David was quite good at killing people at this point. One year of semi-regular fighting, and two-months of dedicated instruction from perhaps the greatest soldier on the planet had turned him from a relatively average individual to a force to be reckoned with. He could, and has just now proven to, go through an army of hired mercenaries. His combination of speed, endurance, and firepower from wielding various looted guns allowed him to do that.

He could move at roughly ten times the speed of a normal person at will, his chrome limbs never grew tired, his chrome lungs drew vital air in vastly more efficient quantities, his chrome eyes could go on forever without needing to blink. Thickened Myomar, Reinforced Joints, EMP, and Microwave Shielding made his limbs just about as difficult to actually damage as they could be. Only made even more durable from his Arasaka-grade body armor and helmet providing full-body protection. This was in addition to an ICE of a grade they normally reserved for Adam fucking Smasher.

So long as he paid some amount of attention, no number of street-grade gangers could take him out without heavy firepower, such firepower that he would run away from rather than bother confronting. Indeed, the only opponents that he ever really had trouble with were Adam, Victoria, and…

The meat staggered again, dodging David's close-range shot. David turned with the momentum of the oversized shotgun to spin on his heel. His other foot crashed against the meat's torso and sent him back a half dozen feet. Unfortunately the meat countered this in time, and a rather painful back-handed fist crashed against David's helmet.

Their sandevistans deactivated.

…The meat in front of him. He guessed Victoria was right when they first fought. A sandevistan is rudimentary for those who fight at higher levels than street-tier. It's a damn-near requirement, separating those that are cannon fodder and those that are an actual threat. It was almost insulting how much trouble he was having.

"Damn, that's not bad at all. How old are ya kid?"

Shut up meat. David fired again, again being mostly blocked by those stupid armored arms.

"Me? I've been fightin and scrapin by for close to thirty years now. I started over in NUSA, rose up the ranks, then got bored of lickin boots."

David picked up a belt of grenades. Their sandevistans activated. He ran forwards, bracing his arm to full-auto the shogun against the fucker. Nine shots until he runs out huh? David fired seven, threw the belt on eight, and hit it with number nine.

Unfortunately, the meat had already picked up a car door and thrown it to collide with the belt. They collided and flew away from him. Their sandevistans deactivated.

The belt of grenades exploded somewhere to their sides.

"So I left, came over here 'ere, had all the chrome dey had on me cleaned out by a pally. Started small, started working up a nice little troop of me own."

David picked up another shotgun, and jumped towards the meat. A spray of blood and viscera from the carnage around them exploding out with his movement. He waited til he got close. He landed in front of him, glaring up at the meat's stupid expression.

They activated their sandevistans. David kicked towards the meat's legs, which the meat dodged backwards with a stagger-step. The meat did a twisted step forwards and punched down. David took the hit, and in return got a meatshot on the fuckers exposed torso.

Their sandevistans deactivated. David's helmet held up, but he bounced off the blood-covered streets from the force of the blow. They both jumped backwards, disoriented.

"Now I know ya think me and me troop are all dumbshits. Maybe dat's a little true. But that's nice for us, cause if no one takes us serious-like, we can get away with all sorts of shit. It's why I chose the name Pavement Apes after all."

A car horn sounded off, and the meat grinned with a cigar still in mouth. David turned slightly to see a ramshackle bus, filled to the brim with loot and gangers with guns. Enough heavy and fast guns pointed at him that he needed to take cover.

If he took cover, they would get away.

"Get away with all sort ah shit, shit like flatlinin' a buncha bigshot gangs and makin a clean getaway. All cause some gonk came up and thought we was slow."

The meat gave a smug chuckle.

"The king of the concrete jungle is many things, slow aint one of them."

David's rage warred with the training Adam gave him. If he moved for cover, he would live, but these fuckers would get away. He didn't want that to happen, but if he died then he wouldn't go back to Lucy. They were waiting for him to move, they knew the situation they were in.

Either he moved for cover, or they filled him with lead. The threat alone was enough to halt his movements. They also knew he was fast enough to dodge if they started shooting. A stalemate that had one outcome. They get away.

