Davey had gotten past the first round, in his usual brash manner. Dramatic gestures, fast paced strategizing, efficient speedware usage, capped off by revealing the opponent's strategy and then immediately countering it to end the match. It was practically a flatvid ending, it was clear Davey was a natural spectacle fighter despite clearly not being aware of it.

Then he emphasizes the drama inadvertently by heading over to the medics to check on his opponent after the fact, stirring up both drama and public approval.

She gave a long-suffering sigh.

Davey was dumb, but adorable. That was his biggest flaw. Talented, but outside of combat he thought zero steps ahead. He had very little idea about what his actions would mean to the rest of the world, and didn't seem to care to consider it either.

She didn't care either, but she could at least see how people were going to react when he beats up a girl and then asks for her number while she's on a stretcher. People were already going wild with speculation about the 'Secret Smasher Seduction Strategy' that he had been taught.

Beat a girl up and then flirt was apparently a hidden art that Big Guy had preserved for generations and refined into the ultimate pick-up technique. The lost caveman art.

She didn't even smoke and she still felt the urge to grab a cigarette from Lucy.

At least he got through the first round fine, the next rounds looked tough from what she had seen. Davey had joined them after the first round to watch the others unfold, and try to come up with strategies for them later. By them, she meant herself and Kats.

Betty, the half-japanese looking girl, had won the second round through seemingly nothing but pure skill. Her opponent, Naito, was a Tyger with Wolvers, and she had spent the entire fight dodging, redirecting his attacks, and occasionally punching into a soft or unguarded spot.

It was an endurance fight, where every mistake was punished against a target with tremendously strong defense. Kats said 'that's not Aikido.' with a puzzled expression at one point, and then he clammed up to start thinking.

She didn't seem to have any speedware, but she also didn't need it against Naito, who only had a low-grade kerry. David would have to play carefully again to make sure that she didn't, before capitalizing on his probable greater speed advantage.

Tigre, the one guy who loudly proclaimed advertisements for his various cyberware implants as he fought, had won the third fight in boisterous aplomb. He focused on leaping to an opponent, using his speedware to get a split second of advantage, before grappling the opponent. Gori, the unfortunate opponent with bladed legs, had suffered a constant barrage of throws, slams, and disorienting tosses before finally being hurled bodily straight up and landing on Tigre's devastating uppercut.

From how far he threw Gori up, he was probably around twice as strong as Davey was. If Davey got grabbed, it was probably over for him. Davey had also noted his impressive ability to soak damage, subdermal armor, skinweave, and constantly rolling with every blow in overdramatic fashion.

He looked unharmed by the end of it, despite taking multiple head-on blows from Gori's Gorilla Arms.

The girl named Ranko had won the fourth fight. Fight was a bit of a stretch though, as Paul didn't really stand a chance. The redhead had a paired set of monoblade wolvers, an internal autoinjector filled with combat stims, and high-grade kerenzikov.

She had torn him apart in less than fifteen seconds, ignoring the electrocution from Paul's taser-fists completely. Paul was the next permanent death in the tournament immediately after.

Kats and Davey had both immediately scoffed at her performance. She was fast, her weapons could ignore a lot of armor, and she could ignore pain. Davey could do all that but better. They didn't think she would make it past Tigre and his grapple-focused fighting style.

Former arena champion, 'The Rat', had won the next fight against Sandro. Sando was a defensive fighter, with a riot shield and brass knuckles. The Rat had a second set of jaws installed on his head big enough to act as his helmet, his face hidden away in the 'mouth' of the beartrap of the second jaws.

The Rat had managed to grab onto Sandro, and from there practically ate him alive until he forfeited. Sandro had to get cloned limbs, and The Rat's face was covered in gore afterwards. Judging from his raised arms and skybound roar, he loved it. Judging from the cheers of the crowd, they loved it too.

Jun had won the next match against Jin. It was a rather amusing coincidence that they fought each other. Jun used a monokatana, cyberarms, and speedware against Jin using a monoglaive, cyberarms, and speedware.

It was a rather standard match, all things considered. Both fighters being careful to sync up their speedware, neither fighter risking a hit when they didn't have to, neither fighter having any real gimmick to speak of. It was a match of pure skill in weapon against weapon. The fight ended when Jun managed to cut off the blade of the glaive after an overextension, and Jin forfeited.

Not as bloody, but still very interesting to spectate. Davey had better speedware overall, so all he had to do was fight as normal against him in order to win.

