It was not difficult to quantify how powerful his new frame was. He had been sent the exact specifications for his capabilities well in advance, and everything he had tried himself lined up.
His Dragoon frame had served him well for decades now, its array of sensors and high-performance physicality shattered most people who were placed in one. A normal Dragoon soldier was little more than a slightly less creative robot, owing to the drugs needed to put the brain into a sleepwalking coma.
A Dragoon frame had every visual optic option that humanity had ever developed at the time of it's invention, it had as many of the most useful audio options as well. It was as well armored as an armored truck and that armor was fully resistant to non-kinetic weaponry as well, could sprint at fifty miles per hour, and could leap six meters into the air or nineteen meters longways. Its safe carrying capacity was four-hundred and forty pounds, its maximum carrying capacity was seventeen-hundred and sixty-four pounds. It weighed six-hundred and twenty pounds and carried a host of backup systems and communications arrays.
A normal Dragoon frame was a man-sized light tank, and carried weaponry to match. His Dragoon frame was not normal. His was eight feet tall, and almost seven-hundred pounds. His carried a General Motors micro-fusion engine in the torso to grant indefinite longevity, his was filled to the brim with thickened myomer and reinforced joints and whatever else seemed optimal for turning problems into red paint. It was to a normal Dragoon what his Sampson was to a normal Sampson frame.
His new frame was not his Dragoon's equal. It was better. Every facet of its design was on par if not improved. It had just as much armor as before, and the internal frame was equally reinforced. He had just as many sensors and communications systems. He was now only five-hundred pounds in all, much lighter than before. The biggest change, of course, was the improved physical capacity. He couldn't jump quite as far as before, a mere 12 meters long, but he could jump higher.
His lift capacity, his strength, was tripled. A safe lift of thirteen-hundred and twenty-two pounds, a max lift of five-thousand, ninety-one pounds. His run speed was increased again, from fifty miles per hour to sixty-six.
Best of all, his frame was not finished yet. It would be at least one more month, several if he was being realistic, in which the second component of its design was finished. Integrated ACPA, just like his DaiOni, but designed for his new and improved base. He couldn't wait to fight something again.
He was feeling good as he lifted the truck above his head. His arms were cybernetic and thus, never got tired. He could do this all day if he wanted to. The kids and the woman were watching from the other side of the lot, instead of practicing with their new linear frames. He didn't buy those so you could gawk at him, he'll glare at you in a minute. After he was done relishing in his new frame.
Highest functioning fucker on the planet. Why the hell did he ever stop chasing power?
…Oh yeah, he was already the strongest on the planet, there was little point at the time. With the panzerbots coming out of the woodwork, that little fact didn't change, but the gap was narrower than he liked. He wouldn't make the mistake of slowing down ever again.
Decades spent in a frame more than seventy years old at this point. Who the fuck had ever heard of using a gun more than seventy years old outside of random shitholes in the middle of nowhere? He should have gotten an upgrade years ago, decades ago. Oh well, he was getting them now at least.
He grunted and crouched slightly, using the massively powerful myomer in his legs. He paused for a moment to get the angle right, and then extended his entire body. He threw the truck above his head.
It flew through the air, disgracefully, for several seconds before landing on the other side of the lot. It basically shattered on impact, modern vehicles were fucking garbage made out of aluminum and other shit like that. He walked over to it, counting his steps as he did.
…Sixty meters. He could do better. Still a huge improvement from his Dragoon frame, it would have managed about a third of that. Wait no, it wouldn't have, because his Dragoon frame couldn't lift five-thousand pounds.
Rest well in his armory, Dragoon, he didn't need you anymore. This 'Oni' frame was a worthy successor.
He looked over to see the kids and woman still gawking, he glowered at them until they got the hint and started going through the list of movements again. They had to be aware of what it was like to move in a linear frame before they could go on jobs again. Not knowing was how you got your arm torn apart by doing something stupid and flexing in the wrong way.
In the case of the kid, he had to get used to his new bioware. It was stupid expensive for it all, but the kid wanted to pay for it and made a good argument for it. He also wanted to pay for everyone elses' bioware, but Adam shot that down. That was a good way to lose all your savings, dumbass, he had enough to cover the costs of turning three meatgirls into barely acceptable backup.
So the kid was now buff again, much to his pleasure. He caught him flexing at a mirror once. The kid booked it once he noticed Adam there.
Anyways, kid's bioware was right around fifty thousand eddies for the whole lot of it, about double the cost of the general set that the meatgirls each got. That and he was on some sort of bioware diet or whatnot to get better, but that would be two more months before he was done drinking a liter of nanobot-laced milk each morning and eating triple portions.
