The new chrome wasn't all that bad, David admitted. It wasn't near his old stuff in performance, but it moved preemly and was just as comfortable. Having a complete set from a single source was… well he understood why cylons were able to manage so much chrome without meds.

Comparing how it felt to have his street set and this set was like sandpaper and silk, everything just flowed without the need to strain it. His old set was strong, but it was also… unruly? It had to be told firmly what to do. This set was just like cylons themselves, immediately obeying without hesitation.

He knew why that was now, Lucy and Becca told him what Smasher said about it. He got a little bit more angry at corpos for all the bullshit they pull. The streets were rough enough without them going out of their way to make things worse. He was playing right into their fucking hands with it, too.

He was diving right off the deep end with the chrome, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. He went on a fucking rampage at the end and almost got everyone killed. Again.

It won't matter by the end of it, the side effects are gonna stack. You'll go right off the edge.

He was a terrible leader, he kept the crew together but only by letting most of them die. Falco even left after it was all said and done. All he managed was getting Lucy back…

No, he didn't even do that, did he? Smasher would've killed everyone if he didn't accept the offer. Not even out of some personal grudge, just another job to him. Now look at them, in one of the most preem flats he had even heard of, all expenses taken care of, with all their chrome replaced with matching fucking sets for a sign on bonus. Faraday was dead, Arasaka wasn't going to touch them with a ten-foot scyther blade, and he was brought back from what Doc said was impossible.

The best thing that ever happened to him and his remaining crew and all it took was him giving up.

Lucy deserved better than that. Becca deserved better than that. They deserved better than him.

You might as well drop out.

"Kid, pay attention."

David focused once more on the present. Smasher was to the side and they were both in one of the formerly barren rooms. This one Becca converted to be a sort of training area, some kind of sparring ring in the center, targets on the wall, and prior soundproofing made this long room good for teaching peeps how to fight.

Smasher had his arms crossed, standing perfectly still. Still just as menacing as ever in his full-borg, all-black, frame. Apparently today was "getting used to the chrome day.", since tomorrow they were going to start going out to practice fighting on the streets. The Tin Man was… kinder than he was expecting from the boogeyman of Arasaka. He grumbled and grunted and called you out if you said something he didn't like, but he also payed for basically everything they needed, got Arasaka to back off, and occasionally gave advice.

"A man is his word"

"They aren't men, they're meat. Men hold themselves to higher standards."

It was… It was nice in a strange way. The closest thing he can compare it to was Maine.

"Everybody gets a fair shake. Only way I operate."

He remembered what you said, Maine, so he was trying his best to do the same. He'd give Smasher a chance, and if he proved to be another gonk? He'd get Lucy and Becca out of there before going back to scrap his ass. He learned from last time. Besides, he'll be out of here and with Lucy on the moon in a year's time anyways.

"We're checking your form today, see if you actually know how to fight." Smasher growled out. Then again, Smasher growled just about everything out. "This is one of my old Gemini's so scrap it as much as you can. I need to toss them out anyways."

Them? As in plural? As he thought that the door to the room opened to reveal a completely nude man. Dude was blonde, had a pompadour, and was pretty buff, but walked over to the other side of the ring and waited.

Wait, David didn't know much about chrome, but didn't you need to actually be in the body that you were controlling? How the hell was Smasher moving them both around?

…Eh, Smasher was absurd like that. He probably had some preem corpo tech in his frame that let him move more than one body around at a time, that seems about right.

"This the Gemini?" David asked just to be sure that it was and not something else.

"Yes." Adam responded.

"Nova, just making sure." David raised his fists and bent his knees, and waited for a signal to start. He saw the Gemini sigh and put its face in its hands.

"What the hell is that?" David turned and saw Smasher in the exact same pose as before, staring at him.

"Uhh, my stance?" David hesitantly replied. There was a long silence before surprisingly the Gemini spoke up.

"IHe's been relying on the Sandevistan to dodge instead of blocking. That's why he's in such an aggressive stance, king." A somewhat strange voice came out of the Gemini. "He's ready to rock but he's never been rolled before us."

"That'll get him killed the moment he finds someone as fast as him." Smasher growled out at the Gemini.

"That's what we're here for, king." The Gemini calmly retorted.

"Are… you talking to yourself?" David hesitantly questioned. Was Smasher completely hexed already?

"Helps me think."

