14/09/2077
The Aldecaldo Convoy, The Badlands
Outside Night City, State of Northern California
V
-
Since he'd left the Afterlife, since the Mox had taken Clouds and the Maelstromers and Animals had returned to their hideaways, V had never felt more at ease with his situation. Leaving the safety of the city borders, following Panam's truck, he'd come to walk around the camp in his combat gear. If anything, he'd felt under-dressed for the occasion where the Aldecaldo clan was taking the chance to move camps once more.

Of course, like the many times he had seen it and been a part of it, it was a long and painful process. The three main flatbeds had been packed to the brim with the scouting motorcycles, food and medical supplies of the camp. Mitch and Scorpion as well as some others had taken to welding some extra protection on the wagon train that was carrying the water for their desert trips. A lot of the cars had been filled with the clan's personal belongings; families ready to roll on the uncharted roads that only Nomads knew intimately enough to travel on.

A couple of the trucks and vans had more metal plating, carrying some members of the clan that didn't have their own cars or bikes. Scouts, led by Cassidy on his quadbike, were rolling around the site looking for hostiles that would be lurking and praying for a vulnerable nomad camp. The Wraiths, the Raffen Shiv would take any given chance to take it to the Aldecaldos after the last attacks.

Hence, he had found himself on the top of Panam's truck, Overwatch in his hand as he looked out over the southwest edge of the camp. Other than the occasional truck travelling to and fro from the nearby motel, there was not one sign of an attack coming. For once, he was happy with that result. He fought better without civvies in the way, he was used to having a clear battlefield, making the most out of a proper killzone.

He took his eyes from the scope, his hand on the small earpiece he'd been given. "Cass, it's V. The southwest sector is clear. Might be ready to send some of the families to the north oil field to meet the rest of the convoy. Start getting the heavy trucks ready."

The line scrambled, before returning to normal. "Copy that, V. We'll send them off in five. DeFalco is covering your position, get ready to move out."

"Roger that, old man."

The gaps of silence left V to his thoughts, one more time where he solidified his approach to his situation. He could feel it coming to the apex, the summit of the mountain where there wasn't much left to climb. Arasaka Tower leered, the building itself towering over all others that surrounded it. It was the Arasaka family's pride and joy in America, the method they used to show their size to everyone else. The Militech HQ was the exact opposite, it was hidden away, even on Corpo Plaza. Most of it was underground, but V had an ideal scenario where he could just kick either Smasher or Takemura off the roof and watch them be eviscerated on contact with the ground.

At least he dreamt about it in his sleep, one of the few scenarios that brought him peace other than when he felt the warmth of Panam as he held her tight against his chest. She was too understanding. They'd found themselves fondling each other when they'd returned, falling into another escapade where she realised that V wasn't going to leave Night City immediately. Seven years and the claws were still too deep. He needed to settle affairs, but he'd been truthful when he said it, when he left the city for good, he would find them again.

Turning around, V leapt off the roof of the truck, finding himself face to face with his compatriot. He'd given a curt nod to DeFalco as he swapped positions with V, the cyborg going to the centre of the camp to talk to Saul. Looking around, only a few select tents had remained in place from before. The multiplied roar of the nomad vehicles kicked up the sand at the border of the camp, trucks and buggies navigating across the sandtraps and desert trails. Entering the tent, he'd caught sight of Saul packing up his stuff into numerous brown heavy cases, his own MAC Deux truck outside and ready to be packed up.

Panam had pushed past, slipping in a small smirk to V as she pushed past with some of Saul's gear. V let out a small cough, alerting Saul to his presence as the shaggy-haired (but fresh-faced) leader stood up, his cases at his feet. He seemed to be a little bit happier, at least he was since V had last seen him since their last conversation. One in which they had affirmed themselves as Nomads, and whether they liked it or not, leaders of a kind for the people under them.

"Saul, nice to see that you've got the place moving again," V mentioned, almost offhandedly. "It's the best that you stay as far away from Night City for the next few months."

