The New Man: Adam Smasher Si

by Crossposted

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

4. Upload 04

Blackbeard wasn't quite seven feet tall, David realized. He was about as tall as Kiwi was, which made him about six foot six inches, with a little extra for his weird hat-helmet. This of course meant he was a little taller than George, who was a solid two or three inches less. He loomed in the middle of the gore-hole, legs drenched in red and coat-edges dipping into it at their tips. His skull-faceplate shaded over and barely distinguishable in the dim morning light.

George had an exaggerated swagger and stutter about him before, not anymore. Each motion he made now was a practiced, perfectly spaced movement. There was no hint of mocking humor, only controlled rage. David thought the fucker only deserved it, he had made him waste all that effort on the Voodoo Boys.

So David stood on the sides of the gore-pond, perfectly still so that he could recover a bit of stamina, and readied himself to watch and observe. Every scrap of information might be useful here, if he needed to fight either of them afterwards, so he needed to watch closely. He still had his backup weapons, but somehow he doubted that a pistol and knife was going to help him against someone with as much chrome as he saw in front of him.

Eventually, the two squaring off burst into movement. Everyone activated their sandevistans.

Adam had explained this to David once, the principle of 'boosterware chicken'. No one wanted to be unable to activate their own sandevistan while an enemy had theirs active. So each and every sandevistan-involved combat was a matter of waiting for the other individual to attack and activating your sandy right after if possible. That way you might be able to get an extra action off while the enemy is unable to act. Even a single shot or stab might be the difference between victory and defeat, so being able to get a hit in while the opponent can't move to counter you is incredibly good.

That was the core essence of combat, compounding and building up as many possible advantages as possible in order to attain victory. Preferably victory at as little cost as possible, but any victory is better than no victory. Adam went the method of sheer durability, covered in incredibly heavy armor and with a fully-reinforced frame, relying on his sandevistan for speed when he needed it.

A tank on legs that can carry vehicle-grade weapons and occasionally move faster than an organic eye can react to. There wasn't anything short of another fullborg or a squad of armored trucks or a tank that could actually threaten him because of this combination of advantages. David himself couldn't get nearly as much armor, so he relied more on speed. Chrome limbs, the best armor that he could get without slowing him down, and a sandevistan. Unless he wasn't paying attention, he really couldn't be hit by an average gonk, and even elite troops would have a hard time putting a bead on him. A combination of speed, stealth tactics, and top-tier shotgun were his combination of advantages that let him keep up with Adam. He couldn't do what Adam did, but Adam couldn't pull off David's own niche either, he was too big and heavy.

David considered himself pretty good at gaging the skill levels of his enemies at this point, Adam had beat that into his head during training. So when George rushed Blackbeard, David could tell that he had been holding back against him. He could also tell that it wasn't going to be enough when Blackbeard effortlessly countered, sweep George's legs out from under him, and palm-struck his chest to send him flying back into the gore.

David had a sinking feeling in his stomach. He recognized that move, Adam had used it on him once or twice. Panzerfaust, the fighting style that let Adam rip other borgs apart nearly effortlessly, this guy knew it too.

In that exchange, Blackbeard reminded David of Adam when Adam decided to have fun against gangers. George wasn't an average ganger, he was a step above, and Blackbeard was able to muster the same effortless dominance in one exchange.

Blackbeard was playing with them, and David could tell that he was skilled enough to afford doing so.

Their sandevistans deactivated. George rolled through the gore, before pushing himself back up quickly, an ugly bruise quickly starting to form on his chest. He glared at Blackbeard, and slowly made his way forwards again, arms up in defensive posture.

David knew the outcome of this fight already. George was going to be torn the fuck apart, and then David would be too if he stuck around.

But this guy was looking for him specifically, and was at least on Adam's level. He would tear anyone else apart. David's mind flashed with images of everyone waiting for him back at the compound. His fist clenched, he couldn't allow Blackbeard anywhere near them, they would die in a fucking instant and it would be his fault. He had to kill the fucker right here and right now. But how?

George charged again. All three activated their sandevistans. David's optics drank in as much information as he could. George had a high-grade sandy, but was still noticeably slower than Blackbeard. George was almost as fast as David was, which meant that Blackbeard's sandy was fucking ridiculous bullshit corpo-tech to be that much better. George rushed forwards in a feint, waiting for a counterattack, before dropping down in a stagger and trying to uppercut. An uppercut that Blackbeard countered with an elbow-block. George's orbital crystal fingers had their chrome covering shatter.

Their sandevistans deactivated. Blackbeard delivered a spin-kick on George's shoulder. George flew back and rolled through the gore again. He got up a bit slower, the chrome on his upper arm cracked now. He rolled his shoulders and got back into a stance, slowly approaching Blackbeard again.

David grit his teeth, damnit even if he helped the meat out they would still lose here. Adam could kick his ass even with both arms missing, Blackbeard could do the same no doubt. This was such bullshit, some fucker comes out of nowhere, blows up everything in a fucking 20 meter radius, and then starts stomping the meat that…

…blows up everything in a 20 meter radius.

David glanced over to his left. The chain-grenade launchers were still there, as was the vest of grenades. He glanced back to see Blackbeard focused on taunting George.

"Come on now, meat? Didnja say ye were gonna take me skull? Having troubles with that goal?"

Battle was a matter of building up as many advantages as one possibly could, and leveraging them to their fullest effect. If Adam was here, that would be full-on direct confrontation, wading forwards unstoppably before smashing the shit out of whatever gonk tried to take a shot at him. David's advantages were speed, stealth tactics, and a hard-hitting gun.

Would you look at that? His enemy has just dropped a very hard-hitting gun right over there.

He had to be careful about this, because Blackbeard was far faster than he was…

If they activated their sandevistans at the same time that was. But if David activated his right after Blackbeard and George activated theirs? He would have multiple seconds of movement to work off of each time. He would still have to move carefully during that time, to make sure he wasn't noticed before it was too late. It would take at least three activations. Two to get over there, and one more to get the thing ready to fire to make sure the gore-pit turned into a red well instead.

George and Blackbeard activated their sandevistans, David resisted every urge to do the same, and suddenly George was sent flying back again, another arm now cracked as well, Blackbeard raising his arms for a taunt.

David activated his sandevistan, and moved around the edge of the pit. He used every fucking trick of avoiding notice that he could during this time, he couldn't afford to let this fucker survive.

He was halfway there, close enough to get over there in one more activation, far enough to avoid immediate suspicion if Blackbeard glanced over in the fight. He kept his furious glare on his face, he had to sell the act of putting his full attention on the fight. His sandevistan deactivated, Blackbeard continued his taunt.

"Don't go thinking about running away now either, my temporary crew is making sure the hornets nest is riled up right now, ye'll be shot on sight. Ye can't run from Blackbeard."

George didn't react beyond getting up again, and slowly approaching Blackbeard. David had to give the meat credit, he was certainly able to take a hit.

"You think you're special just because you're scrappy?"

George slowly got within range. They activated their sandevistans, David resisted. Suddenly George was back in the pit again, and David activated his own sandy. As he made his way closer to the grenade launcher, he took stock of the fight as it was.

He was amazed to find Blackbeard's scarf firmly clenched in the grip of George's hand. George's face had been beaten quite a bit, nose broken and fresh blood spilling, but the scarf was still in his hand. David looked over to Blackbeard.

Blackbeard didn't have a lower jaw, was the first thing he noticed. Indeed, the entire front-half of his neck region was dominated by some sort of electronic device that connected down to his upper torso. His torso was dominated by what looked vaguely like a speaker system on his upper-pectorals, which is what the device on his neck was wired into.

His upper back had some sort of additional device, attached to the nape of his neck with two hardened 'ears' coming off and extended upwards. David didn't recognize what it was off the top of his head, but the 'ears' looked familiar.

David was within reach of the grenade launcher now. One more activation and he could pick it up and start firing, and with Blackbeard just using his sandy right before, he would be unable to dodge. He could even hit the meat with it at the same time. His victory was fucking assured at this point, provided everyone just keep doing what they have been.

Blackbeard growled out mechanically, hand reaching for his face and mimicking a scratch at the jawline.

"Who the fuck takes a man's beard? You fucking meat-monkey, I'm going to get my time's worth outta killing you."

George got up again, and tied the scarf around his upper arm. He glared at Blackbeard, and slowly approached again, fists raised defensively. His left eye was beginning to swell up and black his vision there. His legs were unsteady, his arms shaking, and servo's whirring. His glare was rock solid.

He slowly approached Blackbeard again. They were right about to have another clash.

At that point, Rebecca opens comms with him. Blackbeard suddenly glanced backwards.

[David, I can see your position.]

Blackbeard moved.

David activated his sandevistan, and dodged backwards as the body of George flew through the space he was just at. He then kept moving as a space opened up on Blackbeard's arm and started firing micro-missiles at him. Six until Blackbeard ran out. David was now right where he fucking started again. Their sandevistans timed out.

George crashed against the far wall, the concrete building cracking through with his impact. He slumped to the ground, not moving, a streak of blood now staining the wall. The six missiles kept flying before colliding with whatever was in the distance and exploding. Blackbeard's teal optics glared right at him.

David's plan had just failed, seemingly due to luck. This was a distinctly poor situation.

"Clever of ye, Mr. Martinez, ye almost pulled a fast one on ol' Blackbeard. Course, now that I know yer a clever little rat, I won't be playin about no more."

"I'm here to kill ye, and that's what I'll do. Shame that damn fool Roland just had to blow our fucking cover, but the situation is still salvageable-like."

"Just have to make sure you die, and that no one knows that I was here."

David grunted, and replied both verbally and on the comms.

"Will you shut up, I'm not about to die to some jawless gonk."

[I'll try to keep him talking, see if you can hit him.]

David was relying on Blackbeard doing exactly what he had been doing, and taunting him. To his hidden glee, Blackbeard did exactly that.

"It's always fun to hear the last words of meat-rat, why don'tcha step into the pit? 'Less of course yer scared of this 'jawless gonk'."

David did exactly that, raising his arms in a defensive posture and slowly approaching the completely still Blackbeard. Blackbeard tilted his head at him.

"You've only been at this, what, two months boy? Not half bad stance there, shame I gott-"

At this point, Rebecca fired a shot that moved faster than sound. A round the size of a 'mini' sized soda can, shot from a gun too big for a person to even use without being a full borg or wearing an ACPA.

And the fucker sidestepped it.

The round hit the far end of the gore-pit, creating a temporary wave of blood and viscera that washed over them both. The sound of the round followed shortly after, air roaring in pain at the bullet. A long moment passed, before Blackbeard started chuckling, eventually escalating into a full-blown laugh.

"Did ye really think that would work, rat-meat? I'm fucking Blackbeard, I've been fighting since before yer parents were born. A sniper isn't about to fucking hit me."

Goddamn it, how the fuck did he suddenly glance back earlier, the set up was perfect! It was like he heard Rebecca over the com…

…The ears on the device on his back. David remembered what they reminded him of. The ears on Rebecca's comms array on her ACPA's head. That was a high-grade comms device on his back.

Blackbeard reacted like he heard Rebecca because he did. He was listening in on the comms around him.

Motherfucker. Rebecca called over the comms again.

[How the fuck did he dodge? David, see if you can disable a leg.]

David had to take out that comms device, but he couldn't let Blackbeard know that he knew that Blackbeard could hear them. Quickly, he formed a plan. He replied to Rebecca knowing full well that Blackbeard could hear them.

[I'll feint and rush his grenades, I'll see if I can blow him up enough to give you a clean shot.]

[Got it, shot readied.]

Alright, fucker, let's see how you deal with this. They activated their sandevistans, David rushed forwards, arms raised to do a punch. Right before he reached Blackbeard he crouched and jumped to his left.

Right for the grenades.

Below him, right before he reached the grenades, Blackbeard rushed in and waited to hit him as he came down. David readied himself. Shame Blackbeard, you didn't realize this was a double-bluff, try again next time.

Blackbeard's clawed hand reached for his face, David tilted his head, and used the fist to turn his entire body around it. His heel-kick crashed against the comms device on Blackbeard's upper back. The clawed thumb approached his left eye.

Their sandevistans deactivated. David flew backwards, face suddenly full of pain. He crashed into the gore and rolled for a bit. He waited a bit for the world to stop spinning, before remembering that he was in a fight and pushing himself up.

He couldn't see out of his left eye. It was screaming at him. He disabled the pain in that optic. It was no longer screaming at him. The rest of his face was. He disabled pain there too.

He looked over to see Blackbeard, one hand on the nape of his neck, the other hand drenched in red. Then again, everything in the area was drenched in red at about this point.

"Clever little rat-meat. Ye realized real fucking fast that I was listening in. I'll remember you for that."

David sent a message to Rebecca.

[He was listening in on our comms, be ready to hit him as soon as his sandy times out. He'll be right in front of my current position.]

David ignored whatever she replied back with, and pulled out his pistol, much to Blackbeard's immediate amusement. David ignored whatever he replied back with, and activated his sandevistan, quickly followed by Blackbeard. He was giving Blackbeard one free shot on him after a useless attack, he wouldn't be able to resist the chance to gloat about the mistake.

David started firing his pistol, all the bullets of which Blackbeard avoided as he approached. David took a purposefully unsteady step back, letting his chrome leg partially give out before stabilizing. Yeah that's right fucker, he was real hurt after all the fighting today, he was vulnerable right now.

His sandevistan timed out. David was suddenly flying back, chest full of pain. He crashed against the edge of the gore pit, and struggled to breathe. It was entirely possible that Blackbeard would have killed him right then, but…

Blackbeard suddenly lost a forearm as Rebecca's bullet tore right fucking though it.

…Rebecca's bullet would have hit regardless.

Blackbeard screamed in rage, echoed by the screaming air and waves of gore. It was one of the best things David had ever heard. Cocky bastard, not so smart when you fuck up like that, huh?

David got up, unsteady for real this time, and got into another stance as Blackbeard ranted hatefully. He didn't really care what he was saying though.

David wasn't about to let this monster get his family. He would make sure of that.

There was only three ways for Blackbeard to attack him now. So David readied his stance to block all but one of them. He was furious right now, not thinking straight, and under the impression that David was a rookie that was in way over his head. Blackbeard activated his sandevistan, David waited a brief moment before activating his own.

All of those things were true, so when Blackbeard rushed him with the only move David wasn't ready to block, David couldn't help but grin triumphantly. David moved at just the right time to parry the move he predicted, and Blackbeard's sandevistan wore out. David's arm cracked right through from merely parrying the guy, the pain was immense, so he turned that off.

David had only about a single thing he could do before his own Sandevistan wore off. So he got behind Blackbeard and grappled him.

His sandevistan wore off, David's arms were locked around Blackbeard's shoulders and his legs were locked around Blackbeard's own, forcing both of them to kneel in the gore-pit.

Blackbeard realized what David was doing, and began to struggle. He was stronger than David, but it wasn't strength that mattered in a proper grapple, it was leverage. David sent a message.

[Take the shot!]

[But… I'll hit you too!]

[TAKE THE FUCKING SHOT!]

Blackbeard stilled and began to sing.

"What do we do with a drunken sailor?"

Blackbeard's frame began to vibrate. Rebecca still hadn't fired. Blackbeard continued to sing.

"What do we do with a drunken sailor?"

Blackbeard's voice began to distort, the vibrations worsened. David's entire body began to hurt. Rebecca still hadn't fired.

"What do we do with a drunken sailor?"

Blackbeard's form became blurry and indistinct from how hard he was vibrating. David's head began to pound. Rebecca still hadn't fired. It was getting hard to hold on, even though all his pain should be disabled. Blackbeard screamed out the next verse.

"EARLY IN THE MORNING?!"

The pain became too much. His grip loosened. Blackbeard broke free and backhanded him.

David flew through the air, he crashed into the gore again. Rebecca took the shot. Blackbeard moved out of the way.

He couldn't move, his limbs refused to respond. His mouth was full of liquid, he did his best to spit it out. He tried to lean up at the very least.

He barely succeeded.

Blackbeard was walking over now. One heavy footstep at a time. His entire form was indecipherable, indistinct and unrecognizable save for a vaguest black-blue silhouette.

"Weigh, heigh, and hope he rises."

The gore-pit was filled with waves, all of them originating from his footsteps. He felt more and more pain as Blackbeard approached, like a boxer using his organs as a punching bag.

Ah… He was going to die here, wasn't he?

…That was fucking infuriating.

David forced himself up more, he turned off pain in every fucking chrome part he could.

Blackbeard kept walking for him. David resolved to taunt the fucker, but his mouth wasn't cooperating with him.

Rebecca took another shot, Blackbeard activated his sandevistan to dodge.

"Weigh, heigh, and hope he rises."

The nature of fights involving a sandevistan almost always falls down to boosterware chicken. That's what Adam had taught him. Unfortunately he couldn't take advantage of Blackbeard dodging like that, his body too damaged to move properly.

He was just as surprised as everyone else, when George suddenly had Blackbeard in a grapple and facing towards where Rebecca was shooting from. Blackbeard thrashed just the same, and kept singing. George's body fell apart with every syllable, even more pronounced from his previous damage.

"WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!? I'M THE KING OF THE CONCRETE JUNGLE! YOU DON'T FUCK WITH GEORGE GOODE!"

Blackbeard sang another verse, George's skin split open, his face started to bleed from every pore, and his chrome started to give out a metallic scream.

"HEY SNIPER! TAKE THE FUCKING SHOT!"

A second passed, before a hole tore it's way through both of them.

They fell into the gore pit.

It was silent.

…

David thought back to all the people who died in the past two days. He thought back to the faithful, who he was just beginning to warm up to.

…

It is what it is.

…

He wanted to go to bed now.

David's last sight was a Trauma Team carrier descending next to the gore-pit.

The new chapter release schedule is every OTHER day now, so expect their to be no new chapter tomorrow, but one should be up two days from now.

Jugemu Jun was a President of the Arasaka Corporation, acting on behalf of Arasaka Saburo to manage one of its various branch offices. He was responsible for the maintenance and development of Arasaka influence in Night City, and for no less than forty-four years he had been successful. He was proud of his duty and his abilities, who wouldn't be?

In front of him were the various projects that were brought before him. Their success or failure was now up to him, and if he chose to fund one over the others. They had been assembled by the various departments under him, and then forwarded for him to pass judgment upon. The information was more raw than he was used to, but the recent attack on Arasaka Tower has rendered his secretary a fine red mass of biological matter, so he had no one trustworthy to sort through his data for the next few years. It was annoying, but he was prepared to deal with it, it was a small price to pay.

The first project was to provide additional funding for the Arasaka development in Pacifica. If given enough wealth then in a mere few years it could grow to be more influential than the existing Arasaka holdings in NC, and thus an excellent staging HQ for future operations. He dismissed it immediately, making note of who proposed it and adding them to his list. It would not do to give the gaijin any more power than he already has.

The second project proposal was to reallocate wealth now freed up from supplying their now freed-up field operatives to increase reconstruction and repair of the tower. The operatives who seemed more loyal and trustworthy would be assigned to fill in the gaps in their security and train up the next batch while the less useful or less dedicated would be assigned to act as security for the Pacifica development.

