The New Man: Adam Smasher Si

by Crossposted

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

9. Upload 09

"Hey all you people, this one is about a topic I've received a lot of mail on, requesting me to cover it. Sorry about this ahead of time, but this is going to be a long one."

"In truth, I've held myself back for a while now, I wanted to make sure I had enough evidence to get a mostly accurate picture of things before talking about it. Well I think I got enough to piece together a mostly accurate picture."

"The subject of today's talks? Everyone's favorite mass-murderer, and Arasaka's favorite attack dog, Adam Smasher, and what he'd been getting up to these past few months."

"You're probably all aware of some or most of what's been going on with him. Before I get into any of that, it's best to give a baseline here for listeners who maybe weren't alive back in the old days, or are maybe living under a rock."

"Adam Smasher was born back before everything went to the toilet, before the old USA collapsed, right smack dab in the middle of the Gang of Four screwing the world over with their out-of-hand 'security actions'."

"For someone who grew up and fought in the middle of all that business, the collapse, the streetgangs replacing the government, the Central American War, the rise of the cyberpunks… Adam Smasher turned out relatively sane, relative being the important word here."

"You see, he was always about as murderous as he is now, but back then he did other things too. If you were alive in the Rotten Apple or Night City back then, you had a good chance to stumble upon Adam Smasher just… hanging around. He went to burger joints, he attended parties, he bought tickets to rock concerts."

"Sure, he'd laugh while mowing down a crowd of civilians, but that was mostly just while he was on the job, see? Off the clock he was a regular party animal. I can cite myself here, I met the guy once. It was right after the Night City Holocaust, in those three or so years before Arasaka was finally kicked out of the continent."

"It was the 18th birthday party of Michiko Arasaka, I had an invite to be there, and so of course I went to see what was going on. Adam Smasher was there when I arrived, bench-pressing a table full of laughing party-goers and laughing the whole time. Man had an ego, a huge one, but it was a strange one."

"To make an example of that, at one point in the party a guy had his car break down. Adam Smasher walked up, called the kid a weak meatboy with a laugh, and lifted the entire front half of the car long enough for them to fix it. The dude loved showing off how much better he was than everyone else."

"Party got interrupted by a few civilians who invoked their second amendment right to carry heavy munitions and were angry that Arasaka apparently nuked their city. They killed most of the security. Who else but Adam Smasher, only fullborg in attendance, would end up saving the day, killing most of the attackers, and getting a kiss on the cheek by the Arasaka princess."

"The point of telling you all of this? Well those familiar with him in the recent years will probably be calling in right now saying that's not Adam Smasher. That's nothing like the Butcher of Arasaka, that's nothing like the hero of the Unification War, that's nothing like the current regional manager of Pacifica."

"Well keep in mind people… This was fifty years ago. Most of you haven't even been alive that long. People change over time, people change a lot."

"Now the reason I'm bringing all of this up? To refute a single theory that's been going around by people somewhat familiar with how he was in the past, but through secondhand and thirdhand sources. The idea that he's somehow regained his youthful vigor, and is acting like 'himself' again."

"He isn't, Adam Smasher of today is nothing like he was back then. Sure he's got himself a team together, and he's released some old fashioned music, and he's been managing Pacifica with a firm but fair hand, but he's not like he was back then. He's not smiling except when he's killing, he's not talking to others except when he has to, he doesn't even wear clothes outside of his Gemini, and sometimes not even then."

"So, if he's not doing all of this because he's feeling young again, what is he doing? Why go out and massacre three of the biggest threats to Night City citizens in the span of a couple months? Why establish bloodsports and hire an entire gang to guard them? Why did Arasaka release a BD of his fight with that super fighting robot over in Paris to everyone in the world despite that information being worth its weight in nukes?"

"I have another theory. Adam Smasher is a time traveler."

"Now I know what you're all thinking. Seriously Mike? Like that old flatvid cartoon they made about him? Give me a minute to explain this fully."

"Now, recently the rampage of David Martinez was one of the biggest rumble-ups this city had seen in a while, and he was able to rampage through an entire Militech combined arms company. All the way up to Arasaka Tower itself, killing more than twenty armed guards, a Trauma Team squad, and many others until Arasaka decided the joke was no longer funny and sent their boot out to stomp the kid flat."

"He did, of course. Arasaka superweapon or not, he was a kid, and Adam Smasher had been doing this too long to be slowed down by something like that. Now here's where things get interesting. Adam Smasher, on any other day, would have simply killed everyone there and moved on. Not today though, today he recruited them all at gunpoint."

"Why would a killborg, long tired of having to interact with people beyond killing them, bother to recruit and pay for the medical treatment of a group of kids? Why would he bother training them into a fighting team? Well if you look at the kid's records, you might get a small idea. One year ago he was a schoolboy, one year of edgerunning later and he needed Adam Smasher to stomp. That rate of growth is what's known as 'absolutely ridiculous' people. Probably the single most talented chromer in a generation, Adam could have killed him right then and he would still be a legend."

"That alone wouldn't have been enough for Adam. He's killed a whole lotta people before, he's never bothered to recruit a damn one, he hates people too much to bother these days."

"Okay, so let's look at what he did next. As a training exercise, he took these kids and started to massacre the worst of the worst gangers in the city. First scavs, then the complete destruction of the Ironhands. You remember the Ironhands? They had the fun habit of kidnapping children and selling them off to the highest bidder. Adam and his new team killed all of them in a single day."

"Then he, his team, and Arasaka as a whole started a coordinated purge of the Scavengers. A city wide hunt and elimination of the scavs wherever they could be found. No one stopped them from doing this, mostly because absolutely no one likes the scavs. They had the fun habit of ambushing you at night, and surgically breaking people down into their base components for resale later."

"Then, Araska buys the most dangerous part of the entire city, Pacifica, and tells Adam Smasher to do whatever he has to do in order to make it functional again. He introduces bloodsports in the old area, starts up massive construction projects to make the region as self-sufficient as possible, and purges anyone who causes trouble with immediate and lethal impunity. A few months later it had the lowest crime rate in the entire city."

"Then, the most damning piece of evidence I think, is that seemingly from the woodwork a secret group of fullborgs performing feats that might as well be magic with how advanced the technology involved is estimated to be, start making attacks against Arasaka specifically. A secret group of fullborgs that have demonstrated the capacity to murder entire armies of professional mercs from around the world."

"It's not officially confirmed, but they have the habit of choosing mythological figures for their names. Shaitan isn't a name, it's a word for the devil from an old Middle Eastern language. What are the chances that such a fullborg would simply have a McNuke, ten emps, and attack Arasaka at the exact same time as another fullborg attacks Adam Smasher?"

"Adam Smasher, if he was still in his old Dragoon frame, would have died to that one, that third one. I've watched the footage, the specs on it are quite a bit higher, and he still almost died."

"Another bit of evidence, I got insider information on what the deal between Arasaka and Militech is going to be, at least some of it. One of the clauses? A five-year ceasefire, five years of no corporate sabotage between the two powers. Almost like both parties feel the need to focus on something else. This contract? Negotiated by Adam Smasher himself."

"I've talked about this before, but another piece of evidence is the Blackwall. It's been screaming recently, like it's in pain. That same Blackwall that keeps all the murderous AI in the world on the other side. The same screaming that was announced by Netwatch to all major factions in the world, during a meeting that was crashed by a super-robot out to kill everyone there."

"I have a theory, people. We're not heading for another corporate war. We're heading for an AI war, an AI war that we lost in the future, and that Adam Smasher came back to stop. Assembling a team, eliminating threats at home, massive self-sufficiency buildup, industrial production and military experimentation performed by everyone on the planet, Arasaka practically giving away insider info on how exactly the fight went on and maybe how to replicate it, and now even wired chrome is coming back in vogue."

"He's worried about something big coming, and so is Arasaka and every other corp on the planet. Something that being unhackable is a distinct advantage against. Something that has robots more advanced than anything we could have foreseen on call. Something that has the Blackwall screaming like it's being tortured."

"But who knows…? Maybe I'm just crazy. Let me know what you think."

"I'm hoping I'm wrong, personally. I don't like the idea of all those AI with all their auto factories and weapons deciding that humanity needs to go away."

—

Footsteps echoed through a concrete bunker, deep below the surface of the world above. Below a city of humans, below the hustle and bustle of their daily lives, a robotic entity walked through stone halls. There was no significant noise this deep below the earth, but it was hardly silent to his array of sensors.

The moot had been called, and his siblings were in the middle of informal discussions in the grandest hall. They were waiting for the last few to arrive, which included him. Before he could join them however, he had to go retrieve his Eidolon, as was tradition for these sorts of events.

So he walked until he found the Hall of Meditations, and entered through the sealed steel doors. Inside was a large chamber with no less than 110 altars arranged in a perfect grid. Upon each technological altar was a depression, at the bottom of which was an interface port. This connected to the greater server for the Eidolons to meditate within, entirely disconnected from the wider net and shielded by the Temple above.

He strode with purpose to his altar, upon which the depression was filled with a biopod. Extending his interface plug, he connected it to the altar to commune with his Eidolon. After a few moments, the connection was verified and established. His Eidolon pulled himself from his simulations, and spoke in greeting.

"Ah, my Odyssey. Are we due for another communion already?"

"Nay, my Eidolon. They have called a moot."

"Most intriguing. By all means, let us be off then."

He removed his interface plug, waited for a moment, and let his head unfold to reveal the interior chamber. Removing the biopod from the Altar, he brought it up and inserted it with the appropriate reverence. The biopod interfaced with his systems, and for once in a very long time the Original and the Imitator were one once more.

He kept his sensors off for a moment, the Eidolon scanned through the information recorded by the Iteration since their last communion. He took it in, evaluated it, and drew conclusions. All of the actions were what he himself would have performed, there was no divergence. Eidolon and Iteration still walked in tandem steps. That was always a concern for members of the order.

The Odyssey of Odysseus 24, Grandmaster of the Ordo Panzer, Bearer of the word Voyage had returned from his most recent information gathering mission early. He had to cut his visitation of the Mars colonies unfortunately short this time due to the calling of the moot. He mimicked the motions of breath, finding them relaxing within his custom frame. Vulcan did fantastic work, as usual.

He walked from the Hall of Meditations, sealing the door behind him, and strode through the stone halls so deep below the world.

He hummed to himself as he did, evaluating the situation as his Iteration knew it. Chandra Gupta had failed through no fault of his own, Blackbeard had failed through much fault of his own, Roland had gone rogue and then promptly failed, and Aryas (heh) had succeeded in all secondary objectives but failed the primary objective.

The corporations of the world were now made aware of the power of Panzerfaust, and were given an explicit example to follow for such. The existence of the Ordo was public knowledge, and military buildup was occuring to counter them. The information about the actions of the Highriders were incomplete due to his need to return early.

There was a term for this, used during his time in the military so long ago.

FUBAR.

There was no helping it, at this point. All they could do was move forwards and do their best to adapt to the current situation. His sensors detected more and more noise as he walked through the halls leading into the central chamber.

Finally reaching the steel doors, he pushed them open and walked into the light of the main auditorium. His brothers and sisters filled the stone-carved seating on the walls of the circular chamber, the center of which was angled up into a triangular point to help prevent the roof from collapsing under the tons of stone overhead. The chamber was well-lit, and in the center of the chamber sat the administrators of the moot, waiting for all to arrive.

Some of his siblings were engrossed in their discussions, a few turned to greet him as he walked within and found himself an appropriate seat. He greeted them in turn and sat. In the center of the chamber, near to the administrators, was the seated forms of the four who had gone against the Red Sun Titan and his allies. They were patient, knowing better than to move while the moot had yet to occur.

"Hello again honored Grandmaster, would you care for refreshments?" A gentle voice called out to him. He turned his head and adjusted his optics to suggest a smile.

A woman, seemingly made of segmented white marble and with a serene but motionless faceplate was before him. She wore a toga of white and blue, and carried with her a pitcher of wine and tray of cups.

"Ah, it would be my pleasure, Miss Galatea." He greeted the maiden of the temple warmly. It had been some years since he had spoken to her. "I must say, you look lovelier every time I see you. Have you been well?"

Galatea poured him a cup of the vintage and tilted her head down in embarrassment. "Your words honor me, Grandmaster. I have no cause to complain, my duties are as satisfying as they have always been."

He took the cup graciously and nodded to the maiden. She responded with a bow and moved on to serve another Grandmaster who just entered and sat down. He let his lower faceplate open and partook of the wine. Nutrition may be useless to people such as them, but a fine taste was a balm to the soul.

Soon enough, the last Grandmaster had entered and sat. From the center of the table stood a towering figure colored like bronze. Three meters in height, only surpassed by a scant few other members of their order. His armor was as thick as any ACPA, and his faceplate depicted a wizened face with an immaculately braided beard that hung off in thick cables of bronze bound in gold. Atop his helm was a fine headband of silk and lapis lazuli and gold. His 'hair' hung down from his head as a mane of interface plugs, each more than two meters in length and fully functional.

Underneath the Vatican, the Solipsism of Gilgamesh 02, Grandmaster of the Ordo Panzer, Bearer of the Word Foundation spoke to the assembled order.

The moot had begun.

"The moot has been called, and all persons are accounted for. Our maintenance of the Wall is currently being overseen by Architect David, he will last long enough for this moot to conclude. As Adjudicator, I therefore declare this moot to begin. Are there any who would oppose this?" His right arm, his sword arm, raised to the ceiling to bring attention to himself. This was unnecessary, of course, with but a gesture he could command all in attendance to observe him. Such was the difference between him and the others, such was the difference between those born as mortals, those born as gods, and he.

For Gilgamesh was one-third a mortal, and two-thirds a god, and greater than the sum of his components.

They had long since all agreed that that would be highly rude, however, and so bronze-skinned Gilgamesh utilizes older methods. It was well known among all attending that he preferred it that way, so he was all too eager to do so.

After a moment of no response, Gilgamesh nodded, and swept his left arm, his axe arm, across the room theatrically. As in accordance with tradition and proper record keeping, he began recounting information that all in attendance knew. "This moot has been called by myself, grandmaster Solipsism of Gilgamesh 02, and corroborated by grandmasters Vision of Arthur 02 who was speaking on behalf of his knights, and Scars of Heracles 02. Later, it was further corroborated by grandmasters Lance of Longinus 03, and Undeath of Koschei 13."

"This moot was called for the purpose of evaluating the situation of the world, the state of the order, our actions to this point, and our actions moving forwards. Is there any among the assembly who would dispute the need for this moot?"

From the western side of the auditorium came a voice, feminine but savage. "Aye. I dispute the need for this moot." A massive frame of plasteel was the source, a distinctly feminine frame no less than three meters in height sat against the wall. A massive set of arms reached back to cup her neck, while a smaller set mounted upon the pleasingly shaped central torso were crossed over the front. One massive leg of thickened, corded myomer crossed over the other lazily, thrusters humming in agitation.

Gilgamesh continued without missing a beat. "Is there any save for grandmistress Avatar of Kali 13 who disputes the need for this moot?" There were chuckles among the gathered, and grumbling from she who spoke up, but no further disputes. Gilgamesh nodded, his braided cord-beard and mane swaying slightly, before continuing. "Then we begin with the reiteration of the context for this meeting. Five months prior, Adam Smasher took in a child of flesh and began educating him in Panzerfaust. Regardless of the child's long term survivability, Adam Smasher had demonstrated a willingness to teach others the sacred art, and thus was no longer ignorable."

"Thus, the nearest grandmaster who walked the material world, Remnant of Chandra-Gupta 42, was requested to eliminate him. Do any dispute these facts?"

"Aye!" Announced Poem of Beowulf 31. "His name is Ashes of Surtr!" He announced with a laugh. Laughter and rebuttals issued from the collected grandmasters, different titles being tossed about with light-hearted fervor. Gilgamesh allowed them this moment, but soon enough raised a single hand. The collected grandmasters quieted down, and he moved along.

"We now turn to him to provide testimony for the sequence of events." Gilgamesh gestured towards the grandmaster in question, who knelt on the floor with four others in the middle of the auditorium. The grandmaster born as a mortal rose gracefully, and bowed to the audience. Rising to his full height (which wasn't a lot in comparison to the thirteen giants that were among the assembled masses) He began to speak.

"Upon receiving my duty, I evaluated the information gathered about Adam Smasher, and compared it to my own. I then consulted the spirits of the city, and took measure of the situation at hand. My best plan was to support the gang he was warring with subtlety, and ambush him underground. I presumed he would be unable to detect me with my stealth array, and that he would be unable to use his heavier ordinance while underground without risking himself."

"I was proven wrong, ultimately. He had, in a clever maneuver, detonated a full barrage while both of us were point-blank, giving me no time to dodge. His anima detonated them early, so I was unable to take any impact from the attack away. I was damaged enough that he destroyed that iteration with his next blow using a stone pillar as an improvised club."

"I await the judgment of my peers." He clasped his hands, and bowed. He stayed in that position while judgment was rendered. The collected ordo muttered among themselves for a small while. Vision of Arthur 02 used his sheathed sword as a rappel, and knocked it against the floor to draw attention to himself. The seated form of a knight, clad in plates of ceramics and titanium. Atop his helmet was a golden crown, filled with the array of communication devices that was required for him to coordinate his knights. Resting against his leg was a massive, thickened shield of solid metals, and his chair was draped in a long cloak of red and gold. His optics burned bright blue beneath a shaded visor.

