[[[ okay i tried super fucking hard on this one, since it would count as a boss battle. tell me what you thought, and if I made any mistakes]]
My heart pounded so loudly it felt like it would crack open my ribs as I stood frozen for half a heartbeat, the cold fury tightening my muscles like steel cords beneath my suit. Bent over a body.
Small. Limp. The head is twisted at an angle. The chrome butcher loomed above her, blood still dripping from the cleaver bolted to his forearm. His plating gleamed under the emergency strobes, and for a second, I couldn't hear anything but the slow grind of his servo joints as he turned.
His grin spread like a crack in metal. No lips. Just a skeletal grimace lined with dented silver teeth. "New toy," he rasped, voice like a buzzsaw dulled by bone.
I fired. Two rounds cracked through the air, the first pinged off his shoulder plate. The second nicked something under his collar and sparked, but didn't slow him.
I stored the Chao and charged, claws flaring out from my gloves with a satisfying snikt. The bastard laughed and raised his cleaver. I ducked under the first swing. Felt the rush of air as it missed my head by a breath. Slid low, claws out, and raked his thigh. Metal shrieked.
The armor plating under his pants had dents, jagged seams, but nothing deep. I darted back before he could retaliate, heart slamming against my ribs. The kids behind me whimpered. "Feisty little kitten," he cooed, stepping forward, boots thudding like anvils. "I like it when they scratch." His left arm snapped forward, too fast for his size, and crack, his knuckles clipped the edge of my mask.
I staggered.
Vision whited out for half a second. The mask took the brunt, but it jarred my neck sideways. I tasted blood at the back of my throat. Didn't matter. I rebounded off the wall, vaulted toward him, and aimed low.
He caught me mid-lunge. Fucker was faster than he looked. His chrome arm wrapped around my midsection and slammed me into the floor like a ragdoll again and again. The breath whooshed out of me. My ribs screamed. I gasped, but my voice didn't make it past the mask's vocoder.
"Kitty doesn't meow so loud now," he chuckled, stepping on my side as I rolled away. Pain bloomed across my hip, but I gritted my teeth and hit him with an EMP puck from my belt. The blast fizzled against his chest, brief, bright, blue.
He hissed and twitched. Smoke curled from one of his shoulder ports. It bought me half a second. Enough to get back on my feet, breathing hard, vision doubled. I hit the adrenaline injector on my wrist.
Hissss.
Heat flushed through my limbs. He recovered faster than I expected. Charged, shoulder-first. I sidestepped, barely, and raked my claws across his side. This time, I hit soft tissue, what little was left of it. Blood sprayed. He roared, but not in pain. In joy, it seemed as he got a hard-on.
I kept moving, kept cutting. One-two, like Kitrina drilled into me. I again aimed for the same spot, lower flank.
I got in close, slashed deep, and— He headbutted me. Everything snapped white. I dropped, ears ringing. Couldn't see for a second. My mouth filled with blood. I spit. A molar went with it.
"Still breathing?" he taunted. "Good. Hate it when they die too fast." He grabbed me by the back of my shirt and threw me. I hit the wall with enough force to bounce. My shoulder dislocated with a wet pop. The scream died in my throat.
Fuck. I rolled, clumsily, arm hanging uselessly, and fired a flash-strobe grenade behind me. The boom lit up the room like a supernova. He howled. Optics blinded. I scrambled to my knees, popped the arm back in with a grunt that came out more animal than human, and lunged. I tried to tackle him to the floor.
Bad idea. It was like trying to pin a wrecking ball. He bucked, twisted, and drove an elbow into my ribs. I think one cracked. The pain lit up my brain like fireworks. I didn't care. I slashed his face, claws digging into his eye housing.
He screamed. That one hurt him. I grinned beneath the mask, blood seeping past my lips. "Smile for the camera, asshole." He backhanded me so hard my mask's voice filter went dead.
I landed in a heap. Breathing was shallow now. Blood filled one lung. I coughed hard enough to rattle bone. "Still think you can win?" he asked, stepping over me. I laughed. Couldn't help it. It came out bloody.
