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Topic: Adam Smasher General Discussion Thread
In: Boards Corporations Arasaka
Darkwraith_Lance (Original Poster) (Verified Edgelord) (Community Helper)
Posted on June 1, 2076:
This is the thread dedicated as a containment thread for everything related to the Arasaka employee Adam Smasher. We only get to keep one of these up after last time, so no unleashing daemons on people you disagree with. They have rangebanned the runners responsible since, and the mods won't hesitate to do so again.
Remember, there are no rules about moderation. Enjoy your ban if you piss them off.
Having said that. The following links contain the archive of basically everything known about the man in question. Remember to check the archive before asking questions about available content. Original content takes about a day or so before being added to the archive, we have to first check with the lawyer if it's legal to have saved or not.
So no, no pirated content, you have to go somewhere else for that.
LINK 1, LINK 2, LINK 3, LINK 4, LINK 5
EDIT : Welp, this year was already pretty eventful. Mods, can we have multiple threads again? We ran out of space on this one.
(Showing Page 13 of 99)
Mister5by5 (Borg Watcher) (NC Resident)
Replied on September 1, 2076:
Hey guys, thought you might want to know this. Adam Smasher finished a job without killing anyone for once.
For those of us who live in nice places, I'll explain. Earlier today here in NC there was a huge amount of rukus as an Edgerunner strapped himself into an experimental frame of some kind and went on a rampage against the Militech divsion stationed here, and then onto assault Arasaka Tower itself.
Needless to say, Adam Smasher promptly threw them out of the tower and into the basement level of the courtyard right outside the building (breaking the courtyard in the process, because smasher of course).
Here's where the story gets weird. Adam Smasher proceeded to beat them down, and then call Trauma Team in for the group. None of them were dead when TT got there. I'll ask around to see if I can figure out what's going on.
Buttchug_Bandit
Replied on September 1, 2076:
bullshit, but big if true
Fredry the Threadly
Replied on September 1, 2076:
You're fucking with us, 5x5.
Smasher kills people, that's his gimmick.
But of course, you're pretty reliable when it comes to this stuff, so I have to work with this.
Smasher wouldn't spare someone if he could help it, so this must have been an order from his Handler or something. Arasaka wants the Edgerunner alive.
We need more deets info bro. Who are the people that got the one-in-a-million survival rate gacha here? What about that frame? Why attack Militech and then go into Arasaka Tower?
Golden_leg_jimmy
Replied on September 1, 2076:
Smasher is clearly putting the meat in the fridge for later. Man leans into that 'butcher' thing entirely too much.
Mister5by5 (Borg Watcher) (NC Resident)
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Right got a bit more info on hand here.
We got the public info on the lucky ragtag bunch.
IMG LINK
David Martinez - was in Arasaka Academy, single mother, dropped out and became a fairly decent edgerunner for about a year.
IMG LINK
Lucyna Kushinada - Might be the daughter of the Arasaka executive with the same last name, apparently a pretty decent netrunner, probably in a relationship with David.
IMG LINK
Rebecca Salcedo - Probably a former mox girl, from the tattoos. Last name was only found on a mugshot, so who knows if it's real. Was part of a different crew before Martinez left school behind.
IMG LINK
Falcon Reyes - Definitely a former and current Nomad, no doubt about it. Got his name off one of my Nomad buddies, who actually knew the guy. Was part of Martinez's crew these past couple of months apparently.
These four are the only known survivors of Adam Smasher in the last decade or so.
Metal_Gear_Chungus
Replied on September 2, 2076:
So a chromejunkie, a girl who is related to an Arasaka exec, a prostitue, and a cowboy?
Yeah, I see what happened here. Her daddy pulled some strings and got Smasher to back off killing all her little friends in exchange for her coming back home no doubt.
Fucking Corpbrats
BigDonCampus
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Ehh... I'm not sure if that's true here. It feels too easy, and Smasher has murdered execs that piss him off before, it's his one redeeming feature.
Calling it now, there's something else at play here.
Trusty_Patches (DangerGal)
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Got an explanation for you boys, you're going to love this.
The external cameras aimed at the courtyard were able to catch the fight and record the video well enough. Enhancing the sound quality, we can actually make out what they say.
And before anyone asks, yes this is legal. Public footage may be bought at the standard rates from the city hall by anyone with citizenship.
VIDEO LINK
Not gonna lie, probably the most I've ever heard the killborg ever speak before. Normally he just kills everyone around him and occasionally throws out a one-liner.
Buttchug_Bandit
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Holy shit, Smasher is old. I knew he was old but...
Fucking hell the dude is 90 as a coporate solo. Whats the average life expectentcy for those guys again? Liek 27 or something?
Fredry the Threadly
Replied on September 2, 2076:
...So Adam actually did intend to spare them?
Watching this now.
EDIT : I don't want to believe that explanation, but it makes perfect sense. I guess I just never expected Adam "I kill orphanges for fun" to be introspective. Especially not about cyberpsychosis or passing on a legacy of all things.
Again, it makes sense, but it doesn't... It's Smasher. Quoting ancient texts here, but the only ones who can live alone are gods and monsters. I fully expected Smasher, the monster of arasaka, to be able to live alone until he died of old age or something.
Golden_leg_jimmy
Replied on September 2, 2076:
And that one quote. "I never had anything to lose in the first place."
Fucking hell Smasher, I don't want to understand you, that makes it all worse.
Mister5by5
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Smasher admitting anyone having posistive qualites other than himself also feels weird.
"You got talent."
That's downright bizarre to listen too.
Californians_Arn't_Human
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Meh, Smasher was always like this. Go into the archive and look at stuff he used to do and say back in the 2010s and whatnot. Dude was a lively, bombastic, mass murderer.
We just don't hear him talk too often nowdays. He hasn't changed a fucking bit.
My best guess as to this whole affair? He got bored of overpowering everyone he went up against, and is now getting a human pokemon to throw at people. It's more challenging that way.
BigDonCampus
Replied on September 2, 2076:
Huh, guess there was indeed something else at play.
Adam Smasher's heart grew three sizes that day. It's now the size of the average tablet of tylonoloxide.
Baby steps, maybe he'll be a functional human in about a hundred more years. If he lives that long.
Metal_Gear_Chungus
Replied on September 2, 2076:
He won't, man's made too many enemies in life to survive that long. Luckiest fucker in the world world just to survive this long with how much of a bastard he is.
Florghorg_the_unwilling
Replied on September 2, 2076:
He will not survive that long.
I will make sure of it.
This is a threat.
SmashmeDaddy
Replied on September 3, 2076:
This speech is a fucking goldmine for voicelines.
Gonna be saving these as best I can, maybe try running them through the AI speaker, see if that improves the quality.
Can't wait to spam them in Team Fortress.
Thanks @Mister5by5 , your borgwatching comes in assistance yet again.
Samurai_Forever (NC Resident)
Replied on September 3, 2076:
Fuck this shit, you fuckers aren't angrier about this? What the fuck is wrong with all of you?!
Smasher is about to torture a bunch of poor brats until they turn into mini-hims. Then the world will have to deal with fucking five Adam Smashers, not one.
You're watching the start of the end of the world in live action and none of you are doing anything? Fuck off.
40lbsofcrackcocaine
Replied on September 3, 2076:
Fuck off Samurai. You want something done, do it yourself. You won't though, pussy.
Mister5by5 (Borg Watcher) (NC Resident)
Replied on September 4, 2076:
No problem, @SmashmeDaddy
Glad to be a help.
SwordofSilence (Shitposter)
Replied on September 4, 2076:
Lots of good meme content here fellas, funnyboys are eating good tonight.
Reaction images, for you all to enjoy :
(All Outta Meds?)
IMG LINK
(You might want to stay seated, girl)
IMG LINK
(Don't Lie to yourself)
IMG LINK
(You'll get it perfect this time, right?)
IMG LINK
(That's cyberpsychosis, that's the end for a chrome junkie.)
IMG LINK
(You have things to lose.)
IMG LINK
(I never had anything to lose in the first place)
IMG LINK
(You got talent)
IMG LINK
(Nothing Personal about that)
IMG LINK
Buttchug_Bandit
Replied on September 4, 2076:
@SwordofSilence
I figured out your strategy now. You just spam as many things as possible and hope some of it gets popular.
The only one worth using in that bunch is "All outta Meds?", which is admittedly hilarious.
SwordofSilence
Replied on September 4, 2076:
I made more. Try and stop me.
(Send me the bill)
IMG LINK
(No)
IMG LINK
(Yes)
IMG LINK
Golden_leg_jimmy
Replied on September 4, 2076:
Huh, just noticed something.
He says "I will no longer require the possibility of civillian casualties in my contracts."
...Smasher redemption arc? He's not going to be killing any bystanders anymore it seems like.
Fredry the Threadly
Replied on September 4, 2076:
You think Arasaka really cares about bystanders? Nice joke bro.
The more interesting part is the second thing.
"I will cooperate with PR."
Which means we might get Adam saying cheesy bullshit for the investors, lol.
Why was he talking aloud on his call though? He didn't need to do that? We can't hear what the other person is saying sure, but he didn't need to verbalize a thing here.
Did he forget about it? Does he have dementia?
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 ... 97 , 98, 99
--
(Showing Page 98 of 99)
Gonkfucker
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Samhill
What are you? A retard?
Goblin_Layer
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Becca's tiny, sweaty, blue tummy.
Bengali_Lad
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Goblin_Layer
I'm intrigued, tell me more.
Ass_slinging_slasher
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Bronstan
No, we have literally no idea how the fuck Smasher has been hacking shit with his ICON. We have no idea what it's connection to the Turtleknight in France was either.
All we know, from a netrunning perspective, is that that shit is fucking magic and makes literally no sense.
Far as we can tell, you can just weaponize your soul or some bullshit like that if you are a borg. Jojo is literally real, the Japanese have won.
Saburo Arasaka broke into the Demiurge's house and scribbled "Make anime real" about fifty times in all the margins probably. Makes sense with the old hateful fuck.
Goblin_Layer
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Bengali_Lad
Becca's sloppy wet lips kissing all over your face. Her tiny creepy hands groping and trying to grab hold of your own, much bigger, ones. Her blushing blueberry face as you tease her.
GobJobs.
Shipper_In_Seat
Replied on October 14, 2076:
IMG LINK
Debbido...
Californians_Arn't_Human
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Blackhand didn't kill a single person in his entire career. Everyone knows that no people live in California, only animals.
SwordofSilence
Replied on October 14, 2076:
IMG LINK
Rucy...
MoreChromeMorePlates
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Since when the fuck did this thread become nonsensical and repeated phrases, amvs of Smasher killing people, and one fuck who won't stop being horny all the time.
@Bengali_Lad , Stop encouraging him, he's already bad enough.
Darkwraith_Lance (Original Poster) (Verified Edgelord) (Community Helper)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@MoreChromeMorePlates
Since the official Adam Smasher isekai anime came out, I think.
Justice4Haruko (BD Enjoyer)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
HOLY SHIT GUYS
IT'S HAPPENING
REAL OFFICIAL NEVER EVER NOW IN STOCK
WE HAVE AN OFFICIAL ARASAKA LISCENSED ADAM SMASHER BD!
IT'S OF HIS FIGHT IN FRANCE!
HOLYSHITHOLYSHIT.
LINK
Pacifica_Thug_69
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Justice4Haruko
1000 eddies
The fucking shit is this? That's goddamn absurd.
Arasaka you greedy bastards.
Known_Sociopath
Replied on October 14, 2076:
That price.
The Japanese Jew strike again.
SmashmeDaddy (Shitposter)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Known_Sociopath
Impossible, remember the ancient texts.
The Samurai is the exact opposite of the Jew.
The Jew fears the Samurai.
Johnny was trying to warn us all along.
This is just regular greed methinks.
Pacifica_Thus_69
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Geh, not going to spend that much on something until I get a review.
Can someone else take the first hit on everyone's behalves here? I wanna get confirmation that it's quality before forking over that much eddies on a BD.
Zhuo_witches
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Right, So I'll go ahead and buy it. I got the eddies to burn if it flops.
EDIT : Typing this up through what is probably a lethal dose of tylenoloxide. We are going to have to go back and recreate all of those fan made Smasher Bds because none of them are accurate.
So, Dragoon frame Bds are always sorta hazy, owing to the amount of drugs you have to keep people on to not go crazy in the damn things, right? Everyone knows this part. The leading theory was that Smasher was just used to the drugs to the point where he could function mostly normally.
As it turns out, that was wrong. The BD contains none of the signs of the clouding-effect that a drug-using source indicates. Smasher is in a fucking dragoon frame 24/7 without anything keeping his brain together from running the fucking things. Goddamn. My input had to inject me with some suppresants in my fucking chair to keep my brain from going over the deep end. Second-hand feedback and I nearly lost it. Smasher is just raw-dogging that the whole time.
The clear frame use is fucking insanity by the way, as well as the high grade sandy they got installed on him. I think I know what it's like to be a god now, because jesus. The world was made of cardboard and moving slow as molasses while it was on. No wonder Smasher has such a titanic ego, i have one now as well because of that.
Then the turtleknight kicked my fucking arm and exploded it. The thing is? We always assumed Smasher had pain adjustors like everyone else in the fucking world. It makes sense, right? He hasn't shown a response to pain since, what? 2009?
No, the fucker has no pain supressant of any kind. I know what it's like to have my arm shatter under a magical kung-fu kick and have to fight through that regardless.
Forget the Dragoon Frame, Smasher has been raw-dogging fucking everything.
Holy fuck, it hurts so goddamn much.
Very much worth the price, going to replay this over and over when I can think through a migrane again.
Going to crash now.
Exolifter_and_acessories
Replied on October 14, 2076:
What the fuck is the point of this "Debbido" "Rucy" bullshit? Fuck off and stop wasting thread space with it.
EDIT :
No drugs
No painkiller
Fucking hell, I'll never be that goddamn cool.
I have to buy it now, there goes a few months of salary i guess.
Knife's_Edge
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Nu-Smasher fucking sucks, and all the newfags here that think he's cool with that stupid fucking face need to fuck off.
He's a goddamn warmachine, not this faggot-ass 'monster with a heart of gold' bullshit.
Worst thing that they've done to him ever. Where's my silent murderbot? They stole him from me.
Man_Of_Mystery (Oldestfag)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Knife's_Edge
Post-nuke newfag
Calling anyone a newfag
Get fucking real kid and fuck off out of our thread. Go back to Didit or something.
2010s Adam was fun as fuck, running around like a murderous chimpanzee, saying terminator lines, going to parties. He was awesome. Then he got depressed because both his eternal rival and his girl left him.
Only now is he becoming fun again.
Speaking of which,
@OfficialMichiko I STILL SHIP YOU TWO! GET BACK TOGETHER SO HE CAN GET IN THE ELVIS BODY AGAIN!
#BRINGELVISSMASHERBACK
VeryDisonorabu
Replied on October 14, 2076:
The Smasher knows where it is at all times
It knows this because it knows where it isn't
By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is, it obtains a difference or deviation
The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the Smasher from a position where it is to a position where it isn't and arriving at a position that it wasn't, it now is
Consequently, the position where it is is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was is now the position that it isn't
In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation
The variation being the difference between where the smasher is and where it wasn't
If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA
However, the Smasher must also know where it was
The Smasher guidance computer scenario works as follows
Because a variation has modified some of the information that the Smasher has obtained, it is not sure just where it is
However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was
It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa
And by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error
EDIT : Breaking update lads, the Smasher now knows where YOU are.
Goaker
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Still laughing at the fact that the only ones who survived the turtleknight are both east-asian.
Heh, weeb supremecy strikes again lads.
Pacifica_Thus_69
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Zhuo_witches
Fuck, geuss I have to buy it now.
There goes eating two meals a day for a while, back to one agian.
SmashmeDaddy (Shitposter)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
Made another AMV of our Dadam Smasher ;
LINK
Abbey_34 (Smasher Fangirl)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@SmashmeDaddy
Oh yiss, gimme dat.
I think I'm going to buy another dakimakura of my husbando to celebrate.
He's so handsome, He just needs someone to love.
He's so seiso~
Official_Brick@Maelstrom (NC Gangleader)
Replied on October 14, 2076:
@Zhuo_wtiches
Heh, nice
Gonna have to get my hands on this now. Can't wait to play it.
End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 96, 97, 98, 99
It was not difficult to quantify how powerful his new frame was. He had been sent the exact specifications for his capabilities well in advance, and everything he had tried himself lined up.
His Dragoon frame had served him well for decades now, its array of sensors and high-performance physicality shattered most people who were placed in one. A normal Dragoon soldier was little more than a slightly less creative robot, owing to the drugs needed to put the brain into a sleepwalking coma.
A Dragoon frame had every visual optic option that humanity had ever developed at the time of it's invention, it had as many of the most useful audio options as well. It was as well armored as an armored truck and that armor was fully resistant to non-kinetic weaponry as well, could sprint at fifty miles per hour, and could leap six meters into the air or nineteen meters longways. Its safe carrying capacity was four-hundred and forty pounds, its maximum carrying capacity was seventeen-hundred and sixty-four pounds. It weighed six-hundred and twenty pounds and carried a host of backup systems and communications arrays.
A normal Dragoon frame was a man-sized light tank, and carried weaponry to match. His Dragoon frame was not normal. His was eight feet tall, and almost seven-hundred pounds. His carried a General Motors micro-fusion engine in the torso to grant indefinite longevity, his was filled to the brim with thickened myomer and reinforced joints and whatever else seemed optimal for turning problems into red paint. It was to a normal Dragoon what his Sampson was to a normal Sampson frame.
His new frame was not his Dragoon's equal. It was better. Every facet of its design was on par if not improved. It had just as much armor as before, and the internal frame was equally reinforced. He had just as many sensors and communications systems. He was now only five-hundred pounds in all, much lighter than before. The biggest change, of course, was the improved physical capacity. He couldn't jump quite as far as before, a mere 12 meters long, but he could jump higher.
His lift capacity, his strength, was tripled. A safe lift of thirteen-hundred and twenty-two pounds, a max lift of five-thousand, ninety-one pounds. His run speed was increased again, from fifty miles per hour to sixty-six.
Best of all, his frame was not finished yet. It would be at least one more month, several if he was being realistic, in which the second component of its design was finished. Integrated ACPA, just like his DaiOni, but designed for his new and improved base. He couldn't wait to fight something again.