…That's where the fights ended. Obito, Mashiro, and Hetalia all died of various causes the night before. Oto had been injured by what he claimed was an attacker, and there was a lot of speculation about which of the fighters decided to off them and why only them. There were some accusations aimed towards Oto, but his missing arm and fractured leg cleared much of the suspicion aimed at him.

It was nothing that speedheal and a cloned limb couldn't get him up to speed in time for his next match, so it wasn't too suspicious that he showed up to fight with such injuries anyways.

Still, that meant that Oto had just gotten a ticket to the semi-finals without having to have a single fight, something that rubbed many viewers the wrong way.

Including her.

She'd keep an eye on that one, she didn't trust him. He had those psycho eyes. Yellow and slitted. She had seen a couple gonks like that on the streets before, and in the arena, and they were always trouble.

She didn't think she would get this kinda hobby, watching bloodsports in an arena, but it had pulled her right in. Not so much the technical fighting stuff, that kinda thing she'd leave to Kats and Davey, but the stories intrigued her.

Rat was the second champion the arena had, dethroneing the first by chomping down on his reinforced skull and into the brain. He went from a skinny nobody to a chromed-out, chilled-out modern-day gladiator. He refused any sponsorships and marketing deals because he believed in fighting for the sake of fighting, not for making a profit off of it.

His signature fighting style of latching on and chomping down was refined after his brutal fight against Brokeback the Nomad, and by his constant need to purchase new teeth eventually culminating in a custom extra-large combat jaw that was specially reinforced for this specific purpose.

He would go onto defend his title against six fighters in a row, before eventually losing it against Rock & Shock, who used taser-skin to defend himself, before getting the title BACK in a later fight after he trained himself to ignore the pain of tasers and install hardened shielding!

A moment of glory before falling to an up-and-coming strommer, who would go on to reign as the current champion. Jerome the Chromed, who decided to not participate in this tournament for whatever reason. Despite the power in his jaws, he was simply unable to penetrate the densely layered armor of Jerome, who was mostly metal already at this point.

Every fighter in the arena had a story like that! It was like a constant flatvid but it was happening in real life! How could she not get excited about it?!

Quietly grumbling to herself about her new hobby, she took a sip from the drink she stole from Kats. No she didn't ask, because that corprat deserved to be bullied a bit, keeps him humble. It was root beer flavored, which she was slowly coming around on.

"I figured it out." Kats suddenly from the other couch. She grunted and turned her head over from where she was laying down. Kats had been searching the NET and his old hard drives for a while now, maybe a few hours, to try and figure out what Betty was doing.

"It's not Aikido, it's an older style." Kets stood up and gestured for her to follow, off to find Davey and tell him probably. She scrambled up, careful to not spill her pilfered drink as she did so. "It's called Akki."

—

"Well, the south side of Night City."

"Is the baddest part of town."

"And if you go down there."

"You better just beware."

"Of a man named Leroy Brown."

The clean up operations for Night City were going about as smooth as nuclear clean up in sewers and underwater could be. Namely, the EEG had hired several specialist work crews to help with the efforts. He was one such worker, toiling away down in the sewer sections to get the cleanup handled here. He was glad for his ability to turn off his nose, and the company-provided radio playing one of those modern Adam Smasher covers of an old classic.

Brock grunted as he lifted the massive concrete block out of the way of the partially-collapsed sewer system, apparently the city had been skimping out on repairs for this section of the system for years now, and now it was biting the blue-collar borgs out here to help. Finally hefting it out of the way enough for his fellows to go in and grab the other side, they drug the massive chunk out in the open for Brodie to hammer away at it with his jack-hammer right arm.

Brodie, never one to disappoint, got to work right away, and started cutting the block into easier to haul chunks in short order. Brock grunted and pulled out his walkie talkie.

"Hey Amad, This is Brock with Samson crew eight. We've gotten the rubble almost cleared out of tunnel four. The Sheols should be clear to go in in about fifteen minutes."

He held the walkie up and waited for a reply from the otherside. The grumbling voice of Amad called out soon enough.

"I hear you Brock, how blue is it down there?"

Brock squinted his optics down the corridor, stepped forwards to peer inside better. His radiation detecting optics outlining a faint glow down the entire tunnel. "Maybe a 3 or 4 down there. A bit too blue for us, but you lads should be fine."

"...Right, We'll be down there soon enough, tunnel eight you said?"