He considered this for a moment. It would be granting more power to another party within NC, but it would be to a provisional ally and the power provided would be risky at best. He approved the proposal. It would take no particular budget to perform, the more loyal operatives can be used to fill ranks and repair security, and the more risky operatives can be discarded. It was a good proposal. He memorized the name of the executive who proposed it, and made a note to give them a minor pay raise.

The third proposal came from the private military research branch underneath the tower. They took minimal damage during the attack, which was excellent and exactly what he was hoping for. Attached to the proposal was the current results of project YOKAI. He scanned through it as he thought back to the meeting in which it was originally proposed by Mr. Hijikata. A shame that he was also rendered non-functional during the attack, he was a smart man, very useful in projects related to his specialty.

He didn't know anything about his replacement yet. He made a note to check his profile during his lunch break.

The scientists working on YOKAI have managed to reduce the test subject expiration rate by another 0.5 percent, if this trend continued they would reduce it by about 2 percent per year. In a mere five years the subject survival rate would already double. That was very good progress, he immediately approved for the additional funding for acquiring test subjects. They would have to be armed with stealth technology this time.

Project YOKAI required high neuroplasticity for success, and it was vital that it was kept a secret from as many as possible until it was ready to be used on a large scale. Currently only he himself, the scientists involved, and Arasaka Saburo himself knew of it, and he was determined to keep it that way.

Hmm, perhaps they can negotiate with local maternity wards? The disappearances can be concealed by having the medical professionals claim SIDS. Ah, but then they would have to be silenced as well. He attached a file to be sent to the stealth team that they were to simply be cautious and quick. He did not need to explain the price for failure, they already knew it well.

It was rather expensive to budget for this, but it was absolutely nothing compared to the monstrous amount of wealth flowing into the Pacifica development or the CS2. He grit his teeth at the sheer waste caused seemingly by Arasaka Saburo's flight of fancy. There was nothing in Pacifica besides trash and filth, a money sink of colossal scale if he had ever seen one. To say nothing of the CS2, the first model was absolute garbage and it was good. He had been hoping by indulging Hijikata's disdain for the affair by letting that abomination to warfare be made would cause interest in the idea to die out.

Then subject Martinez had to show up, and the CS1 proved enormously effective even with its nonsensical design features. The CS2 was even worse, taking up more funding to develop by an order of magnitude. War was meant to be fought if no deal could be made, if no advantage was to be had in any other recourse. War was expensive and damaged many resources, it was for that reason that Jun described himself a pacifist. War was only useful for conveniently dealing with excess war-stock that held over from conflicts decades ago. It was meant to be fought between men with guns in tanks and planes and boats, where all factors that determined victory were solely in the hands of the respective industries of each participant.

It was not meant to be decided by the actions of singular individuals, that would lead to a disastrously chaotic world. The attack on the France meeting proved that beyond a shadow of doubt. Lives cannot be held in the hands of singular brutes who knew nothing but violence, that was beyond question.

If he had any say in the whole affair, both such projects would be shut down and their funding allocated to more profitable ventures. Unfortunately, they were both being handled by the Main branch of Arasaka Corporation in Japan. He had no say in the projects that were handled there, all he could do was watch as millions poured down two sinkholes caused by his city. He almost popped a vein from guilt, it was downright shameful.

It was fortunate that the support levers and attachments to Arasaka Tower proper held by assault-asset Smasher were rendered non-functional in the attack, even if that took a little uncharacteristic interference on his part. With his primary hooks cut off, Jun could begin making sure that Arasaka Tower NC could function without his influence and occasional destruction of company property. The bodies were always annoying to dispose of, and the rendering of company employees non-functional for reasons as nebulous as 'he pissed me off' was unacceptable.

No, now Jun could begin to slowly liberate his city from the tyrant jaws of Arasaka Saburo's favorite rabid dog. Thereafter, he could finally focus on Night City's development properly.

—

Brutus Cunningham, Elite ACPA pilot of Militech's finest, took a long drink of the shit-water coffee they had in the office. He was in the room with two of his least favorite people, his CO and his fellow Elite.

He didn't like all the strict 'regulations' shit that his CO tried to push on him. He got the job done, and he got it done with more than enough time to spare, each and every time. No, why the fuck would he care about property damage or civilian casualties, he had killed the target, didn't he? Brutus was more of a 'do your own thing' kinda man, and it fucking worked. He was the best damn Infantry unit Militech had, no matter what the prettyboy bastard to his right's records said.

Regulus Law (god damn what a horrid name) was a shit-talking dumbass who was high on his own shits. Twink probably though the sun shined out his ass too, it would be right up his fucking alley. He took another drink of the coffee, fuck, he wished it was a beer.

"I trust the both of you have seen the attached footage by now." His CO said, uselessly. Of course they've seen it, they were here weren't they? Seeing that borg tear through that many goons got his blood pumping, that was what being a man was all about!

Had they figured out his armor trick? Was he gonna get that? He sure as fuck hoped.

"Yes Sir."

"Eyup."

Fucking bastard, stop trying to show him up. Get that cock out of your ass, this wasn't a fucking formal meeting.

"The military development board has been working on developing a counter to such opponents…" Ah, he wasn't going to be invincible then. Boring. Well, he might get a fancy new suit out of this, if they were talking to the best ACPA pilot in Militech and the twink. "...and after a three-day designworks phase, have settled on an ACPA design roughly according to the following specifications. The design consists entirely of existing technologies, so the only requirement of the development team is to make them fit together. All in all, we're looking at a six month development cycle and a two-month manufacturing cycle until it's ready for mass production."

He started looking at the proposed schematics. This was to counter more borgs in the future, huh? He looked at it with that in mind.

A 1350 frame was fucking lightweight, more than he wanted, but it made sense he supposed. That giant set of thrusters and wingpack on its back meant that this was an aerial design. They couldn't do those 'destroy you with a tap' tricks if they couldn't reach you. The armor was also lighter than he wanted, but oh well, don't get hit, easy enough to do.

The carried gun was a model he didn't recognize. He asked about it.

"Heyya, what's this gun? I don't recognize the model."

"A prototype Microwaver, upscaled to ACPA sizes. Raw damage has been increased by about fourfold and the range has been increased ten times over."

Ah, yeah that would mess up a borg real fucking quick. How many shots? Only twenty, not great but better than it could be. These would be nasty in a group. He made a note to carry two. He moved onto the arms and noticed something.

"What the fuck are the arms? Why the hell do they have shotguns with phosphorus pellets?"

"The board decided it would be a strong option in case a target managed to close the gap on the pilot."

"That's fucking retarded. If your target has moved 200 meters faster than you can fly away, you are not surviving with two fucking shotgun blasts. Also, the phosphorus would blind the pilot as well. Good job, you are now doubly fucked mr. pilot. ALSO! It only encourages the pilot to get in close and use the fucking things instead of staying at safe range, and with the piddly fucking armor they're only going to get killed trying that."

"Similar concerns were brought up and dismissed."

He grunted, so this was upper-management meddling, fucking figures. Dumbasses didn't know the first thing about fighting. He moved onto the legs and noticed another issue.

"Why the fuck did they mount thermite grenades in an enclosed space in the legs? That's just lowering the structure of the things that you use to land and lift off, that's shit-brained. And If an enemy hits one of those things with a lucky shot then all the thermite is gonna burn through your lower torso faster than you could hope to respond."

"They were concerned with the aerodynamics of the design if mounted externally."

"They realize this is a fucking ACPA, not a jet, right?"

"I assume so."

So they don't then. Fucking hell he hated upper management sometimes. At least the twink had kept nice and quiet as he pointed out all the shit-garbage design in this thing. He took another drink of his coffee as he waited for CO to continue.

"Your assignments, should you choose to accept, will be to act as test pilots and doctrine-makers for the design. You will be given a test-type model of the design and missions that have been judged specifically to be suitable for the modeled parameters of the design."

"Fuck no."

His CO turned to look at him at that, raising a tired eyebrow at his rejection. Brutus explained.

"You heard me earlier, right? This thing is a fucking mess of a design more liable to get the pilot killed than actually help on a job. Send it back to the fucking think-tank and tell them to try again."

"I accept." The fucking Twink proved that he lived to spite him, and agreed. You shitfucker, you're not gonna one-up him ever again.

"Changed my mind, when do I start?" He growled out.

He was Brutus Cunningham, the best damn ACPA pilot in Militech. They wanted him to turn a shit design into gold? Fuck that, he'd turn it into fucking platinum before he was done. He would kill more borgs than the twink could ever hope to. The twink just used his shit-dainty hand to brush his annoying long blond hair out of his eyes. Cut it short, retard.

God he hated his coworkers.

—

At one-hundred and twenty six years old, Valentin Domanevka was a very old man in a world full of very young men. He had been acting director of the SovOil secret police since the year two-thousand and two. Seventy-two years of managing one of the most dangerous and influential jobs in the entire world, Seventy-two years of serving SovOil to the best of his ability, ensuring that the dream of the Soviet Union does not ever fade. Longer than that he has spent serving the Union more broadly, first serving as deputy-director of the KGB seemingly so long ago.

His friends of youth have all died at this point. His rivals of adulthood have all died at this point. His enemies within SovOil's boundaries have all died at this point. The old Soviet Union may have long since fallen, but its dream shall not die until long after he does, and he had no intention of dying anytime soon.

He adjusted his spectacles a bit and looked at the forms in his hands. All twenty-seven forms required for legal resignation from the SovOil secret police, and the letters of confirmation indicating that the memories involving the individual's service have been successfully bound and extracted. This was in all regards a proper and legal exit from his services.

He looked up at former agent Arnold Armstrong, a massive, burly man who sat in a suit one-size too small for him in a chair that was many sizes too small for him. He was across the desk and patiently waiting for Domanevka's judgment. He liked Armstrong, he was dutiful and loyal. Unfortunately he was more loyal to his family than anything else, else he would not be in his office right now.

"Your father is not joining you?" Valentin asked, eyes searching.

"Ah, father is too old, he wishes to be a proper enemy next time we meet." Armstrong responded, observing the proper courtesy and respect for his elders that his sister never did. Still, it was good that he would not be losing two respectable agents today. Armstrong senior had served him for decades at this point, and his performance was exemplary. They occasionally played chess, as Valentin had few opponents that were trustworthy and good enough to actually challenge him.

Valentin knew how to spot liars, and for all the faults the family had, the Armstrongs were not liars. There was a reason he trusted them well enough to let them live for so long, they didn't have a dishonest bone in their bodies. Which made them strangely suited for secret police work, but that was simply the nature of things.

He also knew that Arnold Armstrong couldn't betray the secrets of SovOil at this point. His neuralware had been thoroughly searched and mind had been scrubbed of any sensitive information. It was the reason why he would never have anything with software interact with his body, horrible idea all around. Armstrong knew nothing of importance at this point. Still, it was a shame to let such a valuable asset leave…

As a favor to his father, he'd allow it this once he supposed.

Valentin began the process of checking the forms again. This was merely a show, he already memorized them. He began making small talk with Armstrong.

"Going to join your sister in America, I suppose?"

"Indeed, families must remain together if possible. I fear her boldness might get her into trouble, even ignoring her defection."

"You were always more level headed than she."

"Ah, such is life. She is my sister, and I must help her as best I am able."

Such is life indeed.

"Your unemployment request has been accepted. You will find that the planes in section V will be delayed by half an hour, and the squad assigned to eliminate you will suffer an unfortunate traffic accident beforehand."

"Ah, thank you very much, Mr. Valentin. I shall remember your kindness, not only for this but for my family through the years."

"How can I look your father in the eyes when we play chess otherwise? Now go, I have more work that doesn't involve you."

With that Arnold Armstrong got up, moved over to the window, and opened it. After a few careful seconds of crawling his bulk through, he was outside, whereupon he gently closed the window again and waved goodbye. Dashing away to jump many meters over the compound walls and into the proper streets of the city.

Valentin nodded at him.

He was a very old man in a world full of very young men. He need not kill every one of them. Besides, his father was far more valuable to risk losing over one combat asset leaving his service.

With that business taken care of he got back to what he had been doing before, formulating a strategy for what his agents should do if they met another threat like that found in France. An individual of immense cybernetic prowess, and a dedicated combat-AI, that was immune to kinetic attacks…

He pondered the puzzle for a bit. In his mind, a board formed and a knight advanced in a direction he wasn't expecting.

He wrote down that the agents were to move in groups of two, and carry at least one high-grade thermal explosive at all times. One agent was to ensure the explosive was used on the target, the other agent was to flee and report the sighting. The best solutions were the simplest in some cases.

After all, if he could take out a knight for a measly pawn, then that was a very good trade indeed.

Valentin liked chess, he looked forward to his next match with Armstrong senior. He wondered how that great metal behemoth was doing.

—

Everywhere across the world, the corporations and countries reviewed the footage that was distributed of the France attack.

Everywhere across the world, the military planners began to tackle the new problem with enthusiasm. New plans were drafted, new factories built, new strategies devised. Warmachines that corporations and countries ever-longed to test in live combat.

The military engines of the world began to rev again, only briefly slumbering after the Fourth-Corporate War and half-awake through the Reunification War. Now they were awake in full, and focused squarely at the thing that awoke them.

Across the world, great beasts of war began to shake off the rust of a mere few decades of dreamwalking.

When they started shaking off this torpor, their vision cleared enough to see their rivals doing the same.

Adam walked into the private medical facility maintained by the Trauma Team assigned to Arasaka Tower, following him were the three hanger-ons. They had received news that the boy had woken up, so they were going to visit. It had been two weeks since Adam had returned from France, missing an arm, to find that everything had gone all to hell in his absence.

He had heard reports, countless reports, of what had happened. He wanted to hear it from the boy though, get a proper perspective.

Those fuckers that were trying to kill him? All's fair in his optics. Plenty had tried to kill him in the past, plenty in the future will also try. They had gone and made it personal though, by attacking the shit that belonged to him while he was away. Uriel's flames turned from their gold-white to red-black when they learned of what all had gone down, they haven't changed back since.

THEY TOOK HIS FUCKING DAIONI. THAT WAS HIS! YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!

He fully intended to turn the next bot into scrap as fast as he could next time. Not that he wasn't already trying to do that, but now he was going to carry a full-loadout everywhere he went. Uriel had told him to buy a cyberdeck for him to use, and Adam agreed fully, the extra processing power should help him against future bot ICONs. Best part was that they didn't even need to open the thing up, just carry it on his belt and let Uriel work his digital magic through it.

Uriel burned a cheerful red-black at the thought.

Adam was going to get his new frame by the end of the month, something the both of them were excited for. It was technically incomplete, the new frame was designed to interface with custom ACPA for higher performance, but it was still a frame that represented close to 57 years of tech development. They didn't build frames better than the Dragoon because almost no one could use one, they were doing so now because he requested one.

Hijikata died before he could come up with any ACPA for him to use. The project was being handled by a new guy coming in from Japan with a specialty in just that sort of thing.

Adam was no stranger to having people die on him, that sort of thing defined the first twenty five years of his life. His fellow street-rats, his first gang, his fellow recruits, his second gang… Adam had lost a few hundred allies before he was a full grown man. He called them allies, because people who had friends die on them cried or some other bullshit like that. Adam didn't do that, so they couldn't be called friends.

Uriel didn't really get the whole 'mourning' thing either, even having lost a few family members and friends himself, but he understood the socially correct things to do when such things happened. Adam learned a few things himself reviewing the memories. He also learned that funerals were long, drawn out, and boring affairs with lots of 'emotions' and other touchy-feely-huggy shit that neither of them cared for.

Still, he liked fucking Chiri (Uriel told him he liked her too, Adam responded with a grumble). Uriel told him going to the funeral was the 'correct' thing to do, so he would do it. Uriel knew this social shit better than him, so he would do it. Adam handled murdering fuckers, Uriel handled the boring shit, and together they were going to put the meatfucker and the cheerleader into the ground. Hell, with all these fucking bots coming out of the woodwork, Uriel was still going to stick around even if the meatfucker never showed up, they had long since decided that neither wanted to die and they got along well enough outside of that.

At least his annoying handler with the trash hair died too, thank fuck that he never had to see her ever again.

They were at the boy's door, he paused and held up a hand, stopping the three from moving in.

"I will talk with him alone. You all are next."

They wanted to argue that point, but his antipathic expression dissuaded them. They settled back, taking seats on the hallway chairs or leaning against the wall. He glowered at them for a bit, before opening the door and walking in.

The kid was fucked all up. Adam had read the reports, he was impressed that the boy was able to last long enough to get put back together. It wasn't quite his old record of being turned into hamburger and stuffed in a backpack, but it was way closer than most. Credit where credit was due, most half-meats would never last that long.

All of the kid's hardware had to be replaced, all of his wetware needed emergency nanobot repair-swarms to stabilize and then most of it also replaced with cloned tissue, most of his organs suffered tier 2 damage, and his face was half-torn off.

But he won. He won against a bot that had peers capable of killing Adam Smasher if he fucked up more than once or twice against them. He had been fighting for hours before, then got into another scrap, then fought a bot that probably would have given Adam trouble in a head-on duel. He won with a single ex-SWAT and support from one anti-material railgun. He won without even being a full-borg, he was still a half meat.

Adam was fucking proud of the boy, no 'almost' or 'barely' or 'somewhat' about it. Pride in someone else was a strange and unfamiliar sensation to Adam, and he intended to revel in it for a while. Pride, Wrath, and Lust were the emotions that Adam was most familiar with, and feeling the first on behalf of another was an interesting thing to experience.

The boy scrapped the bot that had the audacity to break Adam's shit, The bot that by all rights should have fucking killed him in an instant. Adam could always appreciate a good subordinate like that, once again he praised Uriel's choice of backup, boy was proving that all the fucking hassle was worth it.

The boy looked at him, and gave a weak wave in greeting. Adam nodded and walked forwards to sit on the bedside chair. Very carefully so as to not break the fragile-shit chairs they always used, he lowered his weight into it. It still groaned in protest under him. You motherfucker, you trying to call him fat? His bench kicks your ass any day.

The boy looked amused at that exchange, you're lucky he was proud of you boy, otherwise he'd be mad. The boy's expression began to fall off shortly afterwards as Adam stared at him. Adam was about to speak, but the boy cut him off.

"I need more chrome."

Adam paused a bit, staring at the kid. The boy continued, talking fast.

"I'll pay you back, but I need more to handle gonkbots like that guy in the future. If he had any backup at all I would be flatlined right now, if he wasn't a fucking dumbass who threw away his nades I'd be flatlined right now, if he…"

The boy trailed off, before continuing, looking away from him.

"I need more chrome."

Goddamn it kid, he didn't need you crazy. Uriel, you handle this, Adam didn't feel like it.

"You already forgot."

The kid looked confused at that, looking back at him. Good, start with confusion, that will get him to pay attention to what he'll say next.

"You already forgot the first two things I told you."

Looks like the kid really didn't remember, judging by his still confused expression. Fucker, you were going to listen when he speaks to you in the future.

"I told you I need you sane to be worth anything to me. You lost it last time because of martyring bullshit like this. You'll get chrome when I let you, not when you feel like you need more."

"But-"

"No. The second thing I told you? You aren't responsible for jackshit while you work for me. Whenever something goes wrong? Whenever someone gets fucked up? You are not responsible for any of that. That's my fault. You're going to blame me, for not teaching you well enough, for not giving you enough backup."

"You need more chrome? You feel guilty? Fuck both of those things. You need to get stronger, you need to feel mad. I'm going to tell you what the fuck you're going to do, because last I checked you still work for me."

