Cyberpunk: I'm Not a Scavenger - Chapter 8: The Fierce Battle Against the Animals (Patreon)

The Animals were human beasts obsessed with physical strength. They shunned conventional cyberware, preferring to enhance their bodies through biology and chemistry.

In the old days, drug abuse was practically a shortcut to an early grave. In the cyberpunk world of 2075, the sheer variety of drugs was beyond counting.

Those drugs certainly made the Animals stronger. Unfortunately, most of them had paid for that strength with their brains. Their left hemispheres frequently seemed to be arguing with their right.

True to their name, they also admired animal physiques. Some lunatics even transformed themselves completely into beastmen. Real furries, in the most literal sense.

Pantheon had no idea what Lucy had done to make these crazies storm the city rail system so recklessly. That was Night Corp property, after all.

Only the brainless Animals would try something like that.

"Run faster, little rat!"

The Animals leader had an exceptionally rough voice. His roar thundered through the underground passage, shaking dust from the walls.

"You steal our shit and think you can just run? You really think we're that stupid?"

Lucy didn't look back. Her short pink-and-blue hair fluttered behind her as she ran, like a streak of light. She made several sharp turns into an abandoned subway maintenance spur.

"Cut her off! Don't let that bitch get away with the drugs!"

But just as she was about to reach the end of the passage, a blinding light flared in front of her.

Three Animals thugs were already waiting at the junction. Their gun barrels and mountain-sized bodies blocked the way completely.

And mountain-sized wasn't much of an exaggeration. All three stood over two meters tall, filling the narrow underground tunnel from wall to wall.

Hideous grins split their faces, and an oily sheen coated their skin. Just looking at them was enough to make someone sick.

The pursuers caught up behind her too, cutting off her retreat.

"Go on, run! Why'd you stop? Don't shoot her! I want her alive!"

The Animals leader bellowed arrogantly from behind.

His underlings jeered and slowly closed in, giving Lucy no space to escape.

Lucy struggled to stay calm, but exhaustion still showed on her face, and sweat kept beading on her forehead.

She spread her fingers. Monowire sprang from the cyberware in her wrist, humming softly through the air.

To the Animals, however, she looked like a helpless little kitten baring its claws. They roared with laughter.

"Hand it over, girl!"

The three thugs in front of her advanced steadily, their bulky Satara shotguns looking like little sticks in their enormous hands.

Lucy's eyes turned cold. Without wasting a word, she sent out a quickhack, streams of data flickering furiously across her vision.

Objectively speaking, Lucy was a capable netrunner. Unfortunately, she'd picked a fight with the Animals.

They had precious little cyberware to hack.

The Animals were practically a natural counter to netrunners. It was a particularly bad matchup.

Even so, Lucy's attack had some effect.

The man blocking her way let out a bizarre scream. Her intrusion had sent his internal hormone regulator out of control.

Different drugs flooded his body at once. His blood vessels couldn't withstand the violent chemical onslaught, and blood began seeping from his pores, staining his skin red.

His eyes went bloodshot, veins bulged along his neck, and he lost all reason as he entered a berserk state.

"I'm gonna blow you away!"

Lucy didn't panic. She'd chosen this route for a reason.

Hacking might be far less effective on these walking lumps of muscle, but in a cybernetic city like Night City, a netrunner could always find unexpected ways to work miracles.

The next instant, all three Animals' weapons malfunctioned.

Bright blue electrical arcs burst from the guns, shocking their owners so badly that they dropped them.

The enraged thugs charged anyway. Lucy's cybernetic eyes flickered, and a pipe in the tunnel wall suddenly opened.

Scalding steam erupted like an unbridled beast and swallowed all three men.

"Fuck!" "Aaaagh!"

Their screams rang out continuously. The muscles they were so proud of offered little protection against the heat.

A panel in the pipework overhead suddenly opened, revealing a concealed maintenance passage.

The pursuers behind Lucy took a moment to understand what had happened. She seized the chance to climb into the opening and disappear.

When the men reached it, they discovered that the pipe was barely wide enough to accommodate half a body.

Before the idiots could decide what to do, a rhythmic burst of gunfire erupted behind them.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The Animals had never expected someone to attack from behind and were caught completely off guard.

