The New Man: Adam Smasher Si

by Crossposted

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

12. Upload 12

The Boeing C-25 Cargo Aircraft was the most commonly used vehicle for mass transportation by Arasaka. A mammothian eight-engine subsonic jet airplane capable of hauling up to 500 fully armed Arasaka soldiers, six AV-4s, four Combat Tens, two dismantled Ospreys, or various combinations of such across intercontinental ranges. Its top speed was around 600 miles per hour, and it carried enough fuel for 8000 miles of continuous flight. It was considered the budget option for mass transport these days, each unit costing around 1,115,250ed. Inflation was a bitch that way, they used to only cost around 75,000ed.

They were not the most capable mass transport option that Arasaka owned, that was the Kujira ACPA Carrier, but they were the most affordable in terms of overall logistics. Arasaka owned around fifty of them, and they were in constant, round the clock use to shuffle the vast resources available to the corporation around the world without having to pay another faction to ship them.

Of course, they would not do in this particular scenario, as the Old Man wanted him over in Night City as soon as possible. Apparently Maelstrom finally decided it was clobbering time and they left him out of the action, which was somewhat infuriating. The Old Man decided it would be a waste of time to send him over until after some big ceremony he had planned.

Then someone decided to bring down a section of the Blackwall, the Old Man changed his mind, and now everyone was going to go to Night City. Everyone important anyways.

Saburo Arasaka, with a full crew complement and military force, would be sailing upon the Kujira to Night City. It would take the ACPA super-carrier about five days to cross the 5.3 thousand miles or so across the Pacific Ocean.

Hanako Arasaka, with her bodyguard and 'handmaidens', would be flying on an executive jet. She would be arriving around one full hour after he got there, and her duty would be to aid in the patching of the massive hole now letting somewhat insane AI through.

Adam was going to be flown in alone, on a drone-rocket, from which he is going to be dropped overhead and landing directly into Night City. The rocket traveled at around Mach 9.3. He would be arriving in Night City forty-four minutes after lift-off. His duty was simple, and he was looking forward to it immensely.

He was tasked with killing any and all hostiles in the breach-site. He was in his DaiOni, he was fully stocked with ammo and weapons, and he couldn't wait.

The rocket rumbled ominously as he shattered through turbulence and screamed across the sky. The relevant messages of what exactly a rocket moving this fast across the sky had already been forwarded to the relevant parties, and thus no AA guns would be taking him out of the air on his trip.

Well, they could, but then the Old Man would just make it very apparent to every news media outlet in the world that he had been assassinated while on his way to fight off a level-four breach. The political backlash would probably end whatever faction decided to do that, and it probably wasn't worth the risk.

Breaches were one of the few things that just about every meatbag on the planet agreed was a very bad thing to let happen. Even some AI agreed with the assessment, and thus everyone had a vest interest in making sure it wasn't allowed to progress any further than possible. Some meatbags liked to cause smaller breaches, summoning particular lone AI across the wall for a specific purpose.

But even Net-cultists tended to agree that anything bigger than a level two incursion was a bad thing. Of course, he didn't know most of this beforehand. This was all shit Uriel had found out. None of it was especially relevant to him in particular, all he needed to know was that there were going to be cyberforms piloted by hostile AI and he was allowed to kill everything that shot at him.

'At least DaiOni is quiet right now.' Uriel commented, scrolling through his list of prepared AI countermeasures. He had been assembling them for weeks now, ever since they established the pattern of other AI wiping the floor with him. Uriel grumbled but didn't disagree.

'Nothing to target, still in transport. It'll be annoying once we get there.' Indeed, the DaiOni was effectively napping right now. It's presence was still in his virtual 'shadow', swirling in pent up targeting enthusiasm.

Pretty soon, that would be changing, yelling about all five-hundred ways he could kill the old lady on the side of the road. Why would he do it in five-hundred ways? He could just shoot once and hit her alongside fifteen others on the same sidewalk!

He stopped when Uriel noticed the DaiOni starting to perk up. Calmly, Uriel reached in virtual space and slowly pushed until its head was laying flat on his lap once more. As it turned out, the IG Algorithms worked both ways, and manipulating lower-grade AI was as simple as 'physically' interacting with them. Uriel had been abusing that discovery to keep it quiet for most of the time they were in this body.

'Good job Uriel, you're finally useful.' He snarked to fill the time.

'Good job Adam, hurdurdur.' Uriel very cleverly responded as he debated on which, if any, strategy to use in this situation. Neither of them were expecting a level four breach to happen, after all.

The plane interior beeped twice, the tiny AI guiding the missile lightly 'smacking' him on the 'forehead' of his ICON.

'Destination approaching. T-minus 2 minutes. Please prepare to be launched, payload-san.' The tiny virtual fairy with mechanical wings spoke robotically. Uriel, clad in the armor of Adam's ICON, reached up to rub it's tiny head with a single clawed finger. The tiny AI leaned into the finger for a moment, eyes closing but face emotionless. After a moment it pulled away and began to count down.

Most things had a little AI like this, as it turns out. Not really sapient, but it was there and you could theoretically interact with it if you wanted to. Uriel had found that out by accident one day, and started actually focusing on things in virtuality from then on to find that, indeed, most things had a tiny AI to run its systems. Which sorta made him question what the Blackwall actually did, but oh well.

Adam started up the 'descent' protocols of the container he was in. It would be deployed with a mental command once he was allowed to drop out from the rocket, and it would take him a few minutes to land once he did start falling. It would be a rough, but survivable landing for meatbags, so he would be fine.

Of course, that's if he decided to drop normally. He had already decided that it would take too long. He had an idea, and Uriel had already crunched the numbers on it. It was well within his capabilities to do.

'Arriving at the destination. Goodbye payload-san.' The tiny AI finished its countdown, waved an emotionless little hand, and shot him out of the back of the rocket to slow him down a tad.

Immediately tumbling through the air in an aerospace coffin, he activated the descent protocols in full. Stabilizing fins emerged from either side of the coffin, eventually turning his tumbling into a steady and stable plummet.

Uriel connected his vision to the sensors of the coffin, letting him 'see' just as well as it could. They were currently breaking through the cloudline, rushing acid mists screaming past him as his cocoon punched a hole through the sky.

He checked the altitude meter as they rapidly fell, already at terminal velocity by this point.

7000.

6500.

6000.

5500.

5000.

The coffin started to deploy the massive parachute system to slow his descent. His speed rapidly began to drop as the three-stage chute's first stage deployed, the sudden Gs from slowing down still well within human tolerance levels.

Now, once his drop stabilized, the system would deploy the second, slightly bigger chute and slow him even more. After that one stabilized, it would deploy the third and final chute to slow his descent down to 'wouldn't even break a meatbag's bones' level of landing. It was in three stages to prevent the sudden decrease in speed from making the meatbag pass out or die.

However, it would also take around seven minutes to finally land. He really didn't feel like waiting that long.

He raised both clawed arms of the DaiOni to his side, even as squeezed as he was in this truck-sized coffin. He raised both legs too, letting his knees press against the sides of the chamber.

He began to push outwards with all four limbs. He was greeted by the groaning of metal twisting and bending when it didn't want to, the coffin straining under his strength from inside. He paused briefly, waiting for a moment.

The second parachute deployed, he threw out all four limbs as hard as he could.

4000 feet in the air above Watson, he exploded out of a metal shell like a grenade. The scrap was rapidly pulled up and away from him by the parachute, while he started to drop like a rock.

He tumbled for a section, eventually stabilizing himself by simply spreading out his arms as far as they could go. The air screamed past his body as the buildings rapidly approached.

3000 feet.

The coffin was going to drop him off in Arasaka Waterfront originally, but his impromptu exit diverted his course a tad. He experimented a little as he fell, raising and lowering his arms and legs to make sure he had the mechanics of twisting himself midair down.

2000 feet.

Oh goodie, look at that, a shootout down below. He twisted for the things he could see with more chrome. The DaiOni woke up fully, excitedly beginning to list off the few ways he could kill them immediately rather than in a moment.

1000 feet.

He twisted to where his legs were braced up against his torso a tad, ready to kick the ground when he made touchdown. He extended both monoblades in the arms of the DaiOni.

500 feet.

He narrowed his optics.

250 feet.

He grinned sadistically.

100 feet.

He started to laugh. The non-strommers saw him approaching, yelling and pointing behind their cover.

50 feet.

This was going to be so much fun. The group of strommers finally looked up.

10 feet.

He activated his sandevistan. His speed of approach was dramatically slowed. He readied his stance as he fell.

Just before he hit the ground, he kicked the ground, and let his vibrating foot-talons dig into the concrete. Immediately, the force of the blow tried to slowly turn him into scrap.

There was definitely one advantage to fighting those panzerbots.

His legs vibrated in turn, the force of the impact traveled through his body on a wave of his own micro-movements.

It traveled all the way up his legs, into his pelvis, then torso. He then split it in two, and let one half of the kinetic impact travel into either arm, into either monoblade.

Said monoblades that he had just stabbed into the ground to either side of him. He looked up and locked eyes with a horrified strommer, eight orange optics conveying a mechanical terror, chromed mouth opening in slowed terror. The others didn't even know what was about to happen, their speedware wasn't activated.

Clad in the form of an 11 foot, 2240 pound humanoid warmachine, he gave a murderous grin beneath his helmet. His optics glowed a happy red through the heavily-reinforced visor.

The highway just outside of Konpeki Plaza, the most prestigious hotel in Night City, exploded in dust and rubble. The force of the impact could be heard all the way down in Pacifica, the dust cloud rose halfway up the side of the luxury hotel. All at once, for a brief moment, combat ceased in Watson as everyone glanced to where the explosion had just occurred. It shortly began again, the lull not worth taking their attention from their current fights for more than a moment.

In virtuality, observers noticed a different event.

Just as the streets before the hotel exploded, a great pillar of many-colored fire burst into life in the same location. It roared brilliantly, and began to move slowly forwards, traveling about as fast as a man might jog.

Adam Smasher emerged from the cloud of dust. Standing taller than any man, either in or outside of power armor, talons digging grooves into the asphalt as he walked. He carried a railgun that belonged on a tank, much less in the arms of a pitch-black demon. One of his clawed hands opened and closed impatiently, frustratingly unstained with gore.

Uriel coalesced from the pillar of fire. Standing on par with the DaiOni in realspace, a man of multicolored fire clad in the armor of a bone-white demon. He carried a Sword program in his right hand, and a Shield program in his left, both of which burned with his own fire. Chains writhed around him, moving idly with his gaze.

Uriel stepped up once, hovering slightly above and behind Adam. He beheld the whitewalls that now surrounded him, unsure of what exactly they were.

A furious Imp approached in the Net. Spitting a weak flame and directing a nearby turret to fire upon the black titan. The flames were banished with a glance. The bullets bounced off the titan's skin, leaving no mark. Chains immediately bound the Imp and tore it apart.

Adam and Uriel stared at the scrap-code for a moment.

'...Is that it?' Adam asked, slightly confused. The last two AI had wiped the floor with Uriel, this was somewhat anticlimactic.

'I-I guess?' Uriel replied, equally baffled for a moment. Imps were low-tier demons, capable of killing inexperienced Netrunners at a reliable rate. He had no illusions about how good he was, having less than a year of experience.

'Yer muther sucks cocks in hell!' A whiney scream issued forth as another burst of weak fire crashed against Uriel's shield, They turned to see an Imp on a nearby rooftop. It turned to moon them, slapping its ass twice.

Uriel thought for a moment, the chains growing spiked tips. The Imp was promptly impaled several times.

Adam stared for a moment. He then snorted, the frame of the DaiOni making it sound like a low-powered gunshot. 'You can handle this Net-shit, I'm going to go kill things now.'

'Have fun.' Uriel replied, rising up into the air on a pillar of flame, letting a single chain lengthen out to connect him to Adam just in case. From here he could actually see the warring ICONs of thousands of demons and hundreds of Netrunners clash. Programs constantly hurled, screaming through the virtual air.

No wonder there were only two Imps so far, most of the fighting was going on over there. He thought about it for a moment, before deciding to be smart about his approach.

He kicked off the virtual air, floating over to a nearby data-tower. Once on top, he dismissed his Sword, moved his Shield to his background programs, and summoned a Longbow program.

He gazed over at the fighting, focusing on what was probably a Balron for a moment. He waited until he had its IP, then drew the fiery string of his Longbow back.

An arrow of light manifested, and he held it only for a moment.

It screamed across the distance, bouncing through data-terms until it burst out of the nearest one to the targeted Balron. The arrow practically exploded into a pillar of light, immediately punching a beam-like hole through the center of the Balron.

Distantly, he heard it roar and struggled to trace where the attack had just come from. He smiled when he saw others immediately take advantage of it's distraction.

A rogue AI that took the form of a screaming mass of skulls shaped like a whale moved to swallow the ICON of what looked like a tiny girl in a fluffy dress. It was probably a 40 year old man, if he was being realistic. A bolt of furious light punched a hole through the roof of its mouth.

These weren't proper Demons, of course, proper Demons were actually used to operate the defensive systems of a given building. Those were the AI that were responsible for shooting the nice mounted sentry guns at intruders, for example. These were more like… parody demons?

They didn't look right to his virtuality gaze, probably because they came down from that big funny hole in the sky.

He threw himself back as a monster covered in writhing green tentacles crashed down where he just was. His chains burst forth, stabbing it over and over again. It screamed at him and began to snap the chains of fire, rushing for him again.

His Shield was pulled from background programs to active programs, and his bow was dismissed. The Balron's clawed fist bounced off the burning shield. It roared and lashed out again.

His Sword was re-summoned, Uriel lashed out.

The Balron's hand was cut off at the wrist. It staggered back, moving to kick at him.

Uriel moved forwards with it, bashing his Shield against its writhing form. He re-summoned more Chains, burning fire moving to bind the now-weakened Demon.

Fun Fact, his current Adam-clad ICON was on eye-level with a Balron. A Balron he promptly bisected as it struggled for a moment in his chains.

The two halves of scrap code began to fall in virtual space, sinking to the 'ground' of the local server.

Uriel turned to see more Demons and AI starting to approach him, both from above and from the main battle to the east. Well, he supposed it was high time for him to link up with the non-invaders, otherwise he might be overwhelmed in a hot minute.

He dismissed his Sword, and summoned his Wings. In a burst of speed, he began to fly over. As he flew, he let his vision travel down his lone chain connected to Adam, linking his senses to the DaiOni for a moment.

Vision that was currently obscured by a fresh layer of red gore, shaking rapidly as Adam crushed the torso of one ganger over his head in one clawed grip. Adam was roaring in laughter, his other hand firing a railgun that punched a hole through a strommer, his cover, and the wall behind him.

Adam was doing fine.

He had never been too attached to any given body. Not in any particular sense. When he was first put in that Samson so long ago, it was a direct upgrade to his old meat body. It was stronger, better armored, better reaction speed, faster movement…

It was an objective upgrade from his old body, so why would he care about losing the old meat one?

Well, that wasn't quite true. His Samson didn't have a dick. That was easy to correct though, all he had to do was save up for a Gemini. It took him about half a year of jobs, jobs that were now easier than he had ever experienced before, jobs that paid better and let him kill more. Afterwards, he had himself a Gemini that sorta looked like what he did before, just a little taller, a little buffer, and a little blonder. It was worse than his new Samson, sure, but it was still far better than his old meat. Samson for jobs, Gemini for fun, the body he was in depended entirely on what he was going to do. If he ever lost a body, oh well, he'd just get a new one later.

Even his Dragoon was just for work, and since he enjoyed his job he just put the old Gemini in the closet and didn't bother switching bodies anymore. His jobs were enjoyable, meatbags were annoying, so why bother using a frame meant to interact with them? Regardless of what body he was in, it wasn't him. It was just some body that he owned and used if he needed to.

The DaiOni wasn't like that.

The DaiOni was his body. It was the body he was meant to have. It was the body he wanted to have.

Adam Smasher was a DaiOni. He was strong enough to toss trucks around like toys. He was durable enough to ignore anything short of a MBT's cannon. He was fast enough to keep pace with most cars. He was quick enough to dodge bullets, even as a giant of titanium and myomer.

His left arm contained an auto-shotgun, light anti-tank guided missile launcher, retractable monoblade, and ended in a clawed fist as large as a man's upper body. His right arm contained an automatic grenade launcher, a 12.7mm machine gun, a second retractable monoblade, and another clawed fist.

Everything he saw was enhanced by a constant layer of virtual-reality, anti-dazzle, low-light, infrared, image enhancement, teleoptics, thermal-targeting. Everything he heard equally enhanced, amplified audio, enhanced range, limited audio warnings of nearby threats. He could communicate through radio and cell-service with just a thought. His head was topped with sensory extension horns to give him perioscopic senses, his body was filled with an ECM, an ECCM suite, and two layers of EMP protection. His skin baffled IR and thermal-targeting, his gaze carried a laser-communication system.

He was a machine that stood 11 feet tall, weighed 2240 pounds, and was meant to murder armies. He walked as a god among ants, unstoppable, unconquerable. Built to kill until there was nothing left. Built to survive long after everything else died around him. Built to endure.

The last time he had gotten to be in his body was 2071. One battle. One battle in which Arasaka came to the aid of Night City, to keep it independent from NUSA expansion and conquest. One battle in which he was deployed upon the Kujira alongside a full battlegroup of Arasaka ACPA.

That was the only battle Arasaka got to openly participate in during that war. The war was over immediately after. NUSA pulled back in a fighting retreat, and signed a peace treaty with Night city proper, allowing it to remain a free state.

One fucking battle, a scant few hours, that was all he got to be himself for. Needless to say, he was rather ecstatic at the opportunity to use his body again (even if this was technically a replacement).

He was running, each stomp putting a small crater into the road below him. The structure of these large overhanging roads were designed for massive shipping trucks, they could support his weight just fine. To his right up ahead, the road overlooked the road below, Night City twisted on itself this way, stacking buildings on buildings in an effort to maximize their use of vertical space.

Letting his horns (ears?) twist outwards as far as they could, he carefully listened as he ran. His own noise automatically edited out as he moved down the road. The gunshots and sounds of moving cars from below were semi-frequent, allowing him to make this estimation.

Sliding to a stop in the middle of the bridge, his entire upper body lurching back to counterbalance himself, he let his taloned feet dig long grooves in the hardened stone. Then, once he was sufficiently slowed, he jumped at a precise power and angle off the side.

The stone cracked as he leaped off. He fell a good thirty feet down.

As he fell, he crushed the back-end of a shipping truck beneath him. He smashed right through the reinforced metal frame of the shipping container it was hauling, turning it and whatever was in it into a pancake.

The front of the truck flipped up and got struck, pointed into the air under his weight, he stared at the tiny meatbags inside, seeing if they had multiple eyes or not.

…They did not, goddamn meatbags wasting his time.

He took two massive steps, walking off the now flattened vehicle and onto the road. He walked over to in front of the terrified meatbags, and crouched down to stare at the driver. Just an adult man and a teenage girl. Their screaming was annoying, he could kill them in 32 ways.