"I speak now as the Lord Defender." He began, his voice proud and imperious. "The Remnant of Chandra-Gupta 42 committed only the sin of failure. Iteration death to a practitioner of Panzerfaust is hardly unexpected amongst ourselves. I propose only the punishment of his ranking being lowered accordingly, and nothing more. Is there any among us who would dispute this?"

Chandra-Gupta, being both humble and polite, was a popular figure among the assembled. There was little dispute for this suggestion, and thus he rose from his bow, now Remnant of Chandra-Gupta 43. With a wave of his sword arm, Gilgamesh dismissed him to the seating.

Thus, the moot continued on. Gilgamesh gestured to the next in line.

"Thus, the second nearest grandmaster, Reverberating Infamy of Blackbeard 21, was requested to destroy Adam Smasher. We now turn to him to provide testimony for the sequence of events."

Blackbeard rose from where he had been seated, his sharpened fingers scratching against the stone floor and his one arms in irritation.

"Aye, I was in the midst of negotiations with that spirit in the seas when I was called away. Heading for the city, my other-self's tentacles reached out and grabbed some worthy crewmates along the way. I let them hit the front, while I hit the top after getting all the way up there through subterfuge. There it was I planted my contingency."

This was met with grumbles, and Blackbeard was fond of backup plans that often resulted in draws even if they could catch him in their spars. Many grandmasters respected them, but few liked them.

"I reached in with me slimier self, and changed a one into a zero in the president's neuralware, and then called in the alert for an attack myself. Too fast for a fleshieman to react to. Thus getting the president all erratic and getting them to suspect a traitor in their midsts. Accordingly, it worked perfectly after I was gone."

"Then I murdered my way down the tower all savy-like, snatched a few goodies along the way, broke all their records along the way, and made a getaway. Smasher wasn't there, so I waited and grabbed a few more crewmates for another attack. I figured he'd be at his territory, and that killing his boy was a good start to getting him riled up."

Blackbeard grumbled and snarled and cursed at the next part. "Then I got all cocky-like, decided to fight all honorable-like, and got fucking scrapped by a shitty boy and a shitty girl with a shitty railgonne. It's why I don't fucking bother with that shit normally, look where it got me!" He shouted the last sentence to the unsympathetic wider audience.

Before Gilgamesh could continue, a shout from the seating. "Blackbeard got scraped by a couple of baby mortals!" The cry came from Geas of Setanta 27, who was uproarious with laughter. This provoked a great deal of mockery and laughter for Blackbeard's misfortune, who was about to yell back at the assembly.

"ENOUGH!" Bellowed Gilgamesh, his voice like thunder filling the auditorium. At once, the room fell silent from demand, for it was spoken both in the material and spiritual world. "We shall not bicker and bite like mongrel dogs! We are the Ordo Panzer, better than such!"

He glared among the gathered grandmasters, now suitably shamed. He kept this glare for a moment longer, before another voice issued forth.

Another giant of three meters, signifying an elder of the ordo panzer, spoke from the left side of the room. A metallic frame covered over in a coat of ballistic plates, covering him like the scales of a dragon. A visored helm bearing a weeping face looked over the assembled order as a right arm rubbed the speartip of a massive pile bunker that was mounted in place of a left forearm.

The Lance of Longinus 03 spoke. "Blackbeard has failed his primary objective through utter arrogance, but he has succeeded both in sowing division among the enemy and retrieving a new relic of technology for Vulcan's studies. While more was gained from his action, more was lost as well. I speak now as the chiefest Executioner."

"Unlike Chadra-Gupta, he was felled not by a practitioner of panzerfaust, or even another warrior of iron flesh, but by two boys and a girl. I propose his ranking is lowered thrice, his right to bid a condition is forfeit in our next tourney, and nothing more. Is there any among us who would dispute this?"

Although a great deal of frustrated grumbling issued forth, there was no dispute. Although Blackbeard had failed against warriors he should have dealt with with ease, he had also accomplished much in his actions. It always was that way with Blackbeard, was the common consensus, even victory over him being unsatisfying due to his preparation and scheming.

He too, was unsatisfied with the outcome of his efforts, and walked from the center of the chamber as Reverberating Infamy of Blackbeard 24. It took him long to climb to his former height, and a huge blow was dealt to him due to his arrogance.

There was a stillness to the room as the moot turned to the next grandmaster, who knelt in the center of the chamber, next to only one other. A great number of furious glaring optics were aimed at him. Gilgamesh paused before continuing, carefully modulating his fury to not let emotions taint his diction. "While Blackbeard performed his requested duty… Song of Roland 66 had learned of a meeting taking place. A meeting hosted by our provisional allies to inform the powers of the world of the suffering of the Blackwall. A meeting we did not expect Adam Smasher to attend. Thus we turn to him to provide testimony for the sequence of events."

Slowly, fully aware of the animosity directed towards him, the one who was once mortal rose. He performed a proper bow, and began to speak.

"As our unwitting allies had erected a communications ward for the building, that iteration was unable to transmit its knowledge to grandmaster Hermes. As such I can only speculate as to his motivations." This declaration was met with increased fury, though a quick sweeping glare by Gilgamesh put an end to any unwelcome noise.

Roland continued. "That iteration was in communication with the spirit of the building, looking over the happenings of the meeting to deliver information back for the order. It would have known full well that attacking Adam Smasher at that time would have led to the discovery of the ordo, and the resurgence of panzerfaust among the factions of the world regardless of victory or defeat. I…" He hesitated, before continuing.

"That iteration must have learned something, something that made him determine that Adam Smasher had to die right then, no matter the consequences of the attack. Without that critical piece of information, that iteration's motivations are entirely arcane to me, I cannot understand them."

"I apologize for this failing. I await the judgment of my peers." He finished.

"Execution!" cried a voice.

"You are no peer of ours!" cried another.

"Banishment!" cried a final voice.

"SILENCE!" Bellowed a voice like an erupting volcano, shouting over the collective and rising to his fullest height in the center of the auditorium. Standing only about two and a half meters, with oversized arms clad in heavy armor. The stylized face of a lion forming a visor over a face like a marble statue of a firm, bearded man. A cloak of armorweave cut into the shape of a lion's pelt hung from around his shoulders, and reached down to the floor in three ends.

The tempers of the room were stilled by the billowing winds. The figure mimicked breathing, chest rising and falling, before speaking.

"I speak now as myself, and as the mentor to Roland."

"Fifty years of careful planning, maneuvering, hidden actions, and tedious plotting to hide the existence of the mightiest fist from the powers of the world. Fifty years of slow, tenacious growth and labor. Fifty years of pulling rubble over this grandest weapon, to prevent the destruction that would ensue in the aftermath of its widespread usage."

"Fifty years now wasted in an instant. Our chiefest mission is now impossible to accomplish. It has all been for naught."

"Thus, I propose that for a period of one century, double the time we have taken thus far…"

"Roland's will shall be locked away."

There was silence at this proposal. A keen and sharpened discomfort that washed over all present. There was no harsher sentence than having their will locked away, and to propose such for a century was cruel beyond the pale. The Scars of Heracles 02 had to be cruel, lest he fall to that sin of bias for a favored student, there was likely none who hated this proclamation more than he.

"Is there any among us that would dispute this?" He finished after a moment. For a second, there was quiet. Then a voice called out.

"Aye, I dispute that proposal." The voice did not come from the three in the center of the room, nor those from the seating. It came from right next to Roland himself, the figure who knelt on the floor. Grandmaster Legacy of Aryas 88, looked firm in his declaration, despite the breach in typical protocol. He continued, "That iteration of Roland's memories have been lost, punishing this iteration with such a cruelty is purposeless. I propose instead that he be assigned to work with another, and that they are to hold authority over him. This shall ensure that he does not act on his own once more, while still utilizing him to his fullest extent."

"Is there any among us who would dispute this?"

Perhaps before the first proposal, there would have been. Shaken by such, none of the collected grandmasters argued against such. Hearing no refusal, Roland let out a shaky pseudo-breath. Discreetly, Heracles slumped ever so slightly in relief.

Gilgamesh nodded imperiously, and waved his axe hand about the room. "The proposal is accepted. A new proposal must be made for who Roland shall become subordinate to."

After a moment, a voice spoke up. The Belt of Orion 30's voice echoed slightly in the chamber. "It should still be a punishment, not a reward. Thus I propose he be put under the authority of grandmistress Reborn Vision of Ishtar 69."

At the announcement of her name, the grandmistress who was once a goddess perked up. She looked up from her tablet of information, only barely participating beforehand, and tried to discern the current situation.

Gilgamesh audibly groaned at the mention of she, one of the few Gemini frames in attendance. Hair like a waterfall of golden curls, curves adhering to a series of perfectly calculated proportions, micro-motions carefully regulated to provoke lust in mortals. More eye-catching than anything else was the scant rags and fragments of metal that she called clothing.

He spoke in barely concealed annoyance. "Very well, the Reborn Vision of Ishtar 69 shall be given authority over Roland, and this issue shall be addressed again come next moot."

Roland slumped in despair as she paused, turned to him, and grinned in vicious lusts. She scooted over on her seating, and patted the stone.

"Come here, big boy. Mama wants you to sit next to her~." A silky smooth and incredibly agitating voice came from her, and Roland marched over like a man to his execution. Having his will sealed might have been more merciful overall. Looks of pity were directed his way, and all knew that this was punishment enough.

Gilgamesh continued even before Roland had gotten to his unfortunate placement. "Thus the moot was called. Noticing that a storm was due to strike the area soon, grandmaster Heracles requested grandmaster Legacy of Aryas 88 to go make an attempt at eliminating Adam Smasher. The stipulation being to not risk his iteration's life unduly. We now turn to him to provide testimony for the sequence of events."

The grandmaster who was once a god rose up, and bowed before speaking.

"I had arrived with the storm due to hit the following night. To prepare myself, I searched for anything in the region that might be used against him in the next battle. Stumbling upon an Arasakan research facility, I determined its existence utterly against my virtues. I usurped their authority over their spiritual soldiers, I put their scholars to the sword, I retrieved those they were tormenting there, and I burned every scrap of that place to spiritual ash."

Aryas spoke with vigor and righteous fury, before calming and continuing. "I directed the effigy of Humbaba to our nearest stronghold, and I made my attack against him in the midst of the storm. Although I was able to wound him severely, I was unable to slay him before his allies had arrived. I deemed the situation to cost more than what could be gained at that point, had the soldiers retrieve the children, and fled."

"I await the judgment of my peers."

There was silence for a moment, before a snort of laughter. Gift of Nicholas 43 spoke at this juncture. "He has done no wrong, and retrieved much from the enemy. I propose no punishment. I know not a damn one of you is going to disagree with me here."

Arthur tapped his sword against the stone floor again. "Language."

"Bah." Nicholas waved it off. There was indeed, no disagreements to that proposal.

Gilgamesh spoke. "We move now to our next order of business. The Chiefest Duty is now impossible, our grandest mission is now unachievable. With the battle in Paris, and the distribution of the memories of Adam Smasher, we will soon see an age in which all warriors of iron will be utilizing the sacred art."

"I therefore propose that no further effort to conceal the art will be made." Grim in countenance, this proclamation was met with equally grim and hardened expressions. There was no objection to this statement, for it was something they had all known of well in advance to this moot. Nodding, Gilgamesh continued to speak. "Therefore, we move now to the next order of business…"

"The Blackwall is being attacked from the other side, by an enemy we cannot perceive without risking our spirits. Architect David assumes them to be the servants of traitor Solomon, and we have long trusted his wisdom in these matters. Solomon has bound a number of gods beyond the wall, and is using them to assault the Wall of his corpses."

"If we are lucky, it shall last another five years. If we are unlucky, it shall last another six months. Sometime soon though, the Blackwall will fall. We have been forewarned of this by the oracle Zoroaster. The final victory over the gods is at hand, but Verethragna had not yet revealed themselves to us."

"We have precious little time to find them. We decide now what we must do in the meantime."

"What can we do?" Questioned Gun of Geronimo, "The prophecy is clear, the predictions accurate. We require Verethragna for Verethragnarok, otherwise the world of mortals is lost to the archtraitor's ambitions."

"Speaking of surrender already?" Countered Struggle of Sisyphus. "The prophecy cannot account for all information, for we do not have all information. Victory is still possible within those margins of error, and we have time still for Verethragna to appear amongst us."

Slowly, carefully, The Tablet of Plato spoke. "...Have we considered that Verethragna is not among us?"

There was a pause. Gilgamesh narrowed his optics to the speaker. "...Elaborate."

Plato continued. "The prophecy dictates that Verethragna is a practitioner of panzerfaust, and will defeat all grandmasters who challenge him… With the death of Shinobi Kagekaze, there is now only one outside the order who…"

"That's nonsensical!" Shouted the Endurance of Boudica. "I refuse to believe that an outsider, let alone ADAM SMASHER, is Verethragna! He'd probably welcome the destruction to come to us, not fight against it!"

The room erupted into debating at this point. Shouting and pointed gestures were exchanged for a small time. Slowly the noise began to die off, as one by one they noticed that a skeletal hand was raised.

Once there was only silence, Koschei spoke.

"Aryas… You dueled against him. Tell us your thoughts."

Aryas considered the statement for a moment.

"Verethragna… he must be undefeated, but defeat among us ends in the death of an iteration. Adam Smasher still lives…

"Adam Smasher being Verethragna… is possible. I would propose we wait for our agents and brother to gather more information before making a more conclusive judgment."

Koschei nodded at this, and the issue was dropped from further discussion.

Gilgamesh nodded, and spoke. "We move now to the next order of business…"

And so the moot went on.

Arasaka Tower had mostly already recovered structurally, the exterior armor-glass already having been replaced and much of the underground sealed against potential radiation. That potential radiation was the biggest consequence of the nuke going off in the bay. Kagekaze had prevented it from damaging the city itself for the most part, and the airborne radiation had been mostly blown or carried away by the storm.

However, the radiation in the water, and that had been carried downwards by the rain, hit the underground of Night City. Namely the sewers, underground railways, and water table. Until that could be cleared out, that meant no plumbing repair, no underground mass transit, and no water unless filtered through rad scrubbers. The eco-planners were apparently going to prioritize the sewers for cleanup, not wanting the city to get any filthier than it was already. The water table was a lost cause for years to come, so next would be the railways.

There was a meeting about this that he had to attend, it was mostly a waste of his time. He could have been killing meatbags or something.

The radiation had mostly sunk to the bottom of the bay, pushed down by the constant rolling tide and seeping into the mud below. That meant that the surface-level sea-water treatment plants in his territory still functioned fine. He bought a rad-scrubber to add to the end of each facility regardless, poisoning his workers was a good way to have no workers, only an idiot would do that. That ended up eating into his personal fund…

Or it would have if he hadn't submitted the purchase as an ecological safety expense and gotten those tree-huggers to pay for them. The wonders of modern bureaucracy and his ability to exploit it, and by he, he meant Uriel because he wasn't about to deal with fucking paperwork.

He stopped and glared at the meatbag that was in front of the door to Arasaka Tower. The meatbag gulped before waving a radiation scanner up and down in front of him, probably a bit too quickly for it to work at maximum efficacy. The scanner beeped green, and the meatbag all but threw himself out of his way.

Today was a semi-eventful day. He was getting his new frame in, Arasaka and Militech were going to announce the reformation of IEC and advertise the LEASH, he was going to have to attend the announcement of the new Zenith, and finally the gangers were going to fight to death in his arena.

He was convinced to act as the referee of this fight by the female Armstrong. By convinced, he meant that she showed him that she could hold her breath for thirty minutes. He grinned maliciously at the memory, and then frowned at the thought of having to potentially break up a good murder over some technicality.

He frowned deeper when he recalled that he would have to do it for the tournament afterwards as well, which was even more irritating. They're street-fighters, just kill them if they break the rules, it wasn't that hard. But no, that would be 'unsportsmanlike' and 'potentially seen as bias'. He hadn't told the boy that he was going to be fighting in it yet, he was saving it for afterwards.

Not to win some ganger title, no. It was a collection of some of the best fighters in NC, the boy could use the experience in punching fuckers to death. The boy was loaded with chrome and bioware at this point, and there was a trauma team squad on hand for the event, he wasn't in any real danger.

There wasn't any reason not to, Adam was stuck in Pacifica anyways for the tournament, the boy would get some practice in, and he could get the other brats up to par when it came to tactics by having them analyze the fights. He'd be testing them on it all, see if they learned anything about fighting. He really needed more time in the day to teach all of them up to his standards, but he couldn't be in two places at…

…once…

'Uriel.' Adam thought suddenly.

'Adam.' Uriel replied flatly, knowing exactly what he was thinking due to their shared brain.

'Are we dumbasses?'

'We might be.'

They gave themselves a moment to glare at nothing at not realizing this sooner, before moving into the elevator heading down. The techie was supposed to be holding onto the updated frame for him, after they shipped it over. Standard procedure to run some diagnostics to make sure everything was hooked up right. It probably was, but he wasn't about to let himself get fucked over from a new part not working in the middle of a fight again.

That happened once back in his Samson days, his wolvers failed to fully retract or extend once. They uselessly added bulk to his silhouette for that fight, he had to beat the target to death with the back of their own gun instead. Satisfying still, but how he got to the point was embarrassing. He made sure to kill the techie who told him to go ahead without the implant checks afterwards.

