The techie was excited when he walked in, practically bouncing up from where he had been sitting and typing away in front of a large holographic display of a disassembled ACPA frame. That excitement lasted a few moments before it gave way to comical horror at what he was carrying.

His frame, half melted by a barrage of lightning bolts and plated in replacement armor paneling. He ignored Techie for a moment, carrying the frame in and dropping it with a heavy thunk on one of the reinforced tables. He stepped away in time for techie to dramatically throw himself in front of the table and plug his interface cable in.

"This is terrible, Smasher-san! Look at your body!" Techie paused for a moment to read through the damages via the neural interface. His girlish face grew more and more horrified as he read. "Your beautiful CCPL myomer is all damaged, and forty percent melted beyond functionality! Your entire electronics array has suffered short-circuits from wiring damages!"

His face curled into a sneer. "And someone took off your hard and heavy armor paneling and replaced it with… this." He practically spat the last word, clearly sickened by the civilian market-grade armor paneling. He shook his head, raised his fists to his chest, and asked him in despair. "Who sabotaged your frame like this?!"

Adam grunted. "I got into a fight, it got damaged."

The techie paused at that, and looked to the frame, then back to Adam. He tilted his head. "Do you have a recording?" Adam downloaded his memories of the fight from his black box onto a memory chip, then removed it from the neck of his Gemini and handed it over.

Techie inserted it, and his eyes unfocused as he watched the memory of the fight. About halfway through, his face started getting red and he started rubbing his legs together. Adam pointedly ignored this as he waited for techie to get done so they could discuss a frame update. Hijikata didn't waste his time on shit like this, all he did was rant about guns every now and then.

Eventually techie removed the chip, and coughed into his fist to refocus himself. "Right, I'll put in the work order to get another one shipped over. Normally we'd have an extra for you, but I don't think anyone was expecting this level of damage yet."

"No, this frame needs an update first." Adam growled out, catching techie's attention.

"An update…? Ah, you noticed a deficiency in the design during the fight then?"

Yeah, you could certainly fucking say that. He didn't have his fucking missiles anymore. Adam lifted the frame and pointed to the sub-arm mounting first.

"This part is fucking useless to me right now. It's supposed to plug into the ACPA to come, but it's only dead weight right now. Replace it with weapon mounts and linking on the forearms instead. It'll plug in just the same, and I can use actual fucking weapons in the mean time."

Techie chewed on his lip as he considered that.

"We'd need to update the ACPA wiring a bit, and that would drop your sub-arm manipulation in it by… maybe twenty percent?"

"How long until the ACPA is done?"

"Uhh.. maybe about four months?"

Adam grunted "It's useless to me if I get scrapped by some lucky bot in the meantime, update the frame. I'll compensate for twenty percent later."

Techie grinned cheerfully, and nodded. "Righto, Smasher-san, I'll pull a few more all-nighters working on it."

Adam considered the techie for a moment. He furrowed his brow in a confused glare. "How did you not know I got into a major scrap?"

Techie rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I've been working on your ACPA designs for the last sixty–eight hours. I haven't slept or left this room yet."

…Adam's optics narrowed as he magnified on Techie's eyes. Nothing noticeable.

Techie noticed, and rubbed away underneath one of his eyes revealing the dark circle underneath a layer of creamy white. "Makeup." he explained simply.

Huh. Well, mystery solved, he didn't really care anymore. He pulled away to walk out, but Techie spoke up again. "Ah, Smasher-san, wait."

He stopped, annoyed. Techie quickly continued.

"I assume you're wanting to mount micro-missiles on your forearms, just like your Dragoon frame had, right?"

"Yes."

Techie hummed at that. "...The missiles hit hard, but you can only carry a very limited amount, and you've been needing a non-kinetic option for a while now."

"Yes, thermite-loaded missiles." Where was he going with this?

Techie scratched his temple. "...Have you considered lasers instead?"

He audibly snarled at that, undeterred, Techie kept talking.

"If we take two Militech Electronics Lasercannons, swap out the batteries for supercapacitors, and then hook it up to your fusion core, you'd have two non-kinetic weapons with unlimited ammunition and nearly instantaneous firing-speed. You'd have to wait a little bit before they recharge, but you'd have a long range option that never runs out of ammo."

…He wanted his fucking missiles back.

