and rockets. I had just over eighty of them from years of hacking and jacking them from the cops. Tuning them and modifying them to my liking, the drones each operated as a processor in a greater system, performing calculations and coordination with all the drones in the network. They worked smarter as a swarm, and became dumber as they lost numbers, but still baselined at a slightly more aggressive police level programming.

The Tygers choice in arms came back to bite them in the ass tonight. Their favored smart guns were great in fast moving fire fights as the gyrotech and targeting systems allow them to just get the victim into a wide cone of effect in front of the weapon and it'll do the rest so long as it doesn't malfunction.

The down side is the kinetic energy the system delivers. Smart bullets are absolute ass at damaging hard targets. Targets like my modified police drones. The rapid percussion of hails of fire will get the job done by fucking up the internal systems, or even a lucky shot might hit something vital, but its a bad formula when the other side is carrying the kiss of death in each hand.

Even as more and more of my drones died in this battle the fire support on my end didn't decrease. The Tygers didn't make this big display to start a fight. They came in numbers like this for a lynching. They expected, and rightly so, that the sight of them would cow any ideas of resistance. That they'd arrive, drag us out of our bar and homes, execute us in the streets, and parade our dead bodies around as a warning to the next fools who dare defend themselves on their turf.

Instead they kicked a steel plate and the many Valentinos in the area found their nuts somewhere in the rivers of blood getting shed. The Tygers came under fire from every window nearby. Gold plated guns and the cholos wielding them determined to slay the invaders. I'd barely started shooting them myself when they started running. The night's promised rivalries not panning out.

Sad face.

I activated the Sandevi-zerk and put as much lead into them as possible. Everyone got a .42 magnum round, I didn't much care if they died from it or not, I just wanted each and everyone of them I could hit to feel personal regret for this attack.

They couldn't retreat like they wanted too, not with my drones hounding them, and the time it took them to get the last cost them dearly. I pressed on until the last Claw in range caught a bullet to the back of his stupid top knotted head, his melon bursting and the bike under him screeching across the pavement.

All around me flowed rivers of blood under broken bodies, broken machines, spent casings and shrapnel. Cars alarms blared, buildings were blackened and pockmarked. Those who couldn't get away due to injury were sought out and ended by the Valentinos that took to the street, whooping and wooing loudly in victory. It was all so violent and primal.

It was all so beautiful.

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Had to take a second crack at this chapter to get it right. The first try was too much focused on Juan basically being a superhero, but it didn't feel right. Juan's not ready to stand in front of a whole army and tell them to bring more men. Not yet. Better get to at least purple quality cyberware before that happens.

I like it a lot more being a victory from his many years building up defenses around his mom.

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