He didn't know much about Maelstrom.

He had heard of them, of course. There wasn't a person in Night City who hadn't. The posterboys for cyberpsychosis, the multi-eyed monsters of the north, the 'fuckers'. He had taken jobs against them before, back in his solo days, and they were always the hardest overall.

They cut their faces off as part of initiation, some say that they have to do it themselves, and without meds. They chipped in more chrome on average than anyone except the most absolutely hardcore edgerunners around. He and Maine had chipped in quite a bit, subdermal armor, limbs, optics, weapons. They were textbook chrome junkies.

That was probably how much the average Maelstromer had chipped in, let alone their most hardcore members. If that was it, no one would care much. Maelstrom had a funny habit of nabbing gonks off the streets and seeing just how much they can install before their victims break.

About a third of all the XBDs he used to watch came from a strommer in some way. It wasn't always combat either, sometimes it was a public execution.

He didn't know much about Maelstrom, but he knew enough to tell that they were dangerous. Of course, he would have been able to tell that about the thing in front of him regardless.

He looked to the corner of his vision, locking his pupils on the strommers that just shot a grenade out of his forearm but focusing on the little percentage read-out. He had asked for this from Saika, the techie, a few weeks ago, and apparently it was some kind of app, no additional chrome required, just a download and an update.

Right now, it was telling him that the thing in front of him was one-hundred percent metal.

It wasn't a borged-up strommer. It wasn't a fullborg strommer.

This thing was a fucking bot.

'What do we do with a drunken sailor?'

He grit his teeth as he stared at it. This wasn't someone he could afford to have fun with, he had to go all in with his advantages.

Advantage the first, his speedware was second to none. It was Smasher's spare, it was better than anyone else's in the world. He was almost guaranteed to be faster than the seven-foot mechanical monster.

Advantage the second, he wasn't alone.

He couldn't guarantee anything else until they started fighting. He drew the monokatana sheathed at his hip, taking it in both hands and watching the botgonk for the hints of any motion.

A common symptom of cyberpsychosis was the eyes. They blurred and unfocused, they stared at things that weren't there, they didn't see things that were right in front of them.

The thing about this bot's eyes? He couldn't tell a damn thing about them. Seven furiously glowing orange optics staring out of a partially-carved-in face, wires splayed out from such and falling down like a loopy mane. Its mouth was almost gorilla-like in its form, mimicking breathing with plate-lips that folded up and out instead of up and down.

Its body had clearly been some sort of borg beforehand, what with that one-hundred percent counter and the plates of scrap-metal welded to every surface and grinded down to allow for mobility.

It just stared with its arm raised, almost like it couldn't understand that it had missed. He glared at it, waiting even as the audience started to get antsy. He really didn't care what they thought anymore, not with this coming out of the scrapyard.

He almost jumped when he heard the loud proclamation coming from his right.

"HOLA BANDITO! DO YOU HAVE A NAME?! I, EL TIGRE GRANDE, WOULD HATE TO BREAK YOU WITHOUT LEARNING SUCH!" Arm thrown forward, the other on his hip, and a wide grin firmly mounted on his face once more. El Tigre almost effortlessly plowed through the tension that had been building up to demand a name.

There was silence for a moment. The big bot took a heavy step forwards, David noticed that its legs ended in clawed feet that seemed perfectly capable of grabbing if needed.

A horrible, distorted voice called out from the speaker in the mouth of the bot, although it's mouth didn't line up with the correct motions of talking at all.

"Jerome. Boss wants me ta kill Pacifica, so I'm gunna do that."

[LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, DID I JUST FACKING HEAR THAT RIGHT?! JEROME THE CHROMED HAS RETURNED TO STOMP THIS ENTIRE DISTRICT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOURNAMENT?]

The bot continued walking forwards, something that the both of them returned.

"I see, you understand that El Tigre Grande, friend to all children, enemy of evil, ally of justice, cannot allow you to do that?" Tigre's shoulders were level, and his arms swung steadily as he stomped forwards.

"My mother, my output, and my friends live here, you're not going to do gonkshit before I flatline you." David chose to be polite and wait for El Tigre to finish his line before speaking. He chose to be equally polite in threatening the now-walking corpse.

This so-called Jerome laughed. It made his ears hurt. He ignored it, it was just pain. "Can't flatline me, can't no one flatline me no more."

We'll see about that, gonkbot.

Right before he entered the swinging distance of those two massive sledgehammers, he stomped just a bit harder than normal and activated his sandevistan. The next clawed step of the bot slowed to a crawl mid-air.