"You're going to stop with this sad sack routine. You're going to get pissed off that someone fucked you up. You're going to demand I teach you more. You're going to brutalize the next fucker that thinks they're lucky."

"You got that boy?"

Adam growled at him, voice kept low and even the whole while. As his monologue progressed, he could see the boy's expression starting to change. By the end, the boy was glaring right back at him, eyes locked. Good, Adam always did like a good facedown.

"Got it." He growled back. Adam grinned in response, it was not a nice grin. The boy continued with a proper demand this time.

"Hey Smasher, I need to get stronger."

"That's more fucking like it."

Adam stood, and walked to the door.

"Rest up boy, we'll start again when you're good for it."

To the inhabitants of the hallway, as he opened the door all the way from where it had been cracked from his improper closing, he called out as he walked away.

"Boy's all yours now."

Adam had work to do, his territory wasn't going to fix itself. He had a few gangers to talk to.

They helped protect his Arena, he had an offer for them in mind.

—

It was later that day that the gremlin approached him, before he was about to leave the HQ. She was standing in front of the doorway that led to the exterior fortress, and was clearly waiting for him. He grunted questioningly at her, and she explained.

"I need better gear, and training, and more chrome and…"

She trailed off, face twisting in on itself before relaxing into a downright miserable expression. Oi, is everyone going to be a fucking mess today? You were all alive weren't you?

"I need to be more helpful. I wasn't good enough against the pirate-guy."

Adam grunted thoughtfully, leaning against the wall.

"Where were you deficient?"

This was a question he had asked them many times before, in the initial training, so they were all used to what he meant. What did you mess up on, what could you have done better, what would you have done differently.

"My firing wasn't fast enough, he could dodge everything I shot at him. My ACPA wasn't fast enough, I wouldn't be able to catch up in time to help in close range. My armor isn't enough to survive in close range. I.."

She punched the wall. Careful now, blueberry, that might hurt his wall.

"I wasn't good enough."

Adam considered her, her hair hanging over her eyes as she glared at the floor. A full-scope upgrade huh? It wouldn't do to load her up on chrome too and have two junkies to manage, but she could handle a little bit more now… Or, if he wanted to burn the eddies, he could get her some bioware.

Eh, he'd have Uriel release another album of music or something, that always raked in eddies. He'd use that to fund her upgrades. Nothing that would change her outward appearance too much, just a general package.

That, and an ACPA upgrade. He'd get her a Linear Frame and some MetalGear Armor as a stopgap, the current Kyudoka wasn't enough it seemed. Hijikata knew frames, but ACPAs were not something he was the best at. The new guy was apparently, so he'd give him the task of upgrading the Kyudoka's design. Faster and more guns.

Hmm, Faster and more guns? How was he going to get the girl to hold more guns with her tiny arms? Uriel had an idea. Hip-mounted guns for stability when firing and two things to fire, ACPA-grade skaters for speed, and a decent package of bioware to make her an actual threat. That sounded about right to him, more gun, more speed, similar armor, better body. Everything that she asked for.

Uriel laughed at the image.

"Two things." She looked expectantly at him.

"One, how do you feel about bioware?"

She paused at that.

"Okay I suppose, I haven't really thought about that stuff ever."

Too many meatbags don't. The one thing that can make them a half-decent fight and they fucking ignore it. Fucking meatbags.

"It's less taxing on the meat, more expensive but it doesn't drive you psychotic as fast. You can handle a lot more of that than you can chrome."

"And tell the girl that too, before she approaches me later about this same shit, I'll get her some bioware if she wants an upgrade."

"Two, how do you feel about having extra arms?"

—

It was late by the time Adam finally got back to the HQ, walking past the security and into the personal chambers area. He was going to spend the next few hours reviewing training plans for the kids and Uriel was going to keep up the active management of the region while he was doing so. It had been rough for the first couple of days when they got back, but the fuckers very quickly learned that the boss was back. Still, that added a few hundred more to the death toll as Uriel turned off their cyberware and burned out their neuralware. An alert to security to haul off the corpse to the ripperdocs, and the problem became a not-problem very quick.

Uriel wasn't any faster at doing it with his new cyberdeck, but he could do it and other things now. He used it to burn more of them out simultaneously fairly often.

Incidents stopped happening again after a few days of that. It was back to pre-france levels, and he doubted the bossman was going to send him out again after the attack on the tower. No, he just got his funding for Pacifica doubled and was told to get to work as the tower got itself back together.

He heard that Kagekaze was here now, a real polite and serious guy, easy to get along with from what he remembered. Even if most of their interaction was him raving about murder and Kagekaze politely nodding along. Hey, this extra perspective isn't appreciated Uriel, you need to stop that. Anyways, he was head of security for the tower now, and was training up the grunts to his decent standards.

Hell, maybe they'd be worth something in a fight now.

…probably not, he was too much for any of them and even ol' Kaze couldn't turn scrap into steel. Maybe iron or something instead.

That and they shipped over a full squad of ACPA, including two DaiOni (fucking bastards took his baby, that was his favorite thing and they fucking took it, he'll kill them) jockeys. Aoichimaru and Akaniko or some stupid sounding names like that. That certainly wasn't their actual names, but some sort of code name he imagined. He didn't want to bother dedicating any energy to figuring it out though, so he ignored it.

Adam walked through the doors to the central chamber, and saw the woman sitting at the main table. She was holding a cup of coffee and his old clothes. She looked up when he walked in, and spoke before he could say anything.

"Adam, may I talk with you?"

He grunted, before closing the door. He walked over and sat on his bench at the head of the central table. He was glad he moved this out before he left, fuckers would have probably taken it too otherwise. He looked at the woman on the couch. He was pleasantly surprised to find that she didn't have a pitiful look on her face, she was determined instead. Good, at least that was two people who knew how to act, himself and the freeloader.

The meatbeast rubbed against his leg, he resisted the urge to kick it.

"I need to help."

Adam raised a brow, it seems like today everyone in his house decided to get their acts together and actually try to get better, surprised to see it.

"My son was… he was almost…" She trailed off, glaring at herself for being unable to finish and taking a loud gulp of the coffee. She locked eyes with him again.

"My son almost died, and I wasn't there for him."

Adam considered her, maybe the freeloader isn't going to be a freeloader anymore? She was asking for it, so the kid couldn't complain to him about it.

"What are you going to do about it?" He asked, challenging her. Let's see if she disappoints with her response.

"I'm going to kill the next son of a bitch that thinks they can hurt my boy." She did not disappoint. Adam grinned at her.

"What are you going to need?" He asked, growling out in a pleased manner.

"I need equipment, chrome, bioware, and you."

A pause. Adam raised a brow. Her face flushed as she replayed what she said mentally.

"I-I need you to train me! N-not anything else." She was downright cute, looking all embarrassed like that. He wanted to be mean to her.

He stood and stalked forwards a bit in order to loom over her. Her eyes were wide as she all but retreated back into the couch. He placed a hand on the reinforced metal frame next to her head, and another on her chin, forcing her to look at him. She flinched minutely at every movement, but didn't run or call out. Her eyes were wide, face was flushed, and she was beginning to spill the coffee on herself.

He leaned in and spoke, letting his fusion-power warmed breath splash against her face as he asked. His eyes were narrowed.

"Nothing else?"

Her breath was heavy and came out in bursts. She eventually gasped out :

"N-nope! N-nothing at all, T-That's all I need!"

Heh. This never got old. She'd come asking for it eventually now, the bait was set. If she asked for it, the kid couldn't complain.

He withdrew and shrugged.

"Well, if that's all you need…"

He walked away from the woman looking like she was recovering from a heart attack. Looking at him like a baby deer that was just let out of a tiger's jaws, knees wobbling.

He called out behind him as he walked away.

"You spilled your coffee."

A yelp and a spanish curse as she realized she was in pain. Adam grinned. She was a fun one to bully, huh? He had to do it more often.

Adam stood before the three women that he was apparently going to train up. He only really intended to train the boy, but getting the kid some half-decent backup would keep him alive longer while Adam was away. That and the kid is still recovering, so he couldn't train him anymore right now.

They were in the training room built into the temporary HQ, a long and wide section that would normally be reserved for presentations but Adam had refurbished for indoor training. If he had something to say he'd just send a message to all the relevant parties, presentations were useless and the room wasn't ever going to be used otherwise.

The woman, the girl, and the gremlin stood at lax attention. That would have gotten them beatings back in the army, but he wasn't in the army anymore so he didn't care. Adam was tasked with turning the three in front of him into competent threats, and that was difficult enough. He wasn't about to bother being a hardass about their standing.

The woman had med training, so she was an obvious choice for a field medic. Probably won't be worth anything in a fight for a while, so he'd have to hold her fucking hand for a while. Linear Frame, heavy armor, riot shield, smartgun links, and pistol? Sounds about right.

The girl had netrunning skill, so she was obviously overwatch, as he had already had her lean into. But her big weakness right now was getting found, as she was subject to quick death if an enemy got the drop on her. Linear Frame, light armor, stealth system, silenced submachine gun and pistol?

The gremlin had few redeeming features aside from her larger tolerance for chrome. She was still made of too much meat to justify putting on the frontlines like him or the kid, so he had got her a really big gun and armor to survive for a second or two against an actual enemy. But apparently that hadn't been working out for her. Uriel already suggested something for her. Linear Frame, heavy armor, hip-mounted sub-arms, two borg rifles, and skaters for movement. That would give her durability, speed, and firepower in one convenient package. That and a pistol.

The reason he was giving all of them a pistol? The four-hundred eddie gun that he had placed on the table. It was fucking puny, the size of a hand-flashlight for a normal person. Adam couldn't even hold a standard model version, his hands were too big. It weighed basically nothing, and it dealt pitiful damage to meatbags. Average ganger could probably just walk it off, no need for a ripperdoc.

He was going to insist all of them used one and got real fucking good with it, because it was probably the single best weapon for them to use against actual threats. They used to be more expensive, five-hundred eddies instead. Still fucking pocket change to the average solo. Blackhand was a fucking meatfucker ass, but he knew what he was doing, and he carried one of these around constantly.

"So big guy, what are you teaching us first, huh? Any of those secret vibrator punches you have Davey doing?"

"No, none of you have the chrome to do that."

Adam paused and thought for a second how he should explain the importance of the glorified flashlight and attachment on the table. He settled on falling back on how he taught the kid.

"Borgs are found primarily in corpo and government jobs, and are rare on the street level. Why?"

They were silent for a second before they realized he was testing them on their knowledge. The gremlin spoke up. "Well, cost right? Borg-hood is supposed to be expensive, right?"

Adam nodded. "Correct. What else?"

The girl spoke up next. "Cyberpsychosis." She didn't need to explain any further.

"Correct. What else?"

The woman spoke up. "Because borgs get better jobs, don't they?"

"Correct, what else?"

A pause as they thought about it more. After about half a minute Adam spoke up again.

"There are four primary reasons why Borgs are found more often on higher levels and not street level. You three mentioned three of them. The fourth reason is the gun on the table in front of me. Why?"

The gremlin spoke at that, bouncing slightly in place as she looked at it. "Oh, is this some sort of high-tech corpo supergun? Like a noisy cricket?"

"It costs four-hundred eddies, and any competent gunsmith could make one."

That caused her to deflate a bit, before the three of them adopted similar thinking expressions about how such a cheap gun could lead to the downfall of the street-borg. The girl spoke up at that. "Does it use some sort of easy-to-make explosives?"

"It shoots an upscaled laser pointer. The battery is good for fifteen-shots, and can be recharged at any wall outlet in one hour."

He looked to the woman, to see if she had any guesses. She shrugged, guns weren't her forte it seems. Fair enough, Adam picked up the dinky little thin between two fingers and held it in front of them.

"This is a Techtronika-15 Microwaver. It is an upscaled version of the dash-ten model. It shoots a beam of microwave radiation a maximum distance of twenty-five meters. It can fire fifteen times in total. An extra battery pack can be bought for three-hundred and twenty eddies that gives it ten extra shots before it needs a charge. It can be fully charged in one hour from any standard wall outlet."

"It weighs less than three kilograms, it deals minimal damage to flesh and metal alike, and is easy enough to make that there likely isn't a techie in night city who couldn't manage it. It is one of the primary reasons why MaxTac is so effective, and why every borg expected to see combat must have additional modifications beyond factory standard."

He growled the final part out.

"It was one of the two signature weapons of Morgan Blackhand."

That got their attention. There likely wasn't a person in Night City who didn't know about that meatfucker's nuclear legacy. Adam had Uriel bring out a standard borg frame from one of the side doors. They watched it, not expecting another person to arrive.

"This is an IEC Alpha Class Borg Frame. It can be considered to be the industry standard borg conversion. It can take far more damage, deal more damage, carry more weight, and is in general superior in all regards to a meat human. It costs forty-thousand eddies to purchase, in addition to the surgery cost required to have the brain and essential organs transferred over."

All of them winced at that price tag. They should, it was enough to buy more than a century of food for the average person. Adam raised the microwave slightly awkwardly in his giant hands, practically having to pinch the thing to get his fingers in the proper place. Uriel started shadow-boxing in the frame for demonstration purposes.

Adam shot the gun once, and the IEC Alpha immediately seized up, fell over, and started shaking in a manner resembling a meat-seizure. Huh, lucky shot. The woman almost rushed over as it convulsed, Uriel was fine, it was controlling it wirelessly, nothing that happened to it would go back to him.

"Now it is worthless scrap for the next few seconds, because it didn't have any electromagnetic or microwave radiation shielding installed. A forty-thousand eddie investment brought down by a four-hundred eddie investment and a no-cost shot. It works on all cyberware, not just full borgs. It works on all targets within one meter of the beam."

Their eyes were filling with understanding while he spoke, and when he put the gun back down they looked at it with newfound respect. Adam let them think about it for a minute or so before he continued. The Alpha frame eventually stopped shaking, and Uriel directed it out of the room again. He would use it again someday, but really he had bought it just for this demonstration. But hey, now he has yet another frame to use.

"A standard cyberarm costs three-thousand eddies. To have it hardened against harmful radiation costs an additional six-hundred eddies. This must be done for all limbs, the torso, and head to ensure adequate protection. This is a twenty or so percent increase in cost."

"That forty-thousand eddie price tag? That's a minimum of forty-eight thousand now to ensure you don't get scrapped by some techie who turned a microwave oven into a laser pointer. The price was already high enough for most meats, now it's entirely too much for the vast majority of them."

"The reason why most every borg is a corpo? They're the only ones who can afford the unspoken costs most of the time. Because walking around without hardening means dying real fast."

Adam looked them in the eyes, one at a time, as his monologue went on.

"You are going to use this as your sidearm at all times. If you see someone with visible chrome, you shoot them. I am going to make sure you three get very good at using it."

"What if we shoot at some chromedome with hardening?" The gremlin asked, scratching her head.

"Run, and let me or the boy deal with that one."

They all frowned at that, but that was too fucking bad. They didn't have the chrome to deal with actual threats, this was the best they could do. The woman spoke up, hesitantly.

"Who did you bring in to… shoot?"

Adam grunted, and tapped the side of his head. "Remote controlled."

Their eyes filled with realization. The gremlin punched her hand and let out a 'ah'. The girl nodded. The woman scratched her face with a finger, slightly embarrassed.

You fuckers, did you all seriously think he would shoot someone and not finish the fucking job? That's downright insulting.

—

He spent the entire day drilling them on how to use a pistol most effectively. He wasn't a master at it by any means, but if they could get to his level then they would be an actual help in a fight with those microwavers. The gremlin was the best at it, the one who was closest to his level of shooting (that is to say, maybe half), the girl was next in line, clearly being more comfortable with her monowire.

Adam didn't particularly care for Monowires, mostly because nine-times out of ten it was simply more effective to just shoot a target. He supposed it made stealth-kills easier, but really it only worked on meat-bags and the like. She should invest in replacing the arm-mounted model with just a spool of the stuff, but eh, he didn't care about her that much to suggest that. She was a netrunner, her frontline skills were always going to be garbage.

The woman was obviously the worst at it. She was familiar with it, sure, and had practiced with a pistol before, but it was the practice of someone who had never had someone else to tell them how to do it. It was the level Smasher was at when he was a pre-teen. Course, he had been expecting that, so no harm there. She would benefit the most from a smart-link by far.

A smart-link would end up helping all of them, to be honest. Eh, if they asked for some, he'd buy it, but for now he'd let them try to figure out some of their own upgrades. He couldn't be babysitting them forever.

He approached his bench…

The bench had been moved about five inches closer to the table. The kid was in the hospital. The women had been with him.

Someone had been or was currently in his HQ.

He armed every missile he had, hatches in his arms opening up, and Uriel scoured the cameras.

Nothing.

He walked forwards, cycling through every optical option he had.

Nothing.

He looked with standard eyes around the room. The chairs were untouched. The far walls were untouched. The wall-screen couldn't hide anything immediately dangerous behind it. The doors were untouched.

The meatbeast was gone. Hopefully whoever broke in killed it, he'd kill them quickly as a thanks.

He turned around suddenly.

A borg was sitting at the table, a fresh pot of tea had been readied and two cups placed. The borg looked over at him, and tilted its head at his brandished missiles.

"Smasher-san."

Adam growled and disarmed them. He would recognize that monotone anywhere. Fucking ass almost got him to blow a hole in his own fucking fortress. He grunted and walked off to his storage room.

"Getting my gemini, you ass."

"I'm not sure what you're referring to." The fucker was laughing at him, he could hear it in his inflection.

Soon enough he was back in the body that could actually consume things.

He sat down on the other side from Kagekaze, and waited for the appropriate motions to be made. Kagekaze was the guest here, he would pour. Fucking tedious rituals, but the fellow borg enjoyed it so he'd let it slide.

Kagekaze was the one who taught Adam most of what he knew of Panzerfaust, after all. Adam had a smidge of respect for the fellow murderer.

After they had each taken a sip, Adam spoke.

"You come by for a visit then? Your frame's new, I didn't recognize you."

"Indeed, as the new head of security I thought it best to evaluate my strongest and most unwieldy asset."

"You just wanted a break for tea. You and the old man are exactly the same."

"That is merely good fortune, I prayed to the Buddha for luck shortly before I left. How wonderful my prayer was heard by him."

Adam let his expression demonstrate how much he believed that. Kagekaze gracefully sipped his tea through what looked like a specially-installed mouth. He was one of those that used an interchangeable face-plate and an artificial stomach it seemed. Probably just so he spit poison in people's eyes or something, that sounded on brand for the ninja.

The tea was good. It wasn't as good as Saburo's 'I have specifically cultivated this type of tea leaf for a hundred and thirty years' level of good, but it was passable. That wasn't fair regardless, the old man probably had the best fucking tea on the planet, probably had a team of biotechies constantly at work on making ever-greater forms of the tea leaves he preferred.

His faceplate was modeled to look sort of like those classic theater ninja-masks, black hood things that were tied around the face, with a bit of actual fabric that hung over his optic. A regular Kuroko, a gunmetal black frame covered by carbon nanoweave fabric. Not in any place that could slow him from drawing a weapon or what not, of course, but it was everywhere else. Additional armor and muffling? The bunny-ear sensors on the sides of his head were new at least.