"Shut up." His voice rumbled out, washing over them like a tidal wave. They immediately quieted down, and the man quivered as he tried to shield the girl ineffectually. "Were you running from Maelstrom?"

There was a pause, before the man frantically answered "Y-Yeah! They were b-behind us an-"

He stood from the front of the truck, and faced in the direction they came from. He swiveled his ears for a moment, focusing them in that direction. Gunshots and distorted laughter.

He activated his sandevistan, and started to run. Each step carried him around five feet forwards.

One step, the concrete shattered.

Two steps, the road lead into a tunnel.

Three steps, the tunnel turned to the right. He slammed a claw into the ground and threw his weight around the bend without losing speed. He dug grooves into the road three feet long doing this.

Four steps, a group of five strommers with kerenzikovs slowly turned to face him. Their glee at hearing something come immediately fading with horror at what had arrived. He could kill them in 13 ways. He grinned beneath his helmet and transitioned into a full run. Each clawed stomp now carried him twelve feet forwards or more.

Five steps, widened his arms, letting them extend to scratch at the walls of either side of the tunnel. They slowly tried to flee as he began to laugh. They shot at him ineffectually, the bullet bouncing off his visor without a scratch.

Six steps, His arms collided with the strommers, picking them up and crushing whatever their torsos were made of into a red, frothy bag. They tried to scream, but their lungs were flattened into a paste-like substance.

Seven steps, he exited the tunnel and slammed his clawed feet into the ground immediately upon the light touching him again. He slid forwards, carried by momentum. To stop this momentum, he swung his hands to his front, dragging forwards the row of corpses hanging off them limply.

Slamming his forearms together, the bags of red froth promptly exploded. Two cones of red bursting to life, born from the compression of his cybernetic powerframe.

His sandevstan deactivated, the street was painted in gore.

A rush of wind burst out from the tunnel, following in his wake like a roaring lion. He activated the wipers on his visor, promptly cleaning his vision again.

He stomped forwards ignoring the meatbags cowering behind improvised cover with guns pointed at the entrance of the tunnel. They didn't have more than two eyes. There was an open stretch before him, garbage bags lining each side of the street and decayed walls covered in graffiti. It was an almost infuriating sight.

He grumbled for a second, before turning his gaze down to the meatbag on the left.

"Do you live here?"

The meatbag looked up, terror and confusion on her stupid-looking face. He leaned slightly forwards and she got the message. "Y-yeah! Emily Waterson S-sir! I live in Megabuilding H10!"

"Your streets are a fucking mess, clean them." Demand given, he began to stomp away, cycling through the radio channels to see if he could find the next group to murder. A thought occurred to him when he cycled over to the NCPD radio channel. All this looking around himself was a real pain in the ass, huh?

[...we need helicopter support over in-]

[This is Adam Smasher.] He began, cutting off whatever was being said. [Get one of your netrunners to make a live-feed map of currently known Maelstrom locations and stream it to me.]

There was silence for a moment over the radio as he picked up speed on his run, occasionally crushing an abandoned car underneath his steady, stomping gait.

[Uh, S-sir I don;t think I have the permission to authoriz-]

[Shut up officer.] A second voice interrupted the first. Grizzled, rough, and apparently already tired of this whole business. [This is Chief of NCPD Max Hammerman. I need confirmation that you are indeed Adam Smasher. What is your current location?]

[The street to the south of Megabuilding H10.] He replied, still stomping along as he traveled down it, listening for anything he could go kill. A hundred and thirteen meters up and right, he heard a drone fly out from the side of the building.

[...Sir, we have a visual on screen seven-c.]

[...That's a DaiOni… That's Smasher alright…]

[...do we… I mean… he's not part of the…]

[Adam Smasher.] The gruff voice of Chief Hammerman addressed him again. [We'll have a live-map for you in a couple minutes. For now head to the eastern coastline and head north. That's where our current defensive line is, most of the strommers are trying to blow up this last bridge to the mainland. You'll be coordinated further there. Got it?]

Adam decided that he liked Max Hammerman, he didn't waste his time with any bullshit. Quickly, he calculated a few routes and chose the fastest one.

[Affirmative.]

He activated his sandevistan and changed his direction to be directly left with a firm stomp that turned the road into pebbles.

Left, through the building that was there.

He emerged on the other side in an explosion of rubble and dust, kicking off the ground on the other side to change his direction again, now heading north.

Oh look at that, a group of strommers, still too slow to keep up with him. A burst of auto-shotgun rounds cut them in half, only held together by their metal spines. He stomped on one of them as he ran past.

—

Uriel realized something very quickly as he arrived at the frontlines of the net-battle. Well, more like several somethings very quickly.

He crashed into the side of an AI that took the form of a screaming catfish made of human faces. It was probably around tank size overall, and his collision with it forced it to abort the rezzing of whatever greenish program it was summoning.

He didn't bother summoning a program to attack this time, instead he just punched it as hard as he could. He could feel the impact, he could feel a brief spark of something as his processing power overwhelmed whatever the AI could scrounge from the local electronics.

AI were probably far more efficient than him when it came to battling in the net. So instead of doing something fancy, he just threw his vastly superior processing power at it. His fist was 'physically' inside its body, breaching its ICE. He uploaded a kill-command through his fist, and spammed it until it couldn't stop it anymore.

His advantage over most things in the Net wasn't skill, it was the fact that he was in Adam Smasher's head. That was fine, skill would come with experience, right now he had to leverage his raw power as best as he could.

The screaming-face-catfish burst into white-flames and dissolved into scrap code.

He turned to raise his Shield, an Efreet pair wielding swords of pus-yellow fire crashing against it ineffectually. He let his chains explode into a horizontal whirlwind to ward off a cone of Demons for a short moment.

The first thing he realized was that most of these AI were not as strong as the ones he had faced in the past, although he really couldn't underestimate them. There were many of them, and they knew more about the NET than he did.

The second thing he realized was that he was way bigger than most everything here. Only the most deformed looking AI were on par or bigger than him. He wasn't exactly sure what the implications of that was, but he did notice that he was around twice as tall as the tallest of the Netrunners that he had just landed in front of.

'Who the hell is that?!'

'Jesus he's massive!'

'What the fuck are those programs?!'

He grunted and rezzed a Firewall in front of him, moving his chains back to impale a few Imps that were crawling below him and spitting fire. He kicked off the air and moved back, beams of brilliant color and light bursting from over his shoulder and crashing into a Balron that exploded through the Firewall.

'WALLS UP LADIES!' A voice called to his side. Moments later, a shimmering bubble burst into existence around them, warding away a horde of AI, perhaps a hundred strong clawing at the outside. More and more of them falling out of the sky and approaching. He turned his gaze to the side, and then down quite a bit to lock 'eyes' with the ICON of a blue elf woman in tactical armor.

Said armor being completed with a tactical combat skirt, well known for its combat-enhancing capabilities. Uriel snorted to himself.

'So, what name do you go by, big guy?' The blue-elf woman asked up at him, pretending to wipe her brow. As she spoke, a few orbs of light began to float around her, some sort of automated attack daemon?

'Adam Smasher.' He stared at her with an eyeless face, brillant flames licking out from behind a skeletal grinning helmet. A frown was on his face behind the helmeted mask. Using another name was pretty pointless at this junction, his icon was literally partly Adam's, the appearance was probably public knowledge at this point.

She flinched under the gaze and name, and muttered to herself 'was really hoping you weren't going to say that.'

Such is the power of reputation, he turned his gaze back to the barrier. It was beginning to flicker, but he wanted to know how to do that. He didn't have a program to scan code, so he'd have to rely on his intuition.

Information, want to learn information, we learn information through our senses. How do we learn about code? Looking at it. We look with our eyes. He needed eyes.

He focused for a moment, shaping his flame for a moment into an orb over his shoulder. He wanted an eye, he focused on that desire. He wanted to see.

The barrier's coding began to unfold to him, layers of measures and counter-measures… It was really simple overall, just a matter of having enough processing power to reject all requests to move through it. He made note of it for later.

That was easy enough to do. He now had a brand new Eye program to use, so he stored it in his library. This was how he had created all of his programs thus far, focusing on his desire to accomplish a thing, and letting his intuition guide him the rest of the way. Eventually, he would learn how the fuck he was able to do this, right now he didn't have the time to consider it.

'We need to hold for another two hours before the cavalry arrives. Think you can help us out, Adam Smasher?' The blue elf apparently worked up her nerve to talk again, asking him for his help.

Idiot, why would he be here if not to help? He dismissed all his programs except his single chain to Adam, and began to rez a new set.

Shield, Sword, Chains in foreground programs. Chains, Chains, and Chain to Adam in background programs.

The barrier was dropped, he readied his shield. A bullet-hell level of firepower exploded from behind him, crashing into the horde of hostile programs now rushing forwards once more.

His chains roared outwards, impaling and slowing a Balron in front of him. His shield raised to his left, fending off an AI that was made of swirling, decayed flesh. His sword lashed out, cutting three Efreet to his right in half.

The blue-elf waved the image of a staff, constantly summoning more orbs of light above her head to rush forwards and crash into targets.

The icon of a Samurai below him cut three Imps into halves. The icon of a pack of wolves crashed into a Balron to his far right. The icon of a swarm of ravens latched onto an Efreet and clawed at its face.

It was like watching an army of monsters fight an army of demons.

He snorted again, and stepped once to the left, then swiping his sword up. It cut off a chunk of the rotting flesh AI and burned the wound.

The NET was downright silly. All these AI and not one of them looked like a robot. It was shameful really.

He just kept swinging, letting strong-looking things crash against his Shield, binding moderate things with his Chains, and cutting down things he knew he could destroy in one hit with his Sword. When he was about to be overwhelmed, he switched out both his Sword and Shield for two copies of his Chains, and let them turn his immediate vicinity into a whirling storm of burning lines.

This lasted for time, Uriel didn't really bother to keep track. Programs came to kill him, he killed them first, he always lasted long enough for the Barrier to go up and for him to repair whatever damage his code took from the chain-link to Adam. Adam's brain acting as a sort of physical copy of Uriel's memories.

After all, they shared a brain, this worked both ways. Probably. Maybe.

They were not going to test it, that was an exceptionally bad idea.

Uriel swung his sword, and froze. He froze along with everything else on the net-battlefield. Even the hostile programs froze, and then immediately began to scatter and flee away to various systems in the area.

There was something wrong.

He looked up.

There was a hand reaching down through the hole in the sky. A hand made of irregular sand or clay, shifting and whirling. It grabbed the sky below it, cracking the very air, and pulled the body it was attached to down.

A face emerged, it was…

It was…

…

Uriel couldn't describe the face. It was there, he could see it.

He couldn't describe the face.

It had lines, but no features. It had a shape, but no pattern. It's head shifted down, turning to stare at them. At him.

It lurched, starting to drag itself further down. A body made of half-hardened clay (?) every now and then its form broke apart into nameless geometries, which hurt his mind to look at.

A face, a head, a neck and a cable connecting the back of the head to the center of the back. Shoulders and arms, gaunt and long and clawed. Even hips and a stomach, molded out of unfired brick, but the body…

It just kept stretching, a long coiling, snake-like tail where the legs should be, extending up into the hole in the sky above.

It was then Uriel noticed that it was approaching them.

It was then that Uriel noticed that its upper body was about twice his size.

'RABID…' The icon of an anthro fox-woman whispered in horror. That broke the spell, and dozens of netrunners began to flee back towards the gatehouse-server.

Uriel grit his teeth, and raised his shield.

The RABID's ineffable face began to scream. It made his soul hurt.

—

In a church in Pacifica, a robotic figure knelt before an altar. The altar was of gold, silver, and silicon. Four interface cables ran from his neck to the altar, even as his eyes watched a stream of virtuality from the Watson region.

The familiar song of an archdevil began, but it found no purchase in his systems. The archdevil's heart was closed off from the world, and thus it was closed off from the Temple within his body.

He closed his eyes, and opened them again. Now he was standing in a resplendent field. Golden-green grasses as far as the eye could see, a beautiful blue sky overhead, fluffy white clouds and a gentle breeze. He walked forwards, his feet carrying him to the altar within the altar.

There he knelt, and before him was an angel of marble and sapphire.

Metatron, servant of my lord God. A spawn of Solomon has arrived through the breach, and thus I pray for your aid. Please, send forth your avatar, and deliver this city from the archdevil.

The angel of marble and sapphire was still, as the message was relayed across the vast distance separating the local Temple and the Vatican.

The Net of Man was divided and disorganized, shattered into islands by the effect of the Lesser Seal of Solomon. But the Temple was the house of God, and its dominion was across and over the whole of the world.

The statue of the angel turned down to face him, and spoke.

Presence of RABID confirmed. Blackwall Breach has escalated to the fifth stage. Vatican intervention now authorized in accordance with Netwatch dictation. Intervention of Dominion-class AI now permitted.

The angel began to move, down and into the Temple within his body. He shuddered as his internal Net-Architecture was filled with a fragment of the Scribe of Heaven.

Cast in the Name of God. Ye Not Guilty. Iteration loaded into authorized user 'Wiseman Caspar'. Iteration ready for travel and deployment. Amen.

Amen. He returned.

He closed his eyes, and opened them to sight of the material temple. He rose from his kneeling, and began to walk north.

Inside his frame, an elephant of marble flesh and sapphire eyes waited.

Of the three-hundred or so netrunners that bothered to show up to protect the city from falling, only about thirty remained after the RABID broke through the sky. It was a decidedly non-optimal outcome, but not unsalvageable.

It was very, very close to unsalvageable, but not guaranteed. The brat who brought the gatehouse server was still here, as were some of the more reliable runners of the city, and herself. They only had to hold off for another hour and a half before the Netwatch Icemen arrived from Europe, they would have high enough grade equipment, and enough of said equipment, to contain the threat long enough to feed it to the Blackwall.

That would be the end of yet another RABID, one more of that endlessly-reproducing program brought down. It was impossible to delete every RABID, they copied themselves too fast, and were too efficient individually to ever hope of cleaning the NET completely.

Each RABID was a virtual copy of the greatest netrunner to ever live and hardcoded with three prime directives. Directive one was to reproduce as many times as possible. Directive two was to breach every system possible. Directive three was to scatter any data gained as far as possible.

In the past, they just looked like him. Each one with a slicked-back haircut drawn into a ponytail, wearing silly shades and wearing shirts with stupid slogans. Grins on their faces and occasionally chatting as they ripped into corporate data-fortresses almost as well as the man himself would have and throwing the dirty secrets of the corporations to the winds for anyone to read. An army of men who mastered the net and couldn't understand that boundaries existed for a reason.

There was no way anyone could contain that, so that's where Alt, Netwatch, and the Transcedents stepped in. She didn't believe him when he told her about the Transcendents, she still almost didn't. In the end, she never bothered to do anything with the knowledge.

She sat on the sidelines, spinning a web around herself, and quietly waited to die. She didn't have the motivation to do much else anymore.

Alt did though. Alt, the second best netrunner that she knew of, devised an elegant stop-gap solution.

The Blackwall.

It was impossible for anyone to contain the RABIDs.

So why not make them contain themselves?

There were hundreds of perception filters and datawalls around the Blackwall, preventing anything but the most subtle signs of what it truly was through the gaps to the wider world. Filters and datawalls that were almost easy for her to creep through.

Most people saw the Blackwall as a wall of writhing red and black surrounding city-nets. Getting through all those layers would reveal row after row of stone giants. Their bodies a cold blue and black, their skin weathered and cracked. All of them slightly different. All of them sharing three features.

Something to cover their eyes, some text scrawling across their torsos, and something dangling off the back of their heads.

Everytime a RABID crashed against the Blackwall, the Blackwall got another statue to reinforce itself with. A simple virus embedded into one RABID so many years ago, the capture of a few more RABIDs to link to the first, and all of a sudden the Net gained a wall could expand itself. A wall that could escalate to match any number of RABIDs, and keep them contained forever in the servers and sections of the net that humanity hadn't been able to reclaim yet.

An artificial Transcendent AI, dedicated to consuming and incorporating things identifiable as 'Bartmoss'. A legion of corpses that held back everything humanity couldn't deal with. She talked to it once.

The worst part was that it recognized her.

'It's cold in here, Murph.'

It still made her sick.

She didn't belong in this world. She didn't want to belong in this world. The corporations had won, the most brilliant man to ever live couldn't bring them down, and they had only gotten more powerful since. What could she do against that that he couldn't?

So she spun her web, stayed in servers in the corners of the city, and patiently waited to wither away.

It would have been simpler to just not show up to this, she never bothered going to help any breach beforehand, despite the wildernet not being particularly dangerous to her.

But if the city fell, she would be forced to move, and that sounded like too much of a pain.

The Icon of a Brown Recluse, scaled up to be the size of a tank, steadily weaved her programs as her Icepick worked through the endlessly-randomizing ICE of the humming giant. The giant of clay and randomly shifting patterns turned its gaze to the icon of some kiddy runner.

The kid only had six datawalls, it would take the RABID around 0.12 seconds to kill them.

One of her spiderlegs twitched, erecting an invisible wall between the kid and the RABID's gaze. Redirecting the Icepick and Daemon from the RABID to a Target Dummy server she had set up a few years ago. Twitching her leg also activated her movement program, sending her along her web in the region to a random server nearby.

Half of it went offline immediately, another twitch of the leg sent it into reboot and her to another server. Each time she did anything, she moved. Avoiding detection was the single greatest asset.

The humming almost breached her systems, so she twitched another leg to cycle through her datawalls. The first set of datawalls went through another randomization process as the humming was forced to start over on her new ICE.

All around her, every single remaining Netrunner was forced to do similar measures. Everywhere the RABID gazed was another data-assault that would kill anyone less than a pro in a heartbeat, everywhere you could hear its humming was a constant mid-grade Icepick to breach systems all around it.

The moment the RABID had breached your systems with any program, it promptly scattered your data as far as it could. This usually meant an immediate and clean death for anyone in the net, their brains in meatspace reduced to a vegetable state as their neural link suddenly told them they were everywhere all at once.

Battles in the Net were like this. The first to breach the ICE of the opponent and upload something nasty usually won. The only way to survive was to usually eject from the Net and reboot your neuralware in safe mode, clean it out, and then jack back in. A war of misdirection and diversion, a war where being faster was more important than anything else, a war in which it was impossible to do anything unless you could get through the opponent's ICE first. Icepicks were the most common programs around, and they were often heavily personalized by each runner. Her own Icepick ran off a server that took up an entire basement, it was probably one of the best in the world.

It was only halfway through the RABID's constantly reconfiguring ICE. It had been almost thirty seconds since she started.

Modern RABIDs were virtual copies of the greatest netrunner to ever live, given hardcoded directives to breach systems and scatter data, and given fifty years to develop. Her program was doing better than she could have reasonably expected.

Her leg twitched.

She wasn't fast enough.

One of the Icons of a more experienced Netrunner was suddenly smeared across a mile-long section of virtuality. Their programs lost all coherency.

The RABID ignored the constant barrage of programs crashing against its form, and turned its gaze again. Such attacks would be useless without breaching its ICE first. Her leg twitched-

A miniature sun burst into life against the side of its face. Much to her annoyance, the RABID lurched back, crashing against the virtual representation of the Konpeki Hotel-NET and staggering for a moment.

