[TN: Here yesterday chapter]
The best weapons often came with famous battle records—sometimes you could even say the most famous weapons weren't necessarily the strongest ones.
And an entity with a desire to create, one that tried to build the best weapon, had no reason to miss a competition like this—
Especially when this competition might also be linked to its other objectives.
Car manufacturers entered racing leagues. Cyberware makers entered no-limits sports. Firearms makers entered shooting trials…
An extreme, brutal race that showcased every aspect of vehicle performance and armament, tying life directly to speed—a never-before-seen competition.
Right here in Night City.
Starting from the Badlands, racers could pick any starting point. They'd enter the city through one of a dozen-plus highways, cut through Santo Domingo's Coronado Farms with its low-rise buildings, merge onto the city freeway toward Vista del Rey, pass through the northern edge of Pacifica, loop around Corpo Plaza via Heywood, run through Westbrook, cross the bridge into Kabuki, and finally reach Watson.
The finish line would be on the riverside outside Afterlife—perfectly placed with a view of Corpo Plaza.
A full sweep through every major district, every gang's core turf and headquarters, ensuring everyone in Night City could see it.
"Extreme Metal… are you insane?!"
The moment Jefferson opened the chip, his face changed dramatically!
This wasn't racing.
This was city war.
The route design was both free and cruel: each zone didn't lock you into an exact path, but whenever you transitioned to the next district you were forced to funnel through a crowded main artery—
And with no restrictions on armament, that meant heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, full-body cyberware, explosives, weaponized vehicles, even armored cars could all appear!
If those adrenaline-drunk psychos ran a race like this through Night City…
How many people would die? How many buildings would get hit?
How much economic damage would it cause?
Even street kids like Jackie and V were shaken when they saw Leo's proposal—
They'd seen crazy.
They hadn't seen someone start a war on purpose.
But Leo believed this was the best solution.
Brainiac's emergence proved one thing: power didn't like a vacuum.
When Night City's municipal system didn't protect ordinary people, they'd be "guided" and ruled anyway—by forces stronger than the underclass, yet weaker than the megacorps and City Hall.
Yesterday it was Jotaro Shobo. Today it was Brainiac. Tomorrow—who?
It was time to decide what tomorrow looked like.
"Yes. A lot of people will die. But believe me—if people know where and when the firefight is happening, they'll stay home, and they won't get killed by stray bullets from nowhere."
"If you knew your classmate was going to shoot up the school today, would you still go?"
Every year, Night City lost countless lives to the problem of rampant weapons. Most of them were just living their day-to-day lives when rockets and bullets suddenly crashed into them.
Even without this event, they were already living in a war zone—
they just didn't know when their neighborhood would become the next battlefield.
If you draw a battlefield and announce a time, then anyone who insists on showing up can only be one thing:
A fighter.
And fighters were born to keep their heads hanging by a thread.
As for the collateral economic loss…
"By my understanding," Leo paused, "Night City's never short on liquid capital. This plan actually gets fewer people killed—I mean civilians."
"You really think NCPD puts out one notice and everybody obediently stays home?"
"That's why I've got some friends who might be more convincing than NCPD."
Jefferson froze.
If anyone else said that, he'd write it off as hot air.
But coming from Leo, it was different—
Santo Domingo's "NCPD"—the 6th Street gang—had been stomped by them.
Heywood's Valentinos had been dragged along by them to stomp other people.
The Badlands' Wraiths had been beaten so hard they barely dared enter the city anymore, and the Aldecaldos were their good brothers.
The Tyger Claws had been stomped too.
Even Watson's Maelstrom were obedient; lately there were even rumors they'd been promoting some "Burger King special-edition software."
It wasn't that Leo had some convincing friends.
Leo himself was convincing.
From Jefferson's perspective, once he framed it that way, he suddenly realized—
This insane idea was, in theory, strangely coherent.
And the route Leo had planned happened to skirt Corpo Plaza, the municipal center, and Pacifica. On closer inspection, it was a path with unusually careful restraint baked in—
If the race scaled up, the corps would absolutely be happy to sponsor it, showing off products and hardware.
Once corps sponsored it, the tech level would be secured. Gangs would get material support. Once they had money and exposure, they could recruit.
