The New Man: Adam Smasher Si

by Crossposted

Crosspost of Seat Admiral’s fanfiction on SpaceBattles, all credits go to the original author.

3. Upload 03

Interlude 8 : Various and Adam

Adam Smasher's new album, MGR Revengeance, is a partially visual experience, accompanied by several scenes supposedly drawn by Adam Smasher himself. With the pictures as context, the viewer understands that the surprisingly techno-soundtrack is in fact an operatic autobiography. It is unknown what "MGR" stands for, although several theories have been suggested.

The cover is of an oversized ACPA facing down a borg with a mono-katana. The scene is a dusty desert land with scant scrubs. It is evening, the sun is red.

Song 1 : Rules of Nature

The scene is of a blond boy in a shadowed alleyway. The boy is dressed in sneakers, shorts, a black "Mets" hoodie, and a baseball cap. The boy is holding a bloody baseball bat. The boy is eating a loaf of bread. The boy is sitting on a man's corpse. A bag of groceries is scattered on the ground.

Song 2 : A Stranger I Remain

The scene is of a young blond man in an army recruit's uniform. His eyes are covered by his helmet. He is grinning. He is in a row of many other recruits. A drill sergeant walks in front of them.

Song 3 : Hot Wind Blowing

The scene is of a blond man in weathered army fatigues. He is in a desert. He is shooting several men in middle-eastern clothing. The man is grinning. An army division is approaching from behind him.

Song 4 : I'm My Own Master Now

The scene is of a blond man. He is walking away from an army officer in clear disgust. He is tearing off his uniform. He keeps a tight grip on his gun, however.

Song 5 : The Stains of Time

The scene is of a blond man. He is wearing street clothes and body armor. He is firing a machine gun at a group that are wearing gang symbols. He is smiling.

Song 6 : Collective Consciousness

The scene is of a horribly injured man. He is hanging from the ceiling, and is missing three of his limbs in their entirety, and one limb down to the elbow. Several corporate officials are around him. The officials have an Arasaka brand on their backs. A cybernetic body is behind the man.

Song 7 : Red Sun

The scene is of a mostly cybernetic man. His cybernetics are pitch black and bulky. He is carrying a massive machine gun. He is shooting a crowd of people. The man's face is covered by a cybernetic jaw and a skull-mask.

Song 8 : It Has To Be This Way

The scene is of a DaiOni frame and a man with a black chrome arm. They are shooting at each other on top of a tower. The tower is collapsing. There is a helicopter in the background.

Song 9 : The Only Thing I Know For Real

The scene is of a mostly cybernetic man. His cybernetics are black but not overly bulky. He is carrying a mono-katana and a handgun. He is standing in front of a large quadrupedal ACPA with a large gun mounted on its back. The man has a face and graying hair. They are in the ruins of a city.

—

Arasaka purchases the Pacifica region of Night City in its entirety! Cost not disclosed!

In a shocking move, the Night City government made the decision to snub the Chinese corporation Kang Tao and instead sell the Pacifica region in its entirety to Arasaka after Arasaka management made an offer. The site is planned for major reconstruction as Arasaka agents begin to move into and police the area. Arasaka reveals that hot-topic public figure Adam Smasher has been assigned to help quell gang violence in the district. Arasaka plans to unveil plans for reconstruction at the end of the year, but has leaked that they have "no plans to make it a tourist attraction again", much to the apparent dismay of many civil planners.

—

Rogue had mixed feelings about the man sitting next to her.

Adam Smasher was there in his Gemini body, still utterly dwarfing anyone except the most borged out cyberpsychos, and slowly sipping at his drink (that she paid for) as he stared at the kids that he press-ganged into his service. Dressed in fashion that went out of style more than fifty years ago.

They were off near the center of the room, drinking and laughing with the boy's mother (that was brought back from the fucking dead a year later, fucking hell how?) talking to her cute little bartender. The kids were doing some sort of trick with bullets and guns (it's always gun tricks with these kids), they better not shoot a hole in her roof, she just got that repaired yesterday.

They were good kids, good as anyone can be in this fucked up city. David was a bundle of canned sunshine, and the girls were precious little hanger-ons. They made for a cute trio. It made her pissed off every time she saw an Arasaka logo on their clothes. They were branded now, dogs of a corpo, and they would never be able to escape that. Was serving under Adam Smasher any better than dying to Adam Smasher? She didn't know anymore.

Ask her a year ago and she would say death is preferrable to staying around the murderous bastard. Ask her now and she couldn't tell you.

As far as she could tell, the bastard was a good boss to the kids, which was all kinds of fucked up. He paid them an even share, he made sure they were ready before starting jobs, he paid for all their chrome and equipment to be updated, he gave them free lodging.

If you told her that Adam Smasher would do anything except toss the kids into a meat grinder, she wouldn't have believed you. Yet here she was, sitting next to the bastard as he drank some fruity thing that Kevin brought over. She told him to bring him drinks like that to see how the bastard reacted, but so far all he's done each time was grumble and growl.

He clearly didn't want to be here, surrounded by 'meatbags' and in a club with music that he hated, drinking fruity drinks. The kids wanted to be here though, and so here he was in the corner of the bar watching them like a hawk.

No, not a hawk. Like a lion watches his pride. Resting in the shade of a vantage point while the cubs played. Adam Smasher was a grumpy, growling, apex predator, one that was defending what he saw as his. She almost wanted to laugh at such a stupid image.

Adam Smasher didn't defend jack shit, he was the killer that Arasaka sent out whenever they needed everything in a hundred meter radius dead, enemy and bystander alike. He was the blunt instrument of destruction that intimidated everyone that thought they could fuck with Arasaka and get away with it. The walking natural disaster that turns people into corpses.

He was not a man who rushed a young girl in his arms to safety. He was not a man who stayed back to take out an assassin gunning for a young boy he was teaching. He was not a man who saved prostitutes and homeless from scavs in the streets. He was not a man who made fucking music. He was not a man who critiqued her fucking fashion choices.

He was a man who killed the dumb, cheating, asshole that she still wasn't over all these years later.

Rogue took a drink, and started speaking to drown out all this introspection.

"Scavs are basically gone from the city, I'm sure you know." He didn't turn to look at her, but she knew he was listening. He always was, even when no one else was.

"Funnily enough, you and 'Saka got rid of one gang, and two more sprouted up in the aftermath."

"The first one doesn't have a name, not really. With the sudden death of the primary suppliers of second-hand chrome gone, the ripperdocs were in trouble of staying in business as a whole. They've decided to unionize, forming a sort of ad-hoc pseudo-gang. They don't really have a leadership or command structure, just more of a formalized agreement to watch after each other. No one's sure if it'll last long."

Adam spoke at that, voice rumbling in its distinctive robotic undertone. Adam never tried to hide who he was, even in a more human looking body. Adam never hid his thoughts behind polite words or backhanded phrases. He was honest, maybe the most honest man in the city. Rogue wanted to laugh, the most honest man in the city is the most murderous one, sounded like a bad joke.

"A new gang will fill the gap soon enough. It won't last when that happens."

Rogue would normally agree, but she had a feeling on this one. She had learned to trust her feelings over the years. She just took a sip and continued.

"The other gang is formed from a combination of ligering scav elements and some other miscellaneous groups rallied around a guy named George Goode…"

He noticed the pause.

"They have a name?"

Rogue groaned and placed her face in her hand. The secondhand embarrassment from the new gang's chosen name was almost unbearable.

"...Pavement Apes."

A pause. Adam actually turned to look at her, silent for a moment.

"Pavement Apes?"

Rogue nodded.

"They know what that means right?"

Rogue nodded.

"George Goode is from Louisiana, and got himself some custom gorilla arms a while ago. He decided that he 'was going to be king of the concrete jungle' in a speech when the gang started forming a few weeks ago."

Adam stared for another moment, before scoffing and turning back to watch the kids.

"That's fucking embarrasing."

Rogue fully agreed. She found herself hoping the new gang would be wiped out real soon. It was a small gang still, so it was more than possible that she wouldn't have to hear of it again. Regardless, she was done giving out info, time for the bastard to give her some back.

"So what was with that trick where you made a district worth of scavs melt?"

Adam growled out at that. "Overclocked their chrome, then locked them into overclock."

…fucker, she knew that part.

"How?"

Adam scoffed again. Glaring at her from the corner of his eye like she said something incredibly stupid. Bastard, that was an honest question. "Netrunning, it's not hard to figure out."

…So either he was covering for his little Arasaka attack AI, or he was being entirely blunt again. Did he actually expect her to believe that he was able to quickhack the entirety of northern Pacifica in the thirty or so seconds it took for him to run Lucy back to TT?

…Adam was probably the most honest man in the city, he might actually have done that. The thought scared the shit out of her. She decided to ignore it for now, either he was lying or he could replicate an attack AI while running away.

"What does 'Saka have you doing down in Pacifica now?"

Adam audibly snarled at that, clearly deeply annoyed at the situation.

"Bossman told me I was in charge of its development, and assigned a fucking stipend to get it done. I don't know fucking why, but I'm going to have to move there once the preliminary structure is finished."

…what? All she knew was that he was being assigned to the area, not that he was in charge of its development! What the fuck? Why was the Emperor assigning his butcher to administrative duties like that?

"Do you even know anything about civil development?" She asked, bastard was a killer through and through, she doubted he knew jack shit about something if it didn't involve murder.

Adam paused a bit, he grumbled and took a drink.

"A bit, and now I have to read up about it."

"You know about civil development, really?" She somewhat sarcastically asked.

"Lots of free time between jobs. I don't sleep." He explained, and it did actually explain things somewhat, she knew he didn't have a social life. Him being cooped up in the tower all the time, he had to have some sort of hobby.

Besides music and fashion, apparently. Rogue turned to her drink, and considered her state of dress again.

She knew for a long time that she wasn't looking good. It had only gotten worse over the years. A woman slowly rotting away, clearly visible to everyone around. A silent cry for anyone to care, anything except apathy to her state of being. But no one cared to say anything as she decayed.

No one except a murderous asshole.

He pissed her the fuck off, she had to prove him wrong. She got the rejuv treatments, she actually tried with her clothes again…

And when she looked in the mirror, she felt better than she had in decades. He came back, and eyed her up like a lecherous bastard. She felt as sexy as she had when she was twenty, still able to draw gazes from every fucker on the street.

Rogue snorted, and took another drink.

She was still weak in the knees for violent, asshole musicians it seems. What a fucking embarrassment. He'd take responsibility, she'll make sure of that.

—

The Voodoo Boys were in the middle of a schism. It was a bit inconvenient for her.

They had seen the clip of Adam Smasher running with the girl in his arms. Everyone in the fucking world probably has at this point. They didn't care about that part. They cared about the recording of the same scene in cyberspace.

A brilliant golden bonfire, washing over an entire fucking district and selectively melting scavs but leaving everyone else alone. If it wasn't the work of an AI, then it was the work of a Netrunner on par with an AI. The fire being sucked right back into Adam Smasher as soon as he went into emergency shutdown meant that the signal had to have come from him.

Either Adam Smasher was the direct host of an AI, or he was on par with an AI while running a girl to TT. Either was ridiculous.

Overnight the Voodoo Boys fucking imploded. Half of them declaring him to be a false idol, half of them declaring him to be an avatar of Those Beyond the Wall. With both sides willing to back up their opinion with violence.

Violence that only got worse with the news of Arasaka buying the whole of Pacifica, and assigning Adam Smasher to bring it in line. They declared it a sign of either the material world's trickery or the spiritual world's guidance.

Either way, Brigitte was eager. Violence would prove who was right here, she just had to pick a side and survive.

—

Vincent walked forwards through the dusty winds.

In front of him was a car-circle, guns pointed in his direction. He walked forwards unafraid regardless, it wasn't like he would let any of those bullets touch him.

Three steps now before the first shell fell on their west flank.

Two steps. The guns shifted their aims to focus more on him instead of the warband behind him.

One step. The fingers on the triggers prepared to squeeze.

The shell fell, turning their westmost cars into scrap. All of the guns pointed at him suddenly jolted, some of them turning to look at the new threat to their side and some of them firing at him. He took one step to the right. All bullets of their first volley missed him.

He drew out a six-shooter, you couldn't beat the classics when selling a pitch, afterall.

Two steps before the second shell landed on their eastern flank.

One step before they fired at him again. He raised a hand up and flicked the ash off his cigarette.

The shell fell, distracting them again. More of them fired at him this time, he stepped left and raised an arm. The second volley mostly missed, four bullets tore into his coat, but not his body.

Four steps until his men on the west flank could fire at their interior, the dust starting to clear.

Three steps until they realize they were surrounded by snipers in the hills around them.

Two steps until they recovered from the double shelling to fire at him again.

One step until his cancer-stick stopped being helpful for the image he was selling here. He pulled it out of his mouth between two fingers and tossed it on the ground to his side. The casual disinterest would sell his utter dominance better than a serious demeanor.

The third volley fired. He twisted to the side as the bullets shot to either side of him instead of hitting him dead on. His snipers fired, and key members of their command structure collapsed.

One step until his victory was assured.

They realized the state they were in, and Vincent was unhindered as he continued to approach the Delmingas Nomad Clan. Their patriarch had stepped out from beyond their car-circle to finally meet with him. His profile said he was distrustful but not stupid, he knew the situation he was in right now.

The man approached him, and spoke.

"Alright, you got us surrounded and crippled already. What do you want?"

Vincent spoke plainly, that would work best on a man like this.

"Your loyalty."

The man tilted his head a bit at that, before slowly replying.

"...What exactly do you have in mind?"

Vincent replied honestly.

"Uniting the Nomads."

It took a moment, but the man slowly nodded. He was backed into a corner, he was out of options here unless he wanted his clan to die. He agreed just as Vincent knew he would.

Alright, a fourth clan now under his banner. Not bad for a month of work. It's a good start.

Vincent waved the medics over to take care of the wounded in the Delmingas clan, all of them having been shot with tranq rounds that needed a special antidote. No sense in killing anyone if he could avoid it.

He'd need all the help he could get when he goes to Night City.

Immediately, he started back for his command truck. He had profiles to review.

He made sure his walk was just as nonchalant and confident as before. No need to waste the potential moment of social influence.

—

Adam Smasher looked at the busty one. She was in front of his elevator door, flanked by four Arasaka Internal Security agents. Her hands were bound.

Adam looked at one of the guards.

"Why is she here?"

The busty one spoke at that, despite him not asking her anything.

"I have agreed to defect to Arasaka on two conditions."

Adam grunted.

"Which are?"

"The first is that you must fight me. The second is conditional on if you defeat me."

'If'? Arrogant woman, Adam Smasher didn't lose to fucking anyone. She lost to the kid and the gremlin.

Speaking of which, the kids came in and tensed at the sight of the woman, before untensing confusedly at the sight of her bound. The woman saw them, and nodded her head, before loudly declaring.

"I did not take you two seriously, and in doing so forced you to take a cheap victory. I apologize for that." Ah, she was one of those 'honorable' types.

The kid blinked at that, before scratching the back of his head.

"...I forgive you, I guess?"

The gremlin nodded in agreement, looking just as confused. The busty one rose up again and smiled at them. She then looked at him and gestured to her shackles. Adam grunted before gesturing for the AIS team to unlock her. It's not like she could hurt anything in here while he was around.

"Shall we?" She spoke. Adam grunted again before walking to the sparring room, gesturing for her to follow. The kids followed too, clearly wanting to see the upcoming curbstomp.

Adam got to one side of the ring, and waited for the busty one to do the same.

"Boy, say when."

The kid startled at that, before raising one hand and chopping it down with a 'start!'.

They activated their sandevistans simultaneously. She moved to punch him, Adam decided to oblige her by punching her in return. Their fists collided with a devastating boom. She moved to punch him with the other arm, he matched her. Both of their fists ground together as their sandevistans wore out.

She punched a little harder than him, but his armor was more than enough to completely ignore it still. Her arms were not armored enough to ignore his blows, however. Her knuckles on both hands were damaged. Eh, better than most meatbags, but not nearly good enough. She might be able to beat all three of his kids, assuming she was actually taking them seriously. She wouldn't be able to beat him though, not even if he stood completely still and let her punch him.

Adam jerked his arms down, breaking their lock. Before she could move he slipped them under her arms and grabbed her by both wrists. Pushing back, he slammed her onto the floor, arms breaking a bit more under the force of 600 pounds of chrome pinning her by the wrists.

She had lost, fairly decisively at this point. He was too heavy to be lifted off from this angle. She knew it too. She slackened in his grip, smiling up at him.

"The second condition is that you are the only one who can order me."

He'd have to get her better chrome than what she had, but that was fine he supposed, another body to throw at the meatfucker was a good thing.

"Now for a personal request, please impregnate me."

…huh, she was a forward one, wasn't she? Still, she wasn't asking for romance, just sex. Uriel lost it, filling his head with laughter.

Meh, he'd have to get the techies to put live swimmers in.

"Later."

Uriel couldn't stop laughing. The kids looked baffled for some reason. The woman looked like she was halfway between rage and confusion.

What were they on about? Actually, Adam decided he didn't care.

The reconstruction of Pacifica was something that Adam was entirely disinterested in, so he left it in the digital hands of Uriel, who was greatly enthused to play city planner. So in the remaining days until the beginning of the next month, Adam played troubleshooter in the region while Uriel drafted up plans for the district. By the end of that second month of Uriel's arrival in Adam's head, the initial plans were finished and sent off to the relevant parties.

All such parties seemed rather amazed that 'Adam' took a personal hand in the actual development efforts, and even more amazed when he seemed to know a thing or two about the process. Since he was the boss, they had to listen to 'his' orders regardless.

A civilization is, at best, nine meals away from rebellion. Pacifica had been cut off from the city and therefore starving for quite some time now. The best way to earn the undying loyalty of the citizens in the area would be to first supply their basic needs, and do it away from where work had to be done.

There were three roadways into Pacifica, all three of them were blocked off. Only military personnel, company employees, or construction workers were permitted to pass on these roads in vehicles of any kind. This was to prevent fuckers from have joyrides into his new territory.

The first structures erected were temporary, designed to work well enough but to be demolished as actual permanent housing was erected. A 'fortress' of stacked concrete blocks made up the initial structure, painted black to make it slightly more heat efficient in the colder months. Within was all the basic comforts that Adam required for himself (that is to say, none but his guns), and a few rooms for the kids and woman. He offered to let them stay at his personal floor back in Arasaka tower, where there were vastly more creature comforts, but they insisted on clogging up his new temporary fortress.

Around this initial fortress were a number of temporary apartment complexes. They were prefabbed things designed to be very quick to build, efficient enough to house about a thousand people each, and easy enough to connect. By the end of the first month, there were roughly thirty such buildings set in easy-to-patrol rows to the side of the initial fortress. It was said that Night City had a population of more than six million, thankfully Pacifica was a fucking hellhole so it had some of the least people of any region, maybe only three hundred thousand. Even with the stupid-quick construction of huge groups of men in exoskeletons and pre-fabricated housing blocks, they had only enough housing to manage a tenth of that number.

Fortunately, he had a simple solution to that. He let the areas of Pacifica he wasn't ready to expand into rot, and when he was ready he'd clear them of any stragglers himself. He had the authority to do this, not that it mattered most of the time. But most folks don't try to argue with Adam Smasher nowadays. In order to manage a higher population, he'd need the industry to support it.

