At least with netrunning you didn’t get all the aches and pains you got from fighting in real life. Even when you won a fight you’d come away with little pulled muscles and bruises and cuts. On the grids there was none of that.

[User should be informed that there were several instances of high temperatures during the previous netrunning session. Sanctum made appropriate changes to cyberware outputs and tolerances along with minor, localized metabolic changes to avoid temporary damage but User is advised to seek further cyberware or hardware to avoid such dangers in the future.]

Ah, right. Yeah there was a good bit more combat than I thought would be applicable to such a simple job. I used to be nice to the netrunners when I was being a guide but I’ll try to be even nicer to them going forwards. They had to deal with some stuff.

I untangled my little barricade that was blocking the doorway and dismantled my flash traps without blinding myself. Then I unlocked the smelly shelter and opened the door to let some fresh air in.

The coast was clear as the door opened smoothly so I stepped out from my cover position and headed out of the shelter back into the viaducts. Walking along the route I’d taken here in reverse. The drones I’d hacked had moved on since I’d been netrunning leaving nothing in their place but some busted pipes that would likely need an actual engineer to come out and sort at some stage.

I was kind of sad for a moment as I wanted to walk invisible among the drones again but now wasn’t the time to be playing around. Now was the time to get paid and revel in my first netrunning job pulled off perfectly including the setup. Even Noe couldn’t be mad at me this time.

The journey back on the train was long, the first train to come along was literally full so it just went right past without stopping and I had to sit there another twenty minutes. Eventually another one came through and I got on this one fine although the carriage I’d chosen ended up filled with ganger kids on the next station and they were blasting a boom box with some gang anthem music which was annoying.

My music palette wasn’t exactly the most developed and I listened to a lot of different stuff, but a song composed of a guy describing his vague daily schedule of ganger life in a hushed whisper close to the microphone while a heavy bass line pounded from time to time and the only time the song had any other instruments was when he got into two fights and the song sped up and filled with random notes was just annoying.

Ganger anthem music, man. They all had their own types and they nearly always bad.

Fortunately they got off two stops later so they were only around for a while. I got off soon after.

As I walked through the more local neighborhood there was still some signs of tension on the streets even as the place wound down to evening with gangers visibly carrying heavy iron and just being a lot more handing around in general. The civs were still around but people weren’t shopping so much or standing around talking, just heading home.

I saw a big ganger group up ahead on the crossroads ahead, there was some obvious argument going on over the territories overlapping there. At least three gangs from what I could tell from the colors but there was enough variation there could be a fourth mixed in there, I wasn’t planning on checking.

Instead I took a hard left and headed down a small side street to avoid the confrontation, the side street was quiet and I could follow it south until I hit the main street and just head west from there.

Unfortunately I was only about halfway down the street when I noticed an audio alert from an alcove ahead of me.

[Footsteps]

I slowed my walk a little and placed my hand into my zipped jacket onto my signet. Apparently the hostiles took that as their sign to step out so I just slowed and stopped a good distance away from where they seemed to want me as they walked up from the front.

Four teenagers from the front, one from the left and three from the right, I glanced back and saw three more behind me with at least one having iron.

“Hey kid. You going somewhere this evening? You must have heard about the gang troubles around here. Tell you what we’ll make it real quick so you can get indoors. Drop your iron and you can just walk on by. No issues.” The scraggly bearded guy with gray chrome eyes said, laying his hand on a machete at his waist.

“Woah, hey choom. We don’t need to get in trouble. I didn’t know there was a toll through here. How much? Fifty? Seventy?” I said, trying to salvage the situation. I backed up and to the side a little, slowly.

“Choom, we’re going to need you to drop the iron, both of them. No toll though, walk away with all your aura tonight.” The hostile said. Taking a step towards me as he slowly pulled his machete free of it’s little sheath thing.

“You can’t be trying to hold up a guy with iron with a machete? Even a few extra chooms won’t do you much good personally. Bullets move a lot faster than your friends.” I said, carefully sidestepping towards the wall to the right of me. I wanted at least one safe direction.

“It’s fine though right choom? It’s not going to come to that because you’re going to drop the iron right this second. So it doesn’t matter. You go shooting on these streets and you’ll have the Drowners on all of us in moments to hunt down their guns. Shooting is a big no no right now. Now drop them both.” He said, taking more steps towards me and getting a bit hyped.

Noe was going to kill me.

“Maybe you’re right. I’m not dropping them though. You’ll have to pick them off me.” I said as I quickly unzipped my jacket and pulled my truncheon from the back of my rig.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Ooh a stick. Kid, just drop the stick and the guns and we won’t zero you right here.” He said, dropping all pretense.

“Just come at me you gonk. It’s getting late.” I said, trying not to be nervous. There were a lot of them and one me. I wasn’t getting out of here without making an example of the leader.

The leader hostile smiled real twisted and rushed at me with the machete in a wide swing.

At least he was obvious, even as time slowed down I could likely have deflected the machete even in normal speed. I knocked the machete totally wide with a hit from my truncheon and had more than enough time to bring the truncheon back around to catch the gonk in the head.

He staggered back with a bleeding cut to his scalp and he had lost balance but he glanced up with a feral look and rushed me again with a top down chop. I tried to step back but I wasn’t going to get enough room so I brought up the machete to try to block. Wish I had longer legs.

The machete clanged into my truncheon and my arms almost gave out, the guy was stronger than I thought. I managed to keep it from getting to my head though and pushed it off to the side and then kicked out at the gonk.