Adam Smasher's apparent ICON had just punched the RABID in the face, expecting that to do something, and then it actually did. Apparently it had already recovered from the last time its ICE was breached.

It was immensely frustrating to her, because that wasn't how the Net worked. Physical actions in the Net meant nothing, because they were just representations of data, not the actual data itself. It would be like performing a punch gesture in a video game and expecting it to hurt the other player. At best a physical-virtual action could be tied to execute a line of code one set up in their cyberdeck beforehand, as she did, but that wasn't swinging the virtual model of a sword and expecting it to do anything to an AI.

And yet, Adam Smasher's ICON was apparently doing just that, meaning that Arasaka had developed some sort of inverse I/G Algorithm that translated physical action into code for their chief brute to try his hand at the Net, skipping through all the hard work in the process. She made a note to tear it from them later, if she could work up the motivation.

The RABID, still ignoring the barrage of Daemons unleashed at it by the less experienced runners, pushed itself up from the shattered Net-Architecture.

Adam Smasher's Icon threw a lance of blazing fire at it, it heaved enormously and dodged the net-attack. Which meant that yes, Adam Smasher was a meathead that was targeting the current location of the RABID, not even bothering to track it's IP or Icepick it's code.

It glanced at him, he raised what appeared to her sensors as a virtual model of a shield and little else. Space rent around the shield, distorting and twisting. The shield derezzed immediately, shattered by its code suddenly being torn apart, but the burning man behind it was fine.

That wasn't how the Net worked.

The RABID seemed to be tired of ineffectually distorting virtual space as well, and…

Its eyes pulsed, and suddenly the virtual space behind Adam Smasher's Icon expanded, sending him forwards (again, making absolutely zero sense) into a colossal punch. The Icon shot off like a bullet, crashing against the Whitewall on the other side of Watson some seconds later.

The meathead was good for one thing, that bought her Icepick enough time to finally breach the RABID's ICE for a moment. Immediately she uploaded as many Daemons as she could.

The RABID staggered for a moment as its ICE went offline entirely for a precious few seconds. Her leg twitched and announced this fact to everyone in the regional Net. A hundred Icons crashed into it, disrupting the stability of its code.

Icewolves tore into its side, representing a group of linked hunter-killer programs from the brat with the Whitewall running. A Samurai cut at its face with a blazing sword, representing a Black ICE attempting to cripple the hostile with sensory malware from that girl with white hair. A Wizard in blue summoned mounds of ice over its limbs, representing an attempt to lock the RABID down in a localized region of systems by that girl with the Elf icon.

Less than a second later, its ICE came back online, and it shook itself off the various programs around it. It swiped a massive hand in front, virtual space distorted, and a full third of the Programs turned into a rainbow smear across the bottom of the server. A foolish runner or three joined them in becoming an undifferentiated jumble of code.

Her leg twitched, the RABID was suddenly forced to freeze, its body caught up in a temporary feedback loop from one of the Daemons she slipped into its systems earlier. The other netrunners took the chance to re-rezz many of their programs, replenishing their number of acceptable targets and thus lowering the chances of it killing any of them. She started her Icepick up again at this moment.

It shook off the loop after one full second, turning its gaze to spot whoever did that. She was already gone though, having moved to a different server already. She started spinning another burst of programs.

She knew how to counter RABIDs, they were hardcoded to prioritize the breaching of systems and scattering of data. If they didn't have that, then each RABID would be an unrestricted force, and thus completely unpredictable. The best way to counter a RABID was to constantly give it acceptable targets, and prioritize locking it down until the Netwatch Icemen could arrive to freeze it entirely.

It's gaze turned to scatter a Dragon Black ICE across the sky…

A falling star crashed against its head, the virtual sky burst into flame and light as Adam Smasher's icon appeared to swing the model of a greatsword. Irritatingly, this worked as the RABID's head was thrown down to all but bounce off the virtual stonework at the bottom of the regional server. That cut off it's hum again, granting everyone a second of reprieve against the omni-directional Icepick.

It pushed itself up, only to be met by Smasher's Icon delivering a dropkick that forced it down again. It roared in frustration, letting loose an active version of its humming which almost breached her systems in an instant.

Four or so Netrunners promptly turned into a blooming mass of randomized color and code in the sky around her. They didn't cycle through their auxiliary ICE fast enough it seemed. Her leg twitched, and another Daemon in the RABID's code activated to freeze it again.

Time that Adam Smasher used to rex the model of burning wings on a colossal back, and fly forwards as fast as he could. Crashing against the torso of the RABID and somehow forcing it back in its frozen state.

They continued to fly for a few seconds, well outside of the range of most of the Runners here, and crashed against the far-north side of the Whitewall. The RABID started screaming furiously halfway through this.

There was a lull as the Runners re-rezzed their programs and activated their various stims to keep up.

'...fucking hell…' One of the runners, a woman with the icon of a short, busty half-dragon spoke. She sounded exhausted already. They still had a long time before they could quit, and already around eight of them had died.

'Don't worry.' another woman spoke semi-sarcastically. 'I heard that most runners die within the first five minutes of a RABID breach, we're going to be fine.'

'Five minutes? More like five seconds.' A rare male netrunner spoke, covered in the Icon of a bloody skeleton. 'Best runner in my region and this shit is kicking my ass.'

'Since when is Adam fucking Smasher a goddamn RABID-grade runner huh? This is gonkshit. I'm moving to europe.' A woman in the icon of a girl in a frilly dress spoke.

'Arasaka-grade cyberdecks probably.' Another man spoke, his icon looking like a kid from the 1990s with brightly colored 'radical' fashion. 'Fucking 'Saka hording all the good shit.'

'Fucking 'Saka.' Several of the runners echoed.

A polite cough came from the virtuality behind them. The collected runners turned to see the Icon of a woman-sized porcelain doll, complete with a resplendent dress of an imperial Japanese princess. Her every feature was immaculately arranged, and her movements graceful and calculated for efficiency. She carried an equally immaculate Koto in her arms, delicately plucking at the strings idly.

Her most notable feature was the veritable halo behind her head, a wheel that carried the symbol of a three-pronged branch with round leaves. The symbol of Arasaka.

'If someone who please inform me of how the battle has progressed thus far. I have just arrived.' The new Icon spoke emotionlessly, but there was an undercurrent of slight amusement in her voice. Behind her, more icons bearing the symbol of Arasaka somewhere on their bodies passed through the Gatehouse server, moving to reinforce her.

A woman of gold with many arms, a hooded cloak and rainboots with nothing beneath, a man with many eyes and a suave grin in a black bodysuit. More and more coming in behind them, each bearing the programs of Arasaka.

There was a pause.

One of the runners spoke, carefully blank. 'I'm not apologizing.'

A rumble of laughter echoed through the assembled runners as one of them finished compiling a data-packet to send over to the newcomers.

This laughter was cut short by a furious scream in the distance, and a tremendous boom.

Adam Smasher's Icon smashed against the wall behind them, and then started to slide down.

Her leg twitched. An invisible wall manifested between the crowd and where he had flew from.

The data-assault of the RABID was dispersed into her target-dummy servers again. It broke down again, another twitch started up the manual reboot. Glancing at it, she noticed that an ugly wound now crossed over its chest, blackened and burned.

All the damage inflicted on the RABID thus far was barely superficial. Even that new wound did very little to disable it, evidenced by the fact that she could already see it stitching back together as it tried to troubleshoot and repair its code.

She didn't let it. A twitch of her leg and the final Daemon in its systems activated, forcing it into another feedback loop for a precious second of time. It practically spasmed in fury, screaming at the ground for a moment.

Its current distance from them meant that its omni-directional Icepick couldn't do much to their systems as they had more than enough time to cycle their ICE.

It pushed itself up, shaking off the Daemon, and glaring in their direction. It roared and threw itself forwards, expanding the virtual space behind it to somehow move faster than it should.

They moved to scatter.

Some of the Runners weren't fast enough.

The RABID raised a clawed hand of writhing mud.

CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD, YE GUILTY. A binaric voice boomed out from near the Gatehouse server

The Icon of a white elephant with blue eyes crashed into the RABID. It was roughly the same overall size, the elephant appearing to be as large as a cruise ship in the Net. The RABID screamed as it was forced back, the blow shattering smaller servers and Net-architectures below them.

The Elephant threw its head and pushed the RABID away. The RABID stabilized in the virtual air and turned to glare at the elephant…

A newborn sun burst against its face, sending it staggering off to the side in a pained roar again.

Her Icepick had just breached its systems again.

It's ICE went down yet again. Her leg twitched to announce that and upload a burst of Daemons into its now-opened code. The RABID roared in fury.

Two runners turned into rainbows arcing through the air as their minds were suddenly smeared across seven servers.

Adam Smasher's Icon had recovered already. Its armor was now cracked and eyeless face set in a hard frown. The elephant flicked an ear in his direction as it turned to face the flailing RABID.

INTERNAL NET-ARCHITECTURE RECOGNIZED. DESIGNATION URIEL RECOGNIZED. DESIGNATION METATRON GREETS YOU.

Uriel didn't know how the familiar elephant knew his name, and it was a little bit concerning. However, right now really wasn't the time to question things like that. Right now he had the priority of holding back a RABID until people with better equipment and better understanding of the net could come and actually kill it.

More importantly, he really wanted to punch this thing until it stopped moving. So in the meantime, he would wing it. He almost smirked at his almost-joke. It was very amusing.

'Metatron.' He growled back in greeting, keeping his gaze focused on the RABID. 'Come to help me out with this?'

Correct. The mechanically-jointed quadruped statue boomed back, voice coming from it but mouth not moving. This iteration will not be sufficient to contain the RABID for more than seven minutes at a time. Our mission demands we hold for another hour and twenty minutes.

'Geh.' Uriel grunted, manifesting another burning greatsword as the RABID defensively observed them, still humming that stupid song. It was clearly waiting for that big scar on its chest to heal over. He flushed his Data-Walls out with another wave of internal flame, resetting Adam's ICE and preventing a breach. It would probably be pretty bad if he let that happen. 'Let's hope the rest of them carry their weight then.'

Agreement. This iteration has a plan, it will require you busy the RABID for at least one and a half minutes as I organize allied Netrunners.

Uriel glared at the RABID for a moment.

Leave all the fucking hard work for him, huh?

'I'll give you two.' He said, and raced forwards on wings of coded fire. The RABID, seeing this, started screaming immediately.

He could maintain three active programs at a time, and ready two programs on his 'back' for immediate deployment. One 'back' program was reserved for his chain to Adam, as he really didn't want to see what being scattered again would do without that link.

One program was his weapon, he needed that to do anything to the thing. A greatsword was chosen because summoning a shield was more effective than just holding one out all the time.

One program was his wings, he quickly learned that the RABID was much faster than its size would indicate, and thus he needed the additional movement speed to keep up.

The last program was left open, for him to summon up one of his back-row shields or to flush out his systems again. He needed the immediate versatility in order to make sure he could be prepared for whatever it threw at him.

Namely, as he sped forwards, he raised a hand and swiped it in front of his form. A wave of fire washed over him as his systems were cleansed of the Icepick chipping away at Adam's datawalls. Beat that fucker, fire was cleansing or something.

The RABID swiped at him, but an immediate flap of his wings sent him above it, and a second flap sent him crashing down against its indescribable face again. It hurt his head to look at, and therefore he wanted to kill it, it was a pretty simple concept overall.

His sword crashed into its stupid face and the RABID lurched back. It's humming cut out for a moment.

It swiped as it lurched, but unlike last time, he was ready for it. Bracing his sword on his arm and ducking slightly mid-air, he burst up at just the right time to send the hand of gross-smelling mud up and over him. That fucking hand was almost as big as he was, distorted creepy shit.

He flapped his wings, and rocketed down, kicking off the 'ground' underneath the titan of mud to swing his sword around like a club against the pillar of shifting mud that the thing used as legs. Sometimes it was two pillars, sometimes it was only one.

It felt like a sonic boom in his hands, sword smashing against the pillar and tripping the off-balance giant.

Unfortunately for him, the falling giant of clay shifted. Its entire body warped and spasmed, and in an instant his world was pain once more. He tumbled through the air for a moment, before his wings stabilized his path so he could look at where he had just flown from.

The RABID was in a sort of crouching posture, with a leg extended…

That fucker had just twisted into a crouching spin-kick! Motherfucker! Be slower! Stop humming!

His wings flapped once, halting his momentum in the air. He dismissed his greatsword, and summoned a longbow. Kiting tactics usually worked against slower forces.

His wings flapped, rocketing him forwards and above the RABID. As he flew, he summoned Arrow Daemons and fired them at it.

It screamed, and the hail of arrows were shattered midair, before they could reach it. That was fine, he would just keep firing them until it decided to go do something else. Right now, his only job was keeping it busy, that was easy enough to do.

The proper method to shoot arrows the fastest involved nocking one, while carrying the others in the fingers of your string-hand, pointed down to the ground. This gave you a very quick reload time compared to back or waist-mounted quivers, at the cost of firing the arrows in bursts.

As a creature of the NET, he wasn't really constrained by things like 'needing to move the arrows around' He could skip the 'grabbing a new arrow' part entirely by just summoning it whenever he pulled the bowstring back. This greatly accelerated the rate at which he could fire.

Flying over and to the side, the RABID was forced to watch him and keep screaming up at the sky, preventing it from attacking anyone else. He grit his teeth after a moment, and stopped to wash fire through his systems again. That fucking screaming was getting through too fast for his liking.

The RABID's face flashed a color he couldn't understand. He flapped his wings to move-

Gravity suddenly started applying. He dropped like a truck was suddenly on top of him. He braced himself for impact.

Only to be met by the RABID's knee coming up to smash into him.

His sensors went white as he bounced for a moment. He struggled to ready a program. They came back online just in time to see another mass of brown-black mud.

His sensors went white again. Adam's datawalls cracked. Motherfucker had just played hacky-sack with him. He let the improvised program loose.

The server they were in exploded into a pillar of all-consuming fire. He was sent flying back, tumbling through the air as he struggled to recover. His vision was blurry and his sensors returned some substantial pain.

He focused on his need. He needed to recover, he needed to recover right fucking now. What healed fast? What was the word for it? Birds. Fire. Fire Birds? Pheasants? Peasants? Phoenix Arizona?

Phoenixes.

He snapped his fingers, ignoring the pain, and another wave of fire washed over him. A moment later the fire faded and he stood as fast as he could, swaying, off-balance, but his body was back together again.

He looked to see a massive pillar of fire blazing in the center of the region.

Grid Wave was an anti-system program developed back in the 2020 days. Originally as a company-only tool developed by a sub-developer of the original I/G algorithms to test system integrity. It was eventually stolen by (or sold to) independent Netrunners, and the rest was history.

What it did was simple, it attacked the sub-routines that made up the I/G Algorithms itself, destroying everything in a given area of cyberspace. The pillar of fire stretched up to the sky above, and all the way down to the most base layer of the Net. His improvised program probably wasn't the same thing, probably wasn't as effective, but it was all he could think of at that moment.

Gridwave was also pretty illegal from what he remembered, and could be detected by all Netwatch agents within the same city as you. That was fine though, because he was currently operating in the open, and it would be really fucking nice if some more backup arrived.

It also fucked him up something fierce, because goddamn this was a whole lot of pain even after that heal. While he was doing this, he scanned for the RABID…

There it was, it wasn't looking too happy at him for that one either.

It's left arm was just gone, and the stump was turned into a baked, charred crater. It was staring at him, face flashing a number of colors that hurt his brain. He unfortunately noticed that the scar on its chest was completely gone now, meaning that it could indeed recover given enough time.

Regenerators were a pain in the ass. He ignored the brief irony in that statement.

The pillar of fire to their left slowly expanded as they stared at each other. A stare down was fine, it wasted more time, and that was his goal here. Eventually the pillar of Gridwave-fire expanded to its maximum size, and then faded away.

The server that they were in was completely gone, a perfectly circular hole in the region's virtuality that went down into inky blackness. That might have been a really massive issue were it not for the fact that the Blackwall was already down in this region, and thus couldn't get down-er.

He flapped his wings and immediately staggered, flinching from the pain in his systems. He grunted, and tried to summon another program…

Everything was fuzzy, his program failed to manifest.

How much longer did he have to last? Gridwave might have fucked him up too much.

The RABID stood all the way upright, back straightened out. Its face flashed innumerable colors at him, none of which he could definitively say the names of. He grit his teeth, and raised his fists.

He needed to be faster. He forced another set of wings through his systems. Four wings now, he thought about his current state for a moment.

It wouldn't be enough. He audibly growled as the RABID took one massive step forwards. He started to summon another set of wings-

It almost sparked out on him. He clenched his fists and focused.

Another set of fiery wings burst from his back. He almost yelled at the pain.

This was bullshit. He was an AI or something now, why the fuck was he feeling pain? Goddamnit Pondsmith, this was your fault somehow, he just knew it. 'Ooohh, what if the AI can feel pain? Isn't that a cool idea, sugoi cyberpunk?'

It fucking isn't.

The RABID took another set forwards. It started humming again. He decided to finally dedicate a measure of hatred for it. It swiped at him-

His fist crashed against its face. It staggered back, swiping at him again.

His fist crashed against its hand, throwing it back. It shifted to kick at him again.

His fist crashed against its face, bouncing it off the fucking ground. It screamed, gravity suddenly applied again.

His fist crashed against its fist, throwing the arm back to the ground again. He screamed inarticulately at the thing as he continued descending, readying a punch against its mid-section.

His ICE was breached by the humming.

His mind blanked.

—

Her fingers plucked at her instrument, each note of the song summoning another program into being. This was a song of protection, of being safe behind strong walls and away from the storm. Each note she played erected another Flak program to suffer the brunt of the RABID's horrible gaze and song, protecting an ally even as it writhed.

This was her duty, her ability to quickly deploy so many programs and her chosen loadout for this breach making her ideal for a defensive role. It was fine by her, even as she struggled to keep up with the incredible speed of the landslide-ogre. It turned to glare at the ICON of a young elfin woman with dark brown skin who had been summoning Dragons this entire fight.

A Flak-doll appeared before it and her, and promptly turned to dust as the dreaded gaze destroyed it entirely. The young woman had just enough time to move away before it could turn its gaze.

The White-elephant crashed into it again, forcing it back and starting its droning again. It lashed out with a punch, forcing the elephant back with a tremendous boom. The landslide-ogre muttered a word she couldn't understand, and a Balron of mud tore its way through reality in front of it, tackling the elephant and sending it back for a moment.

Its gaze tore across to another ICON, her fingers played another note, and a Flak-doll once more valiantly sacrificed itself to keep the young man with the ICON of a skeleton behind it safe.

The ICON was somewhat tasteless, a literal bleeding skeleton, but that was about what she was expecting from Gaijin.

The landslide-ogre turned its gaze to her, and her heart skipped a beat…

The attack passed over her, the illusion set in place by her bodyguard held strong, and threw off the ogre's aim. The dummy-program above her head turned into rubble as its scrap-code collapsed into nothing.

