The Aldecaldo pack watched slightly stunned and relieved as Adam Smasher drove away from them into the dark of the badlands. They had assembled a firing line in response to whoever was approaching them, but realized too late that the someone was him. They didn't have the heavy ordinance required to take someone like him out, his armor too thick and his speed too great to focus fire for long.
They'd put up a fight, but they would die. It was too late to run, so all they could do was put up a strong front and make it seem not worth the effort of killing them. They figured he was coming in with one of Arasaka's poisonous offers, one they couldn't refuse with the Butcher here.
But he didn't, he asked them if they were the fucking wraiths, and then drove off when they said no.
Panam shook herself, and growled. She went over to one of the cars and motioned Jamie to follow her. Jamie had the best optics among them, full zoom and recording feature. She was their best long-ranged recon for this reason.
"Hey, where are you going?" Saul called out to her as she jumped in the car. He was tense, almost sweating. It made sense, he was the one that had to talk to the Butcher, not an enviable position. She wouldn't give him shit about it this time, that was fair.
"Seeing if the bastard is a liar. If he's making a deal with them instead…" She trailed off, and everyone sharpened their gazes again. If Adam Smasher was making a deal with the Wraiths, they had to know about it as soon as possible to prepare for the shitstorm to follow. Saul's gaze hardened and he nodded firmly.
"Take the Charger, you're going to need the speed." A generous offer. She thanked him and jogged over to it. Jamie followed with all the clumsy worry one might expect in this situation. Saul got to work getting everyone ready to run from this place. It would be real rough on their supplies for a while, but they would survive.
They had to.
So Panam drove out into the desert, following the roaring engine of the armored Musclecar as it approached the distribution center that contained about half of the Wraiths at any one time. Jamie was focused, her optics zoomed in all the way as she stared unblinking at the car.
The Butcher's car seemed to gallop at around one-hundred, the Charger was faster by a decent margin when the nitrous was active, but slower without it. She readied that particular button well in advance, just in case he turns around and decides to chase them down.
He approached the DC, he didn't seem to be aware of them. Jamie was streaming her view to the rest of the pack, for fastest response time. He stopped in front of his car for a moment, and Dogkiller yelled something at him.
Then all of a sudden, a new dawn cut the night in half. It almost blinded her. There was a nonstop roar in the distance.
A line of fire and light burst into life right on their Wagonwall. It turned their defenses into scrap. The Butcher had his monstrous right arm extended, six barrels whirling as it stayed revved up in preparation to fire. He started walking into the fire, every now and then unleashing a burst fire of bullets at something that might have been a person or a gun. Every now and then a brillant newborn bonfire burst into life in the dark of the night.
The area turned into scrap and fire in about three minutes, they watched as it happened.
Then, laughing, the Butcher got back into his car and started driving again. Not towards the city, but deeper into the badlands still. He said he was going to genocide the Wraiths.
He wasn't lying.
She called Saul. He picked up nearly instantly.
"Saul, get the pack ready to move in, we have a chance to take their territory and supplies right now!"
"Don't try to order me woman, already on it, keep following him."
To her side, Jamie looked stunned, eyes locked onto the Butcher's car. She had lost everything to the Wraiths, more than most of their family. Here they were, being wiped out. Fair trade in Panam's mind. This was an unprecedented opportunity right here, even assuming that the Butcher gets no one else tonight.
That Distribution Center was the pin that held the majority of Wraith influence in the region. It was turned into scrap and rubble. Three hundred rapists, murderers, and scavengers turned into corpses and ash. The amount of guns, cars, and foodstuffs they could come in and take right now would be an incredible windfall. This was ignoring the chance to expand from the deaths of their biggest rivals. This was ignoring the sudden lack of murderers to pick off members of her family from the outskirts in the future.
Her family was going from one of the two powers in the NC Badlands, to the sole power in the NC Badlands, with this alone. They wouldn't have to worry about dying anymore, not from starvation, or predation, or slavery to a corpo.
All because the Butcher woke up today and decided to wipe out a bunch of Nomads. That could have been them. Her hands felt clammy on the steering wheel.
The Charger chased after the Butcher's Shire. Her gaze was locked on the roads and scrubs, not letting her mind wander, not while she had to do something like this. Behind them the bonfires that ringed the now destroyed DC lit her path forwards.
Jamie spoke up, absentmindedly.
"He said you had nice hips."
"He also called me fuckmeat. Shut up and keep watching, lookout."
"You going to wine and dine him? Seduce the bloody knight of Pacifica? He has a castle, you know?"