The leader chuckled. "Well, we won't have to worry about that. We're stopping off in Reno, getting more supplies and then making the long trip north. Mitch and Scorpion mentioned Alaska, Panam mentioned you said something about Montana?"

"I did, but maybe somewhere warm isn't too out of the picture. Salt Lake City ain't exactly a bad place too, last I heard it was the largest Nomad market to go to." V replied. "You never know, I might have to join you up there sometime."

Saul frowned. "You're not coming with us now? After all you've done?"

Panam had joined just in time, joining V's side to face Saul. "I said the same thing to him, Saul. He'll find his way back, somehow, he managed to do it after ten years. He'll do it again."

The leader of the Aldecaldos shook his head, sighing before he looked at the pair. "At least one of us is understanding of whatever your motives are, V. Well, we've got you helping us get out of here anyway. We'll take that for what it is."

V and Panam helped the older leader take apart his tent, piling his belongings onto the small bed of his truck before they took the tent down quickly. By the time they had finished, the sun had started it's process of setting as dusk took hold of the sky. Some of the scout bikes had taken off, escorting Saul and the fuel and water trucks to the oil fields to siphon off what they could whilst the rest covered the flatbeds. The camp was all but packed up, and for once, V felt homeless again, something he hadn't felt in a while. Panam had walked to her truck, readying it for departure before she came back to V.

"I know it seems like I'm beating a really dead horse V, but I need to say it again." Panam began. "You don't have to destroy Arasaka to feel better. You can come with us, and I know you won't listen to me because for some reason you've become more stubborn than me, but that's what I wanted, I needed to say to you."

V couldn't help but laugh. "You weren't gonna leave without trying to convince me one last time, were you?"

"Not a chance in hell, dumbass." Panam smiled, approaching quickly as she wrapped her arms around him in the warmest embrace she could give. "I can't stand it, leaving you here. I don't want to."

"I know, but it's not you, it's me…"

"Shut up, just let me have this without you saying some cheesy-ass shit like that." Panam resisted the urge to laugh too, taking as much time as she could with the hug before she gave him away again.

V pulled her closer. "I don't think you have any idea of how much I've wanted this, wanted you after all this time. I have to do this, but Panam? I will be back, I have no doubt about it, I will find you guys again."

She'd let out a few years, she'd outright refused to turn into a sobbing, hyperventilating mess, not when the camp needed her. "You fucking better. Can't believe as soon as we find you, we have to leave you again."

V pulled away, and Panam tried to fight before he pried himself free. His fingers pressed gently against her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. She was the living definition of rugged beauty. "Panam, I'm coming back. I'm not planning on dying."

"You better not be."

She'd closed her eyes as soon as she felt the back of his metal fingers gently stroke her cheek, with him wiping away the tears that were slipping down. He took a small step, approaching slowly before he (as gently as he could) pressed his lips against hers. He could feel her hands wandering as if she didn't know if she should hold his hands, keep him close by wrapping around him or just bringing him closer for a kiss he would definitely remember. He wished he could have held on longer, pulling away as she whispered 'I love you' and got into her truck, driving off for the final time.

With DeFalco having departed to escort the trucks, V was left to his own devices once again. Instead of looking into the city which he despised, he turned away. Trucks and bikes rumbled and thundered past, kicking up more sand than he expected as he clambered up the sandy hill to where Cassidy was positioned atop it all, as the king of the hill. Joining the old man, the pair kept to the silence as V looked out to the vast desert, the hot air blowing against his hair and face as he watched the trucks drive off, watched Panam drive off.

It was after ten minutes that Cassidy coughed loud enough for V to be broken out of his stupor. V turned to the old gunslinger, the elderly ranger handing off his scoped lever-action rifle to the younger soldier. "Southern sandhills, three hundred metres down, you see him?" Cassidy questioned.

"Affirmative," V grunted, keeping his eye down the scope as he sighted the large figure, garbed in black camouflage cloaks. "Cass, get on the trucks and get the flatbeds going now. You need to get out."

"We still have the stuff to pack up, kid." The old man argued. "Who is that?"