"Ah, got it." This has never shown up before, so what changed…? Ah, the Gemini body. Was the reason he was able to control two of them due to some sort of mind-splitting stuff? That was pretty preem if true, but sounded like hell to stay focused with it active. So like the Sandy but for controlling chrome instead of going fast? It would make sense why it doesn't use it in a fight then, it's only really useful for stuff like this where Smasher doesn't have to move himself.

Wait, did this mean that Smasher speaks like the Gemini does in his own head? That was a hilarious image. He muffled his snickers.

"The kid's laughing at us, king."

"Correct his stance and start fighting."

The Gemini walked over and started talking in an easy drawl. "So let's start from the ground up, king. Your feet are ready to get you moving, but not to keep you stable. If you get pushed right now you'll lose your balance immediately. Look at my legs, copy what I'm doing…"

At this point Becca walked in to see the situation. Smasher standing off to the side, A naked man as buff as he used to be gesturing to his legs, and David without a shirt on trying to copy him.

There was a distinct pause in the room. David felt his face go red. The Gemini body spoke up, hey maybe he'll fix this.

"Hey there pretty mama, How 'bout you and I go out on the town? We're too pretty to be in this house tonight." A handsome smile on his face and two finger guns pointed at her. Still completely nude.

Becca stared for another long moment, before turning to Smasher's main body, pointing at the Gemini. Smasher's fist was shaking in rage. "You got some pretty hexed ideas about training, big guy."

The Gemini started laughing. David wanted to die.

—

"Hey, what was with the Gemini's…"

"Behavior?"

"Yeah."

"...I was young once. That frame influences me."

Adam Smasher, the borg who stomped him flat when he was at his strongest, used to act like that? That was either a bad joke or an unfortunate circumstance.

After that embarrassing moment, they explained the situation, Becca gave a skeptical 'yuhuh' and the lesson continued. He has a stance that has the approval of Smasher now, well less approval and more of a grunted out "acceptable." That was the entire day yesterday, him practicing the stance by scrapping Smasher's old Gemini bodies. Each time one of them was destroyed, another would shortly follow from the storage room and tell him how he could improve on beating people to death with his bare hands.

Soon enough that room was filled with a small pile of scraps that look like someone tore through a band of androids who all went to the same hairstylist. It was surprisingly fun, a no stakes period to just learn how to actually fight.

While he, Lucy, and Becca were all asleep, Smasher went out and got his new Tin Can installed. David had to admit, the dude looked pretty hard.

It looked similar to his old stuff, all pitch black with red and white highlights, but all the spaces and gaps were filled in. It was like he was a dude in armor rather than a terminator now, if one didn't notice the servos in the joints. His feet were pretty corpo now too, looking like Corpse-shoes rather than the slabs of steel they actually were. There were no gaps in his frame to let wires show through where it could be avoided, and the armor plates were all smooth metal instead of that fabric stuff he had in place before.

The biggest difference was the face. Now instead of looking like a corpse reanimated by chrome he looked like one of those vid stars who was starting to get old. Angular and sharp features with graying hair partially slicked back before meeting with a chromed helmet that had a visor that could fall completely forwards to hide his face. The lower half of his face was covered in a mask that reminded him of Kiwi…

Go get them for me.

Still just as tall and heavy though, taller than anyone else David had ever seen. Becca said he looked like Arnold had a baby with Murphy (he didn't know who either of those people were), and Smasher had snorted (actually snorted!) before saying "We'll be back, creep. He's coming with me." and gesturing for David to follow.

Becca squealed at that. Maybe it was an inside joke? He'll ask Becca to explain it when he gets back. He was given armor that made him look superficially similar to Smasher's new look, so he put that on and put mom's jacket on over that. It looked… strange, the casual wear of the jacket with the professional plates of corpo bodyarmor beneath.

Mom would have probably liked it, huh? He looked down at the road and kept his eyes there.

They took a transport to the streets before Smasher just started walking. Smasher had handed a handgun and a knife to him once they got out, but that was it so far. David had followed, but it had been nearly ten minutes and Smasher hadn't said a word about what they were actually doing today.

"So uhh, Smasher, what are we doing?"

"Looking for trouble."

"Can I get some deets?"

"I put in one month of vacation time at Arasaka to get you up to speed. After that we'll be getting jobs, most of them will probably be bodyguard work, but occasionally we'll be called in to raid a rival corp's assets or similar levels of danger."

