Faulty Utopia

"With great power comes great responsibility, right? They can't expect me to go. At least you're made of metal and bulletproof," Sun Jack said solemnly to Tapai.

"Fuck you," Tapai clenched the gun in his hands and, with a forceful push of his reverse-jointed legs against the ground, charged straight towards those people behind him.

The various bullets fired from the front quickly caught up with Tapai's figure, eventually provoking a barrage of curses from another direction.

"Haha! Success!" Sun Jack, seeing both sides shooting at each other, suddenly clenched his fists in excitement.

A "pu-chi" sound, and the smile on Sun Jack's face froze in place.

He trembled as he looked down, only to see a bloody Arc Blade protruding from his abdomen. As the blade was withdrawn, scalding blood sprayed out.

Covering his stomach, Sun Jack turned to look behind him but found that there was no one there, just a bloody blade floating in mid-air.

Under his gaze, a bald man with metal prosthetic arms and an inverted cross scar on his neck sneered as he canceled his Mimetic Camouflage, revealing his true form. "Batard."

"You motherfucker!" Sun Jack roared as he raised the rifle in his hand.

But with the flash of cold light, in just a fraction of a second, the arm holding the gun was cut into three pieces.

Time seemed to stop in that instant. Watching the bone marrow from his severed bone tumble out in mid-air, Sun Jack instantly felt the desperate gap between prosthetic body and flesh. "Am I going to die?"

The next moment, time resumed its normal course, intense gunfire erupted, and bullets from the left side shot in, intercepting Baldy.

Glancing at Sun Jack, who was now almost turning into a bloody gourd, the adversary sneered and quickly activated the Mimetic Camouflage, disappearing from the spot.

Just as Sun Jack was about to collapse, Tapai, holding a rifle, rapidly rushed over and dragged him toward the edge of the battlefield.

Thanks to his efforts, the two sides had started fighting each other and temporarily ignored them.

"Am I going to die?" The delayed pain finally caught up, and Sun Jack's consciousness began to blur as he spoke in fits and starts.

Tapai quickly dragged Sun Jack to a low-lying area safe from bullets. "You won't die!"

As he extended his hand, the slender fiber optics previously used for hacking computers swiftly penetrated Sun Jack's body, mending the ruptured blood vessels at a rapid pace, and the bleeding was quickly reducing.

But that wasn't enough, Sun Jack was already close to dying from blood loss shock.

Tapai quickly sensed Sun Jack's blood type and after a rapid scan, he pulled a battered corpse from the outside. As the transparent sensor wire inserted into the blood vessels started to turn blood-red, another wire inserted into Sun Jack's body.

"Wait... wait! I'm not dead yet!" the other struggled to open his eyes.

Tapai raised his fist and smashed it down hard on the man's head, causing the skull to cave in. "You're dead now."

With the still-warm blood rapidly transfused into Sun Jack's body, his dead-pale face gradually regained its color.

Tapai quickly scanned the surroundings with radar for anything useful, and eventually, after finding painkillers and stimulants on that body and injecting them into Sun Jack, he finally came to.

Reopening his eyes, Sun Jack looked up at the gray, rainy sky and cursed fiercely, "Fuck!"

At this moment, Sun Jack was immensely grateful for having brought Tapai with him as he powered it up. If it wasn't for this prehistoric robot, he probably would have lost his life just now.

"We need to move fast, or you won't be able to fuck anything up. I don't have any anti-infection meds, and the acid rain has drenched your wound. If we don't find a doctor, you won't last long," said Tapai.

After speaking, Tapai began to help Sun Jack prepare to leave.

"Wait a minute," Sun Jack said, enduring the pain as he stopped at the sight of the body with the caved-in skull.

The man appeared to be a mercenary, his black prosthetic arms giving off a high-tech vibe. His clothing was riddled with bullet holes, looking utterly miserable.

He had a skull tattoo on his left cheek, messy dreadlocks, and with two large nose rings, he didn't look like a good person no matter how you looked at him.

Sun Jack glanced at his own empty right arm, then at the metal prosthetic of the corpse. "Can you attach it to me?"

Sun Jack couldn't let go of the anger towards the Baldy who had almost killed him, all for the fact that he was without a prosthetic.

It wasn't just a matter of pride for Sun Jack; their adversary might still be lurking nearby, ready to strike, and he had to recover as much combat ability as possible right now.

"Fitting too many prosthetics can lead to cyber psychosis," said Tapai.

"Look at the environment we're in. Is now the time to be discussing this? Let's make sure we survive and get out of here first!" The surrounding gunfire made Sun Jack care less about the risks. In such conditions, being armless was as good as being useless.

"Alright, you're the Boss," Tapai said as his fingers rapidly morphed into tools and began disassembling the other's metal right arm.

Taking advantage of the lingering effects of the painkillers, Sun Jack swiftly cut through flesh and bone, and soon, the matte black metal arm was transplanted onto his body.

As a tingling sensation traveled up his nerves, Sun Jack found that his right hand could move again.

He examined the metal arm in front of him, slowly opening and tightening the fingers, feeling as if his hand had returned to him.

With a "clang," an Arc Blade with electric arcs emerged from the forearm, reflecting Sun Jack's excited expression on its surface.

The clicking sound followed as the blade quickly retracted, the metal fingers bent backwards towards the arm, and the dark barrel spiraled open from his palm.

The prosthetic could even mount a cannon; evidently, many of the nearby explosions were caused by this very thing.

As the pain began to return, Sun Jack picked up a syringe of painkiller from the ground and injected it directly into his thigh. With his pupils shrinking, he felt as if the sky was brightening instantly,

"Looks like I've hit the jackpot." Sun Jack, regaining his ability to move, put the last bit of the painkiller in his pocket and gritted his teeth as he stood up.

Instead of retreating immediately, he went directly to the location of the previous skirmish. He targeted the group that had been pursuing him and fired several shots at them.

Seeing the explosions and fire in the distance, Sun Jack finally felt that the wounds on his body were not as painful.

"Let's go!" Sun Jack said, ready to leave with Tapai, but a trembling hand grabbed his left foot. "Wait... wait!"

Looking down, Sun Jack saw a man with a caved-in skull and missing right arm looking up at him. Upon closer inspection, wasn't this the original owner of his right arm?