V slammed the rifle back into his hands, forcing him on the quadbike as V took control of the handles. The bike ripped down the hill, and Cassidy got off, looking at V. "It's Smasher. You need to go, all of you, whatever you've left, you need to leave it or you will die. Get in the trucks, get the stuff out and don't look back. Go, now!"

As soon as he had said his piece, V had already shot off into the desert plains, closing in towards the city. He'd recognise the sight of a DaoOni power armour suit anywhere, the Samson frame that Smasher had forged himself into. Every single time V had set his eyes on him, something bad happened, he'd lose someone or lose a part of himself all over again. No more, he'd told himself as he got closer and closer to the looming black figure that grew larger and taller as he approached.

The odd thing? Smasher never fired first, not one spray of gatling gun bullets, no salvo of missiles on his approach to rip V into bits and pieces. Psychological warfare? Maybe, perhaps it was arrogance or confidence on the psychotic soldier's part. From his experience, he'd always been one for more physical encounters, he would most likely want to have V ripped apart, bit by bit. On the other hand, it was the same. V wanted to destroy the borg who had torn his life apart so quickly and so violently.

Soon enough, V had closed the distance between the two, turning off the quad bike and leaving the key inside the ignition. Stepping off, he'd readied his gun hand as well as his combat cyberware. He'd analysed the figure, confirming it as Adam Smasher, the grim legend that left a trail of civilian casualties and collateral damage in his wake. His new arm, he'd named the Overcharger due to it's electrical output, sparked to life as voltage jolted out in small bolts.

His left hand took the Malorian, locked and loaded as the two soldiers circled each other. For the first time in a long time, he was scared. Smasher pulled back the hood, exposing the little skin that was left on his metal frame. His one red-eye modification remained, the absent one covered by a black and red fleshy-looking tissue. His armoured frame was glossy, although the blasting winds had forged specks of sand to the fresh coat of black paint.

"I knew I'd find you again one of these days, and your pack of disgusting desert rats," Smasher growled, his voice modulator glitching a little, drawling his words. "They'll burn too when I'm done scraping the flesh off your fucking skull as a new trophy."

V kept a straight face, purely business, he thought to himself. "You know, Adam, for someone as big and as powerful as you are, you really fucking suck at killing people. Rogue, Shaitan, Me. Must be old age."

"I wouldn't worry, as soon as I'm done crushing your bones into dust, the old cunt is next. It'll be slow." Smasher growled, standing at his full height, towering over V. "Funny, a dead man's gun carried by a dead man. I bet Silverhand pissed himself when I ripped him in half. Maybe I'll do the same with you."

"You've got to kill me first, Adam," V said, as nonchalantly as he could. Maybe if he put him off-guard, it would help. "Last time I checked; you couldn't even kill me after throwing me off a cliff. You're losing your touch."

His monotone voice modulator growled again before it let out the equivalent of a hacking laugh. "It didn't kill you, but it killed your friend well enough after I sliced through his red fucking guts. Street-rat, corpo-rat, desert-rat, you bleed all the same to me. Same with your Militech whore, she screamed louder than any whore in this entire fucking city. Oh, she begged for you too. Fucking pathetic meat sacks."

"You steel-faced motherfucker, Jackie was worth ten of you, they both were worth more than this entire city put together!"

Another hacking sound was let out as they circled each other. "Still touchy about it, huh? At least I made it quick. You're gonna beg when I'm done."

"Focus, V. As soon as he starts, he won't stop, and you have to play by his rules too. You can't stop either. It's a battle of fucking attrition, but you can do this. I know you can." Johnny encouraged.

"At least you killed Oda. Might have made Takemura shed a tear for once in his miserable life. Mercy was for the weak. I've been waiting for this, for so long."

V smiled. "I dream about killing you. I think about taking your eye out, how it must have felt using that blade to rip it out of your thick skull."

"Good," Smasher drawled again. "It was thirty years back since I felt pain like that. I want to feel it again."

"Come and get it then, you sick metal fuck."