To encourage residents to move from whatever shitholes they squatted in to the temporary housing, he offered them three things. One ration a day for free, one liter of water, and shelter. In exchange, they had to follow a list of rules that Uriel came up with. If they made themselves too much of an issue, they'd die when Uriel noticed and burned out their chrome. If they didn't make themselves too much of an issue, they got all their basic needs taken care of.

Then, to get a lot of mostly unpaid labor to help clear out all the fucking garbage that these animals caused themselves, he had a slightly better offer. Two rations a day, a hardhat, boots, and gloves. And they got half of the legal minimum wage in pay. Uriel felt a little bad about this, but they had a lot of fucking work to do, and they can improve conditions later when they could fucking afford it.

To those who wanted to help keep the other fuckers in line, they were given three rations a day, a cheap gun and ammo, and a single free drink of the dogshit cheap beer that some Arasaka military officers were guarding after each shift. That got him a basic workforce and a basic policing squad on the cheap, and since they were far fewer in number than the 'citizens' Uriel could monitor them more effectively. If they started acting up, Uriel shut down their chrome for a minute and sent them a message to stop fucking around. They had very few incidents after two weeks.

So, the first thing Uriel began once the initial housing started getting the fuckers out of his way, was to assign the Arasaka construction crew (the same one that was normally assigned to clean up after him) to start building some of the infrastructure. Namely, the coastline was fucking worthless as it was right now, and that was inexcusable. The fuel prices were tolerable right now, but they would add up soon, so Uriel told the crew to get rid of that first dock and cordon off that entire initial bay area.

The entire coastline of Adam's new territory would one day be nothing but buildings to produce electricity. Tide generators in concrete structures with solar panel roofing, giant wind turbines were a fucking eyesore and he wasn't allowed to put nuclear power plants anywhere, so these two would have to do. The second line of buildings on the coast would be water treatment and purification facilities, to ease up that potential long term cost as well. The third line of buildings would be the first set of towers, the first three floors of which would be solid concrete bunkers, but the upper seven floors would be dedicated to huge hydroponic farms to supply organic food.

Organic food was a fucking luxury item in the year of 2077, so selling such would be huge profit for the district in the future. Uriel planned to force set their prices to 80% of normal, to encourage basically everyone to buy from them first and then everyone else after. Because if you sell out all your good but cheap stock, then it only drives up the demand for such in the future, and thus speeds the sale of the goods by a huge margin. It would also allow those in the region to purchase such goods first, thus increasing the rate at which people migrate to the region in the future, thus increasing the rate at which they could expand.

All of those were fucking years off at this point. In the three weeks in which Adam was given reign over the district, they had a total of one of each set up for initial production. The workers of the future worked really fucking fast, and worked long hours, but they were not omnipotent. The initial production runs would all be a slight deficient until the long-term benefits began to show themselves. Of course, the long term benefits would be that the district could fucking ignore the outside world for all they wanted to outside of military action, so that was nice.

This shit was his now, he wasn't going to let some fuckers from another place get their grubby hands on it.

All of this required a great deal of funding of course. But the recent PR campaign that Arasaka underwent generated an absolutely ludicrous amount of money, and everything with his face gave him a royalty fee. All of which he was directly spending on the development of his new land. He didn't really need any more money, so it was better to put the new income into something that might actually be useful to him.

That, and he was getting his medical services on the cheap too. See, when fuckers in his new territory started acting up, he could be quite efficient in getting paid for it. Whenever some gang tried to fuck around in his land, Uriel disabled their chrome, he killed them (or had some of his new policing forces kill them) and that left them with corpses and chrome.

That new ripperdoc union? He gave them the corpses, they paid him for the chrome they got out of it, and the remaining meat was turned into fertilizer to help grow some plains-grass in the areas he didn't want eroding anymore. That niche that the scavs left behind ended up being partially filled by him, except he only killed fuckers that were already going to die for causing him problems.

In exchange for this supply of chrome, a few ripperdocs acted as medics for his burgeoning new land. So he got to cut costs there by simply handing off the meatbags he already had to butcher. He never knew that bargain-hunting could be so rewarding, he took everything bad he had ever said about couponers back!

Actually no, those fuckers were still annoying.

He honestly thought that he would be forced to kill more fuckers acting up, but all of the above combined with his already terrifying reputation meant that his district had probably the lowest overall crimerate in the region. This was annoying to him, as a lack of meatbag criminals to kill meant that he had less chrome to hand off to the ripperdocs, and less fertilizer for the exterior plains, and less fun in 'developing' the region.

Eh, the initial burst of fuckers to kill was probably good. The dry-grass was already growing pretty decently, and the ripperdoc union seemed to have stabilized more or less with that initial funding (oops?) and many of the stupid meatbags died off real quick.

Apparently a few thousand cocky fuckers having their chrome turn off, stabbed to death, and converted into useful participants of society was rather intimidating, who knew?

That was the bread portion of keeping a people under control, all he had to do next was the circus.

There was a huge abandoned stadium in the region that was, while filled with garbage, still structurally sound. So all those cheap laborers got the distinct job of cleaning out everything that wasn't nailed down. A few thousand tons of garbage taken out and shipped off to recycling facilities later, and it was a barebones structure of concrete with a large central area.

So, he had the busty one take over the hosting of duels, a task she took to with great enthusiasm. For a mere five eddies, anyone could go into the stands and watch two or more people (often with weapons or chrome) beat the living shit out of each other. The 'tickets' lasted for an entire day, so it was a fucking bargain for people who had little better to do. The participants paid for their entry the same way, ten eddies for entry, and a tournament-style bracket every week with the top four participants getting a share of the pool, a third of it if you win.

There was only one rule to the tournament, no ranged allowed. This was a place to beat the shit out of each other. The ripperdocs liked it too, because they got a shit ton of practice off all the wounds from the survivors. If you fought, you told the busty one what you wanted her to do with your corpse if you died, most chose to get their chrome handed off to a friend so far, although a time or two a fighter chose to be burned instead. Only twelve deaths in three tournaments thus far, not too bad at all.

The first tournament had about a hundred watchers and a dozen fighters. The second had about a thousand watchers and hundred and fifty fighters. The third tournament had about ten-thousand watchers and a thousand fighters. It probably wasn't going to go up much more from there for a long while, but the stadium was rigged for about a hundred thousand people in all, so they could expand more in the future.

It was dirty, it was brutal, it was good old fashion bloodsports, and the folks fucking loved it. Something about the honesty of two men foregoing guns and using their fists, chrome, and weapons to beat each other bloody appealed to people. Some of the more 'civilized' regions of NC called it barbaric underground fighting rings, but they didn't get to do jack shit about it. This was his land, he'll have bloodsports if it makes his job easier.

Gangs from other regions in NC started hearing about the whole affair, and Adam quickly approached them with some ground rules. Mostly that they keep their rivalries in the arena and if they cause problems he was going to murder them and sell the corpses. They kept real polite when he started enforcing that rule.

It was beginning to look like the gangers were starting to organize into semi-official teams representing their gangs, so the busty one made it more official by having sub-tournaments throughout the week to weed out all but one fighter from each gang for the main tournament. This shit made money hand over fist, and kept the folks in the region busy with team rivalries instead of fucking with his construction workers.

Of course, they cleaned up after themselves, Uriel made fucking sure of that with personalized messages and the occasionally disabled bit of chrome. They started being real fucking considerate after the first two big tournaments.

Thus was his first three weeks of working on this fucking land. About a tenth of the region is under control, a single power plant, a single water purification facility, a single aquaponics tower, a temporary fortress, thirty temporary apartments, and a bloodsport tournament filled with gang-backed fighters. A really fucking productive first few weeks made possible by cost-cutting, extreme violence, and all of his merchandising royalties and Arasaka stipend in cost.

In this time, Uriel went ahead and released more music. On one hand, he had to listen to his own fucking voice through the radios everywhere in the region, on the other hand, it was actually good music instead of more techno shit. He wasn't sure what he would actually prefer at this point.

His new club came in too, way faster than his supposedly unbreakable sword, which was apparently still being worked on. A simple stick of hexagonal patterned carbon nanotubes that expanded outwards a bit after the 'handle' section, covered in a layer of high-entropy alloy metal. All in all about two meters of surprisingly lightweight club that he would need to seriously focus on breaking to damage at all.

It worked, he could use it to bash meatbags, and it withstood panzerfaust just fine. It was a club, it did club things, it did them well. He was happy with it, shame it cost him about as much as the last ten guns he had bought, but he needed a dedicated melee option. He had ditched the holster for the Kendachi-MonoThrees, something Saburo was initially mad enough to message him about until he told the old man he needed a club until that new sword came in. The old man ended up being fine with it afterwards.

He occasionally let the kids go up to Rogue and pick up jobs. So long as they didn't oppose Arasaka, that was fine. He reviewed their footage afterwards and told them what they did wrong each time, which was becoming progressively less time consuming with each job they took. He wishes he wasn't so busy, he hadn't been on a murder-job for a fucking while now.

Of course, right now he was busy with something else. Namely, working on that favor for the busty one.

Adam was clearing out his storage room of the shit he didn't need. Moving was a good opportunity for that, and while he couldn't take the time to start shipping the stuff he had initially (too much work to do initially) now he had a slightly freer schedule. A lot of shit he just handed off to Chiri and told her to auction it off. There were no shortage of weirdos who wanted some of his old shit, and that made another chunk of change for him to use on his new land development.

He paused when he got to the cheerleader's old shit. He wasn't even really sure why he snatched them back then, he certainly didn't need them, and he certainly didn't want any memorabilia from the fucking cheerleader in his new territory. He thought about auctioning them off as well, but then Uriel reminded him about the cougar.

Ah, she'd probably be pissed at him if he did that, and then the kids couldn't visit. Adam grumbled before making a call. He waited for a couple moments before the other person actually picked up.

"Ah, Adam, it's been a while." It was the voice of Grayson, one of the few meatbags he bothered hiring for jobs. He wasn't incredible at the whole merc job by any means, but he shut up and listened when Adam spoke, so he was tolerable.

"Hiring you for a delivery."

"What do you need me for?"

"Take a car and a package inside it from my storage to Afterlife. I'll give you five-thousand for it."

"Can do Adam, which car?"

"I'll send you a picture. Security will be expecting you."

That was something Adam liked about Grayson, he didn't waste his fucking time with pointless posturing or some other garbage. I have a job for you, can you do it? And his answer is almost always 'yes'.

Adam looked about his now empty basement-floor storage that Arasaka kept on hand for him. It was an area that you could drive into and out of, and normally one of these chambers were dedicated to various trinkets that Arasaka didn't want being outside. He got one of these chambers for himself, as a reward for good service all these years, but he got it decades ago.

Nothing in here had been touched in years, might as well get rid of all of it. His personal floor storage had the shit he actually cared about.

…speaking of things he hasn't touched in years. He still had that old cargo ship docked up in Watson. He might have that actually renovated and re-docked down in his new territory. He wasn't sure what he would use it for yet, but it was another resource that could be useful for overhauling the shit-pile he was assigned to into an actually tolerable plot.

He made sure to tell security to let Grayson in, and went on his way back to his territory. He got stares along the way, he almost always did. That had been true ever since he got put in that sampson frame. Idly, he wondered if he should auction that off too before deciding otherwise, an extra frame is always useful if he needs a very quick repair, even if it's not nearly as good as his current frame.

The DaiOni was staying in Arasaka tower, he wasn't letting fucking anyone take his baby, and the safest place for that until the final HQ was actually built would be right where it currently is. Besides, basically no one knows that he still has that outside of Arasaka higher executives, because he hasn't used it since he got nuked. They didn't keep it a secret particularly, but rather just not talking about it for decades tends to cause people to forget about things.

They were almost stopped at the checkpoint leading into his land, but one glance at him sitting in the truck-bed got them to move out of his way real quick. Through the Arasaka security checkpoint and into the rows of concrete cubes that housed the meatbags he was now responsible for. Every now and again he saw the symbol that Uriel drafted up for the area.

An 'Arasaka red' background/flag, and an eclipsed sun in the center, black circle and golden flames around it. It was simple enough to abstract to put in places quickly, and it was nice and colorful to add a splash to the endless gray, glass, and neon shit that modern architects seemed to love. It's what was used to mark the meatbags that worked for him. He had sent the design to get the bossman's approval first, and he signed off on it, so it was fine.

Absent-mindedly he wondered if this meant that he was a gang, and a gang under Arasaka control at that.

…No, he didn't think so, gangs are usually illegal, everything here was perfectly legal to do. Maybe like a specialized corporate branch? He thinks that's what the bossman told him when he asked to use the symbol. Eh, he didn't care about the technicalities that much, that's what he let the actual corporate entities worry about. He was just a killer at his core.

Some of the meatbags he had to deal with now waved as he rode past, thankfully kept nice and clean by Uriel's micro-managing the past few weeks. No violence that requires a doctor, no hard drugs, no setting off bombs and the like, pick up and throw away your fucking trash, actually use the restrooms. These were the broadstrokes of Uriel's rules for keeping these fuckers from dirtying up the brand new rooms he had to pay for (partially at least).

Can't believe Uriel had to tell them to use the fucking restrooms properly, fucking meatbag animals, he hated all of them so goddamn much. Then again, Pacifica was basically a district-sized wasteland of murder, filth, and violence for quite some time now. No surprise so many of them just defecated wherever they wanted.

Granted, that may be just the consequence of forcing 25,000 people (and counting) into new housing. They currently had enough room for five-thousand more, but soon enough they would have to wait for more income to expand any further.

Considering the rather extreme success of his bloodsports arena, that didn't seem like it would take too long. The base payouts and profits were comparatively small, but the real margins came in from the betting ring and renting out marketspace to various sellers. The actual events were self-sustaining at this point, the gangs had already started to see it as an extension of their existing rivalries, and most independent fighting rings elsewhere in the city came here now that there was an official venue.

That and all the fuckers that were filming it, making BDs, and selling them abroad. He got a cut from each. At least half of the wealth of the arena went right back into making it better, the rest of it went towards funding all the little things that running a civilization required. The Arasaka stipend paid for new developments, his merchandising paid for most of the upkeep costs, and the arena paid for all the little things that weren't in either of those categories.

The tournaments were held during the day, with two sub-tournaments a day, a major tournament at the end of the week that lasted all day, and one day where the arena was closed for repairs and upgrades. That shit was Uriel's best idea yet, and it made this whole fucking job actually bearable.

It had the side effect of reducing the rate at which people murdered each other, because they could now just join a sub-tournament to beat the shit out of each other and everyone would cheer them on, and if they were good at it they might win a bunch of money as well. Occasionally Victoria sent him a clip of a fight, and occasionally it was rather entertaining. One day the kid asked him what he was watching, and Adam explained, and then explained what each fighter could have done better.

Adam then realized that was both a fun hobby and potentially useful, so he started doing that for the fights that Victoria sent him in his free time, recording it, and handing it off to the Arasaka security agents in training that were assigned to his district.

Because of course, he had to deal with a bunch of green meatbags at the same time. He just gave their trainer the clips of him teaching the kid, and the new clips of him explaining why meatbag fighters were dogshit, and told him to use that to teach them. He hadn't heard anything from those fuckers since, but he occasionally saw them about, usually surrounded by a couple of his cheapo police. It was good that they were working together, otherwise he'd kill them all.

Wait no, murder was fun, it was bad that everything was going so smoothly. Of course, it was about that time in which he got a message from Saburo about a job. When the bossman called him for a job, he wasn't particularly allowed to refuse.

The job this time? Guarding Hanako Arasaka and her assistants while at a week-long social gathering somewhere over in France. Of course, for really rich people social gatherings were actually an excuse to meet and talk about clandestine business deals, so that made sense.

He was Adam Smasher, the Butcher of Arasaka, best damn bodyguard on the fucking planet. It made sense that Saburo wanted him to guard his daughter while she was in middle of some of the most tempting terrorist and rebel targets around. The unfortunate thing here? He'd be away for a week, a day to travel to Japan and then to France, and then five days of meeting, and a day trip back.

He got off the truck and waved the driver off. He walked into his black-painted concrete fortress and past the internal security. He walked until he got to the residential section, and saw the kids and the woman in the central room. They were talking about something, but stopped when they saw him come in.

"I'm being called on a solo job. I'll be gone for a week."

He swore, if any meatbag thought they could get up to clever shit while he was away, Uriel was going to burn them to death when he got back.

—

The Arasaka Compound was exactly as beautiful and functional as it ever was, and the trip through Tokyo with all the new gawkers was exactly as annoying as last time. The 2 meter club on his back discouraged a lot of the 'meatbags getting close thing' but there were even more whispers, shouts, and noise from all the bullshit marketing they got up to over here.

The guards were nice and quick about letting him in, just as usual. He walked into the central chamber and waited for his escort to the Old Man. It wasn't the curvy murder-gynoid this time, it was some nameless fucker that he didn't bother remembering that he followed to Goro.

Goro was looking the same as he always had, stoic and serious. They didn't have the best relationship, but they were hardly hostile to one another. Goro did his job and Adam did his, they didn't interact enough to have any strong feelings about one another either way.

At least, that's what Adam thought. Uriel pointed out the expression on Goro's face (it's all in the eyes, he said), a strange mixture of anger and admiration. Adam didn't really care regardless, so he just exchanged the customary greeting with the man and was allowed in.

The old man was sitting there, having tea with his daughter.

They were looking better from last time he saw them. Saburo had clearly dedicated another hour or so each day to sitting in that rejuv bath of his, because instead of looking like a corpse he looked merely like a hundred-year old man. He had even started to grow out some facial hair, and had fully shaved his actual head.

Hanako was in the more traditional wear that Saburo wanted everyone in his house to be in, and her hair was longer and set into a bun with chopsticks holding it up. My, how traditional, I'm sure your husband likes it a great deal, oh wait, he was so sorry, a shame about that. She had also gotten rid of those stupid fucking golden finger-sleeves, thank god.

What was with the new look?

Behind her three girls were kneeling. He recognized two of them as J-V2 and J-V3, but the third was unfamiliar.

J-V3 was the same as before, a curvy little Japanese beauty with all her traditional garb and whatnot. Her face tinted the slightest bit red when he came in.

J-V2 was slightly different. Her hair was a bit darker blonde, her skin was a bit lighter, and she looked absolutely enthralled by her own traditional outfit as she fidgeted in the kneeling stance. Heh, that must be driving the old man insane right now. She smiled broadly and wiggled in place when he came in.

The third girl he felt safe in assuming was J-V1. She was the tallest of her sisters, perhaps 5'6" or so, with pure white hair and gray eyes. She looked incredibly bored with kneeling here and made no attempt to hide it. She also looked rather incredibly annoyed at her own yukata, and occasionally openly tugged at it. She had a Kendachi-MonoThree on the ground to her side. It was about three-fifths as long as she was tall, and had some nice detail work. She raised a brow and scoffed at him when he came in.

If the old man was annoyed with V2's fidgeting, he was probably apocalyptic at her constant moving and noise.

Adam greeted the old man as appropriate.

"Arasaka-sama."

The old man nodded at him, gestured for the seat next to his daughter.

"Yojimbo, please be seated."

