"Boss, an assassin from the Valentinos has infiltrated."
"What?!"
Clemente was shocked. He immediately pulled open the drawer of his desk and took out a large-caliber revolver. Pulling up the security feed from the terminal on the table, he saw that the family compound appeared completely quiet. There were no signs of a firefight.
At that moment, the door suddenly exploded with a deafening crash, splintering into pieces. A silver figure shot into the room like an arrow released from a bowstring. Clemente instinctively raised his gun and fired, but all the bullets struck empty space.
Leo flashed past him in an instant.
Clemente clutched his throat in stunned silence, then toppled from his chair like a fish stranded on dry land, struggling desperately.
The gunfire immediately alerted others. Members of the Clemente family began converging on the area from all directions. Leo dove through the window and out, dual-wielding kinetic assault rifles. He didn't need smart weapons—his helmet's built-in tactical display could provide the same targeting support.
As the Clemente family forces arrived, they were quickly gunned down or wounded. Leo kept moving, kicked off the compound wall with two heavy steps, and launched himself into the air. He soared over the boundary and vanished from sight.
…
On the same day that Clemente, head of the Clemente family, was assassinated, Jackie led Padre's men in a counterattack. With intel obtained from Rogue, Jackie specifically targeted the Clemente family's hidden manufacturing shops.
Like the former Jotaro group, the Clemente family had largely taken over the production of glitter within the Six Street Gang. Their underground labs were devastated, and the Six Street Gang also suffered collateral damage.
To maintain operational secrecy, Jackie had only brought along Marcus and a few of Padre's most trusted men. He didn't reveal the mission's details until they were nearly at the target location, minimizing the risk of internal leaks.
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The chaos continued into the fifth day with no end in sight. The conflict between the Kiryu-gumi and the Clemente family remained intense. However, the battleground had shifted from Heywood's Vista del Rey to Santo Domingo's Arroyo district and Westbrook's Japantown.
The unrest and disorder kept escalating. Originally, NCPD had marked Santo Domingo with a "Warning" threat level. It wasn't a good rating, but not terrible either—less dangerous than Heywood's "Partially Dangerous" but worse than Westbrook's "Minimal Threat."
Now, NCPD had upgraded it to "Extremely Dangerous" and even reclassified Westbrook as "Partially Dangerous." During this period, Mayor Ryan and Director Jerry Fort were both restless and overwhelmed. Though neither particularly cared about the lives of the lower classes, that didn't mean they were willing to sit on a volcano that was about to erupt—or already had.
If it were just Santo Domingo, fine. But Japantown in Westbrook was Night City's most iconic entertainment district and a major source of tax revenue. Now even Japantown was regularly shaken by gunfire and explosions. With no one going out to spend money at night, revenues dropped, and so did the city's upcoming tax intake.
Mayor Ryan and Director Fort didn't care about the poor—but they couldn't ignore the cliff-diving numbers on the next fiscal report. Ryan had already screamed more than once at Fort to find a solution. The only move Fort could come up with was increasing patrol presence in Japantown, hunting down and killing criminals responsible for the explosions and gunfights.
The results were immediate. On the first night, the increased patrols significantly reduced incidents in Japantown. But by the next day, Fort was forced to pull those patrols back—because they had been reassigned from North Oak and Corpo Plaza. These were wealthy districts, tax powerhouses, and though they had their own private security, that didn't mean the NCPD could just reallocate public units.
"I pay all these taxes every year—not so the NCPD can protect the poor!"
—A wealthy North Oak resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, stated modestly.
By the seventh day, the situation had grown even more chaotic. Gunfire rang out across Santo Domingo from dawn to dusk—and continued through the night. At sunrise, a factory reduced to rubble still burned fiercely, greeting the morning light with blazing flames.
At this stage of the conflict, nearly every gang except Padre's had suffered losses of some kind. Naturally, the Clemente family bore the brunt of the damage. Their Boss had been assassinated. One by one, their glitter production and trafficking sites were raided and destroyed by Jackie's crew. Outer circle members were dead or scattered, and even their core inner circle had taken massive losses. With their forces devastated, the Clemente family had no choice but to hire mercenaries.
They paid generously, bringing in guns-for-hire to patch the holes in their battle lines. Other gangs followed suit, trading eddies for mercs. Soon the fighting flared up again—this time with mercenaries clearly present on both sides of the battlefield. Even Maine's crew joined in and made a killing.
The ratio of mercs to gang members reached 1:1, then climbed to 3:1 just two days later.
By the eleventh day, Mayor Ryan could no longer tolerate the situation and authorized Fort to deploy MaxTac. Originally created to counter cyberpsychos, MaxTac rarely deployed unless absolutely necessary—because wherever MaxTac showed up, civilian casualties were guaranteed.
But at this point, no one cared about civilian casualties anymore. If the situation remained uncontrolled, Night City could collapse entirely.
That day, MaxTac's heavy AVs patrolled above the city nonstop. They hovered over the hotspots, then deployed. Fully armed, heavily cyberized MaxTac officers leapt straight out of their armored AVs like angels descending from the heavens, slamming into the middle of the battlefield.
Whether it was Kiryu-gumi, the Clemente family, or even trigger-happy mercs firing rounds into the air to fake activity for easy eddies, MaxTac didn't discriminate. They deemed all of them threats to public peace—and erased them without mercy.
MaxTac's strength was beyond dispute. Their efficiency was equally terrifying. The moment their AVs appeared overhead, anyone with half a brain immediately bolted. The smarter ones fled the moment they heard the engines. As for the idiots, too bloodthirsty to realize what was coming—even daring to fight MaxTac? They were reduced to nothing but blood mist.
…
On the twelfth night, while Leo and Jackie were staying at Padre's safehouse, Jackie received a call from an unknown number. After connecting, a holo-image appeared: a man wearing a military uniform and a beret, with an armband identical to the flag of the New United States. He also wore dark sunglasses under the beret. His chin, clearly once injured, had been replaced with a cybernetic alloy jaw.
The man sat in a chair, leaning forward, hands resting on his knees.
"Good evening, Mr. Jackie."
"Evening. Not very polite, mister. You know my name—but isn't it only fair you share yours?"
"You can call me Cannon."
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