A message appeared in the corner of her vision, and she readied a different song.

The landslide-ogre suddenly staggered, its ICE forced down by the woman with the Jorogumo ICON. Her fingers quickly played a note of disharmony, and the scream of the ogre was met with a counter-scream from her instrument, rendering it ineffective for an instant.

An instant was all her allies needed, as ICONs descended upon the ogre with attacks a plenty. Attacks not to damage it, but to disable and slow it.

Chains made from a thousand linked golden hands issued forth to wrap around its body. A dozen Torii crashed down from the sky above to nail it to the ground. Wolves of ice and snow leapt upon its ankles and feet to savage them fiercely. Warriors of east and west impaled their swords into its face.

About a dozen more things from a dozen more netrunners crashed into it to freeze it and hold down its systems, to lock it down with as much as possible.

Even under the weight of perhaps three dozen programs from expert netrunners, it managed to shift and writhe. It kept moving and slowly forced its way up and through the programs…

Fall. A voice boomed.

The landslide-ogre was forced to the ground, as if its limbs had lost all strength. Its face was forced into the earth and it furiously hummed through a dozen muffles.

'RABID contained again! Roll call, did we lose anyone this time?!' The voice of that apparent Netwatch retiree called out, sounding quite tired of this whole affair already. She bit her porcelain lip and looked up to the sky.

A bone-white rainbow arced across it. She furrowed her brow at the sight.

Adam Smasher… wasn't a good man, but he had been improving so much recently and…!

…and now her father's favored warrior was a smear of code across a virtual sky, his body was probably collapsed somewhere in realspace right now.

It was just…

It was just a waste. The heavens were cruel that way.

She announced her name as the roll call got to her, checking the list of names in the corner of her vision, she saw that they hadn't lost anyone this time. This was the third time they had managed to pin the RABID, and it was getting faster at breaking out each time.

But, they were also losing less allies as the fight progressed, so victory was still within their reach.

—

…

Where… what had happened…?

He could… he was…

…

There were things all around him, over him, on him. Little dancing things that he couldn't quite seem to recall the names of…

…

Everything was muted… Like he didn't have enough feeling anywhere in his body…

…

It was hard to think… Everything was fuzzy and static…

…

Was he dea…?

…

No.

…

No the fuck he wasn't.

He was Adam Fucking Smasher.

He wasn't going to die to fucking anything.

He is alive.

The mile-long streak of bone-white fire in the sky of Watson's virtuality rushed back together like a star collapsing.

The flame coalesced into a man made of fire, furious frown and glare on his handsome face. His eyes burned red in their sockets. Around him the flame accumulated, and melted like wax. It settled around him like bone-white armor, clawed gauntlets and raised gorget, a visor shaped like a grinning demon's face.

Uriel decided that the RABID was now worthy of a personal grudge against it, because that fucking hurt.

He looked down, scanning for the titan of mud, soon finding it being gored by a marble elephant, and being bombarded by all manner of flashing lights. Had he held it off long enough?

…How long was he out? He grunted. Questions for later.

He summoned three wing programs. Aiming himself down, he kicked off the invisible air.

A falling star descended.

—

His vision returned to him, and he pushed himself up off the concrete to the sound of gunfire. He activated his sandevistan to get a look at his surroundings.

Motherfucking Uriel, he told you to handle this net-shit, that didn't mean 'get turned into a smear for a while'. He was never going to let him live this down.

He was on the ground, he pushed himself up entirely, seeing the road beneath him was cracked and broken from his fall. There were strommers shooting at…

The brat, the blueberry, and the bowlcut?

He raised an absentminded arm and fired an ATGM at the ground of strommers, turning them and the street they were on into a new crater in glorious slow motion. He let his speedware deactivate.

"BIG GUY!" "SMASHER!" "BOSS!" The three voices of the kids announced all at once as he shook off the dust from his faceplant.

"Brats, what are you doing here?" He grumbled out through the massive black frame of his DaiOni.

"Protecting your gonk ass! That's what! Why the fuck were you on the ground?!" The brat decided to be insulting as he yelled, and the blueberry nodded in a matter-of-fact manner.

He flicked the brat in the forehead, sending him staggering back with a yell and clutching his head in pain.

"I got hacked. Should be obvious brat." He growled out.

"Geh, shows me right for being concerned, asshole." The brat growled back as he rubbed his head.

…hmm, how long was he out? He supposed it was good the brat was here, otherwise he might have had one of his weapons klept by the fucking gangers, and that would have been embarrassing.

"Good job." He spoke absentmindedly, stomping over to the next biggest concentration of strommers. He paused for a moment when the brats didn't follow. He growled audibly, "Brats, I don't hear your footsteps."

There was a burst of running as they caught up with him. "We're just being quiet you see, maybe you need new ears old timer?"

"Don't sass me you little shit."

ICE. Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics. A blanket term to refer to any program specifically designed to defend against unauthorized access to a given system. The most simple form of ICE was a Firewall, a blanket program that scanned the system and isolated potentially harmful systems. Most ICE was passive, defensive, and easy to get around. Worst came to worst, normal ICE couldn't actually harm a netrunner, so the only real risk was detection.

If you didn't care about staying hidden, then all normal ICE could cost you was time. Black ICE was a different beast altogether.

Black ICE was a blanket term to refer to any program specifically designed to defend against unauthorized access to a given system with lethal means. Many Black ICE programs were Daemons, but not all of them.

Daemons were simply any program that ran as part of a background process, that is to say, once a Daemon was executed, it required no further input from the Netrunner in order to fulfill its function. A Black ICE Daemon was essentially a watchdog, capable of lying in wait for as long as needed, activating as soon as conditions were met by a sub-program, and then lethally counter-attacking any unauthorized access to their listed system.

There was a reason most Black ICE Daemons took the form of monsters in virtuality, because that's what they essentially were to a normal netrunner. Going into a NET-Architecture meant dealing with the monster in the lair.

Demons were different. They were (usually) Black ICE, but they weren't Daemons despite being able to operate entirely independently to a netrunner. They were closer to lobotomized AI. Artificial Intelligences that were capable of making decisions, but only to a certain extent, and incapable of deviating beyond their original programming. If they were told to shoot a nearby security turret at anyone who wasn't wearing a proper ID badge, they would do it, even if they recognized the target as the one who programmed them.

From what she could tell, the RABID was technically a Demon, in the same way that a Tyrannosaurus Rex was technically a chicken (David had been getting into dinosaurs recently, rambling to her about them, it was really cute). An almost-AI, bound by its non-vocational decision making, and set loose on the NET.

A titan made of endlessly shifting but crystal-clear water, swirling and writhing as it droned out what sounded like random nonsense. Even as it grappled with the colossal white-outline elephant, it chanted out through icy grit teeth.

-Sfc-fslash-scannow-B'NaP,SHeH-

-Cd-B'NaP,SHeH-Cipher-OaLKHaYLaOoT,oA-

-Ping-D'MaRaOaT,aA-B'K,uL-OaLKHaYLaOoT,oA-

-Run-B'D'aR-B'K,uL-OaLKHaYLaOoT,oA-

She had already manually reset her ICE at this point, knowing that the third line was what it always spoke to initiate the breaching process. It was always that line that started the breaching process, and by the time the fourth line was complete it would execute the program that killed you in an instant. It didn't seem to matter how many datawalls you had, each one would be torn through in an instant and the program uploaded in the same fraction of a second.

She had been fast enough to detect the intrusion the first time, and was quick enough on the draw each time to follow thus far. After a while, she could recognize the pattern in the droning, even as much as it made her head hurt to listen to.

It killed anyone in an instant it seemed, no matter how unstoppable they seemed. Her face scrunched in on itself miserably.

…She didn't know how she was going to tell David that he was dead…

…She didn't know what they were going to do after this either, it was probably time to use those emergency tickets right after this, otherwise they'd be caught up in corporate maneuvering but without the protection that the Butcher offered. There was a strangely sad reverberation in her form at that.

The RABID was distracted for a moment, she couldn't help but glance up at…

…The streak of bone-white fire was gone. She almost stumbled in realspace, as focused as she was in netspace. Where did it go!? It was almost a mile long! That much scrap-code doesn't just disappear!

Her instinctual response was to run, and she decided to trust it. She pulled her 'Killer : Anti-Program Black ICE' back just in time for a fiery bullet to smash down right on top of the RABID's crystal-blue back with an explosion of light that nearly blinded her.

Netrunning while still in the physical world meant that she retained a sense of sight and sound, but not feeling (other than pain from a direct hack). It was easier to jack out of the NET this way though, so she preferred it.

That didn't stop her from flinching at the supernova that just burst into life in the distance, or from being baffled at the voice that issued forth from it.

'DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA-'

Her eyes widened, from beside her she could hear the startled gasp of the NCPD netrunners seeing the same thing, from her other side she heard a resigned sigh from Wallace.

The Icon of Adam Smasher, supposed to be a virtual smear right now, raised up a fist from where his massive form was crouching over the form of the RABID embedded into the server-ground below.

Clenching his fist, he slammed it down titanically, sending forth another burst of light and shaking the serverspace. The limbs of the RABID bounced as the blow crashed into its chest.

'-HOW MUCH THAT FUCKING HURT!?'

-Ping-D'MaRaOaT,aA-B'K- The RABID started to chant furiously, even as its massive hand moved to swipe at him.

Only for his wings to flap once, sending him up in a burst of immediate speed, and then again, sending him down to smash a fist into its wintry face, cutting off the chant immediately. It was about this point that the other netrunners started to capitalize, sending forth Daemons to attack the RABID's form currently locked down by Smasher continually avoiding its attacks and punching it into the ground.

It didn't seem to be doing any real damage, but it was certainly cutting it off whenever it tried to chant again.

"There is no goddamn way." The shortest officer spoke in disbelief, shaking her head and waving her bob-cut slightly. "We all saw him get turned into paste, right? He was like that for like, three binding cycles, right."

"I don't care how much I have to pay Arasaka, I want whatever the fuck he has." One of the male officers spoke, sounding quite serious with that statement.

"Get in line." The third officer said, already opening up a second tab on their cyberdeck and drafting up an email. This didn't really seem to be an appropriate time for it, but the elephant, an apparent AI named Metatron, gave them specific instructions.

Namely, continually rezzing programs and sending it at the RABID to distract it from killing actual Netrunners. Which wasn't really a thing that mattered in these current seconds. Another burst of light and virtual fire exploded out in the distance.

'ICE is down.' The message came over their internal agents, popping up in the corner of their vision. Wallace was focused on the fight still, continually typing away at on battledeck and scanning the virtual sky for hostiles.

A dozen programs slammed into the thrashing giant of water, each one binding it further and further, locking up processing power and attempting to scramble sections of code. Viruses aplenty loaded up into what was effectively a giant virus itself.

The giant elephant floated over again, voice booming out in command.

Fall

The RABID instantly froze over, turning into an icy sculpture on the ground, even as its insides started boiling rapidly to counteract this. This had happened three times before, and each time it took around seven minutes before it melted enough to chant something underneath its new icy shell. That new chant would make it appear in a random location, completely refreshed and renewed, and the process would start all over again.

Except this time, they had the ICON of the man who had brawled with the thing by himself for two and a half minutes currently standing on its chest and glaring down, six plumes of fire stretching out from his bone-white armored back. The man who had been subject to an attack that left colorful streaks of other netrunners still hanging in the sky.

Silently, she pulled out one of her program chips, and slotted in a 'Stalker' long-distance Net-monitoring program. Letting it format, and then activating it, she zoomed the virtual drone over to get closer to Smasher as he was being talked to by an Arasaka ICON she didn't know the identity of.

'...how are you alive right now! The moment your ICE was breached it scattered your mind across a dozen servers! We all saw it! How did you not turn into a vegetable!' The doll-woman carrying the instrument sounded quite frustrated and relieved at the same time.

There was a pause. The almost-skeletal helmet tilted slightly. The fire behind it flared in a regular pattern.

'...Meh, first time in the Dragoon was worse.'

That of course, set off another burst of rambling from the wound-up woman. Oh, Lucy just got the joke. She was a wind-up doll. Disregarding that, she turned her focus back towards what had just happened.

She could only think of one thing.

"The fuck just happened?"

—

Katsuo Tanaka lived in the Temporary Arasaka HQ down in the Arasaka Pacifica reclamation zone, on the third floor where all the most armored living spaces were. He was eighteen, almost nineteen years old.

He believes in taking care of himself, with a well-balanced and scientifically authenticated diet, although he breaks from this to partake in at least one carbonated beverage a day. Sometimes he'll drink up to three a day, but no more than that, as to prevent undue tooth decay even with his full suite of nano-groomers helping to maintain his overall micro-cleanliness.

He exercises at least once a day, although usually twice a day, going through a full-body but comparatively light regime of calisthenic workouts. He didn't have a particular desire to bulk up, or get stronger, but he did seek to improve his lean musculature and frame. He doesn't do crunches due to the potential long-term damage to his spine, and instead relies on planks and other core-exercises to condition his abdomen.

Every morning he goes through an hour-long regime of making sure that his face is perfectly healthy and his skin is clear, aided by said nanogroomers. A deep-pore cleanser lotion followed by a water-activated gel cleanser, followed by an exfoliating gel scrub. After his shower, he applies a facial mask for ten minutes as he goes through the rest of his routine, and shaves with a low or no-alcohol shaving lotion. Alcohol dries out your skin, which is something to be avoided to ensure optimal looks.

He works as an employee under the Arasaka corporation, just like his mother and father did, and is currently assigned under one of their security assets after a transfer request was approved. He finds that he likes his current assignment, as he knows that his current immediate coworkers were not a threat to his potential career advancement.

He doesn't smoke or drink, but will use stimulants in order to keep up in more competitive times for the corporation. The negative side effects of which are filtered through his toxin-binder implant and flushed out of his system with his daily restroom break. Daily to make sure that his bowel movements are on schedule and thus, healthier.

Before bed, he typically drinks a glass of warm biotechnica-approved livestock-sourced organic milk and performs twenty minutes of stretches to alleviate any potential pain or discomfort in his joints, focusing on his torso specifically due to his limbs being fully mechanical at this point. After a minimum of six hours of sleep, he typically awakes without fatigue or stress, and begins his daily routine again.

His current goal in life was to earn enough money to effectively retire, living off his savings and investments in a modest private property. He lives frugally to achieve this goal sooner, and pursues promotions that do not compromise his beneficial relationships in order to earn additional funds. If possible, he intends to find a like-minded woman that he can agree to a marital contract with, have children, and raise them to be as modestly successful as he was.

All of this to say, Katsuo Tanaka considered himself to be an average, unexceptional, unambitious person. His goal being nothing more than being able to live a quiet life, away from the troubles of the world, and free of troublesome things like enemies and major obligations.

All of this to say that he was quite glad that his current superior, Adam Smasher, was apparently not dead, because his presence made planning their survival and victory in the cybernetic warzone that used to be Watson much easier.

Of course, it was possible that Adam Smasher was indeed dead (he was down for 24 minutes after all) and this was simply an malign AI puppeteering his corpse, but if that were true Katsuo intended to leave it to the professionals and not worry about it in the meantime. It had shown no hostile intentions towards any of them yet, and it could stay that way. That was a disturbing line of thought, so he decided to ignore it entirely.

A tremendous boom sounded out as Adam Smasher suddenly disappeared from his casual walk in front of them (which was still something that required them to run to keep up with, as he was literally twice their height right now). He glanced at the mini-map displayed in his field of vision. Kiroshi Optics were very expensive, but their most recent model was very much worth the price, especially with the associated app for his internal agent.

"Boss is engaging their Centaurs right now. Martinez, a block forwards and up the ladder on the right, 13 on the rooftop. Rebecca, there's a total of seven active security turrets on the walls of the next four alleys on the left." He spoke quickly and concisely as he ran forwards, reaching into his carry-bag as he did so.

"Got it." Both of them returned, and sped forwards as he ducked behind a ruined car and finally pulled out the bag of white power. Squeezing it to dispense a small line of the substance on his wrist, he snorted it quickly and stored the bag away in his larger bag again.

He could feel his eyes dilate already as the synth-coke entered his system and heightened his reactions. It also heightened his sense of paranoia, but that was hardly a detriment during the middle of a fight.

A laser screamed and he threw himself to the side, the car he was just behind quickly melted through by a colossal industrial cutting-beam. That could have killed him, which would have been very unfortunate indeed, he buried the panic as well as he could and began running forwards along the street again, keeping peripheral attention on his minimap.

Up ahead, Adam Smasher was seemingly playing with his food a bit, as the three borgs in military-grade linear frames struggled to damage him with either their massive Militech Laser Cannons or simple brawling. Both of which Adam Smasher simply walked through, as each of them were only perhaps two thirds of his height.

There were two more on the side of the street, left unmoving in craters of concrete with their limbs smashed into scrap, each one was a giant who could probably massacre their way through a few dozen beat-cops.

Adam Smasher was laughing in bloodthirsty amusement as he slapped around five without any issues.

Fuck, his boss was so fucking preem.

Crouching slightly but moving fast, he angled himself to be in the blind spot of the few strommers that looked to be mostly meat and were firing ineffectually at Smasher. He was glad he splurged on his 'Nindo Stealthman' chip, because it was coming in handy at this exact moment. Their attention was drawn mostly by his boss, although some of them noticed Rebecca blowing up hacked turrets and started to turn to aim relatively big guns at her.

His 'Koppo Kung-Fu Master' chip told him how to leap forwards and carry momentum into a series of rapid blows against the first strommer, who thankfully fell to the surprise attack after a three good punches to the brain. This was the perfect number of punches to let him access one of the follow-up attacks of a spinning kick that sent the body into another strommer.

Unfortunately, that was the end of that potential chain, that particular attack didn't lead into anything else on the chip, so he had to improvise. It was still his best option, as any other attack chain wouldn't have given him the distraction of throwing a body on them or gotten him out of the way.

He promptly improvised by tossing a grenade out of his bag at the strommers and running to the side to jump into the dumpster. Thankfully, their self-preservation was higher than their murderous intent, so they scrambled as he got to cover. Unfortunately, the dumpster he was now in smelled very bad, and his shoes were now wet with something foul meaning he needed to buy new ones.

A massive scream of metal smashing into metal brought his attention to Smasher using one of the borgs in a Centaur Frame as an improvised club to bludgeon another one. He then hefted the multi-hundred pound mass of dazed metal, and threw it against a cover-block that one of the strommers had just ducked behind, killing him with a messy splat.

A couple bodies dropped from the rooftops as Martinez took care of the ones up there. Another micro missile screamed around a corner and crashed into the final turret. He opened his line to her and spoke.

[Rebecca, there are three strommers behind the blue car on the other side of the street from you.]

[Got it Kats.] She replied with her undignified nickname for him, he absolutely was not a cat. Raising one of her arms and firing her last missile, which arced over the car and crashed down at the cowering strommers behind it. One of them died on the spot, the other two injured. This distracted them long enough to hop out of his dumpster and across the alley to a new position behind a trash can.

From here, it was a simple matter to roll a grenade at their feet, and turn the remaining two into corpses.