Adam was not in a yukata-clad gemini right now, right now he was in his Dragoon frame. This was a business affair, not a chat over tea, he had to be ready for violence.

Carefully, he lowered himself on the cushion that probably cost as much as several buildings in his new land. He managed to not damage it with his weight. He accomplished this by performing a seiza and putting his weight to either side of it with his legs. The old man had an incredibly pleased glint in his eye when Adam did that.

"You may discard with outward formalities, Yojimbo." Well that was a bit unusual, normally the old man reserved that for when it was just the two of them. Adam raised a brow, before the old man continued. "Please Hanako, pour a drink for Yojimbo."

Something she complied with. As she was pouring, Adam felt like being a little mean. He spoke to the old man.

"That district is a pain in my ass, old man."

A jerk in the stream of tea as Hanako almost spilled it. She finished pouring before looking at him in shock. J-V3 raised a hand to cover her mouth, looking a bit amused, she had already known of his relationship with the old man afterall. J-V2 giggled at it. The girl he was assuming was J-V1 gave out an open bark of laughter.

The old man's face was blank, his eyes twinkled with a hint of laughter. Man, he was in a really fucking good mood, huh?

"You have done well with it, far beyond my expectations for its growth." the old man acknowledged.

"It's still a garbage heap, It'll be at least a year before it's not infuriating to look at, and three before it's actually starting to be worth the effort I've put in so far."

"That's incredible progress, technology is a wonderful thing is it not?"

Adam grunted, and almost took a sip of the tea before remembering that he couldn't swallow anything in this body. He paused and stared at the tea that would have surely been delicious. He slowly set it down, and glared good-naturedly at the old man.

The old man's eyes were actually crinkled from how amused he was at pulling one over him again. Adam grumbled about this, before speaking up.

"Did you call me here just to pull tricks on me, old fox?"

"Of course not, I have called you here for a task." The old man, humor mostly leaving his voice except for hints in inflection. He was in a really good mood. "You are to escort my daughter, Hanako, and her three attendants as they attend a party in France. It's something to do with the Blackwall, a party arranged by Netwatch to discuss a recent breach they sealed."

Adam grunted and hummed about that, it made enough sense he supposed. It's not like they had any major enemies in France right now, so it should be relatively safe for her.

"I assume those three are her attendants?" He asked.

"Correct, please greet Rin, Hinata, and Tsumugi." He gestured to V3, V2, and V1 in turn with each of their names. V3 did a nearly perfect bow in return, V2 did her best bow but clearly fell short, V1 did a half-hearted bow and grumbled.

He looked at them, before looking at the old man. He raised a single eyebrow. The old man raised a single eyebrow. Adam relented.

"I thought you said V1 was scrapped?" He asked after another moment.

"The development cycle was, her design was inherently flawed for what the project was supposed to achieve."

Adam raised a brow again. "Mind me asking how so?"

The old man grunted and sipped his tea, clearly still annoyed at the whole affair. That means whoever made the mistake was long dead at this point. Their families were also probably dead, or in serious debt.

"V1 maximizes combat performance and looks identical to human norms, but has no way of concealing weapons."

Adam parsed that for a moment. He let out a bark of laughter.

"The designer forgot that an infiltrator can't carry heavy weapons into clandestine meetings, didn't he."

The old man grunted in displeasure and sipped his tea again.

—

Adam was waiting on the assistants to finish loading up the private plane with the things that the woman needed. He had all he needed, 16 micro-missiles, a shotgun, a handgun, a knife, and his club. He had a waist-pack too, filled with extra ammo and basically nothing else. Even if there were two assassin squads a day, he would still have enough bullets to take care of them. Unless they started bringing out heavy artillery or whatnot, which his missiles could take care of just fine.

"Heyya Mr. Knight~!" A familiar voice called out to him. He turned to glare down at the thing that brought him out of his introspection on potential threats, that was his favorite part before a mission. It was 'Hinata' smiling up at him as she twirled back and forth in front of him, now dressed in the typical garb of a Japanese office lady but sized for her.

"Like, look at my fash, aint it cute?" She said, he grunted. She took his grunt as an agreement and started rambling about how cute it was. Adam admitted that it was certainly fucking better than most the stuff worn nowadays. Another voice eventually interrupted her.

"Onee-san, stop harassing Oni-Sama." 'Rin' said as she approached, looking a bit uncomfortable in her own garb, identical to her 'sister's' but sized for her own much more generous frame. She sounded annoyed that she had to correct Hinata, and embarrassed that she had to do so in front of others.

…wait, what the fuck did she call him?

"Oi Oi, So you're the Butcher, huh? I don't see what's so special about you. Just big and heavy, I've scrapped all kinds of fuckers like that." A crass voice called out to him, and Adam turned to see the form of 'Tsumugi' walk up to them. She was in a three-piece all-black suit, jacket hung over her shoulders, arms loose, and sword carried over the shoulder in a seemingly relaxed slouch. Uriel started laughing.

"Onee-san!" Rin all but shouted at her, and Hinata puffed up her cheeks.

Adam glared down at this white-haired brat of a bot.

"I could wipe the floor with a dozen of you, girl. Don't let your mouth write checks you can't cash in."

She glared up at him, refusing to back down. "Wanna test that theory, pops?"

…Heh, this one was his favorite.

Adam snorted.

"When I'm off the clock, girl. Right now I have a job to do."

Soon enough, Hanako had arrived, the plane had been loaded up by stout and serious looking workers, and they were off to Europe. Adam felt like he was forgetting something, but he didn't care enough to spend any energy on figuring it out.

Of all the places David expected to end up, it wasn't as the enforcer for Arasaka's absolute rule over the shithole that is Pacifica. Maybe if you asked him more than a year ago he would have said 'working for Arasaka' would have been fairly reasonable, but probably in some sort of desk jockey position.

He had also expected Arasaka's rule over the area to be, frankly, more brutal and oppressive. It was both of those things, sorta, but putting Adam Smasher in charge of urban development would do that he supposed. It was a fairly… lax sort of brutality and oppression though, it was strange.

A bunch of concrete apartment buildings went up, and if you moved in and followed the rules you got food, water, and shelter for free. Fuck, free rent alone would have been worth it for some people, but throw in a free ration and liter of water a day and it was no wonder the complexes filled up so fast.

Hell, Adam gave you eddies, some clothes, and another ration a day if you helped carry shit and put it in dumpsters. Then he gave you a gun, another ration, and a free drink at the end of each shift you helped keep everyone else in line with the (again, surprisingly permissive) rules. Sure, he pulled that hacking trick again where he turned off your chrome and sent a message not to fuck up again if you broke any of these rules (the scariest fucking thing he could think of, so he decided not to think about it), and then burned you in your own chrome if you fucked up again…

But this was Pacifica, David didn't blame Adam for taking such a hardline stance against his rules being broken. Because it worked, those apartments had some of the cleanest roads and least drugs and crime he had ever seen. No one wanted to be the one to piss Adam Smasher off.

In fact, the most violent place in the entire fucking zone Adam had expanded into so far was the fucking Arena, and everyone loved it. A bunch of people go in and beat the shit out of each other, and a bunch of other people cheer them on. There was no need for coercion or whatnot, people were all too willing to go shank each other in front of an audience of thousands. You got a fair cut of the payment if you made it to the top 4, and a solid third of the total pool if you won. People made money off it, and there wasn't any need to brawl in the streets when you could do it in the arena.

Hell, even the gangs were sending a couple fighters each at minimum to participate in the whole thing. They were even being polite about it! They were renting stalls to sell merch of their fighters! A solid fourth of the fighters in the Arena were part of the Animals gang, they fucking loved the place.

It made money too, David had once asked to see how much all of this was costing, and it made him choke. Adam was pouring a fucking ridiculous sum into this place to make it work as best he could, even as he loudly growled about having to do it. That seemed to be a trend with Smasher, hating whatever he was doing outside of violence, but putting forth his absolute best efforts regardless.

Maybe that's why working for the guy didn't suck as bad as he thought it was going to two months ago.

He was on patrol around the edges between the housing section and the part of Pacifica Adam hadn't taken over yet. Lucy was looking over the cameras set up in the housing area proper, trying her best to fill in for Adam's seemingly omnipresent gaze. Rebecca was set up on the top of the temp HQ tower, in the shade with her ACPA on, ready to fire at anyone who crosses and approaches the production buildings on the beach.

They collectively couldn't match Adam's fucking ridiculous overwatch capabilities, but they could certainly try their best to manage. He was walking on a loop back and forth from the newest building happening on the beach (a second power plant was in the middle of being put together) and towards the end of the Arena's outermost walls. Then he would turn around and jog right back, waving at some of the stationed guards and their shade-tents set up, occasionally grabbing a water or ration from one of them.

It was kinda boring all things considered, but it was easy enough to do, and gave him time to let his worries just… slip away. He explained the feeling once and Adam called it 'runner's high'. It certainly felt like that, a high without any of the side effects that drugs might bring (at least, he thinks so, he's never done anything worse than alcohol at this point, and with his mother back he probably never would).

He was careful not to let everything slip away, he kept an eye on his surroundings and an ear on the radio for trouble. This was his second day of being on patrol like this, and it was… appealing to him. Just him, his thoughts, a stretch of road, and all the time in the day. His stamina was going to improve as well, if he kept doing this.

Maine told him he used to be a runner once. David wondered if this feeling was why.

He was running near one of the abandoned buildings on the west side when he heard gunshots to the south. He paused, that sounded like it came from… three buildings in? He might need to check that out. The gunshots resumed and with them came screams… He sighed, running would have to wait for another moment longer.

Getting a running start, he jumped off the overlook he was on and across the street slightly below. Maybe about 12 meters in all crossed in a single leap over. He rolled with the impact and drew his shotgun as he ran towards the gunshots. Man, these new myomers were fucking preem, that was way farther than what he could manage before.

The difference between the new construction and the rotting buildings of the old Pacifica was night and day. New Pacfica was all entirely rough but sturdy utility, but it was clean and strong. Old Pacifica was the rotting carcass of something that used to be new and beautiful, now revealed to be fragile in its ruin. New Pacifica didn't exactly look pretty, but it worked and worked well. Old Pacifica was just garbage now, neither functioning nor looking well.

The roads were shattered in most places, with trash overflowing at every crack and corner. The whole place stank like nothing else, and you'd find the occasional pile of stuff that was probably better off not being named. He could sorta see how some of this used to look nice, but only if he squinted really hard.

This was Voodoo Boy territory, and apparently the "Pavement Apes" had started to take territory from them in their recent implosion. PA were like that, never really fighting anyone head on if they could avoid it so far, but being plenty opportunistic when they could. They stayed far away from Adam's new works, and far away from anything even tangentially related to something that could kill them outright (like people who work with Adam).

They were playing it smart it seems, laying low and picking on weakened targets to accumulate power until they could hold their own against larger gangs. It made sense. It didn't really matter, it was only a matter of time before Adam finally got to their new territory and decided that he wanted to clean it out.

It was this sort of scene that he ran up to, being careful to sneak up until he got a look at the area where the bullets were flying. The art of stealth, Adam taught him, involved many things, one of which was minimizing sound produced.

It was one of these tricks that he was using now, rolling his feet as he stepped in order to prevent any loud steps from happening. With the gunfire ahead going on, he was practically silent as he approached them.

He peeked out from behind a broken car.

In front of him was a clusterfuck of people crouching behind cover and occasionally shooting each other. On one side were a lot of people wearing feathers and netrunning gear, so he figured they must be part of the Voodoo Boys. The other side had a whole bunch of people with wife-beater white shirts and chrome arms, judging from the way they were literally beating their chests with their fists and some of them wearing chimpanzee masks, he had a good guess that these might be the PA.

…They were really playing into their theme here, huh?

He knew he really shouldn't bother here, just let them kill each other and get back to his run. But he remembered how many eddies Smasher was spending on this whole thing.

He wanted to help out. So he counted heads on both sides. Nine on the VB's side, fifteen on the PA's side. He made his decision.

David activated his Sandeistan, and moved. He ran on the side of their shootout until he got to the PA flank. Crouching behind some more rubble, he deactivated his Sandevistan and waited for it to cool down again. A few seconds later, he activated it again.

Jumping up and above the PA, he started shooting down at them from a few meters up, falling slowed by his Sandy. He had twelve shots before he needed to reload, so that meant by the time he landed on the other side of them he only had three left to deal with.

Standing and drawing out his pistol, he shot the remaining three as they fell back in shock at seeing so many of their friends turn into corpses.

Alright, fifteen down in two sandevistan uses and less than 10 seconds total. Not awful but not the best. He only had to move for that initial jump and for the aiming, so his strain from that second use wasn't bad at all.

He looked over to the hesitant VB as he reloaded. They weren't shooting at him, which was a good sign. David called out to them.

"Oi! I helped you. Return the favor by helping me take these guys up to the ripperdocs, will ya?"

They would get a bit of change from this, which David could use to help pay for… something, he wasn't sure yet. He figured the worst case scenario these guys started shooting at him too, which means more cash to help this cleanup with. He didn't feel too bad about flatlining these guys, they were gangers in Pacifica, they had likely done horrible things on a frequent basis.

The best case scenario? They helped him take the corpses up and go on their way without issue. Simple enough he figured.

He wasn't expecting them to start kneeling and yelling. He flinched back a bit as they suddenly dropped to the road on their hands and knees. Their presumed leader, a dark skinned woman in what looked like a grease-stained white shirt, leather jacket, booty-shorts and worn boots yelled out.

"The Son of the Avatar has delivered us unto salvation! Praise be!"

"""PRAISE BE!""" the rest of them called out.

…

What?

What the fuck did he just stumble across?

—

It didn't take long for them to help him gather up the corpses, they moved with a fervor once they finished with… whatever that was. He got two of them by the wrists, and they tried their best to grab them as well. They lacked the strength for it, but they made up for that in enthusiasm.

He waved the guards as they approached with the corpses, they were initially alarmed, but quickly guessed that he was taking them off to the ripperdoc temp facility. Most people don't try to stop Adam Smasher's apprentice these days.

After the corpses were dropped off, he felt kinda awkward. He rubbed the back of his neck as he looked at the nine men and women still standing in front of him, fidgeting back and forth. He didn't really know why they were still around, hanging about in the lands of a guy who was planning on demolishing their territory and building it into his own. Yet as nervous as they were looking around at the guards, they didn't leave.

"So… Thanks for the help I guess? You can leave if you want now." He said, trying to figure out what they wanted. He wasn't about to pay them for anything, their payment was him saving them from those guys

"U-uh. Actually… may we relay a message to Lord Smasher, host of the divine fire?"

…What? Host of the divine fire? Why were they calling Smasher that?

"Well, Smasher is out on a job right now, he'll be back at the end of the week. What message do you want to send?" He relayed.

He then remembered that he probably shouldn't go around telling people that, and mentally smacked himself. Good job gonk, now the gangs are going to know that his stuff isn't defended right now. David resolved to work overtime until Adam came back for that.

All nine of them looked a bit worried at that, and their leader spoke up again, a bit more hesitant.

"Please tell Lord Smasher that we, his faithful of the Voodoo Boys, request his aid against the Heretics among our number! We wish to serve his divine will! But we must purge out disloyal elements first!"

…Alright one thing at a time David. The Voodoo Boys were having some sort of civil war, he already knew that, but he didn't know that it was a… religious war over Smasher. That was fucking wacky, he wasn't expecting that. Smasher had a cult now, who knew. He couldn't wait to snipe at the big guy over this, it was hilarious.

One faction hated him, he thinks, and the other faction wanted to serve him? And the faction that wanted to serve Smasher wanted help in taking out the faction that didn't like him?

…That was reasonable, downright lucky in fact. A gang wanted their help in killing half of their own group in exchange for jobs afterwards? That was a huge potential benefit, he thinks, he wasn't as good at this 'leadership' thing as Smasher was.

He looked at the nine in front of him. They seemed earnest enough.

Eh, what the hell. They were already going to have to clear out the VBs in the future, recruiting half now and wiping out the other half was helpful.

"I'll send him a message, but at the very least I'll help you all out." David promised. A man was his word, and he had promised to help Smasher out. This seemed like it could help him out a lot.

He couldn't wait to see the guy's face when he came back to hear that David had taken care of one of his future problems while he was away, he was going to be so surprised. The VB were pretty good netrunners, right? They could always use more of those to help manage stuff, and from the fact that they had a cult around Smasher now, they would probably shape up if he told them to.

To his alarm, they started kneeling and shouting praises again.

"PRAISE THE SON OF THE AVATAR!"

"""PRAISE!"""

He jerked his head to see people staring. You fuckers! You better stand up right now! Stop this!

"You don't need to do that! Please stand up!" He practically shouted back as he grabbed the leader by her upper arms and pulled her up. She complied and he stepped back, glancing to make sure people had stopped looking.

They hadn't. Fuck.

"We will go back to the faithful with the happy news! Please, here is my contact! We shall discuss how to wipe out the heretics at your leisure!" Why did you say that one part in such a scary way? A contact appeared in his messages, so he went ahead and saved it. He'd wait until he could discuss this with Lucy and Becca before moving forwards.

They started walking away, waving goodbye to the confused security checkpoint and quickly beginning basic stealth maneuvering.

He noticed something as the leader walked away.

Holy shit, her ass was incredible.

He slapped himself, he has a mainline. He resolved to bang Lucy twice as hard tonight to make up for that.

He started making his patrol rounds again, and let his thoughts disappear into the rhythm of booted chrome feet hitting shattered pavement. A steady pattern as he made his loops around, looking for trouble but utterly tranquil otherwise.

It was an addictive feeling.

"This is the end of the line for me. But not for you. Fast is what you do, remember?"

"Keep running."

—

If you had told John Shepard a few weeks ago that he would receive a second promotion so close to his last, he wouldn't have believed you. But here he was, overseeing the new construction in the Smashman's new turf. The old boss had taken the change in profession as an opportunity to retire, and work on his hobby of model plane creation. He still had drinks with the old walrus every few weeks.

Regardless, the walrus nominated him for the position, and the higher ups in Arasaka had apparently agreed to it. John was now the overall manager for the work being done in what the boys were calling "Smashland" jokingly. The actual name was something funky, "Outer Heaven" or something on the design docs that the Smashman sent them. It was good, honest work. John worked for ten hours a day now, not twelve, but he got paid three more eddies an hour now, so it more than made up for it.

He even got to see his daughter every now and again while at work. She was one of the trainees that was being trained in protection detail assigned here, so whenever he saw her he waved real big and got her all embarrassed. Heh, his daughter was the cutest in the world in her flak vest and helmet, papa was proud of her.

Something that he made sure to remind his underlings whenever he got the chance. He got one of those old physical pictures made of him hugging her the first time she came home in uniform and kept it in his wallet. He didn't really need a wallet, but he started carrying one to carry the picture around.

Anyways, they had been shipping in this pre-fabbed stuff to put up for most of the initial housing buildings. The actual production buildings were permanent, and built to last, but the housing wasn't. He understood the need for it, but he was still eager for when they got to the more permanent housing. The temp stuff would only last 30 years if it was well cared for, but the permanent stuff he got to sneak a peek at the designs for. Eyeballing it, he estimated a much more respectable century and a half for those.

The virtue of a construction worker is making things to last, and John was a very good construction worker.