The girls seemed to enjoy his appetite, what with all the cooking they were doing.
Adam allowed the boy to get all this bioware, he wasn't going to lose it anytime soon from mere meat-enhancements, so there wasn't a need to regulate him beyond telling him not to get ugly shit. Adam wasn't about to have an unaesthetic apprentice, it would reflect poorly on himself.
Other than his new bioware, the kid was mostly the same. He was jumpy and sneaky and ran around with a shotgun. Avoiding hits rather than taking them whenever he could, and punching soft spots like the throat and eyes. Adam could move faster than the kid still, but the kid was almost as quick reflexes-wise and far more agile. He had gotten real good at a trick where he kicks off the ground to jump in a completely different direction mid-run.
Sparring with the kid was like fighting a squirrel now. A buff squirrel with a custom high-impact shotgun. Adam approved, he couldn't be copying him now, the kid didn't have the chrome for it. He could, given time, get the chrome for it. But it wasn't required right now.
Kid could get a full conversion later, or he could stay a half-meatbag, so long as he was useful Adam didn't care. He was in the same gear otherwise, a riot set and his yellow jacket over such, now stretched a bit beyond what it should be on his body.
The meatgirls had gotten their upgrades too. A basic bioware package for each, a linear frame, a set of armor, and new guns.
The tiny-girl got filled out a bit from the bioware. She was going to be using the frame, armor, ACPA skaters, and a quick-detach artificial shoulder mount that was mounted on her hips. Its position let the artificial arms carry much higher impact guns, namely two militech borg rifles with extended magazines. She had taken a while to get used to the secondary arms, and was queasy using them.
She got that fixed by getting the Arasaka techies to change them to non-arm configurations, just getting the guns wired directly into the limbs instead of being held. It now looked like she just had two guns almost floating on her hips, and that seemed to make it easier on her. Adam didn't know how, but whatever. Uriel had chuckled again when he saw it.
The girl had gotten a small upgrade as well. Bioware package, a linear frame, marine combat wetsuit for increased protection without restricting movement, and a new cyberdeck. Adam was somewhat baffled she never got one of her own in all this time, so he had to buy it for her. It was far better than whatever street-garbage she was probably using before. She was a netrunner though, and Adam didn't know jackshit about whatever the fuck they needed to do their jobs besides the obvious. She'll figure it out eventually, probably.
The woman had gotten her first upgrade in what was probably ever. She wasn't a combatant by heart and it showed in her slightly awkward movements. The same bioware package that the other two got, the same grade of linear frame, and new equipment. She wasn't going to be dodging anything anytime soon, so she was just loaded up in the best armor they could get. A MetalGear set and a heavy armor jacket. She got to carry a heavy caliber handgun and a microwaver, mostly because they really didn't have any time to teach her how to use more than one type of gun if they wanted her in decent shape anytime soon.
A Colt AMT Model 2000, a rugged and reliable model of handgun that fired 12mm rounds at up to fifty meters with any reliability, with eight rounds per magazine. Best known for its durable frame, 'can't fuck it up' engineering, and big bullets. It was a classic for a reason, and served in both the first and second Central American Wars as the industry standard officer sidearm. It used zero electronics in its design.
He had to special order it from the manufacturers, they didn't make them in bulk anymore, they were only made to order these days. He had the cash to burn, so it was upgraded with electro-thermal rounds for increased damage on hit for no additional recoil, now hitting as hard as most assault rifles.
It was a workhorse of a gun, and Adam appreciated it for that reason. He had used one himself back in his army days, after snatching it off some officer's corpse. A workhorse that had just been given ET rounds. It would be the best the woman would have for a long time, he very much doubted she was going to contribute much in the short term.
She had training wheels in the form of laser sight, fuck knows she needed it. She still missed against moving targets more than half the time. Good thing the microwaver didn't need precision, just firing within a meter of the target was good enough most of the time.
Which was good, otherwise she'd remain a freeloader in his house all the fucking time. The end of the month had come, and Pacifica had basically fully recovered from the attack, and had started to progress beyond its previous point. They had another set of tide generators, water purifiers, and aquaponics up and running now. The immense casualties had given a huge amount of chrome for the docs and meat for the grass, as well as freeing up a lot of apartment space for the seemingly endless horde of fuckers that constantly came crawling out of the woodwork to live in his territory.
He put the vast majority of them to work cleaning shit up. The constant injuries from the arena and the underpaid workers gave the docs a shit-ton of practice, and reconstruction proceeded on schedule. The new cartoon was quite popular, which Adam had begrudging approval for. It was inaccurate garbage (and took his fucking missiles away) but it's merchandise had brought him lots of cash to burn keeping his territory building up.