The face underneath the masking fabric sheet was just a skull, of course. More gunmetal black and just something stylized to look like a skull, save that it had some muscle attachments and a neck. Two glowing red optics inside each eye-hole glared out menacingly.

…how did he sip that tea without lips? Adam took another sip as he pondered it.

"You have changed."

Adam grunted, seems like he was going to have to get used to that one then. First it was Saburo, then it was Kagekaze. Who was going to say that next? Was Kei going to rise from the grave to tell him he was different now?

He was exactly the same as before, it's just now he was preparing for the fight of his life. He couldn't afford to lax on preparation for it.

"How so?"

"I called you my strongest asset, years you would be ranting about how true that was, and how many 'meatbags' you would butcher."

"We both know it's true, no point in talking about it."

"I am glad to see you've developed a sense of modesty then."

"Fuck no, modesty is for fuckers who aren't me."

Kagekaze let out a mechanical laugh. "Ah, there my student is. I was worried he was lost under a sense of responsibility."

Adam grinned at the borg sharing tea with him. Kagekaze was always easy to get along with, even if he hadn't spoken to him in more than forty years now. They both took another sip of the sub-saburo class tea.

"They don't have you teaching brats how to stop clanking around anymore?"

"No, it seems my days of teaching genin have finally come to a close. Perhaps one day I shall be assigned to it again."

"Enjoying the new job then?"

"Absolutely not."

Adam let out a gruff bark of laughter. He felt a crooked grin start growing on his face.

"The city is atrocious to look at, the security teams are pathetic, and the damages are extensive. I'm amazed that someone as incompetent as the previous head of security was allowed to live. It's absolutely shameful."

"Hah, why don't you tell me how you really feel, huh?"

"I penned a strongly worded letter about his poor performance and had it sent to his still living relatives."

Adam lost it, Uriel lost it. The women finally arrived back to the HQ from where they had been visiting the kid again, to see Adam Smasher laughing harder than he ever had before, sipping tea with a pitch black skeleton.

It would be some time before they composed themselves. The women introduced themselves to Kagekaze as he tried to stop his remaining chuckles.

Good god, Adam had fucking missed the old ninja. He was always a ball of laughs.

—

It was sometime before Kagekaze announced that he had to go. Adam got up to follow him, he clearly had something to tell him privately, otherwise he would have just disappeared when they weren't looking.

Sure enough, Kagekaze paused by the doorway, and stared him down through the curtain of fabric in front of his eyes.

"Smasher. There is something you need to know."

Adam grunted quietly, waiting for him to say it. Kagekaze continued.

"The attack on Arasaka Tower started at two-hundred and twenty-three point four in the morning. The alert for security and medical assistance to the executive suite was sent at two-hundred and twenty-three point four four."

Kagekaze's red optics glared through the sheet.

"The standard reaction time for auditory stimulus is point one seven seconds. Boosterware can decrease this down to point zero five seconds. No executive has boosterware sufficient for even this."

…Adam realized what was going on.

"My movements will be scrutinized, you are not known for your subtlety."

One of the executives of Arasaka Tower knew about the bot before he had arrived. There was a traitor in a high level position. Kagekaze couldn't investigate further without potentially alerting them to his notice. Adam was not one anyone expected to investigate anything.

Goddamnit, he hated sneaky shit.

…But that meant…

…There was a fucker who was responsible for taking his shit. They were still alive.

Uriel flared up again.

Adam nodded, and Kagekaze was gone.

He couldn't wait to pulp a fucker that thought they were clever.

Adam's visit to Arasaka Tower today had two purposes. The first was to speak to his new techie, the second was to let Uriel snoop around a bit. As far as either of them were aware, Uriel was fully visible while in cyberspace, and from any camera equipped to look at the cyberspace of the area.

So Uriel didn't try to hide his presence, he instead expanded it as far as he could. Uriel was made out of fire, he didn't have eyes, so the only way to tell if he was looking at something would be to see where he was. Uriel had been doing this for the Pacifica reconstruction for weeks (more than a month now, thinking about it), and no one could tell what he was or was not looking at so far (to their knowledge). Normally Uriel collapsed back into Adam's systems when they had to go somewhere, they were just not doing that this time.

If he was everywhere, then Adam had enough plausible deniability to claim that he wasn't hacking anything or that he simply forgot to collapse his ICON again. He was just keeping his cyberspace sensors as expanded as possible in case of a threat or whatnot. Some other bullshit like that, he'd let Uriel take care of the talking if they had to. Uriel hated lies, but he was willing to do it. Uriel was a very good liar if he had to be, it disgusted him.

Besides, he didn't have to be convincing, he just had to have a plausible excuse. Were it not for Kagekaze's tip, he wouldn't know to go snooping. No one expected Adam to go snooping, and most thought he was all brute power. He certainly preferred to be that, but he could do subtle things if he felt like it.

And by subtle, he meant being so unsubtle that it loops all the way back to subtlety again.

When Adam arrived back in NC, Uriel had already expanded to take stock of Pacifica. Uriel hasn't collapsed back in again since, always keeping awareness of their territory. So Adam keeping him expanded means they could walk into Arasaka Tower, Uriel being able to look at anything he wanted to, and no one suspecting a thing (or at least, never having enough proof). So long as he didn't alert any firewalls or triplines, it was impossible to tell where his attention was.

Uriel suspected this might make them vulnerable to netrunners, but so far none have taken the bait. Adam's ICE was probably good enough to fend off most anyways.

So as Adam approached Arasaka Tower, Uriel's bubble of influence washed over the area. It was big enough to cover about one percent of Pacifica alone. Five percent now with their cyberdeck on his belt and its increased processing power. It wasn't great, but it was often enough for him to piggyback off other systems and cast a 'web' of influence through all the cameras in the region. Through it he could see basically everything that occurred within line of sight of anyone who had any kind of camera in their eyes.

Such as every cyberoptic, which most meats had in order to have a fucking phone hooked into their brain. They could just carry a cellphone, but saying that would make Adam a hypocrite. He had a phone in his brain as well. Granted, he also had one of the best ICEs in the world, and a head full of fire to fend off net-assault through that path, so he was better off than meatbags once again.

Shame, they should have just been him. It might have helped them.

Uriel wasn't making a net this time, too obvious, but his influence was still broad enough to get everything except the top floors of the tower and that 'secret' bunker they had beneath the tower. He's known about it for a while, but he doesn't know exactly what happened down there. Probably fatal experiments on orphans or something. It didn't really affect him, so he didn't care about it.

Uriel was somewhat curious, but he wasn't curious enough to take the risk of losing their deniability. The traitor had to be found, Adam had a high-priority package to put through their ribcage.

Adam walked into the tower proper, the security clearly having expected him, letting him through without issue. Then again, they wouldn't try to stop him regardless. He was Adam Smasher, they didn't have the gumption to get in his way. He approached the elevator, got in, and started heading for the third basement level. There was a woman in the elevator, he ignored her. The hair was an unfortunately familiar red. It was the handler's daughter, shame she survived too.

She didn't try to talk to him, good. He exited onto the engineering subfloor and the elevator closed behind him.

Uriel's presence reached far enough down to interact with the Mikoshi, he didn't bother doing anything with it. They were all engrams, and the kind of engram that was incomplete.

There were two variations of the Soulkiller. The first was invented by the cheerleader's girlfriend back in the day, which required destructive scanning of the brain in order to properly record it. That version created 'complete' engrams, which were more similar to people than programs. You could use it on a corpse too, provided the brain hadn't suffered any damage yet. The second version was created by Hanako, which didn't require destructive scanning (thus not killing the subject) but didn't record them fully. That version created barely functional programs that tried to act like people. You could use it on a corpse, but why the fuck would you?

Calling the Mikoshi a 'engram database' was also inaccurate. It was really a broadcasting station that connected to the actual servers that were hosted in satellites currently in orbit. It had suffered damage in the attack, but who cares? Just build another set of systems to connect to those satellites.

Uriel saw the programs look at his fire through the metaphorical glass of the server connection. Their gazes were empty and dull, how boring. He thought he saw something else deeper in, but he didn't linger any longer. It was probably the AI that managed the server or something, nothing there was worth caring about.

Uriel continued through the tower that way, letting his 'vision' slowly sweep through systems and connections, careful not to disturb anything in his path. He wasn't looking for audio logs or video recordings or anything like that. If there was a traitor in management, then chances were that they covered their tracks well.

No, he was looking for something indirectly damning. Financial records. If he could find evidence of an employee not being paid the same as their peers, or being snubbed for promotions, or receiving a downgrade in pay, or anything of that nature then he could have a list of potential subjects to look deeper into later.

Best part was? This type of information was not a high-level priority to guard. This type of shit was given Arasaka basics in net-protection and basically nothing else. Most people didn't give a shit about knowing how many more thousands of eddies that corpo employees made. Even other corpos only sometimes gave a shit, if they were looking for getting a traitor to their side.

But corporate loyalty programs (ie, indoctrination) often meant that this was not especially useful either. It was often far more effective to create a child sleeper agent, have that agent inserted into the appropriate academy, and then remain a fully loyal corpo employee until the trigger was given to them. The first insertion took decades, but afterwards you could get the first to influence the corpo internally to hire more sleeper agents, thus accelerating all that came after.

If Uriel was going to guess, that was the situation he was looking at here. Sometimes it was just greed though, so it was best to cover his bases before moving onto the theories that he thought would bring the most success. That and this was very simple and quick to do, Uriel could get it done as Adam was doing other things in the Tower.

So as Adam approached the office/lab with his new techie, Uriel was looking over Arasaka's internal banking records, stepping over and around their ICE very carefully, and reading away.

The new guy was in Hijikata's old rooms. Adam walked through the door unannounced, the guards letting him pass.

Inside was a holographic projection of an ACPA, he didn't recognize the model, but he did recognize the listed specs on his new frame on the side of it and the comparison stats between the two. This must be the first of the new ACPAs that he was going to get, so he memorized the look of it as he walked forwards.

…That was a nice and big chassis, he liked it a great deal already. It looked bigger than a fifty-two class frame, which was the biggest you could get back in the day. Hell, his DaiOni was a fifty-two class, and this thing was a tad larger. Fifty-four perhaps? Whatever it was, it looked pleasing to his optics.

Speaking of things pleasing to the optics, the petite girl at the table was wearing shorts and a lab coat that stopped at upper hip-level, which meant her ass was on display. She turned as he approached and his show ended. At least it was free.

She looked at him, pulling up the goggles that were concealing her eyes. Short-cropped white hair, blue optics, dark blue leotard that disappeared into aforementioned black shorts. All in all, not bad, shame she was so flat though. Wasn't his new techie supposed to be a guy?

"Ah, Smasher-san! Good, I want your opinion on my drafts for your next ACPA!" She spoke, cheerily approaching him. She didn't have any visible chrome, aside from the optics that glowed as a wave of text flowed over it. She wanted his opinion on ACPAs? He might have found his new favorite techie. Sorry Hijikata, you have been replaced with a younger, feminine model, He'll have Uriel mourn your passing.

She knocked a fist on her head. "Ah, first, introductions." She raised a hand to shake, he considered not touching the meatbag, but discarded it. It was good to have your techie like you, that's how you stayed alive. He shook the hand at a meatbag level of force.

"I'm Hannei Saika, I have a doctoral degree in ACPA design, masters degrees in Linear Frame and Cyborg designs, and a bachelor's degree in heavy weaponry, electronics, and general robotics. I'm not sure what you call those in English though, paraphrasing here. I've been assigned to be your new techie, glad to meet you."

Adam nodded as the handshake stopped. "Adam Smasher. The ACPA?"

She grinned. "Straight to it, huh? That's what I like to hear."

She gestured to the hologram, and started talking.

"So, working off the initial design proposed by Hijikata-sensei, your new frame is designed to integrate into ACPA. the same thing that the DaiOni did, but now expanded out to be modular in nature. Your frame is designed to work with any number of different ACPA designs, provided we build them based on the specs that Hijikata-sensei put down. Your frame isn't done yet, but the design is solidified and is being custom made over in japan right now."

"One of the big things we have to do is account for your new Frame's CCPL. You are going to be stronger than any ACPA we put you in until the company finally starts investing in bigger designs again. The only reason we can even put your new frame in an ACPA without tearing it apart is the new material."

She paused, and started a tangent. Did she get Neolungs or something? She hasn't stopped talking for a while now.

The new material they're letting me use is fantastic, Carbon-Nanohelix structure coated with High Entropy Alloy. It is so strong and saves so much weight, frankly I have no idea why they don't use this for everything."

She paused again, and looked off to the side.

"Oh yeah, cost."

Adam grunted to remind her to finish what she was saying, she got the hint.

"Ah, sorry. So the first of your new frames, I'm thinking it would be best to…"

She better say a generalist build. That was what he needed first of all to make up for the DaiOni getting stolen. A solid, all-rounder variant that will buy him time to get the more specialist ACPAs designed and built.

"...a generalist, trooper design."

…She passed the first muster, let's see if she kept it up. Adam nodded to show that he understood and agreed. She flashed a grin at that as she gestured for the hologram.

"So the three core features of a trooper ACPA are solid armor, decent mobility, and average or better long and medium ranged options. You're a cyborg, so we can save an incredible amount of weight and expense by removing Auto-doctors and Safety systems. We don't need a way to get you out of the Frame, because you're strong enough to just move in it even if it runs out of power."

"That gives us a lot of space to work with, so I went with the basics."

She started counting off on her fingers.

"Your armor needs to be tank-grade 3 at minimum, preferably tank-4 instead. Going tank-2 or lower gives you a design that has equal or less armor than your normal frame. Maybe tank-2 for flight models or something in the future, but that's iffy."

"You need at least one long range option, and one medium range option. Your close range can be covered by that fancy vibro-punching you do."

She paused and looked at him.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me how all that works? I know there's a team working on it back at main HQ, but I'm not on that team. It shouldn't be possible to pull all those tricks off."

Adam grunted. "I shake my limbs, and rotate as I attack or defend." It was a bit more complicated than that probably, but Adam didn't really have a way to explain it. He went off gut instinct with it, and it worked out for him. He couldn't really explain the finer details even if he tried. Uriel might be able to, but he was working right now.

…The Mikoshi-AI was still staring at Uriel's fire, creepy fucker.

"...shake your limbs and rotate? Note to self, incorporate full-rotation joints when possible." She muttered, bringing his attention back to the room. She looked back up and continued.

"Right, so I'm thinking of big and heavy guns for each. You shouldn't really ever need a rapid-fire option, no matter how subarashii miniguns are."

Reluctantly, he agreed with a nod and frown. If something needed many bullets, then he'd just punch it to death.

"Right, so I'm thinking of a railgun for your long range option, and a shotgun for your mid-range option. You can't go wrong with either. Then we can give you a back-up weapon for any range with two missile packs on your shoulders."

That he very much agreed with. He nodded with a more enthused (ie, less contemptuous) expression.

"As for mobility, we could do fancy stuff like climbers and jets and gliders, but that's all specialist suit stuff. Best take those out. Instead I'm thinking of simple Skaters for overland travel. Cheap, effective, and doesn't risk killing yourself by dropping from high places."

"Powered or Unpowered?"

She paused and tilted her head. "Why would you go with unpowered Skaters on an ACPA? We have an unlimited budget here."

Adam shook his head. "Go unpowered, I'm fast enough both normally and with the sandevistan that the powered version would actually be slower here."

He's used Skater-equipped ACPAs in the past, this was something he had experience in. She blinked and her optics started showing her running some calculations. She blinked again after a second.

"Oh, wow, you are huh? See, this is why I wanted you here, you just saved a bunch of weight and made it way better. Always ask the soldier what works and doesn't afterall."

"Right, after that I'm giving you a back-loop to carry your club around in. That's about it for the overview, what are your thoughts?"

Adam considered it for roughly three seconds.

"Give it a non-kinetic option with lots of ammo and spread, thermite grenade launcher works here, and an upscaled microwaver."

She considered that for a second. "Ah, for more enemy cyborg targets, I see. Yeah I'll be sure to add those in. Anything else?"

Adam considered it again.

"VRI tech and Shielding are incorporated, correct?"

"Yup. Arasaka premium and double-layered respectively."

"Then no, that's all I can think of. Not bad girlie" Overall not bad, new techie, he'd give you a B for now, lets see how it actually turns out.

She paused at that, and awkwardly squirmed. He raised a brow. She raised a hand to scratch the back of her head.

"Ah… I'm actually a guy, Smasher-san."

…

"What's with the getup then?"

"...it's my fetish."

…

Adam should have probably figured that. He had been directly told that his techie was a guy after all. With how much meatbags were obsessed with cosmetic alteration these days it wasn't surprising. Uriel laughed and nearly set off an alarm. The Mikoshi AI glinted at that. Oi, program, stop staring and go do something else.

It was privately embarrassing that he didn't notice immediately, but no one saw so it's fine. If the new techie blabs he'll just kill them for libel, all square.

'I saw~" Uriel chimed in, face still holding that mocking grin.

'You don't have eyes, idiot, you saw nothing.' Adam shot back. Uriel loosed a bark of laughter.

Eh, that was as good of a place to end the conversation as any. The specs were discussed and he didn't need to be here for anything else, Uriel was also almost done. Adam turned and walked away, he'd leave the techie to it.

"Sorry about that! I'll treat you to some drinks to make it up to you!" Saika offered. Make up for what? Dressing like a girl? That was hardly a crime, dumbass.

As he stomped to the elevator, Uriel started reporting back on what he learned thus far.

Three potential suspect executives who received unusually large deposits within the month leading up to the attack. The only thing left to do was follow up on them from here.

The easiest one to look into was Kaneki Issei, who had received a large some from somebody named 'Declan Griffin'. Uriel looked into the connection to find that he was the leader of Maelstorm of all things. He… didn't think that a mere gang would have connections with a panzerbot that could smash their way through Arasaka tower like that.

Granted, they were also obsessed with the net too, so it made a vague amount of sense. Perhaps the bot had contacted them when he got into the city? The connection started to form in his mind, it was plausible enough.

Unfortunately he might have to kill them all, they were some of the few meatbags that knew the truth of metal over meat. Oh well, more meat for the grinder. Uriel called him cringe, he brought attention to Uriel's deficiencies again by consciously blinking. Uriel laughed again.

Still he had to get more info before writing off this line or not. This was a gang in Night City that he was looking into, there was only one place that made sense.

Welp, looks like the kids were going to Afterlife again. He had to speak to Rogue.

The kids were simultaneously excited and concerned to be heading out to Afterlife again. So was the woman, he supposed. The kid was still recovering, but he was well enough to walk around at this point, the nano-bots put meat back together real fucking fast, and the chrome was real easy to swap out. They had gone to Chiri's funeral earlier today, it was exactly as boring as Uriel remembered funerals being. But now was the afternoon, and they were dressed and ready to go out clubbing.

By clubbing, Adam meant they were going to stay within his line of sight at Afterlife, and he was going to get info from the cougar. She would probably demand info back or something, it was the way info bros worked.

Ah wait, she was a fixer nowadays. Adam didn't really care for the job position, back in the old days a corp and the mercs would do business directly. They send a rep to find mercs that could take the job. Fixers are glorified vending machines that you get jobs out of instead of snacks.

