It had been one month since he tore the kid out of the Cyberskeleton, three weeks since he started training him, twenty days since he sent the girl to get handler and overwatch training, eighteen days since PR finally settled on a fucking design, ten days since his new gemini came in, four days since he got the custom ACPA from Hijitaka for the other girl. Today was the last of the vacation days he put in, and the last day of training the kid (and others he supposed, they were going to be there too).

He had a test planned. Arasaka has a number of gangs that they discretely supply weapons to in Night City, keeps them armed and violent, in exchange for some sort of benefit that Adam didn't care about. Asking his own handler if any of them have become more trouble than they're worth gave him a small list of minor gangs and the info Arasaka kept on them.

Picking the one that pissed him off the most, Adam got their files and brought them back to coordinate a raid. The final test was simple, they were going to wipe this gang off the face of the earth, and the kids were going to decide how. Adam would be following their orders while doing so, to see if any of them learned anything about the butchery he was trying to bestow upon them.

If they passed, good. If they failed, Adam would cut their free time down and force them to take remedial lessons. It was simple enough. He didn't think they would fail, he had taught them well enough for that. But who knows, they might surprise him in new and disappointing ways. Uriel told him to cut down on the cynicism, Adam grumbled.

His floor was quite a bit different now. It was mostly the same in terms of underlying structure and the new furniture was all bulky and heavy, but it all could support his weight. Mostly solid blocks of metal with interiors of honeycombed aluminum to give it the strength it needs to support his six-hundred pounds of steel (and other metals) body. All of them with slightly deep rims around their edges to keep the cushions in place inside for the meatbags who needed such things.

The amount of cat hair was slightly unfortunate, but the girls cleaned the place once a day to make sure none of it got anywhere important. He made sure that they did, they want to keep a fucking pile of meat in his home they were going to keep it clean. The beast hadn't made him mad enough to kill it yet, but it was a close thing. Fucking meat-beast having the audacity to get it's shitty fur on his chrome, he wanted to stomp on it. Fortunately, he didn't have to burn the new decorations, because the gremlin didn't buy any. The only things in his home were furniture, blankets and cushions and what not, and other useful things.

It was good, the gremlin avoided annoying him with useless garbage, and had a decent knowledge of media that was actually good. Although, the P.K. Dick tattoo probably should have told him that long before. She made references, if he was feeling chatty he'd make a reference back, the other two were fucking oblivious each and every time.

He walked into what was now his kitchen, and saw the kids were sitting around, eating something, and watching one of his old vids. He had to break out the disks, dvd player, and adapter cables for that one. It was hooked up to the wall-mounted screen in front of the three places to sit. A heavily reinforced two-seated, a heavily reinforced one-seater, and in the center, his bench.

The kid and his girl were on the two-seater, yellow jacket over them like a makeshift blanket. The gremlin was over in the one-seated, foot-long sandwich in both hands and pistol resting on her lap. Her trigger discipline was so poor it was insulting when she first started carrying around firearms in the home, he took her guns and unloaded them until she started resembling a competent soldier with them.

It took two weeks before he let her have live ammo in the building again.

They were watching Blade Runner, one of his favorites. It was a classic for a reason, although he hadn't seen it in years (decades?) by this point. His files were ready for a briefing, but the vid was halfway over already. It would be a complete waste of time to reset a vid he already memorized.

"Oh hey big guy, we're about halfway done with it, want us to start over for ya?" The gremlin spoke through a mouthful of bread and meat and probably other things. Adam grunted, that would delay the briefing for the final test even more, so he walked over to his bench and sat down on it. He'll let it finish, he was feeling nostalgic for something actually watchable instead of that VR shit. Why yes, he wanted to be vulnerable to ambush for the next few hours, what a fantastic idea. What a worthless way to spend time, actively detrimental to living. How anyone in the world was a VR addict, he would never know.

"No. Briefing after."

"Gotcha." She said and went back to watching (and eating). The kid spoke up at this.

"What about?"

"Final test, see if you all are up to par."

"Gotcha, choom."

The vid played until it was over. They were quiet, thankfully, otherwise he'd have to threaten them again. The meatbeast had the audacity to lay against his feet again, but he ignored it as best as he could.