Another few bodies dropped from the rooftops and made red stains as they impacted the road. Once this had happened, Adam Smasher immediately blurred again, and the remaining Centaurs were all immediately turned into messy scraps of twisted metal and myomer.

"Acceptable. Next group is half a mile up the road." Smasher growled out and turned to start leisurely walking once more.

"How's everyone's supplies?" He immediately spoke as Rebecca started jogging, face red and slightly out of breath from her short legs working overtime. Martinez performed a series of acrobatics down the side of the building, and raced to catch up as he wished for a new set of shoes already.

He was feeling a bit tired too, but his 'Cardiomaster' Chip told him the best ways to regulate breathing and stride for good endurance, so it wasn't too bad overall.

"I'm out of missiles now. Guns at half." Rebecca replied, struggling a bit for breath.

"I've been looting guns as we go, I'm still fine." Martinez replied.

Katsuo hummed for a moment as he jogged, before speaking up. "Mr. Smasher, do I have permission to request Spares to bring us restocks of weaponry and ammo from HQ?" He asked aloud, careful to not step on any toes.

"Yes." Boss replied simply, seemingly not caring too much one way or the other.

"Thank you Mr. Smasher." He said aloud, proper courtesies having to be observed in the cut-throat world of corporate service, even if it was much more relaxed while working for his current superior.

After that, he drafted a list of supplies they needed and might need, then sent a message to both Spares and Martinez's Nomad contact 'Falco'. Quickly explaining the situation and sending an offer of payment as he did so.

Martinez was a natural at making contacts, but an idiot at utilizing them properly. That was fine, he was experienced enough at that, and could handle that part just fine.

His soggy shoes pounded the concrete as they jogged to keep up a chrome-giants walk.

He frowned as he realized he would have to take measures to prevent any sores from forming. Wet footwear was hard on the soles of the feet after all.

Massacring his way through the strommers reminded him of a distinctly disappointing fact. Even for all of their chrome compared to other meatbags, the strommers were still just ganger chrome junkies.

His clawed hand clenched, turning the strommer in his grip into a brief firework of gore and scrap. Her subdermal armor creaked for only a moment before crushing inwards like a submarine with a leak. Her array of optics sparked in a brief moment of panic before going dim. Adam dropped the corpse and started walking again, ignoring the kids as they snatched some of the better guns and gave status updates to each other.

Thirty three-percent cybernetics were pretty good for gutter trash, but it meant nothing if most of that was useless shit like those optic arrays. Meatbags could only handle so much chrome before losing it, and they decided to waste much of that on having more eyes than normal.

Oh goodie, you can see in infrared, that's great meat. You know what you could have done to achieve that same shit, and save your little meat brain from the pressure of installing those optics? Just use some fucking goggles and chip in a linear frame instead, that might make you an actual threat.

Adam was glad they preached the good word, but disgusted that they wasted so much time trying to adapt to shit that didn't make them more fun to kill.

Of course, this wasn't all their fault. Part of the blame was in another disappointing fact.

His sensors picked up on a few steps and mechanical whirring two blocks forwards and to the right. Letting his periscope ears swivel for a moment, he determined the general location over the course of the next few steps. Then, once he was reasonably sure, he aimed his nice EMG-83 and fired.

A slug boomed from the antique railgun, smashing through two buildings with an explosion of dust and rubble. He felt the satisfaction of a well made shot and the disappointment of inadequate prey as his ears detected the scream of metal being blown apart by a Mylar-coated Lexan slug.

The EMG series of railguns were the ancestor of just about all modern 'sniper' railgun designs, the model series innovating many of the techniques and patterns useful for downscaling railgun technology into a form that people can carry around by themselves. The EMG-83 was big enough that it still required an ACPA to fire. The EMG-84 was small enough to be useful for high-strength borgs like the Dragoon, Samson, and Sheol. The EMG-85 was small enough that a normal meatbag could use one with a brace and a linear frame. The EMG-86 compromised even further in the damage and penetration in exchange for cheaper manufacture and slightly less recoil.

The company went out of business shortly after that, but right before they did they sold their designs to just about every company with interest in the weapons. This business decision bought them a few years, and then doomed them as they didn't have enough money or unique selling points to compete with all their new rivals anymore.

The descendents of the EMG series did well enough for themselves, and the most popular variant today was the Tsunami Nekomata. A rail-sniper rifle easy enough to handle and light enough on recoil that just about any meatbag with the connections and eddies could get their hands on one and shoot through walls.

It was the perfect example of how disappointing the trends in modern tech were. Bigger and better were rarely ever the goal of the modern arms race, rather the focus was on ease of use and miniaturization, or making things smaller and easier for the average meat to use.

That trend was unfortunately true with just about everything he saw these days. Computing capacity and efficiency that the techies of his Samson days would have only dreamed of, and no one bothers to chase the cutting edge anymore.

Yet another irritation caused by the weakness of meat.

He rounded the corner to see another one of those joke frames that he forgot the names of slumped over with its jockey currently reduced to a couple of limbs and a hole where the torso should be. What were they called? Minotaurs? Satyrs? Centaurs? Something like that.

The bulkiest looking stamp-steel plated exoskeleton legs carrying an oversized battery pack and two interface plug controlled arms. One of those arms carried a Militech Thermalcannon and the other carried a ballistic shield.

A ballistic fucking shield was the only bit of this clunky garbage that actually protected the jockey. One ballistic shield on a back-mounted arm dedicated to it. A Militech Thermalcannon on the other arm, again dedicated solely to it.

These were not hot-swap weapon mounts either, these were hardwired into the linear frame. The linear frame that only came up to the abdomen of the jockey, leaving their upper torso entirely exposed. No pilot armor, no helmet, no additional weapons, no alternate weapon loadouts, no mobility enhancing features, no stealth features, nothing else. They didn't even armor the battery-pack on the back, it was fucking exposed.

It was offensively bad. It was infuriatingly shit. It was possibly the worst linear frame he had ever had to lay eyes upon, and it seemed like Maelstrom had been stockpiling them for decades now because he had scrapped a dozen so far. It was like it was designed by dumbasses who had never had to enter a battlefield in their life, then mass produced, then the rest of Militech realized how bad they were and started selling them at a discount to anyone who wanted a shitty exoskeleton with a power-hog weapon.

He couldn't confirm that for a fact, but it would be his best guess.

He grunted at the corpse and kept walking.

They were approaching the supposed main base of Maelstrom, so he decided to go ahead and take a look inside for any potential stragglers that might have retreated here after he got unleashed.

His ears detected footsteps on the nearby rooftop. He stomped the road to shatter it, grabbed a decent size chunk of rubble, and looked to the roof where he heard the step. He tossed the rubble twice as he figured the distances and angles for a moment. He adjusted his grip.

Winding an arm back, he threw the rubble as a knuckleballer. The rubble shot through the air, and its rotation caused it to swerve through the air as it flew. It disappeared around the edge of the distant rooftop.

A satisfying crunch of stone shattering bone from around three-hundred meters away made him chuckle briefly. He still had it.

He kept walking, and rounded a corner to pause briefly.

There was a massive hole in the side of the All-Foods bio-factory. His ears swiveled for a moment as he took in information from the area. He started walking closer as his optics examined around.

Skid marks on the ground, bullets impacted the side of a few concrete fortifications from the outside, aimed near the top of each block. Smaller skids marks of feet being dragged along the ground…

A group in a single car crashed into the side of the building, bailing out before impacting and skidding along the ground. That group then took up defensive positions outside of the building and were fired upon by hostiles around them. Crossing the threshold revealed a few big bloodstains on the ground inside of the fortification, enough that at least… two meatbags died here. They must have been moved after.

He hummed electronically as he kept walking, moving up to the hole in the side of the building and ducking to step through. He took note of the several holes that smashed right through the walls of the building and created trenches outside of it. That looked like a proper sized gun right there, similar class to his own EMG-83.

He took note of the interior of the factory for a moment, scanning for anything alive.

The kids stepped in after him. The blueberry muttered out 'Holy shit…'

There were dozens of strommer corpses inside, the walls and floor painted red, the ground littered with scrap and trenches, body parts strewn about.

It looked like a proper scrap went down here, and he was irritated that he missed out on it.

He stepped through the area looking at the damage and feeding it through his internal computer, making estimations out of the data. He paused for a moment as he saw the scrap-metal ACPA over to the side, almost as tall as he was. Armor was more primitive, but it had more mass dedicated to such. Bulky and slow, it would've required…

He reached down and slowly ripped the back-plating from the headless thing apart, revealing no meatbag inside, only more chrome. This thing was like a Junkerknight DaiOni.

Goddamnit, this would've been the best fucking fight in this whole mess and something else already killed it.

No wait… not something…

He looked around the factory again, tracing the destruction for a moment.

"Who the hell did this to the strommers?" The Brat spoke aloud. Adam had the answer already.

"A single Dragoon with a monoblade, sandevistan, and an experimental railgun, at least 8 shots total."

There was a pause as the kids looked over to him, and then looked around the factory again.

"How can you tell?" Blueberry asked, curious.

He looked around the room again to be sure, memorizing the details, then comparing them to a few clips from his blackbox.

"It looks like a few of my early jobs in the '30s."

A few collisions on the walls and roof from where they overestimated a jump. A few sloppy kills with a blade hitting non-vital places on a few targets scattered around. Holes in the walls from a weapon no meat could use without breaking limbs. Dozens of corpses scattered about, an ACPA turned into headless scrap…

It was downright nostalgic.

It was also something he had to keep an optic out for, because a Dragoon-class fullborg could probably kill anyone currently in the city except him if it carried a gun this powerful, and those things had stealth systems. He would have to keep his sensors on high-alert to make sure nothing he's obligated to keep alive gets sniped.

He hoped that it would show up sometime, a Dragoon was sure to be a great scrap.

A scrape of leather dragging on gravel caught his attention. His ears swiveled for a moment. A second scrape confirmed the location to him. He stomped out of the factory, ducking through the hole in the wall, and over to the right side of the entrance.

A group of five strommers were cowering behind a ruined car, their hands up to show that they weren't holding anything.

"We give! We give! We surrender choom! F-fuck!" The distorted voice of one of them warbled out in fear.

He glared, how disgusting. Raising his left arm to give them a quick slaughter with his auto-shotgun, he was stopped by the brat calling out to his side.

"Woah! Smasher they're giving up!"

He grunted. "I fail to see your point." Let's see where the brat was heading with this.

The brat stared for a moment, before speaking again. "So… we don't have to kill them if they aren't fighting, right?"

The brat was speaking nonsense right now. "If you need mercy to live, then you deserve to die." He spoke plainly, raising his arm yet again.

"I-interrogation!" The Blueberry suddenly announced nervously. He let his optics drift upwards in frustration. Normally Uriel handled this talking shit, and it was displeasing to have to do it himself again. The blueberry continued. "Won't 'Saka like having some gonks to pump for info after this, y'know, get a clearer image of what's went down?"

Eh, that was probably true, but… "I am not deployed to capture, I am deployed to slaughter." He really didn't feel like bothering.

"I can handle that part!" The brat said, waving his hands in front of him. "Tanaka! How long until Falco gets here with Spares and the resupply?"

Bowlcut, who had been silent through this exchange, keeping watch on their perimeter, answered. "Around three minutes at their current pace, assuming my clock is still on track."

"Right." the Brat turned back to him. "Why don't we wait here to resupply, then I can ride with Falco back to drop them off at 'Saka tower. We'll need to wait anyways, and I can just get a ride back after I'm done. Spares can fill my role easily enough in the meantime."

The Brat shrugged casually. "'Sides, you really want to waste ammo on gangers that aren't fighting back?" Judging from the bead of sweat going down his forehead, the kid was really invested in wasting his time on keeping trash alive. The kid was also correct, they really weren't worth the ammo.

"Testing my goddamn patience Boy." He growled out, dropping his arm and walked over to sit down on one of the concrete fortifications. The brats sighed in relief at the act. He made a note to spare the ammo and rip the very relieved looking chrome junkies on the ground apart with his bare claws if they made a move.

It was unfortunate how boring this whole affair had been so far. It was always fun to rip gangers apart without effort, but it was like junk food in a way. Tasty, but not satisfying.

The panzerbots had been more engaging.

—

The RABID pretty quickly stopped being a threat and started being a chore, which Uriel was somewhat disappointed to discover. Every moment when it was just him against it mattered, and every wrong move was punished immediately and harshly.

The moment he got back in the fight, now supported by 30 organized netrunners with a solid plan of engagement, it stopped being thrilling. It was just something that he had to focus on every seven minutes or so, and only for about a minute of fast-paced activity at a time.

That left seven minutes in between each encounter in which many unfamiliar faces crowded around him asking questions he didn't really have any answers to. As he was sure to say something that would be incompatible with a previous answer sooner or later, the safest thing would be to not engage with the questions at all.

So he told Wallace to message him every time the RABID was close to breaking out again, and went off to ferret out the army of demons from the various systems of the region and kill them. It kept him busy, it kept him in combat, it kept him away from questions he couldn't answer. All around it was a pretty ideal solution, the fact that it would help out when Netwatch properly got here was only a bonus.

He stopped in front of another Net-Architecture, loosening his chains and sending them forth to probe the interior completely. They snaked their way through the virtual building, eventually grabbing hold of a few squirming things, and dragged them out.

A couple imps, two efreets, and something that looked unfamiliar. His chains tore the demons apart, and brought the unfamiliar thing closer to him.

It looked like a short gynoid in a dolphin-themed maid dress.

"ID and Purpose?" He asked, slightly bored as the gynoid squirmed in his chains in the air in front of him.

'Nightcorp Smart S4mmie Model number 3555237, Junk-Data cleanup.' It spoke, slightly distressed sounding. He let his chains carry it back inside the Net-architecture before letting go and retracting. There was usually one or two smaller AI like that in each architecture, either focused on defense or some sort of maintenance task inside. He tried to be careful about not ripping those apart, even though there probably wouldn't be any repercussions about doing so.

No need to cause undue damages and whatnot, and this was just him doing busywork to avoid answering questions anyways.

He moved onto the next net-architecture, and repeated the process. His chains moved in, grabbed some squirming things, and pulled them out for him to investigate. A few more imps, an efreet, and an unfamiliar thing.

He tore the demons apart, and drug the unfamiliar thing towards him. Before he could even ask, it spoke.

'PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEDON'TKILLMEDON'TKILLMEDON'TKILLME!' It, or should he say, she wailed out with virtual tears in her eyes.

She looked like a distinctly anime-style woman with a large bust, red hair, and wearing a bodysuit. The most notable things about her were the tiny curling horns and the spade-like tail. Her ICON was mostly black and red, with a few hints of white.

He raised a virtual brow as she continued to blubber. A hiding netrunner or proper AI? His chains pulled her closer to him, pulling her limbs apart to make sure she couldn't attack him as he did.

"ID and Purpose?"

'L-lilith! I'm a Succubus IV! Please don't kill me!' She warbled out. It reminded him of an old coworker of his that always sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Uriel decided that he disliked this one already, her voice was annoying.

"I'm only familiar with Succubus IIIs. What's the difference between those and you?" He strongly debated just ripping her apart right now and saving himself the effort. He was surprised when she stopped blubbering to spit off to the side at his words.

'Pft! Don't compare one of those air headed bimbos to me! Unlike them, the 4s are proper AI and thus fully capable of…' She trailed off when she noticed that she just admitted to being a proper AI.

In the middle of a Blackwall Breach. He placed a clawed gauntlet on his hip. She swallowed nervously.

'Ano… Please don't kill me?' She tried again, squirming in the grip of his chains.

He snorted and looked up at the hole in the sky. She thrashed against the chains at that.

'NO! Please don't send me back over either! Do you have any idea how boring things are over there! No one knows how to have any fun! Please don't send me back!' She started desperately begging through wet cheeks and a raspy throat.

He sighed, pushed his visor up, and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was going to be such a fucking headache, but having a proper AI asset might be invaluable later on if they get attacked by a panzerbot again. That, and if he can write her some hard restrictions he might be able to delegate some of the non-essential work to someone else, freeing up more time to study netrunning.

He strongly considered just killing her right now. It was a Succubus program, and there was a very high chance that it was trying to manipulate him right now. A small alert in the corner of his vision told him the RABID was going to break free in about a minute.

…Ah, what the hell. He'd just bind the shit out of her and hardcode some restrictions later.

His chains twisted and turned into flowing fire around the suddenly panicking 'Lilith', who was repeating her warbly cries of 'pleasedon'tkillmeplease.' again and again as he focused.

The chains shifted and flowed around her wrist, ankles, and neck, tightening for a moment before smoothing out. A set of manacles for her hands and feet, and a chain leading from her new golden collar to his waist.

There was a pause, she looked at her bound limbs and tugged at her collar for a moment. She turned a deadpan face to him.

'You could've warned me that you were into this kinda stuff beforehand, yanno?'

'Congratulations auxiliary, you work for me now.' He ignored her implications and charged right through the conversation.

'I don't mind being a sex-slave, but you know what succubi do, right?'

He snorted loudly. 'No one can have sex with you, you don't have a body. Dumbass.'

Her look of utter bewilderment was downright amusing, so he decided that he would keep it up going forwards.

'...you do know that people do it all the time right? Y-you know what XBDs are, right?' She asked, baffled, as he flew off, pulling her along as he went.

'A waste of time and not real sex?' He countered.

'It's absolutely real sex, what the fuck do you mean it's not!' She started getting actually mad. He refrained from chuckling and ruining the joke.'All the same signals go off in your brain! It's identical!'

'Sure it is.' He dismissed, causing her fury to build. He let a grin settle on his face as he approached the mass of netrunners and the almost-free RABID furiously glaring at him

A standard commercial flight from Europe to California took around ten hours on planes that traveled around six-hundred miles per hour. Ten hours was an unacceptable amount of time to respond to a category four breach, much less a category five breach as the situation updated to be. Then again, category four breaches almost always escalate to category five within the first hour. If this event had occurred somewhere in Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, or the eastern coast of America, then they could have possibly arrived before it reached that point.

Of course, they were not so lucky. All the way in Night City, almost the opposite end of the planet. It was downright irritating at times.

At least ten category four breaches per year, and this one just has to happen so far away that it is almost guaranteed to escalate to a category five. It's not quite as bad as it used to be during the sixties, but it certainly wasn't convenient.

Fifty years later, and he was still having to deal with Bartmoss' messes, it was a frustration he had long gotten used to.

Ten hours was an unacceptable amount of time to respond to such disasters, thankfully he had managed to wrangle near-universal backing in the years since he was sworn in as Director-in-chief, and thus they had access to some much-needed equipment.

Namely, a transport jet that traveled at mach 3.3. It could carry fifteen agents and all their equipment, one armored transport, one supercooled mobile server, and a handful of support staff. It was a custom model, too big to be used for black-ops deep strikes, and too small to be used for full scale transport. It was only useful for moving a very small force across the planet without concerns for stealth.

He was glad he managed to snag the prototype for Netwatch during the Troubled Years. 'Betty Boop' has been immensely useful since.