He was feeling good as he lifted the truck above his head. His arms were cybernetic and thus, never got tired. He could do this all day if he wanted to. The kids and the woman were watching from the other side of the lot, instead of practicing with their new linear frames. He didn't buy those so you could gawk at him, he'll glare at you in a minute. After he was done relishing in his new frame.
Highest functioning fucker on the planet. Why the hell did he ever stop chasing power?
…Oh yeah, he was already the strongest on the planet, there was little point at the time. With the panzerbots coming out of the woodwork, that little fact didn't change, but the gap was narrower than he liked. He wouldn't make the mistake of slowing down ever again.
Decades spent in a frame more than seventy years old at this point. Who the fuck had ever heard of using a gun more than seventy years old outside of random shitholes in the middle of nowhere? He should have gotten an upgrade years ago, decades ago. Oh well, he was getting them now at least.
He grunted and crouched slightly, using the massively powerful myomer in his legs. He paused for a moment to get the angle right, and then extended his entire body. He threw the truck above his head.
It flew through the air, disgracefully, for several seconds before landing on the other side of the lot. It basically shattered on impact, modern vehicles were fucking garbage made out of aluminum and other shit like that. He walked over to it, counting his steps as he did.
…Sixty meters. He could do better. Still a huge improvement from his Dragoon frame, it would have managed about a third of that. Wait no, it wouldn't have, because his Dragoon frame couldn't lift five-thousand pounds.
Rest well in his armory, Dragoon, he didn't need you anymore. This 'Oni' frame was a worthy successor.
He looked over to see the kids and woman still gawking, he glowered at them until they got the hint and started going through the list of movements again. They had to be aware of what it was like to move in a linear frame before they could go on jobs again. Not knowing was how you got your arm torn apart by doing something stupid and flexing in the wrong way.
In the case of the kid, he had to get used to his new bioware. It was stupid expensive for it all, but the kid wanted to pay for it and made a good argument for it. He also wanted to pay for everyone elses' bioware, but Adam shot that down. That was a good way to lose all your savings, dumbass, he had enough to cover the costs of turning three meatgirls into barely acceptable backup.
So the kid was now buff again, much to his pleasure. He caught him flexing at a mirror once. The kid booked it once he noticed Adam there.
Anyways, kid's bioware was right around fifty thousand eddies for the whole lot of it, about double the cost of the general set that the meatgirls each got. That and he was on some sort of bioware diet or whatnot to get better, but that would be two more months before he was done drinking a liter of nanobot-laced milk each morning and eating triple portions.
The girls seemed to enjoy his appetite, what with all the cooking they were doing.
Adam allowed the boy to get all this bioware, he wasn't going to lose it anytime soon from mere meat-enhancements, so there wasn't a need to regulate him beyond telling him not to get ugly shit. Adam wasn't about to have an unaesthetic apprentice, it would reflect poorly on himself.
Other than his new bioware, the kid was mostly the same. He was jumpy and sneaky and ran around with a shotgun. Avoiding hits rather than taking them whenever he could, and punching soft spots like the throat and eyes. Adam could move faster than the kid still, but the kid was almost as quick reflexes-wise and far more agile. He had gotten real good at a trick where he kicks off the ground to jump in a completely different direction mid-run.
Sparring with the kid was like fighting a squirrel now. A buff squirrel with a custom high-impact shotgun. Adam approved, he couldn't be copying him now, the kid didn't have the chrome for it. He could, given time, get the chrome for it. But it wasn't required right now.
Kid could get a full conversion later, or he could stay a half-meatbag, so long as he was useful Adam didn't care. He was in the same gear otherwise, a riot set and his yellow jacket over such, now stretched a bit beyond what it should be on his body.
The meatgirls had gotten their upgrades too. A basic bioware package for each, a linear frame, a set of armor, and new guns.
The tiny-girl got filled out a bit from the bioware. She was going to be using the frame, armor, ACPA skaters, and a quick-detach artificial shoulder mount that was mounted on her hips. Its position let the artificial arms carry much higher impact guns, namely two militech borg rifles with extended magazines. She had taken a while to get used to the secondary arms, and was queasy using them.
She got that fixed by getting the Arasaka techies to change them to non-arm configurations, just getting the guns wired directly into the limbs instead of being held. It now looked like she just had two guns almost floating on her hips, and that seemed to make it easier on her. Adam didn't know how, but whatever. Uriel had chuckled again when he saw it.
The girl had gotten a small upgrade as well. Bioware package, a linear frame, marine combat wetsuit for increased protection without restricting movement, and a new cyberdeck. Adam was somewhat baffled she never got one of her own in all this time, so he had to buy it for her. It was far better than whatever street-garbage she was probably using before. She was a netrunner though, and Adam didn't know jackshit about whatever the fuck they needed to do their jobs besides the obvious. She'll figure it out eventually, probably.
The woman had gotten her first upgrade in what was probably ever. She wasn't a combatant by heart and it showed in her slightly awkward movements. The same bioware package that the other two got, the same grade of linear frame, and new equipment. She wasn't going to be dodging anything anytime soon, so she was just loaded up in the best armor they could get. A MetalGear set and a heavy armor jacket. She got to carry a heavy caliber handgun and a microwaver, mostly because they really didn't have any time to teach her how to use more than one type of gun if they wanted her in decent shape anytime soon.
A Colt AMT Model 2000, a rugged and reliable model of handgun that fired 12mm rounds at up to fifty meters with any reliability, with eight rounds per magazine. Best known for its durable frame, 'can't fuck it up' engineering, and big bullets. It was a classic for a reason, and served in both the first and second Central American Wars as the industry standard officer sidearm. It used zero electronics in its design.
He had to special order it from the manufacturers, they didn't make them in bulk anymore, they were only made to order these days. He had the cash to burn, so it was upgraded with electro-thermal rounds for increased damage on hit for no additional recoil, now hitting as hard as most assault rifles.
It was a workhorse of a gun, and Adam appreciated it for that reason. He had used one himself back in his army days, after snatching it off some officer's corpse. A workhorse that had just been given ET rounds. It would be the best the woman would have for a long time, he very much doubted she was going to contribute much in the short term.
She had training wheels in the form of laser sight, fuck knows she needed it. She still missed against moving targets more than half the time. Good thing the microwaver didn't need precision, just firing within a meter of the target was good enough most of the time.
Which was good, otherwise she'd remain a freeloader in his house all the fucking time. The end of the month had come, and Pacifica had basically fully recovered from the attack, and had started to progress beyond its previous point. They had another set of tide generators, water purifiers, and aquaponics up and running now. The immense casualties had given a huge amount of chrome for the docs and meat for the grass, as well as freeing up a lot of apartment space for the seemingly endless horde of fuckers that constantly came crawling out of the woodwork to live in his territory.
He put the vast majority of them to work cleaning shit up. The constant injuries from the arena and the underpaid workers gave the docs a shit-ton of practice, and reconstruction proceeded on schedule. The new cartoon was quite popular, which Adam had begrudging approval for. It was inaccurate garbage (and took his fucking missiles away) but it's merchandise had brought him lots of cash to burn keeping his territory building up.
He had the Animals more or less permanently on his employ at this point, serving as both arena guards and heavy policing grunts attached to patrols of his budget cops. They were the only gang worth mentioning left in Pacifica, the Voodoo Boys and the new upstarts having been wiped out in the attack (good job kid, one less problem for him later).
All other gang activity was kept to a minimum, their only presence on his land being their sponsored fighters and merchandise shops in the arena. They kept the fights to the matches, and he didn't butcher them all, it was a good system. They contributed to his profits, which contributed to his industrial build-up, which contributed to his military power, which contributed to his chances of survival for as long as he maintained it.
An army wouldn't stop the meatfucker, but it would slow them down long enough for Adam to gank the fucker. That was the plan anyways, one of the many that he and Uriel worked out. Adam wasn't going to die, that was for people weaker than him.
Dying was for meat and scrap, he was neither, not anymore.
So he had to increase his profits. Uriel released a bunch of songs about robots killing each other, Adam approved of such, and that made them another tidy sum to pour into Pacifica. The Old Man had him make a braindance of his fight with the panzerknight, which made him another fistful of eddies from meatbags wanting to experience what actual combat was like.
The news reported several deaths as a result, much to his amusement.
The special event he held for the arena made him yet another sum. Himself verses some of the best fighters, in a row, for an entire day. Each fighter was paid based on how long they lasted against him. The arena had reached the point where more eddies didn't need to be put into repairing and refurbishing it anymore, and as such made more profit.
Needless to say, kicking the shit out of meatbags for an entire day was both fun and made him a shit-ton of cash. He made sure that his personal account was still where he was used to it being, and put the rest right back into the region.
The new freeloader had only been in his house for a week before she got one of her people in militech to come pick her up. Adam made the guy swear not to tell anyone what he had done, and the guy nervously agreed as he hugged his gal. That got rid of her and him, and Adam was fine with it.
He and Uriel had still been investigating of course, but the other three suspects all turned into dead ends or were up to other bullshit that wasn't related to him killing them for taking his DaiOni. He forwarded the info each time to Kagekaze, and they were dealt with as appropriate each time. It was beginning to look like this was a true-blue traitor, one that wasn't motivated by greed or similar, which meant Adam had no idea where to look next. Uriel wasn't great at investigations either, which meant they were stuck for now.
It pissed him off. That bastard got to live for now, but they'd slip up again. Even if it took a hundred years, Adam was going to pay them back. He was thinking a very expensive bullet in their torso, as a gift.
Either that or get help, and there was only one investigative group in NC worth a damn.
Adam would rather die than go to the fucking catgirls for help.
"Heya, Adam, wouldn't these ears be cute on you?"
"What, fuck no, I'm not wearing that."
"C'mon~"
"Get those away from me!"
His hand clenched onto the frame of the truck he threw. It put up very little resistance to his grip, twisting and shattering in his new hands.
Good, fuck this truck, it's not even reinforced like his musclecar. Shitty modern vehicle design. Why did they ever stop using steel frames?
He let go of the representation of the failure of the automotive industry and looked over to the kids and woman. They were going through the motions as they should…
He wanted to shoot something.
"Firing practice now." He spoke, loudly enough for them to all hear but not quite a yell. They whooped at the change of pace. Ungrateful, he should kick them out.
They moved into the lines at the correct distance from the targets. Uriel started up the program that got the targets to start moving on their predetermined path. They could be using VR for this, but Adam hated VR, so they weren't doing that.
The kids were fine, their aiming was practice from being on the street long enough to get good. The woman was still poor, aiming incorrectly. He grunted and walked over.
He grabbed her from behind, and corrected her posture.
"Bend knees slightly, widen the stance."
She stiffened up at first, but quickly got into the right stance. Moving under his grip until she was in the right position. Adam wasn't the best at handguns, especially not handguns that were so small, but he knew his stuff when it came to shooting them.
He went to her side and looked at her as she aimed.
"You're still squinting. Stop it."
"Ah, right, sorry."
"Don't be sorry, just do it right."
The woman nodded and Adam gave the signal for them to start firing. Once the forms were right, there wasn't anything to do but practice again and again. He looked over to the crate of ammo he had carried here. They had enough rounds for a few hours of this.
Good thing there was nothing else to do today, Pacifica had finally started to not need Uriel's constant attention to keep functional, and Armstrong was over at the arena. Apparently her brother was visiting, so Adam had to meet the guy tomorrow, see if he was here to fuck his territory up or whatnot.
Until then, the five of them shot at targets until the targets ceased to have an intact form. Then Adam sparred with the kid until he was too tired to stand. It was a pretty relaxing day, even without an actual fight.
…He was still itching for a proper one, it had been a few weeks since he had slaughtered anything of note.
—
David was in his and Lucy's room, looking at the braindance headset in his hands. He was seated on the bed, contemplative. Lucy was looking at him, slightly worried.
She didn't want him to do this, but she understood why it was important to him. She was ready to support him every step of the way here.
She was really too good for a gonk like him, she deserved better. So he had to be better. He set the BD aside for a moment and suddenly leaned forwards to kiss her.
She melted against him, hands reaching around and grabbing him by his neck. He was buff again, it kicked ass. He kept going until they were both breathless, and her lips were bruised. She panted a bit, and buried her face into his neck.
"David…" she whispered, not really for any purpose except to say his name.
Man, he loved her so much.
"Lucy." He responded, squeezing her tightly.
They stayed there for a while more.
Man… Life has gotten really good for him recently. He must be the luckiest gonk in all of Night City. It wasn't saying much, considering this damn city seemed dead set on breaking everyone who lived in it. But he would get strong enough to protect her, protect his mom, protect everyone he cared about.
The rest of the world can fuck off. The anime-thing got that right at least.
He wasn't strong enough yet though. To get that strong, he needed to get a look at what it was like.
So he pulled away from her slightly resisting grip and looked her in the eyes. She looked worried still, but nodded.
He pulled back, picked up the BD again, and put it on.
He leaned back, and Lucy put his head in her lap.
He started the BD, and for almost three minutes saw the world through Adam Smasher's eyes.
The first thing that hit him was the sensors. It hit him like a truck. His own cyberoptics were standard, and just used standard human vision more or less. They wouldn't degrade with age, and they could display his neurally-linked comms, and that was it. Smasher had…
He couldn't process what he was seeing at first. It took some time to sort it all out. Standard with a heads-up display, long-range, night-vision, thermal, infrared. All of them with enhanced imaging and an automatic targeting system. Everywhere he looked, he saw five layers of the world, and it was all at once too much. He focused on the standard and blocked out the rest as best he could.
He had managed it eventually, at that point he had to deal with the audio. It was amplified and came with a damper, but he could hear things that humans were never meant to. Ranges of volume and frequency that the human ear couldn't consciously detect. He could hear radio waves in the air all around him, and knew that he could 'hear' radar just as well. Everywhere around him was noise and volume and things making noise from seemingly nothing.
He could smell. He could smell more than he had ever before, and intuitively knew what each and exact chemical in the air around him was. He could detect the sweat on the bodies of the panicked corpos fleeing from a titan of steel 'he' just kicked into a wall.
Even blocking all of this out, he was left with a sonar. Everything within 120 meters of himself, he knew exactly where it all was, it was impossible to block out. He knew every movement made within that range of himself, even down to some of the slower bullets flying through the air after 'he' deflected them.
He also knew the exact level of radiation around him. It was well within safe levels. He nearly puked from it all.
But he didn't, he got through it, he blocked most of it out and focused on 'his' body.
He was tremendously heavy, each footstep carefully controlled to dissipate force without cracking the ground beneath him. He was tremendously strong, fully able to shatter that ground if he stomped. He did that several times throughout the battle, concrete breaking like sand beneath his heel.
He was fast, faster than he had ever been before. His movements were fluid beyond belief, and his accuracy was incredible. Blows were calculated within an instant and then executed down to the millimeter when making an attack. His absurd weight flowing into attacks that couldn't be replicated by humans of flesh, hundreds of pounds of steel moving like a scalpel attached to a wrecking ball.
The movements of his foe, made with only milliseconds of wind-up, were predicted and reacted to…
Until they weren't, and David felt 'his' arm crumble and shatter. It hurt…
"You think you're special just because you're scrappy?"
But David had been torn limb-by-limb out of the Cyberskeleton, he had one of his arms shattered by Armstrong's fist, he had his body pulped by Blackbeard. A little pain wasn't something that could stop him.
He was built different.
'He' stood up again, and kept fighting the mountain of steel and chrome that took his arm. He saw the mountain move to break his only way out of the fight.
'He' reached out, and forced the software to halt (to burn), without a motion, without a word. Just a demand that the technology obeyed without question.
Until the mountain noticed, and a dragon emerged from its cave. His fire constantly broke and reformed under the avalanche. Until the dragon died from an unseen bolt, and he was alive.
He didn't need an injection, but it was close.
Lucy was enough for him to keep it together. He wasn't going to lose it again.
He had to be stronger.
David shook and thrashed lightly in her arms, his head resting upon her lap as she rubbed soothing circles into his body. His brow was glazed with a thin sheen of sweat and his limbs tensed and slackened at unusual intervals. Except for his right arm, which tensed and stayed tense for some time now.
His eyes were covered by the BD headset, currently on and playing a recording of Adam Smasher's fight in Paris. The BD that was enough to kill some people, and required injections of immunosuppressants for most everyone else to get through. There was some on the table next to her, she was ready to reach over and use it.
But she had promised to let him try to get through it alone first, so all she could do was watch as he struggled yet again. She couldn't help him now, just like she couldn't do much of anything against Blackbeard. Just like she couldn't do much of anything any time else. Just a weak, cowardly, selfish woman clinging to a man who deserved better.
She was helping the Voodoo Boys in the net then, making electronic warfare against their former allies. They were often better at offense than she was, but never as good as Kiwi was. She was the best netrunner overall though, something she took private pride in.
The Net in that area was much like a maze of disjointed connections and wiring in the dilapidated Pacifica, and the mental representation of that battlefield was the same. A massive, sprawling maze of broken signals and dysfunctional servers in between two datafortresses assembled out of scrap code.
Things were going relatively well for them, minimal losses overall as the attackers were slowly whittled down, their physical bodies being burned out through their deaths in the net. She was always more comfortable in the net, but only in the liminal spaces between servers and the Blackwall. The cracks and alleys were the safest place for her, and she was strong there, she didn't have to run away there.
Then, the sky above their digital wargrounds shattered open, and tendrils of ruinously swirling code began to descend, a hateful maroon eye glowing from the stormcloud that they originated from.
No, not stormcloud, whirlpool.
The code came down slowly at first, a single probing tendril or two. Cautiously they lashed out to grab at the Voodoo Boys, either faction of them. She had never seen a netrunner's ICON burn out so fast before, seemingly torn to shreds from every angle the massive tendril grabbed them. It was like the tendrils were composed of an endless number of swirling blades, shredding them with merest touch.
A Leviathan of code swam above her head, and all she could do was run again. The tendrils began to dislodge from existing dedications, as if they were busy doing something else before, and then began to descend upon the area en masse. There were three-hundred or so Voodoo Boys when that day began. There wasn't any left in the region afterwards, not any who were also present in the net that was.
She had kept running, avoiding the thrashing tendrils and cutting off their tips whenever they reached out for her. She had looked over to see where David was fighting then, to be horrified by what she saw. He was surrounded by a swirl of the tendrils, and one was reaching down from above to sink into his chrome.
She couldn't let that happen, she was too scared to run away and let it.