And the gangs quietly growing in the shadows would have to think twice: if they missed this competition, where would they recruit from?
This wasn't just baiting Muramasa into competing—
it was forcing it to weigh the pros and cons. If the gangs it backed couldn't rise, then how would that European contract ever get fulfilled?
Europeans might as well just sponsor a local gang directly.
As for the racers who died…
Just like Leo said, a thought surfaced in Jefferson's mind—one he found himself agreeing with:
They deserved it.
Workers should work. Farmers should farm. Students should study.
If you wanted to fight, you'd better be prepared to die.
There was only one problem.
"If you lose—"
"If I lose, it backfires. Yes. That's the simple truth."
"We won't need to waste time investigating those tunnels, investigating the rogue AI's intentions, investigating what other Brainiac- and Slaughterhouse-like gangs are quietly gathering strength in Night City's darkest corners…"
"If we win, everything stays the same."
Brainiac growing into a real threat would've been nasty. Their defeat this time depended entirely on coincidence.
Based on what Leo had extracted from the shattered remnants of Joestar's mom's memory, the whole situation was basically an accident.
The vendor's abnormal reaction was because she saw her son and pointed him down a path.
And the reason she "invited the wolf in" even when she clearly couldn't overpower Leo was because she hadn't thought that far—
She just wanted to see her son.
To give him the best thing she'd ever found.
Brainiac made one mistake so absurd no one could've predicted it: the woman they chose—the one with the strongest will, the one who endured the most skill-chip data flow and became a mature mainframe—was held together by one thing only:
She wanted to give her son something good, pull him back, find him again.
And by sheer chance, her son wasn't dead.
And she saw him.
For Brainiac, their mainframe had gone cyberpsycho.
But what about the other monsters lurking in the dark?
They wouldn't be relying on coincidences.
Leo looked Jefferson in the eye and spoke slowly, word by word:
"Instead of endless, random fighting… we crush them in a single, open battle—straight up, in broad daylight."
"We show the people who can't fight, don't want to fight, or don't dare fight who the winner is—and what they should do."
"Fighters are born to keep their heads hanging by a thread. Civilians… if you don't have the guts, hide at home. That's mercy."
Jefferson didn't have a headache.
On the contrary, he felt a strong impulse to agree with Leo.
Yes. People should do what they're meant to do.
Strange. Last time, he'd also wanted to agree with Leo, but his head hurt so badly he could barely speak.
Now he just had doubts he needed to untangle.
"I'll think about it."
Jefferson gave a small nod.
Just as Leo thought that was the end of it for today, Jefferson suddenly said, "But this collapse… it's an illusion. What are you hiding?"
As he spoke, his eyes brightened slightly. It felt deliberate—like he wanted Leo to hear that he was communicating.
"…Come back, ma'am." Then he looked at Leo. "Since we're partners, I'll let it slide this once. Don't let it happen again, Mr. Burger King."
Leo watched in silence as Jefferson turned and walked toward his AV—
Then he suddenly said, "Mr. Peraleź, you were born into an ordinary family in Heywood. You studied your way out of that cesspit. That's admirable."
"Whoever paid for you to study couldn't have had it easy. What I'm hiding is making sure someone like that doesn't get swallowed whole by Night City and thrown into a landfill."
Peraleź froze. A sudden headache flickered back. He frowned and looked at Leo. "Do you think I'm a bad person?"
"Hard to say." Leo met his gaze. "I'm just explaining it to you—partner to partner."
"If you're saving people, you—"
He got halfway through the sentence before the headache hit again.
Who paid for me to study…
Who got swallowed and thrown into the trash…
Jefferson's head pain spiked sharply. He stared coldly at Leo's cyber-eyes, got into the AV, and shut the door.
As the AV lifted off, V asked curiously, "What were you yapping at him about just now?"
"Nothing," Leo said. "Just don't like people trying to act tough in front of me."
[Recipient: Brick]
[Leo: Everything normal?]
[Brick: Huh? Pretty normal, yeah?]
In a certain alley, Brick—standing watch with his boys, waiting to welcome someone back—looked at the street in confusion.
What he couldn't see was that a compact AV was hovering overhead.
And in fact, it wasn't just that he couldn't see it—
Because that vehicle…
Was completely invisible.
(End of chapter)