He had the Animals more or less permanently on his employ at this point, serving as both arena guards and heavy policing grunts attached to patrols of his budget cops. They were the only gang worth mentioning left in Pacifica, the Voodoo Boys and the new upstarts having been wiped out in the attack (good job kid, one less problem for him later).
All other gang activity was kept to a minimum, their only presence on his land being their sponsored fighters and merchandise shops in the arena. They kept the fights to the matches, and he didn't butcher them all, it was a good system. They contributed to his profits, which contributed to his industrial build-up, which contributed to his military power, which contributed to his chances of survival for as long as he maintained it.
An army wouldn't stop the meatfucker, but it would slow them down long enough for Adam to gank the fucker. That was the plan anyways, one of the many that he and Uriel worked out. Adam wasn't going to die, that was for people weaker than him.
Dying was for meat and scrap, he was neither, not anymore.
So he had to increase his profits. Uriel released a bunch of songs about robots killing each other, Adam approved of such, and that made them another tidy sum to pour into Pacifica. The Old Man had him make a braindance of his fight with the panzerknight, which made him another fistful of eddies from meatbags wanting to experience what actual combat was like.
The news reported several deaths as a result, much to his amusement.
The special event he held for the arena made him yet another sum. Himself verses some of the best fighters, in a row, for an entire day. Each fighter was paid based on how long they lasted against him. The arena had reached the point where more eddies didn't need to be put into repairing and refurbishing it anymore, and as such made more profit.
Needless to say, kicking the shit out of meatbags for an entire day was both fun and made him a shit-ton of cash. He made sure that his personal account was still where he was used to it being, and put the rest right back into the region.
The new freeloader had only been in his house for a week before she got one of her people in militech to come pick her up. Adam made the guy swear not to tell anyone what he had done, and the guy nervously agreed as he hugged his gal. That got rid of her and him, and Adam was fine with it.
He and Uriel had still been investigating of course, but the other three suspects all turned into dead ends or were up to other bullshit that wasn't related to him killing them for taking his DaiOni. He forwarded the info each time to Kagekaze, and they were dealt with as appropriate each time. It was beginning to look like this was a true-blue traitor, one that wasn't motivated by greed or similar, which meant Adam had no idea where to look next. Uriel wasn't great at investigations either, which meant they were stuck for now.
It pissed him off. That bastard got to live for now, but they'd slip up again. Even if it took a hundred years, Adam was going to pay them back. He was thinking a very expensive bullet in their torso, as a gift.
Either that or get help, and there was only one investigative group in NC worth a damn.
Adam would rather die than go to the fucking catgirls for help.
"Heya, Adam, wouldn't these ears be cute on you?"
"What, fuck no, I'm not wearing that."
"C'mon~"
"Get those away from me!"
His hand clenched onto the frame of the truck he threw. It put up very little resistance to his grip, twisting and shattering in his new hands.
Good, fuck this truck, it's not even reinforced like his musclecar. Shitty modern vehicle design. Why did they ever stop using steel frames?
He let go of the representation of the failure of the automotive industry and looked over to the kids and woman. They were going through the motions as they should…
He wanted to shoot something.
"Firing practice now." He spoke, loudly enough for them to all hear but not quite a yell. They whooped at the change of pace. Ungrateful, he should kick them out.
They moved into the lines at the correct distance from the targets. Uriel started up the program that got the targets to start moving on their predetermined path. They could be using VR for this, but Adam hated VR, so they weren't doing that.
The kids were fine, their aiming was practice from being on the street long enough to get good. The woman was still poor, aiming incorrectly. He grunted and walked over.
He grabbed her from behind, and corrected her posture.
"Bend knees slightly, widen the stance."
She stiffened up at first, but quickly got into the right stance. Moving under his grip until she was in the right position. Adam wasn't the best at handguns, especially not handguns that were so small, but he knew his stuff when it came to shooting them.
He went to her side and looked at her as she aimed.
"You're still squinting. Stop it."
"Ah, right, sorry."
"Don't be sorry, just do it right."
The woman nodded and Adam gave the signal for them to start firing. Once the forms were right, there wasn't anything to do but practice again and again. He looked over to the crate of ammo he had carried here. They had enough rounds for a few hours of this.
Good thing there was nothing else to do today, Pacifica had finally started to not need Uriel's constant attention to keep functional, and Armstrong was over at the arena. Apparently her brother was visiting, so Adam had to meet the guy tomorrow, see if he was here to fuck his territory up or whatnot.