The arena didn't need too much looking at, all in all. Its foundations and structure were still sturdy, they just needed to re-mortar some sections and put steel bracers on others. It should last another twenty years, not as much as they would like, but long enough for the district to get off its feet and build a replacement.

It was really the demolishing that he enjoyed the best. What kind of man didn't enjoy using the wrecking ball? Shame he had to be an overseer instead of a worker nowadays, he was too busy to be smashing up old buildings.

They were going to be putting up a wall in the future, some time. But that would be way after they got the interiors mostly arranged and set in place, maybe a few years from now.

He looked over to where the workers were with the cheapo laborers that Smashman hired to help them move trash out.

…What the hell were those idiots doing over there?

Dumbasses, now he has to go yell at you, no you're not supposed to ride the mules around.

France was unusual for a European nation in the modern age, this is in part directly thanks to the Arasaka European Group. In the early 1990s the AEG established its headquarters in Paris, and spent much of its initial wealth supplying the french government with military supply, troops and vehicles, weapons and such. Due to this surplus of military aid early on, France was kept rather stable even during the height of the various corporate wars.

Countries collapsed during that time, but outside of a small economic drop France remained rather stable, and welcomed Japanese immigrants and companies with open arms. France of the modern day is exactly as it is because of its relative economic stability and corporate influence. Wealth and beauty are the heights of modern French culture, and are their highest virtues. The citizens of France use the latest in aesthetic bio-modification and delicately decorated chrome cybernetics, all in the pursuit of beauty.

Paris is a city of historical monuments that have been carefully penned off and preserved, surrounded by a forest of skyscrapers and advertisements for corporate luxury brands and celebrities. Things of historical relevance are cordoned off, and carefully watched over by an entire branch of their national military dedicated to preventing damage and killing any meatbag that thinks they can get away with littering on their grounds.

The skyscrapers that fill Paris are the dream for the artist, and a nightmare for the builder. All manner of shapes and designs that try to twist and climb their way higher and higher into the sky. There is very little in the way of mundane criminal activity in Paris proper, due to the experience and well-honed police forces that maintain a constant surveillance in the city.

No, the crime of Paris is also kept carefully penned off. The Catacombs below the city collapsed into criminal activity long ago, and so long as they do nothing to damage the structural integrity of the city itself, they are allowed to do this. The catacombs are technically no longer under the jurisdiction of the city, instead they were exempted from city planning and thus their crime rates were left out as well.

They call it the city of vermin, Cite de la Vermine, or something like that. A vast network of tunnels and underground construction that extends far past the city's aboveground limits. Filled to the brim with the poor, the insane, the criminal, and the ugly. Walls made of centuries-old corpses and pillars of stone foundations that extend far below the city proper, allowed to exist so long as the surface is left unblemished.

France, afterall, had laws against public ugliness. They called it something else, sure, but that's what it effectively was. Ugly or fat or disfigured, all of these were subject to fines if you displayed it openly. You were unwelcomed if you were unaesthetic, and not-so-subtly encouraged to head down into the sewers where other ugly things were kept.

Paris was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, a title it enforced rigorously and harshly. France technically has an electoral system, but as the voter turnout has dropped to 0.3 percent in recent years, it remains a technicality.

"I'm like, totes 'cited to see the place, there's all kinds of pretty things there I bet. Whatcha think knighty?"

"Onee-san, stop harassing Oni-sama! Take your hands off him!"

"Oi Oi, be nice Rin, he'd say something if he was mad."

Adam tried his best to ignore the impulse to murder the three gynoids currently around him as they sat on the plane. Hinata to his side, grubby hands holding onto the handle on his shoulderplate, Rin to the other side of her, pulling her away, and Tsumugi on his other side, face resting on one hand and looking out the window.

Hanako was on the seat opposite to him, and her personal guard Oda was standing nearby. She was typing away at something. You bitch, get your fucking bots off of him, he wasn't allowed to murder them but he was getting really tempted regardless.

Sadly, she ignored his unspoken demands, and kept typing away.

Adam growled and leaned back all the way in his seat, letting his head roll back and face pointed at the ceiling of the luxury private plane they were on. He closed his eyes and started up the clip of his fight with the panzerbot again.

It made for good watching.

"Onee-san, look, you're clearly annoying him!"

"...oh…"

"Heya, big bastard, you made my darling imouto sad, what the fuck you going to do about it?"

"Onee! Language!"

Adam wondered if he could pull off the stealth part of that guy's trick himself. He was way heavier, but it might be possible. Then again, it might require power relative to his frame that he simply couldn't replicate. Panzerbot was way lighter than he was, so it might be impossible for him. He started running the numbers with Uriel. It was not looking optimistic.

Adam grunted, setting off another wave of talking that he didn't want to listen to. He tuned them out entirely.

Departing from the plane after twelve hellish hours was a somewhat welcome experience. As they got off they were greeted by the first sights of Paris.

In the distance, towers of glass and concrete undulate in unusual and expensive ways. A hint of the endless paved roads below shined golden under the streetlamps.

The landing strip they were on was smooth and perfectly black, broken up by perfectly geometric golden lines, all of it kept painstakingly clean by a veritable legion of sweep-bots he could see off to the far side, ready to deploy once people had left the area.

There to greet them was some corpo he didn't bother to remember the face of, surrounded by six perfectly spaced guards carrying rifles with polished wooden stocks. They were all the exact same height, and in the exact same garb. It looked like the lovechild of modern bodyarmor and one of the three musketeers. They had blue and golden cloaks that covered a good section of their torso, and full-face helmets that had a distinctly feather-like protrusion.

Adam admitted, it was far from the worst thing he had seen people wear.

Their own positions were similar. Hanako was in the center-front of their group, flanked by Rin and Hinata. Directly behind her was Oda and Tsumugi, suits on and blades on hip and back respectively. Bringing up the rear was himself, towering over everyone in the area, clad in black plate and carrying a club as tall as the average man on his back.

It wasn't his job to pay attention to whatever they were saying, so he didn't bother to. Hanako and the corpo exchanged words, the corpo eyed up their party (lingering on him a bit longer, why? Are you planning something?) before turning and escorting them away from the landing strip. As they walked away, the legion of smooth and decorated cleaning bots washed over the area they were just in, eager to begin removing filth from the area.

How much did that cost? That was such a waste of money.

Wait a minute, he wasn't responsible for this shit, he didn't care how much money they wasted.

Adam focused on their path forwards again. They were probably being taken to some sort of hotel or private apartments for the duration of this trip. A person couldn't attend pretentious rich people parties every hour of the day, after all.

It was at this point in which Uriel noticed something. The cameras that lined every single pathway they were being led on were turning to follow them.

No, not them.

Him.

Adam narrowed his eyes, and glared at the cameras while keeping his head straight forwards. Fuckers knew that he was the most dangerous thing in the city, but he was here on contract right now. They should know full well that he wasn't about to rampage on a guard job. This was downright insulting.

Hell, maybe it wasn't that at all, maybe the meatbags were looking at him because they thought he was ugly. He wouldn't put it past the fuckers. Yeah, get a good look meatbags, you're lucky he wasn't going to be here when he got off work, otherwise he'd kill all of you.

He growled quietly. Fucking guard jobs, all the irritation in the world and no way to relive his frustration unless some meatbag thought they were lucky. He found himself sincerely hoping someone did, in fact, think that they were lucky during this trip.

—

Soon enough, the packages and whatnot were brought to the spacious set of rooms they were assigned, and Adam spent his time waiting by the entrance. Everything on the floor was within range of his sandevistan boosted travel, so he didn't need to stand in the center this time.

Soon enough, they were ready to visit the first day of the 'party'. Hanako was in some sort of one-piece white dress with gold highlights, and the gynoids were in the same wear they started with. Oda was in a suit, humorously enough, looking as professional as he could outside of his standard wear.

…Man, Oda had some really stupid hair. Half of it shaved but the other half partially covering his vision? That's only going to hold you back in a fight you dumbass, why did you think it was a good idea? It made sense that he was assigned to Hanako, she never left the compound usually so he never had to get into a fight without legions of backup.

Fucking hell, why hadn't Goro said something to him yet? Adam found it hard to believe that he would look at his student with anything but irritation for his fashion choice. Maybe he did and Oda didn't listen, that would certainly make sense.

Oda used mantis blades in combat. Some of the stupidest fucking weapons he could be using and he decided to put glowing lights on them. Yes Oda, those are going to be incredibly helpful against anything wearing any kind of armor, yes you should put neon red lights on them too. No, don't get anything else like thickened myomers or hardened joints or emp shielding, just knives in your arms.

What a useful fucker he had as backup right now. Neon red mantis blades as his first and second line of defense. A submachine gun as his third, and a substandard amount of chrome. He didn't even have a sandevistan, the kids could probably kill him. In fact, Uriel, simulate that fight for him, see how long it took for the kids to kill him. Then do that a couple more times and save the vids for later.

'On it.' Uriel confirmed.

Needless to say, while Adam had a decent amount of respect for Goro, he had absolutely none for Oda. Goro was an actual asset in a fight, Oda was just there. Adam was glad he wasn't obliged to protect the meatbag, because his continued survival was downright insulting.

They departed from the rooms, and began to make their way to the 'party' chambers. Every now and again they would pass by some corpo all but jogging to and from the direction they were heading.

It was unusual, it was rare for corpos to be so 'undignified'.

They entered into a vast chamber, beautiful and golden and shining as everything else in Paris was. Adam began to look at the various partygoers, and slowly realized that this might be a bigger deal than he was initially thinking it would be. He recognized a party of individuals from nearly every major corporation on the planet. Sovoil, Militech, Petrochem, Biotechnica…

The list went on and on. All of them were chatting and socializing as usual, but there was a nervous tension in the room. All of them had at least one bodyguard within reach, often they had multiple. He then noticed that individual nations also had representatives here, each with their own set of bodyguards.

What the fuck had Netwatch called them here for?

There were some of the last people to arrive, but not the very last.

Hanako led them around, talking to various individuals and greeting them with the usual forced-politeness that corpos defaulted to. It seemed like no one was quite sure what was going on, but that the message Netwatch had sent to bring them here was definitely concerning. Adam didn't know what it was, but Netwatch rarely calls upon every major power in the globe like this, probably never has before actually.

Uriel stepped out of Adam's body to look around a bit, and noticed something alarming.

A firewall had been erected around the entire building. Every outwards line of communication via electronic means had been cut off. It was a clearly defensive and info-gapping structure, so this was to prevent whatever Netwatch was going to say from leaking. Uriel stepped back into Adam's body.

Eventually the lights dimmed a tad, and everyone went silent.

Up on a stage on the far end of the room was a massive projector screen. A slightly portly man walked up to the presentation podium. He had cybernetics abound that looked to be entirely function over form, and was wearing a suit where he could. He pulled a wire from his neck and plugged it into a port in the podium itself, bringing up several sub-screens on the projector.

The man began to speak.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome and thank you all for coming. While I would like to say that this is a strictly social event, it is not. We here at Netwatch have arranged this meeting to inform the powers that be of a potential problem in the Net."

"This meeting was arranged in person for the specific need to prevent this news from leaking to public awareness. As some of you have already realized, this entire building has been cut off from the outside Net to prevent data-breaches. We are sorry to avoid telling you this ahead of time, but security needs being what they are, it was not a decision made lightly."

"At approximately thirteen-hundred hours, twelve and a half days ago, Netwatch noticed an irregularity in the Blackwall. After investigating this irregularity, we were unable to determine the cause and after the standard twelve hours of investigation, we forwarded this information to our chairman. Our chairman promptly made the decision to host this meeting and here we are."

"The irregularity has persisted throughout the entirety of that duration, and seven total percent of Netwatch's resources have been dedicated to preventing awareness of the irregularity from spreading to the public. It is our hope that the combined resources of the various powers and interests represented in this room can assist us in determining the cause and solving this irregularity."

The man paused and took a drink of water. The tension in the room was palpable.

"We have recorded a sample of the irregularity occurring in the Blackwall, and have prepared it to display here. I will now play the recording."

A screen highlighted on the projector, and an audio intensity graph-thing appeared. It was silent for a moment, then a horrible noise issued from the projectors.

It was a robotic roar, drowning and filled to the brim with static. It was partially on several frequencies that normal humans couldn't detect. It was incredibly painful to listen to. Uriel convulsed.

The recording stopped suddenly, and the portly man continued. His voice was filled with the undercurrent of tension and hesitation that now filled the room.

"At thirteen-hundred hours, twelve days ago, the Blackwall started screaming, and we don't know why."

It was somewhat difficult to describe the immediate reaction in the room after that announcement. It mostly involved shouted questions that no one had answers to.

—

Pierce Warwick walked into the monitor room where his fellow Netwatch agents were. They were all on edge, and had been ever since the scream had started. That wasn't their job right now though, they'd leave that for the other departments.

They were looking at footage of something else, namely, Adam Smasher and his new pet AI.

"So, what's it looking like, boys?" He asked, taking a long drink of his coffee. If Adam Smasher did have an unbound AI, then they could press charges against Arasaka. Nothing would probably come of it, but the extra funding from the hush money might be helpful for alleviating the sudden resource drain that was putting everyone on overtime for the scream.

"Well, we got good news and bad news." That was never good.

"What's the good news?" He asked first, It was good to have something to brace them for the shit about to hit their cooling fans.

"Well, we were right, Adam has what is effectively an AI in his head right now."

…What is 'effectively'?

"Elaborate."

"Legally, it's not something that can be considered an AI. It's closer in nature to an Engram."

Goddamnit, what?

"You're telling me that they put some other fucker in Adam's head to play AI for him?"

"No, look at the Engrammic model and compare it to the surface scans we got of his brain."

Warwick looked at the two, the 3D model they got off the scan from earlier of the apparent engram and the second one they got off his actual physical brain.

They were… identical. He took a drink of his coffee.

"The potential benefits of having a physical mind take care of physical actions while a data-mind takes care of net-based actions is something we've theorized for quite some time now. Adam Smasher having a working example of this has only increased our estimation for what we can do with the tech. But the problem is in synchronization."

"We've tried putting AI in people's cyberware brains before in the past, but the differences between the two thought-patterns have always led to conflict and eventual insanity."

"They cannot synchronize, and thus they undergo psychosis."

He nodded.

"We thought it might be because of the differences between AI and standard human thought patterns, and then tried it with engrams. That didn't work either, because two different people sharing a brain also always leads to insanity. We tried using an engram of the same person, but the inferior copy also leads to insanity."

Warwick knew what they were going for here.

"So they somehow got an engram scan of his own brain and then plugged it back in. Makes sense, like a binary star system. So that's the bad news?"

"No."

It was always something with this shit, huh?

"So what is the bad news?"

"Engrams are kinda shitty unless you go for destructive-level scans, they always produce inferior copies of the original mind. That's not good enough for the synchronization required to maintain sanity, boss. To get a deep enough scan you need to layer the mind with heavy metals and whatnot, which always results in brain death."

…wait a minute.

"But Adam Smasher still has his brain."

"Yessir, you know what that means right?"

Warwick took the last drink of his coffee, trying to wash out the sudden bitter taste in his mouth and sick feeling in his stomach.

"They can make accurate enough Engrams to synchronize with a living person… without destroying the brain."

Which means that Saburo Arasaka undoubtedly had one of his own.

"It's always one fucking thing or another, huh?"

It Begins

The hideout of the 'faithful' Voodoo Boys was not quite what David was expecting.

Tucked away within the various ruined rooms of a building that used to be a luxury hotel, a twisting maze of makeshift barricades line hall after hall, forcing intruders to walk along a set pathway into the lines of defensive fire. The walls were occasionally reinforced with steel beams crudely nailed into place with aluminum latches, and every now and then opened up to reveal a section where the entire wall had broken away, revealing the open sky.

The first three floors of the building were completely blocked off from the outside, instead the entrance to the location was a narrow steel walkway that ran from a fourth-floor balcony to a neighboring building. It was held in place by four stronger looking fellows as he walked across it, ensuring that it remained stable. It wasn't secured by any permanent means, clearly intended to be tossed off to the ground below in the case of a direct assault on their veritable fortress.

Leading him deeper into the fortress of the faithful was the girl (with the incredible ass) who led the small group of VB when he first encountered them two days ago. She introduced herself as 'Milly', so that's what he knew her by. She had sent him the location and met him outside, waving off the guys who were on guard duty there. Rebecca and Lucy were still back at Smasher's Land (Smashland?), after a long and tiring debate over the topic of who should go.

They got the Arasaka Internal Security to step in for his patrols, but there wasn't really anyone who could take over for Lucy and Rebecca's jobs like that, not on short notice at the very least. So he went alone in exchange for a promise to run away as soon as things got hairy. He intended to, he had literally nothing to gain from sticking around if the gangers betrayed him, and was more than fast enough to escape everyone short of someone else with his level of chrome.

Considering that he now worked for Arasaka (indirectly, at least) and Smasher himself got him his chrome, he was fairly certain that no one in NC actually could match his speed. He wasn't about to say that with one-hundred percent certainty, but he was willing to bet a decent chunk of eddies on the idea.

As he was led through the improvised castle, he noticed the slightly startled and somewhat hesitant looks being sent his way. Not in an aggressive way, but looks like they weren't quite sure what to do with their hands as he walked past. It was a very strange feeling to notice that his presence had an effect on people. It was also strange to realize the fact that he had a reputation beyond 'skilled edgerunner' now.

He was the apprentice of Adam Smasher. That mattered to quite a few people. He supposed he hadn't internalized it quite yet. He had nothing to distract himself from their reactions here, nothing else to think about, no one else to speak to. Just himself in an unfamiliar place being given reactions by people he's never interacted with before.

He refocused on his walking, vision refocusing on the present. He noticed his gaze had wandered right at Milly's rear again while he had drifted off. He startled, a bit and focused on anything else.

There, the walls, that was a good thing for him to look at.

…

Actually, he noticed that the wires and electronics began to grow thicker as they descended into the lower floors. Apparently the basement level was where they kept both their 'command' room as well as their netrunning infrastructure. He figured that made sense, they probably kept plenty of rations and water down there to survive in the case that someone with charges blew up the surface and collapsed it on them. Long enough to figure out a way to leave at least.

Err… At least he hoped they did. It would be pretty bad if the guys he promised to help turned out ot be that incompetent.

"We're almost at the head room." Milly explained as he followed behind her, dragging him from his thoughts. She had a perky, upbeat sort of tone about her. She was clearly pretty happy that he had agreed to help out, although to be frank he wasn't quite sure what he'd be doing yet. Aside from killing lots of gangers that is, he supposed.

…Actually, how many gangers is he going to have to kill anyways? He might as well ask.

"Hey Milly?"

"Yes?"

"How many of 'the heretics' are there?"

"Oh, about a hundred and twenty."

"...that's all? I thought I was going to have to flatline way more than that."

"Oh no, that's just the actual members, they have about ten times that in hired guns."

…ah, that made more sense. David looked down at his shotgun again, and counted the magazines he had. Twelve shots and twelve magazines on his belt…

"How many of 'the faithful' are there?"

"...about sixty, with about five times that in hired guns."

