It would be some time before the Lab came back with any more information on the supply run they just looted the other day, but that didn't mean they didn't already have some promising leads. The chiefest of which was that the dumbass scavs had a fucking planner.

A detailed list of locations that they would be using for the next week and the leaders that would be present at each. Why the fuck they had this Adam would never know, fucking scavs were some of the stupidest fucking meatbags he had ever seen. It's basic OPSPEC to NOT HAVE A DETAILED LIST OF THIS SHIT.

More and more it was beginning to look like this 'wipe out the scavs' operation was going to be basic, boring work all the way throughout. Especially if they kept leaving important info like this lying around. There were two meetings going on tonight apparently, one between a number of nameless randos and one between a group of enforcers called 'The hammer brothers'. They were a couple blocks from one another, so the initial plan was to split up here. The kids would take care of the nameless meats, and Adam would slaughter the construction crew, simple enough.

Arasaka military agents were going to surround the perimeter so that nothing escaped, and they had their regular complement of techies and medics as usual. They were only here to pick up the slack meat anyways, so Adam didn't really care about them.

The kids were in their standard equipment for the raid, and Adam was in his with one change. This time he replaced his assault rifle with his 590A1 and attached a one-time underbarrel grenade launcher for a bit of extra kick if he really needed it. He still has his integrated missiles of course, sixteen micro-rockets in all, and his revolving holster of Mono-kantanas, but really if he needed all of this against a group called 'the hammer brothers' then he should just give up.

Still better to be prepared than dead, and Adam Smasher wasn't about to die to fucking anyone.

He memorized where the kids were going to be for their own butchering session, and then waved them away. He proceeded on his own towards the abandoned plumber's shop that they were apparently holed up in. Fucking scav territory, everything they were around was old and decaying. He looked at the graffiti on the walls to see it was all painted in russian. Made sense, the scavs were technically a branch gang of Bratva, the slavic equivalent of the mafia.

He paused for a moment. Was that why they all wore tracksuits if they could get away with it? That was so obvious it almost looped back to being subtle again. He growled and kept walking. No real need for stealth here, they were all meat and he was certain they weren't packing any ACPAs or Vehicle weapons.

Before him was the old building, a worn steel door and a scratched logo of a turtle on the side of the building. It was another all concrete affair, and was likely built back in the fourth corpo war judging from the aging on it. It was a squat, sad thing, and Adam would be doing the city a favour if he blew it up.

Still, he had to confirm the death of the enforcers before he could start unleashing collateral damage, so he walked up to the steel door and kicked. The door kept itself in mostly one piece, the hinges that connected it to the concrete did not, and flew inwards. It crashed with a loud boom on the interior, which was completely dark and filled with piles of rubble and trash around the edges of an open center. He switched to night vision and still saw nothing inside.

Heh, the cheeky meatbags were trying to ambush him, might as well spring the trap.

He stomped forwards menacingly, into the center of the room. Once there, he stopped and pantomimed rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. He was mocking their little trap, and they knew it.

The sound of movement to his right, and his Sandevistan activated. He clashed an arm against the handle of a truly enormous reinforced sledge hammer about to crash against him. It was moving rather fast too, so these meatbags had at least one with a Sandevistan. Good, thats the fucking basics for high level combat, let see if they actually impress him here.

He was expecting the second hammer to come down on him from the left, raising another casual arm to block it the same way. They were called the hammer brothers afterall, that means there had to be at least two of them. From the speed of the attack, he could tell this one had a Sandevistan as well, good, they're two for two here so far. He got a bit more detail out of this one. Tall men with heavy brows and massive cyberarms in tracksuits.

He was prepared for the third hammer to come down from behind him. Shifting his body to slide out of the way of the first hammer and crashing his arm against the third hammer, again hitting it at its peak to stop it with minimal energy investment required. You block by raising your shield to meet the blow, you don't let it build up energy on the way to you. Judging by this one's movements, he had another Sandevistan as well. Alright, three meatbags with basic shit he could handle just fine, this might actually be a warm up now.

He wasn't prepared for the fourth hammer, but he could still react to it in time. Snapping out with a kick this time to smash its angle of attack away from him. It was fast too, a fourth Sandevistan. Looks like these boys were some true-blue scav elite, to be packing both the chrome arms and the Sandevistans. His own sandevistan wore out at about this time, time resuming normal flow.

