Adam Smasher
The Ebunike was a rather small ship, all things considered. Small for a cargo ship, that was.
It was within the 'Small Feeder' class of cargo shipping. Around 85 meters long, 17 meters wide, and 20 meters tall, it was capable of transporting upwards of 150 standard-sized shipping containers or about 2500 metric tons. It had a top speed of around 28 knots, and could travel up to about 8500 miles before it needed to refuel.
It was also completely useless for most things. The Arasaka automated sea mines that went rogue during the Fourth Corporate War plugged up all major shipping lanes first, and then quickly began to spread to every other convenient sea route over the decades until the sea itself became mostly inaccessible to humanity once more. This certainly stopped overfishing in its tracks, but it pissed just about everyone off in the process. It was unknown what most of the sea looked like nowadays, just like most of human history, so it really wasn't that big of a deal all things considered.
Adam bought the Ebunike at a steal right after the market effects of those automated sea mines began to make themselves apparent. He always wanted a ship of his own, and it was in perfect condition and incredibly cheap due to the manufacturer being forced to sell all possible assets in order to buy the investors some time to relocate their wealth and foreclose the company. Almost every sea ship building corporation either adapted to build something else, or stopped existing. There were only a few left, and they almost exclusively catered to inland sea buyers.
So, with a big ship and nowhere to sail it, he started using it as his warehouse. Instead of having to rent out a huge number of shipping containers and storage cells from some shifty-eyed meatbags for a stupid amount of eddies for decades, he could just put all his shit in the lower decks of the ship. All that was down there was the engine (one of the General Motors small cargo shipping fusion reactors, affordable for their era and not too powerful), and a bunch of empty space where the crew and more cargo might go.
All of that was shit he didn't need, so it was a pretty good place to put the stuff he wasn't too worried about getting possibly stolen. Old guns, antique guns, classical weapons and media, a few relics of pre-collapse America…
To be honest, he didn't really care about most of it. He hadn't thought about any of it in years, and he clearly didn't use it. It seems like it had accumulated a bunch over the years, though it seemed far more organized than he remembered it being.
Staring at the clean, well lit, and neatly stacked boxes and rows of his collection in the belly of the Ebunike, Adam crossed his w̸e̷a̵k̵ arms in contemplation. Tilting his head to his henchman, he asked a question.
"Grayson."
"Yes sir?" Jeremiah Grayson, the man he hired a few years back to guard his collection, replied. Average in height, vaguely asianic, with a fluffed-up haircut that was trimmed down on the sides, he was incredibly forgettable among the seas of meatbags around Night City. His most notable feature was the comparatively bright armored vest, and his extra-range motion elbows. Just noticeable enough to not draw suspicion from people who were looking for plain and forgettable people.
In short, unlike the vast majority of meatbags, Grayson was an actual professional. His lack of qualms and politely quiet demeanor made him even less of a headache to deal with. Right now though, Adam had a question.
"You organized my collection."
"Yes, I grouped everything by general category, and then size." He responded, not sounding worried in the slightest. "I was unsure if you'd prefer that or chronologically. I made sure to label it all with name and date regardless."
Adam grunted in slight approval. This was why Grayson was useful. He did his job and took just enough initiative to be unexpectedly helpful, but not bother him with useless shit all the time. Adam didn't ask him to organize his collection, just guard it, but look what he went and did. Organizing his collection and making this entire affair less of a hassle then it was shaping up to be.
"It's good."
"Thank you sir."
"Pick out something you like and take it. I don't care what."
Jeremiah gave a small grin and ducked his head. "Thank you sir."
"After that, make a call and get some auction-meatbag to come out and appraise everything. I'm putting it all up for sale." He rumbled out, even if it was far less impactful coming from this p̵͙̑å̸̤t̶̗͛h̵͎̚e̷̤̽ţ̶͊i̵̛̪c̵͆ͅ frame.
Jeremiah blinked once, and turned his head to look at him in slight shock. He swallowed, then nodded his head and replied. "Yes sir. I'll see if I can make the calls for that."
