Rebecca wiggled the guns mounted to her hips and wired into her spine up and down. On either side of her, guns that were as long as she was tall shifted around to aim. A mental command to have them aim up to 45 degrees horizontally or 60 degrees vertically, in any of the four directions. This combined allowed her to hit most everything within a roughly 90 degree cone in front of her with them. Two modded Militech borg rifles meant that she hit very hard too.

She had been told multiple times how squishy she was compared to the Big Guy and Davey. If she was right next to someone who could get through her new armor, then she was likely dead anyways. Against an actual threat she'd be dead real fast in close range. It was a risk at all to have her be a combatant in the level of combat that the Big Guy got up to.

She refused to back down from it though. That would be the same as leaving them behind, and she wasn't that kind of girl. She refused to be that kind of girl. Lucy was good at running, and could help even while keeping herself safe from things. Well, non-net things like guns and knives, not against Daemons and whatnot.

Rebecca? All she had was a good aim and can-do attitude. She was basically walking bait. If she wanted to not be a burden, she had to get good. Good like Morgan Blackhand, a guy with almost no chrome who was able to go up against the Big Guy and win all but one time. She couldn't afford to fall behind any further at this point. Blackbeard made her realize that.

So every day of her life now, ever since she was useless again, has been a non-stop grind. Practicing her guns at the range, running laps, stretches and workouts of all kinds. Getting used to the Linear Frame, getting used to the new chrome, getting used to the Bioware.

She had abs now, she was kinda excited about it. Sure they weren't as impressive as Viccy's, but they were hers. She had also filled out a bit more, whether that being from the bioware or her eating more than she did before on the Big Guy's dime was up for debate.

Stronger and faster and tougher than she had ever been before in her life, and she wasn't anywhere close to how good she had to be to keep up. So she asked for one more bit of chrome to be added to her new set. A smart-link for each of her new guns, and both hands. Making sure that she hit each time was important, because that meant she didn't waste as many bullets, which meant that she didn't have to reload as often, which meant more time shooting gonks.

So she had two handguns, and two fuck-off big rifles on her hips, and a pair of skates on an armored body. She felt like a Mobile Infantry unit in it, about to kill some bugs. She felt happy that Big Guy would have gotten her reference, even if no one else would have. She winced and held her head again as another jolt of pain hit her.

The new chrome, and four smartlinks, were especially straining to her. She'd adjust to it in time, the medtechs told her, but for a while it would be on and off headaches even when not in active use. Davey would have already gotten used to them by now, no doubt, and Big Guy wouldn't have even noticed any strain at all.

But she wasn't those guys, they were built differently (as Davey liked to sometimes say to himself in the mirror, while flexing, the gonk). She was just… built normally.

Normal, average, non-distinct Rebecca. Rebecca who had a way more fun brother at one point. Rebecca who got chemskin and special optics to stand out. Rebecca who never got the boy she liked. Rebecca who was crushing on a guy way older than her, who slept around all the time.

Eh… she had heard of worse. At least she wasn't a druggie or something. Pilar was probably laughing at her anyways. Fuck you, ghost of Pilar, she was being moody here, buzz off.

"Are you coming, girl?"

She snapped out of it and looked up to see Big Guy performing his signature glare upon her. He wasn't actually mad she knew, that was just what his face was like. She quickly power walked up to stand next to him, craning her neck up in a vain attempt to look him in the eye. It never worked, but she always had to try. Both because of her pride and because her face lined up perfectly on his crotch.

Big Guy made conversations with him awkward just by being so tall, and he wasn't even aware of it. Have some consideration for the little people, huh?!

He had been giving all of them training for a while now, and he set up a schedule for it. There were four of them and seven days of the week. So three of those days were for group training, and each of them got a single day of personalized training. He hadn't been doing this from the beginning because he obviously didn't really care about training anyone except Davey at first. He did now though, and today was her turn for one on one time again.

