Although Jackie shouted "uppercut," the bullets actually got there faster.
The cyberpsycho woman had her hand around one of her "sisters'" heads, about to deliver another brutal groin smash, when a Mackinaw truck appeared at the end of the street!
She looked up—her twin cyber-eyes trembled violently as the hallucination shattered, giving way to reality—
But this reality came at her like a storm.
The sound of 14mm caseless rounds leaving the barrel was like the roar of a dragon. A flash of muzzle fire, and a stream of bullets tore through the air around her. The ground looked like it had been hammered, pocked with deep craters.
One bullet merely grazed her half-melted left shoulder—but even that was enough to rip the entire arm apart!
BOOM!
A deafening crash followed as Jackie's massive frame slammed into the ground—
Jackie wasn't small to begin with, and with his reinforced exoskeleton for structural strength, his height exceeded two meters. Add in those massive powered gauntlets, and he was like a mountain falling from the sky.
The modified cyberpsycho woman stood nearly 1.9 meters tall herself, but compared to Jackie's sheer bulk, she still came up short.
Still, she had absolute faith in her gear.
In the cyberpunk era, street implants were either big or strong—but she'd seen plenty of oversized junk: flashy on the outside, useless inside.
Hers, though, was different.
This was a full-body cyberframe proudly labeled "Sex Doll Power."
Her left leg kicked back, the cracked pavement sinking under her heel. The recoil channeled through her servos, converging at her waist, then twisted up through her torso into her punching arm.
The movement was perfectly synchronized with data modeled after top-tier martial artists—every muscle actuator and servo worked in flawless harmony, integrating into a single, concentrated surge of power.
The force expanded the pit beneath her feet; overloaded servos shrieked as their current peaked.
She met Jackie's colossal fist head-on.
A catastrophic collision.
The instant they clashed, the Scorching Knuckles' intense heat and force transferred into her arm—and her fist exploded like a cheap firecracker.
Then her forearm. Then her upper arm—bent, cracked, shattered.
That perfect kinetic chain she relied on now became her executioner.
Her artificial chest muscles tore apart, her waist servos failed, and the violent feedback carved through her body like a physical entity, ripping downward along the same kinetic path.
The energy spiraled—rotating down through her legs—and then twisted back up through her lower frame.
Her cybernetic body couldn't withstand the pressure. It burst apart—fragments scattering in all directions. From above, it looked like a tornado of debris had erupted from her body.
BANG!
The blast wave scattered raindrops into mist, fragments of cyberware flying through the air.
Click.
To onlookers, it had all happened in under a second—from Jackie's landing to the punch's impact.
The cyberpsycho woman remained frozen mid-punch, her shattered frame locked in place, like—
like a ballerina frozen mid-spin, her confidence gone in an instant.
Suspended in the air, her incomplete arms and head drooped forward slightly, as if taking a final bow.
Jackie's fist recoiled just a little—but the hit barely fazed him. He even reached out with his other hand to gently steady the collapsing woman.
A single thunderous noise—and the fight was over.
On both sides of the street, the onlookers went completely silent, struck dumb.
Compared to the MaxTac, whose operations usually left the streets in ruins, this was something different—
precise, clean, and brutally efficient.
The Mackinaw truck came to a stop in the middle of the street. The fight was over.
A girl with asymmetrical purple-green gradient hair sat on the ground and suddenly burst into tears—
She'd almost been killed by her own "sister," smashed against a pair of iron cybernetics.
The Tyger Claws really weren't what they used to be—or maybe, they were simply returning to where they had started long ago.
Back in 2020, the Tyger Claws were just a third-rate gang, and Westbrook was still an undeveloped district. Gangs stuck to their corners of Japantown, rarely crossing streets.
But after years of growth, Night City had changed dramatically.
Now Westbrook was a hub of prosperity, and Japantown had become one of the city's most vibrant—and most chaotic—districts.