Glancing over to see that Tigre was still moving like normal, he had gotten the signal. Their eyes locked briefly, and he nodded with a grin before lunging forwards.

Swinging his monokatana, he aimed for one of the legs. If he could take that out, then the bot would be a sitting duck for the rest of the fight.

Just as he was about to connect, the bot paused for an instant. His eyes widened as he threw himself back.

The hammer swiped through the space he was just in almost too fast for him to see. A pained grunt drew his gaze as he was jumping back. Looking over he saw Tigre with his arms braced against the handle of the hammer above his head, he had stopped it before it reached full speed, but from that noise he was still feeling it.

Landing on the ground, he kicked off a slowly-rising dust cloud as he threw himself forwards again.

His speedware was top of the line, how the fuck had this bot managed to keep up? He'd figure it out later, right now he couldn't let it focus on his ally. Taking on a bot alone sounded like a bad idea.

He moved forwards, stomping down on the hammer to keep it in the ground, slicing out with his blade.

He was forced to abort it as the bot twisted his left-hand hammer, sent it down to the side of Tigre, and used it as a hook to physically throw him in his way.

Throwing his sword up, he linked an arm with Tigre, who matched his grin.

Panzerfaust was built on three principles. Vibration, leaping, and spins. His new style was based on the latter two, and throws.

Grounding his stance, he twisted and spun Tigre around.

Tigre's powerful legs crashed against the bot's raised guard, and then he kicked. Both of them went separate directions, Tigre leaping off and the bot stumbling back due to its higher weight.

Ducking below Tigre's return, he lunged forwards again…

His sandevistan expired.

He blinked, and his side exploded in pain.

He was weightless. The sky was blue.

He crashed against the near wall, dust exploding outwards as his vision and hearing blacked out.

His senses slowly returned. He activated his pain editor and turned off all the white static in his body. His vision was still a bit blurry.

He tried to push up with his left hand. It didn't respond to him anymore. He glanced down at it.

It was gone. He frowned and pushed up with his right hand instead.

His breathing felt off, he coughed. The ground in front of him was sprayed red.

He glared and pushed himself up all the way up, staring at where he had just come from. Remnants of his arm littered the path now.

"YOUNG FRIEND, ARE YOU OKAY?!" El Tigre shouted out, not moving his gaze from the bot. The bot that was bent backwards and staring at the sky, feet carving groves into the ground, arm stretched out with that hammer extended.

That fucker had hit him once and took off an arm. More importantly…

"He has both a kerenzikov and a sandevistan! That's how he's so fast!" He shouted out as he strode towards his sword, which was now planted into the ground.

"BOTH!? ARE YOU SURE YOUNG FRIEND!?" El Tigre took his eyes off the bot for one moment. That moment that the bot seemed to be waiting for, as it immediately threw itself forwards at an unnaturally fast pace.

He cursed and started running, much too far away to help. His sandevistan hadn't had time to cycle again-!

He noticed El Tigre's slightly hidden grin.

The bot lunged, swinging its hammers down.

Tigre threw himself back, crashing against the bot's chest and avoiding the hammer. In the same motion, he twisted his arms to grab the bot by the arm.

"TIIIGGGEEERRR-!" He began to shout as he used the bot's momentum against him, lifting him off the ground and over his head.

"-CRRRAAASSSHHHEEERRR!" He finished roaring as the bot weighing multiple hundreds of pounds crashed against the ground. The bot didn't bounce, but it was a close thing.

The bot was only phased for a moment. El Tigre moved to leap away.

He wasn't fast enough, as the bot then demonstrated that the bulky hammers were not just hammers as a jet of fire exploded from the back of both.

They were fucking rocket-powered.

The bot turned into a veritable tornado as it spun on the ground, propelled by the immense thrust of two tiny jets it used as bludgeons.

Tigre took the blow head on, throwing himself back with it as he soared through the air. He gave a shout of pain that was only slightly exaggerated. Reducing the damage of the blow itself didn't help him when he too crashed into the far wall of the arena, leaving another cloud of dust from the impact.

The bot was still spinning. He held his blade up with his remaining hand, and slowly began to stalk around it, towards Tigre.

He wasn't sure he could take this thing alone.

A rush of wind, and Tigre was standing next to him again, a smile plastered on his face even through a pained grimace.

David could see why.

