Kwaang!!!
The giant steel knuckles on Mammoth’s fist slammed straight into Aguila’s face, and the horrific impact ripped through the abandoned factory.
Thrown off balance by the shockwave from Ji-hwan’s fist strike, Aguila’s body twisted grotesquely and flew through the air before crashing hard onto the broken concrete rubble.
"Haa... haa...."
Ji-hwan’s legs swayed after he’d squeezed every last drop of life out of his body.
The idea of blasting the force of his strike outward had been good, but the recoil had left both his arms torn and ragged, while a faint red mist of blood steamed up from his entire body.
Mammoth was no different.
He’d erased the pain with the effect of a MaxDoc, but his gray hide was already shredded in many places by Aguila’s dagger and armor-piercing rounds, with blue coolant and blood dripping down in thick drops.
Breathing hard, Mammoth glanced at Ji-hwan’s blood-soaked right arm and asked, "Hey. Ji-hwan, what the hell was that just now? Looked like something was bursting out of your fist."
At that, Ji-hwan stared blankly down at his arm, which had been blown apart by the backlash and no longer even had any feeling left in it.
"Uh...."
He hesitated for a moment and looked away.
"A palm blast? A fist blast? Or maybe a shockwave?... I don’t know, I haven’t even settled on a skill name yet... and the risk is huge, too...."
Ji-hwan’s half-assed answer, muttering about naming a technique in the middle of a life-or-death fight, made Mammoth snort in disbelief and jerk his head away.
"Heh. Fine. Judging by that tacky-ass name, let’s just not talk about it."
Ji-hwan let out a short laugh at his naming sense being rejected even by a brute beast. Then he nodded toward Aguila’s corpse, which was buried in the collapsed concrete rubble and not moving at all.
"More importantly... that bastard took a hit like that. He’s definitely dead, right?"
Hearing that, Mammoth spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor and curled the ugly corner of his mouth into a grin. "Kuhah... Hey, in cheap movies or BD and stuff, don’t the guys always come back to life right when someone says something like that?"
At Mammoth’s uncharacteristically joking tone, the two of them snorted and laughed at each other’s bloodied wrecks.
When the laughter faded, Mammoth gave Ji-hwan a sidelong look and swept his gaze over him.
Up close, Ji-hwan looked even more miserable than he’d expected.
Because of the recoil from firing that bizarre shockwave repeatedly into the air, the skin on his right arm had burst like a balloon, and the torn muscle fibers were grotesquely tangled as dark red blood dripped down.
Even though a faint mist was rising from his whole body, he had burned through all his life force, and his usual miraculous regeneration had bottomed out, unable to properly stitch the wounds closed.
'Crazy bastard. With that much blood loss, a normal person should be flat on the ground unable to move a finger.'
Mammoth clicked his tongue inwardly.
The fact that Ji-hwan was still standing on his own two feet and talking to him so casually was a miracle that shattered biological common sense.
He was only forcing his skeleton to stay upright through beastlike willpower. Ji-hwan’s body was, quite literally, nothing but an empty shell.
He was in the worst possible condition, so wrecked that if he fought a ten-year-old kid with a steel pipe in a back alley right now, he’d probably get tossed to the ground without any strength left.
And then, just as the two of them were finally about to let their guard down in the middle of the collapsed factory, catching their breath—
Pzzzt-Grrrrk!!
"...?!"
A chilling mechanical noise, like gears grinding together by force, so unnatural it was hard to believe it came from human bones and flesh moving.
Pzzzt-Grrrrk!!
But even as that grotesque sound rang out, Ji-hwan couldn’t even whip his head around.
The recoil from his repeated techniques had already stripped away every trace of bodily sensation.
Only a sharp ringing "beeeep" echoed dully in his ears, and his bloodshot vision had gone so red and blurred that he could barely make out the things right in front of him.
Of course, he had no idea that Aguila was rising behind him, stepping over the shattered rubble in that same grotesque way, and he just stood there defenseless.
Only Mammoth turned his head toward the sound.
There, Aguila’s body—one that should have been instantly killed by a broken neck—was springing up like a coiled spring, his joints bending at impossible angles as if the strings of a cut puppet were being yanked back into place.
"You crazy son of a—! Ji-hwan, look out—!"
Before Mammoth could even finish the warning, Aguila kicked off the ground with his shattered legs and surged forward, blue sparks crackling as he charged straight for Ji-hwan’s exposed back.
A razor-sharp dagger flashed silver from his chest, and the cold tip of the blade shot like lightning toward the exact center of Ji-hwan’s heart.
Ji-hwan staggered without even realizing his own life was about to be cut short.