She couldn't waste her time daydreaming. She had to get better, she had to stop being a liability.

They were going out again today. Clearing out everyone in a section that would be demolished to make room for the permanent housing to go up. That meant a one time announcement to everyone in a region, and then they would go in and start killing everyone. If this was a vid from before the two-thousands, there would probably be a message about the human condition right about now.

But she had grown up in Night City. Things were awful here and she wasn't particularly interested in hearing every sob story that turned people into insane drug addicts and what not. She had to deal with them too often before to care about their lives. Besides, the life Big Guy was giving people was way better, so the cleaning of Pacifica was something she was fine with.

In the end though, those were all post-conclusion justifications, the simple truth was that they weren't the people she cared about, they were others. She needed to get better to help her people, and these others were convenient targets to get better. Davey was a good person. Lucy was a good person. Gloria was a good person.

…Big Guy wasn't a good person, but he cared about them staying well and getting better, which was good enough for her. He could have killed them all, and he instead gave them everything he could. He was part of her people now, whether or not he grumbled when she said stuff like that.

So she followed him, power walking to keep up with his leisurely steps. This was the first day of one on one training she was getting, so nervous was an understatement. She did what she always did with her nerves, and buried them under a smile.

"So Big Guy, how are we going about doing this?" She asked.

"Three men are shooting at you, one has an assault rifle and heavy armor, one has a rocket launcher and a sandevistan, and one has a shotgun and belt of grenades. What do you do?"

Oh, they were starting right away huh? Alright, how was she going to do this…

Davey had told her about these kinds of lessons that the Big Guy gave him. You go for the guy with the biggest guns first. So she felt like she was cheating a bit when she responded.

"I shoot rocket launcher, then grenades, then assault rifle."

"Why?"

"The guy with the rocket launcher has the biggest threat to me, so I need him out first. The grenades are the next scariest thing, so I get him. The rifle is nasty, but his heavy armor means I should flatline him last to save time."

"Wrong."

She got a bit frustrated. "Eh, whaddya mean?"

"You are not a frontliner, regardless of armor. You are high-speed fire support."

…Ah, she got it. She felt a bit stupid now, thinking that the same type of answer that Davey gave would work here. So as they walked she thought about the issue. Eventually she had come to an answer she felt was good enough.

"I shoot my microwaver at the rocket guy, just in case I can take out his sandy. He's the biggest threat if he gets in my face and fires faster than I can react. Then I run away until I'm out of range of the other two and start taking potshots at them with my killer hips."

"Good, what else?"

…what else? She couldn't think of anything else she could really do…

She was fire support. She was there to support others in a fight.

"I call out their location for you and Davey while I run"

"Good, correct."

Big Guy never stopped glaring at everything around him, even at his most neutral expression. But he had other little things he did that showed emotion off. The slight inclination of his head at her meant that he had approved of what she said. She wanted him to approve of her more.

Big Guy continued.

"We are now going to go through this upcoming section, clearing out everyone who hasn't left by the time we go in. You will be making these decisions while I act as a melee frontliner. I will tell you what you did wrong each time. We will do this until you stop doing things wrong, or the section is cleared and ready for demolition."

"Melee?" she asked, "You don't have your club with you." He had a big iron strapped to his back that looked like something you'd normally mount on the back of a truck, and a huge duffle bag of extra ammo, but no club or swords.

He stared at her blankly, before raising a single hand and clenching it into a fist.

Oh, she felt a little stupid now.

There had been an announcement broadcast over all of Pacifica yesterday night. Which section was going to be demolished next. Suffice to say, very few people who valued living were going to be staying in the region instead of moving to one of the new apartment complexes they put up. The workers were really fast about doing that, they put up a new temporary housing unit each day, every two days if there was an unexpected delay of some sort.

There was no end to the people who wanted to work nowadays. All eager to get a free set of boots, gloves, hat and a few spare eddies a day. It had gotten to the point that Big Guy had to create a new type of job for them to have, too many workers made the cleanup slower it seemed.