"We've already spent a week waiting for your new chrome to settle in, so now we have three weeks to get you on non-liability level."

"So we are going to walk around the worst parts of Night City and wait for some meat to fuck up around us. We'll do this for six hours a day, and then spend two hours practicing your form."

"You may come to me for further lessons after those eight hours, but that is the minimum training we'll do in a day."

"You want us to just go around flatlining gangers?"

"No. I will be butchering them, you will be attempting to learn from what I do, and only after I know you know what to do will you be fighting too."

David liked that about Smasher, if you asked him to explain something then he would tell you and he wouldn't give you bullshit about it. We are going to do this because this is the best way to do it and here's why. It was refreshing to see a corpo that actually spoke straight.

Except Smasher wasn't really a corpo, was he?

"All they can do is talk, why are you bothering to listen to them?"

David noticed something as they were walking.

"Hey Smasher, I got two more questions."

"Ask."

"Wouldn't peeps recognize and not mess with you?"

"New face."

"Gotcha, second question, What's with the camera?"

Smasher audibly growled at that. "Those PR fuckers said I wouldn't need my rockets for this, and told me to mount this instead. They're going to go over the footage, edit it to be marketing friendly, and sell it."

David felt his own face fall at the first line, having gone through what he did yesterday, he agreed with Smasher's opinion on those gonks now.

"Fuckers."

"Agreed."

There was a moment of quiet solidarity between them. A moment that was ruined with five scavs with nasty looking, cheap-ass chrome swaggered out of the alley with guns aimed at them. Two assault rifles, two shotguns, one handgun. He tensed up but then got a message from Smasher.

[When I give the signal, activate your Sandevistan. Do not engage, only dodge. Watch what I do carefully.]

The scav with the pistol opened his mouth to speak, but Smasher spoke first.

"Now."

His Sandy turned on, sending electric fire through his nerves from his spine. It felt… easier than before, more smooth and less straining. Did Smasher have his Sandy replaced too? His old model was already military grade, what the hell did Smasher have them install that was better than the old one?

The world slowed, and Smasher moved with the practiced ease of someone who has been in high-intensity combat for eight decades. Because he has been, the Tin Man was fucking old by this point.

Smasher walked forwards, drawing his combat knife from his upper-arm holster and his pistol from the holster on his right thigh, stepping past the scav with the gun. A quick motion with the knife and the two with the shotguns had their spines chopped in half. A second step and Smasher was at the two with rifles, one was stabbed and the other was too far away for a stab so Smasher threw the knife at his un-chromed face instead.

Smasher's Sandy turned off just in time for him to line a shot with the back of the pistol-scav's head. Firing and executing him just as the knife buried itself in the other's face. He let his own turn off as well.

Every scav hit the ground at the same time. Smasher walked over to take his knife back. David liked to consider himself pretty good at fighting with a Sandy, it was his signature chrome after all. He was able to tear through gangs like they were… meat to the slaughter…

Huh.

But that was fucking preem.

He took out five scavs with a knife and a single bullet in the same time those guys took to blink. He was acutely reminded of the difference between the two of them. David could have done the same in about double the Sandy time and triple the bullets spent, and they wouldn't have dropped at the nearly the exact same time either.

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

Not anymore, Smasher. Not since you tore me from the Cyberskeleton limb-by-limb.

"Now then, what did you notice?"

"That you're better than me at my sig chrome."

"That will come with experience, what else?"

David thought for a moment, reviewing the butchery in his head.

"The pistol-scav was closer, but you saved him for last."

"Why?"

Why did Smasher do that anyways? He could have been even faster if he took out the pistol-scavs before the shotgun-sc…

Their weapons.

"The pistol scav couldn't do anything to you, not with the chrome you're packing. So you went for them in order of how much of a threat they were to you."

"Correct. Good. What else?"

And so it went on. Smasher would ask him if he noticed anything, David would do his best to respond, Smasher would then ask if David noticed the reasons why he did those things. If he missed anything, Smasher would mention it and explain his reasoning afterwards.

At some point David had to ask. "Hey, what's with my Sandy, it's easier than before and what I had before was top of the line chrome."

"I had them give you one of my spares."

David paused at that, before putting it out of his mind. He can think about that later.

Then they would go back to walking through scav territory, they would get jumped again, and the cycle would repeat. Smasher never once insulting him for not picking up on something, just mentioning it after David said he didn't notice anything else.