David did a quick calculation. Assuming they all had the same number of shots that he had…

"...I don't have enough ammo to get them all." He admitted, just a little bit ashamed that he thought this would be a one-day operation. It always has been when he had Smasher at his back, so he supposed he was just used to these things being quick nowadays. Milly stopped, and turned to stare at him for a long moment. He began to fidget, slightly uncomfortable at her searching look. Eventually she spoke.

"...That was a really chilled thing you just said."

She quickly turned and kept walking, a little bit more skip in her step. He was a bit confused what she meant by that, but moved to follow.

Eventually they ended up at a doorway down, and she flashed him a quick smile as she threw open the door.

"He's here!" She shouted into the room.

Inside was the bottommost floor of the former hotel, repurposed into something entirely different. Perhaps at one point it was a parking garage for the hotel staff, a large concrete room with entrances sealed by stacks of ruined cars, filled with sturdy pillars that held up the weight of the hotel above. Set in long rows, between each of these central pillars, were netrunning chair after netrunning chair, connected to thick cables that coiled across the floor in semi-neat lines as they made their way to what he presumed were generators and a central net-mainframe of sorts.

In the middle of these rows of netrunning chairs were tables with chairs surrounding them. Upon the tables were all manner of things, mostly cybernetic components, weapons and ammo, datapads, and snacks. There were solidly more than a few dozen people in the room, but definitely not more than seventy-five from his initial scan.

David had heard before that all members of the VB were Haitian, and that seemed to hold true. He was the lightest-skinned person in the room by a large margin. On the walls and everywhere over the pillars were the decorated symbols of the VB, blue and white skulls and lines. They had a new addition to them though, a background of a yellow sun.

There was another detail that he failed to mention, just from how absolutely embarrassing it was.

There was merchandise all over the place. Merchandise of Smasher, of him, of Lucy, of Rebecca. Everywhere he looked he saw at least one piece of paraphernalia dedicated to one of them within his line of sight. He wanted to die on the spot. Arasaka could always revive him afterwards, he didn't need to be alive for this moment. There was a fucking shrine on the far backwall, it had candles and everything.

…Was that a picture of him on a bodypillow? The woman holding it flinched at his gaze, and ducked her face.

"""PRAISE!""" A great call came out from everyone else in the room.

He was never going to get used to this. He did not want to get used to it.

Milly started walking, so he followed, nervous under the gazes of so many people. In the background to his right he heard people listening to one of Smasher's songs and arguing over the meaning within the lyrics. To his left he heard a discussion on how they were going to attack the heretics next. To his front he saw…

A man sitting at a table, forearm raised in front of him. There was a panel that slid back, revealing a cavity in his arm. The cavity was currently filled with spaghetti and meatballs. He had a fork raised with his other hand and was eating the meal in his forearm.

That… he almost called that useless before he started considering the benefits of having a convenient pocketspace in his arm. He would never lose any small fiddly things again, he could store an extra magazine of ammo, he could hide chips in there…

The man with spaghetti in his arm might be a genius, David decided. Then that man's arm beeped loudly, and he opened up his (huge) bicep to reveal what looked to be a tiny oven, in the middle of which was a roasted chunk of meat. The man grabbed the meat using the skewer it was on and blew on it to cool it down. He started eating it with his spaghetti.

…A fucking visionary. David liked the guy immediately.

On his other side was another man, he was fiddling with some sort of device in his hands. He had four such hands, two more extending from his shoulders. The man was tapping impatiently with one of his hands. He was asking the other man something. He had a visor over his eyes, or maybe he had no eyes at all.

There was a woman at the table as well, she was looking at a screen that displayed a map. Occasionally she would make a note of something on another screen, typing away with chromed arms. She was wearing a heavy long-coat that reminded him of Adam's old duster that he wore on occasion.

…Were these three the overall leaders of the 'faithful' faction? They didn't exactly look like what he was expecting. To be honest, he wasn't sure what he was expecting at all, thinking about it. As they approached, Milly spoke up, waving at the woman in the long coat.

"Here he is, ma!"

The woman looked up, and David could see the resemblance now that he had been pointed out to him. The woman nodded, looking quite serious.

"I can see that, thank you Milly." She stood up fully, and went about cracking every bone in her torso with a set of efficient twists, a veritable symphony of snaps and pops ensued. The man with four arms spoke up at that.

"You know I can get you a cybernetic upgrade that would prevent your joints from locking up like that."

The woman responded. "Knowing you, you'd put dumb shit in at the same time."

The man grinned and replied in mock-offense. "I would never put something dumb in, you're being so cruel and mean to me right now."

The woman rolled her eyes. "You deserve it."

The man dramatically flinched back, and turned to look at David. He spoke with a humorous inflection in his voice. "Alright kid, here's the scenario, it's the far-off year of 2020, and anyone can get any cybernetic upgrade they want."

David wasn't sure where he was going with this, or why the woman (apparently Milly's mother?) was groaning and pinching her nose.

…wait, did he say 'far-off year of 2020?'. That was decades ago. The man continued before he could mention that.

"So would you get a cybernetic upgrade that lets you integrate yourself into a bathroom glory hole wall?"

David took a moment to process that.

"What? Fucking no, why would I do that?" The man very quickly replied.

"Because! It's the far-off year of 2020 and anyone can get any kind of cybernetic upgrade they want!"

"That's not an explanation! Also no, that's a bad… that's not even an upgrade!" David felt himself being pulled into the back and forth. The man was about to continue before the woman smacked his head, comically sending him crashing into the table. The man didn't seem actually hurt, but he was certainly pretending he was with exaggerated groans of pain.

"Shut up Haden. Please ignore him, Mr. Martinez, if he wasn't so competent I would have thrown him out by now."

"Love you babe~"

She smacked his head again.

A tap on his shoulder, the massive man with spaghetti in his arm was silently offering him a skewer of meat, his other shoulder now opened and revealed to be a second micro-oven. David raised a hand.

"Ah, thanks but I ate before I came here." The large man nodded and offered it to Milly, who accepted it with a happy 'thanks Brons' and started munching away. David turned away and back to the woman, who was rubbing a hand on her forehead.

"I asked you two to make a good impression, make us look respectable, look at what you're doing. Goddamnit." She said that quietly, he probably wasn't supposed to hear that.

She straightened up, and tried to display herself with dignity after the actions of her apparent subordinates(?).

"Right, Mr. Martinez, thank you for agreeing to help us in our hour of need. We are the faithful of the Golden Flame Avatar, Adam Smasher, and I am high priestess Samentha."

"Our current object is the purgation of the heretics who rejected the good word, and thereafter eternal servitude to He who Passed the Walls."

"What do you need of us to aid you in aiding us?"

…Alright, he could work with this. David went back to Adam's teachings mentally. Step one, identify the greatest threats to your VIPs.

"Well, if you can tell me your situation, we can start planning."

Samentha nodded, removed her jacket and turned to the screen on the wall behind her to pull something up. David's eyes, of no accord of his own, drifted downwards before jolting back up and locking on the screen. He felt his face tinge the slightest bit red, even as much as he tried to hide it.

Goddamn, her ass was fantastic too! He hoped that she put her jacket back on, because her pants were entirely too tight.

To his left, the visored man gave him a shit-eating grin, a single 'ok' sign, and three thumbs up.

David resolved to kiss Lucy twice as much when he got back.

—

The initial plan was set. The hired guns of the faithful were to make a lot of noise in front of a heretic controlled building. The building in question contained quite a bit of useful stuff, namely booster drugs and extra guns. The hired guns were not supposed to actually risk themselves in this engagement, just distract the security to give David a window of time to get in and start hitting their backline.

He liked that plan, basic enough for everyone to know exactly what they were doing, and it played to his strengths. They had gotten knowledge of this building from some informants that Samentha had, because after the VB split they immediately set about moving everything that each faction could get their hands on to new locations, to prevent the other faction from knowing where their shit was.

It made a certain amount of sense he supposed, but hauling those net-running chairs must have been hell. Those things were big and delicate and heavy.

…Also, he lived in a fortress now, it kicked ass. Castles were fucking cool, and Adam had a pretty good collection of files about them. He had been getting into them recently, as a hobby.

He waited behind the concrete rubble for them to start firing at the entrance. After he heard the guns firing, he waited a short time before a second set of guns started firing back. Now was his time to move.

He activated his sandy, and moved, staying low to the ground and behind cover as much as possible.

They weren't looking at him, good. He moved to the building's second entrance to see that the guards that were supposed to be there had moved off to the new frontline.

He ducked behind cover again, and sent a message to Milly. He waited for a few moments.

The cameras around that entrance short-circuited, and he activated his sandy again.

He moved forwards, kicking open the door to see two more guards that were moving in slow motion to react to him. He drew his knife and stabbed it into their eye-sockets, one after another. They both fell, he closed the door behind him and propped the bodies up against it.

He began ascending to the top of the building, he was going to work his way down, room by room.

He saw a guy on the stairway, he activated his sandy, moved forwards, and stabbed him in the brain too. The more bullets he could conserve in their early stage, the better. Not because he didn't have enough bullets, but more because he didn't want to alert anyone via the noise yet.

He supposed he could be throwing the knife too, but if he fucked up the throw and didn't kill them in one go then he would be forced to use his gun anyways. Much safer to just stab them at this point.

He kept moving up until he emerged on the roof. He stabbed the guard at the stairway in the throat, no need for sandy that time. He saw a line of snipers on the roof, pointed down at his allies for this job.

He activated his sandy, and shot eight times. He waited for his sandy to end.

Eight snipers suddenly turned into corpses. The entire building had just heard shotgun fire from their rifle-filled rooftops.

Alright, time for the fun part of the job to begin. He cracked his neck both ways, stretched his arms and legs, and rolled his shoulders. He activated his sandevistan, and jumped down to the next floor doorway on the staircase.

He kicked the door open, and started firing.

—

It was pretty late by the time he got back to the fortress. He went inside to see an unexpected face.

Katsuo was at the central table, typing at a screen, a six pack of soda in front of him. He looked up as David entered and raised a hand in greeting. David walked over to the table and took a seat opposite of him.

"Katsuo, whatcha doing here?"

"Apparently I do good work." Katsuo preened under the words, rubbing his nails on his chest pridefully. His smile dropped as he groaned. "Apparently the reward for good work is more work. I've been assigned to act as the PR Liaison from this area to the main HQ."

Katsuo offered him a drink, David took it and cracked it open as Katsuo spoke. He took a sip and considered it for a moment.

"PR Liaison?"

"I act as the go-between for a particular company asset and HQ."

David glared at him, he knew what a PR Liaison was, you ass. Judging from his sarcastic smirk, he knew that David knew that too. David snorted and replied.

"...we're in the same city. Hell, can't we just call if that's needed?"

"That's what I said." Katsuo groaned and rested his face on his hand.

David snorted, and took a sip.

"So what have you been doing, down in gang territory?" Katsuo asked, and cracked open his own drink. He took a sip while waiting for a reply.

"Apparently the Voodoo Boys had a civil war, and the side that likes Smasher wants me to help them kill the side that doesn't." David explained.

"...Gangs can have civil wars? Wouldn't they just become two separate gangs at that point?"

David hummed. "I suppose it depends on what the gang's overall organization is like, if it's a central authority gang versus a dispersed authority gang."

"Ah, makes sense I supp…" Katsuo trailed off as he started getting a call. He went ahead and put it on speaker and he answered. David stayed quiet, he'd leave if it was a personal matter, but if it was just business then whatever. It had become something of a tradition for them to put their calls on speaker when they had their chats, and then throw good-natured insults about the caller if it was spam or something.

"Katsuo Tanaka, PR Liasion?" The voice on the other side sounded official, business then he supposed.

"That is correct." Katsuo put on a professional air.

"Are you in a secure location?"

Katsuo paused at that, and exchanged a glance with David. He replied. "Yes, my location is secure."

The voice continued gravely. "You are not to reveal the following information to any non-Arasaka employee, or any Arasaka employee of D-level authority or lower. Do you understand?"

David and Katsuo straightened up at this. What the fuck was going on? Katuso replied.

"Yes I understand."

The following news shocked them both.

"There has been an attack on Arasaka Tower. Your mother, Chiri Tanaka, was among the Dead-10 casualties."

The third day of discussion on the nature of why exactly the Blackwall was screaming was well underway, and it was beginning to look like that would continue well until the meeting here was over. Stressed out corpos and government agents all desperately throwing ideas around, insulting each other, throwing accusations about. The soldiers and mercenaries that guarded their respective wards were comparatively much more reserved and polite. It was their job to keep their respective employers alive, not protect them from mean words.

They stood in rows on the sides of the meeting chamber of the luxury hotel, hands on weapons and outwardly tense. Inwardly, every merc here could tell that none of them were about to start something, it would be too disastrous for them in the end. As usual, the threat of overwhelming violence kept everyone nice with each other, something that Adam was beginning to see more and more wisdom in with each passing day.

Oda was on the other side of the room form him, arms fucking crossed like an idiot who wanted to slow himself down by a full half fucking second. That way no matter which direction Hanako went she'd be close to at least one… She'd be close to either one competent bodyguard or Oda. The other guards on the walls were an eclectic bunch, most of which were in something half-competent (if lacking in quality). The occasional soldier, however, was clad in something unusual or rather high-tech or both.

One dumbass who kept glaring at him had a fucking glaive (Guandao, Uriel corrected absentmindedly, still reviewing the scream). Looking closer, he saw that it had some sort of launcher built into the weapon, on the spine of the blade. (Does that make it a 'Gun-dao' then? Uriel joked, starting to pay more attention). Scanning the guy over, Adam dismissed him. He only had about seventy percent chrome, his torso was mostly meat then.

In fact… looking around the room and idly scanning every guard, it looked like most everyone here had around seventy percent or less chrome. That was fucking disappointing, Adam sighed internally. Not externally, he was on a job right now, his job was to stand about and look menacing. He didn't need to move for that either, not breathing or flexing or anything that these half-meats needed to do still.

It has been a boring past two days. While the idea that the Blackwall was screaming was concerning (and painful, Uriel chimed in), there wasn't really anything he could do about it. There was no point in worrying over things you couldn't change. If the sky turned red tomorrow, then he'd let the eggheads worry about it as he went about his day. He'd focus on things he could effect, like the ratio of fluid inside and outside of some fucker that thought he was lucky.

Soon enough, the meetings here would be over and he could go back to murdering meatbags in his territory again. He honestly wished for this to be over already, a nostalgic thought that every mercenary in the world has probably thought at least once before. In the end, they were all the same in that way, dealing with clients and trying to make another eddie. The eternal soldier's life, in the end, hasn't changed since the dawn of man.

Well, there was one thing that changed. Adam Smasher was born.

His gaze was locked onto the center of the room, where Hanako and the sisters were talking to some corpos from Petrochem and Militech. The major factions that represented the North American continent in one spot. He wondered what they were talking about, but not that hard. He could have focused a tad and the enhanced sensors of the Dragoon would tell him everything that happened in the fucking room. He didn't really feel like doing that.

Yet… there wasn't anything else to really do currently, was there? Uriel was going over data, he couldn't let himself watch anything (he was on guard duty), and no guard was about to start up a conversation with Adam Smasher of all people.

The Dragoon Frame had a reputation among all militaries in the world. Best in the world, shame that it drove you insane if you wore it for too long, or if you got slotted into one without a cocktail of mind-dampening drugs. A lot of that was due to the godly range of sensors and information-feed that connected directly to the subject's mind. It was enough to break some of the strongest willed men.

There was a reason that it hasn't been seriously improved upon in decades, and that's because no one can keep up with that level of chrome, let alone any more. No one except him that was.

He wore it as his every-day Frame. The cyberaudio specifically of the Dragoon Frame had three main components. The first was an enhanced version of standard human audio ability that increased his clarity of sound by about twenty percent more than human maximum, increased his hearing range to detect subsonic and supersonic noise, and a level damper that automatically compensated for loud noises.

He also had a Radio with 25km of range and a Radar detector in there, but only the first component of his cyberaudio mattered in this exact moment. As he tuned in to listen to what Hanako was saying, they detected something from above as well.

The sound of something smashing through layers of a skyscraper. He was familiar with that sound, he had made it many times himself.

He activated his Sandevistan, and sent a message to everyone in the room.

[Attacker above, coming down through ceiling]

That got everyone's fucking attention, but before they could do anything the ceiling shattered. Legs with thickened spikes retracting into its heels falling through a shower of rubble and steel rebar. Hanako was directly below. He couldn't move her out of the way in time.

So he moved the attacker instead.

Adam kicked the wall and floor at the same time, and flew forwards to the center of the room, above her head. The form of the attacker was visible now, as was the chrome display in his vision. One-hundred percent.

Adam spun mid-air, and kicked the form of the bot that seemed to be as heavy as himself. That proved to be true as he and it both flew back and crashed into opposite walls. The walls of the room cracked and broke as he and it began to slide down and glare eachother down. His sandevistan deactivated.

The half-meats in the room that also had sandevistans had moved while he and the attacker were colliding, moving to cover their VIPs from the falling rubble. The half-meats that did not have sandevistans or kerenzikovs proved that they were disappointments and were only just now moving. Oda was in this second category, but thankfully Tsumugi was able to pick up the slack and a pile of gravel was around them instead of boulders.

The VIPs were very quickly moved away from the new attacker, and the guards took up positions in between them and the settling dust on the other side of the room.

A Samson Frame, but a heavily upgraded and modified one. Completely covered in modified MetalGear armor. Perhaps seven and a half feet tall, with broad and powerful shoulders. Its head was modified to look like an armet helm with a single glowing blue optic peering out from underneath its visor. It had two extra arms bound to its shoulders, both of which were connected to massive shield-plates of further armor. Its other arms were modified as well, both extending below the hands to form two three-foot blades of solid metal.

In both of its hands, the attacker held two assault rifles of a make he couldn't recognize. They looked big though, clearly designed for the strongest of meat-humans to use in both hands. The borg, unbound by the constraints of flesh, held two. A calm, robotic, and masculine voice issued from the attacker. Every guard in the room was tense as they waited for the first move to be made.

"Congratulations, you have earned my name and title. I am Recited Song of Roland 66, Grandmaster of the Ordo Panzer, Bearer of the word Mountain."

A moment passed. Adam sent a message to his party.

[We are leaving, make for the plane]

He was in charge of their safety, they did not try to argue. His duty was to ensure Hanako's safety, not to fight everyone who came their way. Judging from the last panzerbot he fought, he could not ensure her safety while fighting it off. He didn't trust any of the half-meats to actually be a help here or to not take the chance to kill them.

That, and anyone who breaks into a room filled with mercenaries and takes the time to declare their name is either a posing joke or a fellow monster. He couldn't afford to take the bet on the very real chance it was the second option.

As he started moving to guard his wards, every other guard did one of two things. They either copied him or opened fire. He exchanged nods with those that were escorting their charges out, they all had a common purpose here if not common charge. About a solid ten seconds of firing passed, Hanako was beginning to leave the room with Oda at her rear and Tsumugi at her front.

The bullets tore the area where the bot was standing into rubble and dust. The wall behind had more air than structure left, and the floor around was a fucking spiderweb of cracks centered at it's feet. The dust began to settle, revealing the bot within the center. It took a heavy step forwards out of the dust. It was almost completely unharmed, faint scratches on its paint the only indication of the hail of bullets it endured.

"Mine invincible mail, witness its shining gleam."