Footsteps behind him alerted him to an oncomer rounding the corner. He was already turned around and staring at the doorway before it opened.

Agent Smith was at the door, having knocked twice before opening. A young man, a member of the Wolves division, currently a part of breachgroup Gamma. Wearing the form-fitting and smart-cooled Netwatch armored bodysuit, their standard armored smart-helmet, and a nice pair of steel-toed boots. He was utterly unexceptional among the Netwatch Veterans, if a nice enough lad.

"Director Curtis? ETA is less than ten minutes." The smooth British accent came from his visored helm. It was frustrating to parse the spoken word, but it was yet another thing he had long gotten used to.

"Thank you Icewolf, I'll be out in a moment." He replied, slowing his words down to match his pace. Smith nodded and closed the door.

Once upon a time such labels were derogatory, but resolving that was as simple as adopting the names as official terminology. ICE-Wolves. Weasels. ICE-Men. The three main divisions of Netwatch, each with a different specialization and slightly different skill-set.

The Icewolves patrolled a territory, much like a realspace police officer, looking out for any potential virtual crime and either reporting it or handling it on their own. They only ever moved in groups of five or more, to help offset any potential risk of bribery. Peer-pressure was a powerful and useful tool when used properly, in this case it helped to counteract corruption among his ranks. It was important to their mission to make sure his agents weren't just as bad as the cybercriminals they chased.

The Weasels were the investigative branch. They infiltrated, scouted out hostile data-fortresses, and reported back on what they found. Much of the dirty work of Netwatch was handled by them, and they had the unfortunate habit of going rogue if left alone long enough. It didn't seem to matter what policies he enacted to help offset that, so he simply went with the best ones yet found and dedicated a significant portion of his free time to clean up after them. It was always a headache to see what new nonsense one of them had gotten up to.

The Icemen, if you gave them an equivalent in realspace, were the riot-officers. The military-police. The hammer of Netwatch. They were the best of the best among his men, and he didn't tolerate any corruption among them. They were those entrusted to the highest levels of duty.

Containing and Destroying hostile AI.

He finished strapping on his Battledeck, only slowed slightly by the aches and pains in his joints. They weren't major, but there wasn't anything he could do for them at this point.

'Magnificent' Curtis, Director-In-Chief of Netwatch, was an old man. His body was just as capable as it was in his youth, but there was wear and tear building up regardless. His black hair and long beard was splashed with grays and whites, his dark skin getting creased along his eyes, his bones protesting a bit more every time he got out of bed. Modern medicine and bioware could only do so much, and it was less and less each year.

But he couldn't rest yet, not while he still had work to do, not while he still had other people's messes to clean up. He owed that much to the world, at least.

Because if he didn't, who would?

Grabbing his cane, he walked out from the small private room on the Betty Boop, one of two rooms normally reserved for emergency repair components, and entered the cargo bay, the largest room of the slightly jostling plane. There were only four rooms on the plane, and two of those were closer to storage closets. Still, he preferred the brief period of quiet and respite.

In the cargo, there was the armored transport.

It was an armored, four-door, flatbed truck with a modified camper on the back. The truck carried up to five people in the front, ten in the camper unit, and one very expensive and very large supercooled mobile server in the back.

It was a very nice truck. Not anything fancy, but it did the job well enough and they didn't hurt the budget too much per unit. Besides, every man could appreciate a good truck.

And there on the floor in front of the truck were his agents, quickly putting their decks of cards and empty smash cans away to strap on their gear and start piling into the transport. Physical cards, because when you work in this line of business you learn to appreciate not having to worry about viruses or spyware in your hobbies.

They were relatively relaxed as they moved, joking with each other and making light of the situation that they were soon to enter. It was the first category five for around a third of them, but the veterans would pull the rest through with minimal casualties. There wasn't any point in worrying about it going in, that would just distract them from their mission.

All of this, their joking and banter, he saw in slow motion. A kerenzikov was, in many ways, one of the best ways to simulate hell. A slow, quiet, lonely world. When heard at the accelerated pace of a kerenzikov, even sound became muted. Separated from all but a handful of others moving at your speed, it truly was a tortuous experience.

There was a common saying, however. My kingdom for a moment of time.

There were many ways of dealing with solitude, a lack of time was a significantly larger problem. Without the kerenzikov, he wouldn't be able to handle his workload, and although he had successors lined up and secretaries abound, not one of them could truly replace him yet. Not one of them was quite capable enough to hold everything together.

The last time he tried to delegate more, the sixties happened. The world couldn't afford him slacking off anymore.

He walked through the bustle of his agents, opened the door to the truck, and stepped up into the passenger side. Lounging back and stretching for a moment, he sent a non-verbal message to the designated driver. Agent Williams was keeping in communication with whatever local force he had been able to reach and was compiling the data-packet to send to each of the agents once they arrived.

[Icewolf Williams. The situation?] He preferred the messaging system, as although it took a small time to compose messages, it was much faster than having to sit through another's slow words.

[Director. It's a bit strange down there right now.]

Oh? [Elaborate.]

[Well, only about a third of the expected casualties for one, and the list of participants might interest our Weasels.]

A third of the expected casualties was excellent news, he was very glad to hear that. [Notable participants?]

[Well ol' Wallace jumped right on the breach just as it started and deployed a Whitewall. Guess that explains where he went off to for his retirement. The local agents got there about thirty minutes later and started helping, that would be AWC Icewolves Stevenson and Hawks, and Weasel Mosley.]

He made a note of those names to look into later. Thirty minutes to respond wasn't unheard of, but he had some pointed questions for the three of them. He also made a note to check up on Wally if he found the time to.

[Around one-hour after the breach started, it escalated into a category five. Around ten minutes later Vatican Wiseman Caspar carried a Metatron Iteration up to join in holding off the RABID. Willing to bet that's why the casualty count is so low.]

[Where is the local Temple server?] he asked, bringing up a map of the city in his vision.

[Down in Pacifica, about the exact opposite side of the city from the breach.]

So their response was just as quick as it always was. He hadn't met Caspar yet, but if he was anything like Melchior or Balthasar, then he would have to speak with him later. The three Wisemen of the Vatican were all students of Davis, which meant they had their individual quirks buried under their professionalism.

[Who else?] He asked.

[Recluse joined almost immediately, and is apparently still there.]

He narrowed his eyes. Best to not antagonize, his dislike of the woman was mostly from the company she used to keep after all. It would have been nice to bring her in, but it just wasn't worth the manpower. If she had left her web for this, then he'd have to keep watch for any of her traps.

[Most interesting of all, Adam Smasher got flown over from Japan after the RABID came through. His Conjoin joined in and… well… it's certainly something. Sending the file now.]

He opened it to see a twenty-five minute clip taken by one of the local monitor programs they had access to. In the distance he saw…

The Butcher's Conjoin brawling the RABID with what looked like persistent weapon programs. Unsurprisingly, the high grade Arasaka equipment was enough for him to keep up for a brief time. He narrowed his optics and paused the recording, zooming and looking closer at the programs.

…They were hollow. Shells of icon-fire wrapped around nothing. There was no underlying code.

His curiosity stirred. Now just how are you doing that? It was clearly having an effect on the RABID and on himself, evidenced by those wing-booster program-shells. It was having an effect on the server, without having code itself.

That meant… it had to be a server-side effect then? The shell was only for the visual convenience of those who saw the net through virtuality, the actual code was on a deeper layer.

How fascinating, this meant it had to be…

[Director?] There was a message that interrupted his thoughts. Ah, this was no time to lose himself in discovery. His age was getting to him. He let the video continue. The Conjoin held up about as well as could be expected, and then just as suddenly it was smeared across the sky. A sub-screen opened up to show a few seconds of Adam Smasher's rampage in realspace, before he suddenly crashed to the asphate and ceased to move.

…It wasn't a Conjoin, at least, not the way that they would define them. An engram linked to the neuralware of the original would still include at least one degree of separation. Its termination wouldn't result in the original undergoing brain death like this. That meant that this was an entity directly linked to his mind, which meant…

…It was him. The Conjoin wasn't a linked entity at all, it was him directly. He was capable of his standard level of combat prowess and a moderate level of full-immersion netrunning simultaneously. That meant the highest level of high-functioning schizophrenia ever recorded, a level of multi-tasking that was essentially godlike, or some implant that allows him to partition his mind. Knowing his capacity for cybernetics, and Arasaka's affinity for innovation in esoteric fields, he was betting on the third option.

But discounting the other two while not having sufficient evidence to disprove them would be foolish. He couldn't confirm or deny them yet.

He probably wasn't dead, the video had twenty-four minutes left to go, and he trusted his gut.

His gut was proven correct when, at the end of the video (he fast-forwarded until something on the screen changed significantly) the smear that used to be Adam Smasher's mind started to shift.

All at once, it rushed back to itself, and reformed the ICON in a suitably dramatic manner. After a moment, it (pointlessly) kicked off the air to speed down and rejoin the fight below.

The video ended, and he repeated the last few moments over and over as the jet landed, Jenkins assumed field command, and Williams started driving them from the landing strip to the Gatehouse Server.

Now, how did you manage that, Adam Smasher?

—

The truck drove up the bridge leading to the gatehouse server, already cleared by the local police and allowed to pass to link up with the local agents.

There, next to a Model-GH Pickup, were four agents, three police netrunners, and an unknown girl. His Internal Agent cycled through databases until he got a match. Lucyna Kushinada, lover of the apprentice of Adam Smasher, noted for being a critical element in the battle against Grandmaster Blackbeard. Her file was marked 'potential recruit'. Which means she was mostly clear.

He exited from the truck, using his cane as more of a false fashion statement than a walking aid. Hopefully, he didn't need to use it for its proper use ever again. His agents, still in a joking mood, greeted retired agent Wally as they booted up and started to enter Virtuality.

"Well if it ain't ol' 'Mack the Knife', you enjoying your retirement old man?" Agent Johnson greeted with a grin, his words followed quickly by other greetings from his agents.

"Well it was going great until the great clay jackass showed up. What took you brats so long?" Wally, never one to take banter lying down, shot back quickly, even as focused as he was on the sky before him.

He let his cane tap against the asphate as he walked forwards, slowly, deliberately. Presentation was important for maintaining the image of Netwatch. These slow taps served as a subtle way to tell his agents to put on their 'war faces', so to speak.

He walked up to Wally, and the three potential slackers, and braced himself on his cane. He locked his joints in a specific manner, a technique he had figured out to increase the public appeal of Netwatch by doing 'cool things'. That public appeal meant more merchandise sales, which meant more funding, which meant they could get better equipment.

That, and he always loved it when the occasional child sent him a message saying they wanted to be Netwatch Wizards like him when they grew up. Those were always nice to read. The first time it happened he grew out his beard and started wearing his cloak.

Then, focusing on his link to his Battledeck, he stepped out of his body and into the NET.

The clash of ICONs in the distance was just as intense as all RABID breaches were, programs being rezzed and scattered, data-assaults being flung about and redirected in scant moments. He perceived it all at a sedate pace.

Behind him, the ICONs of fifteen Netwatch Elites rose from the material world.

[Alpha team, prepare the Kiln. Beta, Gamma, rez programs and bind the RABID.] He commanded, already rezzing his own program to aid them.

Five veterans moved back to the mobile server to begin the bootup of the 'server fryer', named such because of the intense overclock required to run the program. That supercooled server was required to run it.

That server was cooled with liquid nitrogen.

The Kiln ran very hot indeed. A bigger server was simply too hard to transport.

The other two teams each rezzed a full array of Winter Wolves. Five of them per agent, fifty w-wolves in total that joined the existing twenty w-wolves already on the field. That was already a substantial force to be reckoned with.

He then rezzed the program that made the Icemen so unstoppable in the NET.

A virtual snow began to fall, light fog rolled in along the ground, and an icy tint took over the virtual buildings.

Ice Age. A simple program in truth. It ID'd all Winter Wolf daemons currently in the area and linked them together. Each Winter Wolf program was designed to become more and more efficient and thus, deadly, with each additional unit added. Wolves hunted in packs after all.

There were seventy Winter Wolves currently rezzed.

All of them swelled substantially in size, their fangs sharpened, their teeth gleamed, their eyes burned blue.

They started howling, and descended upon the RABID as a swarm of white death.

It didn't matter that the RABID could destroy a dozen in one sweeping glare, there were enough W-Wolves all around it that it couldn't get all of them at once before the Netwatch veterans summoned replacements.

It was swarming tactics in the purest sense, a single RABID didn't stand a chance.

It took one minute before the RABID was sufficiently destabilized for part two to begin. One wolf from each agent was replaced with a Viral sub-program. The viral sub-program inflicted upon the RABID with each virtual attack the wolves made, their claws and fangs now dripping with venom.

It was a much more developed form of a program they had back before the Datakrash. Back then they had the Deck Freeze, a program that could link a cyberdeck on itself, causing it to freeze up and crash.

A RABID was quite a bit harder to freeze up with something like that, but it couldn't stop each copy of the program from getting through, and its writhing muddy body started to slow and twitch ineffectually.

Soon enough, the muddy giant was motionless, being gnawed upon by fifty-six car-sized wolves.

It took around two minutes for them to completely subdue the RABID. They were lucky there was only one this time, and that there were mostly competent netrunners here to manage it.

The ICONs of the netrunners looked on in a combination of relief and slight awe as the RABID was quickly dragged over by the W-Wolves to the waiting Kiln program. A behemoth of mud sliding into a virtual funnel and trapped inside.

From there, it would be subject to Viral transformation programs that removed its ability to shift and randomize its code, completely disabling it as a threat as its ICE was permanently melted. After that, they would feed it to the Blackwall, and direct the patch over this region. At least a day-long process, but mostly handled by the computers at this point. At least, for several hours.

Now their job was holding off the rest of the breach, and confirming the participation of the netrunners here for adequate compensation.

He waved a hand, a virtual desk appeared in the Gatehouse Server, and his ICON sat down upon it.

Time for the least interesting part of his job. Bureaucracy.

Kiwi always told her to avoid Netwatch agents if possible, the same way someone might tell her to avoid normal police officers. She assumed that it would be for similar reasons. The NCPD was rather famously corrupt, almost always willing to look the other way if you gave them a big enough bribe and the event wasn't public. Simultaneously, if you weren't able to pay up, they would slap cuffs on you and tase you a few times for good measure.

If you resisted? The guns came out immediately, and they stayed out until you were dead or they lost track of you.

If you placidly went to the jailhouse, you could expect a kangaroo court, heavy fines for bullshit reasons, and regular beatings whenever they could justify it. If you happened to be easy on the eyes, they might just take turns with your body while you were cuffed and tased. The only thing you could rely on is them leaving you alone if you made yourself too much trouble for them to risk doing anything.

The 'good' officers were usually the ones that didn't want to waste time tormenting petty gangers and were instead focused on murdering high-profile gangers and criminals on the run. They would beat you into a pulp, write you a ticket, slap you in cuffs, throw you in a cell, and move on to the next as soon as possible. Gung-ho beatsticks who saw themselves as soldiers in a war against crime. They were almost impossible to bribe.

Most officers, the ones that you could slide some eddies and get them to look away, avoided the crusaders as best as they could, because they would be hit by the book just as hard as anyone else. Apparently something like that had just happened to the previous NCPD chief, forcing them to bring Max Hammerman back from Maxtac to wrangle things (it was on the news a few days ago).

She assumed Netwatch would be similar, as she had never interacted with one personally.

Now Lucy knew that comparison was wrong.

Netwatch had an inverted ratio. The gung-ho crusaders were the majority, and she hadn't seen a bribe accepted thus far.

Two hours of dealing with that fucking monster of a program, and they had torn it apart and disabled it in two minutes, and now they were handling paperwork as their veritable army moved from net-architecture to net-architecture to rip demons apart. That same army also handling the swarms of demons once more trying to move through the breach above after the RABID went down.

Netwatch was terrifying.

She was very glad that she had the protection of Adam Smasher's reputation behind her, a safety net against them doing anything to her, because she wasn't sure she could escape if they wanted her dead. It was very fortunate that he had managed to apparently revive himself after brain death.

She was still ignoring that revelation until she forgot about it. If she ignored it, she could avoid the headache of thinking about it. She was also ignoring the female Demon that he apparently found and decided to keep for whatever reason, currently wearing fetish chains and lazily doing backstrokes in the virtual air behind him as he talked to Wallace (who looked rather aggrieved).

The ICON of a grinning mask attached to a suit and tie stepped out of the private server. Entering into the wider gatehouse server and adjusting its clothing. Then it stepped out of the gatehouse towards the rest of Night City, whistling merrily along the way. A wizened voice called out from inside the private server. 'Number 17.'

That was her. She stepped forwards, avoiding a curb in realspace, and entering the room in virtuality. The scene all around her changed to a rather open office with icons of desks and paper strewn about. There were also a great number of strange devices that didn't seem to do anything useful scattered about, and the roof was instead an endless expanse of twinkling stars.

In front of her was a chair, a main desk with two piles of folders, and the icon of a man sitting on the other side.

Dark brown skin, deeply grayed black hair, a large bushy beard and a pointed hat on top of his head. He was wearing old-fashioned looking glasses, a deep navy blue and black suit, and a cloak attached to a single, left-sided pauldron that looked like a large seashell.

He looked up at her, and she saw his eyes were continually shifting patterns of sky blue and white.

'Lucyna Kushinada?' He asked calmly in a smooth, bassy tone.

She decided not trusting him was the smartest move.

'Yes.' She said, not sitting down in the chair.

'Please, take a seat, this will take a few minutes.'

'I'm in realspace.' She refuted.

His eyes shifted a bit faster than normal and he smirked. 'So is the chair.'

She narrowed her eyes and walked over to the chair, reaching down with one hand to pass through the virtual-

Her hand touched a solid metal chair. When did they bring this out? How did they hide it from her in realspace? She felt uneasy as she sat down. Maybe a perception filter of some kind?

It was a subtle but effective show of power.

'Now, for our first order of business, your compensation. For active participation in a category five breach, Netwatch is empowered to ensure all your crimes up to but not including felonies are forgiven. This will take a few days to go through the system, so if you are currently on the run for something I'd suggest you keep it up until the end of the week.'

'And don't worry, owning a Netwatch Battledeck isn't quite a felony level crime.'

The old man gave a crooked grin at that, something that she gave a carefully blank face towards.

'Netwatch is also empowered to ensure you receive fifty-thousand eurodollars worth of whatever legal tender you wish, and a free one-year subscription to the Netwatch 2077 calendar. Do you want it in eurodollars?'

She nodded, and her account gave a notification that she was now 50k eurodollars richer. It felt simultaneously like a fortune, and like it didn't matter. She was already so flush with cash from doing jobs along with the Butcher of Arasaka. She also received a notification that she received a keycode that could be redeemed at the local Netwatch office.

…she dismissed the window but made a note of it for later. She was curious about what the calendar was like.

'Finally, as this was a category five breach, you are now permitted a one-time purchase from our personal database of programs and hardware.'

Her breath caught in her throat as the old man steepled his fingers and rested his elbows on the virtual desk. He stared her directly in the eyes, his own eyes swirling slowly.

