Adam stood before the three women that he was apparently going to train up. He only really intended to train the boy, but getting the kid some half-decent backup would keep him alive longer while Adam was away. That and the kid is still recovering, so he couldn't train him anymore right now.
They were in the training room built into the temporary HQ, a long and wide section that would normally be reserved for presentations but Adam had refurbished for indoor training. If he had something to say he'd just send a message to all the relevant parties, presentations were useless and the room wasn't ever going to be used otherwise.
The woman, the girl, and the gremlin stood at lax attention. That would have gotten them beatings back in the army, but he wasn't in the army anymore so he didn't care. Adam was tasked with turning the three in front of him into competent threats, and that was difficult enough. He wasn't about to bother being a hardass about their standing.
The woman had med training, so she was an obvious choice for a field medic. Probably won't be worth anything in a fight for a while, so he'd have to hold her fucking hand for a while. Linear Frame, heavy armor, riot shield, smartgun links, and pistol? Sounds about right.
The girl had netrunning skill, so she was obviously overwatch, as he had already had her lean into. But her big weakness right now was getting found, as she was subject to quick death if an enemy got the drop on her. Linear Frame, light armor, stealth system, silenced submachine gun and pistol?
The gremlin had few redeeming features aside from her larger tolerance for chrome. She was still made of too much meat to justify putting on the frontlines like him or the kid, so he had got her a really big gun and armor to survive for a second or two against an actual enemy. But apparently that hadn't been working out for her. Uriel already suggested something for her. Linear Frame, heavy armor, hip-mounted sub-arms, two borg rifles, and skaters for movement. That would give her durability, speed, and firepower in one convenient package. That and a pistol.
The reason he was giving all of them a pistol? The four-hundred eddie gun that he had placed on the table. It was fucking puny, the size of a hand-flashlight for a normal person. Adam couldn't even hold a standard model version, his hands were too big. It weighed basically nothing, and it dealt pitiful damage to meatbags. Average ganger could probably just walk it off, no need for a ripperdoc.
He was going to insist all of them used one and got real fucking good with it, because it was probably the single best weapon for them to use against actual threats. They used to be more expensive, five-hundred eddies instead. Still fucking pocket change to the average solo. Blackhand was a fucking meatfucker ass, but he knew what he was doing, and he carried one of these around constantly.
"So big guy, what are you teaching us first, huh? Any of those secret vibrator punches you have Davey doing?"
"No, none of you have the chrome to do that."
Adam paused and thought for a second how he should explain the importance of the glorified flashlight and attachment on the table. He settled on falling back on how he taught the kid.
"Borgs are found primarily in corpo and government jobs, and are rare on the street level. Why?"
They were silent for a second before they realized he was testing them on their knowledge. The gremlin spoke up. "Well, cost right? Borg-hood is supposed to be expensive, right?"
Adam nodded. "Correct. What else?"
The girl spoke up next. "Cyberpsychosis." She didn't need to explain any further.
"Correct. What else?"
The woman spoke up. "Because borgs get better jobs, don't they?"
"Correct, what else?"
A pause as they thought about it more. After about half a minute Adam spoke up again.
"There are four primary reasons why Borgs are found more often on higher levels and not street level. You three mentioned three of them. The fourth reason is the gun on the table in front of me. Why?"
The gremlin spoke at that, bouncing slightly in place as she looked at it. "Oh, is this some sort of high-tech corpo supergun? Like a noisy cricket?"
"It costs four-hundred eddies, and any competent gunsmith could make one."
That caused her to deflate a bit, before the three of them adopted similar thinking expressions about how such a cheap gun could lead to the downfall of the street-borg. The girl spoke up at that. "Does it use some sort of easy-to-make explosives?"
"It shoots an upscaled laser pointer. The battery is good for fifteen-shots, and can be recharged at any wall outlet in one hour."
He looked to the woman, to see if she had any guesses. She shrugged, guns weren't her forte it seems. Fair enough, Adam picked up the dinky little thin between two fingers and held it in front of them.
"This is a Techtronika-15 Microwaver. It is an upscaled version of the dash-ten model. It shoots a beam of microwave radiation a maximum distance of twenty-five meters. It can fire fifteen times in total. An extra battery pack can be bought for three-hundred and twenty eddies that gives it ten extra shots before it needs a charge. It can be fully charged in one hour from any standard wall outlet."
"It weighs less than three kilograms, it deals minimal damage to flesh and metal alike, and is easy enough to make that there likely isn't a techie in night city who couldn't manage it. It is one of the primary reasons why MaxTac is so effective, and why every borg expected to see combat must have additional modifications beyond factory standard."
He growled the final part out.
"It was one of the two signature weapons of Morgan Blackhand."
That got their attention. There likely wasn't a person in Night City who didn't know about that meatfucker's nuclear legacy. Adam had Uriel bring out a standard borg frame from one of the side doors. They watched it, not expecting another person to arrive.
"This is an IEC Alpha Class Borg Frame. It can be considered to be the industry standard borg conversion. It can take far more damage, deal more damage, carry more weight, and is in general superior in all regards to a meat human. It costs forty-thousand eddies to purchase, in addition to the surgery cost required to have the brain and essential organs transferred over."
