—Logan Martin Lake, Alabama-
-2016-
"He's getting away from you!" Sundowner yelled.
"Not a chance!" Adam Smasher replied, his gruff voice screeching with static as he strained," None leave the slaughterhouse. Not alive!"
His fishing rod bent as he wrestled with massive alligator gar on the other end of the line. Its tail briefly flashed above the water, eliciting a whistle from Sundowner.
"Goddamn, I think that might be an Alabama state record right there!"
"Try world record! Nothing less could struggle this long against the might of Adam Smasher!"
"Well the mighty Adam Smasher better get that fish to stop strugglin' fast or that line is gonna snap and you'll be on your mechanical ass."
"Are you trying to be hurtful? Because…it's working."
With a final roar of effort, Adam Smasher wrenched the rod upward, their twenty foot dinghy rocking from side to side precariously. The massive fish flew out of the water and Adam Smasher swiped it from the air with one hand.
"You look like a piece of grillable meat," Smasher growled triumphantly at the flailing fish.
Sundowner whooped and slapped Smasher on his mechanical back," That's my little brother!"
"Grab the scale, I think this one is easily a hundred-pounder!" Smasher said.
"Right, let me get it. You hold onto that thing now. Those gars are cruel, Smasher."
"Don't talk down to me as if I'm a chil-"
Suddenly the fish whipped its tail and cracked Adam Smasher over his chrome head. Smasher growled in pain as the fish nearly slipped from his grasp. At the last second, he gripped it by the tail and pulled it back from the water's edge.
"You think you're special because you're scrappy?" He punched the gar, sending it flying across the small boat. "Don't make me laugh!" He leaped into the air and proceeded to elbow drop the fish.
"Fuck 'em up, Adam!" Sundowner cackled.
Smasher continued pummeling the prehistoric fish. "You can't even stand without your buoyancy implants!"
Suddenly, the fish's head snapped up and bit down on his nose.
"FUCK!" Smasher screamed and tried prying the fish from his face.
"Hold on, I got it!" Sundowner began punching the fish.
After a few seconds of the onslaught, the gar finally let go. But a wild punch from Sundowner ended up sending the fish flying out of the boat and into the water.
"NOOO!" Smasher screamed as he reached his hand out over the edge of the boat in despair. "What am I going to post on Instagram, now?"
"Like I said, gars are cruel, Adam," Sundowner patted him on the shoulder reassuredly. "Ah don't worry about it. We got plenty of daylight left."
"That fish would've put me at the top of Arasaka's leaderboard. Now fucking Clint and his stupid walleye are going to keep the record," Smasher grumbled.
Sundowner stood up and grabbed both their fishing poles. "Ya know what, fuck this fishing rod bullshit!" He snapped them both over his knee, then reached into his pocket and pulled out multiple sticks of dynamite. "We should've just started with the explosives from the get-go!"
Adam Smasher's red eyes lit up with glee. "You always were the idea guy."
"Damn right! Now let's turn this lake red!" Sundowner sneered. A ghoulish look that Adam Smasher mirrored.
Soon they were both standing with cold beers in hand, chucking stick after stick of lit dynamite into the lake. Each time one exploded and sent a couple dozen fish to the surface, they both laughed with childish glee. It got to the point where they couldn't possibly fill the boat with any more fish lest they risk the dinghy sinking.
Not that that stopped them from continuing to chuck dynamite into the lake though. Their cybernetic enhancements allowed them to beam the explosives so far that their freshly opened beer bottles were already empty by the time the explosives contacted the water.
The sound of a motor approaching broke them from their nitroglycerin-fueled revelry.
"Fuck, it's the feds," Sundowner said.
They both tensed as the game warden's boat pulled up alongside them.
"Gentlemen, mind telling me why I'm getting reports of two cyborgs punching fish and throwing beer bottles and dynamite into the lake?" the game warden, a portly middle-aged man with the textbook hardass buzzcut and wraparound sunglasses combo, inquired.
Sundowner shrugged, an unlit stick of dynamite still in hand," What's the fuss? Ain't no Geneva Convention for fish!"
"No, but there are ADCNR-regulated bag limits on how many fish you can catch a day. Which is ten," the man glanced at the piles of fish in their dinghy," And it looks like you have around two hundred there. Not to mention public intoxication, littering, and detonating illegal high ordinance explosives in a public place."
"How's an honest fishmonger supposed to make a living without dynamite and beer? It's unAmerican!" Sundowner protested.
"Besides, don't you have a six year old to fine for fishing without a license, fed?" Adam Smasher snarked.
"Alright, I've heard enough. Both of you, put your hands behind your back," the game warden, pulling a pair of handcuffs from his belt and stepping onto their boat, the two cyborgs on board towering over him.
