บท 215: Buggin'
"Just so you know, this is all your fault!" Ori bluntly shouts as he and David sprint through the sand away from a narrow canyon passage.
"Tell me something I don't know! Does stating the obvious make you feel any better!?" the teen retorts, jumping over a line of thorny shrubs.
"Yeah, well, shut up!" Ori grouses, looking over his shoulder just as thirty or so people charge out of the canyon and start chasing them, bullets whizzing past the duo with some coming perilously close.
While it was technically David's fault, his knocking over something as they were sneaking into the San Peyote camp had gotten them both caught... Yet, no one had known that San Peyote would be meeting with a number of other Raffen clans for one reason or another, either way, they now had two or three Nomad groups on their asses.
At least they'd some precautions... Just as two dirty yet sleek vehicles are exiting the passageway, an explosion rings out, causing a rockslide that buries both cars and ten unfortunate men. Shocked and surprised, the Raffens pause their charge momentarily to look back at what'd happened, allowing Ori and David to dive into a ditch where they'd stashed a number of rifles.
"You two okay!?" Rebecca shouts from a further ditch, the rest of the crew had holed up there in case anything went wrong.
"We're good! Just start shooting!" Ori shouts, grabbing one of the many random guns and doing so himself.
The Raffens, not willing to go down so easily returned fire and continued to charge. Nineteen go down before they reach the duo, but those numbers were chump change compared to what they were used to dealing with.
One larger Raffen lunges into the ditch, but Ori instantly replies with an uppercut that explodes his skull, as if the guy had headbutted a landmine. The next guy stumbles into the ditch with bullets riddling his legs, despite that he was aiming his gun at Ori...
*SLIIIZNH!*
Only for him to be split in two, completely bisected by his Monowire. He stands and aims over the edge of the ditch again but is just in time to see David beheading the last guy, flicking the blood from his blade with an intense expression on his face.
"That all of 'em!?" Pilar loudly questions.
"Nah! There's like thirty more in the camp, they're probably trying to climb over the rockslide right now!"
"Let's finish em off then!" Maine states, hopping out of the trench and jogging over to the collapsed canyon entrance.
The others join him and just as they reach the base of it Rebecca nails one Raffen in the face as he peaks his head over causing the survivors behind it to flee back into their camp.
They pursued, following the runners back to the camp where they'd already started fortifying, blockading the camp with vehicles and scrap metal. Unfortunately for them, whatever they built couldn't hold up against Maine's cannon, blasting the defence apart and allowing the crew to run roughshod.
The Raffens fell apart rather easily after their leaders were killed, and the only person who had any real trouble was Christy, who'd emptied her stomach after getting a lucky shot in the initial firefight. This wasn't surprising given she'd not known how to hold a gun days prior.
---------------------------
An hour after the battle started a pyre stacked high with corpses released black smoke into the sky, making everything nearby smell of burnt human flesh, carbonized metal, and for some reason, hints of chicken...?
Ori, Lucy and Maine gather in what's left of the Raffen 'head caravan', sitting down next to a makeshift surveillance unit which had access to a badly cobbled-together satellite transmitter placed atop the vehicle's roof.
"Alright, we're in." Lucy reports, overlaying the Raffen ICE walls with her own to prevent anyone hitching a ride on the connection. The last thing they needed was Arasaka finding them again.
"Think you can get a connection to NC? I wanna update from Kiwi." Maine asks.
"I'll need to scramble and encrypt it, but yeah... Give me a second to link up."
...
[Kiwi, it's us.] - ???
[Right. I've never heard that before.] - Kiwi
[Your first name is Kylie and you lost your virginity to a 13 yearold at 20. Sound about right?] - ???
[Maine... Good to hear from you.] - Kiwi
[We can catch up when we're not being hunted. What's been happening since we left?] - ???
[The whole city's going mad. Everyone seems to think 'Zombie' got assassinated by Arasaka for removing the Tyger Claws, and protests are only getting bigger. Biotechnica shut down its Headquarters and handed control of its protein farms to Night Corp, tripling the price of gas. Me and Sasha joined up with Wakako to, y'know, not die, and the 'Dragon Claws' or whatever we're calling ourselves have taken control of everything in Japantown.] - Kiwi
"Huh, so we missed a bit." Ori dryly remarks.
"No shit sherlock." Maine grouses.
[What's the sitch look like? Any chance we can come back?] - ???
[No. Stay out wherever you are, Arasaka has undercover agents patrolling the streets. You'd have to hide the entire time if you did manage to sneak back in.] - Kiwi
[Look, I know this is a bad time to talk about this but, Dorio, she didn't make it.] - ???
...
[I'm sorry. Maybe if I was there I could have done something...] - Kiwi
[That is not on you. You might be dead if you were there, at least with this you aren't out here kicking sand... Listen, you got any intel on Vegas? Anything someone might need if they went there?] - ???
[Vegas huh, I'll see what I can do. Open the link again this time tomorrow and I'll send the detes.] - Kiwi
[Hey, is Sasha doing alright?] Ori leans in and shoots his own message.