Adam nodded once, before turning to march out of the lower levels and back up the stairs of the currently immobile ship.
It was unfortunate that he couldn't quite leave Night City immediately, as Uriel eventually pointed out. If he did that, he would lose the vast majority of his wealth and power projection, both of which were going to be absolutely required if he was going to ensure his survival without the protection of Arasaka.
Which meant, before he could leave far beyond the reach of the Cunt, he needed to do some preparations.
Step one, moving all his shit from Arasaka Tower NC and Arasaka Pacifica HQ to his only legal personal residence, the Ebunike. While that was going on, move as fast as he possibly can to replace his almost h̸͈̠̃ų̵̒m̸̧̥̾a̴̬͛n̴̮͊ frame with something that could actually fight. He had already sent a message to the ripperdoc, and gotten a reply. Now he had to wait till tomorrow til he could meet the supposed 'borg experts' of NC and start discussing the creation of his replacement frame.
He had forgotten how irritating it was to not have a techie ever-ready for his needs specifically, he made a note to get one as soon as he could if it was feasible.
'You mean I made a note.' Uriel piped up, turning away from his simultaneous careful observation of their new secretary demon and reading of yet another datashard on netrunning. Making sure the codemeat wasn't currently trying to screw them over only took a bit of his processing power.
She was mostly trying and failing to do sexy poses at him instead of going through the paperwork required to set up a Private Military Company. She was otherwise relatively co-operative, especially after they came back to find her rambling to herself about blocks and gravity. It made 'the box' a real good threat to keep the probably evil AI in line, so that was nice.
'You mean you made the codemeat make a note.' He countered dryly, stomping his way up the metal stairs, his footsteps not being as careful or as loud as they should be.
'Having a secretary is cool.' Uriel grinned as he delighted in his ability to make other things do menial paperwork for them.
Obviously Adam needed something to ensure his survival, and with Arasaka no longer being an option, that meant he needed another organization to draw from, both in manpower and financial power.
When it came down to it, he only had one marketable skill, and that was violence. Thus they only had one good option for making more money. A Private Military Company. A faction that he could leverage to protect him and his shit whenever he was getting repairs, and that he could make money off of in order to expand the PMC in order to expand his safety net in order to make more money and so on and so forth. He had quite a bit of cash saved up to get this whole operation off the ground, but that wouldn't last forever, even with the royalties and whatnot he was forced into still feeding his account.
Two point seven billion eurodollars in liquid, a few million a month from advertising shit, and however much his collection of garbage was worth. That was good enough to live in retirement forever back in his day. There was probably a price hike-up over the years, Uriel figured, but it shouldn't be bad enough to render him poor by any means. That would give him enough to get a small company off the ground, buy all the military assets and pay all the legal fees, and start hiring murderers and meatbags to get the day-to-day business up and operational.
He would be getting some chucklefuck at Arasaka to handle the fiddly bits for him right now, but he wasn't their employee anymore. That wasn't possible. So instead he used Uriel's newest acquisition to handle it, and threatened to put her back into the box if she tried anything. High level executive planning was easy, all he had to do was tell other fuckers to handle things for him and threaten them while he did it.
He snorted as Uriel gave an amused scoff. Pushing the door open, he emerged onto the deck and looked around at all the random shipping crates and miscellaneous squatter garbage on the surface. He frowned through his temporary faceplate and glared at the accumulated shit that wasn't his. That would have to go as soon as he could get to it. He'd keep the containers, but the random stuff would be dumped somewhere. Maybe just the ocean, because fuck those fish, they deserve a bit more plastic in their diets.
'What's with the hatred for fish?'
'It's something to do.'
'...have you ever eaten fried fish? It's good.'
'Once, two-thousand and six, it tasted awful.'
'Of course it was awful, it was deep-fried sushi with ketchup. That's not food, that's disgusting.'
Adam was about to retort when he was cut off by a voice coming from above and behind him. He almost snarled in surprise at having not heard the footsteps. His ears were d̸e̸a̶f̵.
"Hey big guy!"
