“Yeah gimme a minute,” I groused back into the phone.

Chuck seemed utterly dumbfounded. “What did you just say?”

“Gotta mop up these Brass Crosses real quick.” And that’s exactly what I was doing. With my new Half the Battle card activated, I put plasma blasts in the heads and necks of the remaining tattooed foot soldiers, letting Chuck hear the carnage as I fought.

“You thought you could just come in here, guns a-blazing, and we’d be done?” Blam, another one fell.

“Don’t ignore me! I will kill your friend, Dirk Stone!” Chuck demanded. “See if I don’t!”

“Jack’s fine,” I told him, and shot another Cross. “If you think dropping him is gonna kill him, you haven’t been taking notes.”

He roared in impotent rage. The best kind of rage to have directed at you.

Cybernetic enhancement informed me that several were on my six, but when I dove and turned, two of them were dead and the third one had seen the writing on the wall: his buddies’ brains.

“Wha–”

“You’re mine!” Hina shouted from a nearby rooftop, with steam lazily drifting into the air from a gun about the size of her entire body. “We’re not done until you pay off that weapon… and die by my hand.”

“Uh… thanks?” Behind me, Patches was in the process of taking fire from one of the mecha suits.

“No one is going to rob me of the pleasure of taking you down,” Hina declared, and brought up a gauntlet. This one fired into the remaining mecha suit trying to flank Patches. A huge net spread out, wrapped awkwardly around the cockpit bubble, and dozens of tiny explosives went off all over the place. Another Cross suit exploded.

Now, with Patches grappling onto the last one down here, I ducked in, pulled open the cockpit door, and slipped inside. A little Aggressive Negotiations followed, and I found myself one slightly-bloodied mecha suit of powered armor richer.

“Okay, Chuck the dragon. You’re on the roof of my building, holding one of my people hostage, threatening to kill him if I don’t… what? Come up there and offer myself to you? Cause that ain’t gonna happen.”

“Face me like a man,” Chuck snarled, smoke curling from his nostrils.

“I did that in a sweet hallway scene already. And we know how that turned out.”

Chuck roared out in anger, and I gained a rank in the Taunt skill. Which was nice. But what I really wanted was to Aggressively Negotiate all over his big metal face. He tossed Jack back over his shoulder, onto the roof of the building rather than dropping him, and blasted fire up into the sky.

Oh, and though it didn’t matter, my reputation level with Chuck the cyber dragon fell by another hundred points.

I blasted up on hand and foot boosters, soaring upwards while checking the status of the weapons systems in this bucket of bolts. The mecha suit had sustained some damage, about 35% of its hit points, but still had several weapons left: cutting torch, Haruken miniguns at half ammo, and something called bolo garotte.

Cutting Torch

DMG 2-20 (short)

Spd Slow

Damage x5 to armored suits, tanks, and cybernetics

‘Was made to peel wounded soldiers from wrecked vehicles. Never seen it used that way though.’

Bolo Garotte

DMG 1-10 (short/medium/long)

Spd Fast

Successful grapple inflicts asphyxiation status until freed. Successful grapple causes an additional 1-10 damage every 5 seconds until freed.

‘There’s a reason its best to fight in pairs.’

“Interesting,” I breathed, and maneuvered the menus to my liking.

Below, I was getting reports from Ice and Sug that they’d taken down the last of the cross posse, and scattered the rest. The Brass Crosses might’ve won the day somewhere in the city, but it wasn’t my little slice of the pie.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Nolan had an update: we had one dead and seven at low hit points. Given the many Crossers I saw lying bloodied and broken all over the street, that seemed like a pretty excellent showing.

“Now to make sure it’s just those eight,” I told myself.

I engaged the miniguns the moment Chuck came back into view, but he surprised me by leaping down and directly over me. I went to compensate, but the controls on this thing were clunky when it was airborne, and I only started to turn when Chuck slammed into the top of the mecha and latched on.

“I lost a perfectly good arm to your shenanigans,” Chuck growled.

“You’re going to have a matching set, asshole,” I called out. Cutting torch, do your thing. A bright beam of fire sprang from the palm of one hand, and I brought it in for the kill.

Chuck only laughed.

An Insight notification sprang to life. AS CHUCK IS A RED DRAGON, HE IS IMMUNE TO FIRE DAMAGE.

“Yeah, I got that impression,” I said, then tried to course correct. A second later I had the torch bearing down on Chuck’s cybernetic arm.

We sailed up and over the roof, Chuck’s clawed hand was melted free of the rest of the arm, and he roared again. I got a bath of scorching heat; he was giving me his own cutting torch treatment.

The heads up display on this mecha suit started going wild with various warning lights, turning the cockpit into a Christmas decoration. Beeps and buzzers and klaxons warned me to cut that shit out, and I heartily agreed.

I angled downwards, and now grabbed onto Chuck just before we crunched against the rooftop. Unfortunately it cost the mecha another 25% of its health, easy. These things looked strong, but seemed to take only three or four strong attacks before they killed the pilot.