He wasn't able to react to the fifth hammer in time, crashing into his side and sending him flying into the side of a bunch of scrap metal, away from the doorway. His six-hundred pounds of weight turned the old truck into crushed steel and aluminum. Just about this time the lights flicked on, revealing a balcony lining the walls above with about twenty fuckers in track suits carrying assault rifles.

…Huh. Five fuckers with reinforced sledges, cyberarms, and sandevistans backed up by twenty meats with assault rifles. Not bad at all, he was actually kinda impressed that the scavs could pull something like this out of their ass.

The bullets began to fall like rain on his position. Hundreds of bullets crashing against his chrome, individually nothing but potentially dangerous if he let himself stay still. Suddenly one of the hammer brothers was next to him, swinging a hammer down. He re-activated his sandevisatan and rolled away, snapping off a shotgun blast at the man. The bullets began to float down like leaves off a tree instead.

Before it hit, another hammer brother moved in between and absorbed the shots on his reinforced arms locked together. The fuckers were cycling their Sandevistan time, and Adam could only keep his active for the duration of four of them, not five. This was actually good shit, they were impressing him more and more as time went on here. Of course, now that he knew that they were cycling like this…

He aimed his shotgun-holding arm out to the side and fired a micro missile at where he knew a brother was approaching him. It struck him square on his raised chrome arms and began to slowly explode as Adam slightly shifted his aim and shot the grenade at the fourth coming for his position. His sandevistan began to wear off, so he rolled again just as a hammer suddenly appeared where he was. The falling leaves turned into rain once more and the old truck was turned into chunks of bullet-riddled rubble. They began to shift to target him again, so he would have to endure another second or so of gunfire before he could safely activate his sandevistan again.

Alright kids, what do you do if you're outnumbered like this? The answer is simple, begin disabling the most dangerous targets first. The hail of bullets was simply an annoyance unless he decided to be an idiot and stay still, but the hammer brother might be able to keep him in one place with this tactic.

That in mind, one needs to start overkilling targets. A hammer brother appeared before him again, hammer filling his vision. Adam activated his sandevistan and jumped back, firing a micro-missile from both arms and his shoulder mount as he did so. This time he aimed slightly more to the ground. The second hammer brother appeared before the first again, but his boxing stance meant that while his head and upper torso were well guarded, his lower torso was almost completely open.

Three micro-missiles hit his abdomen, and one of the five brothers was turned into two and many chunks, splattering his friends in gore. One down, he could now maintain Sandevistan time long enough to react to all of them. Adam grinned, this was actually fucking fun, why couldn't the scavs pull this shit off more often?

The third hammer brother approached him, and Adam countered with a rotating panzerfaust kick. His hammer turned into fucking scrap under the blow, as the fourth hammer brother approached to swing, which Adam counted by continuing his rotation into an uppercut on it. The second hammer exploded. Two weapons down, but he would be forced to endure the third one here, he didn't have the stance required to dodge this time, all he could do is mitigate the damage by rolling with it.

A hammer hit his side again, and Adam flung himself in the same direction to crash against an old toolbox. It still hurt, but the actual damage was far less than it could have been. The bullets became rain once more as his sandesvistan had deactivated, and they proceeded to aggravate him.

They did the same fucking tactic, so Adam had some options this time-

A sudden explosion from a distant location took him out of the battle briefly. He reflexively checked the girl's vital monitors. The boy was fine, the gremlin was fine…

The girl was critical.

He had to get there, he wasn't about to let his investment be scrapped by fucking scavs of all things. The hammer was coming down on him, he activated his sandevistan and exploded upwards. He grabbed the meat by the arm and threw it at the other fuckers approaching him. The meat shot like a canon as he crashed into the other meat. They crashed against each other hard enough to turn into chunks, he was quite done having fun here, he needed to go back to business.

'Uriel.' Adam commanded and he ran for the door under the slowed time of the sandevistan.

'With pleasure.' Uriel responded.

He got to the doors as his sandevistan began to wear off. The slowed bullets doing their best to drag themselves along behind him. The hammer meatbags attempting to run after him. He was nowhere near the girl or the trauma team. That wouldn't do.