All of them winced at that price tag. They should, it was enough to buy more than a century of food for the average person. Adam raised the microwave slightly awkwardly in his giant hands, practically having to pinch the thing to get his fingers in the proper place. Uriel started shadow-boxing in the frame for demonstration purposes.
Adam shot the gun once, and the IEC Alpha immediately seized up, fell over, and started shaking in a manner resembling a meat-seizure. Huh, lucky shot. The woman almost rushed over as it convulsed, Uriel was fine, it was controlling it wirelessly, nothing that happened to it would go back to him.
"Now it is worthless scrap for the next few seconds, because it didn't have any electromagnetic or microwave radiation shielding installed. A forty-thousand eddie investment brought down by a four-hundred eddie investment and a no-cost shot. It works on all cyberware, not just full borgs. It works on all targets within one meter of the beam."
Their eyes were filling with understanding while he spoke, and when he put the gun back down they looked at it with newfound respect. Adam let them think about it for a minute or so before he continued. The Alpha frame eventually stopped shaking, and Uriel directed it out of the room again. He would use it again someday, but really he had bought it just for this demonstration. But hey, now he has yet another frame to use.
"A standard cyberarm costs three-thousand eddies. To have it hardened against harmful radiation costs an additional six-hundred eddies. This must be done for all limbs, the torso, and head to ensure adequate protection. This is a twenty or so percent increase in cost."
"That forty-thousand eddie price tag? That's a minimum of forty-eight thousand now to ensure you don't get scrapped by some techie who turned a microwave oven into a laser pointer. The price was already high enough for most meats, now it's entirely too much for the vast majority of them."
"The reason why most every borg is a corpo? They're the only ones who can afford the unspoken costs most of the time. Because walking around without hardening means dying real fast."
Adam looked them in the eyes, one at a time, as his monologue went on.
"You are going to use this as your sidearm at all times. If you see someone with visible chrome, you shoot them. I am going to make sure you three get very good at using it."
"What if we shoot at some chromedome with hardening?" The gremlin asked, scratching her head.
"Run, and let me or the boy deal with that one."
They all frowned at that, but that was too fucking bad. They didn't have the chrome to deal with actual threats, this was the best they could do. The woman spoke up, hesitantly.
"Who did you bring in to… shoot?"
Adam grunted, and tapped the side of his head. "Remote controlled."
Their eyes filled with realization. The gremlin punched her hand and let out a 'ah'. The girl nodded. The woman scratched her face with a finger, slightly embarrassed.
You fuckers, did you all seriously think he would shoot someone and not finish the fucking job? That's downright insulting.
—
He spent the entire day drilling them on how to use a pistol most effectively. He wasn't a master at it by any means, but if they could get to his level then they would be an actual help in a fight with those microwavers. The gremlin was the best at it, the one who was closest to his level of shooting (that is to say, maybe half), the girl was next in line, clearly being more comfortable with her monowire.
Adam didn't particularly care for Monowires, mostly because nine-times out of ten it was simply more effective to just shoot a target. He supposed it made stealth-kills easier, but really it only worked on meat-bags and the like. She should invest in replacing the arm-mounted model with just a spool of the stuff, but eh, he didn't care about her that much to suggest that. She was a netrunner, her frontline skills were always going to be garbage.
The woman was obviously the worst at it. She was familiar with it, sure, and had practiced with a pistol before, but it was the practice of someone who had never had someone else to tell them how to do it. It was the level Smasher was at when he was a pre-teen. Course, he had been expecting that, so no harm there. She would benefit the most from a smart-link by far.
A smart-link would end up helping all of them, to be honest. Eh, if they asked for some, he'd buy it, but for now he'd let them try to figure out some of their own upgrades. He couldn't be babysitting them forever.
He approached his bench…
The bench had been moved about five inches closer to the table. The kid was in the hospital. The women had been with him.
Someone had been or was currently in his HQ.
He armed every missile he had, hatches in his arms opening up, and Uriel scoured the cameras.
Nothing.
He walked forwards, cycling through every optical option he had.
Nothing.
He looked with standard eyes around the room. The chairs were untouched. The far walls were untouched. The wall-screen couldn't hide anything immediately dangerous behind it. The doors were untouched.
The meatbeast was gone. Hopefully whoever broke in killed it, he'd kill them quickly as a thanks.
He turned around suddenly.
A borg was sitting at the table, a fresh pot of tea had been readied and two cups placed. The borg looked over at him, and tilted its head at his brandished missiles.
"Smasher-san."
Adam growled and disarmed them. He would recognize that monotone anywhere. Fucking ass almost got him to blow a hole in his own fucking fortress. He grunted and walked off to his storage room.
"Getting my gemini, you ass."
"I'm not sure what you're referring to." The fucker was laughing at him, he could hear it in his inflection.
Soon enough he was back in the body that could actually consume things.
He sat down on the other side from Kagekaze, and waited for the appropriate motions to be made. Kagekaze was the guest here, he would pour. Fucking tedious rituals, but the fellow borg enjoyed it so he'd let it slide.
