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Chapter 015: Braindance Experience: Arasaka's Maelstrom Massacre
🕑 Added 2025-09-27 04:22:59 +0000 UTCWhoosh!
Running, wind, fire, explosions.
"Huff!"
"Huff! Huff!"
The man's mouth gaped wide, his windpipe feeling the scorching air he sucked in.
That was running with everything he had, breathing through both mouth and nose in rhythm, running until his chest seemed to ache faintly.
A suffocating atmosphere permeated the air, as if endless darkness stretched behind him, with a massive claw constantly closing in.
His backward glance revealed:
The camp bearing graffiti of cracked skull mechanical spiders was ablaze—that was Maelstrom's symbol.
Everywhere were illegally modded hover bikes, cramped, old, squalid shacks and narrow alleys echoing with heart-stopping sounds.
Frenzied heavy metal punk music, thunderous machinery, crude drunk conversations reeking of alcohol, inhuman howls from addled minds, and—bang bang!! Bang bang bang!!!
Beneath Arasaka samurai-style tactical helmets with crests, demon masks with crimson glowing eyes emerged clearly from the shadows.
Arasaka heavy soldiers.
M2067 Defender
Those corporate killing machines' massive M2067 Defenders roared louder than the heavy metal punk, their muzzle flashes strobing to illuminate the especially gloomy old northern industrial district's narrow alleys as evening approached.
Screech screech screech—
Armor-piercing incendiary rounds hit the walls, sending debris flying in all directions. The cheap external cyberware of those Maelstrom lunatics wasn't much harder than glass right now, shattering on impact. The bullets punched through their subdermal plating, grinding flesh and metal together in bursts of sparks.
"Fuck! Corporate dogs, ambush!"
"Let's waste these ball-less bastards!"
"Who the hell brought Arasaka here..."
...
Those were the obscene curses of Maelstrom gang members.
Maelstrom
Easy to distinguish—naked cyber implants covering their entire bodies, horrifying modification levels, and flashy metal tattoos all over. Those psychos who'd carved out their foreheads and replaced everything below with spider-like cyber eyes—in Night City, you didn't need to look twice to know they were Maelstrom.
"Orders from above: retrieve company lost cargo, recover company assets. Anyone showing hostile intent—shoot to kill!"
There was also the ice-cold voice of Arasaka soldier killing machines.
Boom!
His vision followed the sound upward.
Octant heavy combat drones bearing Arasaka's cloverleaf logo came screaming in. With ear-splitting noise, the cannon fire they spewed was like elongated, intermittent lasers licking and slicing across the ground.
Several expensive modified hover cars were blown to pieces, smoking and exploding.
The world spun.
He was thrown by the blast wave.
After tumbling, his body groaned in pain. Shrapnel had cut into his torso. Blood loss was making his vision gradually blur, though his hearing remained sharp—various unrecognizable gunfire erupted one after another.
Boom.
Just then, accompanied by a shrieking whistle that tore through the air, the security bars on the factory's second floor exploded outward. Glass shards scattered, broken concrete chunks and a twisted old air conditioning unit crashed down as a dark, tall figure gracefully leaped from the burning second-floor breach.
Like a spear piercing the steel roof of a Maelstrom-modified van.
Screech screech screech—
Metal made tooth-grinding twisting sounds. Exposed weld marks and rivet debris flew high as the vehicle tilted with the impact. The driver's head slammed into the door, and the passenger nearly flew out the window.
Being close, he clearly saw the newcomer.
A terrifying figure.
Reference: Star Wars Second Sister [character design reference]
Over six feet tall with long legs, black clothes and armor covering her entirely, wrapped tight with a black cape with red lining flowing behind her. Arasaka's cloverleaf logo on her shoulders, her head covered by a matte black helmet with a narrow V-shaped visor glowing with an unsettling crimson light.
Sharp, elongated metal fingertips stained with blood, carrying a head with cables brutally torn out, blood-red and milky-white fluids constantly dripping.
A head belonging to someone heavily modified, probably with barely any meat left.
Hum.
The extended thermal katana was swung with a crisp singing sound—clang!
Like cutting butter, the street-armored Maelstrom van's driver compartment was sliced open. Everything happened too fast—the blade passed right by the faces of two screaming Maelstrom psychos inside.
When that Arasaka woman left, the van flipped, but the driver's compartment also fell silent. Thick, viscous liquid flowed from the vehicle's gaps.
