Arnold Armstrong was a gigantic man. That much was evident from his height and bulk alone. He was the first person outside of a Dragoon that actually reached eye-level with him that Adam had met in a very long time. Eight feet tall, and perhaps four or five hundred pounds of muscle and bone. Muscle and bone, because as far as Adam could tell, he had absolutely no cyberware anywhere in his body.

Perhaps the most extensive array of both long term CRISPER-backed eugenics and bioware that Adam had ever seen before on a meatman. Adam had upgraded Arnold to meatman status instead of meatbag when he first met him, because of what he was doing. Lifting 1800 pound weights while his sister cheered him on, while standing on a bed of red coals like a fucking monk. That's an amount of weight that Adam would have struggled with in his Dragoon frame, not anymore though.

Adam didn't care for meatbags, because they were so fucking pathetic most of the time. Metal was better than meat, it was simply a fact. Everything meat can do, metal can do better. Most meatbags just couldn't keep up with the mental strain it put on them, and those that could keep themselves together enough to go borg usually couldn't go much further than that. Bioware was a second place option, less straining to have but also much less effective overall. Most people could handle a fair bit of bioware, but it wasn't as good.

Arnold had more than a fair bit of bioware, he had more than Adam had ever seen on a non-exotic before, and all of it was functional rather than cosmetic bullshit. It wasn't overly fiddly bullshit like UV resistant skin or extra eyelids or other shit that you could just get equipment for. It was all foundational, strength, speed, durability, and healing rate.

Pure functionality, no extraneous bullshit, and in sufficient amounts to match a Dragoon in lift capacity, match most borgs in reflexes, and almost match an Alpha Class in durability. He couldn't jump nearly as far, and he was far slower than the vast majority of borgs, but that was the limitation of flesh.

Adam and Uriel respected the classics, even if modern tech had long since replaced most of it. A good steel club was never going to stop being useful, even if a club made of endosteel was far superior. Arnold Armstrong had taken his body above and beyond the vast majority of meatbags, and even some borgs. He had reached the upper limits on what could be done with flesh, and then went about refining what he had with constant training.

Monoblades had almost no place in the modern battlefield. They were old tech taken to its near logical extreme, and the results showed. It was good enough at cutting meatbags and could handle light armor to a degree, but it broke too easily and you had to get in close. Usually, just shooting a rifle at your target was a vastly better option. Plate armor stopped being used because guns started being too strong. The modern soldier was given armor not to survive direct hits, but instead to survive shrapnel and glancing blows.

Arnold Armstrong was like a monoblade. Old tech taken to its logical extreme. Adam respected the man for it. Shame that Arnold Armstrong didn't like Adam Smasher at all. At least he was honest and polite with it.

If Adam had to guess the reason, it was because he fucked Arnold's sister.

Repeatedly.

Until pregnancy.

Then some more after that.

Uriel chuckled even as Arnold gave a side-eye glare at him and Victoria led them on a tour around the Arena. She was showing him the specifics of what she had been doing with the place recently, and other shit that he didn't care for so long as everything was mostly working and the funding for the rest of the reconstruction went through. He paid enough attention to get the information down, but his focus was on the hulk of a retrograde warmachine walking next to him.

His (Uriel's) conclusion? Adam didn't need to worry, Arnold was worried about his sister, and wouldn't make trouble. He was the responsible one of the family. So long as Victoria had her needs taken care of, he wouldn't be an issue for his territory. Victoria's needs were easy to meet, basic necessities, a house, violence, and the occasional fucking.

Adam paid her well enough for the first two, her job for him covered the third, and he enjoyed fulfilling the last one. Victoria had everything a halfmeat could ask for, and Arnold couldn't complain about it. His open and polite dislike was refreshing as well, no corporate bullshit of hiding dislike under rules and false smiles.

The first thing Arnold had said to Adam was 'I do not like you, Adam Smasher. I shall tolerate you for my baby sister's sake.' Something that the mentioned 'baby sister' took issue with, starting a small argument among themselves. He never backed down from his statement though.

At least he was willing to say it to his face. Indeed, Adam found Arnold Armstrong significantly more tolerable than the vast majority of meatbags in the world. It would be irritating to have to slaughter him should he start trying to pull bullshit.

Bullshit like the fuckers in his territory had been starting to pull recently. Little skirmishes between what were obviously gang members starting up more and more frequently. Not enough to need a ripperdoc to patch anyone up, but enough that Adam had already had to shoot a couple fuckers that decided to pick a fight with each other within ear range of him. Not those who were brawling with each other, but the ones that pulled out weapons. They could save the murder for the arena, which they had also done.