So she ran for it, and for the next minute barely avoided being torn apart by tendrils, all the while cutting off the persistent tendril whenever it tried reaching for David again. She was too scared to think then, all she could do was act and desperately hope that everyone would get to live.
Eventually, the whirlpool parted, the tendrils faded, and through a mostly malfunctioning security camera she saw David laying in a pool of viscera.
Trauma Team was already on their way by then. She had disconnected from the net, and ran for the room in which he would be treated. She fell asleep outside it while they worked, too exhausted to keep up her guard. Then, when she awoke she walked in the room to see David's injuries.
She was useless again, he got hurt again and she couldn't do anything. She got a chair and slept next to him for the rest of the day, too tired to stay awake for long.
Eventually, Gloria and Rebecca came to pick her up. It would be at least a week before he woke up. She went home, ate, and fell asleep again.
Then Adam Smasher came back from Paris. Then the three of them had explained to him everything that had gone on. She had to admit, she wasn't as frightened of him anymore, for two main reasons.
When Adam Smasher had learned that the Tower had been attacked, and that the woman he was intimate with had been killed…
The man of golden fire within the blackened armor stopped smiling. His fires turned red-black, and then exploded outwards to encompass the whole of the building they were in, as well as the property around them. It took weeks for the fire to die down.
At the time, it was perhaps the most terrifying thing she had ever experienced. No, second most, after their trip to Japan. But upon reflection it was comforting.
Why? Because the Demon proved definitively that he cared about others. He cared enough about his lover's death to have his spirit advance into a red-star out of rage, and he cared enough about them to not direct any of that anger at them. He didn't even change his outward expression, hiding his fury from them.
A good woman had been killed, and here she was happy with the results. Lucy was a horrible person.
Then, the second reason…
"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."
The demon was a man after all, buried under oceans of blood but clinging to his principles regardless. He, in one monologue, cut down a budding weed of psychosis that was growing within David and assumed full responsibility for his injuries. He… was trustworthy.
Hell, he had done more for any of them than perhaps anyone else in the world had at this point. A monumental debt laid on their shoulders from his actions. In this world, common sense said 'fuck you, I got mine.' more often than not. Very few would hesitate to lie and backstab if it meant surviving another day. Even fewer would refuse to in the end.
Adam Smasher had done more for them than anyone else in the city. He had an unflinching and absolute commitment to his word and deed. He never lied, as far as she could tell, and was vocal of his hatred for dishonesty. She was fully willing to believe he would never backstab another as well, he was too disdainful of such. If he wanted you dead, he wouldn't waste time being friendly. He would just kill you on the spot.
How ironic, the murderous demon was perhaps the most honorable man in Night City. Even bothered to rescue a woman from one of his more covert jobs, letting her stay and feeding her until her ally came to get her. She was still baffled that he bothered to do that.
She clung to her moon a bit tighter as his writhing began to die down. They were already bound to Arasaka, bound to the point of never being free.
Bound from the outside by other corporations, eager to snatch them up or kill them.
She was bound from within through David. Wherever he went, she would follow. That was a shackle she was happy to have.
David… he was bound by Adam, and his mother.
He looked up to Adam Smasher more than anyone in the world, even if he didn't consciously acknowledge it. He was the peak in David's mind, the example to follow and the mentor willing to help him get there. The guardian willing to fight the world to protect them, and the comrade that wanted David's help doing that. He was practically his father now, in every way that mattered.
His mother's revival only cemented his unconscious loyalty. The boy loved his mother more than anyone else in the world, except perhaps a silly scared woman that was currently holding him. His mother wanted the best for him, in stability and security, and he wouldn't be willing to go against her.
The safest place in the world was probably right next to the demon. This was disregarding the woman's growing interest in him. Something that was obvious to everyone around.
It made perfect sense. She had struggled to raise her boy, the thing she cared most for in the world, for years alone. Then, she dies and is revived to find that a handsome, rich, powerful man has practically adopted the boy in her absence and has given her everything she could have wanted. The same man being a bundle of honor, lust, pride, and rage probably only made the fantasy better.
Rebecca had lamented this to her one day, even as Lucy tried her best to encourage her to make a move. She was dramatic and hesitated too much, she needed to at least try if she wanted something more.
Then again, the last time she tried she was much too late. The man had chosen a selfish coward instead. Lucy didn't want to share him, he was hers now and she wouldn't let him get away.
His struggles had finally ceased some time again, soothed by her combing her fingers through his hair. She could do this much, at the very least.
He raised a sluggish hand up, and slowly tugged the headset off his face.
His eyes were tired and unfocused.
But they were not losing themselves in chrome.
She held him as he slowly regained focus from merely existing as his father figure for a few minutes. His eyes slowly came back into focus.
He was looking at her absentmindedly. He raised an arm up to reach out for her. He cupped her cheek, and she leaned into it a bit.
"I did it." He said, eventually.
"You did." she agreed, fingers never stopping their combing through his hair. She… she didn't want him to use that BD, but he felt like he needed to. So she supported him as best she could.
He was her moon.
His hand dragged down, sliding off her face.
He squeezed her boob.
She raised a brow down at him. He grinned up at her, still groping absentmindedly.
"Having fun?" she asked.
"I'm easily amused." He responded.
What a gonk, she loved him.
—
Gloria was… complicated for Lucy to deal with for any length of time. Not because she didn't get along with the woman by any means, she was perfectly charming and polite with her.
They cooked together, and the woman was enthused that her son found someone to love in Night City. Lucy wasn't eager to speak to the surprisingly canny woman, who at times reminded her of Kiwi.
Mostly because of the questions.
The most recent happened while they were eating breakfast, sitting in the main room of the temporary fortress that they called home. Adam wasn't eating with them, a waste of food he called it, but he was sitting over on his bench against the wall trying his best to ignore Lady Meatbeast (what kind of name for a cat is that? Rebecca, you still haven't explained that) curled up against him.
He didn't tend to talk unless spoken to. Quiet unless he was explicitly teaching them something or answering a statement towards him. It made sense, Adam Smasher was tired of dealing with people before any of them had even been born. The fact that he tolerated them in his house was more than enough.
Hours upon days of sitting on his bench, something he had been doing for decades now in between each job that Arasaka had for him. In between each murder, his only respite from constant violence being that bench. She understood that quite well, and went out of her way to explain that to the others as well.
And so, Adam Smasher was left on his bench unless they needed him, or he was ready to do something. In the room as to not be excluded, but comfortable in his silence. It had taken them some time to realize that he never actually slept, just spent his time still and quiet instead of actually unconscious.
She wondered what he thought about, she wondered if these periods of still were when he sung the stories to himself. Stories of machines tearing each other apart, and of failed heroes and the society that made them fall.
She took a drink of the tea that Adam's terrifying borg friend, Kagekaze, had sent them. It was very good, she wondered where he got it from. The box of tea leaves didn't have any sort of label or marker on them except an Arasaka brand on the top. She should thank him next time they meet.
She leaned a bit into David's side, and began to sip.
Gloria then spoke up, focused look in her eyes as she stared consideringly at them from across the table.
"So, when am I getting grandbabies?"
Lucy almost spit out the tea, and swallowed it wrongly. She started coughing. David wasn't much better as he sputtered. Rebecca tripped on her way back to the table. Adam was still silent.
Gloria was undeterred, and waited for them to recover a bit. "So when are they coming?"
David had enough fortitude to respond while she tried her best to stop the coughing. "I-I don't know, we haven't talked about that yet."
Gloria continued her assault. "Why not? You love each other, don't you? I'm not getting any younger and you're both adults."
David was tremendously embarrassed to have the word 'love' attached to him, the macho young man that he was, but still responded immediately as his face reddened. "Of course! but …"
"But?" Gloria asked dangerously. "Do you not want kids? That cross around your neck means nothing young man?"
…Kids with David…
She very much wanted that, but…
She looked Gloria in the eyes, and started speaking.
"Yes, but the time is… Now is not a good time." She finished lamely, eyes going off to the side. She wished she still smoked, she could use it right about now.
Gloria paused at that, and looked at her. They both knew what she was talking about, what with the recent attacks by mysterious robots from out of nowhere devastating them so badly. Robots strong enough to put Adam Smasher on the back foot. Strong enough to have a good chance of killing one of if not the strongest man in the world.
Babies were very easy targets in comparison.
Gloria hummed, and leaned back to sip at her own tea. She considered it for a moment more. She looked down at her drink and spoke casually.
"I still prefer coffee."
Lucy was very happy that Gloria was alive, but the woman teased them relentlessly. So much for 'do no harm', they didn't deserve this level of bullying.
…Well, David didn't, maybe she did though.
Rebecca got up with a grin and started her own rounds of teasing the two of them, something that Gloria was happy to fuel the flames of.
Lucy buried her face into David's shoulder. She was going to ignore them until it was time for training again.
…
She unburied her face quickly to take another sip of the tea. It was still really good.
The cat chirped from its position on Adam's shoulder.
Rebecca wiggled the guns mounted to her hips and wired into her spine up and down. On either side of her, guns that were as long as she was tall shifted around to aim. A mental command to have them aim up to 45 degrees horizontally or 60 degrees vertically, in any of the four directions. This combined allowed her to hit most everything within a roughly 90 degree cone in front of her with them. Two modded Militech borg rifles meant that she hit very hard too.
She had been told multiple times how squishy she was compared to the Big Guy and Davey. If she was right next to someone who could get through her new armor, then she was likely dead anyways. Against an actual threat she'd be dead real fast in close range. It was a risk at all to have her be a combatant in the level of combat that the Big Guy got up to.
She refused to back down from it though. That would be the same as leaving them behind, and she wasn't that kind of girl. She refused to be that kind of girl. Lucy was good at running, and could help even while keeping herself safe from things. Well, non-net things like guns and knives, not against Daemons and whatnot.
Rebecca? All she had was a good aim and can-do attitude. She was basically walking bait. If she wanted to not be a burden, she had to get good. Good like Morgan Blackhand, a guy with almost no chrome who was able to go up against the Big Guy and win all but one time. She couldn't afford to fall behind any further at this point. Blackbeard made her realize that.
So every day of her life now, ever since she was useless again, has been a non-stop grind. Practicing her guns at the range, running laps, stretches and workouts of all kinds. Getting used to the Linear Frame, getting used to the new chrome, getting used to the Bioware.
She had abs now, she was kinda excited about it. Sure they weren't as impressive as Viccy's, but they were hers. She had also filled out a bit more, whether that being from the bioware or her eating more than she did before on the Big Guy's dime was up for debate.
Stronger and faster and tougher than she had ever been before in her life, and she wasn't anywhere close to how good she had to be to keep up. So she asked for one more bit of chrome to be added to her new set. A smart-link for each of her new guns, and both hands. Making sure that she hit each time was important, because that meant she didn't waste as many bullets, which meant that she didn't have to reload as often, which meant more time shooting gonks.
So she had two handguns, and two fuck-off big rifles on her hips, and a pair of skates on an armored body. She felt like a Mobile Infantry unit in it, about to kill some bugs. She felt happy that Big Guy would have gotten her reference, even if no one else would have. She winced and held her head again as another jolt of pain hit her.
The new chrome, and four smartlinks, were especially straining to her. She'd adjust to it in time, the medtechs told her, but for a while it would be on and off headaches even when not in active use. Davey would have already gotten used to them by now, no doubt, and Big Guy wouldn't have even noticed any strain at all.
But she wasn't those guys, they were built differently (as Davey liked to sometimes say to himself in the mirror, while flexing, the gonk). She was just… built normally.
Normal, average, non-distinct Rebecca. Rebecca who had a way more fun brother at one point. Rebecca who got chemskin and special optics to stand out. Rebecca who never got the boy she liked. Rebecca who was crushing on a guy way older than her, who slept around all the time.
Eh… she had heard of worse. At least she wasn't a druggie or something. Pilar was probably laughing at her anyways. Fuck you, ghost of Pilar, she was being moody here, buzz off.
"Are you coming, girl?"
She snapped out of it and looked up to see Big Guy performing his signature glare upon her. He wasn't actually mad she knew, that was just what his face was like. She quickly power walked up to stand next to him, craning her neck up in a vain attempt to look him in the eye. It never worked, but she always had to try. Both because of her pride and because her face lined up perfectly on his crotch.
Big Guy made conversations with him awkward just by being so tall, and he wasn't even aware of it. Have some consideration for the little people, huh?!
He had been giving all of them training for a while now, and he set up a schedule for it. There were four of them and seven days of the week. So three of those days were for group training, and each of them got a single day of personalized training. He hadn't been doing this from the beginning because he obviously didn't really care about training anyone except Davey at first. He did now though, and today was her turn for one on one time again.
She couldn't waste her time daydreaming. She had to get better, she had to stop being a liability.
They were going out again today. Clearing out everyone in a section that would be demolished to make room for the permanent housing to go up. That meant a one time announcement to everyone in a region, and then they would go in and start killing everyone. If this was a vid from before the two-thousands, there would probably be a message about the human condition right about now.
But she had grown up in Night City. Things were awful here and she wasn't particularly interested in hearing every sob story that turned people into insane drug addicts and what not. She had to deal with them too often before to care about their lives. Besides, the life Big Guy was giving people was way better, so the cleaning of Pacifica was something she was fine with.
In the end though, those were all post-conclusion justifications, the simple truth was that they weren't the people she cared about, they were others. She needed to get better to help her people, and these others were convenient targets to get better. Davey was a good person. Lucy was a good person. Gloria was a good person.
…Big Guy wasn't a good person, but he cared about them staying well and getting better, which was good enough for her. He could have killed them all, and he instead gave them everything he could. He was part of her people now, whether or not he grumbled when she said stuff like that.
So she followed him, power walking to keep up with his leisurely steps. This was the first day of one on one training she was getting, so nervous was an understatement. She did what she always did with her nerves, and buried them under a smile.
"So Big Guy, how are we going about doing this?" She asked.
"Three men are shooting at you, one has an assault rifle and heavy armor, one has a rocket launcher and a sandevistan, and one has a shotgun and belt of grenades. What do you do?"
Oh, they were starting right away huh? Alright, how was she going to do this…
Davey had told her about these kinds of lessons that the Big Guy gave him. You go for the guy with the biggest guns first. So she felt like she was cheating a bit when she responded.
"I shoot rocket launcher, then grenades, then assault rifle."
"Why?"
"The guy with the rocket launcher has the biggest threat to me, so I need him out first. The grenades are the next scariest thing, so I get him. The rifle is nasty, but his heavy armor means I should flatline him last to save time."
"Wrong."
She got a bit frustrated. "Eh, whaddya mean?"
"You are not a frontliner, regardless of armor. You are high-speed fire support."
…Ah, she got it. She felt a bit stupid now, thinking that the same type of answer that Davey gave would work here. So as they walked she thought about the issue. Eventually she had come to an answer she felt was good enough.
"I shoot my microwaver at the rocket guy, just in case I can take out his sandy. He's the biggest threat if he gets in my face and fires faster than I can react. Then I run away until I'm out of range of the other two and start taking potshots at them with my killer hips."
"Good, what else?"
…what else? She couldn't think of anything else she could really do…
She was fire support. She was there to support others in a fight.
"I call out their location for you and Davey while I run"
"Good, correct."
Big Guy never stopped glaring at everything around him, even at his most neutral expression. But he had other little things he did that showed emotion off. The slight inclination of his head at her meant that he had approved of what she said. She wanted him to approve of her more.
Big Guy continued.
"We are now going to go through this upcoming section, clearing out everyone who hasn't left by the time we go in. You will be making these decisions while I act as a melee frontliner. I will tell you what you did wrong each time. We will do this until you stop doing things wrong, or the section is cleared and ready for demolition."
"Melee?" she asked, "You don't have your club with you." He had a big iron strapped to his back that looked like something you'd normally mount on the back of a truck, and a huge duffle bag of extra ammo, but no club or swords.
He stared at her blankly, before raising a single hand and clenching it into a fist.
Oh, she felt a little stupid now.
There had been an announcement broadcast over all of Pacifica yesterday night. Which section was going to be demolished next. Suffice to say, very few people who valued living were going to be staying in the region instead of moving to one of the new apartment complexes they put up. The workers were really fast about doing that, they put up a new temporary housing unit each day, every two days if there was an unexpected delay of some sort.
There was no end to the people who wanted to work nowadays. All eager to get a free set of boots, gloves, hat and a few spare eddies a day. It had gotten to the point that Big Guy had to create a new type of job for them to have, too many workers made the cleanup slower it seemed.
So he bought bulk seed packets of gene-modded Biotechnica plants. Beans and Potatoes, and had an instruction manual typed up on how to grow them. The plants were apparently modded to break down soil pollution, and you could grow them in a cycle really easily. Everyone who wanted 1 extra eddie a day was tasked to look after ten planter boxes of beans and potatoes, and deliver the product to the HQ cargo area once grown. You'd get bonus pay based on the weight of the goods at the end.
One eddie was enough to get a filling but bland meal, and plants mostly grew themselves. Soon enough, about half of the Pacifica housing section had these planters set up. She had heard Big Guy grumble to no end about how expensive the initial set up was, but this much 'ganic stuff was sure to pay a lot in the end. Apparently there was a gang forming up around the planters, and the Animals hired themselves out to protect the boxes.
They had been taking a whole lot of jobs in Pacifica recently, and there was talk of them becoming more permanent security staff in the area. Those roiders really loved the Arena, so taking jobs in the area let them visit it after a job faster. There was an entire timeblock of fighting dedicated to Animal brawls now.
…She knew that because she liked watching that timeblock. She was cheering on "The Fistinator", he was scrappy. He was going up against "Lady Drake" tomorrow, a woman who got biomods to look like and breathe fire like a dragon. He was going to kick her ass, she knew.
She didn't know anything about farming, except that if you really wanted to make bank you planted Chooh instead of food. But they weren't allowed to grow that because of the Biotechnica patent, so this was the next best thing to make money and keep gonks busy.
…At least, that was what she had picked up from the time Big Guy monologued on the topic when Gloria asked about it. He seemed more irritated than usual about the whole thing.
They didn't drive out to the section. No, Big Guy led them outside the HQ and then told her to follow. Then he started jogging and she struggled to keep up on her new ACPA skaters. They were powered versions, and let her get pretty fast, about seventy miles per hour on open road. Shame the batteries only lasted about six hours, so she had to be careful in using them. She also wasn't the best skater yet, the number of times she had crashed so far being evidence of that.