"I said shut the fuck up lookout."
"You hear what he was listening to? It was some old Jap pop song. Ain't that strange?"
Panam decided to ignore Jamie for the rest of the night. Useful as she was, she had the irritating habit of constantly needing to make small talk whenever she could. Jamie said it was her 'natural gossipy nature', everyone else said it was annoying.
"He writes songs, doesn't he? You gonna listen to any of them now?"
Please shut up, lookout.
—
On the floor in the middle of an office room in Arasaka Tower, a ghost sat. His resting crouch had long been optimized for immediate motion, and his optics never rested. The office was completely bare, there was no need for the comforts required by the living. His mind alone could wander the net of Arasaka, gleaning information that mortals would require interfaces to perform.
He was Kagekaze, the wind shadow. That old patriarch of the shinobi was long dead, his dishonor dying with him, his shadow was all that remained. Chiefest assassin of the great clan Arasaka, chiefest spy and saboteur, chiefest expert in the ways of parting men from their ghosts in silent and unseen ways.
He was never the chiefest murderer of Arasaka. Once, that title belonged to young Kenichi Zaburo, guardian of his lord's granddaughter. Young Kenichi had chosen to stay loyal to his ward after the fourth corporate war, and thus remained among the Oni. He was no longer a warrior of Arasaka, a truest shame, but he was still fulfilling his duty, a truest honor.
By the time Kenichi Zaburo had to be cast out from Arasaka, Kagekaze had already trained another in the ways of separating men from their vital fluids. He did so reluctantly at first.
Adam Smasher was boisterous, rude, violent, and all in all the perfect and quintessential example of the Oni of this land. He was crass and hateful, he was brutish and sneering, he was perhaps the most difficult student Kagekaze had ever had. Kagekaze truly enjoyed teaching, passing on wisdom to another, it was something that he retained from life. Adam Smasher tested that love thoroughly.
Still, he persisted on orders of his lord, who saw something within the young Oni. His lord was correct once again, possessing foresight that Kagekaze could never quite manage.
Adam Smasher, clad in the body of a five-eyed dragon, and turned into the most proficient murderer and guardian that Kagekaze had ever seen. Perhaps dreaded hero Blackhand could outwit him, perhaps now-old samurai Kenichi could overcome him, perhaps other Heroes, now long dead, could defeat him.
He was not a savant when it came to learning. He was not a prodigy that learned faster than any other, born only once every thousand generations. Adam Smasher had another advantage all to his own. The artifacts of the world were great indeed, and their implantation took a heavy toll on the spirits of men who bore them. Their fires sapped out by the engines they turned their bodies into. Even he himself struggled to overcome the fire-drinking artifact that his body now was.
Adam Smasher bore this toll without strain, his fire was inextinguishable.
The body of a five-eyed dragon was enough to devour any man who didn't place their minds in alchemical shackles. Any man except Adam Smasher, who broke its spirit like a man does to a wild and furious steed.
The chiefest limit on a man's strength would always be his fire, his will to withstand the hungry artifice. Adam Smasher bore an endless fire in his breast, he had no limit. This was what his lord had foreseen so long ago, Kagekaze privately assumed. It was something he himself was blind to until well within their training.
Just as this endless fire was a blessing, so too was it a curse. Adam Smasher's own will drowned within his fire, filling him with the abundant passions and excesses of the Oni in an attempt to vent it. Violence was one of the only things that could smother the fire long enough for him to function, soon filling his mind with rage again.
Once, the young granddaughter of his lord called him love. Love, the only other thing that could quell his fire for long. Adam Smasher was happier in those days, his mind was clearer and his fire more manageable. Then, oh greatest shames, they quarreled as all young lovers do. Adam lost himself to his fire once more, and so great was its heat that she could no longer approach to quell it. Kagekaze had despaired then, for it seemed his student was forever doomed to flame.
Years had passed, and in efforts to contain himself his student locked himself away in the border fortress. Protecting it and staying well away from any among his lord's family or their retainers, protecting them from his fire. Staying away from all save when he was needed, his fire building in intensity each time.
Kagekaze hadn't seen or spoken to him in decades. He busied himself with training more genin, namely young Goro. Goro was talented, but his obsession with being a samurai as opposed to a shinobi held him back.
Then, he had heard the reports of his recent behavior, delivered to him on his lord orders. Kagekaze dared to let himself hope for a moment. Then the reports continued, and the old shadow was filled with elation.
Adam Smasher had mastered his fire, containing it to a spirit within his frame, moving in harmony with it. Just as those murderous revenants had learned the secret of taming their fires, so did his student learn the same, on his own no less.