Well, that wouldn’t do. I rolled off Chuck and got a little distance. The dragon didn’t seem at all bothered by the loss of a cyber claw, and still had a good 75% of his health intact.

“Hiding inside a suit of armor. You’re pathetic.”

“You’ve got me outclassed by, what, 30 tons? Yet hear I am, beating the snot out of you,” I shot back. Taunt increased by another point.

I backed off and dodged several more flame breath attacks, using the mecha’s ball shape to roll over, and its long arms to complete some of the weirdest looking cartwheels in history. Only one of the flame attacks hit, and lucky for me, it shaved off only a tiny fraction of the suit’s HP.

I opened up with the miniguns next. The barrels whirred to life right as Chuck was jumping. Thousands and thousands of rounds sprayed out into the night, just behind him. He slithered through the air and came down like a bullet, cutting through one of the arms entirely. The arm dropped off with a thunk, and spun me around to face him.

I did score some hits, but the Examine skill informed me further that he had crazy high damage resistance versus typical weapons. A few icons denoting his abilities popped into my feed, (a shield with a bullet bouncing off, a dragon breathing flame, fire against scales, and one that could only be flight) but I wasn’t quick enough to read all of them thoroughly.

Chuck slithered to the side and shot at me again.

Abandon ship. “On my mark, fire the bolo garotte,” I told it.

I dropped to the floor, kicked open the front hatch, and rolled out of the mecha suit just as Chuck bounced off the cockpit bubble, cracked it hard, and tore the other arm off. With a quick roll, I was able to get hold of the hand, and aimed.

“Mark!” I screamed.

Sometimes you have days where it seems like everything’s gone wrong. Sometimes you wake up in a start, knowing your alarm is off because of a power outage, you end up getting something on your pants on the drive, your tire blows out three or four miles from work, you walk the rest of the way but get sprayed by a car driving in a puddle. You’re late as hell. When you get there, no spare pants at the office. It’s the same day you have to have an interview with HR over your possible promotion, and it’s the day after your buddy’s birthday, so of course you’re hung over. You know, just by how the interview goes, that today has been a great big heap of shit sauce on an already sloppy shit sandwich.

This was like the opposite of that.

The bolo shot out: two softball-sized steel balls with a length of razor thin wire in between made of some cyberpunk super material, probably with carbon in the name. That bad boy caught Chuck in his long ass neck, wrapped around a number of times, and ended up coming together just below the shoulders.

The flame went out in an instant. Chuck’s eyes bugged out, the garrote started cutting into his scales, and the rest of the cyber arm ended up sheared off a few seconds later.

He made a sound like ‘gulk!’ and took several drunken steps towards me, then had an even more panicky moment and turned around to flee the scene. He even leapt into the air.

“No way,” I told him, and produced the plasma blaster.

One shot brought him down, hard. He landed on that ventilation stuff you see on the top of buildings, crushing it instantly. A second of awkward rolling around later he got to his feet, single hand up to try to stop what was definitely about to happen.

“Wait,” he managed.

“Cue the bargaining.”

“I can…” he tried coughing several times, and failed. “Money. Anyth–”

His eyes bulged again, and this time it was from an internal light. He was glowing from within. A flame blast had been building up in whatever flame sacs or fuel pockets he had inside him. Only it couldn’t get out.

I watched in satisfaction while Chuck’s body bloated out, the glow intensified, and he exploded.

Then I collected a whole bunch of dragon claws, horns, scales, and a few top tier cyber parts for Nolan to craft.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” I told him.

The battle was more or less over by then. Reports were coming in, I had at least one quest I didn’t check, and there was definitely a situational report coming up that I’d need to comb through, but I needed sleep. Jack had made his way down from the roof before I’d even gotten there, and was fine after a few health items from Nolan.

Doug was better than fine, the dickhead.

I got a quick report from Dragon: Patches was an absolute medal of honor hero, everybody was safe, Beer Pong and Chad had been part of the battle and had acquitted themselves fairly well, and the only casualty was an NPC member. Still, it was the rat guy from the other day and I was sorry to see him gone.

Other battles were raging throughout the city, most likely, but there was nothing I could do about it, not here and not now.

Now I just needed to get some sleep…

QUEST RECEIVED! RISE IN THE RANKS

You’ll need to do the The Godfather’s bidding for the time being, and that means putting out the fires the Brass Crosses have started. You’ll see a number of sub-quests appearing, and every one of these you can complete will increase your standing with the Ringo-Dango. Complete more than the other affiliated confederacy member groups, and you’ll rise higher and faster.

Objective: complete side quests at a ludicrous rate.

Reward: increased reputation with The The Godfather, +1000 xp per quest completed

Below that was the beginning of a list, but right now, I couldn’t handle looking closer. No, the day had already been too much. I needed rest.

I was mostly too drained by the day’s events to deal with anything. Two minutes after getting Patches out of the suit and back into my apartment, I was in my bed and dead to the world.