The bot widened its stance, raised its guns, and opened fire upon the small army of guards and mercenaries who began to fire back. Adam made sure all stray bullets hit him instead of his charges, but didn't bother to stick around. Through the doorways that were kept open he could see the battle slowly disappear behind him, the half-meats didn't seem to be doing any damage, the floor around its feet taking more damage than the bot was.

The bot's blue glare wasn't on them. It was on him. He returned it as he hurried his charges along. Fucker was here for him, and all these other fuckers were just in the way. He'd get them to safety first, and if the bot was in range at that point he'd scrap it the same as the other one. There were other fuckers in between him and his group.

In fact, looking at it, he was in between the fighting and all of the VIPs, body blocking any bullets that strayed from the room into the hall. Those fuckers better appreciate this, they weren't on his contract, he just couldn't afford anything coming for his group. No, wait, the fucker with the Gun-dao was next to hit, blocking bullets that he couldn't reach on that side.

Adam locked eyes with the half-meat, who returned the gesture. He nodded, they weren't allies of course, but they both had the same goal. Step by step they moved backwards, and every few feet another stray bullet would come from the mass of guards who were also slowly falling back. Fuckers looked like they were beginning to run out of ammo, and were down to their sidearms, they were also slowly falling back.

The panzerbot was still there, slowly approaching one heavy stomp into the ground at a time. Fucker's armor looked untouched still.

Adam knew that armor, he used to wear that shit back when he was still mostly meat. It was good, but it wasn't 'walk through a hailstorm of bullets' good. There was some fucking trick here. It wasn't the other panzerbot's trick either, because that required active blocking and was signaled by rapidly vibrating limbs. This one was just marching through gunfire hard enough to crack the ground and ignoring it outright.

As they marched in a fighting retreat, Adam noticed that the guards that were still with them were of a higher class than the ones that were left behind to shoot at the panzerbot. Fodder it seemed in this case, for what little good it did. The last of the meatbag guards fell in another burst of bullets.

The panzerbot stopped its stomping march and started moving for them slightly faster, fast enough to catch up to them, shield arms raised in front of it to divert fire. The shields were frustratingly undamaged as well. Good news was that the panzerbot dropped it's now empty guns, bad news was that it unlatched two more of the same model from the back of the shields in front of it.

The corpos and government VIPs had already begun to split off into groups, as they approached the various stairways and hallways that led to their own planes of separate hanger-levels. All that was left going his way was the…

Adam looked at the logos on their clothes in various locations.

Kang Tao delegation, which meant that the half-meat next to him was their latest project. How interesting, he'd learn their name if they survived this fight. They were approaching the hanger assigned to them now, the panzerbot not bothering to waste ammo, just following them fast enough to keep up. It was probably going to attack in the hangar itself, where he and half-meat were going to have to confront it to stop damage to the planes.

It knew it was going to fight them, it didn't bother wasting resources at this point in the fight. Adam growled, and relaxed his shoulders before turning and marching normally, much to the shock of the half-meat.

"What are you doing!?" He shouted in a distinct chinese accent.

"We'll have to fight in the hangar anyways, no point in doing it here."

The panzerbot hummed before lowering its own guns. It kept following them. The half-meat didn't relax, but it did walk more firmly. The VIPs in front of them kept shooting scared looks back at them.

They entered the two-plane hangar that exited out onto the massive run-way balcony that extended from various points on this stupidly designed tower. Just put them on the ground, fucking dumbasses.

There was a nice clear area in the center, Adam walked over to the corner of an invisible triangle that was nearest to his party's plane. He turned and waited for the panzerbot to do the same, which it did upon seeing him stop to face it. He was right earlier, it was after him, everyone else was just in the way.

Good, that means he could send everyone else away safely.

[I will prevent it from following, you all are to leave.]

To the half-meat, he spoke aloud.

"It's here for me, you are free to leave."

There was an immediate reaction to both of his statements, infuriatingly. One a wall of text from his various wards and the other an insulted shout. Fucking Oda was the only one who didn't argue back at him

[What about you?

Oni-sama! You must escape with us!

Oi Oi, you're coming too, yanno?

Wait, that's like, silly!]

"Are you insulting me?!"

Over messaging he simply replied.

[That is an order, Oda, enforce it.]

To the half-meat, he replied.

"You don't live long by fighting other folks' battles, brat. Leave."

Oda followed his orders, and started pushing the party onto the plane. Good, he doesn't have to worry about that now. The half-meat shouted back even as it got into position in the final corner of their invisible triangle.

"How do I know you simply won't shoot down the jet?! Nay, I shall fight!"

Adam grunted.

"Suit yourself."

Soon enough, the jets were flying off, and all three fighters were still in their positions. A veritable standoff between three giants of chrome and violence. Well, two giants of chrome and violence and one guy who still had meat attached to his useful parts. Adam grunted, it wasn't the worst backup he's ever had, and it was hardly the worst situation he's ever been in. At least he didn't have to worry about VIPs in this fight, panzerbot was stupid enough to let that potential advantage go.

"A shame I must kill you, that was a valourous act. I shall remember you both."

Adam glared at the fucker that was looking down at him. He could kill him without any backup at all, let alone with a distraction half-meat to toss his way. But, his last encounter with a panzerbot proved they weren't something he could take easy. He and Uriel began to go over everything that they knew about the panzerbot in front of them. The half-meat was engaging in traditional pre-fight banter, so he had more time to review. Alright, what did he know about the target?

Firstly, the fucker was just as heavy as he was, packing all kinds of weight on those additional shield arms of his. He didn't have as much armor overall, but those shields more than made up for it. That and those arm-blades, which looked to be a few dozen pounds a piece. So he wouldn't be able to toss this one around like the last one.

Secondly, the fucker was just as fast as he was, if not faster. He saw the reaction speed when Adam kicked the fucker into the wall, it was only because Adam was already hitting the fucker when his head finally passed the ceiling layer that he wasn't able to block. Another fucker with a sandevistan and a kerenzikov, did all of these bastards have those? Probably best to assume so.

Thirdly, that fucking invincibility trick. It had to be a trick, because Adam was intimately familiar with the armor brand that he was wearing. Best on the civvie market, but it was not enough to stand up to that much firepower, and not to do so with mere chipped paint. How the fuck was he doing that? He wasn't pulling the same trick as the last one, because he wasn't actively blocking or blurring when he took fire. He just moved slowly and ignored bullets that turned his surroundings into rubble.

…Could he be dispersing the impact of each blow through his entire frame, and those shields? Those looked to be solid fucking plates of metal, so if he could spread out the impact everywhere then that would allow him to take a lot of the blow on those bulky fuckers on his extra arms.

That didn't seem quite right. He was missing something here, he knew it. Panzerfaust was composed of rotations, charges, and vibration. It had to have something to do with the third one, the other two didn't make any sense here. Vibrations, how was this fucker using vibrations to ignore damage that should turn him into scrap?

Alright, enemy analysis completed until further information can be gained. What advantages does he have here?

Firstly, he had way more armor if that invincibility trick was ignored. Not quite twice as much, but close to it. He could take some fucking hits that would normally be impossible to tank, and he had that one trick he stole from the last panzerbot. Sure, he needed a free limb to do it, and he wasn't the best at it, but it would help him mitigate damage here.

Secondly, he had his club. It was as close to indestructible as a weapon could be as far as he was aware, so it wouldn't be breaking on him constantly like his swords did. He and Uriel had run the numbers on it, the club needed more force than Adam could produce to break, so it should be fine for this.

Thirdly…

Adam glanced over at the half-meat.

He had the dubiously useful help of the half-meat on his side. Probably not all that important, but a split second of distraction here might be able to ensure his victory, so it would have to be enough. He looked over to the panzerbot, who seemed to notice his change in attention.

"Ah, finished thinking? Shall we get on with it then?"

"Yes, let's."

All three activated their sandevistans. Good, the half-meat had that much at least.

Adam burst forwards to swing his club down, which was caught by the crossed blade-arms of the bot. The half-meat came around the side and swung its glaive at the bot's midsection. The bot brought its shield down and blocked the attack. Adam growled and fired a rocket from his shoulder at the fucker, which was blocked by the other shield.

Their sandevistans wore off, the ground cracked. The bot proved its speed by throwing their weapons up and kicking at his leg. He met the hit with a vibrating counter-kick, and felt his leg shake through the blow.

His foot was underneath the bot's now. Adam grunted and pushed up as hard as he could, forcing the bot back and off balance. All that weight on your upper torso sure made you top-heavy, dumbass.

Unfortunately, the bot compensated to be pushed over by using it's shield-arms to hold itself upright. This opportunity they took advantage of.

All three activated their sandevistans. The half-meat fired its Gun-dao, which was revealed to be a thermite cannon of sorts. The bot dodged by kicking off the ground and entirely over itself, using its shield arms as hand-stands. Adam was there to meet the bastard as it came up, firing three rockets that crashed into it's upper torso and sent it sliding back quite a bit before it stabilized itself.

Their sandevistans deactivated. Using its swords and shields as bracers the bot pushed itself up. That was some actual damage that time, rockets damaging its armor everywhere they hit. Its internals were still mostly fine, but that was the first blow that it actually made through that invincibility trick.

How? Why? If he could figure that out, the fight would be over. Adam grinned cruelly behind his armored mask. This fucker was far easier than the other was already. He was getting too good at this. Uriel wouldn't even need to try hacking the fucker.

The half-meat clearly thought the same way.

They activated their sandevistans again. They rushed forwards, the bot remained rooted on the ground. That was fine, he'll just blast you open again.

It raised all four arms, and simultaneously moved to block and stab at both of them. Adam's club collided with the shield, and he parried the blade with a vibrating arm, now to…

He glanced over, the bare tip of the bot's other sword arm had stabbed into the half-meat's own arm. It was maybe only a quarter-inch in the armored plating in that area.

Their sandevistans deactivated, the ground didn't crack, the half-meat's entire arm exploded.

"Mine invincible armor, mine gloaming sword. Be smote, lowly fool."

Adam stood, club raised in a defensive posture, in the hangar bay of the Paris luxury-megatower. In front of him was the knight, massive shields raised to its sides, ready to crash into any oncoming blow, sword-arms ready to stab out in retaliation. The knight's torso armor was damaged, but not very much. To his side was the now one-armed half-meat, awkwardly raising a weapon meant for two hands in one.

The ground about them was cracked and damaged.

Adam grunted in frustration. This was like fighting a fucking snapping turtle, which brought to mind the time Uriel had to kill one. Adam banished the thought, he didn't need any distractions right now. Right now he had to figure out how the knight was able to explode an armored chrome arm with a quarter-inch of penetration.

It had to be panzerfaust, of course, but the exact method was unknown. Was it simply that much better at this than he was? That was a possibility, but he couldn't plan around a skill difference. That also didn't help him figure out that invincibility trick. It was not like the counter-vibration trick the first one pulled, Adam knew how that worked at this point, this was different.

The knight took a heavy step forwards. It wasn't going to give him time to simply sit and think, which meant that he had to get creative. A noise to his side reminded him that half-meat was still here. Adam grunted at that, he couldn't focus on fighting and worrying about a backstab from some chinese fucker while he was at it. Uriel had a suggestion for getting him off his back. He opened a message line with the half-meat next to him as he readied himself to clash with the panzerbot.

[Hang back and observe.]

[I can still fight, do not pity me!]

[I will engage, you will figure out his invincibility trick, then he dies.]

[...I shall.]

Good, now all Adam could actually focus on fighting the knight without the half-meat getting in his fucking way. Adam was never good at this defensive thing, but he was a quick study when his life was on the line. The best way to block an attack was to meet it half-way, before momentum had built up too much, so that's what he did.

Their sandevistans activated. They both stepped forwards. Adam swung his club down, which was met by the twin shields of the knight. It stabbed at him with its swords, which Adam parried by drawing his club back a tad, letting go of its handle with one hand, and twisting his hand that was still holding the club 360 degrees to knock the blades off to the side of his body.

Their sandevistans deactivated, the ground cracked beneath the knight's feet. Adam had a hand freed up and already reared back. He punched one shield as hard as he could, the ground cracked again. This is the benefit to planning ahead, scrapfucker.

Test one successful, his melee attacks directly correspond with the damage that the ground takes after an attack chain is concluded. Moving onto test two.

The knight stabbed forwards again, blue optic glowing in malice. This time with only one blade, reserving the other for now. Adam batted it off to the side with his club, sending the arm off to pair with its fellow. The knight's entire body was wound up now, ready for a massive double-slice at him.

Their sandevistans activated, the knight began to swing, starting a heavy step forwards. There, that was his cue. Adam moved forwards, abandoning any defense for a full-on attack at the knight's half-exposed secondary arms with his club. Mid-step, he immediately abandoned his step and stomped his foot down where it was, aborting the swings for a quick block instead. The sword arms blocked in time.

Their sandevistans deactivated. The ground cracked around the knight's feet again. Test two successful, the knight doesn't want to be attacked while moving under any circumstance. This probably meant that the invincibility trick had something to do with staying still. That, and the knight couldn't do that immediately, at least not during sandevistan time, he had to have a moment after staying still to become invincible, as evidenced by the fact that he blocked rather than just take the hit.

Adam was fairly certain of that already, but he had been prepared to lose an arm in that exchange in case he was wrong. When combined with the results of test one, it made for a fairly clear picture.

When he attacked the knight, if he was firmly standing, then he could redirect the force of the blow from his attack to the floor instead. It wasn't an invincibility trick, it was a redirection trick, he was forcing something else to take the force of the blow. That was how he managed to explode the half-meat's arm earlier, he had forced it to take the combined power of Adam's and half-meat's own blows.

Adam was glad half-meat was here to take that first hit for him now. Had he been hit by his own blow and the blow of the knight then he would likely lose a limb, and then he would have been too crippled to win against that defensive bullshit. It would have been fucking embarrassing to run away from some antique bot.

Now, he had his hypothesis, but he had to confirm two more details. Time for test three.

Their sandevistans activated. Adam stomped forwards again, club swinging down from on high. The scrapfucker raised both shields above its shoulders to block it and prevent him from guarding fast enough. Shame that this was a trick, dumbass.

Right as his club impacted, Adam had already let go of it and crouched as fast as he could. He glared triumphantly up into the knight's optics as he fired three missiles at point blank range. Adam slid back a bit, pushed back by the force of the explosions. He had managed to negate the damage with the counter-vibration trick he stole from the first panzerbot. His paint was scorched, correction, he had been able to mostly negate it.

Unfortunately, what he had hoped wasn't quite true. The smoke around the knight faded to reveal that it was only slightly scorched, and the ground around its feet was cracked even more. So test three was successful, it was not just melee attacks or bullets, it was all forms of kinetic energy that came his way that he was able to shunt off.

Adam didn't have any non-kinetic form of attack, a weakness he resolved to correct in the future. Missiles, melee, and guns were his only options, and all of them the bot in front of him could ignore if he was standing still. Which meant that in order to win… Adam had to either attack in a way that didn't allow for kinetic dispersal, or get access to a non-kinetic attack.

The only two methods of something like that he had access to was Uriel's hacking and…

[I have seen through his mystery! He can redirect attacks to his bladed and spiked components!]

…The Gun-Dao of the half-meat that was a little slow on the update. Come on, brat, he had figured that out during the last exchange. Although, thinking about it, he had revealed something to Adam after all. The spikes on his feet and the blades on its arms were the only places the knight seemed to redirect energy to. While it was possible that those were the only places he had wanted to thus far, it seemed correct to Adam's gut feeling.

[I will hold him in place, ready your thermite launcher.]

[Affirmative!]

Adam got into a grappler's stance, which he was sure that the knight noticed. He wouldn't be able to actually hurt the scrapfucker with a hold, but he didn't need to this time.

Their sandevistans activated. Adam rushed forwards, firing three more rockets at the knight's feet while he approached. This created both a smoke cloud and a lot of kinetic energy for the knight. Kinetic energy that the fucker wanted to use really badly no doubt.

He was proven correct about that, but not in the way he was expecting. As he moved to sidestep another stab and grapple the knight, he was met with a spin kick through the dust cloud that crashed into his upper left arm.

Their sandevistans deactivated. Adam rolled across the floor, tearing a gouge in the ground until he crashed into the far wall. For a moment, he lost track of what he was doing.

He did his best to shake off the pain, and used his left arm to brace himself. He pushed himself up, and took note of the damage.

His right arm was gone, his torso armor was orange. From one of those monstrous fucking kicks. He couldn't afford to take a hit like that again.

"You have done well for yourself. But I am the Recited Song of Roland 66, no warrior of the purely material can best me."

It was unbelievably satisfying when a thermite round crashed squarely against the distracted Chrome Quixote's back. Good job, half-meat, he will be sure to learn your name after this. The knight growled mechanically before a depressurized hiss came from him, a section of his back armor unlatched and with it went his shield arms, carrying the still burning thermite with it.

The knight was down to two arms now, both of which were attached to massive 3 foot blades. Those shields alone probably weighed about a fourth of his total weight. Adam realized something quite concerning in that exact moment.

The knight had a sandevistan and a kerenzikov. He was faster than him while he was still around his weight. He had just lost about a hundred and fifty pounds of shield-weight.

He activated his sandevistan. The knight blurred to be in front of the half-meat, swords crossed and ready to bisect him. Adam couldn't get over there in time. Uriel could however.

Normally, in order to hack much of anything one had to first gain access to a given system. You had to be let into the system by an administrative code based on pre-recognized credentials. Uriel had no time for that, so he resorted to a quick-and-dirty solution to preventing the knight's legs from moving.

A DoS attack is when an individual simply overloads a given system by inputting too many invalid requests, draining resources until the target is unable to respond to legitimate requests. If the attacker had enough material for invalid requests ahead of time, then it was the fastest form of net-attack. Uriel had access to thousands of Adam's previously recorded fights, a compilation of his favorites.

Uriel moved and bound the knight's legs in chains of fiery code, overloading the system with thousands of false signals that Adam's own legs made in the past. His legs locked as he approached the half-meat, and abandoned its attack to stab a sword in the ground to prevent falling over. The knight's optic locked onto the DoS-chains, then onto Uriel, then onto Adam.

Their sandevistans deactivated, the knight flexed and shattered the junkcode bonds. Uriel started preparing the next net-attack.

"Your Daemon is a weak, pallid thing. Did you think such fragile chains could bind me?"

The knight turned fully to him, optic glowing in fury.

"I am the bearer of the word Mountain."

The data-shadow of something began to emerge from the panzerknight. The ICON twisted, and its tail of IP Rejection smashed into Uriel. Uriel was pushed back, righting his electronic tumble in time to kneel next to Adam. Gold-white flames flickering from the assault before re-solidifying.

"Master of the great beast of Saint Martha."

The data-shadow began to solidify around the knight. A reptilian ICON with six clawed legs, a tail with a hook at its end, a face like a stunted snapping turtle. A great thorny shell was upon its back and a kingly mane around its head.

"Tarrasque."

Adam wanted the fucker to shut up already. He fired his last burst of two missiles. He had two left in his arm, but he was now missing an arm and didn't have any left in his shoulder launcher. This was a distinctly poor situation for him to be in, he wanted to alleviate some of his frustration.

The scrapfucker stood completely still as the missiles hit. The floor cracked again. His blue optic glared at him. Good, keep all your attention on him, and no one else, certainly not anyone in the room that may or may not have a thermite launcher.