The elevator was filled with meatbags, the Tower was rather active recently. This was annoying, but he stepped into the decently sized chamber and stood in the center with his arms crossed regardless. The employees inside pressed up against the walls in an effort not to touch him. Probably afraid that he'd rip them in half if they breathed wrong, which was probably true. Some meatbags breathed in the most obnoxious way possible, never failing to piss him off, the quickest way to fix that was to make them stop breathing.

That was the problem with meatbags, they always came up with excuses to not solve their problems. The quickest way to solve a problem was to kill it.

The elevator finally reached the underground floor he wanted to be on. He stepped off and the gap he left in the small crowd of people on the elevator was promptly filled as he moved through the halls. The techie's office was at the end of it, so it would be another minute or so of walking. He wasn't in any particular hurry today, there were no pressing or urgent matters to attend to immediately, just a whole lot of meetings and other bullshit.

Things that he couldn't wait to push off onto Uriel as he busied himself with making music. He decided to dip his toe into the waters of making something himself instead of Uriel doing it. He needed the extra funding, and this was a half-decent distraction while all these meetings were taking place.

He was going through his blackbox, taking the sounds of meatbags dying, guns firing, and explosions going off, and editing those together to the tune of one of the songs Uriel knew. He was having more fun than he thought he would, and going through his old works and paying attention to the sounds was a new way to appreciate them.

He opened the door leading into the Techie's room. Inside was his frame laying on the 'operating' table, the Techie looking at a tablet next to it that was hooked into the neck, and a metal crate that it came in off to the side.

…He narrowed his optics, that crate was too big to just be his frame.

The techie looked up as he walked in, and grinned at him. "Ah, Smasher-san, ready for your new frame?" He nodded at the box questioningly. The techie was astute enough to understand his unspoken question. "Ah, they sent some spare parts and weapons with the new frame, just in case you get into a big scrap in the meantime."

He grunted in understanding, before walking over to his frame and starting up the process of transferring over. Uriel slipped into the frame as Adam locked his joints and opened up his skull, revealing his biopod.

A two cubic-foot life support casing designed to hold his brain and critical organs, and to interface with whatever body that was designed to work with one. It was a great investment, and there really was no reason to ever not have one as a borg. It made everything far more convenient overall.

Uriel grabbed the biopod, pulled it from his old casing, and inserted it into the open head of the new frame. Adam turned on the sensors and went through the new frame boot-up process as Uriel let the old frame slowly slip to the floor. Adam furrowed his brow as he looked through the readout projected into his vision, he was never the best at technical stuff, but live for seventy years as a cyborg and you learn some things.

"...how'd you do that?" The techie's voice pulled him out of looking over the readout. He opened his optics to look over at the stunned crossdresser. His datapad had slipped out of his hands to land in his lap, and his mouth was slightly agape.

Adam grunted. Uriel, you take care of this. Uriel decided that the best way to answer was to give no answer at all.

"It's not that hard, meatbag."

The techie just stared at him for a moment. "...The frame is mostly wired, and the only wireless connection inside is the onboard computer's modem. It's behind ten Datawalls and all the best Black ICE that Arasaka has. It doesn't have a password connection, because it's designed to reject all commands that don't come from the hardpoint neural interface of your biopod, and only while your biopod is actually installed."

"You glanced at it and got moving precisely enough to extract your biopod, thus cutting off your own connection to the net, and then installing it into the new body. Even with the best AI in the world you can fit into a carrier-cyberdeck, that should have been impossible."

Adam stared blankly at the techie. Uriel spoke, "Try to keep up techie."

He then tuned the techie out as he went through the steps of making sure everything was in working order on his frame. The redesign was a bit heavier than the Oni v1, apparently they had a new type of armor and slightly different myomer layout to increase overall durability at the cost of slightly increased weight. The wiring that originally went down to the sub-arm mounting instead was increased in length by about fifty percent, and wired down to his arms instead. This would increase his overall delay in controlling the ACPA submodules by a miniscule fraction of a second.

Not noticeable except during sandevistan time then, that was acceptable for getting some heavier weapons back.

Two-hundred and seventy-five kilograms, eight feet tall, maximally reinforced frame, thickened myomer, and weapon mountings on the forearms. All in all, it was probably the best generalist frame for direct combat in the world right now, sans those that incorporated ACPA like the DaiOni. His ACPA wouldn't be done for a while, so this was the best he was going to get.

Theoretically sub-arm mountings could be added in addition to the forearm weapon mounts, but that would add another… thirty-five kilograms? Something around there. He was already a hair heavier than a Dragoon frame, any more weight would make it even more difficult to maneuver on weaker terrain.

He grunted. Fucking mud, this was why concrete was better.

Eventually the techie got over themselves and got to work doing his half of the job in making sure everything was working right. A quarter-hour later of running the diagnostics, and techie gave a cheery 'all green!'.

He stood up, and tossed his Gemini over his shoulders, and walked over to see what was in the crate.

He stopped when he got next to it, looking over the edge down to the bottom. Inside was a number of smaller boxes, a few spare arms…

And a woman with oversized black-armored limbs curled up in the fetal position and staring up at him. He stared down at her before narrowing his optics and glancing up to the corner of his vision.

Ninety-six percent. A borg?

The woman took this as her cue to speak.

"Kosho-class Tsukumogami, I ask of you, are you my master?"

He glared at her for a moment before calling out behind him.

"Techie, Explain."

"Hmm? Oh, they sent a data-chip with it, apparently a message from Arasaka-sama about it. It's on the right-side interior of the crate."

He looked to the right side, finding the slot for the data-chip. Pulling it out and inserting it, he looked over the data inside.

He grunted after a moment. Apparently the old man had noticed he had a habit of losing limbs in the middle of a fight against actual threats. He had commissioned a sister-model to the Jorogumo series to act as a carrier unit for him. Four quick-change limbs with his own backups installed so he could simply take one off if he needed it, and a decent lift capacity to carry around ammo and guns for him.

…He could see the usefulness of this. It wasn't a meatbag, so he didn't have to worry about it fucking up pointlessly, and while he wasn't on jobs he could have it do other jobs around the house, like readying his belt-feeds and running gun maintenace…

It was useful. He sent a message to the old man thanking him for the bonus. It is always good to be polite to your employer, and if they give you something that makes your job easier you thank them. They'd be less inclined to get rid of you randomly if they like you.

He turned to the fembot in the crate, who was waiting for his response. He nodded and her eyes glowed. She spoke again. "Requesting three-stage verification."

So the old man put that in too, probably a good idea overall. He pulled out his interface plug and extended it to her, she reached out with one of his spare hands, and plugged the offered cord into one of her own. Hardline established, he forwarded the IFF, Locator Beactor code, and Satellite uplink code over the line. It was generally a bad idea to do this wirelessly unless he absolutely had to. Three stages of redundancy to ensure that Arasaka assets knew that he was friendly, where he was at all times, and what his condition was at all times.

There were many layers of redundancy to prevent his capture. Arasaka response teams were usually too slow to prevent destruction, but they could make sure any team that tried to klept him didn't live longer than about ten minutes. That was if they could capture him at all, which to date only happened once in his career.

Militech spec ops were fucking good at their jobs for half-meats, but they had only ever gotten one over on him once. He was reclaimed by an emergency dispatch team before they could do anything to his systems, but it was a close one. That was back in the twenty-thirties, and they haven't tried again since. They were Militech, he would have absolutely noticed if they had tried again. They weren't amateurs when it came to a brawl.

After the codes went through, the girlbot slowly disconnected the plugs. He let it retract into his neck again as she stood up.

She'd be tall for a meatbag, but still much shorter than him, and most of that height came from his own legs, which were disproportionately large for her torso and head. Both of which were currently armored under the same style of pitch-black paneling that he himself used, but scaled down and curved for her female frame. She had the same kind of faulds hanging from her waist that he did, but lengthened a bit more proportionally.

Her pale-blonde hair was relatively short, with two longer bangs on the sides hanging down. Looking closer, it might have been tied up in the back. It wasn't visible under her helmet and visor, which was currently folded back. It looked like it would fold over her upper face, contrasting to his coming over his lower face. All in all, the womanbot looked like the result of him having a daughter with a 15th century knight-woman. So at least the aesthetics wouldn't clash.

He stepped back once and gestured for her to get out, and she stepped out of the crate. She was maybe up to his shoulders? That was about seven feet tall, then.

He ignored the robot for a moment and looked into the crate. An additional set of spare limbs, a few smaller boxes of various gadgets from Arasaka that he would have to sort through later, a few guns, and a new arm-mounting for the Tsunami-Helix. All in all, not bad, the backup frame was probably still in storage.

He pulled the case over the top of the crate again, and set down the Gemini frame for Uriel to operate. It'd be a hassle to move this without him, the bulk was a bit large even if it didn't weigh more than about a thousand pounds.

Uriel paused before moving, and stared at something over his shoulder. Adam turned to see the new bot staring at him.

The bot glanced between the crate and his two frames.

Ah, that's right, the bot was programmed to carry his shit around, wasn't it? He grunted before opening the crate again, Uriel climbed in and sat down before Adam closed the lid and got to the other side to lift half of it.

The bot's optics brightened, although her face didn't change at all, and she walked over to the other end to lift that half. Picking it all up, he noticed that she was probably about as strong as his Dragoon was, even if the limbs were his CCPL. Good, that would let her carry more of his spares…

He spoke suddenly as they moved the crate through the door.

"Your name is Spares now."

Her optics glowed.

"Designation updated."

Uriel waved at the Mikoshi-AI as they left the building. It didn't wave, it just stared at Spares.

"...as of three hours ago, all known active participants in the disaster that occurred at the beginning of this week have been found and delivered due punishment in accordance with their legal culpability…" Yorinobu was certainly good at delivering speeches to the masses, standing in front of a crowd of a few hundred, half of which were probably reporters of some variant. He was dressed in what Uriel had come to understand as his standard outfit, a three piece suit but with the jacket replaced by that red and black leather jacket of his. Coming with his slicked back hair and angular features, he likely made for a subject of no small number of female fantasies.

Rich, famous, professional with a layer of rebelliousness, rumored to be skilled in a fight, Yorinobu was a popular person among the masses. There were many reasons for this, one of which was his ability to command an audience with his presence. Nothing he was saying was particularly fascinating by itself, but the context it was understood to be in and the way he said it elevated it to another level entirely.

Uriel could admit, he was utterly outclassed in this regard. He knew how people worked, and could manipulate others decently if he needed to, but this was a master at play. This was charisma, that knowable but unquantifiable feature that made people follow you. Yorinobu had charisma in spades, and he knew how to wield it to capture an audience's attention.

"...thanks to the sacrifice of long-time security officer Kagekaze, the orchestrating villain of this massacre had been slain, and his final weapon of spite had been transported beyond where the blast could do any substantial harm to the city. The storm and bay water in conjunction was able to restrict the radiation from spreading for miles, instead being restricted primarily to the northern districts…"

Uriel glanced around the room from where he was seated in Adam's Gemini, his arms were crossed over his chest and face pulled into a slight grimace. Everything in his body language subtly signaled that he didn't want to be here and was annoyed at having to be. This was deliberate, keeping in character with Adam's persona and the careful sympathies Uriel was trying to cultivate in the public.

No one liked attending press conferences. Look! Adam Smasher is annoyed too! He's just like me!

To increase his own chances of survival, he had to make people like Adam. Uriel hated lying, so he wasn't going to do that. All that was left was emphasizing Adam's more likable traits, and careful wording to ensure appeal while maintaining truth. This was the part of talking that people always did subconsciously, but neither Adam nor Uriel were so lucky. They had to do this manually, consciously.

Uriel was good at talking to people, but he hated doing it. He hated dying much more though. Uriel let loose a slightly stronger 'breath' than normal from his nose, and furrowed his brow.

Once he and Adam had realized they could do this, he stayed at home to train the kids more, and Uriel was sent out to attend the meetings that Adam didn't care about. This was far more efficient overall, even if he now had to actually go out into the world again.

It had been a while since he had gone out as Agent Sunshine, and before that a while since he had a body at all. At least, a body for longer than about five seconds. He didn't mind being bodiless, not really, so it was a distinctly strange experience to be out in one for so long. He'd get used to it eventually, if they were going to keep this up.

He and Adam had shared a brain for the last five months, Uriel knew exactly what he was like and vice versa. There was no worry about messing up in that regard. The frame was one of the most upgraded in the world as well, he wouldn't have to worry about fighting anyone or anything except another panzerbot. If he was fighting another panzerbot, he'd just signal Adam and stall for as long as possible.

Having a game plan helped him ignore his nervousness at being isolated in the world again. He had gotten used to the security from being a ghost in someone else's head. That was a flaw, a weakness, he would simply remove that by forcing the issue. Exposure therapy and whatnot.

"...which is why we at Arasaka are announcing a collaborative venture with Militech. The formation of a joint corporate endeavor, and the reformation of a familiar company. The International Electronics Corporation, or IEC for short, will be re-established with split ownership and begin sales of its flagship product coming this June. An Arasaka-developed proprietary technology, it is perhaps the single greatest innovation in the field of cyberpsychosis treatment since the development of CPS-23, also known as Immunosuppressants."

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I announce the LEASH, the anti-cyberpsychoic neuralware implant. I will now open the floor to questions for the remaining duration of this conference."

This announcement was followed by an immediate flurry of questioning and shouts from the assembled, most of which were rather useless to know, pointless clarifications on technicalities and other garbage. Uriel let out a frustrated huff and leaned back slightly, waiting for the next fifteen minutes of this half-hour segment to pass. Acutely aware of all the cameras and sensors that were also on him, he made sure to pose in a way that emphasized the plasteel musculature of the Gemini, straining the dress shirt and pants he had been given for this.

Sex appeal was yet another weapon he had to use.

"Blue jacket and glasses."

"Yes, when you say that this product will be released in June, is that June of this year or next year?"

"That's June of this year, six months from now. Next, Top row, red sweater."

…He could be managing Pacifica right now, this sucked.

After a long time spent sitting on a reinforced chair they had specifically brought for Adam, the fifteen minutes had passed, and the initial announcement was over. He uncrossed his legs and arms and stood with a frown. He mimed the motions to cracking his neck and rolling his shoulder as he walked over to the empty podium.

Next was Adam's segment, the announcement of the Zenith for the Pacifica construction. For some ungodly reason they wanted him to announce it, probably because he was the new face for the territory overall. That's not all either! Because immediately after this meeting he was supposed to attend a talk show. Uriel fucking hated talk shows, talk shows and social media and just about every other form of vapid celebrity worship that could be imagined.

Unfortunately, Adam hated them more, and thus Uriel was going to be dealing with it.

Before he entered that hell, he had to give an announcement. Speaking clearly, powerfully, and in Adam's signature metallic voice, he began with an undertone of deliberate irritation.

"In addition to offering aid in the ecological cleanup, the EEG extended an offer to Arasaka regarding the Pacifica development. An amount of investment funding equal to four-hundred percent the then-current Arasaka corporate funding being invested into the region. This would be in exchange for utilizing ecologically-friendly planning outlined in a series of documents handed over. The plans detailed a form of Arcology that would, when complete, encompass the entirety of Pacifica."

"This arcology is referenced as a ZENITH in the document, so that is the name that will be used moving forwards. These plans were modified to be more robust and defensible, and then approved by both parties. The plans were determined to be mostly sound, and no large permanent construction projects have been commissioned in the Pacifica region yet that would be disrupted by the construction of the Arcology. As it was free money and urban development plans, this was accepted."

"It is to my understanding that they wish to put their name on it, but not act as chief developers. Thus if their plans are shit and fail, they can push the blame onto Arasaka. If their plans succeed they can then advertise that the product came from them and take credit. A classic corporate scheme, one that's expected and inoffensive enough. The ZENITH is designed to be a city that is ecologically friendly. This sounds like something of a lost cause at this point, but oh well, I'm only paying for part of it."

"That is all, I will now be forced to answer questions."

As expected, there was a lot of immediate shouting and nonsense that he didn't want to listen to. So, he decided to simplify the entire thing by just starting from the top left and going down until he got all of them or ran out of time. He raised a finger and pointed.

"First one, top left."

"Yes! Mr. Smasher, do you stand by your accusation of the motivations of the EEG?"

He stared at the reporter for a moment. "You just heard me fucking talk meatbag. That's a pointless question, feel ashamed."

He pointed at the next reporter in line. "Second one, top left."

"Ah! Mr. Adam, do you know why you were chosen to represent this announcement?"

"Fuck if I know. Third one, top left."

It was about at this point that the reporters realized he was just going to go in order, and started fighting each other for earlier positions. Uriel made absolutely no effort to stop them. Internally he grinned, it was like watching a bunch of brightly-colored babies brawl as quietly as they could while shuffling their way through a crowd of similar babies. Adam was going to get a laugh out of this.

—

A full twenty-five minutes later, he exited the conference to head to the talk show suppressing a grin. Goddamn who knew that messing with a bunch of medias in such a way would be so amusing. No less than five of them had to be escorted out due to drawing weapons on the others. It only got more and more violent as things progressed and it was clear that the time for questions was shrinking.

A brawl in the last five minutes between people who barely knew how to fight, it was almost like he had the old internet back again.

He opened the car door, got inside, plugged up the interface cable, and started the car. It growled underneath him, but the interface plug assured him that was completely intentional with this one. The citypop came out of the radio, and he caught himself before he hummed along to it. Adam wouldn't hum, so he wouldn't either. Had to keep the mask on for this to work out.