"You don't get to walk out of here," I wheezed, voice raw. "You sick fuck, you and all your friends are dead meat! And once I'm done here, I'm going after your clients."
He kicked me in the ribs. I blacked out for a blink. Came to on the floor, barely conscious. But my fingers still worked. And they found what I needed. The microblade in my boot. I let him grab me by the throat, let him lift me, choking, and then stabbed it straight into his neck.
Thhhhk.
He gurgled. Dropped me.
I hit the ground, rolled, dug my claws into his thigh, and climbed his body. Screaming now in rage. He grabbed my leg, tried to pull me off. I jammed my claw through his bicep. Sparks. Blood. Screams.
He threw me off, as I crashed into some kind of crate. But still he was smiling. "You're… fun," he wheezed.
Shaking off the daze, I rolled again just as he stomped forward, his massive foot coming down where my head had been a second earlier. The floor cracked beneath him. I drew a shaky breath and spun to face him again, eyes narrowed behind my mask.
He moved again, quicker than his bulk should allow, lunging with that lethal cleaver. My reflexes took over, honed by countless drills; I sprang upwards, leveraging my double-jump boosters to vault over his shoulder. My claws raked down his spine, gouging grooves into metal but stopping cold against his reinforced ribs. Pain jolted through my hands from the impact, but at least I managed to damage something.
"Tickles," he mocked, whirling around, cleaver slicing a wide arc. I threw myself back, but not fast enough; hot pain lanced across my thigh as the edge sliced through skin and muscle, opening a gash deep enough to burn like fire. I staggered, teeth grinding against a scream, blood slicking my leg.
Growling, I whipped around and hurled an EMP puck straight at his chest. It detonated with a blue pulse, crackling through the room. For one glorious second, his movements stuttered. I lunged forward, driving my claws straight into the joint at his elbow, tearing deep. Hydraulic fluid sprayed, splattering my mask. He roared in fury, wrenching his arm back and throwing me again, my body bouncing violently across the concrete.
Breath wheezed from my lungs in a ragged gasp, ribs screaming. Before I could fully stand, he was on me again, his massive hand closing around my throat, lifting me from the ground again. My feet dangled uselessly as he squeezed, fingers pressing painfully against my windpipe. My vision darkened, stars sparking in my periphery.
"Little kitty has bite," he snarled, driving his knee into my gut. The impact doubled me over, bile rising in my throat. He flung me aside once more, and I hit the wall hard enough to crack ribs, pain blossoming sharp and relentless.
Blood seeped into my mask, stinging my eyes, my breath coming in shallow gasps. Every movement sent agony rippling through me. He advanced slowly, confident now, sure of his victory. My mind raced, hunting for any scrap of a plan, a weapon, a trick—anything that could keep me alive for another few seconds.
"Just die already," he hissed, voice grinding like metal on stone, lifting the chrome cleaver for a final strike.
Then I reached into my storage, I conjured two devices. To him, it looked like I'd pulled bombs out of thin air. Sticky, matte-red, cat-shaped charges, smirking little faces etched in neon blue.
His optics flicked wide for the first time. I slammed them against his chest, clack, clack. His servo arms reached up too slow. My thumb jabbed the primer.
Boom.
A twin detonation cracked across his torso, force and flame bursting outward. He staggered, plating blackened, balance disrupted. I launched my next move, a daemon spike straight into his optics. A finger-twitch sent the hack spiraling.
He bellowed, staggering blind. Optics stuttered between static and pitch black. I took the chance to rake claws across his already damaged elbow joint. This time, sparks screamed and servos twitched violently.
I use one of my demons to hack his vision, the light in his eyes flickers to static-snow, but even blinded, he lunges by sound alone, one huge arm sweeping until it clips my ribs.
Air bolts from my lungs; the world grays at the edges. I tumble across the concrete, smear to a stop against a busted crate, ears full of the sub-harmonic whine from his over-clocked hydraulics.
The bastard's cleaver comes down and splits the floor where my head was. Shards of plascrete pepper my visor.
I see it in the tilt of his metal skull, like a wolf tasting blood on the snow. "Kiddo all out of Tricks?" he croaks, voice skipping as the daemon fries more optics. His free hand fists in my jacket, hauls me up until my boots scrape useless circles. "I would have loved to rape you, before killing you..."