Steam released from Smasher's pack, the robot warrior charging forward, headlong into the path of V. V barely let off two shots from the Malorian, the explosive rounds doing nothing to stop the robot's charge as V ducked underneath and let out two more shots. Once more, Johnny was quiet, and V was thankful so he could feel himself flow in the heat of battle. Smasher might have been Arasaka's attack dog, but V was one of Militech's, and their reputations preceded them as they began to duke everything out in the empty wastes, in the looming shadow of Night City.

Every bullet did nothing to Smasher's powered frame, not stopping him an inch as he charged forward like a tank trundling at Mach Three. All V could do was dodge, use his gear and his cyberware to throw punches or shoot something when and where he could. He was thankful for once that the sub-dermal armour had been taken out, letting himself move faster than he had done before. Each bullet that missed kicked up more dust, each punch ducked or heavy kick dodged in the presence of the setting sun, V and Smasher had yet to make any major mistake as they fought, dirty and faithlessly.

Two soldiers, fighting like their lives depended on it. V slid the hand cannon away, just as he felt his face scraping the underside of Smasher's arm, throwing him to the floor. Immediately, V kipped up from the sand, kicking and flipping out of each raging strike and blow that Smasher threw to obliterate the Militech cyber-soldier. The stains of time came back, his special-operation Militech training coming into play as extensive muscle fibre enhancements turned him into a makeshift gymnast, manoeuvring as fast as Smasher could punch. Whenever Smasher mistimed a heavy punch, V punished that mistake with as much pleasure as he could, gorilla hands clanking and hammering against neo-steel armour before V found himself thrown into the air.

Thudding into the sand, V slipped and rolled away as Smasher laughed, stomping the sand, leaping and jumping in the grains, trying to enjoy obliterating V's head. What Smasher lacked in speed, he made up for in pure power, before he grabbed V by the neck of his heavy ballistic vest, picking him up and slamming him back down into the sand. His metal foot reared up before slamming down, and from what happened, Smasher might have thought he had completely crushed V's head into a pulp.

Except there was no pulp, and his foot was still pressing down on something.

He looked over, to see the fingertips wrapped around the armoured frame that was keeping him from completely destroying the biggest pain in his ass since Silverhand or Blackhand. He pressed down harder, kept pushing his power generator to the limits but his foot wouldn't go down. The rat below let out a bestial roar, the sound of mighty defiance as his black and blue let out a charge of electricity that disabled him for a small moment, but it was a moment nonetheless.

The balance of power and weight shifted, Smasher felt himself losing his balance on one foot as V picked himself up from the sand and pushed, and he pushed back hard. In the battle of David and Goliath, David won with his use of a fucking sling, but in the case of Smasher and V, it was Smasher's brute force against V's sheer force of will. Smasher went over, falling against the sand as V roared, leaping into a punch before Smasher swatted him away like a fucking fly.

The two jumped back up immediately, coated in sand and sweat as the two caught each other's hands, forcing them into a war pressuring the right node or muscle. No quarter was given, no shred of weakness or fear let slip before the two threw themselves into a headbutt that caused sparks as soon as skull met skull.

"When this is over, I'm gonna use your blood as an oil substitute, this is the best fight I've been in since Blackhand!" Smasher groaned, his fleshplate rising upwards. "Show me some more, cunt!"

V smiled, realising perhaps after everything, he'd gone crazy. He enjoyed a brawl, and this was a good one. "What were your orders? To kill me? Not to be biased, but I don't think you can! If you couldn't kill Blackhand, you can't kill me!"

Smasher's hacking laugh was contagious. He picked V up once more, tossing him away, watching as V's knee kicked up sand as he stood, tall and valiant, like some fucking hero. Smasher's arm stretched out, two thick blades popping out of his frame, like a pair of oversized machetes forged into combat shears. Like V's old Muramasa, they glowed a bloody red, like the Night City sun. He watched, ready and waiting to go again as his opponent drew something from the case sheath slung across his back.