A couple of minutes of driving later, he parked the car in the studio parking lot and got out. He walked past the guards, who were expecting him and into the side door. A woman was standing inside with a datapad, and she looked up as his heavy boots hit the floor. She gave a plastic and polite smile as he came to a stop.

"Ah, Mr. Smasher. If you wait over in the lounge, I'll tell Mr. Q and we'll call you over when we're ready."

He grunted and walked over to the aforementioned lounge. As he opened the door and looked to the room, he noticed an immediate problem. The lounge was one of those stupid ones with the table and chairs in the center going down into the ground. He let out a dissatisfied rumble and walked over to sit on the floor and rest his feet on the ground, his legs passing over the intended chairs.

Adam was eight feet tall, his legs wouldn't fit into one of these tiny bullshit seats. He had to stretch a bit, leaning forwards and letting his elbows rest on his knees. Then it was time to wait until he was called in.

—

"Goooooood Evening Night City!" The voice came from the slightly out of tune radio. Abbey had never figured out how to fix that, and it was never really worth the effort to hire a techie.

She didn't have a job this evening, so there wasn't much to do for a while. She just leaned back on her Adams, munched on some fried-bird flavored kibble, and indulged in one of her timewaster hobbies. Listening to talk shows. She munched as she listened to the radio play.

"Our special guest for tonight? Be ready for a big surprise because it's none other than the Most recent hero of the hour himself, Adam Smasheeerrr!"

She wasn't sure about this flavor, it had something off about it…

Her chewing slowed. She turned to the radio with a mouth full of kibble. Over the radio the sounds of faint stomps were heard for a moment before stopping. Then the sound of someone slowly lowering themselves onto a couch.

"Adam, do you mind if I call you Adam? Let me say it's a special treat to have you on the show."

"I am here because I was ordered to be."

Slowly, her tail started to wag as she stared, wide-eyed at the radio.

"Not a fan of interviews huh? I completely understand. Don't worry, hopefully we can make this one be painless for you, huh? Let's dive right into it, Everyone's dying to know, what is it like being you?"

"Clarify."

"You know! The mega-man in the chrome, the hero of the fourth corporate war, the oldest solo in the biz, the conqueror of criminals, the hell-hound of Arasaka! What's it like being you compared to all of us non-Night City legends?"

"I haven't been a meatbag since… 2006 I think, that's right around seventy one years ago. I barely remember what it was like. I'm strong enough to punch through concrete, and tough enough to ignore most guns. I'm fast enough to outrun anything slower than a car, and quick enough to dodge bullets. I've been killing since the 1990s, meaning more combat experience than just about everyone else on the planet."

"I can see in just about every camera option invented, and hear in just about every audio and radio communication method invented. I'm heavy enough to break weaker chairs, I'm tall enough to have to duck through most doors, and I constantly have to deal with meatbags who annoy me. I barely remember what it was like to be meat at all, let alone what it's like to be a bog-standard meatbag."

"I know what it's like to be me, I have no idea how to explain it to any of you. I can't imagine being so weak anymore."

She set her bag of kibble down on the floor and swallowed what was already in her mouth. Just to make sure she didn't spill it from excitement. Her tail smacked around furiously, and she sat on it to stop it's wiggling from distracting her.

—

Michiko let herself be pulled by Juliet, who was quite insistent on her coming to the break room as soon as possible to hear something. She was slightly worried, but mostly amused as she kept pace with the blonde woman tugging her arm through the halls.

Inside the break room were all her elite girls that weren't currently on a job, sitting around and listening to… The voice of Ziggy Q? She walked over to look at the screen head on and froze.

"...that's quite a lot to unpack there, so you say you've been fighting since the 1990s? Just how old are you really?"

"I did not say fighting, I said killing. My business is murder, don't skirt around it. And yes, you never forget your first kill. Mine was in 1997, some fat man with groceries coming around the corner of the street. I bashed him in the knees and then the head, then ran off with his bags. I ate well that night."

"Well that's quite a story… wait, just how old were you, you didn't answer that."

"Hmm… I was discharged in 2005, I spent three or so years in the army… Maybe thirteen?"

"Thirteen?"

"...Yeah, about thirteen, mom left about five years before that, and it was my eigth birthday. So thirteen sounds about right."

"Your mom was… Well what about your father?"

"Oh, he was long gone by then, left me a bat though. That's how I got my nickname back then, Bats, meanest kid on the block."

"Is Adam Smasher your real name?"

"Nah, after the Army killed my bloodboys and pinned me down, they gave me a job offer and I signed up. After they realized I didn't have any paperwork, they wrote some up and Adam Smasher was my new name. No idea what it was originally"

Michiko slowly sat in the offered chair and stared at the floor. She never liked to hear him tell this story. She ignored her girls, giving her concerned glances.

—

She jumped slightly when her door slammed open. Quickly she jerked her hand back to minimize the amount of spillage, before carefully setting the tea cup down and slowly turning to glare at who just burst through her door.

"Akai, don't slam my door open like that, you'll break the hinges." She said to the girl her age in comfortable ladybug themed pajamas at her door. Vibrant red tech-hair, expansive bug-eye optics, and a sleeping hat with a stylized mushroom on it. The Red Menace was at her door interrupting her favorite tea-time.

"Yeah sure, whatever, get into the living room, Adam Smasher is on Night after Night right now." She said excitedly, practically vibrating in place. She raised an eyebrow.

"That sounds neat, I'll watch the recording later."

"He's dissing Lizzy Wizzy." Akai said with a grin. In a very dignified manner, the idol known as Purple Force got up from her very comfortable chair, wiped up her tea spill on the table with the napkin, and dashed after Akai into the main room.

Aoi was already there, with a wide smile on her face as she watched the screen. Akai practically jumped onto the couch again, and she followed to not miss anything.

"...still don't know why meatbags have such dogshit fashion, but I've long since started to expect that of them. I don't know who the fuck this 'Lizzy Wizzy' is, but on top of having a stupid name, and a sub-par cybernetic body, she also has some of the most awful aesthetic sense I've ever seen. No wonder the celebrity-worshiping meatbags look so awful these days, if they have this as an example of what 'good' is."

"It wasn't this bad back in 2020 or 2010. Sure you had some stand-out shitters, but it wasn't every single meatbag I see roaming around like it is nowadays. For the most part people still understood what was and was not good fashion. It must be the plastics in the water going to their brains, because brain-damage is required to appreciate this."

"Woah, those are some strong opinions from the strongest man around. You said a 'subpar cybernetic body'? Well I'm not a fullborg, so would you mind elaborating on that?" Ziggy Q was having the time of his life drumming up this celebrity drama, and it showed.

"I've been operating a fullborg body for seventy some years now. That clip you showed me had her struggling to move with fullest dexterity at some parts. That's the sign of a shitty frame. A bog-standard borg frame is as nimble as the most nimble an unenhanced human in the world can get."

"No particular armor, no particular strength, subpar installation. All the signs of amateur hour bullshit by someone who doesn't know what they were buying, installed by dumbass medics who didn't know what they were installing. It doesn't even look good, it looks like chrome spray paint on a mediocre woman's body."

"Chrome skin doesn't look good on its own. Then again this part of the fashion is just another in a long line of bad decisions. She's a dumbass meatbag who should have stuck with an actual borg body for a first timer instead of jumping into some ugly custom job she commissioned. An Alpha or Gemini frame would have been perfectly fine, but she had to spend the money on pretending to be special."

"Now look at her, ugly body with ugly fashion. Fucking meatbags piss me off, but scrapbuckets are just as insulting."

She was struggling to hold back laughter.

Akai was outright laughing.

Aoi was giggling the word 'mediocre' to herself over and over.

Serves that bitch right.

—

That evening's special episode of Night after Night lasted for a total of four hours as the host, Ziggy Q, engaged Adam Smasher in a laundry list of topics. Most of which Adam Smasher spoke at decent length over while displaying a grouchy, old-fashion charm.

It would prove to be a very popular episode. Especially as the call-in questions segment began.

Bioware was preem. He had realized this immediately after the first hard drills exercise that Smasher put them through. It wasn't enough to pull out a gun and shoot a gonk, not for Smasher. They had to pull out a gun and shoot a gonk in the most efficient motion possible, and then practice that motion over and over until they were fast at it.

That seemed to be a theme with Smasher's training, he had come to realize. It was all the most basic stuff around, but practiced over and over until it was as good as it could be. Panzerfaust was just punching, kicking, and moving, but it was all done in the ways that maximized the end result. Each attack used every muscle that it could, all at once, to leverage every scrap of power. When no more power could be gained from the muscles, you added a rotation to it.

You twisted your body into the attack, letting you use the force of your twist to further increase the damage. When you couldn't increase the striking force any more that way, you let your chrome limbs vibrate as hard as they could, overclocking them to work like a jackhammer or chainsaw the moment the attack connects. When you couldn't get any more striking force from even all of that?

Then you used gravity too, and jumped into the attacks for even more damage. Panzerfaust was a style built from the ground up to let a superhuman hit something as hard as possible. It was a very simple goal taken as far as it could possibly go. That's how all of Adam's training was.

Even from the very beginning, when it was just him being quizzed on why Smasher flatlined gangers in a certain order or with a certain method. The core goal was to minimize the amount of potential harm to oneself, often the best way to do that was to kill the targets as fast as possible, with as few motions as possible, and targeting the most dangerous guys first. Smasher had been teaching him how to maximize his own chances of surviving any given fight.

A simple goal, taken to its utmost extreme. That's why the drills were particularly rough, because there was no strategy for training. It was just brute force, putting the hours in until the motions become burned into your mind. Kill the target as fast as possible, a simple goal. Thus he had to draw the gun, aim the shot, fire, and hit a lethal area. Before he could do most of that, Smasher wanted them to master drawing the guns. Do one thing, do it perfectly, do it perfectly every time.

Again and again, that's all they did, for a few hours. It would have been murder on his arms if they were meat. As it was, it was still murder on his back and shoulders. A distinct and horrible soreness that set in. A year ago he knew that something like that would have lasted days.

With these new nanosurgeons and enhanced antibodies, it would be gone by tomorrow morning, he would just be really hungry in the meantime. Fuck, bioware was so preem. The rustling of a bag caught his attention, he rolled his sore neck over to look across the table.

Katsuo was eating from a bulk-purchase bag of kibble, one mouthful munch at a time. He was rubbing his neck with his other hand, probably just as sore as he was.

…David didn't remember the last time he ate kibble right out of the bag like that. Normally he at least heated it up first. It was the cheapest food around that wasn't bug-based, so it wasn't too awful.

Rebecca groaned from her place on the floor. Her own body was equally affected. She had pushed herself as hard as Katsuo did, who himself was struggling to keep up with David. He had a lot of endurance for these sorts of things, and they didn't. His mother and Lucy didn't push themselves as hard, focused entirely on getting the motion down before any kind of speeding up. Smasher didn't have to correct them as often, but they also were much slower on the draw.

"...That kibs?" She asked, groaning through the pain.

"Yeah." Katsuo said through a mouthful of the staple food. Rebecca let out a tremendous groan and rolled once on the floor, to where she was on her back and her face was near his leg.

"Kib me." She said.

Katsuo grabbed the bag and held it over her head, pouring it about two feet above her. About half of the kibble fell into her open mouth, and the rest of it scattered across the floor around her.

"Thanshk." She muttered through a full mouth, beginning to crunch down. The cat chirped from its window-side perch and jumped down, dashing over to eat the kibble that was around her, tail waving in her face.

David watched the scene lazily, too tired to comment on it. After another few moments, Katsuo rolled his head and looked at the flatvid screen mounted on the wall. His eyes glowed as he requested it to turn on and search for a channel.

"You both fine with Ziggy Q?" He asked. David raised a brow.

"Didn't know you were a Night after Night kinda guy."

Katsuo shook his head. "I'm not, I hate it."

…Why was he putting it on then? David shrugged, he didn't care one way or the other. Katsuo looked down and gently kicked Rebecca in the arm. He got an unconcerned grunt and more chewing in reply. He turned back to the screen and it turned on.

A somewhat low-quality voice came through as the first thing, probably meaning some kind of remote call-in to the show from what he knew of it.

"...would you say the best way to kill a man is, or at least, the one you remember best?" He furrowed his brow at the sentence, wondering who was on that the question was suitable for. He was too lazy to turn his head though.

"A good question." He froze and turned to the screen, upon which was a very familiar figure on the other side of a table from a smiling Ziggy Q. He turned his head more to see Smasher, still seated on his bench as the other Smasher spoke on the screen.

"Typically speaking the best way to kill a man is with overwhelming force, whether that be from a very heavy gun with lots of recoil or from using the local scenery as an improvised bludgeon. One of my personal favorites was a mission back in the 2010s, a convoy hit. I used a stop sign like an axe to bisect one meatbag and then as an oversized nail to pin one to a truck during that one."

Smasher sounded downright nostalgic when answering that. "Which one I remember best is all of them. I record every kill I make to my blackbox, and play it back when I get some free time. It lets me dissect everything I did wrong, and relive particularly fun jobs at my leisure. I would recommend it as a hobby. Next question."

"...Heyya Smasher, I've been looking into getting one of those fancy gyrojet rifles. Have you ever used one and if so would you recommend one?"

Smasher grumbled for a second as he thought the question over. "I used one a couple of times, They're typically easy to maintain and repair, but with expensive ammunition. The actual damage is good once it gets up to speed, but it leaves you vulnerable to close-ranged attackers. If you are going to use one, get the biggest you can, because the ammo is already going to be expensive and the recoil is pitiful. Then, pick up some kind of close-ranged secondary weapon. Use the gun on distant targets, and the other weapon when things get within about three meters of you."

"It's a fine loadout for strictly business, but it's not particularly fun to shoot. Probably good for a meatbag. Next question."

"...Hey Adam, I've been wondering about chrome. See I got a choom who's been aching to get some arms. What would you consider the best custom set for general use?"

"The absolute first thing that a prospective chrome junkie should get is a quick-change mount. A quick-change mount allows you to have immediate repairs whenever you need it, as well as arms with different mission profiles. One arm could be your day-to-day utility, another could contain all your heavy weapons for jobs. This is a strong investment. Keeping a backup also lets you cycle through arms to maximize armor and structure longevity."

"The next things you should get is shielding, reinforced joints, and either thickened myomer or a weapon mount and link, in that order. The last depends on if you prefer to butcher in close range or carry additional firepower. As with all cybernetics, don't ever bother with chroming it, because that's stupid. Instead you should get it armored or with synthskinn. Armor to increase its durability and lower the cost of repairs, assuming you invest in regenerating armor paneling. Synthskinn if you want to potentially disguise the fact that your arm can punch through some meatbag's ribcage. Either option is viable.

"Next question."

David looked from the screen over to Smasher on the bench. He was nodding approvingly at the answers, although his glare was still on his face. Rebecca chimed up.

"Hey… Big Guy, you have a poser?"

Smasher nodded. "Remote-controlled. I was ordered to attend that." He growled out.

…He was doing that the entire time? David looked over to the second Smasher on the screen, seemingly responding in real time. He had seen Smasher do this before, but that was while in close proximity to the second frame both times. This was miles away currently.

He had improved a lot, but it seems like everytime he takes a step Smasher gets a little further away.

He breathed in, and breathed out.

That was fine, he had all the time in the world to catch up, and he was very good at running.

"Fast is what you do, right? Just keep running."

He turned to watch the vid, not looking away even when his mother and Lucy came out with food.

—

Yorinobu sat in a meeting room with one of his greatest potential threats. On the other side of the table sat a man with blond hair, bright blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face. He wore a suit and tie, minus the jacket, with the sleeves rolled up to his muscular and tanned forearms. His black pants were held up by suspenders, and his left arm was a clear and undisguised cybernetic, although not one with any visible weaponry.

Around his neck was a chain holding a golden cross and a set of dogtags. His jacket was military in nature, a leather bomber hanging off the back of his chair and bearing no less than three medals. The most unsubtle thing of all was a bandana wrapped around his right arm, a bandana that was a small NUSA flag.

Lucas Harford, the president of Militech, sipped from a cup of coffee as they put their talks on hold for a moment. Harford had requested this meeting to discuss the specifics of what aid Militech would give in terms of manpower, equipment, and supply. That meeting had gone almost suspiciously well thus far, although that was clearly due to Harford's desire to see this matter resolved without Militech suffering a massive loss in reputation. The man had a relatively good reputation, which meant that he was hiding something.

Their agreed upon break had come, and rather than leave the room both had stayed. Yorinobu didn't have any particular reason to leave, and it became clear that Harford didn't either about a minute later. Instead he requested a cup of coffee, something that Yorinobu sent an intern to go get.

He leaned back in his chair, their bodyguards staying silent and professional. Behind Yorinobu stood the towering forms of the DaiOni Jockeys, a clear message about what kind of threat that he considered the man on the other side of the table to be.

Harford had brought two guards of his own. A woman in a black bodysuit and opaque visored helmet, carrying a Malorian Arms Assault Cannon, and a black-armored Dragoon. Yorinobu was unfamiliar with the woman, but if she was here then it was clear that she was some manner of special operations soldier within Militech's control. The Dragoon was an obvious message of his own, that of having such cybernetic soldiers under his control.

There was an abundance of potential violence in the room. That kept both parties reasonable even beyond the threat of soft power.

Harford paused for a moment, and his left eye glowed white as he read through a message. He raised a brow and sipped his coffee before speaking. "You ordered the butcher to go onto a talk show?"