So he bought bulk seed packets of gene-modded Biotechnica plants. Beans and Potatoes, and had an instruction manual typed up on how to grow them. The plants were apparently modded to break down soil pollution, and you could grow them in a cycle really easily. Everyone who wanted 1 extra eddie a day was tasked to look after ten planter boxes of beans and potatoes, and deliver the product to the HQ cargo area once grown. You'd get bonus pay based on the weight of the goods at the end.

One eddie was enough to get a filling but bland meal, and plants mostly grew themselves. Soon enough, about half of the Pacifica housing section had these planters set up. She had heard Big Guy grumble to no end about how expensive the initial set up was, but this much 'ganic stuff was sure to pay a lot in the end. Apparently there was a gang forming up around the planters, and the Animals hired themselves out to protect the boxes.

They had been taking a whole lot of jobs in Pacifica recently, and there was talk of them becoming more permanent security staff in the area. Those roiders really loved the Arena, so taking jobs in the area let them visit it after a job faster. There was an entire timeblock of fighting dedicated to Animal brawls now.

…She knew that because she liked watching that timeblock. She was cheering on "The Fistinator", he was scrappy. He was going up against "Lady Drake" tomorrow, a woman who got biomods to look like and breathe fire like a dragon. He was going to kick her ass, she knew.

She didn't know anything about farming, except that if you really wanted to make bank you planted Chooh instead of food. But they weren't allowed to grow that because of the Biotechnica patent, so this was the next best thing to make money and keep gonks busy.

…At least, that was what she had picked up from the time Big Guy monologued on the topic when Gloria asked about it. He seemed more irritated than usual about the whole thing.

They didn't drive out to the section. No, Big Guy led them outside the HQ and then told her to follow. Then he started jogging and she struggled to keep up on her new ACPA skaters. They were powered versions, and let her get pretty fast, about seventy miles per hour on open road. Shame the batteries only lasted about six hours, so she had to be careful in using them. She also wasn't the best skater yet, the number of times she had crashed so far being evidence of that.

Big Guy had slowed for her each time, she could tell that he was laughing at her beneath that glare, she would have vengeance one day! She wasn't sure how yet, but she would. She audibly growled at Big Guy as she caught up. He simply turned and started jogging again. You are not allowed to ignore her outrage!

Soon enough, they were in front of the section they were going to be clearing out. A run like that would have exhausted her before, but her new Skaters, exercises, and bioware meant that she wasn't even winded. It was a really good feeling noticing that.

Big Guy was just standing there, arms crossed. He was waiting for her to say something here. She thought back to what she had been told so far.

…She was being tested on making decisions…

So was it up to her to choose where they went first? Just to make sure, she asked.

"You want me to decide the game plan here?"

"Yes."

Alright, Rebecca, put on your thinking chrome here. The goal was to clear out the region of people, so it would be best to make sure as few as possible got away each time they got into a building. She looked forwards and considered the area. Lots of tall buildings, no connections between them.

"We'll enter the buildings one at a time, starting from the lowest floors and moving up. We'll have to make multiple loops and go through the buildings several times."

"Good, why?"

"That way they'll have to go through us or jump out, and by checking multiple times we can ensure we get the most amount of people possible before the day is over."

"Mostly correct, We can also bar the entrances with rubble to prevent easy escapes."

Ah shit, she forgot she was working with a guy who could toss trucks around. She nodded and he nodded back. They proceeded to the first building, Big Guy grabbed a scrapped car with one of his immensely powerful arms and casually dragged it in front of the ruined lobby entrance as they entered, sealing the building behind them. It was probably about two-thousand pounds, no normal person was getting through that.

Then they proceeded down the stairs until they were in front of the basement floor. Big Guy stood next to the door and looked at her again. Right, decisions. She thought about it for a bit, before settling on a good enough plan. She told him over comms.