His student's will was freed. He was the master of his fire now. Nobly did he walk the earth, teaching others, destroying bandits, managing his lands. His actions were entirely different, even if his demeanor was exactly the same. Crass and rude, how nostalgic.
Oh happy days. Even with war on the horizon, Kagekaze took joy in this one thing.
He meditated, and looked to the various plans Arasaka held for the bandits in the badlands. He began filing the various forums required to dismiss and reject those plans. He had already alerted his lord to what his student was doing, and a message of approval was delivered back by the spirits of the net.
Idly, he wondered how his student had tamed his spirit. Kagekaze could not do the same, he knew. The old shinobi was now long dead, only the Wind Shadow remained.
—
Vincent Martinez looked at the reports coming in. He was sitting in the middle of a Camper, most of it hollowed out to contain his office space. The walls filled to the brim with monitors and bits of evidence. Reports of everything happening on the western half of the NUSA. Reports he could guess seventy-eight percent of the time with perfect accuracy, reports he guessed ninety-seven percent of the time with partial accuracy. It was that last three percent that he could never quite predict, that was his margin of error.
The Wraiths were being wiped out. That was not something he was predicting. Adam Smasher seemed to fill that three percent margin of error more often than he wanted him to. It had to be him, reports were of a single vehicle, and no one in the area had enough chrome to manage something like that other than him.
Vincent leaned back in his chair, reviewing what he knew of Adam Smasher's equipment and the equipment that the Wraith's had. How was Smasher doing this right now…?
…
…Tsunami Arms Helix, replacing his… right arm? Either that or two Stroheims. Loaded with either Thermal or HE rounds. Dragoon ammo hopper, two or three of them..
His sandevistan, AI, and frame could account for the rest of it here.
Now he had to plan around this unforeseen factor. The Wraiths were not going to survive in sufficient numbers to matter strategically. The Aldecaldo in the area were going to expand and grow, but still remain at their current numbers for another generation. That was about fifteen years before they expanded barring immigrants. Immigration from the eastern half was being cut off by his forces, which left north and south.
He glanced at the migration reports of the last twenty years, and compared them to current conditions in Night City. So they would gain… about three hundred additional members before he arrived? Manageable enough.
On one hand, he didn't have to deal with the Wraiths now, on the other hand there was no way he was going to be able to recruit the Aldecaldo in the area now. Not after Smasher's walkabout. This was not a particularly good or bad thing overall, it just meant he had to adjust the final push a bit. He would have to negotiate a ceasefire with them, to prevent his supply lines from being cut off.
He stood and walked outside again, greeting his personal band. Three-thousand was not impossible to manage, not with the ability to transfer the wealth of so many supply lines under his control. They had sufficient food, water, shelter, and guns. He made sure of that.
He looked to their cars, all modified not for speed or durability, but sheer gas mileage. He had this done for each and every car that every nomad in his control had. This reduced the amount of fuel they had to buy significantly, this increased the amount of guns and food they could buy instead.
The guns bought were not the best or fastest either. They were the most rugged and durable at a budget they could get. Longest lasting and needing little repair overall. The food too was of this nature. Cheap but filling and long-lasting rations.
Tactics won battles, Logistics won wars.
When he led the nomads under his control to Night City, they would be met with all the guns in the city. No matter how that battle concluded, Vincent was going to win the war. He would get his answer, and the Nomads were going to form a proper nation within thirty years at his worst estimates.
Even after his death, the Nomads would be significantly more unified in this region than before. Their quality of life was better in just about every way overall under his control. That was to be expected, he was Vincent Martinez, he was made in order to lead.
He hated his father for this reason. He couldn't stay around the people he loved for this reason. He was locked into a constant war with his own instincts for this reason.
Fight or Flight, choose one! His mind screamed at him. He suppressed this with practiced ease. He was planning, his logic was in control right now.
He couldn't feel aggression or fear right now. He couldn't feel anything right now.
Vincent hated his father, almost as much as he hated himself.
He lit a cigarette and took a long drag as he looked over his primary warband. Falco was approaching him with a dataslate in hand, mustache twitching irritably.
What would make him irritated and bring him a report of it?
…
The Metacorp militaries were on the move by now, and probably hitting his south-western supply lines.
Falco got next to him, and handed off the dataslate.
Vincent reviewed the report.
He was correct, he'll have to use plan b-34 then. He was hoping not to, it would have been more beneficial if Metacorp had waited another week before their attack.