It was… nice.

Eventually, evening was starting to come around and Smasher said that after the next encounter they'd be going back for stances. This time he wouldn't be using a Gemini body, because David scrapped all of those yesterday.

They heard a commotion off to the side. Seven scavs surrounding a... Girl? Either a flat chested girl or a very pretty boy, and probably a joytoy from their clothes (and tattoos on their abdomen). David was about to run in, but Smasher said "Now." and David realized he was about to get another lesson. Their Sandys activated, and time slowed to a crawl.

This time Smasher didn't try saving his bullets as much. He threw his knife to take out the scav closest to the joytoy, and then shot six times to turn the heads of the rest of them into pulp.

It was certainly faster David supposed, but it was unlike what Smasher had been doing up to this point. Smasher didn't do things without a reason, so there was another lesson here.

The light-blonde haired joytoy blinked slowly, and looked at the corpses that were now surrounding them, then looked over to see an eight foot hulk of steel walking over, followed by a boy in a somewhat loose and brightly colored jacket. Smasher knelt and pulled out his knife before looking at David.

"What did you notice?"

"You didn't try conserving ammo this time, and threw the knife at the one closest to their victim."

"Why?"

The joytoy spoke up at this. "Oh wow, like, did I just get rescued? That's, like, totes preem." David still couldn't tell if they were male or female (maybe both?). They got up and inspected Smasher closer, leaning in provocatively and putting a finger on their bottom lip.

Smasher was ignoring them, so David continued with this thinking. What was different this time around…?

"Are you like, ghosting me right now?"

It wasn't this hard to think about the other times, without this joytoy talking when he was focused…

"There was a potential non-combatant in the crossfire. Anything could have hurt them, so you had to prioritize taking as many guns out as possible rather than conversing bullets or prioritizing things that could hurt you."

"Correct. Normally I don't bother, but some jobs will call for this."

"I like, could have totally taken em! I wasn't in trouble you dummy."

At this Smasher finally looked at the joytoy. Light blonde hair, tanned skin, painted nails and lips, blue eyes, skimpy clothing, a tattoo that said 'breed me' on her (his?) lower stomach and another that said 'buttslut' on their lower back.

The joytoy pouted at their skeptical gazes, and let their arm unfold into a scyther blade. It was then David noticed that they had seams across their entire body. The joytoy then smiled seductively, and pushed themselves up against Smasher. Rubbing their chest against his stomach.

"But like, I'm totes thankful for my knight in shining chrome, anything I can do to repay you, papi~?" They asked, then leaned up on their tippy-toes to try and stage-whisper to him. "I like it real rough, and I've been a bad one recently~"

Smasher glowered at her before replying. "You don't have enough chrome to handle me rough, girl."

…was Smasher fucking flirting right now? David didn't need to see this, he felt sick.

The joytoy giggled before running a finger in circles on his chest. "Wanna take a closer look, papi~?" Smasher paused for a moment, glaring down at them before his eyes widened a bit.

"Ninety-four…?"

The joytoy playfully gasped before rubbing on Smasher again, burying their face into his chest-chrome. "Like super 'barrasing, a hunk is looking at my private places~! How am I supposed to be a bride now~?"

Smasher glared down still, before pushing them away and walking to the mouth of the alley.

The joytoy gasped and fell back dramatically before smiling "We'll be in touch papi~ Thanks for the number~" They then looked at him and David felt like a cornered mouse. A predatory smile came over their face. "Like, what about you, cutie? A squire should get some attention too~."

Quickly he raised his hands in defense and all but yelled out "I have an input!" The joytoy paused at that before a genuinely happy smile came over their face.

"Like, for reals? How long have you been together?

"About a year now."

"You eachother's mainline?"

"Yeah."

The joytoy squealed at that, and did a sort of dance that seemed happy. "That's like, totes romantic~ I'm so happy for you! Here's my contact, you gotta let me see you two together sometime, tell me all about your 'lationship~!"

They then started to walk away out of the alley, brushing by Smasher and blowing him a kiss on the way through. They shouted back at him as they left.

"The names Vee! I'll be in touch, cutie~!"

David finally recovered from the whirlwind of rapid dialogue and managed to walk back up to Smasher.

"What was that?"

Smasher glared in his usual way in the direction that Vee was heading.

"A full-borg conversion."