"No, tunnel four." He corrected.

"Tunnel four." Amad confirmed

Brock clipped the walkie back to his rad-resistant belt and stepped back from the tunnel. He turned to see the boys already working on getting the rubble out of there. Good, they didn't need him to micromanage them anymore.

He liked his job well enough. Challenging work, free healthcare, paid traveling, the ability to slap cocky little shits at the bar down for his buddy frank. Lots of benefits being a Noveltech Samson, he didn't have any particular regrets for getting converted back in 60'.

He narrowed his optics for a moment. Where was Jamie?

"Boys! Any of you seen the newbie?" He called out over the noise, bellowing to get their attention over the sounds of industrial power-tool limbs being operated by men made of metal. They looked among each other for a moment before a few shrugs were given. Jason spoke up.

"Think he went off to grab the extra battery pack."

He huffed in irritation. "That damn kid knows full well we don't need it, we're already almost done."

Tony spoke up with a laugh. "Probably wanted to waste a few minutes without having to work."

He shook his head and stomped off. "I damn well know that! I'll be back boys, I need to shout at that kid again."

"Don't take too long boss! Otherwise you'll miss all the fun stuff!" The boys got back to smashing up the rubble and loading it into the MULE, as he stomped off.

Through the dark tunnels leading up to the central operations site, connected to several other branches through the sewer systems. He turned on his head-mounted spotlight and stomped up, following the map loaded onto his Internal Agent to go give that kid a talking about his laziness.

Two engineering degrees and the brat was still this lazy. It was downright shameful.

He paused for a moment. He turned around and scanned his immediate vicinity, spotlight shining through the damp tunnels.

For a second there, he thought he heard something. Tunnels had a way of making a man paranoid.

Well, most men. Brock was a Samson. His skin was strong enough to bounce bullets off of.

He kept walking through the tunnels.

He never saw the hyperhammer crash right into his biosystem, breaching armor with rocket-propulsion. Nor the seven red optics glare down at him. Nor the body of Jamie with a similar hole punched into the back of his metal head.

Jerome the Chromed raised his head, and focused his array of optics in the direction of construction work in the sewers and a faint radio.

He had more blessed bodies to plunder. Boss wanted them ready by the time they summoned another Archdemon. The first one went so well after all.

Boss was aiming for one they had info on, an AI named 'Lilith' next.

And he had a job to do, and borgs to take.

"Well the two men took to fighting."

"And when they pulled them from the floor."

"Leroy looked like a jigsaw puzzle."

"With a couple of pieces gone."

—

It was a six hour drive to Night City.

He had his demanded gear, and drove off with the sincere hope to never see Blandie ever again. That prick rubbed him the wrong way.

He had a new musclecar, a new gun, and a few other things. Things like clothes and a suitcase full of chips, memories and skills that he might need along the way.

Johnny would've rushed right in, guns blazing, to Arasaka Tower to bring it down.

He wasn't Johnny. He was Silverhand. Doing that wouldn't help him bring them down. Nuking them didn't bring them down last time, and he didn't even have a nuke this time.

He had to think about this, the one thing he drowned himself in sex and drugs specifically to avoid.

This body couldn't get drunk. He knows this because he tried it already. He took satisfaction that he at least left Blandie a few hundred eddies worth of Smash poorer.

There wasn't anymore running away from his memories, he couldn't drown them out. He hated that.

He snarled and tightened his grip on the wheel as he drove through the desert night.

…Take stock of his gear, that would distract him for a bit.

His new gun wasn't his old Malorian, but it was good enough for Blandie's stock. A rail gun in pistol form, capable of breaking through the hull of an armored truck. He tested it. The kick was higher than he was used to, but this body was stronger too. He could deal with it.

He took a monoblade with him too, just because he knew those were expensive. That, and swords were cool, any guy knows this. He made sure to grab a skill chip for it.

His clothes were reinforced against wear and tear, because he probably wasn't getting another set for a while.

…what else…?

…His mind began to drift off. Thoughts of…

Just before it could he clenched a fist and let the force in his grip drag him back to reality. He glared at nothing for a moment as he drove, the steady sound of wheels on old pavement clearing his mind.

…

He pulled off to the side of the road.

He kept glaring, and pulled out the MGR music chip, socketing it into the car's viseoradio.

He kept glaring as he listened to it all the way through again.

He forced himself to think.

There was nowhere for him to run from his memories.

Not in this life.