[Rush in and heaviest ordinance first, go loud. I'll follow and take out who I can with my opening volley. You rush to the next target when they split their attention, and we'll repeat this until no one is left.]

Adam nodded, and stood in front of the door. She moved over to the side, out of sight from inside the room.

He kicked in the door, and she was rocked by an explosion big enough to blow a person in half. Her vision shook a bit and she took a moment to recover from such a blast against her new armor. When she could, she moved into the room, Big Guy having already rushed in, probably not even phased by the trap they had placed.

Good job Rebecca, you already fucked this up.

Inside she saw a number of guys all starting to fire at Big Guy, who had run up to a bulky looking chrome junkie and had started wailing on him with his punches. His normal punches, not Panzerfaust.

To be fair, they were still beating that almost borg into a pulp. Big Guy was really fucking strong now. The poor guy couldn't even really fight back. Either way, he wouldn't be a threat for a minute, unlike the guys with guns all around him.

She took aim and started moving around the side towards some cover, torso angled to point all her guns as her targets. She went slow enough that she got a target lock on four of them right before she moved behind a stone column.

Four shots rang out, two big handguns and two big rifles adding together to turn four gonks into corpses. She was behind the pillar just as they reacted and started aiming her way. A burst of bullets came her way, doing nothing to her but eating up the concrete around her pretty nastily. The sounds echoed alongside the sounds of Big Guy beating a man of inferior chrome to death.

The shots started slowing around her, so she crouched and activated her Skaters, moving along a straight path behind the row of pillars, letting her smartlink grab another set of locks. Another few seconds later, and her guns fired again, taking out the remaining guys with guns.

Big Guy noticed this, but kept his downright casual assault up. He slammed his elbow down on the guy's temple and he crashed into the floor. She went into the open and got two locks on the almost borg, her hip-cannons firing and blowing a new set of holes in the guy as he tried to stand up again.

She didn't notice anyone else. She looked to Big Guy for confirmation.

He nodded and spoke. "What did you do wrong?"

She flinched, and spoke up. "I didn't account for the bomb trap."

He nodded. "Yes, what else?"

What else? Had she done anything else wrong there? She thought back to how the fight had gone, and nervously suggested "I didn't get them fast enough?"

"That's an issue of skill, not tactics. No. What else?"

"I got nothing."

"Look at their guns."

She looked over at their assortment of weapons, 1 heavy machine gun, 2 assault rifles, 2 shotguns, 4 submachine guns…

She still wasn't getting anything here. She shrugged, and the Big Guy sighed. She wilted a bit at that.

"Your armor is enough to ignore the submachine guns entirely. If you had taken out the shotguns and rifles first, you would be free to stand completely still and target the remaining meatbags. This would have killed them roughly twice as fast. The Militech HMG was for the borg, and I had him occupied."

"Ah, I guess I'm not used to being able to ignore small bullets like that." She rubbed the back of her head a bit, awkward at missing the fact that she was in heavy plates of armor right now.

Big Guy didn't say anything in return and nodded towards the doorway. She smiled at him behind her helmet and started moving to the stairs. Next floor was ground level again, so they probably wouldn't encounter anyone.

Of course, she was immediately proven wrong by the fact that they saw four people trying to shove the car out of the way at that entrance. She was about to give Big Guy an order to move in as she readied her guns, but then paused.

Those were teenagers, and their weapons were really light for this part of the city. A couple of mono-katanas and submachine guns and handguns. Not really anything that would threaten them.

[Wait, let me talk to them Big Guy.]

He stopped. He turned and looked down at her. He stared.

She waved her hands placatingly, he frowned at the delay of violence.

[Look, our job is to clear this area out, they don't look like they're from here.]

He almost audibly growled at her. Yeah, yeah, you big murderer. She'll be quick about it.

She walked into the room, not trying to hide her metal boots' footsteps. It took them a bit longer than they should have to notice a woman in a full set of heavy armor and carrying a whole lot of gun behind them.