Bang—!!!
A violent explosion. As that black shadow flashed past, the people behind similarly turned into skyward flames with their vehicle, wreckage tumbling away trailing sparks.
Bang bang bang bang...
A series of rockets fired from the Arasaka armored hover car's smart turret, adding another layer of fire to the smoke-filled Maelstrom factory.
Dozens of armed gang members who came charging aggressively out of the factory hadn't even finished their battle cries before this barrage turned them into mincemeat.
In the corner, the man struggled to crawl up.
He also saw:
"Die!"
That was a big guy who counted as an extreme modification psycho even among Maelstrom, roaring with synthetic lungs that thundered like explosions, charging toward the black-clad woman who was tossing the head in her hand to an Arasaka heavy soldier.
Bang!
His power legs stomped the ground, and the big guy instantly rushed ten meters at stunning speed.
The inner skin of both arms tore open from within in a flash, revealing heat sinks as spring-loaded sickle-shaped appendages shot out, still dripping with maintenance fluid, stabbing toward the woman like a hunting mantis.
But she vanished.
Like a phantom, the woman disappeared instantly. The big guy's attack hit nothing.
The man in the corner could only see this much.
No time to think more, because the black-clad woman's figure reappeared in his vision.
Kangtao L-69 Zhuo [Premium model]
Still so elegant, unhurried, holding the thermal katana behind her back with one hand while raising a massive shotgun—seemed like some Kangtao premium model—with the other, pressing it against the big guy's back.
Bang!
Terrifying kinetic force exploded across the big guy's body. Whether metal or flesh, everything was pulverized in that moment. The big guy was torn apart in the blast.
Like a bag filled with red, white, and gray paint, he exploded into pools of blood and chunks of meat.
Rat-tat-tat—
The slaughter continued.
Arasaka heavy soldiers wove a dense web of machine gun and shotgun fire covering the entire narrow district.
That woman also continued.
Elegantly continued, with a completely different fighting style from street punks—moving like a dancer.
Perfect sword strikes, the rhythm between blade cuts and punches and kicks—Maelstrom thugs either lost their heads, or rolled in the street coughing blood, or slammed hard into obstacles, becoming piles of mush.
Evasive movements that never wasted a millimeter, like some variant of dance.
Composing a bloody dance of slaughter.
...
Finally, the man's vision was blocked by inspecting Arasaka heavy soldiers. Black gun barrels filled his entire sight. Fire flashed—bang!
Colorful static.
---
"Ahhhhhhhhh—————!"
In the small room, on an old couch with cracked leather, a teenager let out a cry that could have been agony or pure ecstasy. His body went rigid, arms raised high, legs involuntarily thrusting forward, toes pointed and straining backward. His whole body writhed like a fish out of water.
After a while, maybe when the aftershock passed, the teen removed his old-style braindance headset, sat up with wonder, eyes shining as he exclaimed: "Awesome!"
The unprecedented sensory impact combined with the intense pain of the witness's final moments—for many people in 2074, this delivered peak sensory stimulation that could match or even exceed any drug or sex bot.
David
The teen ran his hand through his mohawked dark brown hair, orange-red light flickering in his brown eyes.
As content scrolled in his built-in virtual dialog box, he made amazed sounds.
"That feeling is incredible. Doc, this beats any movie by miles! This braindance of yours is unreal."
Braindance—"Alternative Reality Process"—a virtual reality technology using implanted devices to record experience fragments including video, audio, sensations, and spatial information.
Both a popular entertainment form and a disgusting programming technique used for crime, military simulators, even psychological therapy tools. How it's used depends entirely on the user.
Ring ring.
Ripper Doc: "Naturally. What's impressive is the editor JK who cut together this masterpiece. Braindance made from fresh memories extracted from Maelstrom modification freaks' brains—still warm after just two hours."
"Too bad this isn't the full version. What you watched was just one Maelstrom grunt lookout who ran after spotting Arasaka forces, ending up witnessing all this from a bystander's perspective."
"He was probably the longest-surviving grunt. JK's using him as a promotional teaser."
"Last night the northern Watson industrial area was quite the party. The real badasses were those true psychos fighting Arasaka's war machines. If their brain memories got edited into braindances, now that would be truly awesome. But the price would be a whole different story."