My mask is an inch from his dented grill. I hear my own heartbeat, fast-fast-fast, like a trapped bird, feel the lacquer of his knuckles begin to squeeze. Veins in my eyes burst; vision swims red.
Think.
I grab another knife from my storage and bury it to the hilt in the meat of his shoulder, but the blade stops it dead from severing anything important. He laughs, deep and wet, and slams me spine-first into a support pillar. Something in my back crunches; black blooms at the edges of sight.
He cocks the cleaver behind his head, ready to pin me to the wall like a bug.
I can't lift my arms. I can't even curse him. All I can do is watch the arc come screaming in—
THOOMP—KRACK!
The entire left side of his skull detonates outward in a spray of chrome shards and violet arterial mist. For half a breath, he's still standing—body locked mid-swing—then the servos in his hips misfire and he folds like a marionette with its strings cut, crashing at my feet.
I hit the floor with him, chest heaving, ears ringing. The muzzle-flash afterimage still ghosts across my retinas when a shadow steps through gun-smoke, barrel of an integrated cannon retracting back into a forearm big enough to bench-press a car.
Maine.
His silhouette, hydraulic pistons sighing as he lowers the massive arm. I can't see his eyes past the polarized lenses, but his breathing is slow, controlled, and professional. He gives the corpse one final tap with the toe of a steel boot, just to be sure, then snaps the arm-cannon's breach closed with a clack that echoes off the walls.
"Blood Cat," he rumbles, voice like gravel down a gutter, "you pick the worst gonk to fight."
Blood pools around my knees; some of it mine, most of it not. I manage a cough that tastes like copper pennies and burnt ozone. I raised my hand and gave him the finger.
Maine barks a short laugh, reaches down, and one-handed lifts me clear off the gore-slick concrete. "Yeah? Looked more like he had you mounted on a trophy wall. You should be thanking me for saving your ass."
I try to answer, but the adrenaline finally bails, and everything shifts sideways. He hooks an arm around my waist before my legs go, steady as rebar.
"Save the sass for later," he mutters, scanning the room, cannon cycling a fresh round with a hydraulic chunk. "More of these chrome psychos'll be sniffing around any second. You mobile?"
I nodded before forcing myself to stand. He snorts, hauls me toward the exit. "Good enough."
Behind us, the butcher's ruined head sends tiny rivulets of neural fluid across the floor, the sticky-cat charges still sizzling on what's left of his chest. The kids huddle in their cage, wide-eyed but alive. When they see the giant with the smoking arm and the bleeding girl in the cat mask, hope flickers for the first time all night.
Maine shoulders the cage door like it's sheet rock, bends the bars apart. "C'mon, little chooms, field trip." I stagger after him, ribs grinding, claws drenched, heart still jack-hammering.
The corridor outside smelled of scorched wiring and iron-rich blood, a fetid current that rode every gust of air funneling through busted ventilation ducts. As water was filling up to our knees quickly on this lower floor. Maine's boots slammed down the metal walkway in a cadence that vibrated up my spine, each step making the reinforced grates whine in protest beneath his weight as we moved up to the first floor.
Behind us, the twenty-five kids moved close together. Rebecca met us at the door and then led the pack, hyperactive in every motion, pistol in one hand and a stolen flashlight in the other, snapping directions in a clipped staccato that somehow kept the little ones calm. Pilar limped beside her, his combat chrome sparking here and there after his earlier tussle with a security turret, but his grin never dimmed; any time a child hesitated, he flashed those gold incisors, barked a joke, and nudged them forward again.
The radio chatter in my ear was a mess of overlapping channels: Kiwi swearing in quick bursts of Polish-laced English while she burned Maelstrom ICE from a safe house seven blocks away; Falco asking for street grids; Dorio's low rumble shepherding a second evac van through a maze of half-collapsed tunnels; and somewhere under it all, the flatline drone of Maelstrom IDs winking out one after another as Kiwi's kill-codes chewed through their biomons.