Sandevistans were dangerous tech that increased the wearer's speed and perception of time. They built up heat the more movement the wearer did during this time. All of them had built-in safeties to automatically shut down if the user kept them on to prevent the wearer from cooking their nervous system and spine. Adam's nervous system was mostly wetware anyways, he could get it replaced afterwards. His actual brain was far more insulated and wasn't at risk here at all.

He manually disabled the automatic shutdown of his sandevistan, and kept running. His chrome feet tearing grooves into the roadwork as he approached the girl's listed location. At this speed, it would take him nearly thirty seconds to grab the girl and maybe thirty more to get her to the Trauma team that Arasaka had on hand for this.

Behind him, Uriel got to work. Adam still had a job to complete, afterall.

They had figured out fairly early on that Uriel could prove to be a rather effective hacker (netrunner, Adam corrected). Uriel didn't have to look at the lines of codes for his hacking, his hack was, perhaps due to his nature, entirely intuitive on his part. The disembodied fire that dwelt with Adam stepped out and into the frame of one of the hammer-meatbags.

He looked at him, his chrome and software, he stepped around the comparatively basic firewalls that tried to stop him. He considered him carefully, took in all the craftsmanship of his hardware. Then, after fully understanding what he was looking at, he reached in, overclocked all of his cyberware, and deleted the code that let him alter its electrical output.

For a moment, the hammer meatbag was fine, better than fine in fact. His sandevistan wasn't deactivating on him, and his arms felt stronger than ever. Even his neural links that allowed him to communicate with his fellow scavs seemed to be operating better.

Then, his cyberware began to heat up, and the software couldn't communicate with it to tell it to lower its output. The meat connected to the hardware began to sizzle as the meatbag began to cook. The hammer meatbag started to burn to death, his own chrome killing him.

Then, Uriel stepped out of the first meatbag, and then into the second, and repeated the process. Then he did it again, and again, and again, until everyone in the building with even a basic implant began to fry themselves to death. Burdened by the output of their own enhancements growing too much for their meat-components.

This tactic wouldn't work against a fully meat target, and it wouldn't be nearly as immediately effective against a full borged target, but for everyone else in between it was perfectly usable. If they had higher-tier ICE's then this would be much harder to do, but they had basic at best, most of them had nothing at all. Fuckers, go big or go home next time.

Adam ran from a building faster than some bullets, and everyone inside burned from a fire that was within themselves in his wake.

Uriel ran ahead after making sure everything in that building would die, and caught up to where the kids were. The building they were supposed to be in, as well as the adjacent buildings, were now exploding rubble. The kid was running with the girl in his arms, the gremlin was sliding down an adjacent building.

There were no scavs inside or outside, both buildings were traps of a different kind. If the kids had gone to the other location then the hammer meatbags would have turned them into salsa, and Adam had gone to this location he would have been buried under rubble for hours at least. Fucking scavs had planned this out, the entire planner they got was a fucking dangling hook and they fell for the bait immediately.

Adam hated sneaky shit.

The girl was in bad condition, her entire right side was tenderized and both her right arm and leg was completely fucking gone. Uriel estimated the time to bleed out at about fourty five seconds. He then estimated the time for brain damage to set in after death at about four minutes. So a little less than five minutes for him to grab the girl and get her to the trauma team. How far away were they?

One minute at sandevistan speeds, five or so at normal speeds. Treatment would take them at least ten seconds to stabilize, and maybe a minute to ready for off-site transportation to a medical facility. Unacceptable then, he kept the sandevistan locked on.

He sent a message to the kid, who couldn't keep the sandevistan locked on like he could. The kid was clearly fucking panicking, that wouldn't do.

[On approach, ETA twenty seconds, I'll get her to medics].

The kid startled at that in slow motion. Before replying.

[You got her?]

[Yes.]

Adam approached the position, Uriel turned every lingering thing that might be a scav in the area into ash. Adam was beginning to heat up himself.

His chrome boots shattered the stone beneath him as he passed. He sent a message to the trauma team and the guards.

[On route, critical wounded, ETA one minute, ten seconds.]

He was getting close to the kid now. He could see him on the other end of the street.

[Extract Rebecca.] He ordered as he took the girl from the kid's hands.

[Affirmative.] the kid replied as he went back to guard the gremlin on retreat. She should be fine, her ACPA protected her better than either of the other two.

The girl was going to die on approach, no question about that. But the trauma teams were good at their fucking jobs, and so long as he get her to them within the next…

He checked the mental timer Uriel set up.

