Mistrunner 3 (Mistborn/Cyberpunk

On the Hunt

“You’re sure about this?” Elend asked again, knowing what the answer would be.

“We need ‘eddies’ to survive in this world. We’ve gotten lucky with what we’ve survived on so far, but it won’t last long.” Vin replied as she put on her gear. Which currently was the only clothing she owned, having washed it in the hotel bathroom.

This world has so many incredible inventions and innovations. I wonder if ours will make it to this point some day? Elend felt it was likely, with no Ruin lurking to destroy everything and no Lord Ruler to oppress the population. He wasn’t sure everything here was great, but he hadn’t nearly the time needed to investigate it all.

Books were a ‘thing of the past’ for most people here. When people could have text and apparently pictures they could read on screens or even directly within their head, why bother with books? Despite that, there were some available for Elend to peruse from the City Library, which is what he’d been doing the past few days searching for information about the world, to help them find their place in it.

Vin on the other hand had been looking for ways to survive in it, and this was the best answer she’d come up with. Bounty Hunting. Criminals are apparently so prevalent in this world that law enforcement rellies on civilians to attempt to reign in the criminals. It feels crazy, how society can function like that?

Clearly, it somehow did. So many systems meshed together to keep Night City constantly running. Not the least of which must be their ‘cyberware’. It can enhance a person’s abilities significantly, possibly on par with burning metals. That’s what must be what allows them to work the citizens so far - even the Lord Ruler didn’t push the Skaa as hard as most corporations here do. 

That was likely more due to the fact that the people in Elend’s home would have died if they were worked that hard rather than a sign of any mercy on the Lord Ruler’s behalf. While he’d come to understand some of the struggles the man had dealt with more clearly after his passing, Elend did not hold his ‘compassion’ in high regard.

“Very well, if we need to do this, then we shall.” Elend declared, standing from the desk and closing the book he was reading. Vin frowned at him, her brow scrunched in cutely as she tried to think of a way to dissuade him.

“It’s dangerous out there,” she pointed out and Elend shrugged.

“Then it will be safer with the two of us. I’m stronger than you are anyways, and I’m sure you have enough metals for us to share.” Likely not much more than that, but enough. Vin had to sell the ‘gun’ she had taken in order to cover getting the appropriate metals and the food and room they’d needed these past few days, but if they could succeed with this bounty hunt, it would give them plenty of eddies to really begin setting up. Setting up for what, I’m not certain, but the money will give us the power we need to defend ourselves.

“...Fine,” Vin said reluctantly after a moment. “Be careful of their weapons - the projectiles move too quickly for us to deflect. Maybe with Pewter Flaring we could Push them away but…”

“We don’t have enough to do that easily. So we Pull the weapons from their hands to begin with then use them against them,” Elend reasoned before hesitating. “And all of these are people worthy of death?”

Back home, Elend had commanded hundreds, thousands of people to their deaths without blinking, no matter how it wore on his conscience. Here however, he had no such excuse of doing such things to save the world. What we’re doing here is only for ourselves.

Vin nodded decisively. “I’m certain. They’re members of Malestrom, a gang here ‘obsessed’ with cybernetics.” There was a small frown on her face, as if she found the idea of anyone here calling someone else ‘obsessed’ with those strange devices they’d implant in their bodies, ridiculous. “They’ve all stolen and killed innocents. This group of four in particular have kidnapped a man for ‘initiation.’ Somehow, the initiations force the people to join them.”

“Slavery,” Elend said, his lips curling in distaste. Even worse than regular slavery then, this feels like what Ruin did to the Koloss and the Kandra. Yes, these people sound like monsters. Even at my worst, at my most desperate, I never forced anyone to this kind of depravity. It was something that would have had him willing to fight them even if there wasn’t almost a thousand eurodollars (and thus their continued existence) on the line.