A genuine sword, Sandayu Oda's own sword gifted to him from Takemura. In a journey full of twists and turns, Smasher wished he could have smiled, to have used his face to convey that it had been so long since he genuinely felt threatened by someone who was out for his blood. V's sword glowed purple, an eerie shade that coloured the sand below it as they charged into each other once more. It was blade against blades, ultra-heated shear pressure and tonnage against the purple grace and elegance of V as he fought back against Arasaka's top hunter.

Sparks erupted, each time the blades scraped against each other, they jostled and shifted, trying to win the best position to force the other back and press the advantage. Smasher found it easier, using his strength and force to push V on the back foot, swinging wildly with one machete, the other one always guaranteed to follow up to push V back again. Smasher continued, taunting V with every push forward. He'd tire eventually, but Smasher wanted to enjoy every second of the fight for as long as he could.

V's left arm split apart, revealing a Mantis Blade that Smasher didn't even know he had, it wasn't mentioned in his file. Smasher ripped one of his shears off, dual-wielding the red steel blades, forcing himself onto the offensive before he quickly found himself on the back foot instead. V might have been weak with Oda's sword, but with his own Mantis Blade, his body was his weapon. He tried to skewer V, a desperate move that in hindsight, he shouldn't have done at all. V slipped to the side, bringing the Jinchu-Maru blade up, parrying and riposting as his Mantis Blade sliced through a weakened section of his Samson frame, quite literally disarming Smasher of his right-sided appendage.

His modulator let out a pain-filled howl before V felt his single red-eye peer into his soul. "YOU CAN BE CRUELER THAN THAT, VERGIL, DO IT AGAIN!"

V thrust forward, each slice from the Maru or the Mantis Blade pushed Smasher back, heated metal or high-frequency blade slicing through neo-steel armour or high-quality power armour. V let everything out, pulled back to let Smasher have some form of attack before he pushed back, slicing away again before his Mantis Blade slid away and he sheathed the Jinchu Maru. His gorilla hands returned, the Overcharger sparking once again as he ducked and dived out of Smasher's random and untrained attacks. Dodging away, he ripped Smasher's machete from his dismembered armour, just in time to parry another wild slice from the Arasaka borg.

"COME ON, JUST LET ME SEE THOSE GUTS, LET ME RIP AND TEAR YOU APART. IT'LL BE QUICK, I PROMISE."

The blades sparked together again, and every second he kept fighting Smasher was another second that Panam and the Aldecaldos had to get away from Night City, away from the Arasaka Corporation. He headbutted Smasher with as much force as he could give, pushing him away before he caught Smasher's stump with the Overcharger. Two-thousand volts of pure static electricity jolted from V's prosthetic right into Smasher's circuits.

The borg jolted, sputtered and stuttered as his voice modulator let rip with as many foul curses as it could muster as the towering borg fell to the floor. Smasher's red-eye was still active, stationary like the rest of his body. V took the machete-shear, thrusting it into the centre of Smasher's frame to keep him pinned and aware that if he moved, he'd be shredding his internals if he had any left.

He ripped the patch of gauze from Smasher's eye, making eye contact, artificial blue in front of bloodshot brown, tides of rage battering against each other. V's hand was tight against his skull, threatening to crush it before he relented. He screamed again, to nobody in particular, he wanted to kill Smasher, he needed to rip his head from his body, show it to Rogue that he meant business.

Yet he couldn't.

"The only reason I won't kill you today is that I want everyone to see me do it when I do," V growled. "Take this as a professional courtesy. Get better, and maybe I'll kill you next time."

"Fuck… Shit…" Smasher's modulator spat. "Cunt…"

"Yeah, thought so. Fucking asshole. I'll be waiting."

V pulled out a couple of wires, no idea of whether they were essential or not. He still couldn't move, his legs moving of their own accord as Smasher shouted louder and louder at V as he walked away. He got on the quad bike, the engine howling in the desert as V sped off back into the city. It was time to end everything, find the chip, get Johnny out, and take the fight to Arasaka.

For the final time.