Eventually, the vid was over. He had forgotten just how good it was. Well, he didn't actually forget, he just didn't have it at the forefront of his mind until being reminded of it. Uriel said that was the same thing, Adam ignored him. Uriel grumbled and went back to synthesizing music of his world.

Adam got up and waved the kids to come over to the larger kitchen table (why did they buy it if they were just going to eat in the bench room? Wait a minute, he's the one who technically bought it. Fucking kids wasting his money.). Once they were all seated, Uriel pulled up the relevant documents and sent them to the table-screen, causing them to appear in front of them.

"The test is the complete elimination of the Ironhands minor gang, led by Jeremiah "Johnny Ironhands" Smith. You three will be planning it. I will be joining you. I will be equipped with an unmodded Tsunami Nue and an unmodded knife. I will not be using any active-type chrome. I will not be using Panzerfaust. You have three hours to decide your approach. They must be eliminated before noon tomorrow."

Adam got up and walked off, leaving them to their planning session. He'd be back after their time was up, and follow whatever plan they had concocted. All the information they needed were in those documents and files, they'd either succeed or prove to have been a waste of his time.

He went into the armory to get his mentioned equipment and busy himself with maintenance and observation. Uriel set a timer for three hours from now, so Adam could drift off as much as he wanted here.

The Tsunami Nue was one of Adam's favorite guns. It was unpretentious, it didn't have some stupid gimmick, it shot a big bullet. Ten rounds of .45 caliber bullets, the only software on the thing being a small light that turns red when the chamber was empty for the few meatbags that couldn't fucking count. It was a handgun, it did handgun things, it did them well. He had picked it specifically for its practicality and functionality (that and the very loud boom it made when firing, Adam liked that part a whole lot).

His knives were custom tailored to his size. Adam was eight feet of steel tall, had an eight foot arm span, and hands big enough to crush a normal man's skull. A normal four-inch knife was just not going to work for him, so he had to order custom. His personal knife was another thing he liked a lot. It was one foot of solid steel, a shortsword for a smaller man. It had a good grip, it was balanced for throwing if he needed to do that. It was a knife, it did knife things, it did them well.

Making sure the gun was loaded, his belt had three clips of ammunition, and that his knife was sharp and ready, Adam then let his mind wander. By this time tomorrow they'd be taking jobs again, and he'd let the boy start getting chrome at a pace that Adam knew he could handle. The kid occasionally drifted off, but Adam cutting him off cold had prevented any problems from occurring since. That and his girl stepping up to do girly things had helped.

The first time they came back and the boy saw the girl in an apron, he wasn't able to move, just stare. The girl's face went red as she told him to sit down and wait for the food to be done, and the kid's wasn't much better. Finally got around to acting like some approximation of a couple, took them long enough, Uriel commented. Adam grunted, he didn't know jack shit about romance, his last girlfriend made that clear to him.

Just thinking about that bitch made him mad, so Adam distracted himself by going over the equipment the kids were likely to bring along on the test.

The first obvious thing was the kid and his chrome. Human-peak for all the parts that he has replaced and a S-grade (Smasher grade) Sandevistan. Kid was probably going to wear his Arasaka body armor and that yellow jacket. The Arasaka body armor was used for the better grunts. It looked a whole lot like the american police riot armor from Uriel's world. It protected moderately well from most things, it was good and unsophisticated. You can't hack bullshit that doesn't have any electronics.

Kid would probably use the weapons he had been practicing on for the last few weeks, a Tsunami Nue and knife of his own. Maybe he'd buy something else before the mission with that bank account Adam had shared with the gremlin, maybe not.

The girl would be overwatch, no doubt. Her job would be to look at all of their cameras, vitals, and the files on the targets they already had on hand and then make sure everyone was coordinated and stayed alive. A good overwatch was worth it's weight in fucking platinum, so getting a consistent one was very valuable indeed. Adam had bullied one of the Arasaka-dime overwatch operators to train her in it, so she should be competent by this point. His handler knew not the fuck with him another time, so she was nice and fucking polite while training the girl in mission handling. She knew what Adam would be doing to her otherwise.

The gremlin would be loaded up in her brand new ACPA and using her new miniaturized naval railgun. She called herself a Metal Gear the first time she put it on, and Adam corrected her saying the gun was completely non-nuclear in nature. Both the ACPA and gun were test-types that Hijitaka had worked out, and if they proved useful then Arasaka heavy-snipers would be getting a nice upgrade in a few months time. Good job Miliatech, you bunch of meatbags, you gave the enemy a nice fat advantage for them to fuck you with. Better bite the pillow.