***

It was easy to avoid the press of bodies on the street from above, and soaring through the air once again brought a rush Elend found difficult to describe. There aren’t even any mists here to obscure our vision. Though the foul taste in the air can be rather unpleasant. Vin had noted her distaste for it since arriving to this world, but Elend could really only sense the toxins in the air when burning Tin. Hard to imagine how people live like this, but then again, we lived with the ashes for all of our lives.

As they neared the industrial district where the Maelstrom ‘gangers’ had last been spotted there was a marked drop in foot traffic, and even more metal about, for abundantly easy Iron Pulls and Steel Pushes. Elend flew quickly through the mess of pipes and blocky buildings but Vin kept up despite his speed, every twist and turn of her body, every motion far more graceful than his own, letting her shave off precious seconds as she flew through the air. 

Perhaps I might be a bit distracted by my beautiful wife as well, Elend admitted to himself before catching signs of a fight below. No, not a fight, a battle that’s already happened. The scent of blood was confirmed in sight as he saw bodies torn across the ground of a small alcove between buildings. Brutal, and deliberately so. The Maelstrom were monsters but who would go to such lengths to tear them apart like that?

The grounds were covered in gore, splattered on the ground and all around the graffitied walls which marked it off as Maelstrom’s territory. Guns and even a long curved sword were on the ground amongst the bodies of at least three people who had all been chopped to bits. They look to be more metal than flesh, even with their guts spilled, though it’s hard to get an exact count. Elend was no stranger to violence and death, but a scene like this left him with no desire to investigate that particular mystery either.

His previous question was answered when he heard a cry, and hopping ahead to another overhanging pipe, came across the fourth person. Now just a body, which was bisected with the wave of a hand from her assailant. And then cut in half again, and again, and again. 

The man who killed her stopped, panting heavily over the corpse he’d just made, staring off at a bloody stretcher with baskets of flesh and metal beside them before whirling around. “Who goes there? Who else hunts me?!” He screeched, turning up to ‘face’ Elend directly.

While there were a few people he had seen with more than just mechanical eyeballs but full visors implanted in their heads, half of this man’s face had been replaced by metal, leaving five glowing red ‘optics’ to see from. Much of the rest of his body was replaced with obvious metal, no attempt made to cover it up with ‘synth skin’, or even much by the way of clothes. More disturbing were the trickles of blood that ran from where the metal melded with the flesh, signs not of injury one of the gang members had caused in battle but of recent surgery.

“He’s not one of the targets, all four were taken out by him,” a whisper came to Elend. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Vin hiding and decided to keep the deranged man’s attention on him. Dropping a piece of metal down, Elend used it to help descend down from the pipe he’d been perched on. He was no Kelsier, hardly able to levitate or the like, but he had enough skill to drop down lightly enough that with Pewter it was a graceful landing.

Elend still kept his distance from the man, his hands held openly in front of him to show he was unarmed. “I’m not hunting you. I was after the people you’ve killed for their bounty.”

“Bounty? Bounty… because they’re Maelstrom. But now I’m Maelstrom too? No, I’m Jerome! Jerome… Delaney? Delemain? No no! It’s not right, I’m not right!” He yelled, frantically clawing at his own head. Elend raised a hand to reach out to the man, which triggered incredibly fast action from the man, moving faster than he could believe someone not using Pewter could be.

As Elend was doing exactly that himself, he immediately tried to back away, but it was too slow, even flaring his Pewter, an incredibly thin wire was whipping out from his arm towards Elend. Before it could cut him in two however, a small object blurred into view from above, striking the man in the chest and sending him flying back. 

Elend winced, clutching his side for a second where the wire had clipped him before the man was thrown off by Vin’s Push. Not much blood, doesn’t feel deep. But that speed- he’s alive! Eyes flicking over to the man who was picking himself up, it appeared that Vin’s powerful Push hadn’t killed the man. 