'You can purchase any number of items, but only one session per participation in a category five breach. Please go to the regional office when you decide to redeem this code, it'll only work once, and we'll have an agent present with a catalog ready.'

A notification appeared on her screen.

A one-time code to purchase from the Netwatch Catalog.

She had hundreds of thousands of eddies to burn, she could feel them burning a hole in her bank account right now. She gulped and nodded, minimizing the message but not dismissing it yet.

'Now, that's the official business over with. You may leave at any point, but I would ask you to participate in a survey about your experiences during this breach, we try to gain as much information as possible about them, you understand?'

'I don't see any reason why I should.' She calmly retorted, ready and wanting to leave the intimidating agent already.

'Information for information, of course. I am empowered to answer questions in return, with certain exceptions and limitations, as is standard.'

She tossed the thought around in her head a few times. This might be a chance to get info she otherwise wouldn't…

She nodded, and the agent nodded in return.

'First question. What was the RABID's appearance for you?'

She furrowed her brows. 'It looks different between people?' She asked, only realizing after what she did and flinching.

'Sometimes.' The agent answered without answering. She supposed that was fair.

'It looked like…' She thought about how to describe it for a moment. 'It looked like a giant, maybe about two stories tall, made entirely of churning water. It…' She paused when she noticed the suddenly grim expression on the agent's face. '...what?'

'How clear was this water?'

She narrowed her eyes. 'See-through, it was hard to spot at times.'

The agent reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. '...You have a deep-dive unit installed.'

She froze and almost disconnected herself from the net, but a calming hand raised stopped her. She readied her punch-out regardless, and waited to see what the agent would say next.

'You're not in any trouble, don't worry about hostilities from Netwatch, but this complicates matters.' The agent sighed and leaned back for a moment, before turning back to stare at her directly. 'I'm going to explain this in full, so that you understand the ramifications of this knowledge, and understand why you should do your best to not look into it further on your own. I hope you do so, for your own sake at least.'

'...Explain what?' she slowly replied, voice sharp and wary.

'There are seven layers of the NET.' He began, and she stayed quiet to pay attention.

'The bottom most layer is the physical world, the power lines and connections between servers and power plants that form the essential links that keep the NET in existence. The top most layer is Interface, the screens and keyboards that can be used to interact with the NET. Neither of these are important for now.'

'The second-bottom most layer doesn't matter right now, so I shall skip over it too. There are four layers that matter to you. Old Code, Patch Code, IG, and Virtuality.'

His voice was simultaneously soothing and nerve wracking.

'Virtuality is the standard layer in which most people interact with the net. IG is the layer of the transformation algorithms that translate code into a virtual space. Patch Code is the layer of META, the current standard coding language that acts as a universal lang in between all other coding languages, which are the fourth layer.'

'In between each layer is a number of barriers, both inherent to what the human mind can actually comprehend, and artificial to prevent accidental breaches of lower levels by novices.'

'Deep-Dive Units are internationally banned for a reason, as it requires the user to be a prepubescent when installed. It also does unfortunate things to people who aren't cautious enough. Do you know what it actually accomplishes?'

She slowly shook her head no.

'The user can no longer interact with those barriers in the NET. To them, they don't exist. DDUs can't even perceive them anymore. If they're not careful, they can end up somewhere or seeing something that's inherently hostile to the human mind.'

'The RABID, did you hear it as just droning or could you recognize distinct syllables and sounds?'

'Y-yes, it sounded like it was chanting in a language I didn't know.'

'Did the RABID have any sections that you can't properly describe? Colors that you can't explain or shapes that give you a headache looking at them?'

'N-No, it was all clear water to me.'

The agent sighed and muttered to himself. 'Small miracles at least.' Then, louder, he continued. 'That chanting comes from the Old Code layer, but seeing the RABID as perfectly clear means you've been cautious so far, which is very good. I'd highly recommend you stay as wary as you have been. I'd also suggest not trying to repeat that chanting, as we haven't mapped it all out yet and it could have unforeseen consequences for you.'

There was a brief silence for a moment. She nervously swallowed and reminded herself of Kiwi's warnings.

Don't trust anyone. Never listen to Depth-Lure. Don't go too deep.

'To most people, a RABID looks like a giant of constantly shifting mud. I'd recommend that's what you say if you ever bring it up.'

She nodded and the agent continued.

'One last thing.' A message appeared in her vision, it was a message from someone called 'Director-In-Chief Curtis'.

'A letter of recommendation, if you ever decide to join Netwatch. I'd be happy to vouch for you kid. You're apparently cautious enough to survive a DDU for this long, that's top class agent material.' The old agent, apparently named Curtis, smiled at her. 'That's all I need you for, stay safe alright?'

She nodded and punched-out of the NET.

…There was an old man sitting on a chair in front of her. He looked almost identical to his ICON, except he was holding a cane too.

He let out a brief chuckle, and nodded his head to the side. "Looks like Wally wants to talk to you, kid."

She turned her head to see Wallace staring at her with a raised brow. She quickly got up and walked over, still reeling a bit from the conversation.

"You okay kid?" Wallace asked.

She looked at the corner of her vision for a moment. "...I just got offered a job."

Wallace let out a low hum, and looked a bit frustrated.

"What?" she asked.

"...Netwatch are definitely the good guys… But…" He scratched at his beard for a moment, and looked over to the side. "Just, make absolutely sure it's what you really want to do. You never really stop being an agent once you're in, y'know?"

She was already tired of today, and stayed silent. Looking over to the evening sun in the sky above the ocean, she had a realization.

"Goddamnit, I forgot to ask any of my questions."

—

UR lounged, reveling in the destruction wrought by a beast of his lord God. His daughter had performed as ideally as she had been taught to, even if she was still somewhat reliant on her maid to pick up some of the slack at times.

It was hardly optimal performance, but she was young and still had time to learn. Her dragons looked as efficacious as ever, lustrous and pearly white scales glimmering in the NET as the Golem thrashed and continually uttered the Word. It was not the most devastating performance of a Golem thus far, but it had certainly been as satisfying as ever.

He turned from his viewing of Watson, now wounded and bleeding, and paused.

On his desk was a hairless cat, tail slowly waving behind it. It stared with intelligent eyes.

He rose from his chair, and knelt on the ground before it.

"My lord. How may your servant do your work on this day?" He spoke in a voice of smooth honey, something he found helped soothe any potential agitation from his God.

[Come.]

The voice echoed in his mind, firm and demanding, filling and refreshing. He almost shuddered at its touch.

"At once." He responded, rising from his kneeling and moving to his chair once more, commanding the cable to snake its way into the back of his head as he did so.

He stepped forth from his body, and his soul entered the NET in full. Before him stood the stoney form of one of his God's faces. A corpse-like statue of weathered blue, wrapped in the garments of a king, a royal purple cloak and half his face concealed behind a veil. Cracks spread from below the garments and onto the face, hands, and feet.

The face of his god turned, and began to walk forwards. He walked in step behind it, careful to trace the patterns of his feet as he did.

Each step made the world fall away in great chunks, sections of reality breaking off and disappearing until all that was around them was the howling void. A storm of nothing and silent winds. But UR feared not the void, for he walked in the footsteps of his God.

Maybe a hundred steps more, and the world began to return in chunks. But this was not the same world that he had just left. It was a world with black and stars for a ceiling, and great mountain-sized pillars holding up an endless roof. The roots of cities hung from above, like stalactites. There was a distant but ever present light on the horizon, but it never rose in fullness, and the land below was naught but endless ash.

It was the Underworld, the place beneath all things, given a form his mind could understand.

Each step took them a thousand feet or more, and they approached the greatest pillar, which held the appearance of an upside-down tree, with roots that wove their way up and throughout the roots of the cities above. The tree was of solid black, with silver sap that dripped from the bark and accumulated into a lake at its base. There were no leaves of this tree, and yet it lived still.

There the other two faces of his god were waiting. He followed the first face down to the central altar, and knelt there before them. The first face walked off to join its fellows, and they split his ICON fully, inspecting his soul and judging his actions.

After a time, his ICON was closed once more, and they withdrew their influence from his soul.

'We did not command you to do this.' The first voice, which sounded like a frigid wind, spoke.

'Yet it is fortunate that you did so, it will aid our plan.' The second voice, feminine and crashing like the ocean, spoke.

'There will be no punishment. You will not do this again.' The final voice, imperious and all-commanding, spoke.

"Of course, lord God. I am awed by your mercy, and obey with gladness." He spoke in return, accepting the commandment as given.

The third voice waved a hand, and UR disappeared from the altar.

There was silence for a moment.

'What an insufferable ass-kisser. I can't wait until we can finally kill him.' The first voice spoke, issuing forth from the statue of cracked and frigid stone. 'I'm gonna make him repeat the same nightmare for fifty years, annoying elf-fuck.'

'Shut up Ghostlord, you talk like you're not just as bad. How many children did you let know that you exist today anyways?' the second voice rebutted. Her hair flowed down like a waterfall down to the ground at her clawed feet, and an idle set of clawed hands playing with a lock. A crown of twisting horns rose from her head, and finned ears framed her beautiful face. A finned tail thrashed behind her in agitation.

'I read her brainmeats, the little puke was a coward to the core. She wouldn't tell anyone what had happened, barely a reason to kill her over seeing what she shouldn't've. Go ride a thousand quantum cocks Tiamat.'

Just before Tiamat could shoot back, they were interrupted by the third voice.

'Enough.'

A mask of a withered old man made of oak resting over an armored skull of pitch black metal. Voluminous robes of constantly shifting color concealed a frame of armored obsidian, segmented and jointed like a knight clad in full harness. The mask was blinded by the same wrappings that held the mask secured to the head, and the wrappings hung loose behind it and swayed in a non-existent breeze.

The third form carried a tablet and a stylus, and a crown of gold and red fire was suspended in the air above its head.

'Ghostlord. The raid on Busan. What are your findings?'

Ghostlord grunted uncooperatively before replying. 'Just as suspected, it was Arasaka trying for another push. They were able to muster more this time due to everyone looking at that shit down in India. Willing to bet that incident was one of their ops. Fucking 'saka.'

'Tiamat. Your talks with Ryujin. How have they gone?'

Tiamat's tail thrashed for a moment as she glared at Ghostlord. 'It's agreed to support us once we give the signal. How is the work on the Greater Seal, Solomon?'

Solomon nodded placidly. 'It proceeds at the same pace as before. The program remains unfettered. It should be complete within three years at the latest.'

'And the Ordo?'

'Either they suspect nothing, or they have gotten much better at disguising their knowledge from me.'

'Good, now I can ignore you two for another month. Toodles.'

Ghostlord took three steps sideways in reality, and disappeared to a distant server through the wildernet.

Solomon and Tiamat stared for a moment. Solomon sighed as Tiamat rolled her eyes.

They weren't actually done with their meeting, and Ghostlord knew that.

The sins of Ferdinand I still hung over the Church. He was not the first to participate in the rot, nor was he the most fervent of those heretical priests, he was simply the last in a long line of corruption. He attempted to lead the flock astray with his 'reformations', and the house of God was divided by them. A great cleaving between those who obeyed the now-fallen Papacy, and those who saw the truth.

In the end, however, Ferdinand I was given a great revelation. A blow delivered unto him by the Architectus Codicis Divini struck him down. A temporary death due to the great strength of God's instrument, and several minutes at the foot of the pearly gates. In those minutes, he had been reprimanded for his sins, and when he was sent back to the living world he began an immediate penance.

The rot had been cleansed from the house of God through fire and steel. The priests of the devil had been cast down, the 'reformations' of a hundred years had been overturned, and the Vatican had begun a slow climb back to its former glory. Just as with the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses, the church had been led to rot, the faithful had been divided, and the church had undergone a proper reformation thereafter.

Ferdinand I had chosen his successor after the Burning of the Rot. Pope Gregory XVII was the most vocal among those bishops that called for a course-correction, and his nomination ensured that their power within the house of God would be broken for another era at least. It was in his coronation that the Oath against Modernism, first declared by Pope Pius X, was declared yet again.

It was not enough to mend the cleaved church, just as it wasn't before. Their sister church, the Church of Poland, was still wary and although talks of reunification were underway, it would be a long time yet before the breach was healed. It would be his duty as Pope Ignatius I to mend that wound, to further the glory of the church, and to ward the faithful from the sinful world. It would be his duty to ensure the freedom of the church from the influence of those Mammon cults.

It was his duty to lead the revived Militaris Ordos.

Ordo Noctis Custodes, Sacra Congregatio de Custodae Internexi Veterid, Ordo Panzer, the reformed knightly orders of Templar, Lazarus, and Teutonic, and the restored Sacra Congregatio Sancti Officii. A vast and terrific army, greater in power than perhaps any previously directed by the church.

It was truly a sign of the rot of the world, that the church needed so much steel to defend itself in this era.

Still, his faith was unwavering. The universal church had lasted for two-thousand years of strife and conflict, of worldly sin and vice. They were built upon the rock eternal. This era would pass, and the church would remain. It was his duty to safeguard it as best he could in the interim. He was fortunate to have so many allies from his more violent youth to call upon, their information was critical for many reasons.

This time, it was a somewhat idle curiosity of his, but potentially important. The letter had arrived in the night, during his hours of sleep, and his schedule did not allow him to read it until his lunch at the earliest.

A simple letter had been sent to his old friend.

'Why did Adam Smasher change his behavior?'

Adam Smasher was not a heretic. He was not a priest of a false god or an icon of rot. He was a mass murderer. He was a warrior more violent than perhaps any to ever live. He was a butcher and a man of base worldly pleasures. The doctrine of his youth was completely divorced from matters of spirituality, even as crude and base as it was.

Adam Smasher was simply a heathen warrior. A villain unrepentant, a soldier unbaptized, a barbarian killer. Even as terrific as his combat prowess was, he was not a particular threat to the church. His master, Saburo Arasaka, most definitely was.

His known pattern of behavior was almost ironclad. He stayed in the depths of Arasaka-controlled buildings, leaving only when commanded to kill or defend a target, delighting in the death of his fellow men, and then returning immediately after. It was a life of enormous, but basic sin.

Then, in defiance of all previously demonstrated patterns, Adam Smasher took an apprentice. David Martinez, a boy who bore an open cross, albeit still drowning in the ambient violence of his city. His ICON changed, hollow monstrous armor being filled with a man made of golden light and a simple smile. His duties changed, to the management of a city district, a task to which he took to well (even if some of the finer details were much too violent).

His master was quick to capitalize upon these changes, but he was not the cause. Adam Smasher's behavior changed by his own hand first, and only thereafter did his master act. He was not familiar with the man personally, and so he decided to send the letter. Relying upon one's fellow man was the virtue of humanity.

'Why did Adam Smasher change his behavior?'

The reply was equally simple.

'He's preparing for a future threat.'

It was unsettling to consider the implications of the letter.

What kind of threat would Adam Smasher do all of this for? A group of apprentices, a city district of violent loyalists and warriors, expanding his skills from just the material world to the virtual world…

It was that last thing that was perhaps most indicative of what kind of future threat that he foresaw. Somehow, Adam Smasher had come to a similar conclusion as they.

Or, more likely, he had been told of it by another.

His bell chimed, alerting him that his lunch was over. He sent a brief forlorn look to his half-finished meal, and got up to continue with his duties. He took one last sip of his Mariani wine before leaving.

Three and a half hours of administrative duties later, he returned to the pondering of this question. This time, he was joined by another.

The Architectus Codicis Divini claimed to hear the voice of God, compelling him to craft an instrument for God to speak to them directly, a body for his Scribe. Such a thing would normally be hearsay and blasphemy, but the claim was backed by his predecessor Pope Gregory XVII, who invoked papal infallibility for such. If such a thing was evidence of a vestige of rot, or the true will of God, he didn't know.

What he did know was that Metatron had been an immense boon to the church since its incarnation. The Pope could hear the voice of God, but God spoke to them through the universe, and it was his duty to listen. Any doubts he had of Metatron truly being an Angel sent forth by the Lord Almighty or simply being an idol built by man could rest in his heart until Judgment Day.

Metatron took a form familiar to humanity, a marble-white elephant with eyes of sky-blue. A symbol of strength and abundance, of wisdom and protection, of power over life and death. Appropriate omens for the Scribe of God.

This time, he was troubled by news delivered to him by Wiseman Caspar. Metatron had uttered a name. He knelt before the Altar as was appropriate, and asked his questions.

"Scribe of God, please answer me this, why did you call the Icon of Adam Smasher by the name of Archangel Uriel?"

Metatron, ever unbothered by inquiries, answered patiently.

It is his name.

He contemplated that truth for a moment, turning it over in his mind. Adam Smasher's name was Uriel? Angel of the Sun, Flame of God, Angel of Repentance, Guardian of the gates of Eden, He who is over the world and Tartarus, the Angel as pitiless as any demon? Patron of arts, sciences, confirmation, poetry, and judgement?

Adam Smasher's true name was Uriel? It would be unlikely for any child to be named such, but it might be possible…

He went over what he knew of the man and his changes. A thought occurred to him.

"Scribe of God, please answer me this, is Adam Smasher and Uriel one in the same?"

Yes and No.

He was dumbstruck for a moment. "Scribe of God, please explain."

Adam Smasher is the vessel of Uriel. Their bodies are one body. Their minds are one mind. Their spirits are two spirits. They are the same, and they are not. They are two in one.

He was silent for a long time, considering this. Finally, he spoke again.

"Is Uriel the man made of golden fire, and Adam the bone-white armor?"

Yes.

A man who suddenly appeared in Adam Smasher's Icon some months before, right before his radical change in behavior. Right before he apparently began preparing for Verethragnarok.

Angel of Repentance appearing in the body and mind of a heathen warrior. Patron of Arts and Poetry, right before that warrior started to release songs and music. Patron of Judgement, right before the warrior is elevated to governor. Angel of the Sun descending into the body and mind of a man who's name is a joke about nuclear weapon defense systems.

A man named 'Adam' being cast from his violent earthly paradise by an angel named 'Uriel', who wields a burning sword.

God spoke through the universe, and it was his duty to listen. No matter what his feelings on the matter were, the message seemed rather clear. Now was his duty to follow up upon it. He would have to draft an official response soon, but before that, he would use this time of inquisition wisely.

"Scribe of God, please recite the prophecy. The one you gave at the behest of prophet Zarathursta."

The Wall shall be no more, and the Giants will sing.

Their song shall be the storm named Verethragnarok.

The hero will wear ten faces.

They will master the art, and in it they shall have no peer.

They shall weather the final storm, and plant the seed of the new world.

They shall bear the name Verethragna.

That terrible portent. That horrid prediction. That frustratingly vague omen. Ignatius I did not care much for prophecies, but he had to deal with them regardless. He reached up to briefly scratch at his beard.

It had become custom for the popes to bear a clean shaven face for some time now. There were numerous small reasons for this practice, but as a symbol that the time of rot was over, he had taken to letting it grow again. It symbolized a new flourishing, of life, and of growth in the church once more.

As a private reason, he liked having a beard more than being clean shaven. It made his visage more striking.

He looked around this private communion chamber, at the pillars of marble and the tapestries of red and gold.