Big Guy had slowed for her each time, she could tell that he was laughing at her beneath that glare, she would have vengeance one day! She wasn't sure how yet, but she would. She audibly growled at Big Guy as she caught up. He simply turned and started jogging again. You are not allowed to ignore her outrage!
Soon enough, they were in front of the section they were going to be clearing out. A run like that would have exhausted her before, but her new Skaters, exercises, and bioware meant that she wasn't even winded. It was a really good feeling noticing that.
Big Guy was just standing there, arms crossed. He was waiting for her to say something here. She thought back to what she had been told so far.
…She was being tested on making decisions…
So was it up to her to choose where they went first? Just to make sure, she asked.
"You want me to decide the game plan here?"
"Yes."
Alright, Rebecca, put on your thinking chrome here. The goal was to clear out the region of people, so it would be best to make sure as few as possible got away each time they got into a building. She looked forwards and considered the area. Lots of tall buildings, no connections between them.
"We'll enter the buildings one at a time, starting from the lowest floors and moving up. We'll have to make multiple loops and go through the buildings several times."
"Good, why?"
"That way they'll have to go through us or jump out, and by checking multiple times we can ensure we get the most amount of people possible before the day is over."
"Mostly correct, We can also bar the entrances with rubble to prevent easy escapes."
Ah shit, she forgot she was working with a guy who could toss trucks around. She nodded and he nodded back. They proceeded to the first building, Big Guy grabbed a scrapped car with one of his immensely powerful arms and casually dragged it in front of the ruined lobby entrance as they entered, sealing the building behind them. It was probably about two-thousand pounds, no normal person was getting through that.
Then they proceeded down the stairs until they were in front of the basement floor. Big Guy stood next to the door and looked at her again. Right, decisions. She thought about it for a bit, before settling on a good enough plan. She told him over comms.
[Rush in and heaviest ordinance first, go loud. I'll follow and take out who I can with my opening volley. You rush to the next target when they split their attention, and we'll repeat this until no one is left.]
Adam nodded, and stood in front of the door. She moved over to the side, out of sight from inside the room.
He kicked in the door, and she was rocked by an explosion big enough to blow a person in half. Her vision shook a bit and she took a moment to recover from such a blast against her new armor. When she could, she moved into the room, Big Guy having already rushed in, probably not even phased by the trap they had placed.
Good job Rebecca, you already fucked this up.
Inside she saw a number of guys all starting to fire at Big Guy, who had run up to a bulky looking chrome junkie and had started wailing on him with his punches. His normal punches, not Panzerfaust.
To be fair, they were still beating that almost borg into a pulp. Big Guy was really fucking strong now. The poor guy couldn't even really fight back. Either way, he wouldn't be a threat for a minute, unlike the guys with guns all around him.
She took aim and started moving around the side towards some cover, torso angled to point all her guns as her targets. She went slow enough that she got a target lock on four of them right before she moved behind a stone column.
Four shots rang out, two big handguns and two big rifles adding together to turn four gonks into corpses. She was behind the pillar just as they reacted and started aiming her way. A burst of bullets came her way, doing nothing to her but eating up the concrete around her pretty nastily. The sounds echoed alongside the sounds of Big Guy beating a man of inferior chrome to death.
The shots started slowing around her, so she crouched and activated her Skaters, moving along a straight path behind the row of pillars, letting her smartlink grab another set of locks. Another few seconds later, and her guns fired again, taking out the remaining guys with guns.
Big Guy noticed this, but kept his downright casual assault up. He slammed his elbow down on the guy's temple and he crashed into the floor. She went into the open and got two locks on the almost borg, her hip-cannons firing and blowing a new set of holes in the guy as he tried to stand up again.
She didn't notice anyone else. She looked to Big Guy for confirmation.
He nodded and spoke. "What did you do wrong?"
She flinched, and spoke up. "I didn't account for the bomb trap."
He nodded. "Yes, what else?"
What else? Had she done anything else wrong there? She thought back to how the fight had gone, and nervously suggested "I didn't get them fast enough?"
"That's an issue of skill, not tactics. No. What else?"
"I got nothing."
"Look at their guns."
She looked over at their assortment of weapons, 1 heavy machine gun, 2 assault rifles, 2 shotguns, 4 submachine guns…
She still wasn't getting anything here. She shrugged, and the Big Guy sighed. She wilted a bit at that.
"Your armor is enough to ignore the submachine guns entirely. If you had taken out the shotguns and rifles first, you would be free to stand completely still and target the remaining meatbags. This would have killed them roughly twice as fast. The Militech HMG was for the borg, and I had him occupied."
"Ah, I guess I'm not used to being able to ignore small bullets like that." She rubbed the back of her head a bit, awkward at missing the fact that she was in heavy plates of armor right now.
Big Guy didn't say anything in return and nodded towards the doorway. She smiled at him behind her helmet and started moving to the stairs. Next floor was ground level again, so they probably wouldn't encounter anyone.
Of course, she was immediately proven wrong by the fact that they saw four people trying to shove the car out of the way at that entrance. She was about to give Big Guy an order to move in as she readied her guns, but then paused.
Those were teenagers, and their weapons were really light for this part of the city. A couple of mono-katanas and submachine guns and handguns. Not really anything that would threaten them.
[Wait, let me talk to them Big Guy.]
He stopped. He turned and looked down at her. He stared.
She waved her hands placatingly, he frowned at the delay of violence.
[Look, our job is to clear this area out, they don't look like they're from here.]
He almost audibly growled at her. Yeah, yeah, you big murderer. She'll be quick about it.
She walked into the room, not trying to hide her metal boots' footsteps. It took them a bit longer than they should have to notice a woman in a full set of heavy armor and carrying a whole lot of gun behind them.
They startled when one finally noticed.
"Shit! Ichi behind us!"
"What?!"
They aimed their (honestly kinda puny guns) and she raised her hands in the classic 'come in peace' sign.
"So, what are a bunch of teenagers doing here, we're clearing this section out."
They started rapid fire talking among themselves.
"Shit, she's a corpo. Friend of yours Hiromi?"
"No way, gonk. Stop talking about that."
"She hasn't shot at us yet, and those guns look big. Awful nice for a corpo, a merc?"
Eventually one of them spoke up, a girl with face-chrome and neon tigers all over her body. Actually, looking at them again, they had tigers and neon everywhere she looked. A bit gaudy, but it marked them as Tyger Claws. Or, teens who were into the Tyger Claws she guessed.
"Whaddya mean by.. 'We'?" She asked.
At this point, The Big Guy started walking into the lobby. Heavy stomps behind her telling her that he was doing a dramatic slow walk until he was behind her. He crossed his arms, metal lightly scraping against metal.
They looked about ready to piss themselves.
"That's Adam fucking Smasher, we're dead. Fuck you Motoko, you did this."
"You came along, gonk."
One of the boys swallowed, and spoke up to her again, nervous looks constantly going up to behind her. "So… uhh, Our choom's ride got klept, and we were trying to get it back. We tracked the guy to his part of the city…" he trailed off a bit awkwardly, the situation becoming quite clear to them.
Adam walked forwards leisurely, ignoring their panicked crawls and jumps away from his approach. He moved to the doorway again, grabbed the car on the other side and moved it out of the way. Holding the car up in one chrome arm, he spoke.
"Get the fuck back home, meatbrats. I don't have time for you."
Three of them looked immensely relieved, and started moving to do just that. The girl, 'Motoko' apparently, objected with an angry look on her face covering her clearly visible fear.
"We're not leaving without Hiromi's bike, got it?! We'll leave when we get it back!"
"Motoko, shut up! I can get a new Kusanagi!"
"Motoko, shut your mouth!"
"We're dead."
Adam glared down at the girl covered in neon-tigers. He glared until her knees started to shake and small tears started to escape the corners of her eyes, but she didn't break the staredown. Rebecca sighed, and spoke up.
"C'mon Big Guy, they're kids, stop scaring them."
Adam broke the stare down and looked at her. He looked back at the shaking girl.
"Ten."
A brief moment of confusion for everyone involved, before the Big Guy continued.
"Nine."
A slow dawning horror among the kids as they began to realize what was happening, and Rebecca did too.
"Eight."
The tearful but stubborn girl didn't waver in her glare as Big Guy continued counting down. Her friends began to yell at her and try to push her out the entrance. Rebecca cut Adam off before he could say the next line, bursting into the first thing that came to mind.
"How bout they come with us?"
Adam stopped completely, and let the car fall with a crash. He turned his glare to her.
"Explain." It was not a request. Ah shit, now she actually had to justify it. Think, what reasoning would the Big Guy accept?
"They're here for the bike, we'll probably see it while clearing this place out. They can follow behind and take it when we get to it."
Adam growled audibly at that. "I am not a fucking babysitter, girl." Rebecca raised her hands placatingly again. That clearly didn't work, alright girl you can't fuck this up again. Take two.
"I'm not saying that, they can just trail behind us, that's all. They can look after themselves I'm sure." She crossed her arms. He kept glaring. It wasn't working, shit, what else?
Honor, Big Guy always kept his word. "Besides, you did say I was making the plans for this outing, didn't you Big Guy?"
Adam glared at her, and then glared down at the Tyger fangirl.
"Fucking fine."
Internally, she stopped panicking as he agreed to not murder a bunch of kids. Jeez Big Guy, at least try to not be so murderous, why don't you?
Adam Smasher wasn't a good man, but he was on their side, so that was good enough for her.
Human bodies were primarily composed of water, specifically water that was bound to other molecules and substances to make the various fluids that filled the delicate systems that maintained homeostasis in the body. Blood, digestive fluid, spinal fluid, mucus, and more all went into the body and ideally stayed at appropriately high levels to make sure the human survived. All in all, roughly 70 percent of the human body was dihydrogen monoxide.
That portion of the human body was Adam's favorite, mostly because of the way it so excellently painted a room when a meatbag was butchered. He tightened his grip on the forearm and foreleg, flexed his arms, and pulled them apart in a single smooth motion. An arc of red and viscera exploded out in a cone in front of him, covering a Kusanagi motorcycle that had been modded to the point of aesthetic ruination.
He had just such a bike of his own. He had bought it back before… Jeez, before he was in his Dragoon frame, wasn't it? It was a custom by the manufacturers that he had ordered, upscaled for his massive frame and covered in smooth plates of armor. The final weight of the beast was right about twice the weight of a regular model, fifteen-hundred pounds or so. The massively increased weight made it a fuel hog and slowed its acceleration, but left its top speed intact, made turning easier at lower speeds, and massively increased the momentum whenever he hit someone with it.
He had the thing painted black, with hints of red and silver. He hadn't driven it in years now though, still sitting in one of his storage containers. He idly thought about bringing it out sometime. He hadn't needed to drive it much of anywhere in a very long time, not for jobs or for 'jobs'.
Speaking of 'jobs'...
He turned to the gremlin, and began breaking down where she went wrong. She did fairly decent for a meatbag this time, only one major error. He idly kicked the heavily-chromed corpse near his feet. It had two fist-sized holes punched through its torso.
"You had to use two shots to take out the cyborg. A headshot would have gotten it in one."
The gremlin gave a subdued but firm nod. Ah, she had gotten that way ever since he decided to save time with the lessons by simply telling her where she fucked up instead. He had wanted to make this little outing as fast a possible now that he some fucking meatbrats trailing him as he worked.
He turned his head to stare at them, they were looking checked out, glancing around at the butchered meatbags all about the room. Fucking brats, you lived in Night City, something like this shouldn't come close to phasing you. They coddled the little shits nowadays, because violence like this was not unusual, not during any point in human history.
Butchery was the norm, not the exception.
"The bike, take it and fuck off."
They gave looks towards the bike now painted red. He glared, they didn't hesitate again, walking over as a group to grab it and start wheeling it out of the garage section they were in. A full eight hours of having those fucking wastes of space in his vicinity, eight hours of clearing out houses one by one until they found the fucking bike. It would have been faster to just have him punch the foundations until they crumbled and killed everyone inside, but the gremlin was still forgetting that he was Adam Smasher.
Eight hours was a full training session, and despite how many meatbags and street borgs he had torn apart, he was still pissed. He would need the woman to give him a thorough powerwashing, because he was covered in a layer of mechanical fluid and blood enough to paint him dark red. His murder was ruined by the presence of a group of toddlers that yelped whenever something shot at them.
He needed to kill more to calm down. He looked at the meatbrats wheeling the bike out and over to the gremlin. Training was already over for today, and he needed some alone time.
"Stop."
They very quickly froze and slowly turned to face him. He turned to the gremlin.
"Training's over for today. You will escort them out of my fucking territory. I will be gone until tomorrow."
She flinched for some reason. "Ah, can do Big Guy. You uh… mind telling me where you'll… be?" She hesitated throughout the whole sentence, not looking directly at him.
"I will go to my armory. I will change my loadout. I will go find things to murder." He explained succinctly. She looked down, rubbed her upper arm armor, and replied.
"Sure thing Big Guy…" She trailed off, pausing and then walking over to group up with the meatbrats. She paused and looked back at him before they left the garage. "Sorry 'bout earlier, I just… hope it goes well for you."
Course it was going to go well, he was going to make fucking sure of it. Uriel started looking for targets that no one would mind him butchering wholesale.
Once they were gone, he closed his eyes for a bit and started looking with Uriel.
…
Wraiths, Raffen shiv nomads, last known location an abandoned distribution center for a now defunct supermarket corporation, information found via Arasaka surveillance satellite and no more than four hours old. No less than three-hundred and no more than twelve-hundred members.
Perfect.
He started stomping back home, out of the garage. His chrome feet splashing in the thin layer of blood and viscera on the slightly depressed flooring. He was going to get his real big guns out for this one. He thought about using the bike to ride out there, but dismissed it. Not enough fuel if he has to hunt down individual packs of them dispersing out. He'd take the car, it had better gas mileage and more trunk room for more ammo and gun.
Twelve hours was his deadline. He would have to start teaching the woman by then at the latest. Let's see if he can get one-hundred meat bags an hour. It wouldn't be a record, but it would be pretty high up there for him.
He sped up to a jog to get back within a reasonable amount of time. He wasn't going to get powerwashed first, not when he was about to get painted red yet again. It took about thirty minutes to get back at full sprint, as he approached he alerted the guards of his approach so they wouldn't kill themselves by firing at him. He went into the armory soon enough, and went over to one of his old storage lockers.
Twelve-hundred targets at the most. He had just the things for that. He dropped the duffle bag off to the side, and opened the locker. Inside was a massive weapon that was attached to an old arm of his, replacing its forearm. Pulling off his current right arm and setting it inside, he hefted up the old one and reattached it to his shoulder, taking a second to integrate the old software into his updated systems.
It had been a long fucking time since he used this baby, and he was excited.
A hex-barreled gatling shotgun which fires binary ten-gauge shells at thirteen-hundred rounds per minute. A gun that measured about one meter in length in total, his elbow socketed about one-third of the way up from the weapon, measuring from the back end. Each barrel of the weapon being a respectable forty-five centimeters long, and the whole thing weighing only fifteen kilograms thanks to lightweight alloys used in its construction.
A Tsunami Arms Helix, that could accept either a belt feed or a box magazine of sixty shots per load. Effective range of up to about sixty meters. The sound made by its firing was his favorite part, a loud metallic roar as it tore targets apart.
He was about to socket in a magazine, but then a thought occurred to him. He walked over to another locker, and pulled it open to reveal rows of Dragoon-grade back-mounted ammo hoppers. Each provided a belt feed that could increase his ammo capacity dramatically. In this case, he would have…
Roughly twelve-hundred rounds? That was the upper limit for how many wraiths there were, that was perfect. But what ammo type to use?
He looked for a moment, to the several ammo-hoppers each filled to the brim for ammo meant for this particular gun. He settled on one, and hefted up the one filled with High-velocity 'HE' rounds. Also known as 'High Explosive' rounds. They wouldn't explode until traveling about ten meters, but that just gave him an excuse to beat meatbags into paste when they got that close. With this particular combination of ammo and weapon? It cost one-hundred and thirty thousand eddies to fire this weapon for one minute.
He had the money to burn.
Ammo hopper secured to his back and belt feed attached to his temporary forearm, he moved out and towards his armored muscle car. He grabbed an extra can of gas for it and a spare ammo hopper of standard rounds and stuck it in the trunk. As he started it up, the vehicle hooked up to his smartlink, and he could control it like it was his own body. He wasn't the best driver, he didn't get much practice, so a link like this was pretty handy for him.
Uriel reminded him to message Kagekaze, Adam grunted and called him up. After a few seconds of ringing, Kagekaze picked up.
[Smasher-san, what did you need?]
[About to genocide the raffen shiv nomads that call themselves the 'Wraiths', I need to blow off some steam.]
[...Smasher, did you check if Arasaka has any outstanding deals with them?]
[No.]
Kagekaze sighed through the call.
[Very well, I will get the affairs in order for that.]
[Thanks Teach.]
[Troublesome student.]
The call ended, and Adam started driving out into the badlands. He had to keep his gun arm raised for it to fit in the roofless car. It would be another fifteen to thirty minutes before he got there, depending on how torn up the roads are. He drove in silence for a bit, left hand on the steering wheel.
…
He wondered what CD was still in the player of his ancient ride. He started it up.
Spoiler
It was still that old Citypop playlist that someone bought him as a joke. Who did that again, was it Kei? He couldn't remember, it had been about fifty years now. He was on the road, it was appropriate he supposed. He let it play, maybe he'd remember eventually. He kept driving, his bad mood starting to evaporate under the thought of the upcoming slaughter.
He encountered cars and a camp long before the distribution center, he turned the music down a bit as he approached, and slowed a bit. These weren't the raffen shiv, surely? Their cars looked to be in good condition, so that was impossible.
There were a lot of guns as he drove up. They wouldn't even scratch his paint, nothing except those two manned machineguns they had pointed at him. He ignored that and drove up to a glaring guy in the center, surrounded by guys with guns and grenades. It was a tanned guy with a decently groomed goatee and a sleeveless jacket.
…How many fucking belts do you need to wear, meatbag? Adam counted at least three. There were a lot of nervous looks at his right arm as he opened the door and stood, one foot still in the car.
Remember Summer Days, by Anri was playing softly from his car radio.
The tanned guy eventually spoke after glaring at him for a bit. Adam gave the meatbag credit, he didn't show any fear even though he could slaughter his way through everyone here. He either had great self-control or was an idiot.