The Tyger Claws had risen to power, weaving their influence everywhere: the NCPD, Arasaka, even the local businesses.
At their peak, they practically owned half of Westbrook; even the police gave them face.
Until recently.
After that Burger King–level beatdown, their most profitable division was wrecked overnight.
The gang's second-in-command died suddenly, their greatest protector—the NCPD's deputy commissioner—was arrested, Arasaka pulled its funding, and over a hundred key members were wiped out.
People joined to make money. And now, after a hundred core members dead and the H8 Tower—their headquarters—blown through from top to bottom, the blow was catastrophic.
Once they weakened, the vultures came.
Add in the flood of black-market military-grade tech lately, and Maekawa's headaches multiplied.
Westbrook was no longer the crowded but safe commercial district it once was. Every flavor of violent lunatic now wanted to take a bite out of Tyger Claw territory.
"...So, I need more money to maintain order."
Maekawa sat on the couch, cradling his injured arm, calm as ever.
"Screw you! Not a single eddie of their money's getting cut!"
The pink-and-purple-haired girl leading the Moxes spat back, every word sharp as a knife. It seemed the pinker her hair, the harsher her tongue.
"Judy's right," said Maiko Maeda, crossing one leg over the other.
Something in her demeanor had changed—she looked bolder now, almost predatory.
But Leo noticed the subtle tension in her posture: beneath the bravado, she was terrified of losing Clouds, the club she'd only just taken for herself.
Of course, part of the reason Maekawa had gotten so badly beaten was because Maiko betrayed him, working with the Moxes from the inside to take him down.
While listening, Leo's mind flickered through layers of incoming data.
[Little Octopus: Boss, on the other side they've returned General Ross and the wreckage of the ship. But Roxxon and Stark Industries have built another batch of Iron Soldiers—they're preparing for deployment at the Suez.]
[Little Octopus: They're planning more strikes on the other Somali ports. Even after last week's protest at the Capitol, there's still been no response.]
[Little Octopus: The Mkuku River rescue was a success. Our second shipment of construction equipment has arrived. Tanzania's agreed to the Neural-Link Universal Healthcare Project—lots of volunteers, too.]
[Little Octopus: We're remotely operating the engineering rigs to build the first reactor. Local technicians will be trained within two weeks. The manufacturing plant should be fully operational within a month.]
[Little Octopus: The African Union is opening the rest of its mines to us. Within three months, we'll be self-sufficient in most raw materials. We can start testing production of large-scale vehicles and—]
Leo rubbed his temples as he scrolled through Octopus's reports and the global news feeds, feeling a headache coming on from both the Tyger Claws–Mox standoff and the cross-world logistics chaos.
"...All this over that? I thought Tyger Claw had kidnapped more of your girls again."
"What do you mean that?!" Judy snapped, arms crossed, fuming. "You're cutting ninety percent of their profits! How the hell are they supposed to survive?!"
Maekawa stayed eerily calm.
"Without the Tyger Claws maintaining order, you wouldn't be earning at all. Survival wouldn't even be on the table. Paying for safety's a bargain—just pray you'll have somewhere left to buy it from."
"...Listen," Leo finally cut in, voice hard. "I honestly don't care about your petty turf drama."
The moment he spoke, Maekawa wisely shut his mouth.
But Judy wasn't done yet—Maiko tugged at her sleeve to no avail.
"I thought you were the good guys! But now I see I was wrong! You're just violent mercs—helping the monsters who tore Anna apart for scrap!"
[Little Octopus: Boss, one more issue—labor expansion on the other side's happening too fast. I've rebalanced the cross-dimensional workforce encryption ratio, but Night City's side is still short-staffed. We'll hit a labor gap in two weeks.]
Leo suddenly turned to Judy, his voice low and cutting:
"You say you're the good guy—so why wasn't it you out there doing a full-body cyber conversion and leading the charge? Not good enough?
Or do you just like watching your 'sisters' lose their minds and bodies for you—killing and dying while you watch?"