His fist clenched as George Goode waited for a response, before shrugging and almost turning to walk away. David burned the fucker into his mind. He would kill him.

…Wait, he had allies. He sent his coordinates to Rebecca. He wanted to punch himself for forgetting that he had sniper support on demand.

They were cut off from their thoughts at the sound of heavy footsteps stomping through the viscera-coated streets.

A repeating sound of metal on wet concrete.

From their flanks slowly stomped a seven foot figure. A wide-brim helmet, a skull-face chrome mask, a black thing of fabric that hung from the helmet and covered its lower jaw. A vest of what looked to be ballistic armor that revealed to be a normal vest covered completely over in grenades strapped to its front. Another bandolier of grenades hanging from shoulder to opposite-side waist.

A navy-blue longcoat that cut off at the sleeves. Two chrome arms carrying grenade launchers that were belt fed by an ammo backpack. Two chrome legs, the ends of which were stylized to look like boots.

A malevolent set of teal-green optics glowing in the shade of its helmet. A horrid voice echoing from behind its scarf.

"Pardon me meats, would one of ye happen to be named David Martinez?"

David didn't react, but George Goode gave an exaggerated back and forth look between the two of them. The new threat tilted it's head at that.

"Ah, good. I've business with yer captain, but as he's away I'll have to take it up with ye."

George gave an exaggerated chuckle, put his hands up, and began to walk away.

"Ah, we'll me and me troop will let you two get on with dat. We got's loot to tuck aways."

The new attacker chuckled at that. It was not a nice chuckle.

"Ah, sorry bout that meat, but it's just a tad amusing is all."

George stopped at that, dumb facade hiding a cunning and catious gleam in his eye.

"Oh, what's that?"

"Ye think I'll leave witnesses."

With that the attacker opened fire upon the bus and at George, revealing that its grenade launchers were, in fact, fully automatic.

David and George activated their sandevistans. They jumped away as fast as they could, getting behind cover. The grenades landed all over the streets and on the side of the bus, beginning to burst on impact.

Their sandevistans deactivated. The entire area turned into blinding white and waves of gore.

…

It took a moment before David could see straight again from that initial volley.

He pushed himself up slowly, body completely drenched in the blood and viscera of the surroundings. His armor was pocketed with fragments of metal and stone that impacted him even through the broken car he hid behind.

Before, the area was filled with bodies and the ground was covered in spilled blood.

Now, the area was empty of bodies, empty of rubble and fallen weapons. All that was left was a shallow indention in the road, the destroyed husk of a bus, and a pool of chunky red.

He heard a noise to his side, and looked over.

George pushed himself up as well, and looked at the scene with a blank expression. All hints of humor gone.

To the other side of the lake of gore, the attacker stood.

"You killed my men, all of them." George spoke, dumb voice and slang having disappeared from his voice. All that was left was cold steely rage.

"Aye, this is supposing to be a covert sort of deed. Can't be having meat go about spreading word."

"...David Martinez, right? Forgive me if I put our brawl on hold. I need to kill a motherfucker." George's voice was calm and smooth.

"Alright, I'll flatline you after, I don't mind that." Now he wasn't going to get away, David could wait. If he died to this new guy, then that's fine by him too.

The attacker chuckled.

"Well, If ye think yer hard enough, meat."

"First," George stepped into the gore-pond, and pointed a finger. "Your name, I want to carve in your skull to make a better trophy."

The attacker laughed uproariously at that. It took a moment to settle down, eventually breaking into chuckles and replying. George was completely still and silent while he waited.

"Heh, nice guts ye have, meat. I'll enjoy ripping em out. My name right?"

The attacker dropped the grenade launchers and the ammo-backpack detached from its shoulders, along with it came the vest of grenades which revealed to be a sort of metal plating on its back. The now-revealed torso was revealed to be entirely metal.

"The two of ya are fast enough for the 'nades to be pointless."

The attacker stepped into the gore pit as well.

"I be Reverberating Infamy of Blackbeard 21, Grandmaster of the Ordo Panzer, Bearer of the word Pressure."