In that fleeting instant, Mammoth sucked in a rough breath and clenched his teeth.
He threw himself forward and roughly shoved the dazed Ji-hwan aside with his massive arm.
Crash—!
"Huh...?!"
Ji-hwan, sent rolling across the floor by the blunt force, blinked his blurred eyes and lifted his head.
A stupid, confused voice leaked out of him.
"Mammoth...?"
The first thing that entered his hazy vision was—
Fwoooosh-!!!
A horrifying sound of flesh being torn apart, echoing as if it were ripping the factory in half.
When Ji-hwan turned his head and forced his focus into place, he saw Aguila’s sharp dagger not buried in his own chest, but driven deep into Mammoth’s chest as the giant had shoved him aside and thrown himself in front like a meat shield.
A full-force strike that had pierced even the gray bio-skin that boasted bulletproof and anti-tank defense. The blade punched through the gaps between Mammoth’s ribs, savagely tearing through his abdomen and inflicting fatal internal damage, while dark red blood gushed from Mammoth’s mouth like a waterfall.
"Mammoth!!!"
Even then, Mammoth twisted his mouth into a grin through the blood he was coughing up.
"Got you... you little bug."
Grab!
Mammoth’s huge steel hand clamped down like a vice on Aguila’s forearm, the one that had driven the knife into his stomach.
"Kgh?!"
Aguila tried to wrench himself free, even if it meant dropping the knife, but no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn’t break Mammoth’s crushing grip.
And looking straight down at Aguila’s face as he thrashed, Mammoth finally realized something.
Aguila’s face had been caved in by the direct hit from his steel knuckles just moments ago.
But instead of flesh and blood where a human face should have been, there was a half-torn "synthetic bio-silicone mask" hanging grotesquely off his head.
And beneath the ripped mask, instead of a human skull, a terrifying mechanical frame was fully exposed, with blue optical lenses and a maze of internal circuitry embedded inside.
"What the... hell...."
While Mammoth was still stunned by the grotesque truth, the thing with its arm pinned started thrashing like a madman.
But the voice that burst from its mouth was nothing like the same Aguila who had been delivering death sentences in that lazy, elegant mechanical tone all this time.
"Aaaagh! Let go! Let go, you beast!!"
It was raw, ordinary, shrill profanity from an adult man, full of hatred and fear, like some lowlife thug cornered at the edge of a cliff.
"Do you know who I am?! I’m the legendary Aguila of Havana! I’m the real Aguila! I’ll kill you all, you piece of shiiiiit!!"
Completely losing his mind, he flailed wildly and used his free hand to twist and yank at the knife hilt buried in Mammoth’s chest, trying to rip it out so he could stab Ji-hwan.
Hearing that filthy, desperate scream right in his face, Mammoth let out a bizarre metallic laugh despite the pain of the blade in his chest.
"Kuhk... Kahahaha! You’re Aguila? What a load of crap."
He swallowed the pain of the knife in his chest, kept hold of the bastard’s arm, and raised the pneumatic steel knuckles on his other hand high.
"Whether you’re the real Aguila or not, that doesn’t matter anymore."
"What I don’t like is that you’re both the same."
Kwaang!!
Mammoth’s cannonball steel knuckles smashed mercilessly down on the mechanical skull exposed beneath the torn mask.
"Aaaagh!"
But Mammoth didn’t stop there.
Even as blood poured from the knife wound in his chest, he refused to let go of the bastard, driven only by beastlike tenacity as he drove his steel knuckles in again and again.
Bang-Krizzzk-Crack!!
Mechanical circuitry shattered and blue sparks sprayed everywhere, while the artificial skull under Aguila’s shell began to crumple miserably like a crushed tin can.
Kwaaang!!!!
At last, with the final blow, the skull frame was completely smashed, and the body went limp below the neck.
When the machine’s operating sound finally stopped and all strength left the thing’s hand, Mammoth let go of its arm at last and staggered back, collapsing against the concrete wall.
"Haa... haa... cough!"
Dark red blood streamed endlessly between Mammoth’s lips.
Ji-hwan rushed over and checked his condition.
Fortunately, the blade had missed his heart, so he had avoided an instant fatal wound, but there was no telling what would happen if this kept up.
"Stay still. I need to stop the bleeding first."
Ji-hwan hurriedly rummaged through the pouch hanging at Mammoth’s waist.
But maybe because he’d taken Aguila’s slashes head-on in the middle of that horrific melee, or because of the aftereffects of the fight from rolling across the floor—
The red MaxDoc injectors in the pouch had already been smashed to pieces, leaking only sticky fluid and shards of glass.