Until then, the five of them shot at targets until the targets ceased to have an intact form. Then Adam sparred with the kid until he was too tired to stand. It was a pretty relaxing day, even without an actual fight.
…He was still itching for a proper one, it had been a few weeks since he had slaughtered anything of note.
—
David was in his and Lucy's room, looking at the braindance headset in his hands. He was seated on the bed, contemplative. Lucy was looking at him, slightly worried.
She didn't want him to do this, but she understood why it was important to him. She was ready to support him every step of the way here.
She was really too good for a gonk like him, she deserved better. So he had to be better. He set the BD aside for a moment and suddenly leaned forwards to kiss her.
She melted against him, hands reaching around and grabbing him by his neck. He was buff again, it kicked ass. He kept going until they were both breathless, and her lips were bruised. She panted a bit, and buried her face into his neck.
"David…" she whispered, not really for any purpose except to say his name.
Man, he loved her so much.
"Lucy." He responded, squeezing her tightly.
They stayed there for a while more.
Man… Life has gotten really good for him recently. He must be the luckiest gonk in all of Night City. It wasn't saying much, considering this damn city seemed dead set on breaking everyone who lived in it. But he would get strong enough to protect her, protect his mom, protect everyone he cared about.
The rest of the world can fuck off. The anime-thing got that right at least.
He wasn't strong enough yet though. To get that strong, he needed to get a look at what it was like.
So he pulled away from her slightly resisting grip and looked her in the eyes. She looked worried still, but nodded.
He pulled back, picked up the BD again, and put it on.
He leaned back, and Lucy put his head in her lap.
He started the BD, and for almost three minutes saw the world through Adam Smasher's eyes.
The first thing that hit him was the sensors. It hit him like a truck. His own cyberoptics were standard, and just used standard human vision more or less. They wouldn't degrade with age, and they could display his neurally-linked comms, and that was it. Smasher had…
He couldn't process what he was seeing at first. It took some time to sort it all out. Standard with a heads-up display, long-range, night-vision, thermal, infrared. All of them with enhanced imaging and an automatic targeting system. Everywhere he looked, he saw five layers of the world, and it was all at once too much. He focused on the standard and blocked out the rest as best he could.
He had managed it eventually, at that point he had to deal with the audio. It was amplified and came with a damper, but he could hear things that humans were never meant to. Ranges of volume and frequency that the human ear couldn't consciously detect. He could hear radio waves in the air all around him, and knew that he could 'hear' radar just as well. Everywhere around him was noise and volume and things making noise from seemingly nothing.
He could smell. He could smell more than he had ever before, and intuitively knew what each and exact chemical in the air around him was. He could detect the sweat on the bodies of the panicked corpos fleeing from a titan of steel 'he' just kicked into a wall.
Even blocking all of this out, he was left with a sonar. Everything within 120 meters of himself, he knew exactly where it all was, it was impossible to block out. He knew every movement made within that range of himself, even down to some of the slower bullets flying through the air after 'he' deflected them.
He also knew the exact level of radiation around him. It was well within safe levels. He nearly puked from it all.
But he didn't, he got through it, he blocked most of it out and focused on 'his' body.
He was tremendously heavy, each footstep carefully controlled to dissipate force without cracking the ground beneath him. He was tremendously strong, fully able to shatter that ground if he stomped. He did that several times throughout the battle, concrete breaking like sand beneath his heel.
He was fast, faster than he had ever been before. His movements were fluid beyond belief, and his accuracy was incredible. Blows were calculated within an instant and then executed down to the millimeter when making an attack. His absurd weight flowing into attacks that couldn't be replicated by humans of flesh, hundreds of pounds of steel moving like a scalpel attached to a wrecking ball.
The movements of his foe, made with only milliseconds of wind-up, were predicted and reacted to…
Until they weren't, and David felt 'his' arm crumble and shatter. It hurt…
"You think you're special just because you're scrappy?"
But David had been torn limb-by-limb out of the Cyberskeleton, he had one of his arms shattered by Armstrong's fist, he had his body pulped by Blackbeard. A little pain wasn't something that could stop him.
He was built different.
'He' stood up again, and kept fighting the mountain of steel and chrome that took his arm. He saw the mountain move to break his only way out of the fight.
'He' reached out, and forced the software to halt (to burn), without a motion, without a word. Just a demand that the technology obeyed without question.
Until the mountain noticed, and a dragon emerged from its cave. His fire constantly broke and reformed under the avalanche. Until the dragon died from an unseen bolt, and he was alive.
He didn't need an injection, but it was close.
Lucy was enough for him to keep it together. He wasn't going to lose it again.
He had to be stronger.