—

Shock and awe is a method of warfare typically characterized by a sudden and full-force attack. By utilizing enough force at the unprepared defenses of a given location, it was possible that the attackers manage to overwhelm any resistance before appropriate heavy weapons can be leveraged against them. This was the tactic utilized by the Pacifica attackers, the same tactic they used to perform a direct assault against one of the most fortified places in North America, Arasaka Tower just a few days prior.

In three separate locations, armored buses filled with heavy infantry crashed into defensive barricades, and immediately began firing upon their respective targets. The Pacifica construction site, the Pacifica temporary apartments, and the Pacifica "Smashzone". They were armed in relatively heavy ceramic armors, wielded assault rifles, and carried a bandolier of grenades each.

Each one was a professional soldier who knew their role and capabilities. Each one was a veteran of several conflicts, and was equipped in military-standard or better. There were roughly fifty of them per site of conflict, and the defenses were not prepared for them.

There were two things that were different this time, however.

The type of violence experienced by Arasaka Tower employees and Pacifica natives were entirely different. Arasaka Tower employees had to worry about occasional attacks, to be sure, but most didn't try to damage Arasaka property at the tower itself. That and the in-house violence was more one of backstabbing and trickery and less open bullet-exchange.

Pacifica natives were used to an entirely different type of conflict. The type of conflict in which a dozen men shoot each other over a half-used drug needle. As a general rule, each and every one of them had to prioritize combat capability over all other concerns in order to stay alive to adulthood. Some of them followed the path of synthesis, in which they made themselves very useful to someone who was focused on surviving fights, but by large part each man was out for themselves.

There was not a single adult who lived in Pacifica who didn't have a gun and a bit of combat chrome. There was not a single adult in Pacifica who hadn't killed at least one other human before. The majority of which have killed at least a dozen times over.

The citizens of Pacifica had been used to starving and scrapping by for survival for their entire lives at this point. All of a sudden, they were given food, water, shelter, and things to do with their now freed schedule. Every single one of them now benefiting from the improvements had a very good reason to make sure it stuck around. Give a man with nothing paradise and he'll fight to the death to keep it.

When the armored bus rammed into the exterior concrete fence of the Pacifica apartments, and many armored men poured out to start firing at every target within line of sight, they had a distinctly different reaction to sudden physical violence than Arasaka Tower employees had.

All of a sudden, all twenty-seven thousand residents of new Pacifica had their new paradise threatened by an outside force of perhaps fifty men. All twenty-seven thousand residents that had a lifetime of sudden gang-shootouts and street violence. All twenty-seven thousand residents that as a rule carried at least a handgun, and often far more than that.

A single modern grade assault rifle is far superior to a street-grade rifle. It is not superior to more than a thousand street-grade rifles.

The men that poured out of the buses were all clad in gray, drab, military equipment. They were vastly different looking from both the black-clad Arasaka security in the region, and the colorful and brightly-dressed deputy forces. They were very easy to identify as 'the enemy' by the residents of Pacifica who had enjoyed a haven of shelter, food, water, and relative peace for two months.

The Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 was perhaps the most iconic example of Urban Warfare in the twentieth century, and would be used as an example of the difficulties of taking a city filled to the brim with zealous defenders. Urban Warfare as it is relies primarily on most of the populace of a city not fighting back, people instead choosing flight to fight. In Pacifica, flight was a good way to starve to death the next day.

When the attackers assaulted the perimeter of the Pacifica apartments, they were immediately set upon with return fire. Within one minute of their attack, runners from the front had started moving up and down the streets shouting to everyone within hearing range of 'fucking gonks here to take our shit!', provoking most residents with at least small amounts of body armor and guns to pick them up and set out to flatline them. Within ten minutes of the attack, the runners from the frontline had reached the ends of the Pacifica apartments, and everyone in the area with the gumption was on their way to the frontlines with whatever guns they could bring.

Each apartment block had guns sticking out of every window, every dumpster and policing vehicle was turned into improvised cover, every alleyway filled with another group of natives with the biggest street-guns they could carry with them. All of which pointed squarely at the squad of fifty elite soldiers wherever they moved.