For any carbon-based life-form, trying to stop a bullet with naked flesh usually ended one way.

The gunpowder-propelled slugs tore through their carefully sculpted muscles in an instant.

"Fuck! Where'd this rat come from?!"

The leader roared, several flattened bullets embedded in his arm.

His subdermal armor had stopped the worst of the shots, but even so, the enormous force of the Malorian rounds left his muscles shaking uncontrollably.

Pantheon stepped out of the tunnel's shadows, smoke still drifting from his revolver.

Huh? Where'd my Lucy go? She was right here a second ago!

"Who the fuck are you?!"

Pantheon snapped out of his thoughts. His mouth had already produced a smartass answer before his brain could intervene.

"Your daddy, big guy. All that muscle, and you're still a lightweight."

The Animals leader grabbed a dead underling by the body and glared at Pantheon with bloodshot eyes.

"I don't give a shit who you are! You kill one of my Animals, and I'll rip your head off and kick it around like a football!"

Before he'd even finished speaking, he swung his massive arm, hurling the corpse at Pantheon like a punching bag.

Isn't that practically your left brain fighting your right?

Pantheon couldn't resist the thought.

He sidestepped the flying body, but the leader used the distraction to close the distance.

Fuck! Can't let him get close!

Watching the huge thug hurtle toward him like a runaway truck, Pantheon's eye twitched.

He wasn't keen on ending up stuck to the soles of the man's shoes. What an embarrassing way to go.

He pushed off hard, slid sideways, and avoided the charge.

The Malorian roared again, this time aiming at the leader's knee joint.

Even with bones reinforced through biochemistry and cyberware, the thug couldn't ignore the immense kinetic energy of an anti-materiel-class round. His right leg buckled.

Thrown off balance, he crashed heavily to the ground.

"ROAR!"

The leader pounded his chest and roared, forcing his internal hormone regulator into overload.

A cocktail of powerful chemicals flooded his bloodstream. Despite his wounded leg, he forced himself upright and swung a fist bigger than a sandbag at Pantheon.

Click, click. Pantheon's gun answered with several empty clicks.

He frowned and hurried to dodge, but the leader seemed determined not to give him the chance.

Just then, Monowire swept in as silently as the Grim Reaper's scythe and wrapped around the thug's raised right arm.

The razor-sharp strand sliced through his subdermal armor and bit deep into the muscle and bone.

The leader howled in pain. His movement twisted off course, and the punch missed its target.

"Hoho! I never thought anyone would come to the rescue of a 'Scavenger' like me. I'm touched."

Disgusting.

Lucy said nothing from the other side, but the expression on her face conveyed the word perfectly.

A faint smile tugged at Pantheon's mouth. He was confident he could have beaten the leader even without her help.

Still, fighting side by side with a girl who'd once been his favorite anime wife wasn't a bad feeling at all.

Instead of retreating before the thug's furious attack, he stepped forward.

[Dead Eye]!

The world's colors shifted, and the leader's savage expression seemed to freeze in place.

Pantheon flicked open the revolver's cylinder and snapped his wrist. Six hot casings clattered to the floor while his other hand loaded six fresh rounds with a magician's speed.

Time flowed again. As though he'd seen the attack coming, Pantheon calmly avoided a punch powerful enough to shatter concrete and pressed the Malorian's muzzle beneath the man's jaw.

There was no thick subdermal armor to protect that spot. The bullet would go straight into his brain.

"Welcome to the great gym in the sky!"

The revolver thundered. A bullet drove up through the leader's jaw and blew away most of his skull. His head burst like a balloon.

Thick red and white matter sprayed across the tunnel walls, and the two-meter mountain of flesh crashed to the ground.

A notification sounded in Pantheon's ear.

[Detected trait: [Scientific Superpower] (Blue)]

Description: This punch packs the power of three thousand injections. Think you can take it?!

Effect: Body +3. Special effect: Body +3.

[Keep this trait?]

At that moment, the three men trapped in the steam broke through, and Pantheon casually sent three scorching bullets their way.

With [Stronger with Every Battle] stacked to its maximum, a hot surge of power coursed through his body, sweeping away the fatigue of the past few days. Unfortunately, the effect couldn't last forever.

Silence returned to the underground passage, broken only by the hiss of escaping steam.