It took about a quarter of a second to restrain himself from murdering the blue skinned meatbag. A turn of his body and his glare was locked onto the form of the girl at the top of the stairs, looking slightly apologetic.
"Ah… Did I surprise ya? Sorry 'bout that big guy."
He simply kept up his glare until she got to the point. Hopping slightly and sitting on the smooth handrail, she slid down until the hopped off at the bottom, looking up at him with a curious expression.
He kept his focus mostly on his audio suite as she started talking. "Hey so why'd you have us pack everything and move it to your ship…" the roughly five-foot tall woman tilted her head and thought about it for a moment. "Actually, since when did you own a ship?"
"Since the forties?" He grunted in reply. He heard footsteps approaching, glancing once to confirm that it was the other brats coming down the stairs that led to the room that kept his collection of Militech Mk.31 HMGs. He started taking one whenever he found a good condition model on his jobs about a decade ago. He was up to 22 of the things so far, one of the biggest private collections of that particular model in the world, tied with some asshole over on the east coast.
Fuck that guy.
"You've owned a huge ass ship this whole time and never told us?!" The smurfette exclaimed, throwing her hands up.
"It wasn't relevant." He refuted, before turning his glare to the other brats and making sure they were all here. He didn't feel like repeating himself. "You're all here, good. Bowlcut, you got the message from Yorinobu."
"I did. Are we being reassigned?"
"My contract was with Saburo Arasaka. With his death, I am an independent again. I do not plan on negotiating a new contract with Arasaka." He growled out, glaring at the accumulated meatbrats. Shock quickly filled their faces, all except the boy, standing quietly at the back of the line, halfway up the stairs.
"Wait what?! Why?" The smurfette alerted everyone who might be spying within a city block with how loud she was.
"They tried to make me work for the fucking cat." He snarled to them. The woman's face turned from surprise to puzzled.
"...The cat…?" She slowly asked, eyebrows furrowed in concern.
A growl rumbled in his artificial chest. "...Yorinobu Arasaka, as acting CEO, has decided to split Arasaka into two smaller corporations. Arasaka and Arasaka West. All assets within the North American sphere were to be transferred to the assigned CEO of Arasaka West."
"...Michiko Arasaka." The girl answered, swallowing as his glare turned to her.
"...Who told you that name?"
"Kagekaze." She answered quickly.
He paused for a moment, before snorting in irritation and turning away. Fucking old timer, talking about shit he shouldn't and then dying before Adam could find out. That was just like the fucker.
"Yes. Her. So I'm leaving Night City after everything is ready. The brat is coming with me, I don't care if the rest of you stay or come along."
A hand went up.
"You're coming too, Spares."
A hand went down and the gynoid gave a satisfied nod. The rest of them finally started working through all the implications at about this time.
"...Leave Night City…?" The smurfette spoke like it was a foreign concept.
"Why does David have to stay?" The girl tried to sound dangerous. The brat suddenly looked pretty nervous and waved his hands in a 'no stop' manner. Adam plowed through regardless.
"I told him to fuck off already and he demanded to stick around."
The brat flinched at the blunt answer. The girl and woman's faces went blank as they slowly turned to the brat, who started rubbing the back of his neck and giving an awkward grin.
He ignored their drama and turned to bowlcut, who had been waiting patiently to speak.
Bowlcut nodded and bowed his head. "I'm sorry sir, but I'm obligated to stay with Arasaka. I wish you luck on your endeavors."
Adam nodded in reply, he had been expecting that. "Good luck." The corprat was going to need it working for Ms. 'I put fucking ears on everything and wear a stupid pink beret'. Bowlcut gave a small smile and a, 'Thank you sir.'
The smurfette was uncharacteristically quiet as she looked around at the others, and back to him, and then to the city. The only thing she ended up saying was a quiet "oh." Bowlcut turned a concerned look to her as the brat tried to make amends with his angry woman and mother.
It didn't matter, they were either staying or going, he didn't care which. He had shit to do, namely waiting for the meeting with the supposed borg experts tomorrow.
Like hell he was going to be caught walking around the city in this f̵r̷a̷m̸e̷.