It irritated her that she couldn't find it in herself to dislike Gloria Martinez. Optimistic, hard-working, and just a little shy. She went out of her way to avoid causing trouble for others and tried to do her best in whatever task she happened to be doing.
Rogue had realized who Gloria reminded her of a few days ago, the last time she spoke with her. She had shyly revealed that the dense shithead she was having sex with had come onto her, and quickly clarified that she didn't want to cause issues between them.
Adam had decided to fluster the woman for fun and the woman was apologizing to her for it. Rogue immediately got a flashback to the last time this happened. A younger woman with blonde hair and blue optics nervously apologizing to her, hands waving slightly in denials about her intentions.
Gloria Martinez reminded her of Alt Cunningham. It was a distinctly unpleasant feeling to look back on the similarities in their behavior.
She supposed it was too good to be true anyways. These past few months of slowly chipping her way into the asshole's chest were nice, but were of course going to end eventually. He was going to get tired of her and move on, it was only a matter of time.
It had happened before with Johnny, it was bound to happen again Adam. She should've been expecting it, really. She had shit taste in men.
So she distracted herself with her fixer work instead, made easier by the asshole being away from Night City for a while. Lot's of jobs being thrown around and requested through her, she made sure to filter out those that might hurt her own interests, and gave priority to the things that might help her.
Even if that work was requested by other people, she could still take advantage of them to advance her own plans. Most of these plans begin and end with 'solidify her power base', but it was something she constantly had to do. Her influence was at constant war both with the other fixers of NC and every other faction that wanted a bigger slice of the pie.
So when she sees a job that targets someone who tried to undermine her in the past come up, she makes sure to recommend it to one of the better solos she has contacts with. If she sees a job requested by one of those people come up, one of her less experienced contacts gets the job.
They'll still succeed most of the time, but it'll never be quite as clean as it could be.
A lot of this she had to learn on her own, and her early days involved a lot more of her getting her hands dirty directly. She didn't need to do that anymore, she had people to do that for her.
An explosion outside of her fine establishment pulled her out of her idle business of assigning jobs to solos. She narrowed her eyes and opened a link between herself and her bouncers out front.
"Bronson, talk to me, what's going on out there?"
There was only static in reply. Her instincts were telling her that something very bad was about to happen. She snarled and got up from her booth, snatching her iron from where it was strapped underneath as she did.
The moment she fucking thought about not having to get her hands dirty, the fucking moment she thinks that, this happens. Lady Luck was a gonkass cunt who needed to fuck off sometimes.
"Battlestations people, we got trouble coming down!" She shouted to the half-full bar. Immediately, the few dozen guests of her fine establishment all drew their various guns and weapons and pointed them at the door. They were already on alert from hearing the explosion, her call out was simply the trigger they needed to get ready.
There was a reason most people were reluctant to attack Afterlife. Mostly because she had a policy of 'everyone can have their guns' and 'If someone causes trouble she shoots them'. People are often very reluctant to start a fight in a place full of various factions and lots of guns.
The only people who'd be willing to attack here were people with no connections to NC or with nothing to lose. Crazies, to put another way.
Normally Bronson was tough enough to handle any random cyberpsycho that tries to attack. He was a card-carrying member of the Animals, and had an array of bioware to back it. Bioware, combat drugs, and the occasional heavy implant.
Her club's defenses were being activated as she waited, the fans already at full ventilation to blow any air in the building right back out into the streets instead of lingering. The fire-suppression systems were online and waiting, the few EMP sentries popping out of the ceiling and aimed at the door. Gas, Fire, and Drones all countered as well as one could reasonably expect.
Bronson could handle any regular cyberpsycho so she was expecting some spec-ops unit from out of town to come down.
She was not expecting an exceptional cyberpsycho to come down, let alone a squad of them.
Hearing a distant footstep, she activated her sandevistan.
Just in time to see a warped figure throw itself down the stairs to crash against the floor, quickly throwing itself up. Six-armed and spindly, with a tangle of wires forming a crude fur coat and obscuring the body below. Head hidden under a heavy helmet with nine orange-red optics shining underneath. It was slower than her.
Almost fluid in the way it crashed against the ground and pulled itself up, it reached out with three of its arms to the nearest people in her bar, most of whom were moving in slow motion compared to the thing. Rockets in those arms activated, and they shot out to grab three of her customers.
They would have if she didn't immediately blow all three into shrapnel with a half-dozen rounds of explosive smartbullets. The submachine gun in her hands barking in a steady rhythm as she shot at the fucker.
Adam had been right when he mocked her a few months ago, she had really let herself go. She should've been able to get that with half the bullets in her heyday. She needed to hit the firing range more.