"Damn it, they’re all broken!"
Ji-hwan cursed in frustration and snapped his head around.
Looking around, the corporate hounds and mercs who had charged in blinded by the bounty had long since vanished into the darkness of the Badlands, terrified by Ji-hwan’s impossible violence and Mammoth’s rampage.
Instead, he spotted the Animal gang underlings watching this suffocating deathmatch from behind the collapsed concrete rubble at a distance.
"Hey!! You bastards hiding over there!! MaxDoc!! Bring every MaxDoc you’ve got right now!!!"
Ji-hwan roared like a beast, veins bulging in his neck.
Several Animal underlings, pale with panic over their boss’s critical wound, frantically started digging through their own pouches and sprinting over with red injectors in hand.
But then—
"...Stop."
Blood still spilling from his mouth, Mammoth slowly lifted one huge steel hand, trembling, and stopped the underlings who were approaching.
At that incomprehensible action, Ji-hwan’s brow twisted darkly.
"What the hell are you doing? You want to die?!"
Ji-hwan barked at him and tried to force Mammoth’s raised arm down.
"Can’t you see the blood pouring out?! If we don’t get you medicine right now, you’re really going to die!"
But Mammoth stubbornly kept his hand up and spoke with great effort.
"Ji-hwan... I have something to say."
"Save it for later! Heal first, then talk!!"
Ji-hwan shouted in anger, but Mammoth only let out the faintest, bitter laugh mixed with blood.
"No... too late. I know my own body better than anyone."
"Mammoth...!"
Ji-hwan’s lips trembled.
Mammoth’s ferocious eyes had strangely gone calm.
His gaze drifted vaguely through the air before settling on Aguila’s corpse, crushed miserably by his steel knuckles and sprawled on the floor.
The fake reaper’s face, with its synthetic bio-mask torn away and its mechanical frame and circuitry grotesquely exposed.
Staring at that bizarre heap of scrap, Mammoth began to speak in a heavy, sinking metallic voice.
"Before that... there’s something I have to tell you."
Mammoth jerked his chin toward the fake Aguila’s mechanical skeleton, lying on the floor and sparking blue.
"That tin can bastard... wasn’t the real Aguila. What was stuffed into his head was... something like an action engram chip."
"An action engram chip?"
Ji-hwan frowned at the unfamiliar term, and dark red blood dripped from between Mammoth’s lips.
Every time he spoke, a strange sound came from the hole in his ribs where the knife had gone through, like air leaking out.
"Haa, haa... I only heard rumors in the back alleys, so I don’t know the exact principle or what it really is. Supposedly it’s tech that copies someone’s personality or combat data whole and forcibly implants it into a machine shell like that."
Mammoth coughed up blood and glared at the heap of scrap with dimming eyes.
"It was always just some ridiculous urban legend in the backstreets, the kind of thing netrunners in Night City used to gossip about—saving a human’s nerves and soul as a digital copy, or whatever."
"This is the first time I’ve ever seen a grotesque thing like this with my own eyes...."
Mammoth’s breathing grew more ragged, and his voice began to break heavily between words.
"Some crazy corpo bastards... probably poured a fortune into making a puppet assassin that imitates that legend. If it were the real reaper of Havana, he wouldn’t have been flailing around pathetically like that.... And... cough!"
As he spoke, a deep warning look flashed across Mammoth’s face.
Even as he was dying, he could feel it.
That fake thing’s killing intent and combat implants had already been horrifying enough. Just how monstrous would the original legend be?
Spitting bloody foam through his crushed jaw, Mammoth forced out one last instinctive warning he hadn’t been able to fully explain to Ji-hwan.
"And listen, kid... remember this. There’s one more thing I want to make sure I tell you...."
"..."
"The real Aguila of Havana is... not some monster at this level that a piece of junk like that could ever imitate.... Cough! Guhh...!"
"Mammoth! Stop talking!"
Just then, as Ji-hwan moved to press down on Mammoth’s chest—
"Boss!! Bosssss!!!"
A beastlike howl rang out from the entrance of the collapsed factory.
Bison, the Animal second-in-command who had been watching from afar, came charging through the dust with a face drained white.
Bison slid to his knees and, with huge hands trembling, pulled a top-grade red MaxDoc injector from his pouch.
"D-don’t come any closer..."
"H-hold on!! I’m putting the medicine in now...!!"
Thud-Psssssh-!!
Without hesitation, Bison drove the MaxDoc deep into the gap between Mammoth’s thick chest armor.
The powerful recovery solution was pumped in, but the situation was hopeless.