'He has a point.' Uriel spoke up, irritatingly.

'I fucking know that.'

'We can use missiles later, we need to survive now.' Unfortunately, he was being reasonable.

Adam growled. "Fucking fine, get those ordered and modified appropriately, If this screws me over at some point, I'm ripping you in half."

Techie gave a sailor's salute as he stomped out the door.

As he stomped out, he had Uriel look up a battleglove retailer (Battlearms United, apparently) and put in an order for an appropriate set. He was going to get his fucking missiles at least some of the time.

Uriel smiled and waved goodbye to the Mikoshi AI. It stared. It was still staring as he left the building.

'Fuck, she's creepy.' Uriel spoke once they were well enough away. Adam didn't acknowledge the statement, but he agreed.

—

He winced in pain as he took another step towards the main room couch. Another step and another wince, one after another, step after step, until he reached the couch and gently collapsed upon it.

He breathed in and then out, slowly, letting the strain that had built up on his limbs settle. The strain would fade, but there was an undeniable pressure and weight to them now that he couldn't get rid of. There was a sluggishness to the limbs, even with their better-than-human capabilities.

Chrome limbs were heavier than normal limbs, and he had four of them now. It wasn't too much heavier, but heavier enough to be noticeable. The arms were something he was used to by this point, used to moving in such a way to minimize the burden on his shoulders and back. Usually with his hands supported by his hips, or a surrounding bit of architecture. The legs were not something he could cheat on the burden of, he had to just deal with it eventually.

Neuralware, Auditory suite, Eyes, Strengthened Arms, Legs, Chipware sockets, an Internal Agent… He probably had more chrome than most cyberpsychos on the streets at this point. He didn't particularly feel like turning into a raving lunatic and shooting up a bar, but he also knew that he wasn't particularly special.

Adam Smasher was special, a one-in-a-million guy who could tank as much chrome as he wanted to bother buying and installing. David Martinez was special, a guy who went from a classmate he used to bully to a combat monster capable of wiping out entire gangs by himself in a single year.

He was Katsuo Tanaka, just a guy who went to work. He wasn't particularly ambitious or conniving, he wasn't particularly charming or tough, he wasn't particularly quick or strong. He used to have a bigger ego, back in the day, but dealing with people in the corporate world was exhausting. He was too tired most of these days to be condescending. He wasn't particularly lucky or unlucky either.

Sure, the guy he used to bully beat him up, and then his dad died, and then the guy he used to bully got recruited by Adam Smasher after turning himself into a chromed-out combat monster, and then his mom died, and he got his legs cut off by a lunatic with a chainsaw for a hand…

But he was alive and had a friend, so it wasn't all bad. It could definitely be worse than it was right now. He pulled out the cardboard container for the root beer soda that was tucked beneath the main room table, and took one out to enjoy.

Root beer was the objectively best flavor, afterall. Anyone who told you otherwise was lying or misinformed.

His chrome hands were heavy, but he had long since gotten used to the extra weight. His chrome was all covered in RealSkinn and EMP threading. Apparently there was a study some years ago about how RealSkinn helped reduce cyberpsycho rates, and his mother had insisted on it. EMP threading was simply nice to have in general. She was always looking out for him. She couldn't anymore now, she was dead after all, so he'd have to do it himself.

He breathed out of his nose, and took a drink. It was a very good drink, root beer flavored and bubbly. It probably had pesticides in it or something, but what didn't these days?

Steps behind him alerted him to the fact that Martinez entered the room. It had to be him, the steps were too heavy to be anyone else, and too light to be Smasher. Martinez walked around to the otherside of the table and sat down.

He reached down, grabbed a second root beer, and offered it. Martinez accepted and cracked it open. They sipped simultaneously, and sat around for a bit. He wasn't sure if women did this, but every now and then they would just sit down in comfortable silence and take turns taking sips of their drinks. It was a guy thing, from what he had been told, how true that was was probably a matter of debate.

Just two guys, sitting around a table, drinking. He internally groaned when he realized that he had something to say.

"Martinez." He spoke to get his attention. Martinez hummed and looked over, so he continued talking. "You saved my life, that means I owe you now. What do you want?"