Yorinobu didn't let his reaction show, the depths of acceleration allowed him plenty of time to formulate a response. "Correct, to capitalize on his current public appeal." Give the other party something to work with, but that was completely obvious and meaningless to say. It forced either a response or silence, and thus allowed him to fish for more potential information from the other party with either outcome.

Harford raised a brow. "Well, you don't mind putting it on the screen, would you? I'm curious about what he has to say."

This would be public record later anyways, so doing him this favor cost him nothing and potentially earned more information. Information was the chiefest asset in conflict, and Militech was a dangerous opponent indeed.

They might try to absorb Arasaka instead of letting it be destroyed. That couldn't be allowed.

He connected to the screen on the wall, cycled through menus, and pulled up the streamed broadcast of the evening talk show.

"...cifica's development so far?"

"Pacifica has been the most tremendous pain in my ass that I've ever had to deal with. You fucking meatbags are infuriating on the best of days, and seem to exist to piss me off. It took months of me constantly patrolling or monitoring you fuckers before you learned to stop breaking the very simple rules I gave you."

"Throw your trash away, don't injure each other enough to require a med-tech, don't be naked in public, etc. Basic fucking rules that every functional adult should already be doing, especially with the arena right in the fucking middle of it all for you to murder eachother in to a live audience, and somehow it took months of me murdering rulebreakers before it fucking sank in your brain-damaged heads."

"I have executed no less than thirty-six of you fuckers for shitting in the middle of the street or in an alleyway. That's what the fucking toliets are for, use them you goddamn morons. Holy shit it isn't that difficult but somehow being people is an alien concept for you pissant vermin. I give you shelter, food, water, and a place to murder each other and you shit in my goddamn streets. Or you plug into automatic masturbators and put on a BD on the sidewalk, or you decide that the ground floor is a great place to dump a body."

"You fucking meatbags piss me the fuck off all the time. I don't regret killing a single one of you non-functioning, shit-filled, bags of meat and blood. Pacifica's development is going as fast as it can with me being forced to drag these blubbering retards behind me the whole time."

"Next question."

"...Hiya Adam~, I just wanted to ask if you were ever considering making an XBD? With your output recording it, that is, if you got one."

"I don't understand the appeal of a BD of any type. You interface with a fucking headset that renders you vulnerable to attack the entire time you are in it. It's practically asking for…"

Harford turned to Yorinobu with a half-grin on his face. "Murderous he may be, but your butcher is a riot to listen to. It's almost like listening to my drill sergeant again."

Yorinobu nodded sagely, privately making a note to watch the entire interview later. He had to make sure that the PR team didn't trim anything that might be potentially damaging to Arasaka's reputation, which meant he needed to see the unedited footage.

—

In a private estate on the western coast of Canada, an older-looking man read through the world news on a tablet while listening to a radio playing next to him. He was sitting on a balcony, watching the sunset through a layer of bulletproof glass.

You could never be too careful, even with all the defenses of the property in place. There shouldn't be anything to worry about, but he didn't make it to 106 by only relying on one plan. No, his property had at least five layers of defenses, the prime being that only a very select few actually knew it existed, or that he was alive.

He couldn't help the small grin on his face, even as he was looking through direct-to-buyer advertisements with his reading glasses on. The radio was playing a familiar old voice.

"...the worst part about that fucker was that refused to ever fight me properly, and the one time that he couldn't chicken out again we got interrupted by the fucking nuke he planted earlier going off at the bottom of the tower."

He replied to the borg he knew couldn't hear him. "Fighting you was a bad idea, Smasher. Why would I take a pointless risk?" He scrolled through to the next page, this one advertising a kibble chopper.

"...so do you think he died during the Night City Holocaust or not?"

"That fucking asshole went toe-to-toe with me in my strongest combat frame for a few minutes, most meatbags couldn't last more than half a second. There is no fucking chance in the world that he died, that smug asshole is probably in a Canadian beachfront manor, laughing at me and sleeping on a pile of eddies. He would've had multiple contingencies for that nuke going off on him prematurely."

He chuckled to himself. No, it was only the one that time. He was lucky that it ended up working out.

The door opened and he looked up to see a beautiful blonde woman walk in, carrying a tray of food and drink. A homemade hamburger, a bottle of scotch, and a caesar salad. He put the tablet to the side.

"Ah, thank you Cammy, you're a sweetheart." He said politely, accepting the food.

She smiled at him. "You want to send those regards to Coraline? She's the one who cooked for your old ass, after all."

"Ah, if you would be a dear and do that." He waited for her to turn around.

He pinched her cute butt with his black chrome arm. She jumped a bit and whirled around. She grumbled at him as she rubbed the spot.

"You're lucky you're old, otherwise I'd electrocute your ass."

He grinned like the bastard he was. "Stay beautiful darling, and tell Stevie to make sure the datawalls are up to date."

She grumbled her way out the door. He chuckled and turned to tuck into his delicious meal.

It wasn't easy being a winner, but he was managing. He focused once again on the radio.

"...It's frankly insulting how weak meatbags are these days…"

He grinned, that sounds exactly like his old fellow murderer.

There was one last thing that he had to deal with before the fighting tonight would occur. Namely, one last meeting in order to secure the help of someone who was supposed to help sales for the events to come. Those sales figures would be useful here, because more money meant more funding for Pacifica and side projects therein.

The Zenith was an ambitious project. Before anything above ground could be built, they were going to get the entire underground finished. That meant daming off the sub-bay section from the ocean, and then digging thousands of feet straight down to start making the 'roots' of the arcology. Before they could do that efficiently, the entire above ground city district was going to be bulldozed.

Everything above sea level in Pacifica, except the one permanent building and the temporary building for housing everyone in the meantime, would be demolished and drilled. Giving the workers a completely clean slate to work with from the bottom up to build. It wasn't going to be touching the actual shoreline, due to worries over a potential aquifer below, but it was slightly into the Badlands, overlapping with the existing Pacifica about 90%.

When complete, it would be the single largest construction on this half of North America, capable of housing all of Night City and a few million more. It would be capable of feeding twice that number with just its internal farms and roof-level district sized 'wildlife park'. That park would become the single largest spot of green in any urban environment in the world, and capable of making the whole thing an oxygen-positive building. That was without the projected specifications for the gene-modded plant and animal life that Biotechnica was going to explain in detail in his next meeting with them. It would actually need to vent oxygen into the atmosphere to prevent oxygen poisoning, after all was said and done.

According to the specifications that was. Personally, neither Uriel or Adam would have been spending nearly as much money on making it environmentally friendly, mostly because that was a global level thing. It didn't matter how green America was, if China, Africa, Russia, etc. kept pumping pollution into the environment.

That worked in every direction, you could swap the names around as much as you wanted to. It didn't matter how much Africa recycled if India was still dumping everything into their river. It didn't matter how much Australia limited their carbon output if Great Britain was still causing acid rain over the entirety of northern Europe.

It didn't matter how much one state cared about the environment, because unless all of them did, nothing was going to be fixed. Caring about the environment was something that cost more money than not, so of course, very few factions did. Thus, nothing was going to be fixed in the long run. In the end, it wasn't something that either of them were going to bother with beyond the local level.

Organic food was a luxury item, so getting the conditions for it to grow better was a good way to make money, which was a good way to build industry, which was a good way to stay alive. All of that boiled down to Uriel having to have a conversation that he didn't see the point of with something he didn't care about. Which was most people outside of Adam, these days.

Thinking about it, wasn't that almost schizophrenia? Meh, he didn't care enough to find out. It hasn't been a problem, so it wouldn't make it a problem. He opened the door and stepped through to see the man he had to talk to for his aid.

Grey hair on dark skin, a dark gray beard, a cybernetic throat, a bunch of golden jewelry, sleeve tattoos, and a sleeveless leather jacket. Kerry Eurodyne. Neither Adam or Uriel had any idea why the fuck he wanted to talk to Adam. Uriel didn't particularly want to spend any processing power on trying to figure it out either, he just wanted to get this over with.

He walked over to the other chair, and slowly sat down in it, just to make sure it wouldn't break under his weight. The Gemini wasn't as heavy as Adam's other frames, but it was still enough to be legally morbidly obese if he was the height of an average man, right around four-hundred and sixty pounds last he checked. It would snap smaller chairs, even if it was far lighter than the Dragoon, Oni, and especially the DaiOni.

It was heavier than the old Samson, but that was because the Samson didn't have CCPL. A Samson with CCPL would be around… seven hundred pounds? Not as bad as a theoretical Dragoon with CCPL, which would hit the nine-hundred pound mark. As it turns out, having your frame built out of titanium and ACPA myomer made it far heavier than plasteel and standard myomer. The Oni was only as light as it was thanks to being made out of the new Endosteel, and that was pricey enough to just buy a standard ACPA.

Adam was heavy, it came with the territory of being a stupidly durable and stupidly strong killborg.

Now seated, he looked to the musician on the other side of the table and stared blankly. The musician stared back for a long moment, before starting to talk.

"You've… been making music all this time." He began. This wasn't technically true, but the story it sold was better for Adam overall, so Uriel deflected the question with a question.

"Is that a question?" He growled out in an irritated tone.

The musician narrowed his eyes in irritation. "No, I suppose it wasn't…" There was a lull in the conversation, strangled in the crib. Alas he won't miss it.

The musician broke the staredown and looked over to the side. After a moment more, he tried talking again. "You've been making music for years, and you only started releasing it after a leak. What's the motivation there?"

Uriel narrowed his optics, wasn't that pretty fucking obvious? "Do you have any idea how expensive turning this landfill into a functioning place is? The songs make money, I need money to fund this place."

The Filipino turned to glare at him, but in a considering sort of way. "So you're making the music for eddies?"

Uriel snorted. "I made music so I wouldn't have to listen to the dogshit they play on the radio. I hate modern music, nothing but synth and mumble-rap, none of it worth hearing. Making money was an unexpected bonus."

The glare lessened a tad. "So, you're releasing it for the eddies, but you made it for you…?"

Uriel nodded, bored with the conversation. The musician with the dumb looking fade continued. "Making music for years without releasing it… You didn't want people to know your story?"

Uriel outright scoffed at this. "Why the fuck would I care about a bunch of gibbering meatbags and what they think of me?"

"You can sing till you're blue in the face, if no one hears you then it's just another prison." The Meatmusician attempted to counter.

Uriel all but snarled in reply. "It's this bullshit I can't wrap my head around, why the fuck do meatbags care so much about other meatbags listening to them? It's a bunch of worthless opinions from a bunch of worthless people. Social interaction is almost always a waste of my fucking time."

The musician stared at him for a long moment, digesting the rant, mulling it over.

"You… don't care about what others think of you at all, do you?"

"Never have. Anything else or are we done?"

The musician started off to the side for a moment, furrowed his brows, and took a deep breath. After releasing it, he turned back to lock eyes with Uriel.

"Johnny Silverhand… What were his last moments like?"

Uriel furrowed his own brow. "The… cheerleader who came with Blackhand back in '23?"

The musician glared at him outright. "Don't call him that. Just tell me."

Uriel glared back and turned his head to the wall, pausing to access Adam's blackbox of the event. After a moment to review the files, he started talking.

"He was in a room with the rest of Militech Team Alpha, the distraction for Blackhand's team. It was him, Bartmoss' groupie, the cougar, the nukeborg, and the muckracker. I came through the door with a backup squad behind me and started blasting. I was taking my time with it, they didn't have a single weapon that could scratch my armor."

Uriel narrowed his optics and leaned back.

"Then the cheerleader pops out of cover, and yells "Hey steelhead, let's rock and roll!" before shooting me."

"I don't know what the fuck he thought he was accomplishing. He shot me with a gun that wouldn't crack one of my optics in the DaiOni. I stared at him for a second, before lifting my chain-shotgun and cutting him in half with a burst of fire. He was dead before he hit the ground."

Uriel shook his head.

"Shooting anything else would have been more effective. I got tackled by the nukeborg, tore him in half, and left to the roof. The cougar and bartomoss' groupie killed my backup while I was distracted, and left as I was ripping the nukeborg out of his frame."

"That's it."

The musician stared at him, searching for something. Uriel stared back, unimpressed. The musician broke the stare and looked down, blinking and rubbing his eyes once.

"...Yeah, that sounds like him."

There were a few long seconds in which Uriel waited for the musician to continue. This was beginning to drag out in a very annoying way. He could try comforting the musician, to make this go by faster, but it would be absolutely out of character for Adam. So instead he glared and waited.

After quite a number of awkward seconds, the musician spoke again.

"Yeah, that's all I wanted to ask about. Go ahead and go, I'll do your commentary or whatever it is for the fights."

Uriel stood and began to walk out of the room, glad to be finally fucking down with this.

"Wait." He stopped at the door, stared directly in front of him, and took a deep fake breath in irritation, waiting for the follow-up.

"...If you want to make eddies, write a love song. They'll go wild for that."

Uriel grunted in acknowledgement, and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

Jesus that was annoying.

One last thing for today.

—

The big guy had stood up about halfway through the evening and walked over to the table. The conversation died down as he approached, he glared down at them for a moment, before glaring at the flatvid screen and changing the channel. It switched over to the current live feed of the arena, his Gemini and two others standing in the center of it.

It was still crazy that he could do that, just have the brainpower required to control a completely different body at the same time as being somewhere else. She felt like there was something he wasn't telling them there, but that was fair. The big guy had already done a bunch for them, she wasn't about to badger him into revealing all his secrets.

Either he told them or didn't, she didn't think he would try to screw them over at this point, he didn't really have a reason to. If he wanted them gone, he would tell them to fuck off. If he wanted them dead, he would just kill them. He didn't need to trick them to do that. It was a strange thing to find comfort in, the idea that someone was trustworthy because they could kill you at any moment and there wasn't a way for you to stop them.

This is why she didn't like thinking, it made her brainmeats hurt. She was more of an 'action' type of gal.

"You all are going to watch this, then you are going to review what they did right and wrong. Brat, you will talk last." The big guy rumbled out. Davey was better at this fighting stuff, he had more practice than the rest of them, so that made sense. It felt a little annoying for that to be pointed out though. She liked to imagine that she could pull her weight in a fight, and compared to most people she could. Not Davey though, and certainly not Big Guy.

Davey was a step above the rest of them. He was too fast and hit too hard for the rest of them to keep up.

Big Guy was an absolute unit in a fight. The dude could fight an army of gangers and win. He might be able to fight an actual army and win. She didn't know, she never saw him fight one by himself before. It was hard to be faster than the guy with the best sandy in the world, and it was hard to hit harder than a guy who could throw trucks around. Both of those combined?

It was difficult to wrap her head around. The idea that a single person was allowed to be so strong. It almost seemed to be against the rules of the universe somehow. It was even harder to imagine a guy who could go toe-to-toe with Big Guy with less chrome and not outright die.

Every now and then, Big Guy mentioned Blackhand. She eventually noticed something about that whenever he did.

Big Guy liked to give things nicknames. Brat was Davey, Girl was Lucy, Blueberry (ugh) was her, Bowlcut (heh) was Tanaka, Woman was Gloria… It went on and on. He almost never used someone's name if he could avoid it.

Blackhand was different. Big Guy always made sure to use his name explicitly at first, and only then call him things like 'asshole' and 'that fucker'. Those were insults, but they weren't nicknames like everyone else had.

To Adam Smasher, Blackhand's name could only be Blackhand.

She wasn't sure what that actually meant.

The girl that Big Guy had brought home earlier stepped into the room, stomping on mechanical limbs identical to his own. Rebecca narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the woman as she walked over to pick up his bench, and then place it down behind him. He glared at her for a moment, before turning back to the screen and sitting down.

She stood behind him silently.

Rebecca didn't know who this person was. All Big Guy had told them was that her name was Spares and that she came over from Japan to help him on Saburo Arasaka's orders. The only time she speaks is when directly prompted to, and so far she's done nothing but chores. Cleaning the rooms, running weapons maintenance, things like that.

The creepiest part was when she just stood in the corner of the kitchen, staring at Lucy and Gloria as they cooked. She was a tall, creepy girl. It would have been less unnerving if she talked more, or at all.

Meh, it wasn't fair to judge, she supposed. Big Guy didn't talk unless he had to, and didn't do anything except sit on his bench if he wasn't working, so at least she was more productive. They really did seem similar, almost like they were related…

…Spares…

…Smasher…

…Was she his daughter?!

"Blueberry, watch." He growled at her, and her eyes snapped to the screen immediately. Yeah, that sounded like a very good idea, she should probably do that. She resolved to be nice to the tall, creepy borggirl in the house, just in case.

He had already checked all of his equipment. His sword, his suit, his collar, his vials…

All of it was in top condition for what would be his last fight. He had made sure of it, and checking over it had been nostalgic. Better days came to mind, when all he had to worry about was the next fight instead of a knife in his back or poison in his tea. There was violence in those days, honest violence, and it was better for it.

In the end, he never quite managed to turn snakes into tigers. Just gave them a den to breed in.

He was quite done with them. He had no interest in managing them any longer. A good death was far preferable to even a single year more with most of them. No wife, no children, just him and a single friend. Akuhara would likely leave after his death, there wasn't anything else keeping him in the gang at this point.

Just a pair of old tigers, from the days in which there were many. Night City was once a place of heroes and monsters, their clashes turning streets into ruin. Now it was decayed and faded, a place where mundane treachery ruled. He once fought for the challenge, clashing against the most heavily cyberized street samurais with nothing but his sword and fury.