He avoided it with a little movement and swung a punch at me and even with the slow time he still caught me by surprise enough that my little bit of avoidance wasn’t enough and he clipped my head enough to send me stumbling.

My braincase prevented dizziness or serious damage so I got back under balance and swung my truncheon at the hostile, aiming for his machete arm at the shoulder. Hopefully that’d slow his swings a bit.

It caught him very nicely as he was still pulling himself back from his punch, the previous head hit obviously slowing him down a bit. The shoulder hit send him reeling away and he was obviously angry now.

“Get the gonk! Zero him!” He said, pointing his good arm at me.

Come on man. At least fight to the end.

I looked at the kid with the iron to see him aim at me while all the others closed in around me and the leader guy. A few of them had knives, others pipes, one had a metal bat thing. Plus leader guy that was six close combatants and one overwatch. Overwatch was likely just for show. All of them were a few years older and larger than me.

This wasn’t looking good.

Why didn’t Allie let me take the micro-missile launcher?

The first hostile closed in and time slowed down once more, KD singing to me like it had been for a while. Little suggestions of movements. I caught the pipe on my truncheon and swept it into the path of the next guy for them to stumble to avoid.

Then another hostile from the other side that I managed to just catch out with a punch to the face with my free hand as he came in to stab me. Obviously expecting me to flinch away. Doing that locked me into a big movement though and left me open to take a pipe to my head though.

It didn’t hurt too much, just a bit surprising and the bit of damaged scalp was quickly numbed by Sanctum. Even as blood ran out of my hair I wasn’t out of commission just yet.

I swung out blindly with my truncheon and caught the leg of a gonk to the right of me as I faced the wall nearby. Then I threw myself back and into another to get some space but I was too light to cause him to fall, leaving both of us just stood near each other. He took a swing with his knife and I took a good cut to the eyebrow as far as I could tell in the moment. At least he didn’t catch the eye, those are heirlooms.

Pushing him away with my free hand as he finished his swing caused him to back up and I swung the truncheon around to his head but some other gonk got in the way and took it to their wrist as they closed in to hit me. I heard a crack and he staggered away screaming so it must have broke.

The knife guy closed in again and I just kicked him in the crotch, which left him falling to his knees. Again though, getting into a fight with one guy left me open to another and I took a stab straight to my back, then another as I tried to turn around to face the gonk.

As I tried to wind up a swing with my truncheon I took a punch to the face from the leader guy from my blind side as the blood from my eyebrow had covered my eye. This sent me sprawling a bit and I nearly dropped my truncheon.

As I was on the floor I felt two quick pipe hits to my back and felt something snap, likely a rib. Sanctum was keeping me in the fight though so I ignored the damage and swung back with my truncheon to hit the knee of a hostile winging up for another hit. His kneecap shattered from what I could feel and he fell back screaming.

I didn’t know where I was in the street, I didn’t know how many were left. I was on my knees and blind in one eye with a bunch of wounds to deal with later. I tried to get some air into my lungs and get a breather but the leader guy came in from the side I could see and swung his machete straight at my head.

This was likely my only chance then. I dropped my truncheon and brought my hand up to my knife under my arm and pulled it free as the machete took a wide slice to the side of my head. I felt it bit into the flesh but I knew my brain would be fine at least and Sanctum would stop me bleeding out right away, hopefully.

With the leader invested into trying to cut my head off I lunged at him in that moment and buried my knife into his gut and quickly used that as an anchor to pull myself from my knees to my feet. Pulling the knife free among the slow motion I plunge the blade into the leader’s neck, then pulling it out and burying it in his head. Lights out.

Letting him fall to the floor I turned around and grabbed my truncheon from the floor unsteadily just in time to take a kick to the chin which rattled me for a moment before someone smashed my arm with a pipe which made me drop my truncheon.

I looked up just in time to avoid another kick and punched out into the attackers torso, straight under the ribs. He staggered back and gave me enough room to avoid the pipe swinging at me from the side but he just back swung it and took me in the teeth as I tried to close in.

Back to the floor I went and a bunch of tooth shrapnel spilled from my mouth among some blood. Teeth were expensive, damn it.

He came over to finish me off but I fell flat to the floor as his hit came down on me, really softening the blow as KD told me it would. It also gave me enough reach to grab hold of leader’s dropped machete and I pulled myself up with one hand and swung nearly blind into the pipe hostile’s thigh behind me.

The hostile screamed and tried to swing his pipe at my hand but I just pulled the machete free from his flesh and brought it down on his boot, which didn’t do much unfortunately. I didn’t have the strength to cut through leather with a machete apparently.

It still crushed a few toes though and made him stumble in place as he thought I had cut his foot off. Instead I got my foot under me and threw myself upwards to land a punch on the guys chin. It wasn’t a good hit, didn’t do much damage, but it surprised him enough to back off.

That gave me the space I needed to get to my feet and square up holding the machete in hand. We both stood there looking at each other and the gonk just rushed my with his pipe raised. I swung the machete wide and caught his ribs as I caught the pipe on my shoulder, feeling something pop.

I dropped the machete and it tumbled from the gonks torso as he fell away trying to breathe through his new air vent. My arm was tingly and I knew that if Sanctum wasn’t actively stopping the pain I would be howling.

Looking around the gonks were either gone, dead or too injured to drag themselves away and were just trying to stay still and unnoticed. I wasn’t in the mood to try and save the ones who didn’t have much time left to get help. I had other priorities.

Turning away and slowly, very slowly bending down to grab my truncheon I then slipped into back into the holster at the back of my rig under my jacket and pressed the popper in so it was secure.