Kagekaze was the one who taught Adam most of what he knew of Panzerfaust, after all. Adam had a smidge of respect for the fellow murderer.
After they had each taken a sip, Adam spoke.
"You come by for a visit then? Your frame's new, I didn't recognize you."
"Indeed, as the new head of security I thought it best to evaluate my strongest and most unwieldy asset."
"You just wanted a break for tea. You and the old man are exactly the same."
"That is merely good fortune, I prayed to the Buddha for luck shortly before I left. How wonderful my prayer was heard by him."
Adam let his expression demonstrate how much he believed that. Kagekaze gracefully sipped his tea through what looked like a specially-installed mouth. He was one of those that used an interchangeable face-plate and an artificial stomach it seemed. Probably just so he spit poison in people's eyes or something, that sounded on brand for the ninja.
The tea was good. It wasn't as good as Saburo's 'I have specifically cultivated this type of tea leaf for a hundred and thirty years' level of good, but it was passable. That wasn't fair regardless, the old man probably had the best fucking tea on the planet, probably had a team of biotechies constantly at work on making ever-greater forms of the tea leaves he preferred.
His faceplate was modeled to look sort of like those classic theater ninja-masks, black hood things that were tied around the face, with a bit of actual fabric that hung over his optic. A regular Kuroko, a gunmetal black frame covered by carbon nanoweave fabric. Not in any place that could slow him from drawing a weapon or what not, of course, but it was everywhere else. Additional armor and muffling? The bunny-ear sensors on the sides of his head were new at least.
The face underneath the masking fabric sheet was just a skull, of course. More gunmetal black and just something stylized to look like a skull, save that it had some muscle attachments and a neck. Two glowing red optics inside each eye-hole glared out menacingly.
…how did he sip that tea without lips? Adam took another sip as he pondered it.
"You have changed."
Adam grunted, seems like he was going to have to get used to that one then. First it was Saburo, then it was Kagekaze. Who was going to say that next? Was Kei going to rise from the grave to tell him he was different now?
He was exactly the same as before, it's just now he was preparing for the fight of his life. He couldn't afford to lax on preparation for it.
"How so?"
"I called you my strongest asset, years you would be ranting about how true that was, and how many 'meatbags' you would butcher."
"We both know it's true, no point in talking about it."
"I am glad to see you've developed a sense of modesty then."
"Fuck no, modesty is for fuckers who aren't me."
Kagekaze let out a mechanical laugh. "Ah, there my student is. I was worried he was lost under a sense of responsibility."
Adam grinned at the borg sharing tea with him. Kagekaze was always easy to get along with, even if he hadn't spoken to him in more than forty years now. They both took another sip of the sub-saburo class tea.
"They don't have you teaching brats how to stop clanking around anymore?"
"No, it seems my days of teaching genin have finally come to a close. Perhaps one day I shall be assigned to it again."
"Enjoying the new job then?"
"Absolutely not."
Adam let out a gruff bark of laughter. He felt a crooked grin start growing on his face.
"The city is atrocious to look at, the security teams are pathetic, and the damages are extensive. I'm amazed that someone as incompetent as the previous head of security was allowed to live. It's absolutely shameful."
"Hah, why don't you tell me how you really feel, huh?"
"I penned a strongly worded letter about his poor performance and had it sent to his still living relatives."
Adam lost it, Uriel lost it. The women finally arrived back to the HQ from where they had been visiting the kid again, to see Adam Smasher laughing harder than he ever had before, sipping tea with a pitch black skeleton.
It would be some time before they composed themselves. The women introduced themselves to Kagekaze as he tried to stop his remaining chuckles.
Good god, Adam had fucking missed the old ninja. He was always a ball of laughs.
—
It was sometime before Kagekaze announced that he had to go. Adam got up to follow him, he clearly had something to tell him privately, otherwise he would have just disappeared when they weren't looking.
Sure enough, Kagekaze paused by the doorway, and stared him down through the curtain of fabric in front of his eyes.
"Smasher. There is something you need to know."
Adam grunted quietly, waiting for him to say it. Kagekaze continued.
"The attack on Arasaka Tower started at two-hundred and twenty-three point four in the morning. The alert for security and medical assistance to the executive suite was sent at two-hundred and twenty-three point four four."
Kagekaze's red optics glared through the sheet.
"The standard reaction time for auditory stimulus is point one seven seconds. Boosterware can decrease this down to point zero five seconds. No executive has boosterware sufficient for even this."
…Adam realized what was going on.
"My movements will be scrutinized, you are not known for your subtlety."
One of the executives of Arasaka Tower knew about the bot before he had arrived. There was a traitor in a high level position. Kagekaze couldn't investigate further without potentially alerting them to his notice. Adam was not one anyone expected to investigate anything.
Goddamnit, he hated sneaky shit.
…But that meant…
…There was a fucker who was responsible for taking his shit. They were still alive.
Uriel flared up again.
Adam nodded, and Kagekaze was gone.
He couldn't wait to pulp a fucker that thought they were clever.