The fatality rate for the Arena had jumped recently. Why? Poison. It had become real popular recently for fuckers with blades to start coating their weapons in some sort of neurotoxin, because it worked real fast. All you had to do was get a cut in, and the other guy would drop soon enough. Or they would die after the match.

It didn't affect the chrome junkies too much. It was hard to poison a chrome arm after all. It was cutting into his meat-fighter population though. Everyone with a bit of meat and no hard armor on? They started dying much more often.

It had gotten to the point where Victoria restricted the use of poison to the 'Anything Goes' division. The most prestigious and difficult tournament style in the whole arena, specifically because every tactic and style was allowed, save for guns because those might kill his spectators. Hard to sell tickets when there was a good chance of death from stray bullets.

Anything Goes has recently become dominated by fuckers with speedware and poisoned monoswords. A high speed clash in which even a slight cut meant death in a few minutes. The fans fucking loved it, it sold like hotcakes. The most recent champion was a dude from Tyger Claws, Junichiro or something like that.

He had hired the Animals a while back because they had helped out with the attack by the panzerbot. They refused to wear armor most of the time. Their population was starting to thin out too much to have them patrol everywhere they used to. He'd have to look into hiring other fuckers if he wanted to maintain the level of security he had been.

He hated negotiating, it was one more fucking thing that he had to do that wasn't turning meatbags into corpses. Just another annoyance that he was going to have to fucking deal with recently.

Victoria asked him a question. He gave a noncommittal grunt that she smiled at. Meattank kept glaring at him.

—

It was late by the time he got back from that little bit of social adventurism. It was something he had to do, but not something he enjoyed doing. That was true of most things though, he had long since gotten used to it.

He walked inside the main room, where his bench was.

There was something off.

He scanned around the room. Everything was in the same place as it had been, there were no signs of entry of alteration.

He focused for several minutes, walking around and trying to find what the off feeling was from.

He couldn't find it. It was bothering him. He started listing the features of the rooms in his head.

It was quiet. There wasn't anyone inside except him.

Ah, it was normally louder than this, with the brats and woman in his house. They were up in the Tower right now.

Mystery solved, he walked over to his bench, and sat down on it.

Was there anything he or Uriel had to review for right now?

…

He decided to ignore it if there was. He opened his oldest compilations and hit play, setting an internal alarm for the next morning.

He started reviewing his old murders, noting all the mistakes and inefficiencies he made back then. He then compared that to the slaughters he had been on recently, making sure he wasn't falling back on bad habits.

The room was silent for hours.

—

He was going out for patrol again today, and Adam had found yet another irritant upon starting to gear up again. He was down to two magazines and a bit spare of fifty-caliber caseless bullets. His orders wouldn't arrive until next week at the very least.

He grumbled to himself as he put the fifty caliber revolver and insufficient ammunition on his belt and started looking for another weapon to carry for patrols. He still had a decent amount of brass cased fifty caliber shots, but that was for the Browning M2 and he really didn't feel like picking up all the litter that would produce each time he had to kill something.

What else did he have? Preferably caseless.

…He still had a decent stack of five-five-six caseless rounds. Probably about six hundred by sight. He could use the HK21 if he wanted to go through the effort of putting them on the belt feed.

Eh, he hadn't used it in a while, might as well. He walked over to grab a belt feed, and then over to the box with the correct rounds. Kneeling on the floor, he began the half-hour process of loading up a belt feed. Once he was done with this one, he'd grab another to carry around and load that too. He'd do this until he had maybe five total drum magazines.

He wasn't particularly worried, he still had several dozen crates of ammo in a variety of sizes. If he kept up this pace of usage, he'd get his bulk order in just in time for him running low. That and he could always just start beating the meatbags to death physically if he did run out. Besides, the chance to dig into his dusty antiques was more fun than he was expecting, it had been a long time since he used anything in this section.

Belt feeds finally loaded and then loaded into a few magazines, he walked over to grab the MK21, and performed a maintenance check to make sure everything seemed to be in working condition. Everything was in order, so he loaded it with a drum and set out on another daily patrol.

Another day, another few dozen meatbags to slaughter.

Heh, he was minding this part of his job less and less as time went on. Just walk around and kill meatbags that meet a certain criteria.

He'd have to do this more in the future.

—

He had to attend yet another fucking meeting around noon, this time about the church he commissioned. Apparently, the construction crew was being harassed at the building site by meatbags he might have to kill. They weren't being violent, but Adam was hoping they'd turn that way when he got there.

He walked up to the area that had been partitioned off for the building, it was sizable. It would take the place of one of the permanent housing blocks, and be more or less directly across the main road from his own permanent HQ, when that started going up. It would drop the max population capacity down in the far future, but that was worth the joke to him.