The ACPA was about five hundred pounds of weight that required the pilot to have Cyberarms. Well, more specifically it required the wearer to have Quick-Change Mounts for both arms. The wearer got into the central chamber, and as part of the start-up process their arms were wired into the suit itself. It would be nice if they had enhanced optics as well, but it wasn't required. Adam paid for the gremlin to get both of these things, the Quick-Change Arm Mounts and Cyberoptics with the standard works (Infrared, Telescopic, Low-Light, and Thermal). That was all she needed to be effective in her role, and Adam wasn't going to let her get anything else.

Seriously, she wanted Gorilla Arms but none of the skeletal reinforcement needed to make that extra strength useful or weight worth it. That was stupid, and Adam told her so. She pouted for the rest of the day like the gremlin she was. She certainly cheered right the fuck up when her new ACPA and gun came in.

The entire ACPA was designed to handle the weight and bulk of the new railgun, and by letting the arms be replaced entirely more of the frame could be dedicated to that without needing to worry about where the wearer's own arms would fit into them. When the mission was done, simply take the ACPA off and get an ally to install one's old arms again (or just replace the arms one at a time, it took a hot minute to do but it was faster than a full replacement every time). The rest of the ACPA was simply as much armor as could reasonably be fit without slowing the wearer down, a standard stealth system, and a mission pack for extra railgun ammunition.

Its design was vaguely similar to the robotic child of a gorilla and rabbit. He wasn't sure how much sense that made, but it certainly looked functional.

It was called the 1T-KYU "Test-type Kyudoka" ACPA, and it was pretty much everything that Adam asked Hijitaka for. The man did good work, and was even paid a few million more for the design and further testing models by the higher ups. There was a reason they tolerated his eccentricities.

The gun was not quite as good as Adam was hoping, but not quite as bad as he was fearing.The final result was about three times the firepower of a standard Techtronika SPT32 Grad, at about five times the weight, and zero recoil. For those of you at home, this meant it was about sixty pounds of gun. It was big, it was bulky, but it shot a very big and very dangerous projectile. It was only about sixty percent as powerful as the monster he ripped off that dog a while back, but it was smaller and easier to mass produce by a large margin.

It was called the 1T-YMI "Test-type Yumi" Railgun. Yes, Hijitaka was both Japanese and very uncreative when it came to naming things. It wouldn't be knocking down buildings like the actual base model anytime soon, but it would turn practically anything that was less armored into chunks of colored rain. Adam liked it a whole bunch, and couldn't wait to order an actual prototype model for himself when they rolled off the assembly lines. Hijitaka earned himself another few million from the higher ups for its design.

With both of these, the gremlin turned from a liability to a potential asset, albeit one that had to be kept at a distance from the actual fighting. A standard borg that got right next to her would turn her into mince fairly quickly no doubt, and a Pazerfaust practitioner would be a death sentence in about ten seconds, but so long as she was far away and free to keep shooting the Yumi then she would be helpful.

Adam could probably take a shot or five from it, but not many. A lesser borg would probably be taken out in a single shot, and the less said about meatbags the better. Like Adam said earlier, colored rain.

With this, a competent team was beginning to form. Two close-to-mid range brawlers, a long range fire support, and an overwatch operator. Hell, Uriel could even act as quick-hack support and another mid-to-long range gun if Adam brough the Gemini body with him. A veritable assault squad was in its barebones state. All they needed now was a dedicated scout and Adam would have a strike unit ready to kill things that Arasaka pointed him at. Things were looking up, so he was expecting it to turn sour sooner or later.

'Uriel, how much time do the kids have left?'

'About two and a half hours.'

Goddamn, this was going to take a while. Adam decided to go over old combat logs again, that'll be fun. Uriel pulled up the time he tore through a Nomad caravan with his bare hands, and Adam let it play.

—

After the kids had decided on a plan, it was time for them to suit up, sync their vitals and cameras with the girl's computer, and head out. Hijitaka told them to save all the footage, as the weapons department wanted to go over them afterwards for data on how the new test-types actually perform. That was perfectly agreeable.