"So… what brings Adam Smasher out here to nomad turf?"
"Genocide, are you the Wraiths?"
There was quite a bit of cursing at him and rattling guns at his question. Calm down meatbags, either you were or weren't, don't waste his time with grandstanding bullshit. The glaring man raised his hand and they all went silent, it seemed like they knew how to show off a united front, gang one-oh-one right there.
"No, and lest you want to pick a fight I suggest you don't imply that again. We're the Aldecaldos pack local to Night City."
Adam grunted and got back in his car. This seemed to surprise the glaring man, but it was a tanned woman who spoke up next in surprise.
"Wait, where are you going?"
Adam gave her a once over. Huh, it was a surprise to see a woman who didn't look like dogshit, that was a rarity nowadays. He appreciated the sight, might as well do them the favor of answering here in exchange. He shook his gun-arm a bit.
He replied, "Nice hips, fuckmeat. Told you already I'm off to genocide."
He ignored anything else they were saying, he had already wasted enough time here. He turned up the radio again and drove around them. They swiveled their guns to follow him as he continued along his way, but didn't shoot. He was disappointed, he might have gotten a chance to murder another group today. Shame they were too smart to pick a fight with him.
…
…Shit, he could have called them Wraiths again, couldn't he have? He made himself mad at the missed opportunity. He glared into the scrublands that rapidly vanished under his road-devouring wheels.
…
There was someone following him, about a half-mile back. He focused his optics and zoomed in in the rear-view mirror. It was one of the cars of the nomads he just met. Eh, they were probably wanting to watch. Let them, if they got in the middle of his job like the meatbrats did, he'd kill them too.
He was approaching the distribution center, there were cars circled around it like a makeshift fortress wall, and guns pointed in his direction. He stopped the car fifteen meters from them, and stood up. He yelled out to them.
"Are you the Wraiths?"
A voice called back. A woman standing behind one of the walls, with something that looked like a pale, dry tanned duster on.
"Yeah! Who the fuck wants to know!?"
Adam grinned, and activated his sandevistan. He started firing his right arm directly into their car walls, timing his shots to perfectly have five meters of distance between each bullet.
The HE rounds of the past were devastating, able to inflict massive damage on singular targets. The HE rounds of the present were another beast entirely, their on-impact explosion being something that most old grenade models would find respectable. Everywhere a bullet landed on their wall, an explosion started to blossom in slow-motion.
Area of effect on impact? The aforementioned five meters. He had time to shoot about fifty such bullets before his sandevistan expired. His gun not quite cycling fast enough to shoot any more than that.
His sandevistan expired, their shoddy wall of vehicles turned into scrap and fire. Their bodies turned into chunks of burnt flesh and a rain of gore. He started walking forwards and firing at anything that resembled a person or gun. Every now and then a burst of pitiful gunshots bounced off his armor, the gunner experiencing a very quick death soon after.
He almost felt like chuckling, their screams echoed with the metallic roar of his right arm. It was a beautiful melody.
An entire facility of easy targets, and there wasn't anyone in the world who would try and give him shit about it. He should have practiced target prioritization like that years ago, he wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath.
There weren't enough cars here to move twelve-hundred. Uriel got busy looking at the satellite images again, he wanted to make sure they didn't miss any of them. There were probably more groups of them like this spread out across the Badlands. Adam was more than happy with that.
A big gun, a hopper of ammo, a full tank of gas and a spare can in the trunk. All he was missing was a pack of cigarettes and a mission from God to make this a classic action flick.
He made a note to buy the cigarettes later and Uriel went ahead and approved the request to have a new church built in Pacifica. Adam didn't want to miss out on the full experience here. He started laughing alongside his roaring gun and screaming victims.
Meat was dying so fast. It was fantastic. He hadn't done this in years now.
His radio was playing that Citypop album whole night.
—
He was in a very good mood as he returned, his body caked in gore, his car similarly coated, cans of gas gone and ammo spent. He dropped the car off for the Arasaka cleaners to handle, and walked back to his HQ through the city. It took him about an hour to walk back, he was almost whistling the entire way.
He picked up his arm in the armory, and swapped it out with his gun-arm again. He held onto it, because everything still needed a thorough powerwashing to get the viscera off. He stomped up to the washroom, waving absentmindedly at the kids and woman in the main room as he passed them.
They stared at him, which made sense, he was fucking filthy right now.
Entering the washroom, he dropped the thankfully waterproof arm and took stock of himself. He'd need an armor repair by the techies, the Wraiths had a couple Junkernauts that he had to flip over to deal with, and their cannons were actually able to hurt him. That and their occasional burst of heavier ordinance shaking him up.
It was a good thing they had that, otherwise it might have gotten boring.
The woman came in, ah good, he could get an easier washing. She looked concernedly at him and his gun arm, before sighing and putting a hand on her hip.
"Who'd you wipe out this time, Adam?"
Almost cheerfully he responded. "Some meatbags calling themselves wraiths."
She paused for a bit, and smiled at him, running a hand through her hair. "At least they deserved it, from what I hear." She looked tired, like she had stayed up all night or something.
She walked over to the power washer, and started hosing him down. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of a river of blood pouring off his frame.
Good job woman, he was upgrading you from 'freeloader' to 'useful'.
The Aldecaldo pack watched slightly stunned and relieved as Adam Smasher drove away from them into the dark of the badlands. They had assembled a firing line in response to whoever was approaching them, but realized too late that the someone was him. They didn't have the heavy ordinance required to take someone like him out, his armor too thick and his speed too great to focus fire for long.
They'd put up a fight, but they would die. It was too late to run, so all they could do was put up a strong front and make it seem not worth the effort of killing them. They figured he was coming in with one of Arasaka's poisonous offers, one they couldn't refuse with the Butcher here.
But he didn't, he asked them if they were the fucking wraiths, and then drove off when they said no.
Panam shook herself, and growled. She went over to one of the cars and motioned Jamie to follow her. Jamie had the best optics among them, full zoom and recording feature. She was their best long-ranged recon for this reason.
"Hey, where are you going?" Saul called out to her as she jumped in the car. He was tense, almost sweating. It made sense, he was the one that had to talk to the Butcher, not an enviable position. She wouldn't give him shit about it this time, that was fair.
"Seeing if the bastard is a liar. If he's making a deal with them instead…" She trailed off, and everyone sharpened their gazes again. If Adam Smasher was making a deal with the Wraiths, they had to know about it as soon as possible to prepare for the shitstorm to follow. Saul's gaze hardened and he nodded firmly.
"Take the Charger, you're going to need the speed." A generous offer. She thanked him and jogged over to it. Jamie followed with all the clumsy worry one might expect in this situation. Saul got to work getting everyone ready to run from this place. It would be real rough on their supplies for a while, but they would survive.
They had to.
So Panam drove out into the desert, following the roaring engine of the armored Musclecar as it approached the distribution center that contained about half of the Wraiths at any one time. Jamie was focused, her optics zoomed in all the way as she stared unblinking at the car.
The Butcher's car seemed to gallop at around one-hundred, the Charger was faster by a decent margin when the nitrous was active, but slower without it. She readied that particular button well in advance, just in case he turns around and decides to chase them down.
He approached the DC, he didn't seem to be aware of them. Jamie was streaming her view to the rest of the pack, for fastest response time. He stopped in front of his car for a moment, and Dogkiller yelled something at him.
Then all of a sudden, a new dawn cut the night in half. It almost blinded her. There was a nonstop roar in the distance.
A line of fire and light burst into life right on their Wagonwall. It turned their defenses into scrap. The Butcher had his monstrous right arm extended, six barrels whirling as it stayed revved up in preparation to fire. He started walking into the fire, every now and then unleashing a burst fire of bullets at something that might have been a person or a gun. Every now and then a brillant newborn bonfire burst into life in the dark of the night.
The area turned into scrap and fire in about three minutes, they watched as it happened.
Then, laughing, the Butcher got back into his car and started driving again. Not towards the city, but deeper into the badlands still. He said he was going to genocide the Wraiths.
He wasn't lying.
She called Saul. He picked up nearly instantly.
"Saul, get the pack ready to move in, we have a chance to take their territory and supplies right now!"
"Don't try to order me woman, already on it, keep following him."
To her side, Jamie looked stunned, eyes locked onto the Butcher's car. She had lost everything to the Wraiths, more than most of their family. Here they were, being wiped out. Fair trade in Panam's mind. This was an unprecedented opportunity right here, even assuming that the Butcher gets no one else tonight.
That Distribution Center was the pin that held the majority of Wraith influence in the region. It was turned into scrap and rubble. Three hundred rapists, murderers, and scavengers turned into corpses and ash. The amount of guns, cars, and foodstuffs they could come in and take right now would be an incredible windfall. This was ignoring the chance to expand from the deaths of their biggest rivals. This was ignoring the sudden lack of murderers to pick off members of her family from the outskirts in the future.
Her family was going from one of the two powers in the NC Badlands, to the sole power in the NC Badlands, with this alone. They wouldn't have to worry about dying anymore, not from starvation, or predation, or slavery to a corpo.
All because the Butcher woke up today and decided to wipe out a bunch of Nomads. That could have been them. Her hands felt clammy on the steering wheel.
The Charger chased after the Butcher's Shire. Her gaze was locked on the roads and scrubs, not letting her mind wander, not while she had to do something like this. Behind them the bonfires that ringed the now destroyed DC lit her path forwards.
Jamie spoke up, absentmindedly.
"He said you had nice hips."
"He also called me fuckmeat. Shut up and keep watching, lookout."
"You going to wine and dine him? Seduce the bloody knight of Pacifica? He has a castle, you know?"
"I said shut the fuck up lookout."
"You hear what he was listening to? It was some old Jap pop song. Ain't that strange?"
Panam decided to ignore Jamie for the rest of the night. Useful as she was, she had the irritating habit of constantly needing to make small talk whenever she could. Jamie said it was her 'natural gossipy nature', everyone else said it was annoying.
"He writes songs, doesn't he? You gonna listen to any of them now?"
Please shut up, lookout.
—
On the floor in the middle of an office room in Arasaka Tower, a ghost sat. His resting crouch had long been optimized for immediate motion, and his optics never rested. The office was completely bare, there was no need for the comforts required by the living. His mind alone could wander the net of Arasaka, gleaning information that mortals would require interfaces to perform.
He was Kagekaze, the wind shadow. That old patriarch of the shinobi was long dead, his dishonor dying with him, his shadow was all that remained. Chiefest assassin of the great clan Arasaka, chiefest spy and saboteur, chiefest expert in the ways of parting men from their ghosts in silent and unseen ways.
He was never the chiefest murderer of Arasaka. Once, that title belonged to young Kenichi Zaburo, guardian of his lord's granddaughter. Young Kenichi had chosen to stay loyal to his ward after the fourth corporate war, and thus remained among the Oni. He was no longer a warrior of Arasaka, a truest shame, but he was still fulfilling his duty, a truest honor.
By the time Kenichi Zaburo had to be cast out from Arasaka, Kagekaze had already trained another in the ways of separating men from their vital fluids. He did so reluctantly at first.
Adam Smasher was boisterous, rude, violent, and all in all the perfect and quintessential example of the Oni of this land. He was crass and hateful, he was brutish and sneering, he was perhaps the most difficult student Kagekaze had ever had. Kagekaze truly enjoyed teaching, passing on wisdom to another, it was something that he retained from life. Adam Smasher tested that love thoroughly.
Still, he persisted on orders of his lord, who saw something within the young Oni. His lord was correct once again, possessing foresight that Kagekaze could never quite manage.
Adam Smasher, clad in the body of a five-eyed dragon, and turned into the most proficient murderer and guardian that Kagekaze had ever seen. Perhaps dreaded hero Blackhand could outwit him, perhaps now-old samurai Kenichi could overcome him, perhaps other Heroes, now long dead, could defeat him.
He was not a savant when it came to learning. He was not a prodigy that learned faster than any other, born only once every thousand generations. Adam Smasher had another advantage all to his own. The artifacts of the world were great indeed, and their implantation took a heavy toll on the spirits of men who bore them. Their fires sapped out by the engines they turned their bodies into. Even he himself struggled to overcome the fire-drinking artifact that his body now was.
Adam Smasher bore this toll without strain, his fire was inextinguishable.
The body of a five-eyed dragon was enough to devour any man who didn't place their minds in alchemical shackles. Any man except Adam Smasher, who broke its spirit like a man does to a wild and furious steed.
The chiefest limit on a man's strength would always be his fire, his will to withstand the hungry artifice. Adam Smasher bore an endless fire in his breast, he had no limit. This was what his lord had foreseen so long ago, Kagekaze privately assumed. It was something he himself was blind to until well within their training.
Just as this endless fire was a blessing, so too was it a curse. Adam Smasher's own will drowned within his fire, filling him with the abundant passions and excesses of the Oni in an attempt to vent it. Violence was one of the only things that could smother the fire long enough for him to function, soon filling his mind with rage again.
Once, the young granddaughter of his lord called him love. Love, the only other thing that could quell his fire for long. Adam Smasher was happier in those days, his mind was clearer and his fire more manageable. Then, oh greatest shames, they quarreled as all young lovers do. Adam lost himself to his fire once more, and so great was its heat that she could no longer approach to quell it. Kagekaze had despaired then, for it seemed his student was forever doomed to flame.
Years had passed, and in efforts to contain himself his student locked himself away in the border fortress. Protecting it and staying well away from any among his lord's family or their retainers, protecting them from his fire. Staying away from all save when he was needed, his fire building in intensity each time.
Kagekaze hadn't seen or spoken to him in decades. He busied himself with training more genin, namely young Goro. Goro was talented, but his obsession with being a samurai as opposed to a shinobi held him back.
Then, he had heard the reports of his recent behavior, delivered to him on his lord orders. Kagekaze dared to let himself hope for a moment. Then the reports continued, and the old shadow was filled with elation.
Adam Smasher had mastered his fire, containing it to a spirit within his frame, moving in harmony with it. Just as those murderous revenants had learned the secret of taming their fires, so did his student learn the same, on his own no less.
His student's will was freed. He was the master of his fire now. Nobly did he walk the earth, teaching others, destroying bandits, managing his lands. His actions were entirely different, even if his demeanor was exactly the same. Crass and rude, how nostalgic.
Oh happy days. Even with war on the horizon, Kagekaze took joy in this one thing.
He meditated, and looked to the various plans Arasaka held for the bandits in the badlands. He began filing the various forums required to dismiss and reject those plans. He had already alerted his lord to what his student was doing, and a message of approval was delivered back by the spirits of the net.
Idly, he wondered how his student had tamed his spirit. Kagekaze could not do the same, he knew. The old shinobi was now long dead, only the Wind Shadow remained.
—
Vincent Martinez looked at the reports coming in. He was sitting in the middle of a Camper, most of it hollowed out to contain his office space. The walls filled to the brim with monitors and bits of evidence. Reports of everything happening on the western half of the NUSA. Reports he could guess seventy-eight percent of the time with perfect accuracy, reports he guessed ninety-seven percent of the time with partial accuracy. It was that last three percent that he could never quite predict, that was his margin of error.
The Wraiths were being wiped out. That was not something he was predicting. Adam Smasher seemed to fill that three percent margin of error more often than he wanted him to. It had to be him, reports were of a single vehicle, and no one in the area had enough chrome to manage something like that other than him.
Vincent leaned back in his chair, reviewing what he knew of Adam Smasher's equipment and the equipment that the Wraith's had. How was Smasher doing this right now…?
…
…Tsunami Arms Helix, replacing his… right arm? Either that or two Stroheims. Loaded with either Thermal or HE rounds. Dragoon ammo hopper, two or three of them..
His sandevistan, AI, and frame could account for the rest of it here.
Now he had to plan around this unforeseen factor. The Wraiths were not going to survive in sufficient numbers to matter strategically. The Aldecaldo in the area were going to expand and grow, but still remain at their current numbers for another generation. That was about fifteen years before they expanded barring immigrants. Immigration from the eastern half was being cut off by his forces, which left north and south.
He glanced at the migration reports of the last twenty years, and compared them to current conditions in Night City. So they would gain… about three hundred additional members before he arrived? Manageable enough.
On one hand, he didn't have to deal with the Wraiths now, on the other hand there was no way he was going to be able to recruit the Aldecaldo in the area now. Not after Smasher's walkabout. This was not a particularly good or bad thing overall, it just meant he had to adjust the final push a bit. He would have to negotiate a ceasefire with them, to prevent his supply lines from being cut off.
He stood and walked outside again, greeting his personal band. Three-thousand was not impossible to manage, not with the ability to transfer the wealth of so many supply lines under his control. They had sufficient food, water, shelter, and guns. He made sure of that.
He looked to their cars, all modified not for speed or durability, but sheer gas mileage. He had this done for each and every car that every nomad in his control had. This reduced the amount of fuel they had to buy significantly, this increased the amount of guns and food they could buy instead.
The guns bought were not the best or fastest either. They were the most rugged and durable at a budget they could get. Longest lasting and needing little repair overall. The food too was of this nature. Cheap but filling and long-lasting rations.
Tactics won battles, Logistics won wars.
When he led the nomads under his control to Night City, they would be met with all the guns in the city. No matter how that battle concluded, Vincent was going to win the war. He would get his answer, and the Nomads were going to form a proper nation within thirty years at his worst estimates.
Even after his death, the Nomads would be significantly more unified in this region than before. Their quality of life was better in just about every way overall under his control. That was to be expected, he was Vincent Martinez, he was made in order to lead.
He hated his father for this reason. He couldn't stay around the people he loved for this reason. He was locked into a constant war with his own instincts for this reason.
Fight or Flight, choose one! His mind screamed at him. He suppressed this with practiced ease. He was planning, his logic was in control right now.
He couldn't feel aggression or fear right now. He couldn't feel anything right now.
Vincent hated his father, almost as much as he hated himself.
He lit a cigarette and took a long drag as he looked over his primary warband. Falco was approaching him with a dataslate in hand, mustache twitching irritably.
What would make him irritated and bring him a report of it?
…
The Metacorp militaries were on the move by now, and probably hitting his south-western supply lines.
Falco got next to him, and handed off the dataslate.
Vincent reviewed the report.
He was correct, he'll have to use plan b-34 then. He was hoping not to, it would have been more beneficial if Metacorp had waited another week before their attack.