[Good for now, likes to brag about her new apartment and Mizutani... She'll be happy to hear you're alright.] - Kiwi
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บท 216: Desert Opal
Three days later a large truck pulled a half-broken caravan through the dirt-covered highway, kicking up sand as they hit the road at eighty miles an hour. It was already late in the afternoon and the desert chills starting to set in.
In the distance, the horizon was lit up as if it were sunrise but everyone present recognised it for what it was. Massive amounts of light pollution for, as Pilar put it, 'The shining shit hole'.
"I see it!" Rebecca shouts, leaning out of the caravan's window far enough that Ori had to grab her jacket to stop her from falling out.
"That's great, now get your ass out the way so the rest of us can get a look." Pilar huffs, squeezing next to her to get a view.
Before they even get into sight of the glowing city however, the group spot a border checkpoint, one heavily fortified and manned by what must've been hundreds of men.
"Okay... Did no one think about how we're gettin' through that?" Pilar wonders aloud.
Lucy leans back in her seat and nods, "Kiwi sent me the info on what we'd need to expect. I've already got a daemon for it," she takes out a piece of white plastic from her pocket, one she and Ori had managed to scratch a specific barcode into.
They'd be using a backdoor that'd been created for DMS agents that needed to lie low during investigations. It hadn't been easy to get, but Lucy, Kiwi, and Sasha were effective enough alone, let alone working together.
Thankfully, once they reach the crossing the card works perfectly, allowing them to bypass all the border security without any questions asked. A mile later down the road, Las Vegas came into view, almost blinding everyone who looked from the sheer disparity between it and the darkness of night.
It was absolutely humongous, not as large as Night City with all of its individual districts, but the verticality of it, both up and down allowed it a far larger population. Gleaming, almost crystalline skyscrapers reached for the sky, monumental art projects that made liberal use of hologram technology.
It was as if someone had stolen the holographic goldfish from Memorial Park, scaled it up a thousand times, and allowed anyone who wanted it to have it.
Giant erotic holographic dancers, giant advertisement boards, giant lights projecting images into the distant clouds above. It was almost baffling to everyone that the skies weren't filled to the brim with AVs, drones, and other flying machines like how Night City was usually run.
The only negative thing they could spot from such a distance was the sheer density of traffic on the roads... Since Las Vegas had a large population than Night City and less space to accommodate them, you'd be better off heading places on foot as opposed to trying to drive.
"Why don't you like this place again, Pilar? Looks pretty nova to me..." David mutters in awe, never having left Night City before. The sight before him was somehow even more impressive than the space sim Lucy had taken him.
Pilar scowls and folds his arms, "Not that I care, but this place is worse for the 'little people' than Night City could ever be. MOLE PEOPLE EXIST HERE! Sorry assholes who've never seen the sun in their entire shit lives! I heard there were even people hired to keep them from coming up and flooding the streets!"
David glances at Lucy, "That true or is he just talkin' out his ass again?"
She wets her lips and nods, "It is, 'City Maintanance' is what they call them. They don't clean anything though, just walk around armed to teeth, kicking people who don't look good enough off of the streets. The suits who own the city don't like seeing the poverty they cause."
"Er, and these are the people you want to get help from?" Christy remarks from the side. "No wonder my life went to shit..."
"And my life went to shit because of you, get over yourself." Ori sniffs derisively at her, "Where're we going once we get in?"
"Your friend Quentin managed to set up a meeting with a Fixer in a casino on the strip. We'll need to look the part if we're gonna be walking around though." Lucy explains.
"What 'should' we look like? I'm assuming no punk clothes like what Pilar's got..."
"We aren't gonna have to wear suits are we? Because that shit's rough." Pilar complains.
Lucy shrugs, "No idea, I think as long as we don't look like hobos we're good..." she gestures to her dirt, blood, and sand-covered outfit, "Which means all of us needs a makeover."
"Hey, look! The Las Vegas sign!" Rebecca's shout brings everyone from the discussion, prompting them to take a look.
Indeed, there it was further up the road, the almost ancient-looking 'Welcome to Las Vegas' sign was barely standing among a bunch of rubble. It'd been heavily eroded by wind and sand, with little to no maintenance performed on it. Last but certainly not least, were the thousands of bullet holes adorning it.
"Shit, if they shoot at their own sign what're they gonna do to us?" Pilar muses, "Not that I can blame 'em."
"Just stick with the plan and we'll do fine." Ori assures, "I trust Quentin enough to not screw us on this." he says, hoping the guy hadn't found out who was responsible for flatlining his friends...
"Someone tell Falco to stop at one of the scrap yards outside the city. My accounts have already been shut, and any that haven't are probably been tracked... We'll need to pawn off some stuff for the Eddies." Lucy states.
"Think they'll accept the box full of body parts and Cyberware we got stashed?" Pilar asks.
Lucy firmly shakes her head, "Scavanging, cyberware theft, and the desecration of corpses are all outlawed here... We might be able to sell a few off at a dealer, but a whole box? We'll have to run to New York to lose everyone..."
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