There was a hole torn open in his side. The head of the hammer had apparently crashed there, and ripped off the section entirely. David could see from here that Tigre apparently had an endo-skeleton enhancement, judging from his metal-colored ribs and hip bone.

"Don't worry!" He declared. "My Mexican Metals 'Cortés' Internal Stauncher stopped the blood loss immediately!" His eyes glared at the bot in front of them, now up on its feet again and staring at them. "Although I must admit. This level of foe is uncomfortably close to my upper limit."

David thought for a moment. "I've fought worse." They were getting hits in on this thing. He never even scratched Smasher, and this thing wasn't fucking singing.

"Oh? How did you win?"

"I didn't."

"...We are in a predicament, young friend. Any ideas?"

David chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment.

"...When you threw it, how much do you think it weighed?"

Tigre pondered it for a moment. The bot slowly began to stomp towards them again.

"...I could lift maybe three and a half of him, perhaps around four-hundred pounds." He grinned and got into another stance. "My Mexican Metals '20-12' Linear Frame affords me great strength, but I can tell he is stronger still."

David slowly nodded. Four-hundred? He could lift around twice that much at his max, so a throw is certainly possible.

He couldn't say his plan out loud. He was just going to have to trust the guy to understand.

Smasher had taught him a couple tips specifically to take out himself. His reasoning being that if he could manage decent against him, David could scrap any other borg out there with relative ease. One of those tips was using his own body weight against him.

Gravity hit you harder the heavier you were, a borg was incredibly vulnerable to such without the right implants to help mitigate the shock. Of course, just slamming them into the ground over and over wouldn't help here, if they were reinforced enough then the slam from this distance would just shake them.

Shake them long enough to get another hit in. From Tigre's last throw, they had about one full second before it recovered enough to attack again.

That would have to be enough.

He clicked his tongue. The world slowed to a crawl. He raced forwards, feeling the strain of moving so much with the sandevistan already accumulating.

The bot reacted, suddenly moving much faster than it had been. It swung one of its hammers as he approached, he swung his sword.

Not at the bot, but that fucking hammer.

Their weapons clashed, and his monoblade cut right through the thing. He let go of his sword immediately after, letting his arm-mounted blade unfold to clash with the other, stepping forwards to meet the second swing.

He didn't try to cut through, merely stay still as the hammer cut itself in half on his arm. The monoblade on his arm was not as good as a Kendachi, and his arm was forced back.

He grit his teeth and headbutted the back of his own fist, using his whole body to force his arm in place

Hey gonk, congratulations, you just lost both your hammers against two guys specialized in unarmed combat.

His sandevistan deactivated.

He was thrown to the side again, Tigre tackling him instead of attacking.

He almost shouted in surprise, but then felt the immense heat he was being moved away from.

Landing some distance away, Tigre let go of him and David saw where the heat had come from.

A three-foot lance of white-hot, screaming fire extended from the bot's other arm. It rushed forth, popping up like a projectile launcher from the center of the forearm. A continuous stream of burning that was hard to look at, and that he could feel from many feet away.

"...The fuck is that?" He muttered.

"A thermite lance, used for welding industrial plates." Tigre answered severely. "His body is a Noveltech Samson underneath all those modifications it seems."

Welding industrial plates huh? That probably wouldn't do anything good to his body.

"Thanks for the save." He spoke, a grim frown on his face. "Didn't know he was packing heat like that." Literal heat in this case it seemed.

"Neither did I."

"We have to take that arm off. Once he's out of weapons, he's going to be far easier for us to deal with."

"I agree, but I'm afraid you're out of monoblades young friend."

David glanced at his arm-blade. It was snapped in half. He bit back a growl of frustration.

"Need a hand there?!" A voice shouted from the side of the arena. He snapped his gaze over to see two young men enter through the hole in the arena wall, both of them holding monokatanas.

[ENTERING FROM THE SIDE OF THE ARENA, IT'S KUSANAGI JUN AND YAMADA OTO, THE OTHER SEMI-FINALISTS, AND THEY LOOK READY FOR A FACKING RUMBLE!]

He stared at them for a moment, careful to keep the bot in his line of sight.

They both looked irritated but focused. Jun, the beefier one, actually looked calmer than Oto, the skinnier one.

Oto spoke first. "Strommer, you had no right to interfere in this. If you stayed away maybe you'd get to live another day. Unfortunately you chose to get involved with Tigers." He sounded downright offended that this interruption happened at all.

Jun spoke next. "I got a cute lil' imouto waiting for me back home, mind dying real quick for me?" He sounded almost bored, but with an undercurrent of steel.