When Chiri asked him to send her a recording of it, it was slightly less agreeable. This was a test-type performance, he didn't know if the higher ups wanted it getting out yet. He told her to ask them first, and she nodded in agreement.

She wasn't as timid as she was before, apparently her son was doing well for himself on the corporate ladder right now, and was going into public relations as well. She told him coyly that it was because he was a big fan of "The Butcher of Arasaka", and she showed him pictures of when he was a brat. The brat form of the kid was wearing a mask of his old face and shooting a toy car with the nerf-gun equivalent of his arm missiles.

Adam snorted a bit at the image. Fucking meat-brat didn't know what Adam got into in his spare time, namely turning civilians into chunks of meat. Or maybe he did? He was a corpo-brat, it was certainly possible that he knew and didn't care. Eh, Adam didn't care either way, he had a PR agent already.

He considered her for a moment, before sending a message. It had been a bit since last time, and he was feeling up for it after this test regardless of its outcome.

[Be in your office when I get back.] It was not a request.

She paused at that, face turning a bit red. Her smile grew a bit wider as she ducked her head and nodded. He walked off to join up with the kids again. They entered the elevator and started descending to the ground floor for transport to the test site. His last sight of the woman was her pumping her fist in excitement. Heh, overeager little thing.

The kid and gremlin were looking at him. The kid spoke up, one eyebrow raised and a smug grin on his face.

"What's that? Does the Smasher have an Input now?" Kid probably thought he was being teasing. Unfortunately for his fun, Adam Smasher doesn't get embarrassed. He replied in a bored tone.

"No, I just fuck her when I feel like it."

Both of them sputtered at that, and the conversation about that topic was closed fairly succinctly. Soon enough they were in the transport and moving along to the test site.

It was on the border of scav territory and polite society (well not really, but polite as street-trash could be really), in an old and abandoned tunnel that used to be a subway. There was trash littering the area, both meat and actual, and graffiti covering just about every surface. A few actual rats scurrying about, a few street rats scurrying about.

There was every kind of human filth in the corners of the alleyways, and even more in the cracks in the road.

It was exactly the kind of place Adam could butcher a family of four and no one would come to help. It was also the kind of place in which that family of four would all have shotguns, including the toddler. It was his third favorite kind of place, right after an active warzone and wherever he was when he was fucking a good looking gal.

It would be a good learning experience.

The Ironhands (god, what a fucking stupid name for a bunch of drugged up gangers) were located in what used to be a repair lobby beneath the surface. The rough plan was simple, Adam would enter the tunnel through this stairway as it had more twists and turns but less alternate paths.

The kids would continue down the road a ways, and enter into the tunnels through a second stairway, it had paths that were longer and straighter, but had more alternative paths. This would allow the gremlin to fire at anything that entered the long main tunnel and the kid would clear out the side tunnels to force opponents into the firing line of the gremlin.

If either of them began to get overwhelmed by firing power, the would fall back to the stairway and pick off everything that came for them as a team. Adam, in the unlikely event that he would be overwhelmed, would also fall back, and use the stairway as a chokepoint in the same way.

The Ironhands had at least two ACPAs, gifted to them from Arasaka for some service performed a few years back. They would have to be taken out by the Yumi railgun, nothing except Adam's fists when using Panzerfaust could breach their armor. Adam needing to use Panzerfaust in this mission was a fail-state, so they would save at least three railgun slugs for each.

It was possible that the Ironhands had something in the tunnels that could also breach the ACPA armor, but one never makes plans for things that weren't guaranteed.

It was simple, it was effective, it was probably the best for low level ganger trash like these guys.

Adam was almost proud of the kids, it wasn't perfect but he could save his critiques for after they were done with this.

"Alright, operative sound off." The girl said over their radiolink.

"Operative alpha ready." The boy responded.

"Operative beta ready." The gremlin responded.

"Operative sigma ready." Adam wasn't sure why they skipped so many letters, but he sounded off all the same. Here he wasn't Adam Smasher, right now he was just a borg operative for the kids to use to kill a whole heap of street trash. It was nostalgic, and reminded him of his younger days, before he was Adam fucking Smasher.

"Alright operatives, I'm not seeing any activity, feel free to begin the mission." The girl stated.

They nodded at each other, and Adam descended into the abandoned gutters of a bleeding city.

…Uriel, cut it out with this poetry stuff, he's on a job right now.