Some of the patrons were just now beginning to react, their speedware quite a bit worse than her own. She wasn't sure how the cyberpsycho was so fast, it was unlikely that it could afford anything good…
…on its own that was. Fucking strommers were deciding to commit suicide then, this was going to get everyone in the fucking city pissed at them. The cyberpsycho turned its head towards her, and its jaw opened into four segments screaming at her.
Still in slowed time, half of the electronics in her club immediately went out. Her optics adjusted immediately, but she was out of sandy time. She aimed her gun in its center mass and started firing as her perception returned to normal time.
Her gun immediately turned into heavy rain, she was unable to count the individual rounds as it sprayed at the fucker in her bar. It was then she came to the unfortunate realization that it was very well armored, and didn't have a sandevistan. It had a kerenzikov.
It moved, three of her customers exploded into red mist, and suddenly its corpse crashed into the far wall to the side of her, smashing a few chairs along the way before coming to a halt. She turned her head to see Weyland letting go of the trigger of his light machine gun and turning to nod at her.
Good, he cycled his sandy after her like she told him to awhile back. She stared at it for a bit to make sure it wasn't moving anymore, before staring at the three poor souls that were in the path of its rampage to get to her.
Of course, that was just the first cyberpsycho.
Just as she began to move, the vent in her far wall exploded as another monster of cybernetics burst through concrete and reinforced steel. She turned to begin shooting, and got the unpleasant surprise of another two psychos bursting down her front-door stairs again. One wielding a pair of sledgehammers and the other carrying a heavy machine gun.
Each one was a tangled mess of wires and chrome, a nightmarish and blurry figure of plasteel and myomer, with five or more glowing eyes a piece. Each one giving off a godawful screaming noise.
By this point, the slower patrons in the bar had finally begun shooting.
Her bar erupted into violence.
This was bullshit, her insurance was going to up her fucking rates through the goddamn stratosphere.
—
"YES I AM! EL TIGRE GRANDE!"
David could admit, he kinda liked the large man on the other side of the arena who was currently shouting and flexing to the crowd. The guy was wearing a mask modeled after a tiger, a set of skintight pants and integrated boots, and a cape. His skin was a heavy bronze sorta tone, and he could tell that the dude had both skinweave and subdermal armor from the way the light bounced off the dude.
Human skin was a little translucent or something, skinweave was a little less so, and subdermal armor was a little less so as well. Combined they made the guy seem a bit darker than he probably should be. A little less illuminated around the edges, which only made him a bit more accented on a bright day.
"LEAPING INTO THE FIGHT! EL TIGRE…" The man shouted out to the crowd, then stopped and raised a hand to his ear, the crowd quickly responded with their own roar.
"GRANDE!" He burst into another round of wide-armed flexing. Hyping up the crowd with their eventual fight. This was the kinda fight he liked. The one where everyone involved was into it. This was partly why he was even fighting in their tournament.
So he hung back and let the guy do his magic. Hey, he was enjoying it too after all.
Eventually, Tigre turned to look at him. "MY YOUNG FRIEND! I TURN TO ADDRESS YOU NOW!" The man was grinning under that immense mustache. "I APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAIT!"
"I was beginning to feel a little neglected." He joked back, his own grin fixed on his face. "Got a question though, shouldn't you be Smilodon?" He liked reading about dinosaurs as a kid, everyone did, dinosaurs were cool. Smilodon wasn't a dinosaur but eh, semantics.
"...A Saber Tooth Tiger?" The man raised a hand to his chin and scratched at it in confusion, pausing in realization when he felt his own mustache.
They burst into laughter at the same time. David was chuckling, Tigre had thrown his head back.
"YES! I THINK I SHOULD BE, SHOULDN'T I?! HAHAHA!" He exclaimed. Eventually he settled down and rolled his joints. David copied him and got into a stance.
"COME MY YOUNG FRIEND! LET US HAVE AN EXCELLENT DUEL!"
"I can agree with that."
Aoi waved him hand down, their speed went up, and both of them burst forwards to clash in the center of the arena.
David, Tanaka, and Becca had been studying his moves for the last two matches. He was primarily a grappler, and focused on controlling the pace of the fight through throws into the air. An opponent who was airborne was at his complete mercy. David's strategy to counter this was fairly simple.
If he got grappled, he was going to grapple back. It was hard to throw someone who was currently latched onto your arm.
As he approached, he readied himself to throw a straight punch. Locking eyes with Tigre, he grinned and copied his approach.
A head on clash as their opener? David was fine with that.
Stomping to straighten up again, he twisted into a punch aimed squarely at Tigre's own approaching fist. Their speedware expired.
Their fists collided with a tremendous clang that rang out through the arena. David withheld a flinch from what was probably a fracture opening up in one of his fingers. Judging from the twitch of his mustache, Tigre was just as damaged in that exchange.