They startled when one finally noticed.

"Shit! Ichi behind us!"

"What?!"

They aimed their (honestly kinda puny guns) and she raised her hands in the classic 'come in peace' sign.

"So, what are a bunch of teenagers doing here, we're clearing this section out."

They started rapid fire talking among themselves.

"Shit, she's a corpo. Friend of yours Hiromi?"

"No way, gonk. Stop talking about that."

"She hasn't shot at us yet, and those guns look big. Awful nice for a corpo, a merc?"

Eventually one of them spoke up, a girl with face-chrome and neon tigers all over her body. Actually, looking at them again, they had tigers and neon everywhere she looked. A bit gaudy, but it marked them as Tyger Claws. Or, teens who were into the Tyger Claws she guessed.

"Whaddya mean by.. 'We'?" She asked.

At this point, The Big Guy started walking into the lobby. Heavy stomps behind her telling her that he was doing a dramatic slow walk until he was behind her. He crossed his arms, metal lightly scraping against metal.

They looked about ready to piss themselves.

"That's Adam fucking Smasher, we're dead. Fuck you Motoko, you did this."

"You came along, gonk."

One of the boys swallowed, and spoke up to her again, nervous looks constantly going up to behind her. "So… uhh, Our choom's ride got klept, and we were trying to get it back. We tracked the guy to his part of the city…" he trailed off a bit awkwardly, the situation becoming quite clear to them.

Adam walked forwards leisurely, ignoring their panicked crawls and jumps away from his approach. He moved to the doorway again, grabbed the car on the other side and moved it out of the way. Holding the car up in one chrome arm, he spoke.

"Get the fuck back home, meatbrats. I don't have time for you."

Three of them looked immensely relieved, and started moving to do just that. The girl, 'Motoko' apparently, objected with an angry look on her face covering her clearly visible fear.

"We're not leaving without Hiromi's bike, got it?! We'll leave when we get it back!"

"Motoko, shut up! I can get a new Kusanagi!"

"Motoko, shut your mouth!"

"We're dead."

Adam glared down at the girl covered in neon-tigers. He glared until her knees started to shake and small tears started to escape the corners of her eyes, but she didn't break the staredown. Rebecca sighed, and spoke up.

"C'mon Big Guy, they're kids, stop scaring them."

Adam broke the stare down and looked at her. He looked back at the shaking girl.

"Ten."

A brief moment of confusion for everyone involved, before the Big Guy continued.

"Nine."

A slow dawning horror among the kids as they began to realize what was happening, and Rebecca did too.

"Eight."

The tearful but stubborn girl didn't waver in her glare as Big Guy continued counting down. Her friends began to yell at her and try to push her out the entrance. Rebecca cut Adam off before he could say the next line, bursting into the first thing that came to mind.

"How bout they come with us?"

Adam stopped completely, and let the car fall with a crash. He turned his glare to her.

"Explain." It was not a request. Ah shit, now she actually had to justify it. Think, what reasoning would the Big Guy accept?

"They're here for the bike, we'll probably see it while clearing this place out. They can follow behind and take it when we get to it."

Adam growled audibly at that. "I am not a fucking babysitter, girl." Rebecca raised her hands placatingly again. That clearly didn't work, alright girl you can't fuck this up again. Take two.

"I'm not saying that, they can just trail behind us, that's all. They can look after themselves I'm sure." She crossed her arms. He kept glaring. It wasn't working, shit, what else?

Honor, Big Guy always kept his word. "Besides, you did say I was making the plans for this outing, didn't you Big Guy?"

Adam glared at her, and then glared down at the Tyger fangirl.

"Fucking fine."

Internally, she stopped panicking as he agreed to not murder a bunch of kids. Jeez Big Guy, at least try to not be so murderous, why don't you?

Adam Smasher wasn't a good man, but he was on their side, so that was good enough for her.