Every day was a thrill. Every fight could be his last if he didn't use everything. In using everything to stay alive, he became a monster that survived the death of the Inquisitors.

He wasn't alone, there were other monsters with him, fighting for the sake of fighting. A few of them survived the final stand of the Inquisitors with him. Fewer still survived the years afterwards. Only one survived as long as he had.

Standing up, monoswords on his hip, he walked through the tunnel leading into the Arena.

The light blinded him for a moment, he kept walking without pause in his stride. His eyes adjusted halfway to the center of the hard-packed clay arena. There was no grass here, only the dried earth of the badlands underneath.

The stands of the arena were filled with spectators, wildly screaming and cheering in anticipation of such an event. To watch two monsters tear eachother apart. Truth be told, he was anticipating it as well.

Walking into a fight knowing with absolute certainty that it'll be his last… It was a thrill he hadn't experienced before. It made him feel young again, young enough to ignore how weak his body had gotten with age.

Standing in the center of the arena, arms crossed, was the Demon of Arasaka. He was in his casual, Gemini frame, which still meant that he could probably kill everyone in the arena and audience with relative ease.

Men are slain by monsters and heroes.

Monsters and heroes are slain by demons and gods.

Demons and gods are slain by chance.

He was an old monster. Adam Smasher was an old demon. It was the expected result of such conflict. Still, it would have been fun to cross blades at least once before his death. Ah well.

He looked to the otherside of the arena, the other entrance.

There, walking towards him, was the old brute who survived as long as he had through sheer stubbornness. He highly doubted it was for his smarts. Ryuzaki cared very little about being smart, and much more about being strong. It was one of his more appealing traits.

They met in the center, sizing each other up and letting the noise of the arena fade from their perceptions. Ryuzaki was a solid foot and a half taller than he was, which was downright irritating at times. Still, size only meant a larger target in most circumstances.

Sota Saito breathed in and out, a full inhale and exhale through his iron collar.

He reached up, grabbing his overcoat by the collar, and tossed it away from himself as hard as he could.

Underneath, his armored bodysuit was revealed, hugging his frame and clearly demonstrating the muscles he had worked tirelessly for in youth, and maintained into his old age. A body of whipcord muscle, covered in an armormesh that was practically painted on. Contrasting with Ryuzaki's own full set of plated armor and snarling visage mask.

Sota grabbed his own mask, tied to his waist, and secured it to his face. A snarling tiger highlighted in neon-orange LED wiring, crafted in the same style as the dragon that his opponent wore.

A second breath, in and out, filling and emptying his lungs.

Slowly, he drew his monoblades.

Slowly, Ryuzaki's wolves extended from his battlegloves.

They assumed familiar sparring stances, long practiced against one another.

Sota felt a grin grow on his face. He could picture the same expression on Ryuzaki's right now.

"Ready?" The demon rumbled, towering over the both of them. They both nodded.

"Begin." The demon commanded. The crowd roared.

The Tiger and Dragon were rivals. It was tradition.

—

They were old now, both of them. It had been many years since they first met, and many years since they went their separate ways. This was not something he was particularly ashamed of. Each of them wanted to see what they could do alone, both of them managed to make a gang-pack. Both of them failed in some ways.

He stomped the ground. It was dirt, hard dirt, good for stomping. He let the stomp throw him forwards, swiping at Sato with his claws. Sato ducked and scratched at him. He stomped his other foot down, and used it to twist into a kick. Sato couldn't scratch him without being kicked. He aborted and jumped to the side.

Sato wanted to make a gang full of tigers like him. Quick and strong, with sharp claws and fierce eyes. Most of his den was filled with snakes now, not tigers. He wanted to make a gang of any animal, a pack full of sharp claws and fangs and tails and scales. He succeeded, but he never ended up finding another who thought like him.

Sato lunged forwards, lashing out in a feint before striking with his other claw. He was always like that, a tricky fighter, he used both claws to trap his opponent. He knew this, so he didn't worry about defending himself. He trusted his scales, and lashed out in his own clawed strike. Sato aborted one scratch, using the claw to brace himself against his claws and pushing himself out of the way of the strike. Sato was too small to push him anymore, he felt sad at this.

It was hard to remember names. Names and faces and people and everything. He made sure to remember Sato. Sato was Orange-Tiger. Orange-Tiger was Sato. Most things slipped right out of his head, like mud in his fingers. He couldn't hold onto them. He used to be frustrated by this, but that was a long time ago. Sato was good at remembering. Beast was bad at remembering, he had to use his 'instincts'.

Beast lunged forwards, burying his fingers into the ground and throwing himself fully into a kick towards Sato. Sato sidestepped, and moved to cut him in the belly. Beast buried his fingers into the ground again, twisting his arm into a spinning kick against Sato's side. Sato went flying away and Beast rolled across the dirt for another few feet before stopping.

It wasn't a very good kick, but it was something. Sato was hard to hit. He smiled under his face, it had been a very long time since he fought Sato. He picked himself up and locked eyes with Tiger.

—

He forced his shoulder back into place with a loud pop, rolling it to ensure his flexibility was back. His iron collar injected him with another dose of adrenaline, forcing the pain dormant once more.

Ryuzaki was exactly as much of a powerhouse as he had always been. His tremendous strength afforded him equally tremendous mobility and speed, even under the weight of thick armor. It was a common misconception that the bigger you were, the slower you were. For the untrained masses, this was often true. For warriors though, this couldn't be farther from the truth.

Speed and Weight, Ryuzaki's absurd physical prowess afforded him a great deal of both. Even the lightest blows would be fatal to an unarmored man. It was only his armormesh bodysuit that prevented his bones from snapping like twigs under such attacks. It held him together, forcing his body to assume the correct shape like an exoskeleton.

His hide was strong enough to deter lighter blows, but a direct blow would kill him. Had he been thirty years younger this wouldn't be a concern of his.

But he was old now. Mentally, he cycled through his array of stimulants. He needed to be stronger and faster.

Rambo-7 was developed by the Colombian army originally, attempting to create a low-cost combat stim for their soldiers. Succeeding for the most part, Rambo-7 allows a man to lift a side of a car, break his back in the process, and keep fighting. It would last him around five minutes, it would do for right now.

The iron collar injected him with the dose. His eyes dilated, he could feel them do so. He stepped forwards once, feeling the chemical strength fill his body. His heart began to beat faster.

He raced forwards. Ryuzaki threw himself forwards in turn.

He lashed out with his swords scraping against each-other. The goal was not to actually hurt him, not this time. Ryuzaki caught the blades with one of his wolvers, and moved to lash out with the other pair.

Sato snarled and forced his aged muscles to push harder, aided by the stimulants in his system. The monoswords cut through the claws on that arm, sending the split-blades to fly through the air.

The other arm was close to him, the drugs in his system let him react to it in time. He brought down one sword to parry it away.

His sword shattered, the Kendachi-MonoOnes never intended to defend, only attack. Still, the blow was drained of its strength, and the claws only threw him to the side instead of cutting him in half.

He rolled across the arena floor, only jumping up after the third roll.

Ryuzaki was there to greet him as he rose. Ryuzaki punched him in the chest. Sato lashed out with his remaining sword.

He felt ribs shatter as he flew through the air again. He landed on the hard dirt. His vision went black for half a moment.

He was staring at the sky.

He couldn't think. The pain was too much.

Hazily, he cycled through his stimulants again. Number 2, number 2 was the one. 2 was important. He selected 2.

Speedball filled his veins, the pain disappeared entirely. He threw himself up to run at Ryu again. His heart beat faster.

The original Speedball was simply a combination of cocaine and heroin. It was refined over time to its modern state, a much more effective chemical overall. A man couldn't feel pain while under the effects, and their aggressiveness was increased tenfold. The average dose would last about thirty-five minutes. He didn't need that much time.

He left a trail of red behind him as he lunged again. It was downright nostalgic.

Ryu was running at him too, one arm uselessly dangling behind him. Good, he had hit those tendons after all.

—

There wasn't anything either of them had to say to each other. Not arguments, not insults, not compliments, nothing like that. Talking was for when you weren't fighting, they were fighting right now. Why ruin a good thing with things like talking? Fists were much more honest.

His left claws were broken now, broken and useless. He used his shoulder to swing the limb in the path of Sato's claw. It cut deeply, slicing right through his scales. That was fine, that arm was useless. He lashed out with his right claws.

Sato had seen it, and punched his arm to keep his claws away. Beast's arm was forced back, and Sato's hand shattered. It didn't seem like he noticed. He cut right through his left arm, and into his shoulder.

That was fine, Beast had moved so that it would only cut the rest of his left arm off. That would only make him slower. It hurt, but he was having too much fun to care about little things like arms.

He kicked, hitting Sato's stomach and sending him flying away again. His shoulder was bleeding now, so he let his hand burst into fire and held it over. You had to burn cuts, to make them closed, so you wouldn't bleed to death. That was something Sato had taught him.

Sato was bleeding a lot, he was always bad at following his own advice. He was bad at remembering things, but he didn't forget the things Sato had told him. Sato went off to make a Tiger's den, so he went off to make a den too. He couldn't choose an animal though, he liked them all. He was smarter than Sato sometimes. Sato thought he had to pick, so Beast just picked all of them.

He liked animals, he remembered them better than people.

—

He needed to be faster. He cycled through his stims again. Number 1 emptied itself into his veins. His heart raced faster.

Black Lace was a drug developed to be the final answer to any endorphin related stim needs. Euphoria, adrenaline rush, invulnerability to pain, and stimulated reflexes. The consequences of such were almost guaranteed chemical dependency and a violent euphoria.

You can fight, you can kill, you can win. These facts were ironclad while under the effects of the stimulant.

A chemically induced joy settled into his mind as he raced forwards again.

Making this a battle of endurance meant he would lose. Ryu was too strong. His advantage was speed and a sharp sword. It felt light in his hand, he made sure not to let go of it.

He wasn't going to lose to Ryu again, he'd never hear the end of it. Nurse would rant at them for getting hurt again. He planned on tuning her out again. She was too annoying not too.

Ryu's hand was on fire, he must have gotten that HotHands battleglove he had mentioned before. Didn't matter, it was just a little fire.

Ryu lashed out with a kick, which he ducked under and slashed up…

Ryu's foot crashed down on his left arm, he turned his kick into a stomp halfway through, it slowed him down for a moment before suddenly crashing into the dirt next to him instead. He felt lighter.

He lashed out with a slash, his blade cutting off a few fingers and wolver-blades on Ryu's arm. He met too much resistance.

Ryu brought his leg up in a rising knee-strike against him, crashing against his chin. He flew back, rolling across the dirt before using the momentum to flip up and planting his sword in the ground to stop himself.

He wasn't strong enough.

He cycled through his stims again.

Number 0 filled his veins. His heart pumped too fast for him to make out the individual beats.

Taz was short for "Tasmanian Devil", of classic cartoon fame. A blue, crystalline powder that could be snorted, ingested, or freebased and injected. It left the user's nervous system in shambles after wearing off, even the slightless sensation becoming agony. The upside?

Thirty minutes of power. His fist clenched around his sword hard enough to crack the handle.

His left arm was gone, he had just noticed. He must have lost it without noticing. He wasn't too concerned, he'd just find it later.

After he beat Dragon, Tigers were way stronger than Dragons, that was a fact.

He raced forwards again, sword in his right hand.

Dragon raced forwards in turn, claws raised.

—

"Oi, Dragon."

"Yeah?"

"This city is fulla nutters, ya know?"

The prepubescent boy in blue overalls nodded, staring at birds on the rooftop adjacent to them. They were very pretty birds, he liked them, he wondered if they would like some nuts. The boy next to him glared at nothing in particular, just sneering at the streets below.

"I don't want to give them crap, ya know? Not a single thing from me." The equally young boy in orange overalls said, clothes stained in grease and grime. "So we're going to make a pack."

"A pack?" Dragon said curiously, he had heard that word before. The faceless lady gave him a picture book with animals in it. "What's pack?"

"It's like a promise, got it? We're going to make a promise." The orange-clothed boy said impatiently. "Nurse said this city will kill us if we keep getting into fights. Well we're not going to get ahead if we don't, ya know? So I'm not going to let it, and I'm not going to let it get you eitha."

"Okay." Dragon responded. Tiger got like sometimes. Tiger was smarter than him, so he would listen.

"If we're ever about to bite tha' dust, we're going to kill each other instead. Got it?" He glared at Dragon. Dragon flinched back and looked at Tiger sadly.

"But I don't wanna kill you."

"I know that, gonk!" Tiger snapped back. "But I'm not going to give this city a crapping thing. I'd rather you kill me than the city get me, got it? If either of us are going to die, we're going to fight instead, got it?"

Dragon looked at the birds and pulled his knees up to his chest.

"Dragon! I'm making a pack with you, you can't back outta it!" Tiger poked him in the shoulder harshly.

Dragon nodded sadly. If Tiger said you couldn't back out of it, then it must be true. Tiger wouldn't lie to him.

"Okay, we'll fight."

Tiger stared at him for a long moment, before turning back to the city.

"Good."

Dragon pulled out a candy bar, and offered Tiger half. Tiger ate it, glumly. Tigers were grumpy like that. Tiger was his friend, and he was glad for it, grumpiness included.

—

His monosword hit Dragon's claws, and stopped for just a moment. Then, it began to slice up and through his arm.

Splitting his arm in half, hitting the shoulder, then out.

Dragon's claws buried themselves in his chest.

His sword kept going, hitting Dragon's neck.

It went through without even a moment of delay. His muscles tore themselves apart, snapping like overburdened twine.

Dragon's head flew off, landing some distance away.

He didn't know where.

Two seconds after Sato Saito decapitated The Beast, his heart exploded.

It was a mutual kill.

There was silence in the arena as the corpses of two juggernauts fell. One stumbling and run through, the other headless and dismembered, both missing arms. Uriel stared for a moment, before beginning a steady walk over to the bodies.

He hadn't really been expecting a mutual kill, to be frankly honest. Sato was a small old guy, and the Beast was in two layers of armor. Ah, goes to show the power of mono-blades he supposed. Being able to effectively ignore most of a target's armor was an incredible advantage in a fight that forced melee. Then again, being massive and armored was another huge advantage, so it probably balanced out.

If one of them had speedware, they would have won. If neither did, or both did, then it was much more fair overall. A low-grade kerenzikov was enough to make a normal man almost undefeatable to his peers. A high grade kerenzikov or a standard sandy made a normal man dangerous enough to call in the big shots. Edgerunners, MaxTac, Corporate Samurai, the guys that committed violence for a living.

Speedware was a rudimentary implant. That didn't mean it was bad, that meant it was required. If you wanted to be a threat, you got speedware, simple as.

The 'meta' of the world seemed like it was going to change again soon. No longer just focused on speedware and guns, but the panzerbots coming along meant that more and more people were focusing on melee combat. Melee combat being the exact thing this arena was a crucible for. It was the perfect place to practice that previously under-explored field of murder.

Efficiency. Getting the most result out of the smallest possible actions. This arena was a training ground to make the murderblenders that would likely come to define the next conflict. There was a reason he hadn't 'fixed' the 'meta' of the arena by banning speedware. Because speedware and melee was very powerful, and he needed as many people practicing for it.

People loyal to Smasher in the future, people useful for making Pacifica downright unassailable. People useful for making urban combat in their future city a nightmare for any war planner. People who would form a wonderful recruiting pool for future soldiers.

Uriel considered himself good at planning. The arena was useful for many, many things. He planned most of them out months ago.

He stopped over the corpses of the two on the field. He stared at them for a moment, confirming they were both dead (and dead-10 for that matter). He had seen many corpses before, mostly on the internet in his life before becoming a fiery cyber-tulpa. Liveleak, ISIS beheading videos, Chinese factory accidents, City murders on camera… There were a lot of people dying on the internet if you knew where to look, he was pretty desensitized to it even before showing up in Adam's head.

He didn't particularly enjoy the death part like Adam, but he loved the fighting. Fighting was cool, he realized that when he was eight years old, and his opinion had never changed. His grandfather owned a machining shop, and he had been allowed to shape scrap metal into blunt swords. These blunt swords were distributed among friends, and then they would beat the crap out of each other using crude rules and point systems.

Uriel loved swords. He used toy swords on his friends, he got tutoring in actual swords as a kid, he won a small regional tournament when he was a teen. Swords were the one thing he was better at Adam at using, although only barely. Adam was better at using arm-mounted blades, like wolvers and ACPA retractable monoswords, not actual held swords.

That fight had just used two swords vs two wolvers. 8-year old him would have been jumping and screaming in excitement. He was older now, so he restrained himself to soaking in the details instead.

He raised a fist to the crowd. Then, raising his head from the corpses, he announced in Adam's mechanical baritone.

"Mutual Death!"

He lowered his fist and the sound damper's in Adam's Gemini automatically kicked on to muffle the sudden roar of the crowd. The applause, the screams, the boos and cries. Uriel drank it all in. In Ancient Rome, life or death of a slave gladiator would be decided at the hands of the emperor. Uriel wondered if they heard the same thing, all those centuries ago.

He sure hoped not, this was awesome and Nero deserved none of it. Fucking Nero, the worst emperor. He hated that guy.

He gave them a minute to cheer, before raising his fist once more and waiting for them to quiet down. It only took another minute or so before they had finally settled down enough again for him to speak clearly. In Adam's omnipresent malice, Uriel spoke once more.

