An Engineer in Night City - ch 10.4 (Patreon)

Race for Arasaka Tower (4)

The Red Blue Twins take their distance from Rebecca. The Blue twin discards the broken submachine gun, pulling out a pair of oversized handguns from her hips, one painted black while the other is silver.  The Red Twin’s blade sparkles with electricity as she prepares herself to fight. While readying themselves, the pair repositioned to keep Rebecca between them.

“Well little brother, let’s play more seriously now!” The Red Twin says.

“Yes, older sister, let’s put her in her place!” The Blue Twin agrees.

In the blink of an eye, the Red Twin disappears, dashing towards Rebecca to deliver a lethal blow. Meanwhile, the Bule Twin shoots her twin pistols at Rebecca’s position to pin the shorter woman in place.

A bolt of lighting runs through Rebecca’s spine, activating her modified Sandevistan for a second. She raises her blade to deflect the attack, and with trained grace, she moves to evade the hail of bullets from Blue, before shutting down her speedware.

Outside of the time dilatation, the bullets fly past Rebecca’s former position, almost hitting Red, however, the kidpanner also deflects the bullets away with her sword.

Blue takes this opportunity for a tactical change, pivoting around the pair for a better angle. Meanwhile Red is also taking advantage of her prodigious speed to follow through with her assault.

Rebecca’s heartbeat accelerates, and on reflex, she once again activates her Speedware.

Slash Slink Blam Blam Blam*

Faster than the eye can track, a furious exchange happened between the three Solos with the result being several bullet holes on the nearby walls and ground, and a small cut on Red’s right cheek.

Red snarls at her opponent, gripping her blade until her cyberarm's metal starts to scream.

Rebecca slowly exhales, trying to slow down her heartbeat and rest her cyberware. With that brief exchange, she’s aware of her disadvantage in this ‘game.’

With the three fighters having installed Speedware, all three participants need to be aware of their partner’s and the opponent’s Speedware duration and cooldown periods, giving rise to a phenomenon popularly called “Sandevistan Chicken,” with the first Speedware activation considered to be at an inherent disadvantage.

Eventually, the Red Blue Twins regain their composure.

“She’s good at this game, big sister,” Blue admits.

“But can she keep up two against one, little sister?” Red challenges.

In another heartbeat, Rebecca takes the initiative and activates her cyberware to run after Red, the Solo's sword drawing an arc to cut her opponent.

Sparks fly as Red blocks the unexpectedly powerful attack, and she’s on the back foot when a follow-up upward slash aims for her body. Blue’s carefully aimed shots are deflected by Rebecca when she uses the momentum of her strike to block the bullets that could hit the small Solo.

Those series of exchanges repeat themselves for several minutes under the augmented perception of time. When the fierce combat reaches a lull, the Red Blue Twins are sweating from both overheating their cyberware in nervousness over facing the monster in front of them.

With her heart beating loudly in her ears, Rebecca is glad that she took Mark's advice when installing her current cyberware build. ‘I need to stay calm and focused, or else I will waste my speed. Remember: “Be faster by moving less.”’

Red tsks and glances at her twin. “We’re done playing with her. Let’s go full force!”

Blue shrugs and takes the initiative for the first time in the fight, firing as fast as she can before quickly reloading with the assistance of her chrome, the heavy pistol's rate of fire almost matching a submachine gun. Her attack saturates the area with a wall of bullets that is nearly impossible to dodge.

With a twitch of her muscles, the little Ripper jumps far away from the incoming damage, and then she activates her chrome special boosters to dash forward in mid-air, meeting with Red along the way.

Two blades clash against each other once more, with the larger swordsman overpowering her opponent in the exchange.

Instead of resisting the power of her enemy’s blade, Rebecca absorbs the hit with her legs, redirecting the sword strike with a fast change of her wrist, and finally, she counters the strike with a swift strike.

Red forces her chrome to pull back her arm for a block just as she kicks the smaller woman away.

Rebecca effortlessly sidesteps the retaliatory strike with a smirk, lightly pointing with her head to her right.

Red's eye drifts to her left for a millisecond, allowing Rebecca to disappear into Red's blind spot to swing her heated blade with all her might against Red.

A loud shrieking sound of metal against metal echoes on the battlefield, making Rebecca frown before dodging Blue support fire on her back.

Red doesn’t relent, attacking faster than before with wilder movements, her eyes taking a red tint in the irises.

The Solo quickly reassesses her enemies. ‘Did they mod a Berserker together with a Sandevistan? Of course, they did, why wouldn't the Militech dogs have the good stuff? That's fine, I still got this.'

Red doesn't stop, and attacks with a multistrike combo, taking advantage of her inexhaustible stamina for the next six to ten seconds that are stretched to near a minute of subjective time.

Meanwhile, with a lighter breath, Rebecca steps back and deflects the fast yet clumsy attacks, using Red as a shield against Blue attempts.

“What the hell? How come this bitch can keep up with both of us at the same time?”

Watching Blue’s expression deform in slow motion, Rebecca can guess what she’s thinking, likely reaching an accurate conclusion. Once more, she was grateful for Mark’s aid when he sponsored her Chrome.

“This cyberware implant was adapted from the modern Kerenzikov while taking inspiration from my new supercomputers. The first half connects the frontal cortex with the spine, further enhancing the passive boosts in perception and reflexes of your new OS, while the second half is slotted on your Power Armor to ease the computational and energy burden on your body. With the two together they act as a predictive machine learning tool that learns and adapts to your opponent’s attack pattern, eventually creating a counter strategy that your body can use on reflex.”

“The prototype is called the Zero System. With your help, I can evolve this prototype into the Anubis System.”