"Arasaka..." At the mention of Arasaka, the teenager's mood immediately dropped, becoming melancholy.
"Are they really that strong? That good?"
He thought of the braindance's fully armed Arasaka heavy soldiers, that Arasaka female commander who treated Maelstrom's modified psychos like sitting ducks.
Ripper Doc: "Pfft, who doesn't know about Arasaka's power? Night City's number one mega-corp, the 'emperor above emperors' over us little people. But as for being good... heh, depends how you see it."
"I'm saying, David, isn't Mrs. Martinez planning to send you to Arasaka Academy? Even bought you that learning braindance headset, but here you are using it for after-school entertainment first."
"Yeah."
Ignoring the ripper doc's teasing, the mohawked teen called David flopped back on the couch, eyes drifting to his small home's ceiling.
"But I really hate the way they look at me. When I was registering, they all clearly looked down on me. So why should I still try to get close to them?"
Ripper Doc: "Ha, that's the road to becoming a corpo dog..."
Clang!
The lights came on.
"David!"
"Whoa!" Quickly hanging up his call with the ripper doc, David's eyes darted evasively toward the doorway where a red-haired woman in yellow was glaring at him furiously. "Mom," David said, lowering his head.
"I didn't buy you that braindance headset for entertainment."
David Martinez's mother, Gloria Martinez, entered with tired but excited steps. Seeing her son who hadn't put on his Arasaka Academy uniform, she sighed and couldn't help lecturing.
"Yeah yeah, I know, sorry, Mom..."
"Don't just promise—show me. Today is Arasaka Academy's freshman orientation. After working the night shift, the medical center actually gave me a day off... considering I'm attending Arasaka's ceremony. So you absolutely have to become one of those elite people."
Setting her handbag on the coffee table, Gloria fussed over David's appearance while unpacking his Arasaka Academy uniform, expectantly gesturing for David to put it on.
"I... Mom..."
David took the uniform his mother handed him, his emotions complex.
"Go put it on, get dressed up nice. New student orientation—we can't be late."
Gloria said gently. After David took the clothes, she turned on the family's projection TV, preparing to watch news coverage of the Arasaka Academy freshman ceremony.
"Good morning, Night City!"
Night City radio host Stanley's passionate, signature voice immediately rang out.
An old friend they knew all too well.
Just as Gloria was about to change channels:
"Hey hey hey, yesterday's death lottery—everybody guess how many? A full thirty? Fifty? A hundred? None of those!
We've got to thank those Maelstrom modification psychos for biting off more than they could chew. Of all the cargo to steal, they hit Arasaka's. Last night in Watson's old industrial district alone, hundreds of people bought it! And that's just counting the ones with complete bodies.
As we all know, there's an old saying—what is it? Right: 'New officials light three fires when they take office.' Hasn't Arasaka's security department had some high-ranking executive recently take up their post? And Maelstrom just had to mess with Arasaka's cargo right now—isn't that slapping their face?
At a time like this, who cares if the cost of action doesn't match the returns? "Maelstrom got tossed by our new Arasaka hotshot as a warning to the rest. Chop—slaughtered! Brutal."
...
Gloria didn't listen closely to Stanley's loud-mouth commentary, but one phrase stuck: 'hundreds of people bought it in Watson's old industrial district alone.'
David's schooling needed a lot of money—the kind that required her working eighteen hours a day just to barely manage. If... she could scavenge in Watson, from Maelstrom territory after Arasaka's sweep, with so many dead from that massive battle, even digging through garbage dumps, she should be able to make some money.
"Mom."
"Mom?"
"Mom!"
"Ah! David..."
Startled awake by her son's calls, Gloria looked at David in his student uniform. She had to admit, clothes make the man—whatever else you could say about Arasaka, their aesthetic sense was solid. David in uniform was quite the handsome young man.
"Mom, what were you thinking about? You looked so serious..."
"Nothing, I was thinking about how to treat my son after the ceremony." Gloria didn't want to dwell on that topic. She patted David's shoulder. "Let's go, I'll take you to the academy."
---
6/1/2074, 7:50
Westbrook, Corporate Community, Russell Family Apartment #414.
"Yawn~"
Having vented thoroughly last night while getting a good night's sleep, Vera stepped out of her home, stretched lazily, yawned, casually twisted her neck, then strolled leisurely toward her hover car's landing pad.
"Destination: Arasaka Academy."