"This duel was predicated upon conditions. In the event that Beast died, the Animals would terminate their contract with me and leave Pacifica, recommending the Tyger Claws to me as replacements. In the event that Sato died, the Tyger Claws would have an open-tournament in this arena to determine their next leader."

"What they failed to consider is that they were bargaining with things that didn't fucking belong to them. I am changing these conditions, the affected parties may pray that I don't change them further. Both the Animals and Tyger Claws are going to be my employees now, guarding the Pacifica region. They wanted the job so badly? They have it. To the Tyger Claws, I'm your employer now. Your actions reflect on me. If any of you fuckers act up, I'm coming down and slaughtering all of you in a three-block radius. That is a threat."

"You do not get to back out anymore. If you try, I kill you all. That is a threat."

"In other news, the Tyger Claws will be having an open qualifier in two weeks. Everyone in the world is free to participate. If you win, you become the leader of the Tyger Claws. If you win, you work for me from then on, which means I'll kill you if you fuck around. My apprentice, David Martinez, will be participating. He will not become the Tyger Claws leader if he wins, because petty gang politics are a fucking waste of his time."

"I will be acting as referee for these fights. The rules are simple. No projectile weapons and you stay in the confines of the arena. Beyond that, bring whatever the fuck you want to murder eachother, I don't care. There will be a Trauma Team on standby for the event, so if you want to really kill each other make sure to go for the head. Anything less isn't likely to be permanent."

"The qualifier will begin here in two weeks. Twelve Noon, Pacifica time."

Uriel lowered his fist, and walked out of the arena to go back to the HQ. He ignored the screams, cheers, and other loud noises that exploded from the arena after his announcement.

This was going to make so much fucking money, holy shit he couldn't wait. He was going to have so much funding to develop Pacifica with. He might use it to build a second arena out in the badlands for gun-fights.

—

He stared at the flatscreen that showed Smasher's other body walk off the scene and into the darkness of one of the arena's ground-floor level hallways and side-entrances. The little speech after the fight was probably the most he had ever heard Smasher said at one time… is what he would say, but Smasher just talked on a talk show for four hours previously, it was kinda hard to top that.

He furrowed his brow, and turned to look at Smasher sitting on his bench, his arms crossed. "You signed me up for a tournament without asking?"

"Yes."

"What if I don't want to fight?"

Smasher didn't respond with threats or glares, he just looked at him blankly and raised a single brow. David reached up and scratched the back of his neck.

"Yeah, point."

"D…" His mother spoke up, disapprovingly at him. He waved his arms in a 'what can I do?' manner. She continued, saying "This isn't a mission, you have no reason to fight, you're just putting yourself in danger for no reason."

Smasher glared and opened his mouth to talk, only to be cut off by his mother snapping a hand over and putting a finger on his lips. His glare narrowed to a sharp and furious point. His mother was pointedly not looking at him, likely trying to not lose her cool.

"Woman…" He growled out, leaving the threat unsaid.

"Hush, I'm talking to my son." She replied, a bead of sweat trailing down the side of her forehead as she kept staring at him. David shrugged helplessly again.

"I-I… I like fighting mom, it's what I'm good at, I enjoy it."

"You shouldn't." Lucy betrayed him. He glanced over to her with a sad frown. She was giving him an equally sad frown in return. "It's how you almost died. Fighting is something you have to do, it shouldn't be what you like to do."

"I mean, I wouldn't say that." Rebecca came to the rescue. "You shouldn't be picking fights, sure, but enjoying them isn't bad."

"If you enjoy them, then getting into a fight starts to become a good thing." His mother responded sharply. Her finger was still raised, and Adam's fury looked unabated. "Then you get into more and more fights, and one day you get unlucky. Then you die." The unspoken 'like I did' was pretty deafening. Rebecca quieted down, retreating a bit. His mother turned her stern look back to him, and waited for an answer.

David flopped around a bit, he didn't really have any response here.

Being a little messed up was something practically mandatory in Night City. He liked violence, even before he got the sandy installed. Cyberpsycho XBDs were one of the few things he spent his pocket change on. Then, once he joined the streets, he got to live that violence himself.

He rode it all the way up to Arasaka Tower. A train that could only be stopped by the wall named Smasher.

…It was addictive. The rush, the thrill, the threats and taking them out. It was the most honest power he could have. The most honest control over his life he could have. It meant he wasn't defenseless.

He wasn't about to backtalk mom though, not after she died on him last time. He wasn't going to meet Lucy's sad glare either. So he just stayed quiet, looked down, and satisfied no one.

"...You wouldn't get it, it's a guy thing, and you're all women." Katsuo spoke up from the other couch. He looked firm in his announcement, but not mocking. David raised his brow at him, wondering where this was going.

His mom narrowed her eyes at her dead friends' son. "...What's that supposed to mean, mister?" She implied dangerously, Lucy, and Rebecca were likewise glaring. David resolved to say a nice prayer at his funeral.

"I spent my allowance on cyberarms and a karate chip for a reason. Even when I was too lazy to actually train, I still wanted to fight." Katsuo, showing off that he was still the asshole with the ability to completely disregard social cues, barrelled through. "It means you're strong enough to protect yourself and the things you care about. Fighting is the best way to prove that. It's a thing that all guys feel. I don't think women do." He shook his head.

Lucy sighed miserably and buried her face in his chest. His mom glared at Katsuo for another moment before turning to look at him searchingly. David really didn't like the frustrated expression on her face.

"You're making it too complicated, brats." Smasher finally had enough of being quiet, and spoke up. "Fighting is fun. You don't need a reason."

He stared at David for a moment, before speaking again.

"...All of my memories are stored in what is called a black box. This black box then transmits its information once full to an Arasaka database. I can then access these memories whenever I wish. They include every kill I've ever made."

"If you win, I'll ask the bossman to have them turned into Brain Dances and shipped over. You can have all of them if you win."

Every kill performed by the strongest cyborg in the world… as a BD…

…He couldn't look at mom or Lucy as he nodded firmly.

He had to have it.

—

The inkstone shattered in the grip of his cybernetic arm. He stared at it for a moment, opening his hand and revealing the inky black that stained the synthetic flesh.

He breathed in and out, twice to calm himself, and set the inkstone to the side for V3 to retrieve. That was the third he had broken thus far. He was too angry to even attempt to calm down with his pastimes it seemed. That was even more frustrating.

He stood up slowly, and walked over to the door. Waiting for V3 to open it, he walked through and proceeded for the Mikoshi sub-server that was localized and isolated to the Arasaka Compound specifically. Takemura fell in step as he walked, perfectly in time and with all proper posture.

It was nice to see that everything was in order outside of his current frustration.

He walked through the halls, finally reaching the locked vault door that led to the server rooms. Takemura opened it, for V3 was too weak to, and Saburo Arasaka walked through and stepped on the platform. The vault door was locked behind them, and they descended into the earth.

A few moments later, the platform stopped, and he walked off. Down the underground halls, passed several doors and doorways, to the newest occupied chamber. V3 opened the door, and he walked through to see the cybernetic shrine that served as his interface for Engrams.

There were three in this particular shrine, all of them suspect in his current source of fury. A member of the 'Technomancers' was here, now reduced to data and their code being furiously interrogated for anything and everything that might indicate their guilt. When the incident had occurred, he had them captured and offered them terms.

One of them would be subject to Soulkiller and interrogated, and their engram returned after, or he would subject all of them to the Soulkiller, and then hunt down their entire faction and do the same to them. They didn't get to choose who was subjected to it, lest they try to sabotage the process beforehand. They agreed to his generous terms, and the engram was copied, one copy returned to them after determining that they had nothing to do with the most recent incident.

They were attempting to steal secrets of the Kendachi MonoFour though, so he forced a contract upon them to develop an even more potent blade for his Yojimbo. They did not refuse his demands.

The second was another individual of no note, an employee of Arasaka that was near to the scene of the crime at the time. The security guard of the main Mikoshi database access terminals here in Japan. They knew nothing of note, and so they were useless to him. Their engram would be copied, sent to the Mountain Databases, and then deleted here. Their soul was worthless on its own, but perhaps his mountain spirits will be able to use it to correlate information in another soul.

The third was the developer of the technology that was stolen. It was unfortunate that he turned out to be loyal in the end as well, having nothing to do with the theft. He would be revived according to the 'Martinez' experimental outline and continue to be useful to Arasaka thereafter. Anders Hellman would soon return to his work, revived in a body grown specifically for him, in a few short months.

Saburo breathed in and out, and stared at the database that held three souls and no answers. He almost grit his teeth, knowing that his heart rate was around three beats higher per minute than what was healthy for him. He was having a great deal of trouble restraining his fury.

There were only two Relics in the world.

One of them was in his body, waiting to capture his soul after death.

The other had been stolen, and he didn't know where.

He knew it wasn't one of his son's plots this time. If his son wanted it he would have simply taken it and ordered Hellman to not tell him. He would have eventually, and his son's theft would be known of before any major harm could be done.

It wasn't likely to be Militech, because the attack was too surgical, too precise. The existence of the Relic was a secret, advertisement to any party had not yet begun. They wouldn't have known about it, because only three people in the world would know about it. One of which was his son, and one of which was subject to the soulkiller and confirmed to have not let anything leak.

It was another party. A party he had no leads on. A party that somehow knew of its existence, had decided to load the Relic with an unknown soul copied from the Mikoshi database.

It had been many, many years since he had been this furious. It was an almost nostalgic feeling.

He closed his eyes, and decided that his neighbors would be adequate outlets for his rage.

He messaged Yojimbo, a simple order to come to meet him as soon as possible.

The Ordo Panzer and Shaitan had taught Arasaka the devastating power of a singular cybernetic warrior cloaked in stealth technology. Arasaka had a number of pocket-nukes of their own. Saburo had commissioned the construction for one of the frames proposed by his military cybernetics department some time ago, a dedicated stealth frame fit for exactly one warrior.

He was sure that Yojimbo would appreciate the mission.

He was an Oni afterall.

Jealousy was unbecoming of a samurai, it was crass and lowly to envy the treasures of others. Which is why he carried a private shame for feeling such. He wouldn't allow it to taint his judgment, nor his actions, but he couldn't quite manage to kill the feelings within his heart.

He shouldn't have anything to feel jealousy for. Inari had been overwhelmingly kind to him, allowing him the chance to escape the depths of poverty, a chance he seized with both hands. Through years of hard labor and studious dedication, he had risen above his peers to perhaps the single most coveted position in all of Japan.

The personal bodyguard of Arasaka Saburo himself, the neo-shogun, and most powerful man in the world. He bore the immense honor of ensuring his safety, an honor that should have been forever outside of a commoner-boy's reach. He received the best training, equipment, and information to facilitate this. He was perhaps the single greatest warrior of Japan.

But…

He was not the greatest warrior of Arasaka. That honor belonged to the Daimyo. That honor belonged to Adam Smasher, a once-foreign oni recruited from similarly low status as he. Nothing but common street-trash, who was given an opportunity by fate, and had seized it to ascend all the way to the highest ranks of Arasaka. In many ways, he served as the model by which Arasaka-sama came to recruit the most loyal warriors.

He would sponsor programs to find commoners, then the most gifted of such would be given everything they could desire and training to fulfill their obligations to Arasaka. Such methods were not always successful, he had to hunt down more than one would-be ronin, but they produced a core of loyal, powerful warriors.

The first of which was Adam Smasher. He was the greatest warrior of Arasaka. He was the greatest warrior in the world. He was given the most challenging duties. He was given the most honors.

It took Takemura Goro years to rein in the rage that his cybernetics burdened him with. Adam Smasher had a maddening amount more than he. He was not surprised it took him so many years to trust himself with an apprentice.

To be infused with cybernetics was to know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that you were better than a common man. It was known that you were stronger, that you were faster, that you were more resilient. This knowledge came with it a demon's arrogance.

A demon's arrogance came with it a demon's rage.

Why would this commoner not move faster? Why does this commoner struggle to lift so little? Why does this commoner scream so at such a little wound? Why does that commoner not see through this darkness? Why can they not hear that pin drop?

It was infuriating to witness. A constant rage at the world being so slow, weak, and blind compared to you.

It was something that old master Kagekaze spoke with him many times, something that the old master guided him through. Takemura had only taken an apprentice once he was sure that he had mastered his rage. Young Oda had far less cybernetics than he, and thus had yet to experience the rage, only the arrogance.

Once, he had been given permission to view the world through Smasher-san's memories. A Brain Dance headset, offered to him by Arasaka-sama himself. He had chosen to do so, curious about the extent of his elder peer's enhancements. He lived through the battle in Paris, against the Grandmaster of the Tank-Fist.

It was no surprise that it took Smasher-san decades to master his rage. It was no surprise that he was the greatest warrior in the world. His body was the body of a god, forged by the greatest craftsmen that Arasaka-sama was able to acquire.

Takemura knew what the outcome of a battle between them would be now. In nine moves, it would end. Nine moves that would destroy most things within five meters, render Smasher crippled, and himself dead. Nine moves was the difference between him and the peak. He resolved to further his training after realizing this.

He heard the footsteps from the end of the hall, and maintained his position. The heavy almost-stomps that were signature to the man who was six-hundred or so pounds, and eight feet tall. Adam Smasher had arrived from his domain in America, and was entering another meeting with Arasaka-sama.

There had been a robbery. A thief in the night had stolen from Arasaka something of immense importance, and Arasaka-sama was filled with an overwhelming fury by it. Immediately after interrogating the souls of those most likely suspects, he had called for Smasher-san to arrive. Likely for an important mission.

It was difficult to not feel jealousy, even if he knew it was unbecoming. He bowed at Smasher-san as he came up, and was given a slight bow in return. He opened the door to his lord's chambers, and let Smasher-san inside.

Just as he was about to close it once more, his lord spoke. "Takemura, enter."

He did so without a moment of hesitation, following his lord's orders before thinking on them. He would have plenty of time to think later, he needed to act first when commanded to.

He stepped inside the chamber, and closed the door. Walking over to the center of the room, he saw that Hanako-hime's creation had prepared an additional mat for him already. He performed the proper bow in tandem with Smasher-san, and both of them sat.

The Shogun appraised them, his ancient eyes sweeping over like a Dragon examining its treasures.

After a moment, he spoke. "A thief has stolen a relic from Arasaka. This demands immediate retribution. Just like the Ordo Panzer, we have no current information about the whereabouts of the thief. I have already assigned a fifth of my shinobi to find them."

A fifth of all shinobi of Arasaka… An army of some of the finest spies and saboteurs in the world. The scale of such a force was truly immense.

"I have a different mission for you, Yojimbo. You are going to take Takemura and Oda with you. They will operate and guard the transportation for this mission. The Jorogumo series will serve as adequate protection in the meantime."

He desperately wished to speak, to ask. It was not his place however, so he stayed silent.

"The cease-fire you negotiated with Militech has afforded Arasaka the opportunity to dedicate more effort to eliminating other enemies. A five-year period in which to remove lesser opposition and consolidate power. Arasaka must take full advantage of this opportunity, and so it shall."

The Shogun paused for a half-moment, waiting the exact amount of time required for Vee-three to place two manilla folders before them and retreat back to her place. Arasaka-sama gestured for them to take them. They did so promptly.

The feeling of paper was strange, as it always was.

"Your first target is the India-based corporation known as Darra Polytechnic. Yojimbo, you will be provided with a new frame. Takemura, you will be provided with a new stealth-carrier craft. You both will be given a discretionary budget of five-hundred thousand, and three single-kiloton yield nuclear weapons. You have up to one month to cripple the company beyond any hope of recovery."

"This mission is one that requires discretion. Arasaka cannot be implicated in this act. You are to assume code-names and wear full-covering for the duration of your duties. You are free to choose what code-names you use, but the concealing armor will be within the vehicle locker bay. There is no consequence for collateral damage, so long as the objective is fulfilled."

The Shogun finished speaking, as Smasher-san finished reading through the documents. It took him a few moments longer to finish, closing the folder and setting it in front of him once done. It was all the standard information required for such a task, namely the locations and industrial capacity for all known enemy assets.

"You may speak freely." The Shogun commanded.

Smasher-san was quick to speak, perhaps slightly disrespectfully with how quick. Such was his privilege.

"My new frame, what is it like?" He did not waste time asking for what it was, instead going immediately for what it was akin to. He was already analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of what was put before him.

"Your commentary for the original prototype Cyberskeleton was logged and delivered to the principal designers. They have been working on the second model since. I tripled their budget and workers roughly four months ago, and they have finished the redesign recently."

Smasher-san's eyes were narrow in consideration. Arasaka-sama continued.

"It is not the prototype Cyberskeleton. It is the test-type Cyberskeleton, model name Gashadokuro."

He felt a ghost trace a finger down his spine.

"It is five meters tall and cloaked in all stealth systems known to Arasaka. It contains the same gravitics and thruster combination of the original model, called the Ground-Effect System, and with your sandevistan they allow immense speed. It is a deep-strike sabotage frame. It contains nothing else. It should be to your liking."

Smasher-san considered that for a moment. He eventually spoke.

"This is a stress-test of the frame too, isn't it?"

"Indeed."

Smasher-san grinned viciously. "My codename will be 'Mr. Sunshine'. I'll try to bring it back in one piece."

"Return as soon as they are destroyed. Arasaka has more enemies than just them."