Eh, at least the cougar did other things too, she dealt in info and ran a bar as well. She used to run jobs herself, but she hasn't done that in years now. The last time he remembered her doing such was… on that one job he was on too a few decades back. Heh, what a clusterfuck that turned out to be, he still reviewed the footage sometimes.

He was in his Gemini, and in his now-standard night wear. Duster, button-up shirt, jeans and boots, the works. He had finally gotten the power-pack shipped in (now strapped to his lower-back), which he was happy for. There was some product delay or something like that. But now his CCPL functioned perfectly fine on this frame. Sure, he doesn't have indefinite power for it like his new frame will have, but ten hours of strength far in above even a Dragoon was more than enough to kill most any threat.

Besides, he was carrying his personal Militech borg rifle, customized to hell and back to hit like a fucking truck. Shame the ammo was so expensive. Oh wait, he was rich, who cared? Of course, this body came with the works for cyberware as well, thickened myomer limbs, full-optical loadout lens in his deployable visor, a spinal-sandevistan. For Uriel he had their new cyberdeck strapped to his belt.

He wasn't going fucking anywhere without a full loadout anymore.

The boy was walking somewhat awkwardly, using crutches to move around, being mothered over by both his actual mother and both of the girls. The boy was fine, he was here to murder any street-meat that thought about trying something. He almost rolled his eyes looking back at them.

They continued on to Afterlife proper, looks sent in their direction were more than ever before. Neither Adam nor Uriel cared enough to actually observe and check what their expressions indicated. They were meat, their opinions didn't matter. That and the really big man with the really big fucking gun deterred most all violence.

He almost wished one would try so he could use his baby on them. The shower of gore was always an aesthetic masterpiece. Adam has extended his talent for interior decorating to exteriors as well, broadening his horizons and staying competitive in the marketspace.

Soon enough, even with the boy limping, they were at the entrance of Afterlife again. The bouncer waved them in with an easy-going smile on his face, which the kids and the woman returned as they moved in. Yeah yeah, nice to see you too or something, meat, now stop distracting the kids so they can get a move on.

After that little distraction, they were in, the kids were chatting up the bartender chick, and he was walking to the back again.

The cougar was glaring at him as he approached. The fuck is her problem now? He ignored her glare as he approached and sat down in his usual spot. There wasn't a drink at the table, so he knocked on itand waved a thug down to bring him something. He looked over to see the cougar was still glaring, but she wasn't saying anything.

If she was pissed at him, she should say it, not do this passive bullshit.

He stared back with his usual expression, raising a brow. She kept glaring.

A nervous thug brought him a drink, some sort of whiskey looking thing this time. He sipped it, it was just whiskey, nothing changed. Not bad, at least it wasn't fruity. He continued sipping as the woman glared, unfazed by her apparent anger. It was a game now, whoever spoke first was the loser, and Adam didn't do losing.

He started staring at the kids, absentmindedly sipping his drink.

The cougar kept glaring.

"You're a real bastard, Smasher." Heh, suck it bitch, Adam Smasher wins again. He grunted inquisitively.

"How fucking long were you holding onto Johnny's things?"

…what the fuck was she mad about involving that shit? Was he supposed to sell it instead?

"Since I killed him."

"You just had them all this time?!"

"I was moving, took the chance to clean out my closet. Was going to sell them, figured you'd get pissed at that."

Her furious expression gave way to a baffled one, and then a tired acceptance. "You have no idea why I'm mad, do you?"

"None." Adam said, sipping his whiskey again. She groaned and waved down a thug of hers to bring her a drink.

"It's not even worth being mad at you, that's like being mad at a dog for tearing your couch up."

Adam growled at her, her expression perking up in a smug mocking as he proved her comparison accurate. Adam glowered as he took another sip and leaned back.

She gave a caustic laugh, the same thug nervously approaching and handing a drink over. She took a swig.

"I heard you're quite the manager, aintcha? Pacifica went and fucked up the squad that was sent over to cause chaos, you've won them over pretty fast."

Adam rolled his eyes and half-complained, half-boasted. "Took them a week to get them to stop fucking around again after. Whole affair was annoying as shit. Kid scrapped a fucker that hits around my level, he's growing fast."

Rogue stared at him contemplatively for a long few moments. She huffed and shook her head, a smile on her face. "Kid's a regular desperado, huh? What about the others huh?"

Adam grunted in a displeased manner and took a sip. "Give it a few more years."

Rogue let out a bark of laughter.

A few moments of silence passed, the two old mercs nursing their cups and staring at nothing in particular. It had been a while since the kids came here, so they hadn't spoken in a while now. The only other legend of NC still left was the cheerleader's groupie, and neither of them wanted to talk to that fucker. Everyone else had long since passed, and no new legend has risen in a long while.

Well, that wasn't true. Most new legends ended with 'then, Adam Smasher showed up.' It's where Rogue got a good portion of her memorial menu. Idly he wondered if he should ask for a portion of the profits there.

Some of the old legends were coming into NC, like old Kagekaze, but there was a difference between a legend and an NC legend. It wasn't the same.

So the only legends worth a damn left in the city sat around in a corner, nursing drinks, and suppressing their grudges with each other.

"So what brings you by, Smasher?"

Adam paused and looked over to lock eyes with her.

"Disable all recording devices within the proximity." He demanded. She sat up a bit straighter at that, and looked at him searchingly. Slowly, she nodded and they waited a moment for the devices her techies put in the area to turn off.

Adam scanned around, his visor snapping into place. Uriel looked around their vicinity as well.

There, in the wall, something was active that wasn't a powerline.

Adam reached across the seating, his body half going over the cougar as he readied his fingers above the position through the wall. The cougar paused completely as he reached over, letting him get to work.

Vibrating his arm, his fingers punched three holes in the reinforced wall, grabbing onto the fucker on the otherside. Pulling back, he ripped out a chunk of concrete and bot.

It was about the size of a coke can, flattened out and pressed against the interior wall, spider-like legs squirming in his indomitable pinch. He pulled back to display it to the cougar, her face slightly red from the alcohol. You're a lightweight? That's just embarrassing.

"This one yours?" He asked, glaring at it.

She looked at it, her expression slowly turned murderous.

"No."

Adam crushed it in his grip, concrete and all. A thug brought over a trash bag, he opened his hand to let the smashed bot and dust fall in and wiped his hand on the thug's jacket. The thug was noticeably upset by this, and walked away. He wasn't so nervous anymore, more mad. Good, that was getting annoying.

He looked back at the cougar, and spoke low and quiet.

"The attack on Arasaka Tower. There is a traitor among the executives."

Rogue leaned back at that. Face immediately clearing into a completely serious expression as he continued.

"There is a fucker responsible for taking my shit. I'm going to kill them. So I'm snooping to find out who it is."

Rogue was silent for a moment, before asking. "What do you specifically want info on?"

"Kaneki Issei received a large sum from Declan Griffin, leader of Maelstrom. He is one the list of suspects."

Rogue closed her eyes and rolled her fingers across the table.

Adam sipped on his drink.

Rogue opened her eyes again. "I might know something, but it's gonna cost you in info."

Adam grunted, it always does, that's what being an information broker does, woman. "What do you want to know?"

She paused for a bit, sipping her drink. Adam began to take a swig of his own.

"Your story."

Adam stopped, drink an inch away from his lips. He lowered the glass as he glared at the woman suspiciously. "Why the fuck would you want that?"

She glared back at him. "That's my price, you paying it or what?"

Adam scoffed dismissively. "All the questions in the world and you ask for pointless shit."

He continued before she could speak up again. "Fine, gimme a second."

He tried his best to dredge up the long-buried memories of his early life. Back when he was weak meat, scraping and clawing in gutters to survive. Adam finally got the story straight in his mind, and started talking.

"Dad bailed on us before I could remember much. I knew his voice, and that's about it. Mom stuck around long enough for me to walk on my own and then went off on her own too. I came home one day to find it empty. When the cans of food ran out, I grabbed Pop's old baseball bat and left too."

Rogue started staring into her drink about halfway through his first few sentences.

"I joined up with the other street kids, staying alone was a good way for men in suits to come by and snatch you. That's what we called them, snatchers. They called me Bats back then, and an older kid helped me out by wrapping some barbed wire around it."

He remembered that bat, back when he was weak and easy to hurt. He didn't let go of it no matter what, the reassuring weight of hardwood and steel wire in his hands kept him together.

"We'd rumble around Yankee stadium, and that lasted until I was about eighteen, maybe younger. The army came in and killed everyone else, and I broke my bat caving in a few dozen skulls. They got me pinned down, and offered a job killing things, so I joined up. Realized I didn't have any papers, so they drafted some up and Adam Smasher was my new name."

Adam grinned into his drink.

"Army was great. I got to do what I was good at, killing fuckers, and they gave me all I needed to do that. Three meals a day, a roof over my head, all the guns I could ask for. I stuck around for another three years or so, before a higher up got pissed that I was showing him up all the time. Pulled some strings and got me dismissed."

Adam glared as he remembered the fucker, the son of some governer or something. He got killed a few years later, so fair is fair he supposed.

"I went back to stomping around Yankee stadium. I looked after the new street rats that settled in, and got the older ones to help me out on jobs. They called me Bossman Smasher back then, and I made sure the dumbasses didn't get themselves killed doing something stupid. I got jobs on the regular, and things were pretty good for me."

They all died a few years later, so eh. He frowned harder at the next part.

"Then I got myself blown up like a fucking idiot doing a job for a bunch of suits alongside a few other pros, turned into a bunch of meat in a fucking backpack as my boys ran off from a bunch of assholes with rpgs. My boys got gunned down by the suits, and they plugged me up into a computer so I could talk. Docs said I was dead for eight minutes before they brought me back. They had a offer for me, a borg body and all the murder I could want, or I would die."

"Of course I accepted, best fucking offer I've ever received, way better than the army. A fifteen year contract for this and guaranteed jobs? Hell yeah."

Adam grinned at his good fortune back then. Lady Luck wasn't shining on him, she was sucking his dick in that moment, and his hands were tangled in her hair. Suck harder baby, he wanted to ruin your mascara.

"Life was good for the next few years. I would go around murdering fuckers they wanted me to, and got paid in big bucks and experimental guns. It was awesome. I was high on life back then, and made more than a few mistakes."

'Hey, Adam. If we ran away right now, how far do you think we could go?'

Adam paused, and cracked the glass he was drinking from. He set it down and let out a long deep breath.

"Even tried romance out for a bit. Not making that fucking mistake again. I'm meant for murder and not much else, that incident made it fucking clear to me."

Adam shook off the memory of the naive bitch. He took a sip from the cracked glass again.

"Then Blackhand rallied up a whole bunch of fuckers, brought them to the tower, and tried killing me with a nuke. He failed."

"I was put back together by Arasaka again, and this time Saburo had a better deal for me. More upgrades, more support, a longer term contract, and lessons in how to punch through walls by shaking my fists really hard from his borg ninja. I accepted, got the training, then got assigned to act as the Tower's guard dog. Whenever something started being a problem for the boss, I went out and turned it into a not-problem."

"'Round this time they started calling me the Butcher of Arasaka. I liked the name, so I started leaning into it."

Adam nodded at the kids.

"Then a few decades later the kid showed up, murdered a whole bunch of Militech fuckers, and I realized I was tired of the shitty meatbag backup the boss kept giving me."

"You know the rest."

Rogue was quiet for a long while, as was he. He didn't like thinking about shit from the past, none of it mattered anymore. He finished his drink and waved down a thug to bring him another. The same thug did, glaring at him from earlier, and set down his drink in a professional manner. This was a well-trained one, huh?

Rogue eventually spoke up, transferring a set of coordinates to him as she did. "Griffin and Issei were seen talking by my guys, this was shortly before Maelstrom managed to raid a Militech delivery of some sort. Issei had some mercs transfer a coffin-sized thing to one of his private warehouses in that meeting. My best guess is that Griffin is paying him to hold onto it for them."

Now that was some good fucking info. Coffin sized and a Militech raid? Issei agrees to hold onto a panzerbot body in his warehouse and transfer it to the roof of Arasaka Tower before the attack in exchange for Maelstrom raiding a Militech cargo haul and a sizable sum of eddies? The pieces were coming together in his head.

Panzerbot contacts Maelstrom, Maelstrom works with it because they worship AI or some shit like that. Maelstrom gets it onto the roof in exchange for a raid job from an executive. Panzerbot breaks out and starts the attack from behind defensive lines, and pulls off tower-scale hacking to disable any defense for their group of mercs to hit the place.

Heh, had he nailed this on his first go? Turned out he was real fucking good at this investigation thing.

Adam grinned at Rogue, who had been looking at him while he was thinking. It was not a very nice grin. Man, this was a real good deal for him, he was right to come here.

He leaned back and started sipping his drink again.

"That's all I need to know."

He'd stick around for a while still, the kids looked like they were having fun over there. The girl was doing a handstand or something while the gremlin unloaded and reloaded a gun while resting on her feet in the air. The boy and the woman were cheering them on, as was half the bar. He didn't really understand the appeal here, but that was how kids were.

Rogue eventually started chatting about something or another, he went along with it to pass the time.

She looked bothered by something, but he didn't really care enough to find out. He and Uriel were more focused on looking over all the info the net had on that warehouse. They had to plan their assault.

Meat was going to die.

Rogue sat quietly in her private booth. She was waiting for that smug brat Macguffin to swing by and either explain himself (after which he would die) or look over the spybot that another party put in her fucking wall. She glanced over at the fist-sized hole (a normal person's fist, not one of Adam's giant hands. One of those could completely cover both of hers) in her reinforced concrete wall.

He had reached over, barging in without any regards for where she was, and tore out a problem she wasn't even aware of, damaging her stuff in the process. Rogue groaned a bit and sipped the low-proof alcohol. It was an apt metaphor for all of her interactions with the man recently. She lowered her guard, he pushed in and pressed against her, and then hurt her by helping her. Then immediately after he withdrew and wasn't even aware of his effect on her, having never left 'business' territory for him.

It was hard to be mad at someone who didn't know what the fuck you were talking about. Bastard had just been going about his day, noticed Johnny's old shit in his trophy room, and decided she would probably want it. No, you fucker, she didn't want any reminders of Johnny. She had the car and gun moved to a storage container and kept there, she didn't want to think about either of them. She was, in the end, too much of a little sentimental girl to get rid of them entirely.

Who fucking does that? He just happened to be thinking of her when he was moving? He didn't even give them personally, he had a flunkie do it for him!

Rogue growled into her drink.

The worst part was that he had been thinking of her. Bastard was too much of a dense fucking brick to lie about something like that. She couldn't get mad at him, because he literally didn't fucking get it. It was, as she said, like getting mad at a dog for tearing up a couch.

She glanced over again.

Or a dog tearing up your wall, as it were. She snorted, and decided that dog was an apt metaphor for Adam.

…A dog abandoned by his parents, constantly outliving his packs, and getting collared by suits until he got blown up and then turned into a literal killing machine. No wonder the bastard was such a fucking psycho, he never got a chance to be anything else.

No, that wasn't quite right, was it?

"Even tried romance out for a bit. Not making that fucking mistake again. I'm meant for murder and not much else, that incident made it fucking clear to me."

The one time he reached out, he got burned.

She had known much of his story beforehand, but not the parts he talked about. She knew he was in the army, and his division. She knew that he ran two gangs, and where it was both times. She knew that he had a fling with Michiko Arasaka for a bit, and he looked like Elvis back then.

She knew that his body count was five digits, and she knew the names and locations of many of his victims.

But his perspective shed some light on things. Namely, the reasons and his feelings about them. He didn't even understand how fucked up it was that he was abandoned like that. At least her parents wanted her. It made her feel queasy that she had an objectively better life than Adam, probably at any point in time too.

He didn't understand that he should be mad about how much he got fucked over. He didn't understand that he should be sad that he outlived his gangs so many times. He didn't understand that he should be mad that he was forced between a rock and a hard place and forced to sign a contract that kept him in chains.

He didn't understand any of that, because it was normal to him. No wonder he enjoyed killing so much, it's probably one of the few things he ever had control over. No wonder he didn't mind being a killing machine, he didn't have any happy memories of being human. Even after being borged, he still had bad experience after bad experience.

Suffering was the expected result for him. It wasn't avoidable.

He glossed over decades of constantly fighting and destroying on Arasaka's behalf, because nothing had happened in that time that he considered important. He had just been… going to work. No struggle, no particular passion beyond loving his job, no real desires beyond it outside of occasionally writing a song up in his rooms. He embraced being a robot, because being a human had only hurt him.

It was hard to hate a guy you pity. Then again, it was tremendously hard to pity Adam Smasher, his presence made that impossible. There wasn't a single instance in which he didn't feel dangerous. Like sitting next to an unstable bomb, or a hungry predator.

Rogue groaned. It would be easier to deal with the guy if he wasn't hot. His gemini was handsome, the techies putting him together did real good work there. He was tall and broad and strong. His face was mature without being old and withered. His hands were big, big and strong.

A hot chest pressed up against her own, a strong jawline right over her eyes, hand braced on the seat next to her hip.

His behavior too! Now that he was looking after others instead of killing all the time, the way he came off was entirely different. His dedication to getting the job done translated into a hyperfocus on ensuring their safety. His power became less threatening and more appealing when it was focused on defending rather than attacking. His gruff and grumbling demeanor became downright charming when she knew what the limits were.

A scarred predator, abused its entire life, trying its best to protect its new pack. A predator that had been hurt by love so badly it declared it was only meant for violence, purposefully ignoring the affection it was creating in its wards. A predator that would growl at those that came close, but never bite if they didn't attack first. A predator that was doing its best to create a paradise in a hellhole for others to be safe in.

Creating that paradise for no other reason than that it belonged to him now, and he took care of what belonged to him as best as he could. The kids first, then the land, it formed a pattern. Literally millions of eddies and hundreds of hours poured into something most would leave to rot because of how ruined it was, all of that simply because it was his and he wanted it to be better.

And she was the dumbass little girl that had been led in by stories of big bad wolves with hurt souls.

She pushed her empty glass aside and buried her face in her arms. She wanted to scream, but that would be a step too far. She was already ruining the dignified image of the queen of Afterlife.

She was going to get eaten, wasn't she?

—

It was rare for Hanako to spend time with her brother. She delighted in every chance she got. They had already lost their mother, brother, and sister-in-law. There were precious few of them left. There was father, brother, and their darling niece left.

To her eternal sorrow, her family was divided, and there was nothing she could do to fix it. She did her best to curb father's darker actions, and he loved her enough to allow it. There was only so much she could do, but she had been making progress, however slowly, through the decades. He had even occasionally spent time with her outside of working himself to near-death. Never to death, he was too precise to die from his own labors.

It was not enough for her brother, who still longed for nothing more than father's death. His vindictive crusade against anything he saw that caused suffering. He refused to see that Arasaka falling would mean only more violence as the rivals would sweep in and perform atrocities innumerable against their people. Or perhaps he did see, and simply didn't care. Damning every consequence for the sake of justice on behalf of those who would happily butcher them.

Let alone darling niece, who seemed content to stay overseas and simply go along with what other people told her. Leading a faction that she didn't particularly have investment in, chasing after the latest trends in whatever they called fashion that year, running her little band of kunoichi seemingly out of momentum alone at this point. It had been years since she had spoken to her, and for now that seemed set in stone.