"Whole hive's dead," she confirmed over the wire, voice calm now that the cyberwar was won. "No heat signatures left in the compound—just you lot. But I'm picking up fresh pings heading south on 38th, ten bikes, two Combat Cabs. You've got maybe eight minutes."
"Copy," Maine grunted. He slung me against the wall for cover as we reached a blown-out loading bay that opened onto Night City's rain-slick artery of elevated freight tracks. Dim halogen yard-lamps strobed across puddles, turning them into quicksilver mirrors.
A repurposed cargo van, purple, beaten, and humming with mismatched engines, screeched to a halt below, its gull-wing side door already yawning open. Dorio was at the wheel, chrome knuckles drumming the steering yoke; Sasha sat shotgun, jacked in and pale, flicking her wrist to shunt a final dose of counter-ICE into the mesh net that kept the van invisible to passing traffic cams.
Rebecca shoved the rear latch aside and began shepherding the children down a rickety stairwell. Some were still in shock, eyes huge, skin goose-pimpled beneath ragged blankets we'd scrounged, but they moved.
Halfway down the stairs I pressed a cred-chip into Dorio's waiting hand, a 60k wire I'd scrubbed and triple-bounced through a dozen dummy accounts. "Here's your cut, drop 'em off with the mox, they will know what to do," I rasped, voice raw through the broken mask vocoder, which luckily was working again.
Dorio scanned the chip, nodded once, and slid it into a reader slot behind the dash. "Call when you need more bodies."
Rebecca bounded back up the stairs two at a time, stopping beside me long enough to jam a field-dressing kit into my palm. "Patch yourself, choom. You look like you lost a fight with a lawn mower."
I mustered a bloody smile behind the cracked mask. "Next time, you can fight the big lawn-mower."
The last kid to follow her looked around 7 and handed me a small dirty toy. I held it in my hands as she followed rebecca to the van and looked one last time at me.
Rebecca winked—then she and Pilar melted into the van, doors slamming, engine screaming as Dorio dumped the throttle and fishtailed onto the mag-lev maintenance road, sparks geysering from steel rims until traction caught. Within seconds, they were gone, tail-lights devoured by the smog-haze.
Silence dropped like a blackout curtain. Only Maine and I remained on the platform, sodium-orange light glinting off the giant's scarred biceps and the soot-blackened cat mask clinging to my face. He jerked a thumb at the butcher's bunker behind us, half-collapsed and belching smoke. "You wanna sign your work, Cat?"
"Already did." I raised a hand. Far below, on a buckled service door, a fresh red stencil gleamed where sprinkler runoff hadn't yet smudged it: a minimalist feline skull, three whisker-slashes razoring outward beneath. My calling card.
"Cute." He offered me a combat stim the size of my thumb. I popped the seal with sore teeth, huffed the cocktail into shredded lungs, and felt its burn stitch the worst cracks shut.
"News-tip routed?" he asked.
"Through a Militech think-tank in Manila," I croaked. "By the time NCPD traces it, they'll be filing FOIAs to the Philippine Senate."
Maine snorted a laugh. "You got a decent head on your shoulders."
A distant roar of turbine bikes echoed between the warehouse stacks—Maelstrom's reinforcements, late to their own funeral. Maine's lenses brightened; he checked his cannon's mag-rotor, then jerked his chin toward a maintenance ladder disappearing into shadows. "Exit that way, kitty. I'll see you around." He said before getting into his car and leaving.
I limped to the ladder-well, collapsed onto the first rung, and paused just long enough to swap load-outs. With a flick of mental intent, bloody combat leathers vanished into storage; clean street clothes popped into place—a long charcoal sweater, hood up, gloves fresh, no DNA trace. A med-hypo hissed as I inhaled it, and the edge came off the pain.
At the mouth of the alley three blocks east, I stopped, lit five cigarettes in a row, and chain-smoked until my hands stopped shaking. Rain smeared the neon into water-color streaks on the pavement. I watched them run, and promised myself, and the ghosts in that bunker, that every last buyer on that snuff list would find my claws.
One drag, two, five smokes ground under heel. Then I pulled my collar up, melted into the crowd, and vanished, just another stray cat disappearing into Night City's endless, flickering night.