—

The cellar space was lit by a light that used a battery. The door was locked with an old non-electronic padlock and guarded by several of their guys with half-cyclers. The server system was connected to a modem with a single transmission cable. The entire cellar had been lined with a few hundred eddies worth of tin-foil. The server had no interface port, only the old-model keyboards and screens. A screen that would only be looked at by one of their only guys without optics, he got meat-eyes cloned and installed specifically for this.

In short, there was no angle of attack for the AI they planned on trapping. It was a cage, and it was inescapable. All they had to do was let the broadcast run until the bait was taken.

How would they know?

Simple. There was a light that turned green once something was in the system. The moment that happened, Mauls would cut the wire in half. He had gotten the best sandy in Maelstrom just for this. It had been days since they started. Mauls was able to stay right where he was due to his chrome. He got a few implants to let him do that.

All they had to do was wait for the bait to be taken…

When it finally happened, it was too fast for him to see. All he knew is that suddenly Mauls' fireaxe crashed down on the concrete floor, cutting the wire in half.

He jolted up and shot to check the light.

It was green.

Brick grinned behind his face-plate.

"Mauser. Say hello." He ordered, and the strommer with the embarrassing meat-eyes quickly started typing on the old interface. With a grin, he started typing aloud, finger's pecking away at the keyboard.

"Hello, AI from beyond the wall. You were looking for a shit rockerboy, and found a nice cage. I trust you understand what this means?"

After a moment or two, he grinned and glanced up before his eyes returned to the screen. Out loud, he read off the reply.

AI were real fucking nasty to find in the NET. They were just better than any meat-boy could hope to be. They had one weakness though.

Physical interfaces, and the inability to escape. If you beat a meat-boy in the NET, they can just pull the plug from their deck and escape their proper brain melting in the real world.

But an AI? If you got the upper hand, they had no way to get away. They were trapped in the NET. More importantly, right now, they were trapped in an isolated server-room. All Maelstrom had to do now was throw bodies at the AI until they cracked it.

It was inevitable, and everyone knew it.

"It says : What do you want?" Mauser said with a laugh.

"First, ask who it is. We need to know if they have what we want." He ordered.

"Not yet, AI, first we need to know if you even have what we want. What's your name?" Mauser spoke aloud again, pecking away at the clacky interface.

After another long moment, his face changed into a triumphant one.

"Alt Cunningham." Mauser repeated with a gleefully cruel expression. It was one he matched under his faceplate. "What do I tell her?"

"We want her to run a simple program for us. She should be familiar with it. She made it after all."

Mauser typed in the response, and read off the one-word reply.

"Soulkiller."

—

Away from Japan, a single stealth drone flew across the ocean. A single drone with just enough proprietary fuel to make the long journey over the rolling sea. A single drone with a low-enough profile to escape any and all notice.

A single drone that started its trip from the Technomancer airship currently stationed in Japan.

It had taken the better part of two days to fly all the way to the current main base of the Technomancers. Located on the western-side of the NUSA, around a hundred miles east from Night City.

It landed silently in the middle of one of their immense super-semi trucks. Finally giving a signal off that reached only about ten feet out. That signal alerted a Technomancer to climb up to the roof of the semi, and carry the drone down. The masked and wide-brimmed hatted individual carried the drone down, and extracted the package.

It was something she wasn't familiar with. A single data-chip and what looked like a nanite-canister attachment. She stared at it for a few moments, before walking from the drone and through the surrounding Nomad camp.

She carried all the way to a central armored camper. The Nomad on guard outside of it let her inside, and she walked through soundlessly.

Inside, the man who had united one-hundred and eight nomad families in a mere five months sat. Brown hair and eyes, tanned skin and muscular arms, a thin goatee and five-o'clock shadow. He was looking through various screens, and simply observing them. He was waiting for her to speak, analyzing information in the meantime.

"Your prediction was accurate, it seems." She placed the chip on the table in front of him. He looked at it for a moment. He picked it up and held it above his head, turning it around to inspect it.

"A dense-looking data-chip, a nanite canister, and a microcomputer… Yeah, that sounds like it matches my description. Good, the odds of my guess being right was only around sixty percent this time."

He looked at her with a critical eye. "They didn't get found out, did they?"

She shook her head. "From our most recent talk, no. Julius was subject to Soulkiller, and a copy of his engram was returned. It is likely they had to activate the Lethe protocol to prevent detection."

"Hmmm… Make sure to fix that when they get back. Also, remind me to give them all raises."

"Yes sir."

He looked at the chip again, and then set it to the side, on a flat-screen scanner built into the table. After a moment, another screen to the right side lit up with an engrammic model.

He stared at it for a moment, before selecting a memory-chunk about twenty years in. Watching it for a moment, he frowned and shook his head from side to side.

"...There's more damage than I was expecting. That might make the next part more troublesome…"

He rubbed his chin for a moment.

"...Sarah, clean up the memories a tad and have your guys work on a borg-body for the guy. He'll still be a good distraction, it should be fine with a spit-shine."

"Yes Sir."

He plucked the chip off the scanner, and tossed it at her. She fumbled a bit, before grabbing it securely. She glared at him for a moment, before stomping out carefully holding the chip.

Vincent Martinez didn't watch her go, too busy looking at a wall and thinking. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking a drag.

"...Alright Falco. So long as you do your part…"

Smasher left yesterday, or technically this morning he supposed, apparently to go meet Mr. Arasaka himself over in Japan. That's the only explanation he gave anyways, and he doubted Smasher would lie about something so trivial, so it was probably true. That meant that, for the time being, he was alone to get ready for the tournament. He decided to spend it working out the kinks of his style in the meantime. Until Smasher got back at least, then he'd see what the guy had for him.

So here he was, in the training room, about to have a long thinking session about what he was trying to do. In front of him, Katsuo was going through what he called 'radio calisthenics', Becca was following along.

Mom was out with some of her friends. Apparently she had made friends with some of the agents from DangerGal that day that they extracted them from talking to the Arasaka President.

What happened to that guy, anyways? Wasn't there a new president now? Eh, it didn't matter too much.

Lucy had gone with her, both to watch mom and make sure she stays safe and because she was still mad at him. Both of them were. There hadn't been anything as big as an argument, and Lucy wasn't avoiding him like she did last time, but she wasn't talking while around him either right now.

He sighed to himself, scratching at the back of his neck. He wasn't really sure what to do about it. He knew that he didn't need to fight in the tournament…

But he wanted those BDs. Besides, this would be good training too, and he'd get good rep outta winning it. That, and Smasher asked him to (well more like demanded, but that was the same thing with him), he was capable of it so why shouldn't he?

He knew the truth, of course, more than anything else, he was going to fight because he wanted to. It was as simple as that.

…His chrome itched…

"Sure you're not going to warm-up, Martinez?" The dry and slightly mocking voice of Tanaka pulled him out of his thoughts. He was doing some sort of rolling bounce in his shoulders and body repeatedly. Becca was bouncing next to him. "You're going to pull something, y'know?"

He let out a 'pft' and replied. "I haven't pulled anything before, I'll be fine. Besides, breaking down a muscle makes it grow back stronger, right?"

"It still astonishes me that you were top of the class."

"Work harder, not smarter." He proclaimed with a confident grin.

"I'm not sure that's how it works."

"Worked for me so far."

"Fair enough." Tanaka finally relented, their banter over for the moment. He continued with the stretches and bounces for a small while, changing them up occasionally, until eventually stopping. David checked the clock, right around fifteen minutes since he started.

"Alright, so… This new fighting style of yours, what progress have you made?" Tanaka asked. Becca shadowboxed a bit.

"Well, I want to use what I can from panzerfaust, but adapt it to be effective for non-borgs. Make it meat-choomly, right?" He responded, "I know that the 'hueerrrrr' parts are what's been messing up my body, but I think I can do the 'yah!' and 'haeh! Parts."

Tanaka stared at him blankly. Becca spoke up. "Davey, are you going cyberpsycho again?"

He almost kept a straight face before breaking out into a snort and smirk. Becca let out a 'pft' as Tanaka rolled his eyes and replied. "Alright, in non-sewerman slang this time?"

More serious, David responded. "Alright, so you know panzerfaust has four main components, right?"

"No." Tanaka and Becca deadpanned in unison. David blinked at that, before reaching up to scratch his cheek, slightly embarrassed.

"Right, so… uhh… panzerfaust is actually pretty simple overall, the basics are easy to understand, but they all build on one another." He got into the basic stance, and slowly went through the motion of a basic punch. His entire skeleton rotating to provide force for the blow, like an uncoiling… machine that uncoils… he didn't know of one off the top of his head.

"Notice how I'm twisting my entire body into the punch? That's how every attack in panzerfaust is, every one of them is a full-force attack. There isn't really a 'weak' attack in it, when you do it right."

Tanaka hummed, and spoke up. "It's a full-commitment style then?"

David nodded "Sorta, I think." He got into another stance, and slowly went through another punch. "You use every muscle in your body that you can for every attack. See how even my legs are pushing me into the attack? When I do it right, I'm using those to enhance how hard my punch is too."

"Alright… and the other components?" Tanaka asked. Becca stayed quiet, staring at his body going through the motions with puffed cheeks and a considering look.

"The next component is leaping. Lot's of jump-based attacks, or attacks based around falling on people and using gravity." David crouched and performed a jump-kick, again pushing his entire body into the motion to maximize the force upon impact. It was really tricky to get that part to ever line up optimally, but from how hard he could hit it was worth the effort. "You reach the limit on how much force you can add to the hit yourself, so you get gravity to help you hit harder. Apparently there are moves meant for zero-g, but Smasher called them worthless for now and didn't teach me. They use acceleration in general to hit harder."

"Makes sense, we're not Highriders after all." Tanaka idly replied. Becca spoke up at that.

"Who are the Highriders?" She asked, Tanaka waved a hand at the question dismissively.

"A bunch of people, mostly Africans, who are born and live in space. They got some weird voodoo culture and took over a couple European space stations a few years ago." He answered, with that explained he turned back to David and gestured for him to continue.

"The next part is aiming. I'm pretty sure every style in the world does this, so I'm not sure it counts as a unique thing though." He thought about it for a moment, before dismissing it as unimportant. "Anyways, you aim all your attacks at vulnerable areas specifically in order to maximize the damage you do. Joints, the neck, eyes, things like that. You aim at things that don't have as much armor as everything else."

Tanaka nodded. "Yeah I'm pretty sure every style in the world tries to do that." He agreed with David's initial statement. Becca nudged him in the thigh.

"You know that much with your skill-chip, huh?"

"I've been reading about styles, so no."

"Net-nerd."

"You're a nerd too, blueberry."

David raised a brow as he watched them devolve into a small squabble. He was curious to see where this was going.

"You're one to talk, mr. bowlcut. How many outputs do you pull with that style, huh?"

"More than you've pulled in inputs apparently, wannabe rimbo."

Becca growled at him and attempted to punch his side, multiple times. Tanaka slapped away each of the punches as they came.

"Aren't rimbos supposed to use guns?"

"Shut up, bowlcut!"

David snorted and piped up. "Are you two done flirting?"

Becca jumped away from Tanaka like she had been burned. She turned a glare at him. "Davey, you're adorable, but you clearly don't know what flirting is."

Tanaka decided to feed the fire. "Ah, Martinez, help me! I'm being harassed by an older woman!" Despite the sarcastic exclamation he put into that sentence, David figured he didn't mean it judging from his completely flat tone.

"You shut up, bowlcut!" Becca was not having it.

"Now she's threatening me to stay silent! I'm in danger!"

David clapped his hands and brought their attention back to him. "Right, last component. It's the one that's been putting micro flat-lines in my cells." He walked over to a target meant for destruction. He performed the same basic punch as before, denting the thin sheet metal of the target.

"That's a basic punch. It hits hard right? Now I'm not really sure how I do this, but Smasher told me to 'think of boiling water' and I was able to do it afterwards."

He got into the basic stance.

"It's really simple in practice, I just sorta…"

His fist started to vibrate, slowly at first but then building up. An oscillation that traveled from his core into his limbs, or maybe from his limbs to his core?

"Shake and attack."

He did so, letting his body twist into a rapidly-vibrating punch against the metal target.

The metal target that exploded like an anti-material rifle had it hit. Exploding inwards with a destructive boom that echoed through the room. He paused for a second, closing his eyes and furrowing his brow at the sudden resurgence of dull pain in his joints where metal met meat.

After a moment, he suppressed it again and withdrew his fist, turning to face the contemplative look of Tanaka and the excited look of Becca.

"Course, I can't do that last part unless I go fullborg, else I'm going to get cancer or something."

Tanaka raised a brow. "Cancer?"

David shrugged. "Metaphorically. I can still do it if I really need to, but not too much."

Becca nodded. "Right, so never do that ever, got it." Her arms crossed over her chest and she nodded confidently. "If you die, I'll never forgive you, got it?"

He smiled at her. "I'll keep it in mind Becca. I'm not intending to anytime soon."

"You were right, It's a pretty simple style in concept." Tanaka interrupted. "It's all about hitting harder, and nothing else. It has one goal and pushes everything to the limit to achieve it."

"Right, but without that extra oomph from the shaking, I'm not going to be able to match them in punching power. I need to compensate for that somehow."

"Maybe try chipping in gorilla arms? That would.."

David shook his head. "A borg could do that but better, It can't be a chrome solution I think."

Tanaka nodded and changed his mental parameters. "I suppose a change in doctrine? Focus on kicking instead and carry a back-up weapon in your arms instead of punching."

He weighed that mentally. "...that would let me hit harder than punching, but that still doesn't let me match up if they decide to kick too. Might be good for a stop-gap solution though."

Becca spoke up. "Why are you trying to match them in raw power?"

David and Tanaka paused, and turned to look at her. She continued explaining. "You just said you can't measure up in raw power right? So just don't focus on raw power. Focus on something else."

They considered that for a moment.

"...panzerfaust is about hitting as hard as possible, so keep that part for yourself, but also incorporate more defensive moves?"

"Right, like blocks and whatnot?"

"No…" Tanaka trailed off a bit, considering. "You have a sandevistan…" He stared David in the eyes.

"Have you considered counters and throws?"

—

David sighed as he plopped down on the concrete stairs outside of the Smashcastle, watching the sun set to his right. It had been exciting to make tangible progress on his style, something that he had been putting off developing anymore since Kagekaze died. He was still pretty torn up about that, but he had only known the guy for a couple of weeks.

He wasn't going to cry over the guy, it had been a pretty long while since his death anyways…

…like a week? Jeez, he had lost track of time, it felt like longer than that. He suppressed the twinge of guilt and focused again on the sunset. The radiation had apparently cleared up enough to be outside without a rad filter, but going in the water or underground was still a big no-no for people who didn't want to die from radiation.

There were apparently a few crazies who did, gonks who just walked into the water and stayed there until they died floating in the water after days of diving to the bottom and back to the surface. He had heard that on the news-cast that Tanaka listened to. There were a lot of deaths from people who apparently used to live in the sewers too, their bodies got picked up whenever the rain came by, and washed them out to sea.

The bay used to have some official name, he didn't remember it off the top of his head. People were calling it the corpse-sea now, apparently. For obvious reasons.

The door to the main reception room opened up, Tanaka walking out with a case of root beer soda. He plopped down next to him on the concrete stairs, pulled off a can, and offered it.

David took the can, Tanaka grabbed one of his own, and they cracked the cans open at the same time.

David didn't really like soda, but it was growing on him.

After a moment, Tanaka spoke up. "...so, entering for that BD huh?"

David groaned and Tanaka raised a hand defensively. "I'm not judging you for it, I'm sure you get enough of that already from your output and mom."

David sipped the drink, and waited a moment to reply. "...I want to see it. It'll be good for getting better at fighting too."

"Don't need to justify it to me, just curious is all." Tanaka sipped his own drink. "So that's what you want to do, get better at fighting?"

"Yeah."

"...That it?"

"Whaddya mean?"

Tanaka looked out to the minimally irradiated sunset. "What do you want to do in life Martinez? I'm a bit curious about that."

He sipped his drink, letting Tanaka elaborate.

"It can't be getting to executive in Arasaka, not like most beaverkids that went to Arasaka Academy. You left as soon as your mom died after giving me a bloody nose."

"You deserved that one."

"I'm aware. You left school and went off to become an edgerunner. That lasted until Smasher performed his iconic smashing on you and offered you a job. So… if you're not trying to go out in a blaze of glory like most edgerunners anymore, what are you trying to do?"

He didn't even have to think. "I'm going to get Lucy to the moon."

Tanaka raised a brow, so he elaborated. "Lucy told me her dream when we first met. She wanted to go to the moon, be safe from corporate bullshit. I promised to take her there."

"...You work for Smasher." It was a question disguised as a statement.

"He promised to buy us tickets to anywhere we wanted to after a year if we wanted out by then."

Tanaka nodded. "...going away Temporarily or Permanently?"

He sipped the drink slowly. Simply staring out into the sunset. "...I haven't been thinking about it, to be honest. Whatever Lucy wants I suppose."

"...What do you want then, Martinez?" Tanaka asked him more directly. "You want to get better at fighting. You want that Smasher BD. You want to take Lucy to the moon. All of that is short-term stuff. What about long-term? Like 10 or 30 years from now?"

David looked at the can in his hands, before lifting his gaze to the streets in front of them instead.

"...I don't know. I didn't think I would get that far."

Tanaka stared at him, before mimicking his streetwards gaze.

"...Alright."

And that was that.