Hanako longed for the days of their youth, when Kei was still alive, when the family was still together. It was happier then. Not for the last time she damned those in America, for starting the war that brother had to kill himself to regain his honor for. Privately alone of course, it was not right to blame the citizens for the actions of their leaders, and it would not be ladylike to curse another like that.

It would have been easier if she could, she thinks.

Yorinobu grabbed the teapot and slowly raised it to pour a cup for each of them. He was sitting on the other side of the small table as they sat in his Kyoto home. He refused to go to Tokyo while father was there, and his section of the compound was dreadfully disused and abandoned by all but the servants of the household.

He was focused on the tea, she smiled behind a sleeve. Yori was always bad at things requiring fine control like this, he had to focus lest he spill it. He was still insistent on pouring each time she spent time with him, such was the pride of a man. He glowered at her playfully as he began to pour to the best of his abilities.

He didn't spill any this time, she felt mischievous.

"Ah, witness my grace dear sister, am I not refined?" He spoke like he was a kabuki actor. One of the few things he enjoyed of his youth, whenever father brought him to a theater on special occasions. Silly brother, you hate father but still carry all those happy memories, can you not forgive one another?

"I am most impressed, you have become quite good after all these decades." She returned fire with a backhanded compliment. His eyes widened comically as he pretended to be struck. He sat the pot down and gave an exaggerated gesture to himself and then the wider room.

"Ooooooohhhhhh. A grievous blow, and the samurai is slain by treachery." He called out to an invisible audience. She played her part with an imperious look down her nose at him.

They smiled, and raised their respective cups.

The tea wasn't as good as fathers, something Yori was always shamed by. It would be best not to mention it to him, her prideful brother was always prickly about these sorts of things.

"I heard you traveled to France recently, besides the attack and the guards, did you enjoy it?" He spoke, eager to hear of her little adventure. She frowned at him.

"None of that rudeness brother. They work hard to ensure my safety, I have no experience running around with guns as you do." He grunted. It was always a concern for father that Yori refused to take guards where he went, trusting instead in his cyberware and pistols. Foolish brother, too prideful to accept help from anyone, she as a lady had to be much more practical.

He grumbled and leaned back, chastised suitably. She continued when she was satisfied by his look.

"I enjoyed seeing the historical sites, and the buildings came in many strange and unique varieties, and the people were beautiful as a rule. The subject of the meeting was concerning, and the attack was frightening, but I knew I was safe as I could have been."

He hummed. She knew he wanted to know what the meeting was about, but it was strictly confidential. As far as she knew, only the top netrunners and their direct assistants of each major power, as well as the leaders of those major powers, knew of what was happening directly. There was sure to be information leaks, but on an official basis that was all.

She was not going to break the contract of that meeting by revealing the subject matter, she had more honor than that.

"...I saw the footage of the battle." he spoke slowly, in that way he did when he was considering a matter heavily. Her mind went back to it. An invincible steel giant slaughtering an army, two warriors confronting it on behest of their wards, holding it off for their escape. A dark-clad warrior maimed on her behalf.

A raging turtle-dragon about to devour him, a spirit of golden fire revealing the warrior's true feelings, chains of fire barely saving them from the monster's attacks again and again. A warrior-youth, delivering a fatal blow to the wounded giant to save the elder. An exchange of names after a hard battle won.

She shook herself, Adam Smasher was only performing his duty, she held absolutely no illusions it was for her specifically. He grumbled as much as they rode back after picking him up again, her girls fussing over him. She knew his specifications, he had no pain editors like the foolish brute he was. You are in pain! Why are you refusing a balm for it?

Perhaps the fool simply liked being hurt, she bitterly thought. Her brother and Adam Smasher were entirely too similar, much to their detriments. They shared the same self-detrimental pride of all men.

"Yes, what of it?" She eventually asked.

"What do you think of it?" He asked back.

"Which part?"

"All of it, I suppose." That helps her none, brother. She glared at him for his impudence. He took a sip of tea and brushed off her anger. She took a sip of her own and thought about how to answer it.

The concern for the physical was great yes, but she had long grown used to living in a world of physical terror. What her own mind kept returning to was… the Daemon.

Adam Smasher's soul of fire was reviewed and evaluated again and again by her over weeks of labor. She had poured tirelessly over the existing footage that was recorded of it. She knew his specifications, she knew that he had never been subject to the pseudo-soulkiller, and thus no engram of him should exist. Father was all too happy to allow her to check every existing company file on the matter, his eyes glinting with amusement as she did.

The ICON-AI (if indeed that's what it was) should not exist, yet its existence was not… too terrifying to consider. Its efficacy was limited against targets that had more than just basic ICEs and its range was quite small, a mere district at best. The effect was strong, but limited, and the range was pitiful for what seemed to be a spontaneously bound AI.

It was… within her comprehension and ability to plan around, and it seemed to be unique. So long as it was, there was nothing to worry about. She had no idea how it worked or how the brute got it, but she knew more or less what it could do. Gravity was not frightening before it was theorized, things simply fell and men planned around that.

Then the France attack happened, a fully cybernetic warrior appeared, and carried what seemed to be a bound AI of its own. It seemed far more efficacious, although still limited in range. Indeed it seemed even more limited in range, but its efficacy was tremendously higher.

Adam Smasher was equipped with an ICE of the highest grade possible, one that also broadcasted a scripted counter-hack whenever it detected an unverified signal. The Dragon-Turtle did not circumvent this ICE when it attacked, as the spirit of fire preferred. It simply inflicted a supercomputer's worth of DDoS upon his frame, overloading the ICE, and almost completely ignoring the continuous counter-hack.

It was only this continuous counter-hack and the full processing power of Adam's own ICON-AI that slowed it down long enough for the Kang-Tao warrior to destroy what was presumed to be its broadcasting host. Anything else and Adam Smasher's code would have been completely deleted, after which his biopod would die from the life support no longer functioning.

The Dragon-Turtle did not use administrative access to gain access to the brute's command prompt either. It simply… brute forced its way through layers and layers of firewall. A data-fortress consists of many layers and 'rooms' in order to gain access to the deepest store information. The Dragon-Turtle performed the digital equivalent of tearing down an outer wall and walking in.

That should be impossible. Not that the existence itself was impossible (which it could be, for all she knew), but that action too was impossible because code does not work like that. It was interpreted for a human mind to be as rooms and layers and such, but it wasn't any of that! That was all for human convenience!

It was an action that was impossible. Like gravity suddenly no longer working.

…Smasher was the second-oldest cyborg that she was aware of. The oldest was Kagekaze, but she hadn't seen any evidence of him having one of these… spirits of the net. She called them spirits because they were blatantly supernatural, what they did should have been impossible. Then again, it was rather hard to see evidence of Kagekaze-san doing anything, such was his duty.

Did all cyborgs that live long enough develop one of these? A personality matrix-AI-ICON-spirit?

In the end, she simply had too little information to work with. Even including the third example in the form of the attack on Arasaka tower in NC, with tendrils of code reaching down from the sky.

…She did not want to consider them for any longer than she had too. She quickly hurried to say something satisfying, so she could ignore the topic a small while longer.

"I think it is quite concerning that such cybernetic warriors lurk just out of sight in the world. I think it is quite unfortunate that so many lives were lost to stop one alone. I think I am quite fortunate that Smasher-san was there to confront it, lest I be dead right now."

Yori considered that for a moment. He sipped his tea and looked out to the city below. The city that had been hand-designed by father to look both historically authentic, culturally rich, and immensely functional.

"...Smasher has changed recently, your thoughts on him?" She glared at him for his informality, but he didn't see it. Mayhaps you could tell her what you were thinking right now, so she knew where your sudden interest in the brute came from.

She sipped her tea and looked out to the city as well, wintry fog slowly dissipating under the rising sun. She thought of the brute for a small time. Regardless of his behavior, his loyalty was unquestionable.

He had served the Arasaka family for fifty-six years now, wait, no. He had been first turned and recruited during two-thousand and ten she thinks, which means he had been serving them for sixty-six years. That was far longer than most warriors stay alive, let alone stay in active service.

He had been recruited into her family's service when they were still whole, when Kei was alive and they were not divided as they are today. He even had a brief relationship with her darling niece, even if it ended so dreadfully for the both of them.

Her mind went back some time, to when she had been waiting with father to meet him for the journey to France. When her father tells a man they may drop formalities, there is normally an unspoken level of formality that is always maintained, lest the man lose their lives. Adam Smasher didn't maintain that base level, he ignored it entirely and truly dropped all formalities with father. He did not lose his life for it, but father instead allowed it, even playing a joke on him in short order.

…The last time she saw father joke like that was with Kei. He was never cruel to them, but he never seemed so lively. She wasn't sure what that meant. What was it that Father saw in the brute to make him so open? What was it that allowed him so much freedom from father's wrath?

He had been serving loyally for sixty-six years. She did not think that alone was enough. She dismissed the thought from her mind, dwelling on something like that would do her no good, she had done so many nights and hours before already. She didn't have enough information to draw an accurate conclusion at this stage. She would need more evidence before she could draft semi-accurate hypotheses.

Thought dismissed, she gave her honest assessment of the man father was willing to joke with.

"I think he is brutish and violent. I think he is crass and boorish. I think he is reckless, quick to leap into danger and reluctant to leave it. I think he is loyal beyond doubt and his tolerance for suffering is immeasurable."

She paused.

"I think he is a villainous man, and I think he has been trying to change that."

—

Michiko Arasaka sat alone in her office, staring at a screen of compiled information about Adam Smasher.

Danger Gal needed accurate information about all potential threats they could manage, they were primarily an investigative and security organization. Even if they had withdrawn from the public eye more in recent years, they still received contracts. Information was power, and power was required to stay alive in this tumultuous world.

Information such as psyche profiles about high danger subjects and areas. They had a psyche profile on most everyone that could threaten her girls, but every now and then they had to be updated to prevent one of her girls making a poor decision from poor information. She didn't want to lose anyone else if she could avoid it.

One of her girls was assigned to do nothing but follow the single biggest threat in all of Night City. Following from afar with telescopics and lip-reading, or closer up with enhanced audio and recordings. His whereabouts were constantly monitored, and his behavior carefully examined. Thanks to this diligence, she never had to lose one of her girls to him on a job. They were always able to pull out of the situation before he arrived.

They weren't able to follow him into high-security areas, like his private rooms in Arasaka Tower itself. They would be noticed by the cameras in time. But more public places were far easier to manage.

An accurate psyche profile was important, especially so on someone like him.

His recent actions didn't line up with his psyche profile, the same profile that's held for decades now. Her girl working on it had nearly had a panic attack at the sudden change, so Michiko had to do it herself.

No matter how miserable it made her.

Especially as her girl assigned to 'listening duty' sent her the data-recording of what she had heard, collected from the last two months of tailing him. He had gotten a student, and although he never opened himself up to the boy, he seemed to throw himself fully into his growth.

Michiko was probably the most qualified person in the world when it came to figuring out Adam Smasher. Everything she had heard of his recent actions… hurt, then again, everything involving him had hurt for a long while now. She had simply gotten used to the pain. Marc was always able to soothe her…

But Marc was gone. Danger Gal had but one leader again. Michiko Sanderson was Michiko Arasaka again. She was alone again.

It's been hurting for a while now. She bore through it, her girls needed her. She went through the various recordings again.

"I've been thinking about getting an apprentice."

Undercurrent of anger, is mad that he has to go out of his way for something. Pushing past that because he thinks it is essential.

"I've been thinking about getting a successor recently, 'case some meatbag gets lucky and scraps me."

Undercurrent of anger, this time from having to lie, something he was never good at.

"These aren't men, they're meat. Men hold themselves to a higher standard."

Unfiltered pride, he considers himself better than the vast majority.

"You don't have enough chrome to handle me rough, girl."

An honest statement, undercurrent of lust regardless. He always was a horndog.

"Ordering your sword."

Undercurrent of excitement, he still enjoys playing around with weapons.

"No, I just fuck her when I feel like it."

Boredom, undercurrent of lust and pride. He enjoys sleeping with her enough to brag.

"Your sense of fashion is still garbage."

Disinterested observation, his basic reaction to most people he couldn't fight. He didn't feel like he could fight the queen of the afterlife? Not for himself, but for others? He was using another topic to deflect her anger.

"I'll make sure to bring the kids."

Boredom, undercurrent of amusement. He had heard something he thought was slightly amusing.

"Replace the sweater with a vest, no shirt underneath."

Genuine advice, undercurrent of anger and boredom. He thinks this should be obvious, but doesn't mind handing out the advice. She thought about what he would say to her now. She quickly dismissed that thought.

"Your name?"

Anger from the situation, undercurrent of genuine interest. He was upholding a promise with himself to ask.

Hundreds of recorded voicelines and conversations later, she got to the most recent one.

"I was moving, took the chance to clean out my closet. Was going to sell them, figured you'd get pissed at that."

Anger, undercurrent of confusion.

"Took them a week to get them to stop fucking around again after. Whole affair was annoying as shit. Kid scrapped a fucker that hits around my level, he's growing fast."

Anger at the situation, pride in another.

"There is a fucker responsible for taking my shit. I'm going to kill them. So I'm snooping to find out who it is."

A familiar rage. What belongs to him has been taken by someone he can't kill yet. He's furious about it.

"Even tried romance out for a bit. Not making that fucking mistake again. I'm meant for murder and not much else, that incident made it fucking clear to me."

…she stopped the recording. She leaned back and looked to the ceiling. It had been hurting for a while now, and she didn't have a way of soothing it. Seeing the results of her fuck-up had only amplified that, like rubbing salt into an open wound.

Privately, she had been hoping that he had moved on from her, that his natural state was just murderous rage and that she never had a chance.

His recent behavior proved her private hope was dust and ash. Adam was dragging himself out of the pit of darkness he had been born in. The pit that she shoved him back into.

He had never moved on from her. The songs alone proved that.

"Heh, you're really bad at this music thing, ain'tcha Adam?"

"Ah, shaddup, this is pointless anyways!"

"No! Keep practicing, I want a beautiful love song on my birthday, okay?"

"Geh, alright alright."

His last forty years of silent butchery was her fault, wasn't it? All because she was the coward who gave up on him. She got up from her desk and looked at herself in the mirror.

She acutely realized that she didn't care for any of it. How long had she just been going along with whatever style was most popular? How long had it been since she's done something that wasn't the easiest thing to do? How long had she been… going with the flow?

…Since Marc died, she thinks.

…

She was going to change, she decided. Danger Gal had gone underground because she couldn't keep up with the demands of a more public organization alone. They were long overdue a grand return to the spotlight.

And she couldn't look like this when she made a comeback, could she?

This one is really short compared to normal, I'll go back and add onto it tomorrow, when I get the chance.

Adam had little to fear from basically anyone or anything on the streets of Night City. His Dragoon frame was durable to ignore all but the heaviest urban guns (as opposed to open-warfare guns, which were the weight class Adam was equipped to handle). As for the weapons that were heavy enough to actually hurt him, his sandevistan made him fast enough to dodge them with ease. Indeed the only thing that could really threaten him were weapons that were extraordinarily fast and could penetrate his armor. Such as high-class railguns and the fists of speedware bots using panzerfaust.

His only other weakness was a nuke, and even then you needed at least two of them, judging from his prior experience. There was a reason he considered himself the greatest murderer on and off the globe. You know anyone else that can tank a fucking nuke? Didn't think so. At the end of the month, he was going to become even better at turning meat into ghosts, and he couldn't wait.

…on and off the globe… Maybe there was an alien out there better at killing than he was. If true, he would simply have to wait for FTL to be invented so he could track it down and kill it. Aint no fucker, human or not, who is going to beat him in his own specialty. He got an upgrade to his Biopod recently, a better extended life module, this one would apparently replace his braincells with 'Liveware' which was techno-organic or whatever, over the course of thirty years. After that, his few remaining organics and wetware components would be immune to aging. He didn't understand the science behind it, but the Old Man wouldn't allow something to be installed in Adam's biopod if he didn't fully trust it, so Adam would trust it too.

But his immunity to street-level combatants had exactly one weakness. It was very distinctive. Everyone in Night City could recognize him when he decided to go out and murder something, no one else in a hundred miles came close to his level of chrome, and no one on the globe other than him could walk around in an IEC Dragoon, even a modified one.

Bringing him to his most hated topic, this was not a job he could do and get recognized. The fucker might bail if he was alerted to Adam's snooping around. Which means that he either had to change his look dramatically, or use another frame. As deserved as it was, there was another problem. Adam had a very established set of behavior and attitude. He couldn't let that get recognized either.

Which meant that between the two of them, it was better for Uriel to go out and raid around the site, and he had to be fully concealed within the frame as he did so, which meant no convenient quick hacking. He had to use a frame with less armor, and essentially tie one limb behind his back as he raided a meat-bag's place with sub-standard (thus not-recognizable) gear.

Needless to say, Adam was mad that he was going to miss out on such a fun job. Uriel promised to rip a meatbag in half for him to review later. Adam grumbled as he very publicly started patrolling Pacifica looking for meatbags to kill.

Uriel was in Adam's CCPL Gemini frame, and clad in one of their positively ancient suits of armor. The US Military Assault Armor, a suit that was no longer in commission, from Adam's days in the military when the US was still a thing. It was more protective than a MetalGear street armor set, while only slightly impeding movements, for the low cost of three-thousand eddies.

It would be best if he didn't reveal himself to be a borg either, so he wasn't going to be able to carry around all Adam's favorite weapons. They were all much too heavy for a meatbag to use, requiring either being a borg or in an ACPA. So Uriel had to get smaller scale weapons as well. A stock Militech borg rifle, a 15 microwaver plus power pack, a belt of thermite grenades, and a knife.

This, in addition to the Gemini's sandevistan, was all he had to use on this mission. His loadout was also chosen carefully, wearing a defunct US army armor, using a militech gun, and using thermite all pointed towards him being Militech Spec-Ops or Deniable-Ops. This was good, because they had apparently helped Maelstrom in exchange for a raid on a Militech convoy, and thus a counter-raid was well within their expectations.

Adam and Uriel hated sneaky shit, but they were good at it.

Then, hiding him in the trunk of Adam's musclecar, Adam would drive to a location he was going to patrol, park in a location without cameras, in which Uriel would get out and then make his way forwards from there.

…As discreetly as an 8 foot Militech-looking soldier could he supposed. Which was to say, not very much at all.

Uriel abused the sandevistan as much as he could to move between out-of-sight areas, and moved in a long circle around the city until finding himself near the warehouse. This would be an hour-long affair to do, so he would have to be lucky to avoid being stopped by something unfortunate.

Of course, Uriel had made the mistake of dating and breaking up with lady luck a while back. She was a rather on or off girl, things were either great or terrible with her.

So it was no surprise at all when Uriel rounded a corner to find himself in the middle of an NCPD choke point, guns pointed right at him.

He froze, and a mustachioed man used a megaphone to yell at him.

"Unknown Soldier! Raise your hands, Identify yourself, and submit to questioning! Anything you do can and will be used against you!"

Uriel raised a hand, and pantomimed scratching the back of his head as he looked at the cops that surrounded him in a 180-degree arc. They were tense, and ready to shoot at him with what looked to be fairly heavy guns. How the fuck did they pull this off? He reviewed his movements again, and realized he had stopped in front of a Dunkin' Bucks coffee and donut place about fifteen minutes back.

Way to play into the stereotypes, coppers.