Jerome actually bothered to respond to this, laughing as he did so. "Don't worry, you'll be together again soon meatboy. I'll kill her after you."

Jun disappeared and the sound of steel crashing on steel rang out. A blink later and Oto was gone too, and another scream of steel came from the blurry figures in the center of the arena.

A blink, and his own sandevistan finished cycling.

He threw himself forwards as the blurry nonsense solidified into actual figures. A furious exchange of blows occurring again and again, Jerome keeping up with both well enough.

One of Jun's arms was melted from the elbow down, and he was using it over and over again as an improvised club to redirect the arm hosting the lance of white-hot thermite as he slashed out with the sword in his other arm. His face was perfectly, unnaturally blank. His eyes were glowing a furious red.

Everytime Jerome moved to attack Jun, Oto stepped forwards to cut at an angle he wasn't prepared to defend, forcing Jerome to continually abort his attacks to clumsily defend himself. Each time a chunk of rusted armor was sheared away.

David wasn't looking to shear away any armor though.

Jerome thrust his thermite arm at Jun, Jun batted it away with his melted arm and moved to attack. Jerome was forced to block both Jun and Oto.

He wasn't able to block David too, who leapt and swung.

Jerome's arm flew off at the shoulder.

El Tigre tackled his midsection, throwing him off balance.

Jun threw himself forwards in a sideways swing.

Jerome's head was cut cleanly in half, one half lazily spinning in the air.

Their speedware deactivated. David took a deep breath in and out, coughing again, this time into his hand. It was red, but that would be fine. He'd get patched up later.

Jun was glaring as Jerome's massive body started falling down, slowly due to the joints locking up. Oto spat at the corpse, and sheathed his blade. El Tigre grinned broadly as he rose from his tackle, about to yell something out.

It was then David noticed something as Jerome was falling.

His head was empty.

The should-be corpse seized up halfway to the ground and started screaming.

All four of them collapsed and started seizing up as their ICE was assaulted. His own datawalls were holding out enough for him to move, but only some. He forced himself up on one shaking arm, sparks flying.

Jerome was grinning down, half of his head completely gone. He began to reach down and David struggled to move away…

Jerome stopped suddenly.

Jerome suddenly gripped his own head and started thrashing in pain, screaming loud enough to crack glass.

"Sorry buddy, but unregistered AI are not permitted to be on this side of the Blackwall." A voice that sounded like the opposite of sorry called out, as footsteps approached. David pushed himself up, no longer being subject to a data-assault, and looked towards the voice.

A decently tall guy, with a face that sorta naturally pulled into a frown. A bit of a beard, some smartgoggles on his head, and a coat that cut off above the waist for mobility.

The cold expression of Wallace 'Macguffin' stared at the borg, some kind of techie battleglove on his left arm, a holographic interface projected over it and his right hand patiently typing away on it.

David didn't know much about the guy other than Smasher had apparently hired him to do the advertising for the arena, and that he was apparently some kind of netrunner.

Wallace ignored the screams, and a few moments later Jerome went limp, falling over with a tremendous crash. The others had pushed themselves up at this point, warily looking at the apparent metal corpse.

"You okay kids?" Wallace asked, not looking away from his screen.

"What the fuck was that?" David bit out. It was obviously a netrunning attack, but he didn't see Jerome's eyes light up like Lucy's did whenever she was quickhacking, and all four of them seized up.

A new icon popped up on the holographic screen, and Wallace grimaced.

"A Ghost."

"A Ghost Senor?" Tigre asked, equally perturbed at what had just happened.

"It's what happens when people mess around with what they shouldn't." Wallace sighed, and suddenly looked much older. "The entire city is under attack, you all might want to find your chooms and hunker down."

Jun's eyes widened and he immediately disappeared. Oto frowned for a moment, looking after him.

"Martinez. How did you decide to resolve your match with Tigre?" He demanded.

"Whoever kills the bot wins."

Oto cursed and also disappeared. David blinked for a moment before realizing something.

"Wait, you said the whole city is under attack?"

"It's concentrated up north, around Maelstrom territory. They just took out some bridges to Watson." Wallace replied, a furrowed brow stubbornly sitting on his face. "This is a fucking mess, I'm going to have to message Ol' Curtis, aren't I…"

That's where Rogue was. She was Smasher's… friend?

That's where the Mox were. Those were Becca's friends.

His resolve hardened, he ran out of the arena, sending the crew a message as he did so. They had to go help.