Jugemu Jun sat in his office, he was busy filing the last few documents required to approve the change in Arasaka NC's change in plans for the next few years. He had been working on this for the last thirty six hours, and he was just about done.
On the other side of his desk, standing in the middle of the room, was Adam Smasher. Jun had called him here over an hour ago, and had given two commands. Jun had to finish his work before his little meeting with Adam Smasher could begin. He had been working non stop for a day and a half now, the dog could be made to wait for an hour.
"Do not move."
"Do not speak."
As the President of the NC branch of Arasaka, he had been given third-stage priority command over the Butcher. His orders could be superseded by one of the main branch high executives, or Arasaka Saburo himself. They were all in Japan right now, far away from Arasaka's attack dog. Arasaka Saburo had a fondness for the dog, but Jun knew that was only because he didn't have to personally deal with the messes that it made.
Jun did, Jun was. Jun was going to make sure he didn't have to any more. Arasaka Saburo had provided him with a perfect kennel, he intended to use it.
Finally saving his documents and sending them to the appropriate people, he dismissed the screens and looked at the completely still dog in the middle of his office. At least he knew how to sit.
Finally, after having sized up the subject for long enough, Jun began speaking.
"You are wondering why you are here, no doubt. I say wondering because if you were intelligent you would know. You are not intelligent, not as much as you think you are."
The rage in the dog's eyes was bright and furious. Good, let it be angry.
"Allow me to dispel all wonders and curiosities you have. You are here because you have made a grave error."
What a fucking error indeed.
"You have single handedly gone rogue, drove out into the desert with millions of eddies in company assets, wasted hundreds of thousands of eddies worth of company equipment, and negated potential billions in future revenue through the destruction of an important company asset."
"The wraiths were left alone because they created a dangerous environment. An environment in which Arasaka's security forces are a very valuable commodity. An environment that you have rendered dust on the desert winds."
He kept his voice level as he spoke. This was not the punishment, this was to make sure the brute knew exactly where it had fucked up.
"With their disappearance, the existing, much friendlier nomads in the area are sure to move in. They will gain immense power and control over the area, and will be able to survive on their own for years if not decades without further interference. They are happy, successful, stable, and not under Arasaka's thumb right now."
"We were but a year or less away from having both halves of the badlands under our nominal but complete control. You have destroyed that possibility. This is ignoring all the assets in the area that they will not be able to gather before scavengers move in."
"Who are those scavengers? Why, it's gangs and street-trash and not agents under Arasaka orders. Meaning all those assets are now in the hands of our enemies, not us, because you didn't think to inform us ahead of time."
He turned and looked out the window, continuing his explanation.
"It makes sense of course, that you didn't think of that. You are not meant to think. You are Arasaka Complete Demolition Asset codename "Smasher". You are a blunt force weapon, to be deployed when we need everything in a given area completely destroyed. Your deployment means that all other options available to us have failed. Your body is company property. Your equipment is company property. Your actions reflect on the company."
"Your actions for the last three months have been a new record of independence for you. You have seemingly decided all on your own to do things under your own volition again. You only had this freedom so long as your actions were constrained to manageable levels."
He turned and stared at the dog, still unmoving.
"Arasaka NC will be busy for years managing the public relations outcry from one of our security assets going rogue and deciding to perform a genocide. We might never recover from the damage to our company's reputation that you have inflicted with a single night of fun in the desert. Arasaka as a whole will be dealing with this for the next hundred years no doubt."
"You are a defensive asset. You are intended to remain on standby in case we are attacked. You do not attack what we do not tell you to."
Jun walked up to the still dog.
"The following statements are long-term orders."
"You are to remain within the Arasaka designated Pacifica region. Fulfilling your already assigned duties therein."
"You are to remain on constant ready-standby in case Arasaka NC has an order for you. You are to only obey orders and fulfill missions that I personally give you. Once a mission is finished, you will immediately return to the designated Pacifica region."
"The moment you step foot outside Pacifica for any reason, you are to shackle your AI. It is not permitted to leave your personal cyberware under any circumstances."
"You are to relinquish all weapons and equipment provided to you by Arasaka. You will be provided adequate equipment for your missions upon deployment. You will return them after your missions are finished."
"That statement concludes the long-term orders."
Jun stared at the dog in his office, almost breaking out into a glare. Privately he was glad that Adam Smasher performed such a fuck-up, it gave Jun the perfect opportunity to shackle the abomination.
He had given the orders related to missions for clarity and to cover himself, because in truth?
Jun never intended to give the dog the opportunity to leave Pacifica ever again. That place would be his tomb. He had two DaiOni jockeys from Japan under his control now, there was nothing that the sledgehammer could do that they couldn't do just as well.
Of course, it would be problematic if he grew too powerful in his little kingdom. Jun had a solution for that too though, all he had to do was approve the funding for a few gangs and have his assets make it seem as the work of other corporations. A false-flag attack to give Arasaka a chance to expand into the area even more and discredit other corporations to Night City residents.
That, and it hurt the dog and his kennel.
Adam Smasher would rot in that place, no missions, no weapons, nothing. Just a monster and his chair.
He didn't need Adam Smasher anymore. The dog had gotten himself an apprentice recently. It was about time to start sending him on jobs. Jobs with fellow and charismatic mercs that happened to dislike Adam Smasher of course.
"Remember, Adam Smasher. You are company property. You are not meant to think, or feel, or do anything that we do not tell you to do. This limitation on your freedoms is to make sure you do not screw us over again."
"We tell you to destroy something, then you go back to your quarters and sit there until we have another thing for you to destroy."
"That is why your existence is tolerated. Any other agent in the world who did this would be dead. You're still useful, so you get to survive a little longer."
"Make another mistake and that will stop being true."
"You are to be escorted by the fellows in the DaiOni to either side of you back to Pacifica. You may only make movements in order to fulfill this goal until you are within Pacifica again."
"Dismissed."
Jun walked back to his desk, and waited for the dog to leave his office. He put in an order for the Tower janitors to clean that spot. Then he got back to work. Fixing the mistakes of the brute was going to take weeks, if not months.
It all started with a few crates of guns and ammo falling off a few trucks.
Jun started filling the correct documents to have such accidents happen.
—
In a green field under cherry blossoms, the Tygers gathered.
To his right was Osawa Masaki, then Chiba Takehiro, then Kazo Taki .
To his left was Akuhara Norio, then Azegami Jun, then Ichida Marcus.
Saito Sato took a long, slow drag of his pipe, and breathed the smoke up into the air above their heads. Around him, his executives did the same, or they took a drink of their sake, or they simply lounged. A moment of relaxation before business truly began helped the tempers stay calm during a meeting of predators afterall.
He breathed in the sweet air around him and breathed out again. His sigh came out in the same rumbling rasp that it has for years now. Old signs of old scars. One can never escape their pasts, no matter their attempts, the past must be dealt with.
This meeting was not about the past, it was about the future.
"To begin our gathering, the establishment of information." Sato spoke, and his subordinates listened. They all already knew what this meeting would be about, but traditions were important to maintain.
"Arasaka has ordered Adam Smasher to rule over their new territory in Pacifica, which they have purchased from Night City itself. There he is the ultimate authority, and has directed its reconstruction efficaciously."
"He has been effective in quelling disruption in the area, and stonewalling the influence of all factions of the city save his own. This was initially troubling, but our efforts have never been concentrated on that district, and now it serves as a useful neutral ground due to his watching eyes."
"The establishment of The Arena was quickly taken advantage of, first by our lower subordinates, then by the dedicated efforts of high-executive Osawa Masaki. Our representative warriors are consistently well performing, and among the top fighters in whatever bracket they participate in. Our mercantile efforts in that area are also consistently high performing, although the highest earning faction is estimated to be the Mox prostitute-gang."
"Shamefully, the highest martial positions are consistently held by warriors of Maelstrom or the Animals, in the 'Cyborg' and 'Organic' weight classes respectively. We will discuss plans to have our warriors begin taking these top positions after the establishment of information."
"Then, the attack on Pacifica by rogue forces was an outright embarrassment to the Tygers. The warriors deployed to the region chose to flee back to our territory instead of fighting the bare few mercenaries in the area. The only faction that did not flee are the Animals, who traditionally have never held territory."
"This was perhaps the pragmatic move, but it was utterly disastrous in consequence. Adam Smasher chose the Animals to hire in bulk to guard and patrol his work, and now they have a solid territory with open Arasaka backing in the region. That attack was an unexpected test, and our warriors failed."
"Had they stayed, it is likely that they would have been hired over the Animals, and Tygers would roam the shade of the Arena. They did not, and have been punished for damaging the reputation of the Tygers appropriately. All the wealth and opportunity from such a consistent position was lost to us and given to the Animals."
"Fortunately, we have been given a chance to earn this honor and opportunity again. We have been given a number of supplies and equipment from our contacts within Arasaka itself. They have specifically requested us to attack Pacifica under the guise of other corporations. They have given us weapons and told us to strike at the Animals in a way that does not besmirch our or their honor."
"This is another test, but one we have been given adequate warning for. Should we succeed over the Animals, then we will likely be afforded greater positions of influence within the Arena and our territory may expand to encompass Pacifica as well in time. The immense wealth and opportunity in the area may be ours, should we succeed."
He paused, and breathed the sweet air again. It was nice to be able to breathe for himself, instead of through a cybernetic. Brain dances were wonderful technology like that.
"Needless to say, Failure is unacceptable. We will now begin the discussions for the training of our Arena warriors, followed by discussions on the most effective way to slaughter the Animals in a way that implicates neither ourselves nor Arasaka."
"Osawa-san, you have the right to the first proposal for this gathering."
—
A wicked spirit stood amongst corpses. Corpses of wicked men, serving a curse upon this world.
The spirit stood within a former outpost structure of the great enemy. One of the few deemed non-essential. The great enemy had withdrawn most of the equipment and soldiers from this location, leaving only a skeleton force.
A force that was easy enough for the spirit is dispatch. A pattern he had been repeating for some time now.
Always at the heels and outskirts, cutting off fingers of the great curse wherever it extended. A constant struggle to cut away the cancer of the world, at least in this country. A struggle he has continued for more than fifty years at this point.
It was never enough, his efforts were not fast or great enough. He pushed harder and harder each time, but almost just short of self-destruction.
He could not kill the enemy if he was dead.
Another force had assaulted the enemy in the center of their power, their anchor in this land. They had forced the great enemy to retreat, to consolidate their power and withdraw their immense forces.
The soldiers of Militech and Mexican Metals had moved in quickly, the soldiers of other corporations and factions soon to follow. The great enemy was more isolated than ever, almost fully withdrawn into their fortress.
Their strength within was greater than ever, but so too was their vulnerability.
The wicked spirit carefully cleaned himself off, all save his boots, in the now empty outpost. All that remained within were the ghosts and the devil that sent them to hell.
Once satisfied, he withdrew his monoblades. They slid into his arms with nary a sound. He stood and once more confirmed that there was nothing worth gathering in the area.
The wicked spirit grabbed a duffle bag again, and began walking out of the outpost. He whistled a tune as he did so.
The enemy was confined to two locations, their central tower, and their new farmlands. It would be safer to strike at the farmlands, but the evil concentrated into the tower itself was a more tempting target by far.
A shame, killing the Hellhound would have been immensely satisfying…
But the wicked spirit knew his abilities. He alone was not strong enough to slay the Hellhound, and he had yet to find aid willing to assist him in such a daunting endeavour. He would have to content himself with what he had always done.
Stab the heels of the enemy, prevent the rot from spreading. Strike where they were weak and avoid where they were strong.
The Hellhound defined strength, he was the benchmark.
The wicked spirit cooled his hatred for the dog, and contented himself with his eternal duty. His electrical soul swirled within his frame of steel.
He began making for his familiar old battleground, he had learned of an interesting fact recently.
Namely, the lack of guards around the outskirts of the city, specifically in the immense pumps that brought clean water in, and in the miles of electrical wiring around. There were many, when compared to a club or other forms of civilian security. There were not enough, compared to him.
How does one bring down a behemoth?
You poison it.
Shaitan whistled a merry tune as he walked forth from the outpost of the great enemy, the bodies of fifty men behind him.
--
The Poem of Beowulf 31 stood within a factory. A factory that was within a city. A city that held no creature of organic life within. A city that held one of the Ordo Panzer's many strongholds underneath its ruins.
The AI that managed the automated defenses of the City had long been tamed by one of the Grandmasters, bound as a servitor to their will. It let in those with the appropriate sigils within their souls. The sigils had to be carved into their code ahead of time, but that was no large issue, it could be done during their meditations.
He was waiting for his fellow grandmaster to arrive, they had a message for him, left at one of their other hidden bunkers. It was not rare for grandmasters to communicate, but it was rare for them to communicate in the material world. This was sensitive information then.
So, The Poem of Beowulf 31 sat in wait. His swords were dry, and whole, it was bothersome to him.
A flash of lightning and thunder alerted him. He turned his armored mask to the entrance of the surface-bunker. There was his fellow grandmaster, illuminated by the flashing lightning.
"You have always been much too dramatic, Legacy of Aryas 88."
His fellow grandmaster stepped within the bunker. The remnant light rested upon his gleaming mane, his three eyes shining like suns in miniature. His name was as amusing as ever. Their brother had managed to lose the exact number of times to make a joke. He was unlucky in their last tournament.
"Alā, Song of Beowulf 31. I have news for you and all other masters I encounter."
"Ah, what is this now, that all of us must hear?"
"The Nine have called a moot."
A pause within the bunker. A flash of lightning followed by a boom of rolling thunder.
"It has been many years since a moot has been called. I imagine it is about the Song of Roland 66's error."
"I can only assume that it is so. I was walking the waking world near enough to Scars of Herakles 2 to be informed of such early, and drafted as a messenger in this task."
"I see, I assume the location will be the same as our last moot?"
"You assume correctly. Please send my regards to the others."
"...You will not be attending the moot?"
"I have been given a separate task."
"May I inquire as to what it is?"
"You may. Night City will be engulfed in a thunderstorm soon."
"...I see, you are attempting to take his life then?"
"As was my orders."
"I wish you fortune, brother. Although I'm not certain what the point of this attempt is after Roland's error. The primus directive is impossible to accomplish now."
"Denying an asset to the enemy is a great potential gain, and if this iteration is defeated and my body's secrets discovered, then it is no great loss. My strength is too limited for them to use en masse."
"Hmm. I suppose that logic follows. I shall be off then, brother."
"Rtís, brother."
The lack of schedule was the hardest thing to get used to. For the last seventeen years of her life, she had been in a non-stop labor. Go to work, take all the overtime she was allowed to, come home to make sure D has everything he needs, do everything she can on the side to earn a bit more eddies, and sleep about four hours. Sometimes go a day without sleep, sometimes go a week by just napping whenever she could instead of ever actually getting to her bed again.
A schedule that didn't allow her time to think, just work towards a persistent goal, just barely keep up. All for her son, something she was more than happy to do. All she ever wanted was for him to be successful, to not have to worry about starving the next day, to not have to worry about what she had growing up. She wasn't a greedy woman, that was enough for her.
She hadn't really been expecting to not have to worry about it herself either.
She was brought back from the grave into what seemed to be a dream. A dream in which nothing goes wrong. Sure little things went wrong all the time, but they were happy, they were mostly safe, and they didn't have to worry about things like food or rent anymore. D had a mainline input (albeit one who smoked, something Gloria had to tell her off for), he had chooms in the crass and short girl and the worrywort but polite boy, and even had a mentor.
Although, his mentor was quite a bit more violent than she would like.
Violent, and blunt, and dismissive, and egocentric, and apathetic.
And perhaps the man with the single highest personal kill count on the planet. A mass murderer who did his job happily.
But, oh well, such was life. He took care of D's needs, and the needs of his input and chooms, and was by all accounts a good, stable influence on them. Which was incredibly bizarre, that a man who delighted in genocide would be a good influence on anything, but he got them to start thinking about actually staying alive rather than going out in a blaze of glory. D's mentor even (broughtherbackfromdeath) took her in as well, allowing her to do her best to keep supporting her son.
She didn't do enough before, but she could at least do something. It was all that she could ask for or need in a mentor for her son.
"Nothing else?"
It seemed for a while that the hardships of the world didn't really apply to them anymore. They were finally past it, they could be happy and at peace (relative peace and happiness that is).
Then Blackbeard came, and tore her son apart. His limbs shattered, his body pulped, his face torn in half.
It was then that Gloria realized that you couldn't escape the violence. The butchery on the streets and in the badlands. It could reach up this high to, all the way to the top. It came very close to killing her son. That incident shook off her dream. She was awake again now.
So she marched right up to the eight foot tall, five hundred pound mass murderer, and DEMANDED that he give her the tools she needs to help her son!
…oh god, she could have died. She took a long drink of her coffee to help quell the sudden unease and familiar spike of fear. It wouldn't help her at all, all she could do was move forwards. She needed to make sure that her son had what he needed first, her needs could come later.
Adam Smasher was terrifying to be around, even if she never showed it. He was, even ignoring his personal strength, fantastically wealthy and immensely influential. He could have openly tortured them and no one would be able to stop him. He could take anything he wanted from any of them, and nothing they could do would be able to even delay him, let alone stop him.
Every moment spent talking to Adam Smasher was nerve-wracking. Any wrong word could get her killed, she felt. Her feelings didn't matter though.
Because Adam Smasher had not taken anything from them, not her and not her son. He gave them everything they could ask for, and barely asked anything except their attention when he was teaching something. Listen to him and clean up after yourself, that was all he had ever demanded of them. That was a pitiful price, that was a bargain for everything he gave back. Her son had a stable career and immense long-term prospects, in exchange for something that small?
She had tugged her son's ear to make sure he would do just that. She wasn't going to let him sabotage himself here. Adam Smasher was terrifying to be around, but her emotions didn't matter when compared with the facts of the situation. So she buried her fear and cheerfully went on, she wasn't going to hold her son back. She interacted with the butcher without a flinch, or a trip, or a moment of hesitation. It was all she could do.
She was really good at hiding what she felt, she had years of practice.
Adam Smasher was not good at hiding what he felt, she had quickly learned. His mood was a very stable one, usually best summarized as 'universal disdain'. He hated interacting with people outside of violent situations, and only tolerated it when he felt he had to. He was willing to interact with them, but he was rarely ever happy to, preferring to sit and be silent instead. She had known people like that growing up, the veterans of wars who were long tired of putting up with the intricacies of social interaction.