Equal damage huh? He was down for a game of chicken. David readied his other fist for a punch, and Tigre's eyes widened a tad before he copied.
They threw another punch, left fists clashing just the same as their rights. They were grinning at each other. Now it was a game of who stopped punching first.
Rights, crash.
Lefts, crash.
Rights, crash.
Each time he felt another fracture open up in one of his fingers. This wasn't the best strategy, but it was incredibly fun to just have a head-on clash like this.
His sandy had cycled, time to mix it up. He wound up another punch, which Tigre copied. Just before their fists collided, he activated his sandevistan and spun into a roundhouse kick against his hand, sending it to the side.
He moved to punch his now-open mid-section. Tigre's own sandevistan finished cycling, and the man carried his spin into a mule kick. David aborted his punch and copied that elbow block he saw that Betty girl do the other day, but the force still sent him flying back into a roll.
He jumped up as he rolled, landing on his feet and throwing a smile at the man who waited for him to recover before stomping his foot back down. That ever present smile still wide on his face, Tigre began to shout.
"YOU ARE FAST YOUNG FRIEND! FORTUNATELY MY MEXICAN METALS 'SPEEDY-G' SANDEVISTAN IS MORE THAN ENOUGH FOR ME TO KEEP UP!" Throwing his now visibly damaged hand forwards, he continued. "LET'S SEE IF YOU CAN ENDURE AGAINST EL TIGRE GRANDE!"
"Buddy, I can do this all day." He boasted right back, pointing an equally damaged index finger at him. "I'm what you might call built different."
"HAHA, VERY TRUE YOUNG FRIEND! NOW LET'S SEE IF YOU'RE BUILT BETTER!"
Of course, it was around that point that everyone in the arena heard a massive explosion in the distance and stopped what they were doing. Both fighters paused and looked in the direction that it came from, north it looked like. The crowd fell into hushed whispers.
"What was that?" He muttered. El Tigre hummed in consideration, his grin falling off into a contemplative frown.
The DaiOni refs froze for a moment, before Aoi announced. "We have been recalled to Arasaka Tower immediately. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Both fighters looked to them, but a moment later they were gone and an line-shaped explosion of dirt traced out of the arena, falling in an instant. It was clear they had activated their sandevistans and ran out of the arena, towards the tower.
David frowned. Smasher did say they were fast, but he wasn't expecting them to be that fast even with speedware. They were something like two thousand pounds after all.
He scratched his head and the crowd started yelling in disappointment. If the refs were gone then they couldn't exactly finish their fight. He gave an awkward look over to Tigre, who had his arms crossed and a frown on his face.
"I do not blame them for heeding their orders, but this is inconvenient." He announced. David nodded. The crowd started throwing random things into the arena, not at them obviously but the situation. There were probably live streams that were going on right now about this.
The announcers were saying something about getting a replacement ref in there, and sounded just as caught off guard as everyone else.
He was about to say something in reply, when the side of the arena exploded. He turned to look at it, and Tigre copied. The crowd fell quiet once more, even some of those nearest to the explosion started to panic slightly and approached the walls to look down.
From the settling rubble, a hulking figure of metal stomped forwards, a massive hammer clutched in both hands and swaying slightly with its steps. Almost as tall as Smasher, plated in as much armor as that Junkerknight had, and with seven orange glowing eyes glaring out from the dust.
Eventually, it stopped its approach and tilted its head at them.
The announcers were calling this out as an intruder and not a part of the tournament. Judging from the red that caked the figure, it had probably killed some security to get here.
It raised an arm. Both of the fighters activated their sandevistans and threw themselves to the side. A projectile launcher emerged from its arm.
A massive explosion bloomed to life in the center of the arena, where they had just been moments before.
It tilted it's head again.
David grinned and yelled out to Tigre. "Hey Tigre, I got a proposal!"
"WHAT IS THAT, YOUNG FRIEND?!"
"Whoever bags this chromedome first wins our match, whaddya say?!"
El Tigre Grande began to laugh with delight, David followed with some chuckles. The crowd roared with approval.
The cyberpsycho didn't seem to find it so funny, it started to roar.
—
A car from the desert slowed to a stop outside of a now unfamiliar city. A silver chrome hand rested on the windowsill, before it pulled the rest of a chromed body out to stare at the city.
The city that he just heard a massive explosion echo out from. He glared at it for a moment before pulling himself back into the car and slamming on the gas.
Night City was the exact same it seemed like.
Exact same except for one thing that was.
On an old radio channel, one that no one used except him anymore, a message began to play on repeat. It was a channel Alt had told him to watch for in case she ever had to send him a message before her capture.
[Help Me. Captured. Maelstrom.]
He could burn the city later.
He had to find Alt.
Maelstrom was still around? That was fine, he'd kill every last one of them if he had to.