Within thirty minutes of the first guns being fired, a few thousand residents of New Pacifica were dead or being treated by the few ripperdocs in the region, and all the attackers had been drowned in bodies and returned fire. There was no living attacker at that point.

If given the option between death and abandoning their new homes, most residents of new Pacifica chose to go out murdering the fuckers that tried to take it from them. Spite was a very core human emotion after all. That was not to say that ALL residents of new Pacifica decided fight over flight, only about a third of them did in all. That still gave the defenders roughly nine-thousand street-raised comber-chrome carrying guns against perhaps fifty attackers. This was in addition to the deputized policing force, and the Arasaka security trainees.

Even as much of their chrome and electronics began suddenly turning off, their combat effectiveness was only slightly reduced overall. The residents of the streets were less reliant on the wonders of the modern age than those that live in corporate towers. They had their eyes turned off and often decided to just keep shooting in the same general direction they were, or handing off their guns to someone who could still see.

Then the residents heard the gunshots at the arena and the new construction sites. In the past, villages would form crowds of pitchforks and torches to kill witches and the like. In the modern day, the residents of Pacifica formed a tidal wave of guns and spite.

This was to say nothing of the numerous gang factions that currently had operations within and investment into the "Smashzone". Chief among these factions were the Animals, who had taken to the official and sanctioned ring of brutal melee combat like young men meeting their one true love.

It was estimated that the Animals were a gang of perhaps three-thousand, all of which abused body-enhancing drugs on the daily, all of which carried brutal melee weapons and had enough adrenaline in their systems to outright ignore non-fatal wounds until after a fight was over.

There were perhaps two-thousand gang members from all gangs in the city that made the arena a semi-regular home, mostly for the eddies and the open violence in the ring. Half of those gang members, a full one thousand, were part of the Animals, who had dominated the arena-guard jobs offered by Victoria Armstrong in exchange for discounted tickets and a modest wage. In a very real way, the Animals finally had a permanent turf and job. Their new territory was the arena, their new job was keeping it safe, and keeping everyone near it nice and polite, and they loved it.

Needless to say, while most gang members got out of the way of gunfire and booked it back to their home turfs, the thousand-some Animals charged the fifty attackers like the norse berserkers of old, brandishing sledgehammers and pumped with a nearly lethal cocktail of combat drugs of their own designs. Coming from every hall and room in the arena that they could, yelling profanities and curses as they did.

There was only so much that military-grade assault rifles backed up by a godlike netrunner could do against a vastly higher number of hammer-wielding opponents that didn't rely on chrome for combat.

This is nothing to say of the construction site dedicated to the new production facilities, which held the greatest presence of new Arasaka guards who came in within the twelve-hour period between the Tower being attacked and the attackers trying again in Pacifica. All of which immediately went to work in guarding the only unguarded Arasaka employees in the area, the construction crew. Of the potential three-thousand field agents that were assigned to live within the remaining apartments nearest to the construction, perhaps only fifteen-hundred had arrived by that time. Of those fifteen-hundred, perhaps only seven-hundred and fifty were currently guarding the area for lack of better things to do until all of them arrived.

Needless to say, when fifty attackers in a bus started attacking the area, they were met with seven-hundred and fifty bored Arasaka field agents who were looking forward to violence. Quite a few of them relied upon chrome implants for higher combat capabilities, but they also carried quite a bit better guns and armor than most everyone else in the entirety of new Pacifica.

All they had to do was endure for thirty minutes before a wave of angry citizens washed over the attackers from their flanks. The casualties were horrendous, but the attackers were all dead.

Within forty-five minutes of the three-pronged attack on new Pacifica, all the attackers were dead, more than four-thousand five hundred defenders were dead, and about twenty percent of the relevant infrastructure was damaged beyond repair. It took the policing force quite a bit to calm down the residents afterwards.

All in all, the internal security experts would say that the attackers made a tactical fucking boo-boo, and drinks were passed around. Indeed, even while that occurred Assault-agent DAVID M. was busy with the complete wiping out of no less than two gangs and combating the enemy commander unit. While heavily injured in the end (in requiring extensive surgery to stabilize), the overall outcome of the fighting was deemed 'an overwhelming success for Arasaka'.