When he got there, he saw a tense stand off between his workers and a number of people with stylized Vs and rose tattoos. Ah, the valentinos were out in force today, goody, he might get a chance to kill a bunch of the posergangers. Apparently they were serious business nowadays, but he still remembered when they were a bunch of frat boys who just wanted to fuck pretty women, it was unlikely that they changed that much.

In their front, talking to his chief construction worker (some guy named John, he did decent work), was a rather old looking man in a wide brimmed hat and a white and gold poncho. He had his hands resting on a jewel encrusted cane with a skull motif, and one of his arms was a similar gold and jewel encrusted chrome design. His features were weathered and wrinkled, his eyebrows and beard both bushy and gray.

He was wearing a white suit underneath leather chaps and a vest. All around his outfit faint skeletal motifs could be found. He turned with the rest of the table as he approached, no one was reaching for their guns. Shame.

"Ah, senor Smasher, good day to you." The old man with decent fashion called out to him as he approached, his gangers staying still and polite so he wouldn't have an excuse to off them. The Pacifica workers greeted him with 'hello bossman' of various varieties. He didn't bother with responding as he approached, simply shifting his gun to be holding it by the stock and resting on his shoulder as he got next to the table.

On the screen was a number of tablets displaying a number of designs for buildings, most of them looked real fucking ugly.

He looked at his foreman and the old guy and waited for an explanation as to why he had to be here. The two men began speaking at the same time, cutting each other off. They exchanged looks, the foreman looking a bit irritated and the old guy looking patient. The foreman huffed and gestured for the old man to go first. The old man politely nodded, even as his bodyguards glared.

"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Francisco Murrieta Campo-Orta, of the Valentinos Bandidos. I came to your men here with suggestions on the design of the house of worship you had commanded of them." He spoke calmly, politely, and factually. From his point of view, all of that was probably true. From anyone else's point of view, he was threatening his workers into doing shit that he didn't tell them to do. Adam let his constant glare settle on the old man for a while longer, making it clear he wasn't impressed.

"Ask before threatening my workers." He growled out, letting everyone else in the scene in on the subtext. The old man didn't defend himself there, knowing it wouldn't help him. Adam turned to the foreman, to see him roll his jaw and nod in agreement. That was basically what had happened then?

Well, before he kills them, he might as well see what they were suggesting.

"What was the planned design?" He asked, and his foreman pointed out a tablet. Adam picked it up and started looking. He and Uriel started getting angry.

What was this post-modern architectural nightmare bullshit? Fucking hell it was hideous. Concrete, steel, and glass arranged in…

It was a giant pile of shit, literally in this case, the silhouette was obvious. He let his glare intensify and frown deepen.

"Where the fuck did you get this from?" He growled out, and his foreman was quick to answer.

"Arasaka commissioned some architect over in Europe for it. Some guy named Gehry."

"It's dogshit, never accept a design from that meatbag again."

His foreman nodded, and snapped a finger back to a guy at a computer, who typed something up. Adam directed his attention towards the old man, who was nodding as if he had expected this result. Adam decided to not kill them this time, because they had prevented a giant worthless waste of a building from going up in his territory. He looked down to the tablets on their side of the fold-out table, and started picking them up one by one and going over the designs.

Eventually, he found the one he liked the best, a nice cathedral looking thing. He turned it around and tapped on the screen.

"This one, use less exterior glass and add a few balconies for AA guns."

His foreman nodded and reached out for the tablet, walking with it and handing it off to the guy at the computer, who fiddled with it. Adam turned to the old guy, and made a deliberate scan of his lackeys around the vicinity. He glared at the old guy again and spoke.

"Don't pull this shit again, next time send a fucking message."

The old guy nodded and replied.

"Ah, my apologies senor Smasher, but you understand that it is difficult to get a point across sometimes. I had to be sure this was brought to your attention."

Adam grunted in reply. Yeah, the design could have been real fucking bad, the old guy did him a pretty big favor there. He'll repay him by not killing them all. The old guy, seeing his acceptance, continued.

"One more thing, if you would senor Smasher. Have you given any thought to who you shall hire as ministers of faith in this house? If not, I have a few faithful locals in mind." He suggested again.

Adam was going to just post a hiring offer online, but this worked well enough. The old man was using this opportunity to get spies and whatnot in his territory, but Adam didn't particularly care. It's not like he was doing anything secret here.

"Your lackeys follow the rules in my territory, or I kill them." Adam replied, and the old man nodded and smiled.

"You are an honest man, senor Smasher."

"Lying is for meatbags, I'm above it."