Pulling a large gun from one of the fallen bodies to his hands, Elend lifted it up and fired. The first shots went wild, and he adjusted for the recoil and aimed closer with the machine gun at the man’s center mass, firing again and missing once more. This time, it was due to the frantic, jerky motions of the man, dodging around the shots until the gun clicked empty. Dropping it, he switched tactics.

It was macabre, but Elend Pulled one of the larger fallen body segments towards him before Pushing the larger object hard at the deranged man. Jerome had enough sense of self to cut the body in half, but that just caused Elend to adjust and Push on each half, smacking into his legs and head, knocking the man down again.

“Why can’t I see you? You exist but you don’t! Stop haunting me, ghosts!” He shouted before muttering, “Can’t connect to them, can’t connect to anyone. All alone, no chooms left, all gone. It’s all gone…”

The man’s pitiful sobs tugged at Elend’s heartstrings, though the projectiles he fired from his feet, his legs transforming to a pair of launchers, made it more difficult to feel sympathy for him. With his Pewter still Flaring, he had enough time to react with another Push, sending the projectiles flying right back where they exploded around him.

Jerome was tossed about, his face burning as he cried. Vin swooped down, seizing the opportunity and pinning him to the ground. She’d clearly seen where the wires extended out from his arms and turned them away from her. As he tried to buck and shake her off, Vin strained, but held her down with a force (and weight) she didn’t possess, clearly Pushing herself off one of the nearby buildings to press down on him. It’s using up her reserves though. We don’t have much metal left and I wouldn’t be surprised if that first attack on him wasn’t flaring her metals as well.

Elend rushed over, lending his own assistance. With his larger body and greater strength, they were able to hold him down despite his thrashing. “Noooo. Why are you doing this to me?” he wailed, and Elend bit back an immediate response of ‘You tried to kill us first.’

Catching his wife’s gaze, he realized they needed to make a decision quickly. We can’t keep him down forever. We’ll run out of metals soon while his cyberware doesn’t have that limitation. If they had more resources, then it wouldn’t be a worry, they’d only need a bit more to replenish their reserves, but Elend wasn’t going to waste time worrying about that.

“We were just after the bounties, not you. Calm down, it’ll be alright,” Elend said, projecting as much authority as he could into his voice. This also came with a Soothe, lowering his aggression. That didn’t stop his flailing however, if anything, it was only getting stronger.

“Let me goooo! Don’t hurt me!” Now he’s just afraid. It’s like he’s not even hearing what we’re saying. Elend focused Soothing the fear away as well, which finally stopped the man’s struggles. 

“Just kill me… Who even am I any more?” Despair, and I don’t have any Zinc to Riot joy or happiness or anything. How can we reach him? Elend really didn’t want to kill him since he was clearly mentally unwell, but if he had to choose between himself and his wife and Jerome, he knew what he’d choose in an instant.

Thankfully, Vin was there to save the day, as she always did. “Jerome, you have a brother, right? Eddie.” Elend heard the man gasp in recognition of the name. “That’s who you are. You’re Jerome, and you have a brother who’s worried about you.”

“Please, take me to see him,” Jerome said after a minute, his voice finally sounding close to normal. Slowly, they lifted him back up, leading him away from the site of this massacre.

A/N: You can probably tell which Cyberpsycho mission this was inspired by. Lacking any electronic systems to mess with (and having faced far scarier already), the ‘horror’ elements don’t get played up as much here, but it was still a challenge for them. Being able to manipulate people’s emotions like that is definitely a very scary power, something that really skilled hacking usually needs to do to most people (and even then doesn’t work sometimes).

Oh and if anyone is wondering about the Body hitting him when the bullets didn’t, given how quick the reaction has to be, even with a Krenzikov or similar system boosting your speed, I imagine a lot of it is ingrained reflex. Knowing to dodge bullets is something that’s more commonly known and reflexively dealt with in Night City than ducking away from a body. Even then it was the additional Push after that really caught Jerome off guard.