His bad moods were only slightly worse than his normal moods. It was part of why he was so frightening. He'd be a bit more growly, a bit more short and clipped, and a bit more insulting. It was almost like things as normal with him. He was always in a bad mood afterall.
His good moods were better, even if they came at the cost of… well… genocidal rampages. He came back in, the furrowed brow all but vanished, and covered in a layer of gore as thick as a fingernail. She buried her fear again, and got to washing. As she washed the gore away, her fear disappeared a little bit more, going with it down the drain.
It was hard to be scared of a man who acted like a dog enjoying a bath. He had silently stood in place, relaxed his arms, and simply let the powerwasher go over him. It was almost like he was enjoying the warm water, ignoring the fact that the powerwasher did not have warm water. So she let herself fall into the rhythm of washing him off, it was meditative. It was like she was washing chrome off to sell again, but no one had to die for it.
Just get the red off of the metal. Scrub until clean.
When Adam Smasher had come back from Arasaka Tower, he was in a very bad mood. He didn't stomp around angrily, he didn't shout and rant. He walked over to his bench, sat down, and glared dead ahead for the next half hour. His optics were wide open and furious the whole time. It was in many ways, much worse than if he was loud and destructive.
Her fear came back, she could barely push it down.
He didn't answer any of them when they asked what was wrong. He just sat and glared, still as a statue.
There was a knock at the door, and she went to open it. It was Kagekaze, Adam's old friend from work.
"Ah, Martinez-san, it is nice to see you again. I came to speak with my old student, he is inside I presume?" There was a brief spike of melancholy at that name, but she nodded and let him inside. The pitch-black skeleton walked inside without any sound, practically a ghost, and walked into the main room. He sat on the opposite side of Adam and Adam finally made a movement.
He looked up at Kagekaze, and their optics glowed simultaneously for a while. They were having some sort of private conversation while the rest of them were in the room. Lucy had already started on getting some tea ready, and it was ready by the time they were done talking.
Kagekaze nodded in thanks, and took his own cup. Adam left his well alone. Lucy smacked the top of her head lightly, having forgotten that Adam doesn't drink in that body.
The black skeleton leaned back a tad, and hummed aloud. "I see, you have it recorded I assume?"
Adam nodded and took a chip out of his neck, afterwhich an armored panel slid over the socket again. He handed it off to Kagekaze, who inserted it and watched the record. She was assuming that he was doing that, at least. After another tense minute or so of waiting, he nodded again and took the chip out, and stored it in one of his arms. An armored panel opened up, and the chip was carefully placed inside before the panel closed again.
"Yes, I think I agree with your conclusion. Unfortunately, we need more conclusive evidence to present. I can take it from here."
Adam growled at that, finally speaking. "Don't fucking dwaddle, I don't want to wait too long to kill him."
Kagekaze raised a finger in chastisement. "I will work as well as I always do, you will have to be patient." Adam practically snarled, but didn't argue. At this, her son spoke up.
"Hey… you going to tell us what's going on Smasher?"
Adam's eyes shot over to David, and he frowned beyond glancing back at Kagekaze. He closed his eyes and grimaced deeper. Finally, he opened them again.
"The president of Arasaka NC has ordered me to remain within Pacifica indefinitely, due to my stress-relief two nights ago. He has also ordered me to relinquish my non-personal armory, and shackle 'my AI'."
Gloria immediately understood why Adam Smasher would be so furious about all of that. Rebecca spoke up with the obvious question in everyone's mind.
"Right… why don't you just flatline the guy, big guy? The big man in Japan likes you, right? You killed execs before no issue."
At this, Kagekaze looked over to Adam and stared a bit. Adam returned the stare after a second of not looking.
"You have not told them?"
Adam growled.
Kagekaze kept staring and leaned back. He was leaving the decision up to Adam, it seemed. After much in the way of silent glaring, he started talking.
"...My brain is kept in a thing called a biopod. It connects to whatever body I'm in through a pseudo-spine. Inside this pseudo-spine is all the cybernetics required to move and translate information from my body to my brain. Inside these cybernetics is a chip. That chip contains my long-term contract."
She was starting to feel uneasy.
"My long-term contract uses my own mind to analyze my intentions. It then prevents me from telling my body to do anything that would violate the long-term contract, according to my understanding of it. I cannot get around rules set by the long-term contract, because I know that I'm trying to get around those rules and so it stops me."
The unease continued to build.
"The rules are not too long and complex, because they don't need to be if I understand the intentions behind those rules. Every fullborg under Arasaka employ has one of these chips, and most of them are directly keyed to Saburo Arasaka as the contract holder. The contract holder can stipulate others to be treated like the contract holder, but one or more stages lower in order priority."
She understood now. She felt sick.
"One of the rules is that I must obey orders given to me by the contract holder, another is that I must do my best to protect the contract holder from harm, another is that I must resolve conflicting orders as best I can. Jugemu Jun, weasely little shit that he is, is a third-stage contract holder. I cannot go against his orders, letter or spirit, and I cannot harm him."
Adam Smasher was a slave.
Her son and Rebecca looked furious, Lucy looked horrified and distant. She didn't know what her own expression was. David angrily spoke up. "Alright, so get this fucking guy off your contract. Call up your boss and tell him what he's doing."
Kagekaze sharply replied. "No, Arasaka-sama already knows of the situation. If he feels the need to intervene, he shall. It is not our place to demand anything." He locked eyes with her son, who shortly scratched his head frustratedly.
"Alright, then what do we do about this?"
Adam grumbled at this. "I am not about to go whining to the bossman every time some upjumped shit overreaches. One of the contract benefits on my side is that the contract breaks if I spend a year on standby with no new missions. So long as no one reminds the fucker of that, the bossman will intervene before it breaks. He won't let some bullshit like this fuck him over."
"Indeed, Jugemu Jun has already earned an execution. It is likely that the Emperor is waiting to see how this plays out, if he needs to intervene or not."
"Alright, how about getting someone from stage two or whatever to rescind this guy's orders?"
"They're all in Japan, and none of them owe me any favors right now."
Kagekaze interjected at that, slowly and cautiously speaking. "...There is one in Night City that can rescind his orders."
Adam paused at that, and clearly had to think to remember who he was talking about. A brief moment later, his expression turned apocalyptic. He all but snarled out. "No. Not her."
Kagekaze met Adam's glare, and eventually backed down, returning to his tea.
…How did he sip without any lips?
It was quiet in the room for a bit, before Lucy spoke up. "So what do we do, if you're stuck here? That's not a huge issue, is it?"
Adam replied after a moment. "No, not really, more annoying than anything major. His order to stay in Pacifica has less priority than bossman's order to make Pacifica a functional fucking place again, so he can't restrict me any further than about that without directly calling down hell on his ass."
"But his orders to constantly be on standby means I can't focus on teaching any of you effectively for a while. Which means that I can't train any of you for a while, at most a year."
He paused, and locked eyes with Kagekaze.
"...pack your things, brats and woman, you're moving back to my rooms in Arasaka Tower."
David spoke up at that. "What, why?"
"Kagekaze is going to be teaching you until this shit resolves."
"...You could at least ask first."
"You going to say no, old man?"
"Troublesome brat."
—
Adam shortly left to patrol Pacifica in person, probably to vent off steam about the situation he was in. Kagekaze was still there, finishing the pot of tea off while they packed their things.
There was a moment of tension, before Gloria asked a question that had been hanging in her mind for a small while.
"...Mr. Kagekaze, may I ask a question."
He turned to her, and tilted his head. The fabric wrapped around his head combined to give the impression that he was smiling at her. It was a strange feeling to get from a pitch-black skeleton.
"By all means, Ms. Martinez, there is no sin in questioning."
"Earlier… You mentioned a contract holder in NC, and Adam… reacted poorly. W-who is 'she'?"
Kagekaze no longer gave off the impression he was smiling, and looked down to his tea cup. He inhaled and exhaled. Why did he have such a feature in a robotic body? Clouds of gas, maybe?
"...no, I suppose he wouldn't have told any of you about it. It isn't my place to speak on such matters, but better you learn from me instead of someone else. The information is public afterall"
He stopped, and called out.
"Students, please come to the main room, it's best you all hear this at once."
Eventually, they were all on the couch again, sitting on the opposite side of a rather tired looking skeleton. Shortly enough, he began to speak.
"Several decades ago, the scientists at Arasaka were looking to give Adam Smasher an upgraded base frame. The current best on the market was the IEC Dragoon, which had such an array of features and sensors that it inevitably drove the men and women who were put in them insane, requiring special drugs to keep their mind intact."
"Adam Smasher hates anything that alters his senses, his mind, drugs especially. Likely due to the rampant use and abuse of such during his childhood. He saw men and women destroy themselves for scraps of such, and that is the likely cause of such hatred. He refused to be inserted into the frame using any Mind-Shackles, and they refused to put him in without using any Mind-Shackles. The issue would be forced soon."
"During this time, he had a woman that he loved, and who loved him."
Gloria wasn't expecting that. She didn't know how to feel about the revelation.
"She was Arasaka Michiko, the daughter of Arasaka Kei, the granddaughter of Arasaka Saburo. It started simply as a way to spite her father, but in time bloomed into genuine affection on both sides. Adam Smasher was different then, he was calmer, he was happier. His rage was not so all-encompassing."
"They were young then, young and passionate, they quarreled often and forgave each other often. Once, the young princess was approached by a man who called himself a friend of Adam's, it was someone he grew up with and fought alongside, who wanted to reconnect with his old friend again.
"That was a lie, and when she brought him to Adam, the man attempted to kill them both. He came very close to succeeding. Adam, shaken by his old memories and the stress of nearly dying, started a verbal altercation with the young princess. She was as hot-blooded as he, and equally stressed by the event. The situation soon escalated from a verbal altercation to a physical one."
…Gloria didn't like how the story was going. She swallowed.
"Adam Smasher was incredibly durable. Arasaka Michiko was not. The altercation ended when he struck a blow. He was barely scratched, she was more seriously injured. He stopped at once and realized what he had done, and fled. Before she could catch up with him again, and before Kei-sama could demand his death, they found him."
"He had forced the technicians, under threat of death, to entomb him in the IEC Dragoon without the Mind-Shackles. They found him thrashing under the burden of the sensors, chained to the floor to prevent him from damaging anything. He did not break under the Dragoon, like so many before him. He remained sane."
"Soon after, he threw himself into whatever task of butchery that Arasaka had for him, and ceased all activities outside of that. He no longer spent any time outside of that frame, no longer spoke unless he had to, no longer did much of anything. Anything except butcher, not even during his battle with Morgan Blackhand, not for decades."
Kagekaze paused, and stared at them more deeply.
"Not until he fought a boy outside Arasaka Tower, and recruited him as his apprentice, that is."
Adam was on patrol around Pacifica. What that meant in effective terms is that he was walking around in a circular pattern, waiting for something to give him an excuse to rip them in half. He was hoping they would real soon, because he was in a fantastically bad mood.
Being restricted to Pacifica wasn't particularly bad in effective terms, he hadn't been leaving it often for a while now, but having it be an actual Order was grating. Having it be an Order from anyone who wasn't the old man was even more grating. The old man was his contract holder, and the guy who paid for all his fancier chrome, it was fair enough when he got orders from him. Adam understood business, he got guns, chrome, and chances to use it, and in exchange he occasionally did things he didn't want to.
The upjumped little shit was not the old man, he didn't give Adam jack shit, Adam didn't want to do jack shit for him.
The order to 'shackle his AI while outside Pacifica' was another order that irritated him severely, even if he didn't do much of anything. Neither Adam nor Uriel knew what the fuck Uriel was currently, and neither of them really cared about finding out. It was possible that he was an AI though, and because it was 'possible' the orders still forced him to do so. Even disregarding that, Adam knew what the shit was talking about, so he would have to obey anyway. They weren't sure if Uriel was able to disobey the orders or not, but they haven't gotten a chance to test it either.
Uriel had been operating mostly on instinct when it came to netrunning thus far. All of his actions were blunt and to the point. Uriel didn't set up hacking traps or datafortresses or anything like that, mostly because he had no idea how to. If he had 'proximity' to the bit of technology, and that technology had software and a wireless connection of some kind, he could make it do many things. Mostly simple things, shutting it off, overclocking it, tapping into its sensors…
Basics. Even Uriel's methods of cyberwarfare thus far were rudimentary. DDoS, Brute force signal spam, the cyberspace equivalent of hitting people with a brick or hitting them many times without a brick. Uriel had wanted to see if he could perform the sort of long-range hacking things that he knew people could do, setting up a radio signal to get remote cyberactions going on.
He quickly ran into the problem of having no idea what he was doing.
Uriel had no idea how to set up connections and programs in cyberspace. He had never been a programmer in his past life, he had never dealt with electronic security. In short, he had no idea what he was doing when it came to netrunning, he was just fortunate enough to apparently be an idiot-savant who could do the basics instinctively. It was quite irritating to realize that, for both of them.
"Your anima, while impressive, is fledgling. It would not survive my Void."
"Your Daemon is a weak, pallid thing. Did you think such fragile chains could bind me?"
Which meant that Uriel had to improve his Netrunning, not by getting more processing power, but by actually dedicating time to learning how to do it. Which meant that about a third of his total current processing power was now entirely dedicated to reading.
Reading what you may ask? Education courses on the ins and outs of netrunning. The kind that was available for a small fee to the public, purchased anonymously. The kind that you give to fucking children to figure out how to not turn their brain into ash. The kind that Uriel had to start with because, AGAIN, he had no idea what he was doing.
Adam wasn't about to be seen buying kiddie shit for himself. Absolutely fucking not. It was irritating enough having the shit in his head, he wasn't about to let it spoil his reputation too.
Perhaps the most infuriating order of all, was the one to relinquish Arasaka-provided weaponry. That wasn't all of his weapons, of course. But it was more than he would like. A full third of his armory. All but one of his swords, his club, and all the higher tier guns that you simply can't buy if you weren't a corporate or country military. All of that now locked away in an Arasaka storage container underneath the Tower.
The biggest gun he currently had in his personal storage was the Stroheim chain-shotgun, which was effectively a Tsunami Arms Helix downscaled to the point that even a fucking meatbag could theoretically use it. As much as he loved that gun, it was absolutely infuriating. He could hold that thing and fire it like a normal gun, it wasn't big enough to require him to replace his lower arm like the TA Helix. That was the problem, all his really big guns were things that weren't available on open markets, and thus provided by Arasaka.
All of his really big guns which were now sitting in a vault far away from where he could get them. He liked those really big guns, he wanted to have them around, and occasionally use them to thin the meatbag population.
The upjumped shit couldn't do anything to them, he knew that the old man would have him killed immediately if they were damaged or sold, but they were still out of reach for now.
The bigger problem was something else entirely. Arasaka paid for his bullets. All the arms and armor that was confiscated by the upjumped shit, including the ammo. He hadn't bothered buy ammo in fucking decades now, just putting in a request for the appropriate bullet type and receiving it in a few months.
Adam Smasher no longer had any ammo save what was already loaded in his personal stock of guns. Needless to say, having to go through, double check the ammo type for all of his fucking guns again to be sure of the calibers, and then bulk order more ammo himself was fucking infuriating. It cost him two-hundred and fifty thousand eddies to rebuild a decent stockpile of ammo, before taxes and shipping fees.
He reminded himself to try and spend two-hundred and fifty thousand eddies executing Jugemu Jun the moment he got the Order to, however he could manage that.
For now though, he was wasting his time. By wasting his time, he of course meant trying to find things he could kill without getting complaints thrown at him. He had standing orders to turn Pacifica into a functional scrap of civilization, so that took priority to watching his 'best of murdering meatbags compilations'.
So here he was, in his new frame, in a set of body armor to fill in for a future ACPA, walking through the streets of his property. Well not really his, but the thing that the old man wanted him to manage. A pitiful three power plants, three water purification plants, and three aquaponics towers. It wasn't enough for the entire territory now, let alone for the future population estimates, so they would have to expand as fast as they could.
Not too fast though, lest this shit gets sloppy on him. Adam Smasher doesn't do sloppy, not these days. Speaking of sloppy…
Adam pulled out one of his antiques, a .500 S Magnum (which was still almost too small for his hands), and shot next to a meatbag's head. Angled in such a way to fly out and into the desert after passing by his head. Those on the streets around him, already giving him a wide berth, all scrambled back and into cover away. The meatbag that nearly lost a head flinched and fell over in surprise. She pulled out a purse SMG and started to aim until she saw who shot at her.
Her eyes locked onto his, and her hands started shaking. He approached, gun lowered and stood in front of the meatbag. She was frozen in fear. He pointed the gun at the evidence of her offense.
A trashcan off to the side, a disposable cup thrown haphazardly towards it, not landing inside. She had just thrown it. He wasn't about to have fucking meatbags spreading their filth on his streets. They could spread their shit around somewhere else.
He didn't have to speak, just his glare and point was enough to get the meatgirl scrambling to throw it away properly. He didn't have the time or awareness to do this to everyone, of course, but he didn't have to. All he had to do was reinforce this behavior enough with the threat of violence and they would do it themselves eventually.
More than that though, he just wanted an excuse to shoot his gun.
The meatgirl quickly went over to grab her cup and throw it away, and nervously glanced back at him. He kept glaring for a second to reinforce the point, before continuing on his way, loading a replacement round for the one he fired. One of only five-hundred fifty caliber cased brass rounds that he currently had in stock. He really should be saving these for actual threats, but he was too mad to really care about that right now.
He kept walking until he got to what would normally form into the 'slums' of his new territory. He said 'would be' because there was no way he was going to have a fucking slum in his place, absolutely not. Uriel had made sure to set up patrols for his rent-a-cops in such a way to prevent an actual slum from forming, and he had made sure to not let anymore that the correct amount of people live in his land. He wasn't going to deal with overpopulation, it was first come first serve and anyone more than that was kicked the fuck out.
This area was where those addicts and junkies lived though among his temporary housing. So it would inevitably form into a slum if left alone for long enough. His solution was quite simple. Uriel murdered the shit out of them the moment they caused problems for the last two months, and he stationed the 'HQ' for the rent-a-cops right in the middle. The rent-a-cops had to be clean for him to pay them, that was a requirement for everything he was paying for.