Adam rolled his shoulder and pantomimed cracking his neck. Uriel pretended to display warm-up stretches behind him. They were clearly mocking the knight. The knight's arms began to shake in rage. Adam sent the half-meat a message.

[Be ready to fire.]

Their sandevistans activated. Adam charged the knight with a kick to clash against his blades. He was angry enough that he wasn't even trying his trick now, as crippled as Adam was with a single arm and no weapon. Their attacks clashed, Adam's foot lost thirty percent structural integrity. The thermite round crashed into the knight's back again.

Their sandevistans deactivated. The knight screamed in rage. He turned to go chop the half-meat into the aforementioned halves. Dumbass.

Uriel forced Adam's sandevistan active again. The knight was turned away, and one foot was lifted off the ground, the other foot unsteady. Adam twisted into a second kick against the leg that currently bore all of his weight. The leg turned into shards of chrome that scattered across the hangar bay.

Uriel deactivated his sandevistan, Adam's nerves growled at him. The scrapfucker fell on his face and skid across the floor before flipping over and using one sword as a crutch to stand up. The swords tearing two massive lines in the concrete floor. His optic was glowing brilliantly in rage.

"YOU!"

The knight stilled, before rage left it. A calming sigh left its speaker.

"No, it is not becoming of a knight to hate his enemy, you have done well to-"

A brute-force attack was when a netrunner spammed data-requests at a given subject on as many signals as possible at once. It took some time to set up, but once done it could potentially breach even top-tier ICEs with at least one signal command going through. Uriel had been preparing this since his DoS attack failed, and so had quite a few signal frequencies to use.

Uriel sent as many commands for the Optic to shut off and for the AI's mind to simulate pain as he could all at once on as many frequencies as he could manage. In short, Uriel punched the so-called Tarrasque in the eye. The knight's optic short circuited and he used one hand to grab at its helmet.

"ENCULÉ DE TA MÈRE!"

Another thermite shot hit the knight in the arm that it was using to brace itself. Adam activated his sandevistan as the knight bellowed and rushed at the half-meat like a murderous spinning top.

Adam's sliding kick crashed into his other leg, reducing it to scrap as well. The knight flew into the wall, crashing against it with a thunderous boom. More shouts and cursing came from the

Adam grinned and began for his club. Time to beat a fucker to death.

A data-shadow loomed over him. A DoS-claw crashed down on him.

Adam collapsed, limbs refusing to operate, a full half of his systems offline from the overwhelming number of invalid requests. Uriel was forced back into his systems. It hurt quite a bit for some reason.

"You die now, Adam Smasher."

Adam and Uriel were pinned under a fucking mountain. An ICON-mountain with a toothy beak that was looming closer and closer. Uriel was reminded of the time he had to kill a snapping turtle.

He was fishing that day, as all good young country boys ought to do. It was getting late, and he put his hand near what he thought was a rock only to realize too late that it was a snapping turtle instead. He jerked his fingers back and down, dodging the bite and moving his hand to its extended neck.

How does one kill a snapping turtle without a weapon? Simple, you strangle it.

DoS-Chains of Uriel's golden white-fire came from the sole online broadcasting implant and lashed around the Tarrasque's exposed command-kill prompt. Uriel poured every scrap of fire he had to the effort. The overgrow turtle choked on its meal before it could take a bite. It began to thrash, sending a thousand kill-commands a second.

Uriel clung as hard as he could. If he failed here, Adam and he were dead. That was an unacceptable outcome. So he poured all of his relatively meager processing power into squeezing an extended neck. Spamming the command-prompt with as many invalid commands as possible.

The DoS-claw pinning Adam down loosened just enough for him to send a message.

[Kill the attacker.]

The turtle kept thrashing, Adam's systems flickered on and off at random intervals. Uriel's DoS-chains were beginning to break.

The ICON-turtle disappeared. Adam's systems slowly rebooted as he tried to get up, Uriel rededicating power to try and get it done faster.

He pushed himself up and looked over to see the half-meat had unloaded all of its remaining thermite into the knight's torso, now only a melted ruin of metal.

He stood fully, and turned to look at the half-meat, who was similarly staring him down. They could fight here…

But that wasn't in their contracts right now. A good merc doesn't pick a fight if he doesn't need to, and Adam was the best fucking merc in the world.

"Your name?"

"Chi Tu Ma."

Adam snorted, and walked over to pick up his club. It was mostly fine, he latched it back onto his shoulder mount. He then walked over to see if he could recover anything from his shattered arm. It was not looking optimistic.

He went ahead and messaged his charges that he won, and that he needed them to send someone to pick him up. As he waited for a reply, he walked over to a cleaning bot and sat on it. It whined as it tried to go about its business trying to clean the now thoroughly destroyed hangar bay. It could not with his weight on it.

Sorry bot, you were convenient right now.

Adam sat upon a bot in a destroyed arena, Chi looking contemplative as he scanned the area and melting panzerknight, and he waited for a reply so he could be picked up.

This fucking week, he couldn't wait to get back and get repairs, missing an arm got old after the first ten times.

—

He was Chi Tu Ma, the product of the greatest minds of glorious Kang Tao working nonstop for years to put together the ultimate soldier. His body was given the greatest treatments and injections required to improve combat capabilities, his cybernetics were of the highest and most-cutting edge technology known to his people, and his mind was refined from years of rigorous training.

He had come close to dying three times in the fight that he was just in. A fight that lasted no more than perhaps a minute or two.

The first death missed him by scant inches, a bare pinprick into his upper arm that turned the entire armored cybernetic into broken fragments. If that had hit his torso just a few inches over, he would have died.

The second death was avoided by the legs of the armored reaper suddenly giving out. Upon review of the footage, he learned that they stopped due to a sudden code-attack by gāojí zhànshì Adam Smasher. He did not know that Adam Smasher was capable of net-attacks in that matter, he found himself fortunate for it. For the twin-blades of the armored reaper had paused just before they would have come down upon him. Thus his second death was avoided by quick action of the gāojí zhànshì he fought with.

The third death was avoided, again by the actions of Adam Smasher. A tremendous crash of hundreds of pounds of metal crashing into the remaining leg of a fellow chrome giant. The giant that was on course to cut into him like a river cutting earth.

The product of the most brilliant minds of Kang Tao working for years, and years of their most rigorous training regimes, and he had no ability to preserve his own life in the face of a true monster.

Chi found himself in a state of horrified awe. He was mighty, there was no denying that. He could sever divisions of soldiers and sunder the walls of houses. He could move faster than a sprinting cheetah and jump farther than a waterfall-climbing carp. His armor was enough to outright ignore lesser arms, and endure many strikes from greater arms.

He had thought himself near the peak of the mountain. Then the clouds cleared, and he realized that he was only on a lesser peak, the true height of the mountain suddenly revealed to him.

There were monsters in this world, and Chi was still a man.

His remaining fist clenched around the handle of his guandao, the servos in his fingers groaning under the force he put on them.

He looked up to the hallway that led into this hangar, filled in its entirety with blood and viscera. The remains of a hundred of some of the best warriors and guardsmen in the world. All torn apart by a sole chrome giant.

He looked over at the burning remains of the chrome giant in its shattered depression in the wall. A giant that would have killed him three times over were it not for the interference of his temporary ally. A giant that would have killed him dozens of times over had he been fighting alone. A giant that crippled him with a tap.

He looked over to the Tiě Jùrén that sat on the hapless cleaning servitor. A battered, one-armed giant that endured the fury of the army-slayer long enough for him to figure out the secret of its invincible scales. A giant that saved him thrice over, even while suffering immense damage himself.

Chi Tu Ma's eyes finally saw Mount Tai, and his burning heart filled with a determination to climb.

The attack on Arasaka Tower had its final death toll counted some six hours after the fighting had stopped. At any one point in time, the tower is occupied by about two-thirds of its total staff when accounting for rotating schedules. Of the two-thirds of Arasaka employees in Night City, thirty-four percent of them died, and twenty-two percent of them were unable to be revived afterwards.

The majority of the deaths were on the security team. That accounted for roughly eighteen percent of the total casualties, the majority of them went on to become permanent casualties. A small number of deaths were in executives and standard employees, who combined made up the remaining percentage of deaths and permanent deaths.

The Trauma Team, according to their agreement with Arasaka corporate leadership, prioritized higher-level executives, then security, then lower-level executives, and then standard employees. While they attempted to do so, they also suffered immense casualties in the fighting. A total of nineteen percent of all Trauma Team employees in the vicinity suffered permanent death.

The Tower itself also suffered immense cyber-assault damage in the fighting, of the many electronic devices within the tower (including security cameras and the Mikoshi Engram Database), roughly one-third of it remained active afterwards, and another third was salvageable. The remaining one-third of devices hit by this cyber-assault were deemed unrecoverable, which included the majority of the security footage of the attack itself.

Indeed, all but forty frames of footage in the entire tower during the event were catastrophically corrupted. The majority of the evidence for the attack itself was found from more old-fashioned forms of investigation, observing the bodies of the victims and the attacker that were left behind. From observation of the bodies and other circumstantial bits of evidence (path of fighting, remanent bullet casing, damaged rooms) it was determined that the tower was breached in two places simultaneously.

The first was an immediate assault from directly above, the roof of the building landed upon by a hostile force with enough explosives to breach into the top floor. It is theorized that this force had an experimental stealth system to allow them to carry that much explosives past the vast array of sensors and scanners Arasaka Tower utilizes. After the security teams were mobilized they proceeded to engage the first attacker before eventually calling for backup. The front of the tower was reduced to minimum regulation guards as they moved to deal with the first threat.

After this movement of security, the second force assaulted Arasaka Tower en masse, charging in armored buses from halfway across the city before crashing into the front of the building and then deploying in force against the reduced security. No less than 48 soldiers per bus in heavy armor, carrying assault rifles and grenades, and equipped with stealth systems. Three of these buses crashed into the first floor entrance room, and nearly one-hundred and fifty heavy infantry engaged in lightning-speed attack against a reduced and distracted internal security team.

Although the Arasaka security fought valiantly, they were unable to resist the assault. The attackers proceeded inwards and killed all employees they encountered as they dispersed in teams. They only made it through six total floors of the tower thanks to the valiant defense of the security team, and most all the casualties they caused were revivable afterwards. This was ultimately the lesser danger.

At the top of the tower, a force composed of no less than two individuals and no more than 6 individuals breached the tower roof. The security team and their reinforcements were unable to slow the movement of this force. As the force moved downwards through the tower, a skilled netrunner within the group engaged in an open data-assault against nearly all things in the tower, starting from the top and slowly working down. This data-assault even targeted seemingly random targets, such as lights, clocks, and microwave ovens.

The force proceeded downwards, killing all employees along its path, and pilfering several valuable items from individual rooms (including the personal chambers of Assault-Asset ADAM S., which was robbed). The force eventually hit the security team on floor 3 from behind, linked up with the conventional force, loaded up in one of the armored buses, and drove until an experimental stealth system was activated and hid the bus entirely from electronic view.

The bodies of the attackers that were downed revealed no identifying markers, but the DNA markers occasionally lined up with recorded markers from agents of no less than four separate rival corporations. The only forty frames of security footage recovered was of a brief shot of one of the attackers from the tower roof.

A seven foot cybernetic frame with an armored wide-brim helmet and lower faceplate covered in a black hemp-weave neck covering. An armored blue longcoat that stopped at the chrome forearms. A ballistic vest on the torso covered in additional ammo bags, armored weave pants and combat boots. A dragoon-class ammo bin backpack that linked belts of ammunition to two grenade launchers.

The attacker form was indistinct and blurry, as if the film was smudged with an individual's thumb. The attacker was walking past a slain employee, which burst into viscera upon its passing. It was determined that this was the attacker that focused on defending their associated netrunner, of whom footage was not recovered.

Arasaka's response was immediate. The remaining PR and Marketing employees went on overtime hours to downplay the overall amount of damage that the Tower suffered. All agents in non-critical missions or deployments throughout all of North America were immediately recalled and used to reinforce the military strength. Many of them had to be assigned to the few remaining empty temporary apartments erected under order of Assault-Asset ADAM S.

The sudden and immediate resurgence of Arasaka agents in the region of Night City mostly prevented immediate gang response to try to take advantage of the situation, although there still were scattered attacks. News of the attack was deliberately leaked in a way that reduced the impression of overall damage Arasaka took, even with such measures taken Arasaka stock prices dropped by 0.2 percent overnight, although it quickly stabilized around that area.

In accordance with legal agreements, all employees with relations with one of the unrevivable employees of at least c-level authority or greater were informed of their relation's passing. They were then observed to see if they leaked any of this information to outside sources, of which only three did by accident. Their actions were noted on their files and appropriate discipline was distributed.

Many internal experts from other regions of global Arasaka influence were pulled and redeployed to oversee the redevelopment of the region. Among these numbers were several top ranking executives, top-class security and assault assets, and a veritable army of engineers and netrunners. Included among these agents was Guerrilla-Asset KAGEKAZE, now assigned to oversee Arasaka security in the region.

Internal security experts of Arasaka called it the second worst assault on the Tower in its history, immediately after the Blackhand raid and subsequent nuking. It was carried out by, at most, 150 agents. This sent a clear message to Arasaka military planners. The weapons and soldiers of the past decades were no longer enough.

They needed better.

—

David wanted to sit and do nothing for a few days, after hearing the news. But he had made a promise a day ago, a promise to help out the faithful Voodoo Boys take out their heretic brothers. A man is his word, afterall. Besides, if he manages to get this done fast enough, then that will probably alleviate some of Smasher's anger when he gets back.

…It probably won't do anything to help when he reads the casualties listing.

Katsuo's face, expressionless as his eyes slowly fill with realization…

Still, he had been expecting another series of quick-fire raids and assaults on positions. He had always been on the attack before, always being the one to act and force others to react.

He supposed it was about time that he was forced on the defensive.

He activated his sandevistan. He jumped over his cover and to another broken car, taking another dozen shots while in the air and killing another dozen attackers. He was out of shotgun ammo now. He threw his shotgun.

His sandevistan deactivated. He landed behind cover just as his shotgun crashed into the attacker's face. David stabbed him in the eye before he could recover and stole his assault rifle. Shots came at his position, David threw one of his pilfered grenades in the general direction and waited for his sandy to cool off.

The faithful had called him in emergency after only about four hours of sleep. The heretics were performing a direct two-prong assault, seemingly wanting to use their superior numbers to outright crush their former brothers before they could start taking too much damage from David's raiding. One prong was a physical assault with as many mercs as they had on hand, the other was a data-assault that was consuming currently all of the faithful inner circle's netrunners and Lucy's help to fight off.

Occasionally they sent an armored car or a chromed-out heavyweight their way. Becca took care of both, her ACPA carrying nearly a hundred reloads in a massive ammo backpack. She was stationed nearly a mile away, every now and again turning a massive target into blood and scrap.

David was on the flanks constantly. Hit and run at large groups, only ever striking within sandevistan time or when he absolutely had to. By jumping he could limit the amount of physical movement his body made in sandy time while still moving from point to point. He was going to have to get some jump-boosters to improve this, because it increased his sandy endurance by a huge margin.

He had already activated it eighty times in the last two hours. He was winded, but he could still go for two more if he needed to. Another thing he needed to thank Smasher for when he got back, who told him of the trick to improving sandy endurance was limiting the body's physical exertion. David had figured out the jump thing on his own, Smasher didn't do a whole bunch of jumping, he would break most everything he landed on if he did.

His sandy cooled down. He activated his sandevistan. He jumped to another point of cover, he shot the first target until it died, it seems he needs three bullets for each. He shot three for the next nine targets, running out of ammo on the tenth. He threw the gun at the tenth.

His sandy timed out. He landed near the tenth, he stabbed him with his knife. He stole the tenth's gun.

…aw, he hated submachine guns, they were fucking pitiful. He grabbed a second one from nine.

David had never been on the defense before, but it seemed a lot like an offense but one in which the enemies came to him instead. He found himself kinda enjoying the change of pace.

…wait a minute, wasn't the Militech division assault also a defense? How the hell did he forget about that? Thinking back on it, it wasn't very important, was it? David pondered that for a bit.

His sandy cooled down, David threw a grenade at a group, and activated it. He jumped for the other group coming for him. Two hours in, nearly six-hundred gonkfuckers dead by his count. How many mercs did the faithful say that the heretics had again?

…He was starting to get Smasher, this was downright therapeutic, no wonder the growly tin man liked doing it so much. He had it down to a series of automatic responses now. The enemy was this and they performed these actions, what do you do? It was almost like… running.

"Good, why?"

—

It was nearly an hour later that David got a message from Lucy. Her netrunning allies had fended off the attack, but were being attacked by an unknown force. Everyone now and again, a netrunner from both sides would suddenly disappear from the net-space. David had the sudden realization that his comms had been silent for nearly an hour now. They should have been filled with chatter from the allied mercs.

David finished off his flank, clearing it of all hostiles, and ran. He ran back to where the bulk of the fighting was supposed to take place. His comms still eerily silent.

He rounded a corner to see a massacre.

Every merc in the region directly in front of the tower was dead, it was a fresh graveyard that stretched for multiple city blocks. Literal piles of corpses that could be used as makeshift cover. David was suddenly overwhelmed with the reminder of just how many people had already died in a fight that had lasted no more than five total hours.

Why hadn't the heretics retreated when their losses grew too much? It made no sense.

The ramp into the fortress was propped up, and the entryway unbarred.

David ran in, and down through the halls. He ran down to their netrunning room. He heard voices inside.

He burst through the doorway.

It was another massacre.

Sixty faithful plugged into netrunning chairs, a hundred and twenty mercs to guard them.

All of them are corpses. The floor was now solid red. In the center of the room, he saw a group with gorilla masks and chrome arms. A big man in the center was directing them to loot the place, he had chrome arms, dark skin, and facial reconstructive surgery to look like an ape of some kind. David didn't know which kind, he doesn't know much about apes.

"Come on boys! Let's pack up all this loot and get back to tha gym! George Goode is feeling like a party tonight!" The large man said.

David looked around. He recognized a few bodies. A brief count got him to sixty. Ah, seems like none of them survived, huh.

The large man turned, eyes widening almost comically upon seeing him. He started to point and shout something. David activated his sandevistan.

Time slowed to a crawl, he started firing, not really caring where he hit so long as he did. Men and women in ape masks started falling. He fired until he was out of ammo. His sandevistan timed out.

George activated his sandevistan, and was suddenly in front of David. David flew back and crashed into the far wall. Ah, that was painful, what happened there? He looked up to see George there with his fist extended.

Ah, he had gotten punched. He pulled himself off the now cracked wall.

"I didnya have a fight with ya, but now that you've flatlined some of my troop I gotta turn you into hamburger. Understand, yeah?" The meat said. Lips pulled back in an aggravated smirk.

"You all die." David responded.

They activated their sandevistans. David rushed forwards in a punch, the meat did the same.

The meat staggered its motion about a half-moment before hitting David, dodging his punch and responding with a heavy uppercut that sent David back up the stairs to the right. It hurt, but his armor was enough for it.

Their sandevistans deactivated. The fucking meat started talking again as it walked up for him. He pushed himself up off the stairs.