"I repeat, Raise your hands and submit to the authority of the law or we shall use lethal force!" The man with the honestly pretty nice mustache shouted at him through the microphone.

Uriel debated to himself for a second, before shrugging and calling back.

"Sorry boys, I'm on a job right now. Can't talk about it, op-sec being what it is." It was honestly strange to be speaking out loud again. "No hard feelings though, you're just doing your jobs and whatnot. I'll avoid killing any of you."

With that, he activated the sandevistan and jumped to the right as a hail of bullets, rockets and similar flew through the space he just occupied. He started moving forwards, noting with pleased surprise that several officers also had speedware. It wasn't enough to keep up with Adam's absurd specs, but it was a pleasant surprise to see some of them taking their jobs seriously.

Uriel moved, the top-tier sandy allowing him to blow past all the cops regardless. He occasionally punched and threw them around, but kept his word not to kill anyone. Moving past them and getting fairly far before the dilation of time ran out. He continued sprinting, no need to let them catch up, he had to lose them before he could continue the job.

He was essentially home free with two more sandy uses, after which he just had to get onto company property, property like the warehouse. You see, cops were not legally allowed to go on properties owned by megacorporations who could sue the shit out of them, so all crimes that took place in such areas were the legal domain of corporate security and the criminals.

So if he could get into the sewers coming up ahead, then exit near the warehouse, then get in, they wouldn't be able to follow him and would likely pick up any stragglers he didn't grab.

He dropped out of dilated time again, entrance to the sewers only about a hundred meters away. He grinned underneath the helmet, home free baby.

Of course, in thinking that, Lady Luck was quick to prove him wrong. C'mon babe, is this because he didn't finish? No need to feel bad about that, it's not your fault, he just has a lot of stamina!

A riot armor-clad figure, clad in what looked like a…

Wait, was that a customized Enforcer frame? NCPD had a cyborg? Since when? Credit to them, this was some pretty heavy artillery for cops, Uriel was impressed with them.

"Stop, in the name of Justice."

Uriel froze. He recognized that voice. That was his fucking voice. His voice doing a Zap Brannigan impression.

"Please submit to questioning, you are a suspect due to your incredibly heavy armament and no known affiliation. We have already contacted Militech, you are not known to them."

Uriel stood up fully, and looked at the figure guarding the sewer entrance. He thought for a second about how to go about this. First, confirm identity. Uriel tilted his head to the side, and relaxed his shoulders.

"Hurm… I think I remember hearing 'bout you? Eren Shepard right? Aren't you supposed to be working with Maxtac?" Be casual, talking only benefits him right now, not Uriel. Reinforcements are surely going to arrive within a few minutes, so he'll go along with a brief chat about trivial information.

"You have heard of me? I'm flattered, truly. I got my career started with Maxtac, that's true. I transferred to NCPD after my Maxtac ten-year contract expired. I find the work more fulfilling."

Identity confirmed, this really was who he thought it was. Eren Shepard was one of his old tabletop characters, played as part of a meat grinder, constant-combat campaign. Maxtac's finest rookies, the MAS (Maximum Attack Squad). A year of constant conflict, and sixty-eight deaths later, and Eren Shepard was the only survivor of the original group of four. Just his luck, to run into the second-most dangerous cyborg in Night City.

…But, that also meant he knew exactly how to manipulate him.

"Right, I don't begrudge you for doing your job, which is why I left the rest of the NCPD forces alive back there."

"I know, and I thank you for that. Judging from your words, you do not intend to cooperate?"

"I would ask you to step aside for me, I'm on the path of Justice myself."

That got his attention. Eren Shepard valued one thing above all else, and that was Justice with a capital J.

"Please elaborate."

Uriel shrugged casually again. Display no aggression or fear of the individual in front of him, that signals both personal power and general well-meaning towards them. "I can't explain too much, but I'm on the trail of collecting evidence to bring a high-ranking individual to justice. They directly caused the death of a few hundred people. They will know of me after this mobilization, so I'm on a time-crunch now to raid the place."

"I see, you understand I still cannot step aside?"

You couldn't step aside, sure, but Eren Shepard always was something of a reckless loose cannon cop. Doubly so when it came to his precious Justice. Uriel pretended to think about it for a moment.

"How about you accompany me?"

Eren paused at that, tilting his head.

"Please elaborate."

"Well, if you're there with me, you can give oversight as to what I'm actually doing, and I can get the evidence needed to bring the guy in. Sounds reasonable?"

Eren thought about it. Heh, no he wasn't. The moment 'help me bring someone to justice' left Uriel's mouth he had already decided what he was doing. Right now he was just trying to think of a way to explain that to his other officers.

He unclipped his walkie-talkie, and started talking to his fellow officers. Eren Shepard, in addition to having a cybernetic body, was absurdly persuasive. A minute or so passed, while Uriel patiently waited. He was already in the clear, and he was going to get backup he knew the full capabilities of.

Lady Luck, you beautiful, bipolar woman. He'll take you on a high-class date later, make sure to wear something cute. He was thinking that garter-belt and dog collar he bought you last time.

Eren clipped the walkie back onto his belt, and began walking closer to Uriel. Uriel waited patiently and nodded as he got close. Eren held out his hand, and Uriel shook it firmly.

"Eren Shepard, NCPD Elite Officer."

"Special Operations Unit 'Mr. Sunshine'. Pleased to have you onboard."

Eren Shepard was born to a relatively happy couple, who got along as best they could in the dystopia of the future. When he was seventeen, he realized the combined financial burden of himself and his sister was too much for his family, and so he ran from home. Sickly, weak, ugly, worthless Eren ran directly for the MAS rookie program. A program designed to either kill rookies or produce legends.

Weak, sickly, worthless Eren survived, even as all his fellow rookies died again and again. He survived just long enough to afford a full conversion, replacing his weak flesh with strong machine. The mental abilities that kept him barely alive all this time now combined with the immense power of a cybernetic body. Overnight, he became a legend among the apex predators of Night City, the Maxtac.

The rookie program ended six months later, Eren Shepard had survived a full year of the most brutal, constant-combat meat grinder Maxtac could devise. He had personally taken in or flatlined more than two-hundred cyberpsychos. His relationship with his father never recovered, both of the men blaming themselves for what Eren did. He served Maxtac for the next ten years of his contract, sending home about half his paycheck each time.

This gave his family enough money to pull themselves up into the coveted realm of middle-class, a nearly extinct species in the dystopian future. His father got a better job with Arasaka construction, his mother got a promotion at her own work, and all together they could afford to send his little sister to an Arasaka combat academy.

An unexpectedly good ending, proving once again the adage of happiness requiring power to obtain. There was but a single problem with this.

Eren Shepard shouldn't exist. His presence next to Uriel carried troubling implications, needless to say.

They were walking towards the warehouse in which a coffin-sized package was apparently stored for a while by mercs on Issei's payroll. While Uriel was considering Eren, and the potential troubles he might foretell, he was deliberately not displaying any of this in his body language. As far as anyone would know, this was the first time he had ever met the fellow, he needed to keep it that way.

"What's the situation?" Eren asked him, a minute or so after they started walking. Ah, he had forgotten to tell him anything, his bad. Uriel briefly considered hiding information here, but he knew Eren Shepard. If it was in the pursuit of justice, he would do anything.

"This information is of highest sensitivity. You must keep it secret until after they have been apprehended at minimum." Uriel responded quietly, looking at Eren as they walked. Eren's visor locked with his own, and he nodded. Uriel raised a hand and activated the tight-beam comms device on the side of his helmet.

Tight-beam comms did not use radio waves to transmit information. They used lasers. It was vastly harder to actually 'overhear' them because of this. Eren didn't have one of his own, so this was a one-way transmission, even better to prevent potential problems.

[Kaneki Issei is the current suspect for assisting the attack on Arasaka Tower from within. This is one of his warehouses, in which a coffin-sized container was stored on behalf of the Maelstrom gang. Maelstrom may have connections with the attackers, and have recently raided a Militech convoy.]

It took a fraction of a second to transmit that message, this was the lowest-risk method of delivering the info. It might come back to bite him later, revealing this info, but it was required at this point. If he told Eren nothing, then he wouldn't help or be actively detrimental to his job, and the job was now time-sensitive. He had to tell him in order to get it done, which meant a small but unavoidable future risk.

It irked Uriel, knowing that he had already made a mistake in this operation by stopping in front of a cop hot-spot back then. It couldn't be helped at this point though, so he resolved to simply never repeat such in the future. Such was the way of life, you keep making mistakes and hopefully you avoid making them again in the future. Those that learn the best from their mistakes are the ones that survive longest.

Uriel had no intention of dying. Ever.

Eren took in the information, thought about it for a minute, and then nodded. Uriel nodded back, it was good to have backup on this, even if he was hoping for the challenge of doing it alone. Oh well, better safe than sorry on affairs like this.

They kept walking, making audible small-talk as they did so. It was mostly the same type of pointless filler that Uriel despised making with strangers. It was important to do here though, both for the purpose of socializing and building up rapport with his backup and for giving a show to anyone trying to listen in. The more things he can accomplish with singular actions, the better.

The music was one such thing. He did legitimately hate most modern music, garbage pop and electro bullshit that pleased him none to listen to. So by synthesizing music that he actually enjoyed listening to, he could get some tunes that weren't an earsore. It accomplished two other things as well at this point (for the first release surprised him as well as Adam, and the order of Saburo did as well), the second thing it accomplished was income, which was immediately poured into Pacifica to make it a functional society again.

The third thing it accomplished was reputation. People liked people who made music, it didn't even really matter what kind of music you made. Uriel was re-making some of the best music from literally decades ago, and Adam was getting the credit for making it. This was skyrocketing his reputation, and combined with his new looks and 'story' that was being told with the music…

Needless to say, the social fortifications Uriel had erected around Adam with this music was strong now, and more than enough to hold against any small critiques and slanders. It would also serve as a bulwark against more legitimate accusations and charges. A legion of fans ready to fight to defend the reputation of their new favorite rockerboy. Best part was, Adam didn't have to change a damn thing about what he was doing, all he had to do was keep being himself.

Better reputation means less opposition to his actions. Less opposition means faster military build-up and growth. Faster growth means a stronger overall state when deadlines come up.

Every action accomplishes multiple goals with minimal investment and maximal returns. Uriel didn't like bragging, but he was fucking good at strategy games. Efficiency was the name of the game, and Uriel had less than a year before 2077 came. He had to be better than whoever he was the moment before, he wasn't about to die to some lucky punk.

Eren spoke up again, this time not about some random thing that neither of them really cared about. "Information about location?"

Uriel shook his head. "None. We're going in dry."

Eren either didn't notice or didn't care about the innuendo. Oi, you should at least pity laugh here! He thought it was quite clever at least.

…Eh, he lost interest in the bit real fast. Nevermind that Eren, you were right not to laugh.

"Equipment? I have my riot shield, Techtronika-15 Microwaver, Magnum Opus Big Government, and six knockout gas grenades.

Uriel paused for a second. "Big Government? The 14mm handgun right? You only have thirteen shots." He pointed out.

Eren nodded. "I'll make them count."

Uriel nodded in return. "Stock borg rifle, Techtronika-15, and six thermite grenades."

Eren considered that for a moment while they walked. Eren turned back and met Uriel's gaze. A moment of understanding passed between them. Their loadouts were readied for high-tier borgs and similar, high damage and few shots. That was because neither of them considered normal humans to be a threat requiring more than their armor and fists. Eren had considered them a bit more with his loadout, gas grenades allowing him to disable crowds of them for him to be able to focus on actual threats, while Uriel didn't bother with his longer range choice of weapon.

They were guys who actually knew what they were doing. Granted, Uriel was cheating by sharing a brain with Adam Smasher.

The moment passed, and they kept walking.

Soon enough, they were in sight of the warehouse, and their enhanced optics could see guards trying their best to be subtle as they roamed in patrol routes around it. Now was the time to think about the plan of entry.

It was a two-story, standard warehouse affair. A main room, a balcony around that main room, and a side-building of offices and whatnot. If Uriel was a betting man, the main room had everything they were looking for here, and everything else was pointless.

Having said that, it would not do to let anyone escape here. That would be sub-optimal.

"Disable the perimeter, I move in first?"

"Agreed." Uriel said as he started climbing up the side of the building to get a better view. It took him a minute or so, but the strength of the CCPL made it downright trivial. Aiming the borg rifle, he waited for Eren to get into a good position up ahead.

Eren was behind a building about twelve meters away from the nearest entrance. It was close as they could probably manage in a reasonable time.

Uriel activated his sandevistan, and took stock of the targets. He only had three shots here, his weapon didn't cycle fast enough for anymore than that. So he waited for a moment more, and fired three times.

His three bullets killed three guards, turning their torsos into donuts. He specifically aimed at the targets that Eren wouldn't be able to reach with his own sandy usage. His sandy deactivated and Eren disappeared from view.

Four more guards died, three headshots to his gun, one torso caving to his fist. These guards were some of the few remaining on the ground floor areas that Eren could actually reach. Tch, you ass, trying to show him up?

Uriel sprinted and jumped off the roof, rolling with the impact. He started running in as fast as he could, not activating his sandy until he was actually in line of sight. It was best to reserve the speed for actually killing things, not moving.

Eren was waiting for him behind cover up ahead. He turned his head just in time to miss another guard pop around the corner and take aim with a nasty looking shotgun. Uriel activated his sandevistan, and turned that guard into a pair of red-drenched legs. He deactivated his sandy and Eren didn't even turn to confirm the kill. It was nice that you were so trusting of him, but they literally met only a couple minutes ago, you should be more concerned you know?

Eren nodded when he got to the same cover, and they simultaneously broke through the warehouse doors. Slamming their combined weight against what seemed to be reinforced aluminum. Needless to say, the doors broke and they emerged to find a host of disorganized guns pointed in their direction.

So Uriel grabbed a door and held it in front of them like an improvised shield as Eren activated his sandy and took out another three guards. Before his time had expired, he moved for another block of cover off to the side.

Uriel endured the hail of gunfire for a few moments, the door and his own armor rendering them pointless, before his own sandy cycled again and he activated it.

He moved to the other side, leaving the door in place mid-air, firing three more shots at the fellows with the biggest guns he could see. Three more guards died and he got behind a concrete pillar.

Off to the other side of the building, Eren's own sandy refreshed again. He raised an arm and what happened next made Uriel immensely jealous.

His forearm fired off like a rocket, connected to his upper arm with a cable, grabbing onto a strut that held the roof together. His hand latched on up above, and the cable began rapidly winding back into his body, pulling him up. As he ascended he threw his shield and caved in another guard's face, and activated his sandevistan.

He suddenly appeared above his shield, forearm rapidly returning to it's proper place, and his other hand holding his gun. Three more guards were dead.

Uriel grit his teeth. That was the coolest fucking thing he had ever seen. Goddamnit Adam, we need a body with that now!

He activated his sandevistan, and fired three more rounds, killing the guards that were now trying to fire at Eren and his exposed position. These happened to be the last guards left to fire at them in this part of the building.

His sandevistan deactivated, and Eren ran over to break down the office that was overlooking the central chamber as Uriel ran to the ground-floor offices. Two kicks happened simultaneously as the doors broke open.

Uriel was face to face with a couple shotguns, so he raised the thickened armor of his arm and threw himself to the side. The shots hit, but didn't do enough damage to matter to his armor. His sandy cycled again, and he moved in to drop his gun and grab both the interior guards by the head.

He slammed them together, popping like overripe fruit as their unreinforced skulls collided. There were no other guards in the area.

He looked around a final time, before looking over to Eren on the balcony above doing the same.

"Clear?"

"Clear!"

Alright, not too bad overall. The guards were dead, no one escaped as far as they could tell, and now they had free reign to search the building.

For the first time working with the guy, that encounter was rather clean. No major damage had been taken, all objectives accomplished, and ammo mostly conserved. Neither needed to pull out the microwavers, which was always a good thing.

That grapple-hand was mostly pointless for a fight to the death, as far as Uriel could tell, but Eren was a cop now. He had to actually capture people alive, and for that purpose it served pretty well to grab hold of retreating suspects. That earlier thing was mostly him showing off, it seemed.

Uriel didn't blame him, that was fucking cool, he was jealous.

They nodded, and went searching for anything of worth. The investigation of the lower office revealed a whole lot of nothing important. Outdated documents and nick-nacks accumulated by the guards. A table of poker and a cooler of cheap beers.

Uriel kept looking, and froze when he heard the sound of grinding stone behind him. He activated his sandy, and turned to see a panel in the floor opening to reveal a staircase. He moved to be out of sight of it, and readied his gun to fire.

A guard poked his head out, and promptly lost it. Eren came down to investigate, to see the tunnel leading below. Uriel gave the guards credit, 'secret underground bunker' was not something he was expecting of them or of Issei.

Eren readied his riot shield and they descended down the stairs. Inside was a main chamber and an opened coffin-sized container. It was dark in the room. His olfactory sensors returned a number of foul stenches.

They kept moving forwards, entering into the chamber to reveal a cell on the side, built into the wall.

Uriel suddenly wished he had killed the guards slower.

There was a woman in the corner of the cell, all manner of impure things surrounding her clearly beaten body. She was nude. It was not hard to put the pieces of what had been happening together.

Uriel handed off his borg gun to Eren. Eren had the face of a robot, hardly the best for comforting people. Uriel was dog shit at it too, but he would try at least.

He walked up to the cell. The woman flinched back, but didn't respond. Uriel began pulling bars out, one by one. He didn't feel like looking for a key. Snap, snap, snap.

Woman looked up to see a man in heavy armor shattering her cell.

Once enough of the bars were gone he stepped in, she flinched back again, cowering. Damn it woman, he was trying to help you out here. Uriel glanced at Eren, and jerked his head. Eren nodded. Uriel hated taking the risk here, but it was the fastest way to get out of the location.

Uriel removed his helmet, and placed it in front of the woman. She uncoiled a bit, and looked at him. He stared for a bit, and spoke softly.

"Let's get you out of here."

She started shaking a bit, and tears started flowing. He helped her up, but she couldn't stand on her own. He wrapped his duster around her form, and just picked her up instead. She coiled into his chest. He was trying to be comforting here, but he was never good at expressions other than glares and mocking grins, so he stayed neutral. He sent a message to Adam.

[Sorry Adam, I don't think we got it right the first time.]

[Goddamnit.]

He reached down, one arm holding the woman, and picked his helmet back up to put on. He turned to see Eren holding the blackboxes of some of the mercs and his forearms covered in viscera. He nodded at him, at least they'd be getting some fucking answers for what was going on here.

Maelstrom handed a woman off to be guarded by mercs under Kaneki Issei's employ? What the fuck was the motivation here? They clearly didn't care about her condition, just that she was imprisoned here.

Uriel was rather furious as he stomped out, carrying the woman. All of this had been a fucking waste of his time. They were no closer to figuring out who the rat was than before, because the coffin was used to transport this woman, not the panzerbot. That entire theory was dead, and they had to start over again.

It would be some time before the woman was able to talk again probably, so they would have to get answers from Eren. Uriel gave him a contact number and told him to transfer over what he found. Eren agreed to this, because he was a reliable guy who had just helped to bring an entire warehouse of criminals to justice.

Uriel looked down at the woman in his arms, buried in the trenchcoat sized for someone eight feet tall.