The wound from the fake Aguila’s dagger had already torn apart major organs, and the injected MaxDoc simply gurgled back out through the hole in Mammoth’s chest along with the dark red blood that still hadn’t been stopped.
"N-no... Why won’t it stop?! Shit, please, just work!!"
Bison sobbed blood and pressed both hands hard against Mammoth’s chest, but he couldn’t stop the flame of life from guttering out.
Mammoth, his focus slowly fading, clamped his blood-soaked steel prosthetic around Bison’s wrist.
"Stop it... Bison. You’re wasting medicine."
"Boss! Don’t say that! If we take you to a ripperdoc right now...!"
"I said it earlier... before I left the bunker...."
Breathing hard, Mammoth looked at Bison with fierce but warm eyes full of beastly pride.
"The ‘boss’ here now is... you."
"Boss... sob...!"
"Don’t cry. Doesn’t suit a guy your size... My family, and the rest of the Animals... make sure you protect them. Don’t let the corpo bastards use them as meat shields...."
Bison howled like a beast, clutching Mammoth’s bloodied hand and nodding wildly.
After leaving behind his difficult last words, Mammoth turned his head and looked at Ji-hwan, who was standing silently at his side.
He reached his trembling hand into his bloodied pouch, pulled out a small, sleek black communication chip, and held it out to Ji-hwan.
"...Take this."
"What is it?"
"Something Mr. Hands, the fixer in Pacifica, left behind."
Mammoth whispered through rough breaths.
"That snake... told me to contact him through this direct encrypted line whenever you were in trouble... handed me something I couldn’t tell was a trap or a lifeline. Someday... it’ll definitely come in handy."
The moment Ji-hwan took the small, cold communication chip and shoved it heavily into his pocket—
Dududududududu-!!!
The roar of giant helicopter rotors and the thunder of jet engines tore through Pacifica’s cloud-choked night sky and began pouring down.
Ji-hwan and Bison looked up, and through the broken ceiling of the collapsed factory they could see several corporate armed AVs descending furiously toward the ground, searchlights crossing over one another.
The corporate forces behind this, having detected that their precious "toy"—the fake Aguila—had been destroyed, had arrived to clean up the mess and wipe out the rats.
"Haa... haa... Get out of here before it’s too late, Ji-hwan."
Looking at the searchlight beams slicing through the air, Mammoth spat blood through his crushed steel jaw and said, "If you fight them now... you’ll die... There’s no chance left except to slip out while they’re distracted...."
"Mammoth...."
"Get the hell out of here... If you die a dog’s death here, then it means nothing that I took that knife for you."
The noble, rough kindness of a beast who had thrown away his own life to open Ji-hwan’s path. Ji-hwan ground his teeth.
The reality that he had to run and leave behind a comrade who was falling apart just to save his own life tore at his pride and humanity like a blade.
Ji-hwan slowly got to his feet, blood droplets falling from his tightly clenched fists.
He grabbed Bison’s shoulder hard, like a beast seizing another beast.
"Bison. Save Mammoth no matter what. Don’t let this bastard die."
At Ji-hwan’s cold, desperate order, Bison nodded with a face soaked in tears.
Then Ji-hwan glared one last time at Mammoth, who was lying on the floor, and barked at him with bloodshot eyes.
"Mammoth. Don’t you die. I’m going to make you pay this debt back with interest later."
"...Kuhk. I’ll be waiting...."
Mammoth gave a faint laugh and slowly closed his once-ferocious eyes.
Ji-hwan swallowed the heavy guilt stabbing into the back of his skull, then threw himself like a ghost into the deep darkness of the factory, dodging the AV searchlights pouring down from above.
The moment Ji-hwan’s presence vanished completely into the dark—
Bison pressed both blood-soaked hands against Mammoth’s chest and sobbed, but Mammoth’s massive ribcage no longer rose and fell.
Neither the rattling of the broken steel jaw joint nor the beastlike rough breathing remained, all of it swallowed perfectly by Pacifica’s rain.
"Boss... I swear, I’ll never leave you alone in this dump."
Bison wiped away the flowing blood tears and clenched his teeth.
Overhead, the searchlights from the armed AVs were sweeping through the broken ceiling and combing the factory interior as they drew closer.
There was no time left.
Bison forced his thick arms, pumped full of illegal steroids, under Mammoth’s huge back and legs.
"Uwaaaah-!!"
Beyond the deep darkness where Ji-hwan’s eyes could no longer reach, Mammoth—the king of his own little arena—was carried on the blood-soaked back of his loyal underling as he smiled and sank into a deep, eternal silence, leaving the abandoned factory behind.
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