…two-ish minutes, she should be fine. She'll need either chrome or cloned limbs to replace the ones she lost, but that's easy enough to get. How far away is the trauma team? Fifteen seconds now. His body was beginning to heat up dangerously, he'd need to get his wetware looked at after this.

Really, for the fact that they all walked right into traps like this, this was a pretty good outcome overall. His wetware was returning pain to his mind, yes he knows that he's cooking himself here, no need to tell him twice.

He was within sight of the trauma team and the guards around, who were trying to react in slow motion. Adam braced his frame, widened his stance, and stomped the road.

He slid for a hundred feet, chrome boots leaving a trail of broken roadwork behind him. He stopped right before a readied trauma team, and dropped the girl off on the readied platform. He let his sandevistan deactivate as he stepped back.

The world resumed its normal flow, and Adam's systems went into emergency shutdown as his heatsinks desperately tried to deal with the excess heat. He slumped into a kneel on the grow as everything that could turn off without compromising his vitals did. His optics dimmed and Uriel was forced back into his code.

The trauma team was already getting to work, he could tell. Most meatbags were completely worthless, but they actually pull their fucking weight most of the time. So there he knelt, all sensors blinded to the world around him as his wetware screamed at him. Fucker, I know you're toasty right now, get a better hobby than yelling why don't you?

It would be quite some time before his systems turned on again. He had built up a fuck ton of heat doing that. If the meatbags around him wanted to be helpful they spray him down with coolant foam, but he somehow doubted they would.

All that was left was to wait until he could move again. Then it would be time to get his wetware looked at.

Then he'd be coming back with a fucking vengeance and slaughtering all these animals. He'd bring out the big guns this time, and shoot first. Business and play need to be kept separate after all.

—

"The CHOOH2 is Sovoil grade, not Petrochem. It has too many impurities to be Petrochem grade." His handler spoke to him as he got his wetware looked at by a team of Arasaka medical staff. Good, she was actually being professional here. Still had trashy hair though.

"That pointed us in the right direction, we found more info on this 'Armstong'." She sent him an image.

A beautiful, statuesque, curvy woman perhaps six feet tall. Her legs were toned and powerful, her torso was as well, her face was almost unnaturally beautiful. Golden blonde hair that flowed down to her waist kept swept back and dark blue eyes. Her arms were all chrome, disproportionally large and stylized to look like a marble statue with bronze joints and servos.

And some of the most proportionally well developed breasts he had ever seen. Goddamn those were fucking nice. Full fucking props to whoever installed those. Wait, he didn't see any seams in that area. Were those natural? Maybe there was a god after all.

"Victoria Armstrong, of the Armstrong family, currently a subordinate agent of Valentin Domanevka for the Sovoil secret police. She was dispatched here to help rally the scavs into something that could oppose Arasaka influence back when you and the kid started butchering them en masse a couple weeks ago."

Huh, so this was his fault then. Oh well. He grunted for his handler to continue.

"The Armstrong family used to serve the Nazis with distinction back in world war two, which one of their then-current members became obsessed with eugenics from. Arnold Armstrong became obsessed with the idea of the perfect soldier, genetically and cybernetically, and made his family's life work to produce such."

"At first using basic selective breeding on his own line, he had them seek out and marry the fittest warriors he could. He eventually died in the battle of Stalingrad, but his son continued his work. He found an olympic athlete to marry, they produced at least one son and so on and so forth. When gene-editing came out, they adopted it immediately to start selectively removing traits they thought would hold them back."

"The Armstrong family signed up with Sovoil a bit before the fourth corporate war, and they've been supported by them since. Victoria herself is the product of six generations of selective breeding, three of which were backed by European gene editing. She became a world champion boxer for a time, got the best cyberarms Sovoil could get her, and has been doing their dirty work for the last twenty years."

"You and your team are to retrieve her, alive. Arasaka is interested both in her genetic structure and the potential possibility of recruiting her. If she is uncooperative, then we can simply kill her and take what we want from her body afterwards."

"You'll move out once we have a solid lead on her location, and you're patched up. Any questions?"

Adam considered the situation before him, and ignored the twinges of pain as they operated on his wetware.

"None."

"Think you'll have fun this time, Adam?" The handler asked him with a bit of a smirk. Adam gave a malicious grin back, and delighted in her brief flinch.

"Yes."