One of Blue’s bullets hit the nearly invulnerable Red Twin, but when a second bullet grazed the sword-wielding twin and drew blood it signified that the Berserk system entered a forced shutdown.

Rebecca doesn’t waste the opportunity, swinging her sword in an arc after her opponent with all her might.

“Hah!”

With the remaining seconds of time dilatation, Red sees her arms slowly slide down and fall to the ground. The moment they touch the pavement, Red falls to her knees and screams in pain.

"Ahhh!"

Blue stops her attacks to rush after her twin.

“Sister!”

Seeing the grieving twin, Rebecca hesitates to follow up with a lethal blow, jumping back and assuming a defensive posture.

Sounding desperate, Blue hugs Red who went into shock. “Sister, sister, answer me!”

Red is insensate, alternating between sobbing and screaming in pain while Blue tries to comfort her sister, rocking her back and forth.

At the sudden display of empathy, guilt builds up in Rebecca's chest as she is moved by the sight. Instinctively, she lowers her guard to offer the twins the chance to surrender.

A powerful noise echoes in the area quickly followed by blood and guts showering the scene. 

Rebecca is on the ground a large hole on the right side of her body as the hidden railgun’s nail pierced through her Adaptive Armor module, into her power armor native defenses, and finally over her flesh.

Gritting her teeth, she activates the few medical kits she brought with her, using all of them to restore her health. Checking her energy reserves, she can't take another attack like that if she wishes to continue using her exoskeleton.

Meanwhile, the Red Twin has a large hole in her body that can be seen by Rebecca, and the Blue gunner softly speaks to the corpse of her former twin. “Shhh, don’t worry, you will soon be part of something greater.”

Widening her jaw inhumanly wide, she takes several bites of the Red Twin and swallows, integrating pieces of cyber and wetware into herself.

Upon witnessing this barbarity, Rebecca feels both ill and frustrated. Shackly standing up and ignoring the ghost pain of her regrown side, the Solo can’t help but scream. “Why do I have to deal with those crazy psychos?!”

With each bite, the Blue twin transforms, gaining height, weight, and larger chrome. The cannibalistic twin consumes the fallen comrade's wetware for the DNA and the remnant nanites, using it to evolve her native Bioware, at the cost of uncontrollable growth on her cyberware like mechanical tumors.

During the Time of Red, rumors of nanomachine rampancy that could infect someone and transform a person circulated in the net.

Rebecca can believe those rumors now that she has a partial example in front of her. However, she focused on something more important in her opinion.

“Why did you do that to your sister? Wasn't that your sister? Brother? Your family?”

The creature that stands up in place of Blue is bigger and stronger, her previously feminine voice turned lower. “We did give that impression, didn’t we? That was the same for our predecessors.”

Rebecca is caught off guard by the non sequitur, “What?”

Blue tentatively flexes her new muscles before taking the fallen sword of her “twin” and giving it a few tentative swings. “The Red BlueTwins aren’t just a pair of siblings, we’re an idea!”

Having successfully stunned her opponent, Blue continues explaining her "philosophy."

"We were never related to each other, outside of sharing similar circumstances. We made a vow to one day become one, with each of us turning into sustenance for the remaining twin. Then the remaining twin would induct a new member to our sibling dynamic, restoring our numbers once more, thus restarting the cycle. With this, we would achieve immortality, until one day we become strong enough to match legends like Adam Smasher himself!"

Rebecca can’t believe what she hears, staring at the lunatic Solo in disbelief. She blinks once and takes a deep breath. “You know what, I don’t care about whatever fucked up history you two psychos have. But hey! Congratulations!” Rebecca falls into an Iaijutsu stance, smirking at the Blue Monster, “Now I’m motivated!”

Pushing her chrome and exoskeleton to the maximum, Rebecca suddenly appears in front of Blue with an overhead strike, the two blades clash sending sparks everywhere. Cutting faster than before, the bulkier Blue can’t keep up with the attacks and take each slash delivered.

Blue defenses consist of two layers, the Berserker enhancements that contract the user’s wetware and cyberware muscles to act as a shield against damage, and the new hardening nanite shield that both absorbs damage and disperses kinetic energy to prevent the damage from reaching the soft tissue underneath the metalic shield.

Unfortunately for Blue, the nanite shield isn’t fast enough to keep up with Rebecca’s relentless assault, lagging behind a few milliseconds, enough for Rebecca’s heated blade to cause damage to the cannibalistic Solo.

Sheathing her blade one last time to bait her opponent, Rebecca waits for the perfect opportunity to strike.

The enraged Blue Monster takes the bait, not bothering to keep track of her modified Sandevistan and Berserker combo OS until her enhanced speed fails.

Seeing the opportunity, Rebecca activates her “Blade Mode” and reaches the absolute limits of her cyberware and power armor. Her body and blade blur as she unleashes sixteen body-splitting cuts in the blink of an eye before shearing her blade once more.

Differently from her Red Twin, the body of Blue falls to the ground into several pieces, sparks and steam coming out of Psycho’s body from overuse of chrome.

Rebecca takes a deep breath, calming herself down, and checks her energy reserves.

The energy levels won’t allow her to fight like that for tonight, a weakness that Mark cautioned her before. She should still have enough power to aid her team, though.

“Wait a minute, where the fuck are they now?”

Due to being lost, Rebecca has retired from the race.

Post Chapter Notes

This segment is taking way too much time and effort than it should, and I'm starting to suspect that wasn't worth the trouble. I admit it is a good challenge to help me improve as a writer as I'm trying new writing and scheduling techniques, but I must confess that the attempt tires me out.

After this arc finishes I'm setting up a poll to see if you guys liked it.