"Is it because I'm black?" Adam Smasher growled indignantly.
"You're not black, sir, that's just your exoskeleton. I know how cyborgs work." The game warden reached for Adam Smasher's hands.
"UNHAND ME, FLESHSUIT!" Adam Smasher shoved the man backward, nearly sending him overboard.
"That's it, I tried to be nice to you, city boy," the game warden rolled up the sleeves on his uniform," But looks like I can teach how we do things around here."
"GIVE ME YOUR WORST, MEATMONKEY!"
The fat man charged Adam Smasher and tackled him at the midsection, causing him to stumble. A flurry of blows were exchanged between the two as Sundowner cheered his little brother on," Lead with your right, man!" Sundowner downed another beer and lobbed another bundle of dynamite at a passing boat, laughing as it began to sink.
The grainy video paused on Sundowner's face mid laugh.
The present day Sundowner stood bleary-eyed in front of the projector screen. "In case you're wondering, he ended up losing that fight when the warden pushed him into the lake. Cybernetics weren't waterproofed well back then. Or very buoyant. We ended up spending the rest of the day in the drunk tank until the good boys down at Arasaka got the multiple felony charges dropped. Here's to you guys for that one." He raised a Coors Light bottle to the boardroom of twenty Arasaka corpos. None of them had drinks of their own. Nor were they prepared for a eulogy. The funeral itself had already happened a few weeks ago in their hometown, but Sundowner had felt the need to remind Arasaka of their most valuable cyber mercenary's drunken exploits in backwoods Alabama for some reason.
"Uh, did you guys have a camera crew with you on that boat or what? Because there were multiple angles there that made absolutely no sense," one of the corpos asked.
"Anyway," Sundowner continued, ignoring the question," Adam Smasher, great cyborg, and an even greater war criminal. And most importantly," his voice broke with a barely repressed sob, "my little brother. I'll never forget the time we spent together in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa. All those third-world PMC playgrounds. I'd give anything to commit crimes against humanity with him...one last time. " He fell onto the podium, tears now flowing freely down his face. "I love you, lil bro!" Sundowner chugged the rest of his beer and threw it against the back wall of the boardroom. Several of the corpos ducked in anticipation of a further onslaught, but Sundowner just continued crying on the podium. He produced a bottle of Jack and began taking intermittent sips between sobs.
Douglas awkwardly patted the massive cyborg on the shoulder. "Sundowner, I believe there was something else you wanted to address at this meeting," he hesitantly added.
Sundowner immediately perked up, quickly wiping away his tears," Right, thanks for reminding me, Doug." He clicked the remote in his hand a few times, moving on from his previous slideshow memorial to an aerial view of the night Adam Smasher died. In the photo, infamous edgerunner David Martinez could be seen, along with his crew. In front of them, facing off against the legendary Adam Smasher was a tall bespectacled man clad in a business suit.
"Now, some of my old informants have forked over some tasty tidbits about where David and his posse were spirited off to." He pointed to the looming man in the center of the frame. "This man is known as Steven Armstrong. A Colorado Senator who also happens to be the director of World Marshal and Desperado LLC."
Several murmurs erupted from the crowd of assembled suits at the mention of one of their company's greatest rivals in cybernetic weapons manufacturing and private military contracting alongside Militech.
"Yep, you heard me right. And not only that," he clicked the remote and another slide popped up revealing a grainy image that look like it was pulled from a CCTV camera. On it, what was clearly David Martinez engaged in a gunfight alongside another smaller figure that had been one of the accomplices in his old Night City crew," Surveillance cameras caught this in Denver, which just so happens to be where the headquarters of World Marshal is located."
More murmurs, growing equal parts concerned and angry as the revelation of what this information meant set in.
"That's right, that angry long-legged Puerto Rican and his posse of cybernetic axe wounds have shacked up with one of Arasaka's top rivals. Hell of a scouting job by the Senator I gotta say." The slide changed to an aerial map of Denver, Colorado with the location of World Marshal HQ highlighted with a smiley face. "Now my friends, I think you all can guess what they got brewing over there in Denver. World Marshal with the help its business partner Desperado now has some of the world's deadliest cybernetic mercs in their employ. And we all know it's only a matter of time until they turned their newly acquired human hardware on their business rivals."
The room was quiet. All of them listened intently to the surprisingly articulate drunk mercenary for the first time since he arrived.
Sundowner smiled," I propose, we take the fight to them first. No holds barred. Nuts to butts. Avenge my brother and your declining bottom line.: Sundowner tossed the podium aside to stand triumphantly in front of the assembled heads of Arasaka. "A surprise party for David Martinez and co the likes of which America hasn't seen since the good ol' days of 9/11!"