"Ya see, we apes be smart. Taking out the VD boys head on? Talk about stupid man. Taking out the VD boys while they flatline eachother? Easiest shit in the world. Acting like an info-bro for both was enough to get em to start brawling."

His sandevistan cooled down. David activated his sandevistan again and jumped in a kick at the meat. The meat staggered again, sidestepping David's kick, grabbing the leg, and spinning him around to toss him further away from the other dead meats to be.

Their sandevistans deactivated, David crashed into a wall. It hurt, he ignored it.

The fucking meat kept gibbering.

"Now we apes are in a good spot, we can take all the shit that the VD boys were hoarding, and get big gains from the whole thing. A king like me needs to eat, ya see?"

"Shut up."

They activated their sandevistans. David rushed forwards again, The meat was about to stagger again, that gets predictable you gonkfucker. David stomped the ground and frontflipped over the oncoming punch. His axe-kick landed squarely on the meat's collarbone.

Their sandevistans deactivated. David heard something snap and grinned. He pushed off the meat to avoid the return blow.

He didn't wait for the sandevistan this time. David rushed forwards and avoided the stagger again, he lashed out in a vibrating kick that hurt his few remaining bones to perform. The meat did a double-stagger, dodging out of the way entirely. His kick hit the wall, the already crumbling wall exploded outwards, raining the street outside with rubble.

They activated their sandevistans. The meat lashed out with a straight punch, David blocked it with crossed arms. He flew back out into the street, and rolled with the impact.

Good, this place was full of guns, he could use those. Their sandevistans deactivated.

The meat walked through the dust of the shattered rubble and out into the gore-filled streets with him. The meat pulled out a cigar and lit it with a pocket lighter. David saw red again.

Their sandevistans activated. David grabbed the nearest gun he could and unloaded it at the meat. The meat raised one chrome arm and took the shots on it. Their sandevistans deactivated.

The meat kept gibbering.

"Pretty preem, am I right? These arms are orbital crystal shit, fucking damn near unbreakable it what they are. You could shoot me with all kinds of shit and I'd be able to smack it away."

The meat pulled the cigar out of its mouth and blew out smoke. The meat was grinning.

"Yep, things are looking up for the king of tha concrete jungle. Though, not sure what your problem is, not like you knew any of them. They just hired you, right?"

His problem was that he liked them. His problem was that he had already spent so many bullets and time helping them. His problem was that his friend's mother just died, just like his did in the past. His problem was that he was finally trying to help Smasher out, and some fucking meat came along to ruin all of them. His problem was that this meat's voice pissed him off.

"My problem is you."

They activated their sandevistans.

Behind George, a great many men and women in ape masks were loading items onto a ramshackle and armored bus.

—

The arena was hosting another tournament fight as usual. It was early in the morning, so not many people were in attendance or participating. It was going to get much more busy in about an hour or so.

An armored bus crashed into the entrance, a host of heavily armored soldiers poured out and opened fire. The audience started panicking and firing back. The cheapo security started firing back.

Armored buses crashed into concrete fences in two other areas in the Pacifica district, the temporary housing projects and the production facilities area. Both of which loaded men in heavy armor and carried heavy weapons.

They poured out and opened fire upon the Arasaka security agents in each area and the cheapo police that was assigned to them.

Corpses quickly began to pile up.

In the net, the shadow of a many-armed thing loomed over Pacifica, and code-tendrils began to lower down upon it.

David was quite good at killing people at this point. One year of semi-regular fighting, and two-months of dedicated instruction from perhaps the greatest soldier on the planet had turned him from a relatively average individual to a force to be reckoned with. He could, and has just now proven to, go through an army of hired mercenaries. His combination of speed, endurance, and firepower from wielding various looted guns allowed him to do that.

He could move at roughly ten times the speed of a normal person at will, his chrome limbs never grew tired, his chrome lungs drew vital air in vastly more efficient quantities, his chrome eyes could go on forever without needing to blink. Thickened Myomar, Reinforced Joints, EMP, and Microwave Shielding made his limbs just about as difficult to actually damage as they could be. Only made even more durable from his Arasaka-grade body armor and helmet providing full-body protection. This was in addition to an ICE of a grade they normally reserved for Adam fucking Smasher.

So long as he paid some amount of attention, no number of street-grade gangers could take him out without heavy firepower, such firepower that he would run away from rather than bother confronting. Indeed, the only opponents that he ever really had trouble with were Adam, Victoria, and…

The meat staggered again, dodging David's close-range shot. David turned with the momentum of the oversized shotgun to spin on his heel. His other foot crashed against the meat's torso and sent him back a half dozen feet. Unfortunately the meat countered this in time, and a rather painful back-handed fist crashed against David's helmet.

Their sandevistans deactivated.

…The meat in front of him. He guessed Victoria was right when they first fought. A sandevistan is rudimentary for those who fight at higher levels than street-tier. It's a damn-near requirement, separating those that are cannon fodder and those that are an actual threat. It was almost insulting how much trouble he was having.

"Damn, that's not bad at all. How old are ya kid?"

Shut up meat. David fired again, again being mostly blocked by those stupid armored arms.

"Me? I've been fightin and scrapin by for close to thirty years now. I started over in NUSA, rose up the ranks, then got bored of lickin boots."

David picked up a belt of grenades. Their sandevistans activated. He ran forwards, bracing his arm to full-auto the shogun against the fucker. Nine shots until he runs out huh? David fired seven, threw the belt on eight, and hit it with number nine.

Unfortunately, the meat had already picked up a car door and thrown it to collide with the belt. They collided and flew away from him. Their sandevistans deactivated.

The belt of grenades exploded somewhere to their sides.

"So I left, came over here 'ere, had all the chrome dey had on me cleaned out by a pally. Started small, started working up a nice little troop of me own."

David picked up another shotgun, and jumped towards the meat. A spray of blood and viscera from the carnage around them exploding out with his movement. He waited til he got close. He landed in front of him, glaring up at the meat's stupid expression.

They activated their sandevistans. David kicked towards the meat's legs, which the meat dodged backwards with a stagger-step. The meat did a twisted step forwards and punched down. David took the hit, and in return got a meatshot on the fuckers exposed torso.

Their sandevistans deactivated. David's helmet held up, but he bounced off the blood-covered streets from the force of the blow. They both jumped backwards, disoriented.

"Now I know ya think me and me troop are all dumbshits. Maybe dat's a little true. But that's nice for us, cause if no one takes us serious-like, we can get away with all sorts of shit. It's why I chose the name Pavement Apes after all."

A car horn sounded off, and the meat grinned with a cigar still in mouth. David turned slightly to see a ramshackle bus, filled to the brim with loot and gangers with guns. Enough heavy and fast guns pointed at him that he needed to take cover.

If he took cover, they would get away.

"Get away with all sort ah shit, shit like flatlinin' a buncha bigshot gangs and makin a clean getaway. All cause some gonk came up and thought we was slow."

The meat gave a smug chuckle.

"The king of the concrete jungle is many things, slow aint one of them."

David's rage warred with the training Adam gave him. If he moved for cover, he would live, but these fuckers would get away. He didn't want that to happen, but if he died then he wouldn't go back to Lucy. They were waiting for him to move, they knew the situation they were in.

Either he moved for cover, or they filled him with lead. The threat alone was enough to halt his movements. They also knew he was fast enough to dodge if they started shooting. A stalemate that had one outcome. They get away.

His fist clenched as George Goode waited for a response, before shrugging and almost turning to walk away. David burned the fucker into his mind. He would kill him.

…Wait, he had allies. He sent his coordinates to Rebecca. He wanted to punch himself for forgetting that he had sniper support on demand.

They were cut off from their thoughts at the sound of heavy footsteps stomping through the viscera-coated streets.

A repeating sound of metal on wet concrete.

From their flanks slowly stomped a seven foot figure. A wide-brim helmet, a skull-face chrome mask, a black thing of fabric that hung from the helmet and covered its lower jaw. A vest of what looked to be ballistic armor that revealed to be a normal vest covered completely over in grenades strapped to its front. Another bandolier of grenades hanging from shoulder to opposite-side waist.

A navy-blue longcoat that cut off at the sleeves. Two chrome arms carrying grenade launchers that were belt fed by an ammo backpack. Two chrome legs, the ends of which were stylized to look like boots.

A malevolent set of teal-green optics glowing in the shade of its helmet. A horrid voice echoing from behind its scarf.

"Pardon me meats, would one of ye happen to be named David Martinez?"

David didn't react, but George Goode gave an exaggerated back and forth look between the two of them. The new threat tilted it's head at that.

"Ah, good. I've business with yer captain, but as he's away I'll have to take it up with ye."

George gave an exaggerated chuckle, put his hands up, and began to walk away.

"Ah, we'll me and me troop will let you two get on with dat. We got's loot to tuck aways."

The new attacker chuckled at that. It was not a nice chuckle.

"Ah, sorry bout that meat, but it's just a tad amusing is all."

George stopped at that, dumb facade hiding a cunning and catious gleam in his eye.

"Oh, what's that?"

"Ye think I'll leave witnesses."

With that the attacker opened fire upon the bus and at George, revealing that its grenade launchers were, in fact, fully automatic.

David and George activated their sandevistans. They jumped away as fast as they could, getting behind cover. The grenades landed all over the streets and on the side of the bus, beginning to burst on impact.

Their sandevistans deactivated. The entire area turned into blinding white and waves of gore.

…

It took a moment before David could see straight again from that initial volley.

He pushed himself up slowly, body completely drenched in the blood and viscera of the surroundings. His armor was pocketed with fragments of metal and stone that impacted him even through the broken car he hid behind.

Before, the area was filled with bodies and the ground was covered in spilled blood.

Now, the area was empty of bodies, empty of rubble and fallen weapons. All that was left was a shallow indention in the road, the destroyed husk of a bus, and a pool of chunky red.

He heard a noise to his side, and looked over.

George pushed himself up as well, and looked at the scene with a blank expression. All hints of humor gone.

To the other side of the lake of gore, the attacker stood.

"You killed my men, all of them." George spoke, dumb voice and slang having disappeared from his voice. All that was left was cold steely rage.

"Aye, this is supposing to be a covert sort of deed. Can't be having meat go about spreading word."

"...David Martinez, right? Forgive me if I put our brawl on hold. I need to kill a motherfucker." George's voice was calm and smooth.

"Alright, I'll flatline you after, I don't mind that." Now he wasn't going to get away, David could wait. If he died to this new guy, then that's fine by him too.

The attacker chuckled.

"Well, If ye think yer hard enough, meat."

"First," George stepped into the gore-pond, and pointed a finger. "Your name, I want to carve in your skull to make a better trophy."

The attacker laughed uproariously at that. It took a moment to settle down, eventually breaking into chuckles and replying. George was completely still and silent while he waited.

"Heh, nice guts ye have, meat. I'll enjoy ripping em out. My name right?"

The attacker dropped the grenade launchers and the ammo-backpack detached from its shoulders, along with it came the vest of grenades which revealed to be a sort of metal plating on its back. The now-revealed torso was revealed to be entirely metal.

"The two of ya are fast enough for the 'nades to be pointless."

The attacker stepped into the gore pit as well.

"I be Reverberating Infamy of Blackbeard 21, Grandmaster of the Ordo Panzer, Bearer of the word Pressure."

—

Shock and awe is a method of warfare typically characterized by a sudden and full-force attack. By utilizing enough force at the unprepared defenses of a given location, it was possible that the attackers manage to overwhelm any resistance before appropriate heavy weapons can be leveraged against them. This was the tactic utilized by the Pacifica attackers, the same tactic they used to perform a direct assault against one of the most fortified places in North America, Arasaka Tower just a few days prior.

In three separate locations, armored buses filled with heavy infantry crashed into defensive barricades, and immediately began firing upon their respective targets. The Pacifica construction site, the Pacifica temporary apartments, and the Pacifica "Smashzone". They were armed in relatively heavy ceramic armors, wielded assault rifles, and carried a bandolier of grenades each.

Each one was a professional soldier who knew their role and capabilities. Each one was a veteran of several conflicts, and was equipped in military-standard or better. There were roughly fifty of them per site of conflict, and the defenses were not prepared for them.

There were two things that were different this time, however.

The type of violence experienced by Arasaka Tower employees and Pacifica natives were entirely different. Arasaka Tower employees had to worry about occasional attacks, to be sure, but most didn't try to damage Arasaka property at the tower itself. That and the in-house violence was more one of backstabbing and trickery and less open bullet-exchange.

Pacifica natives were used to an entirely different type of conflict. The type of conflict in which a dozen men shoot each other over a half-used drug needle. As a general rule, each and every one of them had to prioritize combat capability over all other concerns in order to stay alive to adulthood. Some of them followed the path of synthesis, in which they made themselves very useful to someone who was focused on surviving fights, but by large part each man was out for themselves.

There was not a single adult who lived in Pacifica who didn't have a gun and a bit of combat chrome. There was not a single adult in Pacifica who hadn't killed at least one other human before. The majority of which have killed at least a dozen times over.

The citizens of Pacifica had been used to starving and scrapping by for survival for their entire lives at this point. All of a sudden, they were given food, water, shelter, and things to do with their now freed schedule. Every single one of them now benefiting from the improvements had a very good reason to make sure it stuck around. Give a man with nothing paradise and he'll fight to the death to keep it.

When the armored bus rammed into the exterior concrete fence of the Pacifica apartments, and many armored men poured out to start firing at every target within line of sight, they had a distinctly different reaction to sudden physical violence than Arasaka Tower employees had.

All of a sudden, all twenty-seven thousand residents of new Pacifica had their new paradise threatened by an outside force of perhaps fifty men. All twenty-seven thousand residents that had a lifetime of sudden gang-shootouts and street violence. All twenty-seven thousand residents that as a rule carried at least a handgun, and often far more than that.

A single modern grade assault rifle is far superior to a street-grade rifle. It is not superior to more than a thousand street-grade rifles.

The men that poured out of the buses were all clad in gray, drab, military equipment. They were vastly different looking from both the black-clad Arasaka security in the region, and the colorful and brightly-dressed deputy forces. They were very easy to identify as 'the enemy' by the residents of Pacifica who had enjoyed a haven of shelter, food, water, and relative peace for two months.

The Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 was perhaps the most iconic example of Urban Warfare in the twentieth century, and would be used as an example of the difficulties of taking a city filled to the brim with zealous defenders. Urban Warfare as it is relies primarily on most of the populace of a city not fighting back, people instead choosing flight to fight. In Pacifica, flight was a good way to starve to death the next day.

When the attackers assaulted the perimeter of the Pacifica apartments, they were immediately set upon with return fire. Within one minute of their attack, runners from the front had started moving up and down the streets shouting to everyone within hearing range of 'fucking gonks here to take our shit!', provoking most residents with at least small amounts of body armor and guns to pick them up and set out to flatline them. Within ten minutes of the attack, the runners from the frontline had reached the ends of the Pacifica apartments, and everyone in the area with the gumption was on their way to the frontlines with whatever guns they could bring.

Each apartment block had guns sticking out of every window, every dumpster and policing vehicle was turned into improvised cover, every alleyway filled with another group of natives with the biggest street-guns they could carry with them. All of which pointed squarely at the squad of fifty elite soldiers wherever they moved.

Within thirty minutes of the first guns being fired, a few thousand residents of New Pacifica were dead or being treated by the few ripperdocs in the region, and all the attackers had been drowned in bodies and returned fire. There was no living attacker at that point.

If given the option between death and abandoning their new homes, most residents of new Pacifica chose to go out murdering the fuckers that tried to take it from them. Spite was a very core human emotion after all. That was not to say that ALL residents of new Pacifica decided fight over flight, only about a third of them did in all. That still gave the defenders roughly nine-thousand street-raised comber-chrome carrying guns against perhaps fifty attackers. This was in addition to the deputized policing force, and the Arasaka security trainees.

Even as much of their chrome and electronics began suddenly turning off, their combat effectiveness was only slightly reduced overall. The residents of the streets were less reliant on the wonders of the modern age than those that live in corporate towers. They had their eyes turned off and often decided to just keep shooting in the same general direction they were, or handing off their guns to someone who could still see.

Then the residents heard the gunshots at the arena and the new construction sites. In the past, villages would form crowds of pitchforks and torches to kill witches and the like. In the modern day, the residents of Pacifica formed a tidal wave of guns and spite.

This was to say nothing of the numerous gang factions that currently had operations within and investment into the "Smashzone". Chief among these factions were the Animals, who had taken to the official and sanctioned ring of brutal melee combat like young men meeting their one true love.

It was estimated that the Animals were a gang of perhaps three-thousand, all of which abused body-enhancing drugs on the daily, all of which carried brutal melee weapons and had enough adrenaline in their systems to outright ignore non-fatal wounds until after a fight was over.

There were perhaps two-thousand gang members from all gangs in the city that made the arena a semi-regular home, mostly for the eddies and the open violence in the ring. Half of those gang members, a full one thousand, were part of the Animals, who had dominated the arena-guard jobs offered by Victoria Armstrong in exchange for discounted tickets and a modest wage. In a very real way, the Animals finally had a permanent turf and job. Their new territory was the arena, their new job was keeping it safe, and keeping everyone near it nice and polite, and they loved it.

Needless to say, while most gang members got out of the way of gunfire and booked it back to their home turfs, the thousand-some Animals charged the fifty attackers like the norse berserkers of old, brandishing sledgehammers and pumped with a nearly lethal cocktail of combat drugs of their own designs. Coming from every hall and room in the arena that they could, yelling profanities and curses as they did.

There was only so much that military-grade assault rifles backed up by a godlike netrunner could do against a vastly higher number of hammer-wielding opponents that didn't rely on chrome for combat.

This is nothing to say of the construction site dedicated to the new production facilities, which held the greatest presence of new Arasaka guards who came in within the twelve-hour period between the Tower being attacked and the attackers trying again in Pacifica. All of which immediately went to work in guarding the only unguarded Arasaka employees in the area, the construction crew. Of the potential three-thousand field agents that were assigned to live within the remaining apartments nearest to the construction, perhaps only fifteen-hundred had arrived by that time. Of those fifteen-hundred, perhaps only seven-hundred and fifty were currently guarding the area for lack of better things to do until all of them arrived.

Needless to say, when fifty attackers in a bus started attacking the area, they were met with seven-hundred and fifty bored Arasaka field agents who were looking forward to violence. Quite a few of them relied upon chrome implants for higher combat capabilities, but they also carried quite a bit better guns and armor than most everyone else in the entirety of new Pacifica.

All they had to do was endure for thirty minutes before a wave of angry citizens washed over the attackers from their flanks. The casualties were horrendous, but the attackers were all dead.

Within forty-five minutes of the three-pronged attack on new Pacifica, all the attackers were dead, more than four-thousand five hundred defenders were dead, and about twenty percent of the relevant infrastructure was damaged beyond repair. It took the policing force quite a bit to calm down the residents afterwards.

All in all, the internal security experts would say that the attackers made a tactical fucking boo-boo, and drinks were passed around. Indeed, even while that occurred Assault-agent DAVID M. was busy with the complete wiping out of no less than two gangs and combating the enemy commander unit. While heavily injured in the end (in requiring extensive surgery to stabilize), the overall outcome of the fighting was deemed 'an overwhelming success for Arasaka'.