Where the fuck was he going to take her?

He shrugged, and started moving discreetly back home. Adam would no doubt make him explain to the kids and the woman where she came from, but they were trustworthy, he'd just tell them the truth in Adam's gruff demeanor.

So Uriel started moving, this time taking a wider angle around the city. It'd be a lot of walking, but he had time.

Less than a year of it, that was.

Big boy chapter tonight, hoping it holds up

The woman was given a room, and was currently sleeping. He let Uriel explain the presence of yet another freeloader in his house to them, and he answered them honestly. Adam Smasher was investigating the attack on Arasaka Tower, and found her in a cell, and is now waiting for her to tell him a number so he could call her people to pick her up.

'You didn't rip a meatbag in half, liar.'

'I'm sorry! I forgot to do it!'

Adam grumbled, it was annoying, but oh well. He'll just have to do it himself next time. He waited for a time before the copborg sent him the info pulled out of the blackboxes. Issei was working with Maelstrom to hold a woman hostage in order to get a Militech official to give insider info on Militech convoys. It was completely irrelevant to his self-appointed mission of righteous vengeance for his stolen ACPA, and thus he didn't care about it.

He sent all the info about the event to the Old Man, and the Old Man sent a message back.

[Thank You. Kagekaze has been informed.]

Knowing the old borg, Issei was probably already dead. Good, meatbag deserves it for wasting his time like that. Now all that was left was to look into the other suspects…

"Heya Big Guy!" The gremlin called out to him. He was taking stock of his weapons again. Today was a slow day, Uriel didn't have to focus too much on keeping the lowlifes in line, Adam had just patrolled the other day, and neither had much to do besides wait really. Wait and check over combat logs. He was considering taking a trip to the Arena, see what matches were going on, he hadn't done that in a while now.

"The pilot for our show is about to air!" She was excited as she threw her head around the edge of the doorframe, excitedly tapping away at the frame as she looked at him. All but vibrating in place, halfway behind the wall.

Adam grunted and went back to looking at his weapons, he really couldn't care less about watching a cartoon about himself, much less one about the kids. He could use that time doing something else, like looking at his weapons.

'Please Adam, it's anime, I know full well you know this.'

The gremlin groaned dramatically and flopped her way into the storage room, latching onto his side like a lamprey and hanging dramatically. You brat, he'll fuck you up if you keep doing that.

"Come on Big Guy! Everyone else is waiting for you! Let's watch it~"

Uriel pointed out that they didn't have much else to do today, they might as well check it out. Adam supposed that made sense, to see how thoroughly they destroyed his reputation. Uriel pointed out that he could simply massacre the directors if it was bad enough, and that cheered him up a tad.

Adam grunted again, and started walking to the living room. He could just tune it out and go over combat logs while everyone else watched. The gremlin cheered, still holding onto his waist as he stomped his way into the main room. The widescreen and speakers were already set up, the kid had finally learned how to do what he supposed.

A cheer came from all involved parties. The kids, the woman, and…

Adam raised a brow at Armstrong, who was apparently neglecting her job today. She grinned back at him, and shook her jumbo bucket of popcorn. He made a note to kill her if the Arena gets fucked up because of this. If it didn't, then she could live. It was her job to keep it running smoothly, not to babysit it.

He grunted and walked over to his bench, which had been set up for him in the middle of the seating. He lowered himself on it, and the gremlin was forced to slide against the seat as he went down. She adjusted her seating next to him. Oi, respect the bench some more, tiny woman.

The woman handed the gremlin a 'big gulp' cup of some drink, which she took in both of her tiny hands. The woman then sat down on his other side, with a cup of her own. His poor bench, having to carry two meatbags today. The kid and the girl were cuddled into the side of the couch on his right, yellow jacket draped over them. Armstrong was in the one-seater, bucket of popcorn in lap.

There was a countdown on the screen, ticking down to the start of the thing that was no doubt going to be awful. He hasn't seen something worth watching since before 2010, it was already a guarantee that this was going to be garbage.

There was an abundance of chatter between the people in his house for several minutes, before eventually the timer ticked to zero and the opening began.

—

An idyllic Sengoku-era Japanese landscape is presented, farmers work with smiles and cheers around. Children play in the view of their mothers. Curiously, a donkey seemingly made of clockwork machinery is present, pulling a cart.

A shadow starts to fall over them, the scene begins to pan up, but cuts before what is causing the shadow is visible.

An old shrine maiden looks into an open fire in front of her, talismans waving in about her. Her handmaidens look fearfully about the room.

The old woman begins to speak in a low tone

"And then, from the ruins of the future, a demon shall be called to save the world of the distant past…"

A close shot of a furrowed brow and closed eye. The eye suddenly opens to reveal its sclera is black, and iris is glowing red. The scene cuts again to see a number of soldiers in power armor razing the village, descending from a massive air-carrier that hovers in the distance. The lyrics begin to play, being sung by a passionate man.

~Cast through the storm, see the sol-diers causing evil and crime!~

Soldiers in green power armor rampage about, shooting lasers at the buildings and causing them to burn as villages run in terror. A single soldier in power armor stands near the back, helmet in his hand and wide grin on his face as he watches the devastation. He has blond hair and tanned skin, his hair is cut short and his face is shaved.

~A modern day hero sent to the past to save all of time!~

A scientist works frantically as sparks fly from the machine and consoles in front of him, he is typing away as fast as he can. The back of a giant man is shown, clad in black armor. His arms are crossed, unconcerned with the sparking machine. He suddenly disappears in a black hole that vanishes quickly. The door behind the scientist is kicked open and he is shot with many lasers.

"Kabuto Oni fights for justice, putting evil down!

The black hole appears in the middle of the burning village, and the black armored figure is shown in full. A scowling man with glowing red eyes cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders as the men in power armor react with fear. The black-clad man runs forwards and begins a counter attack, sending men flying or their power armor blowing up with his punches and kicks.

~Ride through the storm with the Ronin of Dread Frown!~

The black-clad man drives off the soldiers, retreating with their jetpacks to the airship, which also flies off. The blond man scowls and shakes his fist at the black clad man, who fires a laser from his arm-mounted laser-gun at him. The blond man jumps back into the ship, closing the hatch before it can hit him.

~Come on… Come on!~

The black clad man scowls at the villagers coming to offer him thanks and gifts. He waves them off and marches in the direction of the airship, grabbing a torn and burnt tapestry and setting it on his shoulders like a cloak. He is followed by a young man of the village, with a determined frown and clockwork limbs. Following the young man are two girls, one in a shrine maiden dress and carrying many talismans, the other is a small blue oni carrying an oversized bow.

~Kabuto Oni!~

The last scene is the oni with his arms crossed, glaring in the distance as he stands on the edge of a cliff. Behind him is the boy and the girls, also looking into the distance. The sun begins to set, revealing the silhouette of an airship in the distance.

The scene cuts to a man on a massive throne in the airship, the throne is decorated in golden eagles. He is a massive, hulking figure, all muscle and scars. His hair is gold, his eyes are blue, his skin is tanned. He stands up to glare down at the blond man from before, before glaring out the window of his ship, towards the mainland.

The opening ends with with the title card

KABUTO ONI

SAVE THE FUTURE BY SAVING THE PAST

—

Saburo sipped his tea quietly as he watched the propaganda commissioned on behalf of his young Yojimbo. It was within his expectations thus far, although he noticed three minor historical inaccuracies. It was best to keep everything grounded, outside of the elements that were being deliberately introduced. He made a note to draft up a list of such inaccuracies to send to the studio, they would be sure to correct such for future showings and the purchasable release.

To his side was his Hanako, who was poorly concealing a smile behind her own tea as she watched the content. It seemed the event he had arranged for between her and his Yojimbo had gone very well, to be so willing to smile at such content. She was probably laughing at his probable anger. Such a prickly one Yojimbo was, all young men have their prides in reputations after all. It did not matter, the youth shall adore him for his theater-self, and in them lies the future.

To her sides were the Jorogumo series, V3 was maintaining the quiet decorum as expected of a young lady, while V2 was constantly fidgeting and trying not to exclaim at the production. V1 was inexcusably sloppy in her seating, and was trying to pretend to not be interested.

It took three tries before the Jorogumo line was perfected, and the escalating tensions meant that they couldn't be used for their intended function as safely anymore. It was irritating to have lost the primary objective, but it was alleviated by the development of several technologies that were pioneered by their design process.

A net gain, even if his infiltrators couldn't be used effectively in the global environment the Ordo Panzer has created with their attack in France. Such is life, they will have to be repurposed. Perhaps a different form of infiltrator…?

He directed his attention back to the production.

The propaganda was a combination of several good ideas, he had made sure to reward those that were primarily responsible for them. The 'opening theme' being a summarization of the first episode allowed new watchers to participate in the broadcast at any point and still understand the base story. This increased overall viewership and public investment in his Yojimbo.

The setting being the distant and warring past allowed for the demonstration of Japan's culture to the world, the ability to avoid any accusations of copyright infringement or similar by rival corporations, and the ability to easily include the supernatural elements of the world to a wider audience and have it be believed.

The villains were an amusing mockery of the modern and more degenerated descendents of the Giant, and allowed for public subconscious bias to form against them while avoiding explicit naming. The studio would not be subject to accusations of slander, that would not do.

He directed his attention back to his latest barb loosened forth for his enemies, a glint forming in his eyes.

He always did enjoy theater.

—

A dreary and dimly lit city is seen, a massive golden eagle rising from the top of the highest tower. The scene lowers to the street level, where numerous poor and destitute are shown flinching away from men in riot armor stomping in a rush. The scene continues to lower into the sewers where the riot armored men are entering rapidly, and then deeper still into an underground bunker with heavily reinforced doors.

The camera enters the vault door and into another set of rooms where many ragged men hold guns aimed at the vault door. The camera moves past them, past many other people all carrying supplies around, and eventually into a laboratory. In the lab a haggard scientist is talking to a tall black-clad man.

"Decades of fighting has led to this, fighting and losing against the Order of the Golden Eagle."

The scientist is attaching various components to a bulky machine in front of him, big enough to fit a car within with massive mechanical arms set around it. The black-clad man is silent, checking over his weapons.

"Half our number lost in the raid to steal the technology to transport one to the past… It doesn't matter now, you'll fix this."

A sudden explosion is heard in the distance, and the scientist starts panicking to finish assembling the machine. The black-clad man calmly walks into the center of the machine as the scientist finishes and runs over to the interface.

"No! Just a little more… It'll have to work. This is our last chance, we either succeed or fail right here."

The scientist looks up and begins to power the machine up. The machine is clearly unfinished, and begins sparking dramatically. The scientist grows more and more frantic as the sounds of explosions and combat begin to get closer and closer. The black-clad figure glares and clenches his fist. The machine's arms begin to spin around him, growing in speed as time progresses.

"Go now, Adam Smasher! Stop the devastation of the present, defend our ancient past!"

The scientist shouts out as Adam disappears into an unstable vortex. He smiles briefly, before the doors behind him are kicked down and he is engulfed by a hail of laserfire. The room explodes, and the scene cuts out.

The scene opens up again in a field of wildflowers, a vortex appears in the center of the field and deposits Adam Smasher, before fading away. He lands on one fist and one knee. He slowly turns about to glare at his surroundings. Nothing seems immediately dangerous, he glares at nothing as he looks around him.

He sees smoke in the distance and growls audibly. He begins running, slowly at first but unstoppably building up momentum, tearing up the field in his path. He disappears into the woods between the field and the smoke on the horizon and the camera pans upwards to focus on it.

The camera pans down from the smoke to see a village now, being attacked just like in the opening. Many houses are on fire as the few guards attempt to put up a defense against the soldiers in power armor. They fail and are being pushed back almost effortlessly.

The camera flies past them at road level and moves to the entrance of a temple. It moves through the wooden doors to reveal a boy looking determined and clenching his fist at a shrine girl and a small blue girl. The blue woman has a single oni horn and a snaggletooth frown.

The girl speaks frantically to the boy.

"Please, let's just run! We can't fight them, so don't kill yourself putting on the Demon Armor!"

The blue girl agrees. "You idiot, you'll die if you try to fight here! Be practical!"

The boy shakes his head. "I gotta, this village took me in when I had nothing, So I have to do my best to defend it. My best bet is the Demon Armor."

The girl buries her face in her hands and struggles to not scream in frustration and fear. The oni girl doesn't bother with restraint and yells at him.

"It's got a Demon, a full time Demon, sealed inside it! You think you can overpower that!? Idiot! Let's just run!"

The boy shakes his head and moves to the altar. The girl rushes forward and hugs him from behind.

"Please."

The boy stills, before shaking free of her hold.

"I gotta try."

The scene pans out to see soldiers begin marching up the steps to the temple, laser guns in hand, still firing at everything around them.

—

Michiko always had a soft spot for the animation of her ancestral homeland, even if she had only rarely actually visited with her duties to Danger Gal keeping her busy. Every now and then she would watch something, although it had been a few years since she had actually sat down to do so.

So when the pilot for the anime made for Adam was announced, she decided she could write off watching it as a business affair for information gathering on what the propaganda arm of Arasaka proper was angling for.

In truth, she just wanted to watch it for her own almost morbid curiosity. To see what they came up with. The subtext at hand was rather heavy handed, but it was charming in the way older works were. The show felt aged, especially due to its medium as an actual show rather than a BD or something similar. Rarely is media actually produced in this method nowadays, what with the kids opting for direct neural interfaces and the like.

She preferred it, less chance of someone installing a Daemon into her brain through the interface. Marc always called her old fashioned in his teasing way, but she called it a proper sense of paranoia. It was a legitimate worry, especially in the days when monsters like Bartmoss were around. Maybe it's better now, but she didn't want to risk it.

So here she was, watching a cartoon about her first love. She chuckled through the sudden spike of pain in her chest, man she was pathetic, huh?

They had done good with it so far, all the animation was on par with the best of her youth, and the sound design was very clear and crisp. They hadn't quite managed to capture Adam's glares, his was always double-layered, a blanket of anger hiding another emotion underneath.

And replacing his missiles with lasers was certain to piss him off, he loved his big booming guns. It made sense, with the premise they were going with here, to give him a weapon that doesn't need ammo.

The designers for the mechanical aspects had been doing great too, as far as she could tell. Her expertise was in psychology and crime, not engineering, but everything seemed functional if moved into a real-world environment. Although that airship would require at least two fusion reactors to power, which is what the bulkier back end was probably for.

She made a note to have Amy look over everything in the show, knowing grandfather's perfectionism it was likely that everything in the show would work if brought into the real world. Heh, having his teams design hundreds of impractical designs just to have it in an anime sounded just like the old fart.

She turned her attention back towards the screen.

She wondered if Adam was watching. What did he think of it all?

Heh, he was probably growling at the screen.

She chuckled through the spike of pain again. This wasn't going to make her any happier, but she still wanted to do it.

—

The temple doors explode open, a dark figure bursts out, and immediately begins attacking the soldiers with dark energy waves and punches. The figure races down the stairs, throwing back soldiers until crashing into the road at the bottom.

A dust cloud is kicked up, and the figure inside pushes itself up, before lurching back and roaring at the sky. This clears the dust to reveal the boy in a set of pitch black armor. The armor seems attached to him by a set of teeth on each of the limbs, gnawing away at him. The boy's eyes are clouded over in rage and insanity. He is bleeding from the wounds left by the teeth.

The boy rushes forwards through a rain of laser-fire and begins driving the soldiers out of the village. He drives them back to a point, but the soldiers begin to rally around a central figure. The figure doesn't wear a helmet, revealing a tanned and blond head.

"What kinda punk is pushing you all back!? You should be ashamed, get it together men!"

The men in power armor rally, and the boy's advance is halted in a stalemate. Laserfire countering the dark waves of energy he throws out, and multiple men teaming up to block his physical attacks.

The boy screams in pain, and the teeth on his hands and feet chomp down. A horrid grinding noise is heard before they retract again, revealing his fleshy hands have been replaced with clockwork equivalents. He begins fighting harder, continuing to push the men back until the helmetless man steps into the fight personally.

The blond man jumps forwards and spin-kicks the boy away. The boy flips in the air and slides back, digging mechanical claws in the ground to halt himself. He looks up, eyes hazy and unfocused. He screams again as the teeth on forelimbs clamp down, grinding and retracting again to reveal new mechanical equivalents.

The man grins, taking a step forwards only to dodge a burst of laserfire from the side lines. He is then drop-kicked away by a black-clad figure. Halting in the middle of the air for a slow-motion shot, the figure is revealed to be Adam Smasher.

The blond man is sent flying backwards to crash into his men. Adam flips midair to land on the ground feet-first. He stands from his crouch slowly as a dark but bombastic hero theme begins to play. This ends with his head fully rightening, glare aimed squarely at the camera.

The blond man recoils.

"A-A-Adam Smasher?! How!? We left you in the future!"

Adam Smasher cracks his neck, and points a dramatic finger at the men.

"I followed."

The men begin to run away as Adam starts to fire upon them. Before he can however, the boy in his armor crashes into him and begins to fight again. His eyes are unclear and he keeps growling in a distorted tone. A malicious shadow begins to take form behind him.

Adam Smasher growls before engaging the boy and his armor. While they fight, the soldiers and the blond man fly away on their jetpacks, back up to a smaller air carrier in the sky above the village.

Adam kicks the boy, sending him flying back to crash into the foot of the temple steps again. He readies his guns to fire. The boy screams again as the armor's teeth clamp down on his upper limbs, grinding and replacing them with mechanical parts as well. Adam glares and scoffs before lowering his arm lasers and running forwards instead.

A destructive fight occurs as Adam slowly tears the armor off the boy piece by piece. Eventually the boy is barely conscious in a crater as Adam glares at the airship in the distance. He turns his glare down to the boy at his feet. He turns to stomp in the direction of the retreating soldiers.

The boy calls out, weakly.

"...Y-You stopped the demon using my body."

Adam turns and replies in a dull tone.

"I'm surprised you can string two words together after putting that pile of garbage on."

The boy blinks confusedly before he realizes that Adam had called the suit garbage. He lets out a weak chuckle as the two girls rush down from the temple to his side. The shrine-girl is almost crying, the oni girl is glaring at Adam as she points an arrow at him. Adam scoffs and turns to leave again.

The boy calls out again.

"Wait… You're going after them?"

"...Yes."

"Take me too, I wanna shot at them."

The girls object to this and Adam scoffs loudly.

"You'll be dead weight."

The boy confrontationally yells back.

"Then teach me! They took my village away from me! I wanna beat them down!"

"Oh? No speeches about justice, boy?"

"I don't care what it's called! I wanna protect the people I care for, and fight the people I hate!"

Adam begins to chuckle, before it escalates into a harsh laughter.

"Alright brat, I'll give you and your girls an hour to pack. Let's see how long it takes for you all to die on me."

The final shot is the title card again, before the pilot episode ends.

—

Adam sits on his bench, the expressions of those around him are various states of amusement and irritation at getting details wrong or something else like that. The woman was teasing the boy over his character being so headstrong, saying that it was a perfect match. The girl was getting in on it as well.

The gremlin poked at his side, brows furrowed.

"Hey Big Guy, you look mad, everything okay?"

Adam glared at the screen for another moment longer. Uriel couldn't contain his laughter anymore as he began chuckling in his head.

"They took my fucking missiles."