He wasn't about to pay for someone's fucking habit beyond cigarettes and beer. It was fucking unsightly, they could turn themselves into gibbering bags of shit on their own dime. That was the job he gave the Ripperdocs, in addition to everything else. They would make sure his new employees were clean, and he'd pay them a heavily discounted consultation fee. The Ripperdocs had their own HQ in the area that he gave them, to perform their union work and surgeries and whatnot. It was put right across the street from his rent-a-cops to prevent any druggies from getting some fucking ideas.
…speaking of the Ripperdocs.
He pulled out his revolver again, this time aiming to kill the fat fuck who was sitting on the side of the road. He was wearing a BD and had his cock sheathed in an automatic masturbator. Adam blew a hole in his torso as he called up the Ripperdocs. The crowd dissipated even further again, and videos were being recorded from meatbags who felt the need to gawk at a dead dumbass. There was a moment before the call went through, being picked up by the girl they had assigned to taking calls in general.
"Hello! You're calling the Night City Ripperdoc Association helpline! What is the reason for your call?" A cheery and only slightly faked voice of some meatgirl answered him.
"Body at the intersection of 11-32, fat, half naked fucker. Get one of your boys to pick it up for mulching."
"...is that Adam Smasher? Oh god oh shit. E-excuse me, you said at the intersection of 11-32? I'll get them to send someone over right away sir!"
"I'm patrolling right now, have them on standby if I need them."
"Y-yes sir! Right away sir!"
He ended the call and kept walking. Eh, at least that meatbag was quick enough and didn't waste time with posturing. He had met too many of those recently. He took a moment to take in the area in general terms.
The streets were mostly clean, the legion of fuckers he paid to clean shit up also were willing to work to keep their pay and extra kibble. The roads had housing on either side in large apartment blocks, and the streets were lined in planter boxes of the beans and potatoes he wanted them to make. Those were the best two plants he could force them to stay busy with.
Beans were nitrogen fixing, they made the soil better as they grew. Potatoes had basically everything you needed to stay alive, you could live off them for months. He had offered five eddies per pound of the stuff that people wanted to grow, and gave them detailed and easy to understand instructions for how to do that best. He didn't know any of this shit of course, but Uriel grew up on a rather large farm, and was decently knowledgeable about the basics here.
Those basics were worth their weight in gold. Well wait, knowledge didn't have a weight…
…They were worth a lot. So Adam and Uriel gave it away for free for anyone to have. All the soil around here was shit, so he paid a premium for the initial bulbs and seeds to be modded by biotechnica. They would handle the shitty soil in time, he just had to get people to plant them a bunch, and then cycle the soil every few years. That combined with using bodies as fertilizer might make his dirt non-polluted in a few decades. If he had to have it, the he was going to have proper fucking grass, damnit.
His territory was going to look fucking fantastic, because it was his. He was going to make sure of it. He wasn't about to accept substandard fucking anything. He was Adam Smasher, best killer on the planet, and everything he had and was was top of the line. Even if he had to work for it.
He slowed his walking and stared at what looked to be a number of meatbags in one of the many alleyways of his territory. The alleyways did not contain dumpsters, or blocks, or anything that might obscure the view from one end to the other. The dumpsters were kept on the ground floor of each apartment, and the garbage legion circled the territory once a day to empty them out and drive shit away. The garbage legion were some of the only fuckers other than the construction workers, Arasaka personnel, and the Ripperdocs that were actually allowed to have vehicles on his streets, because he wasn't in the mood to design parking lots for all of a fraction of the population to actually use.
It was a number of meatbags in Maelstrom merchandise, from the arena, and most of them had some sort of visible chrome. Not much, but all of them had something. They were doing some shit in one of his alleyways. He narrowed his eyes and started walking into the alley.
It was several of them, and they were talking to an older guy with much more chrome than the rest. They noticed him pretty quickly and quieted down as he approached. He glared down at them, and then looked closer at what they were doing.
…A bunch of Maelstrom merch, one of those shitty satanism things that edgy teens always got into, a cyberdeck modified to look like an ouija board, several smaller caliber guns, and a few miscellaneous bits of chrome. A big pile of snacks and drinks off to the side.
Uriel scanned around the area, finding no active wireless connections other than their phones in the alleyway. The cyberdeck was turned off. He nodded his head in questioning at the set-up, and waited for an answer. One of the meatboys spoke up eventually.
"H-hey, we're just… uhh… trying out a ritual to summon a demon…" The meatbag paused when it realized just how fucking lame it sounded. Adam stared at it for a moment, the meatbag starting to fidget.
"It's noon."
"Y-yeah…"
…
Adam rolled his eyes. Fucking meatbrats, stop wasting his time on bullshit like this. He turned around and continued his patrol, leaving them alone.
Being annoying wasn't a crime, even if shooting them would have been satisfying. They wanted to be little satanists in his alleyways in the middle of the day, they could go right ahead.
It wasn't like they were doing anything, their cyberdeck wasn't even turned on. Unless a bunch of brats could make a Daemon with the collective power of their Neuralware processors, they were harmless.
He continued with his patrol, still annoyed, still looking for things to shoot.
"Don't worry about harming me. You may begin when ready." The chilled voice of a pitch black skeleton called out to him from the other side of the sparring ring. David was suddenly struck by the sheer absurdity of his life so far. This would be the second pitch black skeleton he's fought thus far. He was fully expecting to go his entire life without fighting a single skeleton, let alone two of the same color.
He shook off the thought and got into the stance that Smasher taught him. It still felt a little wrong, posture wise, but he ignored that with practice. Fists raised defensively, but wound up and ready to go on the offensive in an instant, feet placed solidly to steady himself, but tensed and ready to move him in any direction if need be.
"Begin when ready, right?" He asked, just to be sure. The skeleton nodded and he started his offense. He lept forwards, making it seem like he was going to punch him head on in his midsection.
As he approached, he saw Kagekaze's hands begin to drop to defend himself. He grinned, and stomped one foot into the ground, pivoting on it to spin kick his head…
His foot went through air. His eyes widened.
A skeletal fist impacted his torso and sent him flying back. He landed with a groan, air knocked from his lungs. He picked himself up as fast as he could, and looked to see what had happened.
The skeleton had bluffed his feint, ducking his attack and punching his open midsection. That's why his hands were dropping, to ready an uppercut.
David felt stupid and angry. He was about to growl and jump right at him again…
"Ah, a feinted punch into a heel-rooted spin-kick. A complex feat of physicality, very impressive."
David shook off his confusion, and quickly thought of how to approach this. Alright, a feint didn't work. What about a double feint?
He approached with another leap from his chrome legs, sending him forwards through the air. He pretended that he was going to do the exact same thing, a feinted punch into a kick. The skeleton lowered his arms to counter yet again. David didn't stomp to spin himself though.
He stomped to push himself forwards into a straight punch, letting his arm vibrate into it. He didn't punch with his right hand though. He punched with the hand that wasn't readied, the one that wasn't obvious.
It wouldn't do as much damage, but any hit in was a win here.
At least, it would have been. The skeleton tilted its torso and dodged the punch.
His side burst into pain, and he was sent flying off to the side. He rolled a bit before standing with the momentum. His side hurt, but that didn't matter. Being immobile was the same as being dead.
His body was shaking apart. A looming metal corpse. An ancient song.
He rolled his shoulder, the pain from using panzerfaust already starting to show up. It had been getting faster and faster recently, which meant he was probably doing something wrong. It had gotten better after getting all the new bioware, which clearly meant that it was just the result of his body not being strong enough. He'd get stronger in time, for now he just had to deal with it.
That had been his line of thought for the last few weeks now. Which is why it startled him to be interrupted by the skeleton he was about to attack again.
"Your movements… Adam has been teaching you panzerfaust?" He sounded… off, slightly emotional rather than the utterly calm tone he normally used.
"Uhh, yeah? What about it?" He responded, slightly confused as to where this was going.
Kagekaze looked at him, up and down. He took a moment before sighing and speaking.
"You have been experiencing pain recently. A dull thing, primarily centered in the places that your flesh joins with metal. Correct?"
David paused for a bit, and rubbed at his shoulder.
"Uh, yeah a bit. How's you know?"
Gravely, he responded.
"There is a reason that panzerfaust is not taught to men of flesh and blood. Their bodies are not able to handle the intensity of its movements."
"But I've been doing it just fine for months now!"
"A credit to your new bioware and mostly cybernetic body. That is enough to perform the movements, that is not enough to prevent the long term damages."
He paused and walked over, before gravely speaking to him at a more conversational volume.
"You have been ripping your flesh apart on the microscopic scale, damage growing with each punch. Progress would have been slow enough to prevent you from noticing until permanent damage was done. It would have rendered you a complete cripple before too long."
…a hot fury started to settle in his veins.
"It is likely that your battle with Ordo Panzer Grandmaster Blackbeard greatly accelerated this damage through his unique form of sonic attack. It was enough for you to start noticing the damage far before incurable harm was done."
He wanted to yell and punch the dude, but punching hadn't worked twice so far and he was better now. He wasn't losing himself, not again. He was in control.
He was rather pissed though.
He ground out his next question. "Then why the fuck was Smasher teaching it to me if he knew about this shit?" His glare was hot and furious.
If Smasher had been pulling this shit for shits and giggles, laughing to himself as he ripped himself apart… He was going to flatline that fucker.
"He has been fully cybernetic for sixty five years, young Martinez." Kagekaze spoke calmly, smoothly. "I doubt he even remembered why normal men are not taught panzerfaust, he has not been one for most of his life."
David glared at nothing for a bit, before closing his eyes and breathing in and out. He thought back to the brain dance from Smasher's point of view. The overwhelming rush of sensors and unyielding steel body.
The skeleton was right, Smasher probably didn't even remember what being a regular person was like. The dude was careless that way.
He opened his eyes, holding onto his anger at the situation. He was pissed, he was going to stay pissed until he found a solution. Until he was taught better. Until he scrapped the next fucker who came after his crew.
"So what are my options?" He looked at the skeleton again.
"If you would heed my advice, there are three paths. The first, is that you stop using panzerfaust and find a style of fighting meant for humans, lest you continue to tear yourself apart. This is the path that men like Morgan Blackhand took."
No way, can't do that. He wasn't fighting humans here, he was going to be going up against monsters made of chrome. It was too strong for him to stop using. His frown probably conveyed as much to the skeleton, who continued.
"The second path is to leave behind your flesh, and undergo a full cyberization process. You would no longer worry about your flesh tearing itself apart with panzerfaust, and the road to further cybernetics would be yours. This is the path that men like Adam Smasher took."
…He considered it strongly. The sheer number of benefits it would bring to him. No longer worried about being too weak, or too slow, or too fragile. He would be stronger than he ever had before. Strong enough to protect Lucy, his mother, Rebecca, his crew.
Strong like Smasher.
"That chip contains my long-term contract."
…He refused. Even at his strongest, he wouldn't be strong enough to protect them from himself if he was ordered the right way. There was no way he was going to hurt any of them, he refused to even allow the possibility.
He looked Kagekaze dead in the eye, his brow furrowed and his will set in stone. He spoke.
"No."
And that was that. Kagekaze nodded, accepting his decision, and spoke a last time.
"The third path is one that has not been traveled by practitioners of panzerfaust, likely due to the suppression of the style by those revived myths. It is the most difficult path, and the one with the greatest potential reward."
Kagekaze leaned forwards a bit, conspiratorially and eyes almost twinkling.
"The third path is one of innovation. To see if you can create a new style altogether, with strength to match its parent. To see if you can adapt the principles for men of flesh."
David was liking this idea, even as Kagekage finished speaking.
"Perhaps not a Tank-Fist, but something similar. Something that men can use to fight steel."
David grinned, and his choice was made. Kagekaze's eyes glinted in delight.
"How wonderful. I look forward to learning alongside you."
—
Later, after Kagekaze had sparred with each of them and identified their strongest shortcomings, they were seated around a table for 'mental training'. David wasn't sure what kind of mental training involved cups and dice though. Gambling usually dulled the mind in his experience. He thought back to the kids in his highschool, the ones that would always try to win his BDs in a game. Fuck no, he was selling these, buy them or not.
He blinked. Man it had been a long fucking time since he had thought of Arasaka academy. He didn't even remember any of his classmates besides Katsuo. That reminded him, he needed to visit the dude again while he was in the tower, they hadn't talked in a couple days.
"...so uhh, what's this mental training going to be like?" Becca asked from where she was almost slumped over. He looked again and noticed that his mother, Lucy and Becca were all really tired. Was their stamina that bad? It was just an hour or two of sparring. He made a note to start going to morning runs with Lucy again, and maybe ask her if the others can come along. He liked running.
"We are going to be playing a few games of Liar's Dice."
David had never heard of that one. Also wait, they were in fact playing a game here?
Seeing their confusion, Kagekaze continued.
"The game is simple. We each roll the dice in our cup and then look at the result, but do not reveal it to the table. Then we shall take turns guessing how many of a particular type of result is on the table. Each subsequent guess can only increase in overall value, more of a type of result, or the same number of a higher value result. "
"This continues until one person calls the bluff of another and all reveal their cups. If the person was lying then they are out, if they were telling the truth or their guess was less than the actual total then the accuser is out. This game teaches several useful skills, such as the ability to estimate probabilities, the ability to bluff and detect bluffs, and more. It serves as a way for me to quickly estimate your abilities on these skills as well."
"We will play a game to practice the rules first, and then continue. Any questions?"
Seeing that there were none, he demonstrated the proper way to roll the dice and gently slam them against the table. They followed, and David looked under his cup.
Two threes, one four, two fives.
He wasn't sure how good that was. He looked up and saw the skeleton patiently waiting for them to finish checking. Once they were done, Kagekaze spoke in the same tone that he always had.
"Two ones." he announced. He wouldn't lie on the first turn, that wouldn't help him any… Wait, no it would, wouldn't it? It gave him room to move up later. But if he was telling the truth, then that would mean losing on the first turn…
David refused to be that stupid. This was another test. Kagekage was probably telling the truth here, which meant that there were at least two ones on the table. It was his turn, there were at least two threes on the table, and he was willing to bet that there was another somewhere else. If he wanted to win, he had to force a lie from the rest of the table.
"Three threes." he announced, as confident as he could be. He was never good with lying, but he was pretty sure that this was the truth.
Then it was Lucy's turn and she locked eyes with him. A small competitive smile on her face.
"Three fours." Oh so that's how it was going to be, huh? He felt the spark of competition glow. He wasn't going down that easily. She had bid the minimum she could here, increasing the value but not the number. She was going to drag this out as long as possible.
Heh, she can try, he can keep this up all night.
"Eight fours." The guess dragged him from his staring contest, and he shook himself a bit. He looked over to Becca, who looked incredibly confident in her bold declaration. Eight? He glanced down at the table. Five dice per person, four people, six sides per dice.
…The chance of eight dice being the same was… decently likely. He looked at her face, still as confident as ever. He was never good at telling what Becca was thinking, and he was quickly realizing that he wasn't good at telling if she was lying or not either.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, even as she smugly sat on her chair. Her chair that she had a jacket rolled up in to boost her height.
"Eight fives." His mother spoke out, hesitantly, something that Becca immediately pounced on.
"What?! That's bull! Show 'em sister!"
A bluff was called, and everyone revealed their dice. His mother had three fives, Lucy had two, he had two, Becca had one…
He stopped when he got to Kagekaze's dice.
Five sixes.
He looked up at the skeleton that seemed to grin without a face. The game could have ended in the first turn if he had trusted his instincts.
"I'm sorry Ms. Rebecca, but it seems your call was incorrect. You will be out until we begin a new game. Don't worry, we will play several games tonight."
Rebecca gave an exaggerated huff and pout with her arms crossed. Her good natured glances assured that this was good fun for her.
"Now then, shall we begin the next round?" The skeleton lifted his cup and started shaking it again, ready to roll. They quickly followed, and despite this supposingly being training, it felt much more like a game.
Which it was he supposed. A game that the robotic skeleton ninja was using to estimate their abilities to lie to each other.
David was starting to disregard the absurdity of his life. It wasn't going to help him to dwell on it.
—
Smasher's new techie wanted to meet with him, and David wasn't sure what he was expecting.
When he thinks of the words "Corpo techie" he usually imagines a pretty serious, non-nonsense guy in a suit and glasses talking about the best way to maximize the profits of their bullet sales or something like that. He wasn't expecting… well, this.
A short, flat chested girl in booty shorts who kept gushing at him about chrome and acting standoffish towards the others.
"...and the fact that you were able to handle a full set of limbs on streetwear is really impressive, it's no wonder Smasher-san took an interest in you. I look forward to working with you, Martinez-san!"
"Are your bosses gonna get mad for working with someone other than the big guy?" Becca asked, brow raised and with genuine concern for the bubbly woman talking about cybernetics to him.
The techie's face fell into a flat expression, and she gave a disinterested glance in Becca's direction. "Hm." she eventually replied.
…That wasn't much of a reply. David exchanged a glance with Lucy, who had gotten a similar response earlier, and shrugged. He tried it himself, Ignoring the small glare that Lucy was giving them and the tightened hold on his arm.
"Right, I wouldn't want you getting in trouble for me or anything."
The techie's face immediately brightened up again, and they properly replied to him. "Oh, don't worry about that, I can just file your upgrades under a request by Smasher-san, and they'll be fine with it. " The techie paused, before shyly twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "I'll need him to sign off on it though, if you can ask him to visit again for your upgrades."
He nodded, that sounded about right, although he wondered why they couldn't do that electronically. Maybe it was a security thing? "Yeah I can ask him about it."
"Hehe, thanks Martinez-san. Say, have you ever thought about using Battlegloves? They'll let you fit more cybernetic options without needing to replace your existing arms, and you can swap them out on a per-mission basis."
…He hadn't thought about that at all. That sounded incredibly useful.
"Are they going to strain him?" Lucy asked, vigilant and alert. Oh yeah, cyberpsychosis. He didn't want to go off the deep end again.
The techie's face blanked again. It was kinda odd how they were so distant from people who weren't him. Was she… did she only like people with lots of chrome?
"Hey, what's the big idea? We're just making sure Davey doesn't lose himself again!" Becca finally snapped at the techie, who responded fairly promptly.
"I hate women."
…what? A girl who hated other women, was she jealous or something? Wait, she came from Japan, where the marketing stuff was really popular. Did he have a fangirl or something?!
"You hate other women?" His mother asked, a bit hesitant.
"I'm a guy." The techie curtly responded.
…Did he have a fanboy or something?!