Katsuo Tanaka wasn't planning on being in debt anytime soon, so the sooner he could resolve something like this the better. Martinez blinked at him dumbly, he probably didn't even realize that he had this kind of leverage over him. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that he bullied Martinez to the point of dropping out, because he would be eaten alive in the corporate world. Thinking that made him feel slightly awkward, so he ignored it.

Martinez hummed, and took a few more drinks of the soda, face scrunching slightly in thought. He took a few drinks of his own, it would be rude to rush his thinking here. They were friends now (he thinks) so he can't be rude when it comes to important things like this.

Eventually, Martinez spoke up.

"...Your apartment complex was destroyed in the rumble a couple days ago." It was a statement of fact. It was why he was sleeping here until he found another reasonable apartment. Martinez had offered a place to crash, and he accepted it in exchange for buying all the soda for a month. It was a good deal. "We still have like, five empty rooms here, so you're moving in and helping me with something."

He paused while taking a sip. He lowered the drink and raised a brow. Martinez continued, "Smasher is a frontliner unit. I'm a flanker unit. We need a backline unit to help protect the girls from being ambushed while they support."

He furrowed his brows. "Martinez, you and I both know I have no training."

Martinez nodded. "Right, I'll help you train. I need another non-fullborg to help me out with developing a fighting style, so that part helps me out too."

He considered it for a moment, and took another sip. "I thought Smasher was training you in 'Panzerfaust'?" He wasn't quite sure if he got the pronunciation right.

Martinez winced. "Right, uhh, well turns out that I had been tearing my cells apart trying to do it as a non-fullborg. So Ka-kagekaze recommended that I adapt it for fleshies like you and me first. He was going to help me, but…" He stumbled over the former security chief's name, and then trailed off by the end.

Katsuo wasn't really sure what to say to comfort him. "That sounds painful."

"It was, yeah."

…That didn't help at all, work harder brain.

He leaned back and stretched out to pop his overworked back. Help Martinez out in the fighting, huh?

What a wild world, huh? He huffed aloud, and smirked at Martinez. "Alright Martinez, I was probably going to get fired at this rate anyways, I'll request a transfer to Smasher's unit if you'll help me train up."

Martinez grinned at him, and offered a fistbump. He accepted it, their chrome arms making a noticeable sound of metal on metal.

Interrupting their moment of bonding, a voice he wasn't expecting called out from the kitchen area. He startled a bit at the noise.

"Eh? Bowlcut is gonna be wheeling out with us?" It was the voice of Rebecca. He wanted to use her last name, but she told him that she didn't have one last time he asked. She strutted over and put her hands on her hips to lean forwards and give him an exaggerated examination. After a moment of humming, she looked over to Martinez. "He's kinda scrawny, ain't he? You sure about this Davey?"

Her barely suppressed smile told him she was teasing him. He played into the bit as the straight man. "Hey now, I'm no Kamen Rider, but I might make a decent Kaijin."

She froze, and then turned to stare at him.

…Had he said something wrong?

Martinez glanced between them for a second, and then spoke. "What are you referencing, Tanaka?"

…Shit. No one except him knew about shitty vintage pre-datacrash vids. Everytime he brought it up in the past no one knew what he was talking about. Good job Katsuo, day fucking one and you stumble. He must be more zoned out by the pain of the new legs than he thought.

Before he could brush it off as nothing, his upper arms were seized by Rebecca's hands grabbing tightly and forcing him to look at her in the optics. It was a somewhat nerve-wracking experience being this close to a woman.

She narrowed her optics. "...What's Takeshi Hongo's IQ?"

He froze.

She knew.

He gulped. "...it was said to be 300, but this was never really demonstrated in the show."

She leaned forwards more, and smacked their foreheads together. "We are watching vintage stuff together, understand?"

He gulped again and nodded. She released him and rose to her full height, hands on hips, nodding affirmatively.

He breathed in and out for a bit to calm his nerves, reaching over to grab his drink of delicious root beer and taking a swig. It was out. He grabbed another can and opened it, and drank deeply of its wondrous nectar. Wonderful, non-feminine nectar.

…He put the drink down.

Martinez, the traitorous asshole, looked amused. "What was that all about 'Becca?"

"You know how rare it is for people to get my references? Only big guy knows about shit that old, and he doesn't watch movies most of the time. I'm not losing the chance to nerd out about this stuff with someone else."

"I suppose that's fair."

That was not fair, he nearly had a heart attack.