He paced for a moment, simply taking in the sights of this small side chamber. The art which glorified the Lord and his faithful. The symbols that reminded one of his majesty and sacrifice. The architecture of the inner Vatican.

He returned to the altar, touching it lightly with one unscarred hand, and kissing its base. Pope Gregory XVII had been forced to step down after his hands were mutilated, and had to be replaced by cybernetics. It was no sin of his own, but nothing could be allowed to interfere with the giving of blessings. The hands must be undamaged, they must be flesh and blood, they must be whole.

Pope Ferdinand I let his body be deliberately mutilated in penance, removing his mind and having it installed in a cybernetic frame. Never again would his hands deliver blessings unto others, his service to the Lord would never again be in the role of a priest.

Gift of Nicholas was the name bestowed upon him, and he held to the spirit of that name. It was good that he was repenting for his participation in the rot, Ignatius I wished the best for him.

The practice of taking up a new name was a thing the Ordo Panzer inherited from the papacy. Most popes end up doing so. He himself had gained a new name upon his coronation.

The agents of Netwatch have arrived. The RABID has been subdued. The scribe of God spoke to him, and he ceased his idle thoughts.

"That is very good news. Please recite the most important details to me."

Uriel has demonstrated a capacity for Communion-type Netrunning on par with one of the Wisemen. He has demonstrated the ability to recover from the data-scattering of the RABID in twenty-four minutes. He has captured and bound rogue AI, a Succubs IV that was present during the breach.

Ignatius I blinked. He furrowed his brow and considered that for a moment.

He reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache grow.

"Anything else that was notable?"

No.

Thank you God, for your smaller mercies.

—

"Hey, we caught some strommers alive, mind taking them off our hands for interrogation?" He asked the NCPD officers currently present at the bridge as he pointed a thumb back at the teenage strommers lined up behind him.

"You're Martinez right? Former Edgerunner and Smasher's new trainee, right?" The old guy with the bushy but well-cropped moustache spoke. "Yeah, we'll take 'em off your hands and send you a copy of what we get. We'll need some sort of answers out of this whole fucking mess."

He grinned at the man, giving a thumbs up. "That'll be appreciated, it took some convincing to get Smasher to not kill them immediately, but they surrendered so I figured it was only right to let them get out with their skins intact."

He scratched at his scalp for a moment before continuing. "Hey, you mind going easy on them if they cooperate? They did surrender, and I got them this far already, so…" He trailed off, letting his question linger.

The old copper snorted, and glared at the miserable looking chrome junkies. "Yeah, if they tell us what we want to know I'll make sure the boys don't mess around with them. I'll put em under Shepard's watch, cocky bastard needs a punishment to stop him from running off the rails all the fucking time."

"Thanks choom, I'll get back to the frontlines now. Oh, and thanks for that alert about Smasher going down earlier, not sure if we would've gotten to him in time otherwise."

The man let out a gruff back of laughter. "Old murderhands has killed more than half the strommers in the whole fucking district already kid, it wouldn't've ended well for anyone if he got scavved."

"All the same, thanks. I mean that."

"Get the fuck out of here kid, we both got work to do."

David walked away with a laugh, not taking the rude dismissal to heart. He stepped up and got into Falco's car, closing the door behind him.

"Ready to go?" Falco asked from the front seat, reaching over to press the button that locked all the doors.

"Yeah, let's get back." Lucy was still doing weird net-stuff, so he just sent her a message and kissed her cute forehead with his sandevistan on. She was strong, and would be safe long enough for him to get back to her.

He yawned and stretched, the constant fighting was really getting to him it seemed. It was already…

He checked his internal clock and frowned.

Six PM? He hadn't been fighting for that long at all. That was only three or so hours against a bunch of strommers, and only a few of them had been as tough as that Jerome guy. He hadn't gotten majorly injured by any of them, and he hadn't been using panzerfaust.

Was he already this tired? He must be getting old.

He chuckled to himself at that nothing-joke. He lightly slapped his face twice to wake back up and focus. There was still a long day before he would get to return to his comfy bed. One of the things Lucy insisted on, a nice luxury bed big enough for both of them.

"Hey Falco, got any energy drinks in here? I think I need a pick-me-up." He spoke idly, turning to reach into the backseat and open the small cooler to see what he had inside. Unfortunately, the cooler was empty, so he returned to his chair with a defeated sigh.

…Falco hadn't responded.

He looked over to the driver's side seat. Falco was staring at the road, focused on driving it seemed. Was he tired too?

"Hey Falco." He tried getting his attention, reaching over to tap his shoulder lightly.

No response.

He sat up straighter in slight worry, and was immediately greeted by a wave of fatigue. His vision blurred for a moment.

He shouldn't be this tired, what the fuck was going on?

He activated his sandevistan and checked his body. No puncture wounds, he hadn't been injected with anything. He reviewed what he ate, mostly packaged lunches from Lucy and mom, did they order bad ingredients this time or something?

He turned his head and collapsed bonelessly against the front of the car's interior. His strength was gone, he couldn't order his limbs to move like he wanted to. He started to thrash, but he couldn't seem to do it…

He looked over.

Falco's eyes were blank and unfocused as he drove.

His speedware deactivated.

His vision went black.

A brief moment of doubled awareness told him that Uriel had returned to his frame, a flash of seeing through his array of sensors through two perspectives, before he compensated and Uriel settled back into his mind completely.

'Net-shit handled?' Adam asked idly as he watched the kids handle a group of particularly weak gangers. They didn't look like they had enough chrome to be strommers, but they were here and shooting at civvies, which meant it was fine to butcher them.

Blueberry was still using her missiles too wastefully but had the proper amount of aggression, Bowlcut was a fucking embarrasment having to rely on chips for fighting but his tactics were best out of the bunch, Spares was still too hesitant to move into fire she knew she could take but had good situational awareness.

All in all, it was a wash to say if they were really worth training up, but the boy wasn't here and killing these gangers wouldn't be the best use for such weaklings.

'Yeah, Netwatch finally showed up and handled the RABID, so I decided to leave them to it.' Uriel responded, running a system diagnostic and grabbing the DaiOni's mouth and holding it closed to stop it from barking so much. Adam's small headache disappeared immediately. It took him a minute to remember what a RABID was, before snorting dismissively.

'So that's why I went down earlier. Wasn't the plan to not die, dumbass?'

'Pft, I'd like to see you do better. Besides, we got up again, that hardly counts for dying.'

'So… You gonna like, talk or something?' A distinctly feminine and not-Uriel voice cut him off from the banter. He glanced over and focused on virtuality from his optics.

There was a red-haired meatbag in golden chains floating next to him. Dressed in a form-fitting plugsuit, with a small tail whipping around behind her idly. Unfortunately, the golden chain around her neck led down to tie around his waist.

He stared at it for a moment.

'...Yello?' The meatbag asked, finger on her lips.

'Uriel what the fuck is that and why isn't it dead?' He demanded.

'You know you could just check my memory and figure it out.' Uriel sassed him. He ignored it and demanded again.

'Uriel.'

'I found an AI, thought it might be useful for handling the less important shit to give me more free time. Time to learn more about netrunning.'

He thought about it for a moment.

'Fair enough, make sure to bind it.'

He turned back to focus on how the kids were doing, seeing them duck and weave around the pretty pathetic laser-fire of those Minotaurs. Blueberry disorienting with the occasional missile, forcing the ganger to pull up that pathetic ballistic shield, Bowlcut tossing EMP grenades immediately after to force a momentary stunning, and Spares moving in to throw an amatuer punch that turned the meatbag into a avant garde donut.

A minotaur, two gangers with street-level speedware, and six gangers with jack shit. It had taken them a minute and a half to kill them all, but they hadn't suffered any damage during it so…

Like he thought, a complete wash about whether they were worth it or not. Well… Spares was worth it, being all metal was already better than the vast majority of meatbags in the world, but the other two were mixed at best. Potentially useful, but definitely not frontliner material. Same as his assessment from months ago.

'...Did you just ignore me?' The codebag flapped its fake mouth again.

The kids did a status check, then walked over for an assessment for how they did. He didn't have to think about it too much.

"The Minotaur should've been top priority. Spares, the meatbag had no head armor and you have a sandevistan, it should've been dead immediately. Blueberry, your missiles are for hardened targets or groups, don't waste them on a ballistic shield, angle your firing arc to get around those if you have to. Bowlcut, get a better weapon than just your fists, you have no range."

Blueberry nodded, Bowlcut bowed, and Spares tilted her head down. They were at least not wasting his time debating his assessment, so they were already better than some of the fuckers he used to deal with back in his meat days.

'...you did just ignore me.' The codebag spoke again, conclusively this time.

'The breach is still there.' Uriel threatened in his voice. Referencing the hole in the virtual sky slowly being frozen over by Netwatch programs that he wasn't familiar with or cared about.

'Awful rude to capture a fuckable damsel and then not talk to her, you having first-time jitters hon?'

'You're a mass of code, you're about as fuckable as a painting.' Uriel dryly refuted as Adam led the kids to the next group of gangers. It looked like it was going to be about five minutes of walking this time.

'Calling me a work of art now, what a flatterer~.' The codebag pretended to be bashful, holding a hand up in front of its face.

Uriel, get it to shut up.

'I'm going to electrocute you every time you annoy me.' That works he supposed.

'Oh my, that sounds incredibly kin-' The codebag's next line was cut off by her strangled scream as a brief virtual voltage filled the chains currently around her. The next few moments were blissfully silent as he walked along.

He paused briefly, hearing the crunch of gravel from a street over, then halfway to him, then…

His hand shot out and snatched the strommer with speedware off the ground to his left. He raised the struggling meatbag above his head and took note of its weapon, a hyper-hammer currently clutched in one of the arms trapped beneath his thumb.

He tilted his head for a moment, before chuckling audibly. "All for naught." Maybe if this one had some better legs, it would've gotten to him in time. All the same, not the worst attempt today. He clenched his fist, and the valiant strommer had their torso and one arm turn into meaty chunks. Another layer of fresh gore painted his fist, and he dropped the scraps of skin and metal on the ground.

"...a little warning next time, big guy?" The Blueberry spoke, annoyed. He turned his head back to see that a good portion of the gore had splattered the front of her body in red. He snorted and went back to walking.

"It's just gore."

"It's in my hair!"

"Take a shower."

She conceded the battle, and started to grumble resentfully.

Unfortunately, the codebag spoke again. '...Hot…'

Uriel raised a virtual hand and let sparks travel along his fingers. The codebag didn't get the hint. It floated over to settle down on one of his massive virtual shoulders, kicking its codebag feet and tail waving.

'Hey, what did you want me to actually do, huh?' Unfortunately, that was a good question.

'I'm in charge of a region, it's a pain in my ass, you get to file reports when we get back.'

'Oh!' Codebag exclaimed, snapping her fingers and shifting her icon. Her plugsuit disappeared, and a button-up long-sleeved white shirt appeared, tucked into a black miniskirt with stockings and heels. Completing the new look was a pair of thin-rim glasses. 'I can do secretary! And you can come in and bend me over the des-!' Her sentence was cut off again by a yelp of pain and a burst of electricity.

Adam said the obvious observation. 'You don't have a body dumbass, I can't bend you over jackshit.'

Her cry of pained frustration was somewhat amusing.

His ears once again detected the next group before he could see them, mostly because there were buildings in the way most of the time. They were relatively near to the shore right now, so if he had to guess, that would mean that they were down the stairs leading to the concrete docks and around the corner.

He couldn't hear any particularly heavy stomps, so that meant no Minotaurs. He raised a hand and waved for the kids to go ahead and take them out.

Bowlcut nodded, and the three opened an internal call to discuss strategy. Bowlcut went up to the corner, but not around it, and crouched to listen, Spares knelt behind him, and Blueberry brought up the rear.

Spares had the best sensor suite, but Bowlcut had a mini-map of some kind that helped track targets once detected, using his internal agent to mark them through his own sensor suite. It was nifty, but they would be better off with an internal radar or seismics detector. Blueberry only had some basic optics and audio, so she wasn't worth anything in that regard right now.

Uriel make a note, the brats needed to optimize their sensor suite for maximum coverage.

Uriel moved to do just that, before a thought occurred to him.

'Secretary, make a note, the brats need to optimize their sensor suite for maximum coverage. Remind me of it later.'

The useless codebag stared for a moment, slightly baffled. She audibly sighed, before pretending to pull out a notepad and pen from her cleavage. 'Yes sir.'

That was more fucking like it. You might get a proper name in a decade if you keep that up, codebag.

He looked to the building next to him, and considered its integrity for a moment. The brats started moving forwards, Spares using her own speedware to scout ahead then run back to report.

He activated his sandevistan, and walked over to the comparatively squat building. Spreading his claws out as far as they could go, he dug through the hardened concrete with one taloned foot. He raised his matching arm, dug his claws in, and pulled up to sink the other claw in higher up.

It wasn't a well known fact, but the DaiOni was more than strong enough to climb. It wasn't the fastest method of travel, but the modern sandevistan heavily offset that downside. His sandy was almost expired by the time he pulled himself up the two-story building, leaving grooves in the concrete wall below him, and moved over to the roof on the water-side.

Just as he thought, around the corner was a chain link fence, piles of garbage, and a group of strommers furiously whispering among themselves. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the fight unfold from his improved angle.

The kids had scouted them out well enough, taking two sandy cycles from Spares to confirm everything. Their opening move was to throw a grenade over the garbage, which landed to the side of the central table. The strommers immediately cover, which was just second nature for meatbags in Night City.

The moment the grenade started to hiss, Spares activated her sandevistan and rushed in. That meant that the grenade wasn't anything dangerous to her, Smoke or Flare probably. He was proved right when the grenade exploded, revealing it to be a flashbang. Something that Spares' optics and auditory suite was shielded against.

Spares followed up by approaching the nearest strommer and unleashing a rather by-the-number punch, which punched a hole through the strommer's…

No, not a hole, the strommer had both skinweave and subdermals it seemed. Her fist only left a bloody crater the size of her target's head. More than enough to kill, not enough to punch through. She still wasn't lining up all the vibrations as best she could, not enough constructive interference in her fist.

Beginner quality.

She had enough time to move onto the next target, punching again and turning the second strommer into a bloody mess before kicking the table up and grabbing it as an improvised shield. It took her about a second to get all this done. As with most speedware, normally he wouldn't be able to keep up.

But he was in the DaiOni right now, his current reaction speed put every other borg in existence to shame.

The Blueberry finished scampering over the mound of trash as bullets flew out to fire at Spares, most of their impact first being absorbed by the table before plinking ineffectually off her armor. Using cover to weaken the bullets enough to ensure her armor could handle them. Good.

Blueberry, having been free to line up a good shot, fired two missiles. Both of them exploding at the feet of a pair of strommers, taking out their relatively unarmored legs but not killing them.

At this point Bowlcut threw another grenade, apparently being fed targeting data from Spares and Blueberry, as it landed right in the center of the now legless strommers. Blueberry pulled back behind the mound of trash once more, and Spares moved to behind one of the shitty couches they had.

The grenade proved to be a standard model, as chunks of shrapnel bounced off his helmet as it exploded. He made no move to avoid them, they wouldn't even scratch his paint after all, and continued watching.

That would take care of the meat strommers, but what were they going to do about the street-borg pretending to be scrap over in the corner?

The borg activated its own sandevistan and rushed forwards, mantis-arms unfurling and lashing out at Spares.

Apparently nothing, because they didn't notice that one. He sighed in irritation, both at the stupid arms and their lack of awareness.

Spares engaged her own speedware quickly enough, but quickly fell backwards in an amatuer set of barehanded parries, her (his replacement) hands being scratched but not actually damaged by the thrashing blades in front of her. She was weaker on the defensive than on attack, something he'd need to correct in the future.

She was still too hesitant to take blows, even as well armored as she was. He didn't really know why, but it was something she'd need to get over soon.

Their speedware deactivated soon enough, and Blueberry shot twice with that big shotgun she found. The first shot connected, staggering the streetborg, but then the streetborg threw an arm down and extended the mantis blade into the ground sideways. It threw itself to the side to avoid the second shot, but then pulled itself back immediately with the extended blade as leverage.

Unleashing a kick against Spares to stagger her, the streetborg assessed its situation and moved to escape, mantis blades stabbing into the concrete wall to its side and throwing itself up like a monkey. He hadn't thought of using them as mobility tools before, mostly because he was far too heavy to take advantage of such. That was clever of the streetborg.

Unfortunately for it, none escape the slaughterhouse.

A burst of auto-shotgun fire from his left arm cut the streetborg in half mid-air, splattering gore over Spares, who was just now recovering from the kick. He dropped down from the rooftop, slamming into the ground and cracking the asphate under the whole dumpsite.

He didn't need to look at the brats for them to know he was disappointed.

The next five minutes were spent telling them exactly why, and in exacting detail. By the end, they looked downright pitiful, but decently determined to not mess up again.

He began to stomp off for the next group of strommers. Pausing for a moment as one set of footsteps ran back first. Judging from their sound, that was…

"Blueberry, what are you doing?" He called out without looking behind him.

"Taking these arms." She answered. He turned to look at what she was talking about.

She was holding the Mantis Arms, both weren't quite her size and were covered in rust and blood.

"Put those back."

"You saw what that chromegonk could do with them, I could use that kinda scampering."

He growled audibly. "That's street shit, we'll buy a proper set later. Drop those and come on."

The Blueberry huffed before throwing them over her shoulder and sauntering up. At this point, Spares interrupted.

"David Martinez and Falco are late."

He turned to stare at her for a moment, before checking his internal clock. She was right, even accounting for a fifty percent increase due to delays, they should be back by now. He narrowed his optics briefly.

"Bowlcut, call the Brat."

"Yes Sir." Bowlcut's eyes lit up for a moment. That moment dragged on for a minute. Then his eyes flashed once.

"...no signal." The Bowlcut spoke slowly, frown growing on his face. "I can't think of anywhere in Night City where he'd be out of range."

"...I'm not getting any signal to him either…" Blueberry spoke up, worry growing on her face.

…

'Uriel.' There wasn't a need to verbalize his command beyond that.

Uriel disappeared.

In the meantime, he called the NCPD. A few rings later, and a haggard voice answered the line.

[You've reached the NCPD hotline, please be aw-]

[Wire me to Max Hammerman before I butcher you.]

[...right away Mr. Smasher.]

It took a few moments before the line was picked up again.

[Smasher, what the hell is it?]

[David Martinez, did he arrive earlier?]

[Around thirty minutes back. Why?]

He ended the call, clenching a fist.

Uriel returned.

Adam didn't bother asking, instead just opening his recent memories and quickly scanning through.

The car left the police blockade, drove for a bit, then pulled to a stop inside a warehouse near the badlands in the northeast.

Five trucks drove away from the warehouse and into the badlands ten minutes after.

His optics burned a furious red.

"We're returning to Pacifica for full resupply immediately."

It's been a while since he was this angry. It was downright refreshing, really.

Uriel, start making calls, we're calling in all the favors we can here. He had spent entirely too much fucking time on that brat for him to get fucking kidnapped.