Smasher left yesterday, or technically this morning he supposed, apparently to go meet Mr. Arasaka himself over in Japan. That's the only explanation he gave anyways, and he doubted Smasher would lie about something so trivial, so it was probably true. That meant that, for the time being, he was alone to get ready for the tournament. He decided to spend it working out the kinks of his style in the meantime. Until Smasher got back at least, then he'd see what the guy had for him.

So here he was, in the training room, about to have a long thinking session about what he was trying to do. In front of him, Katsuo was going through what he called 'radio calisthenics', Becca was following along.

Mom was out with some of her friends. Apparently she had made friends with some of the agents from DangerGal that day that they extracted them from talking to the Arasaka President.

What happened to that guy, anyways? Wasn't there a new president now? Eh, it didn't matter too much.

Lucy had gone with her, both to watch mom and make sure she stays safe and because she was still mad at him. Both of them were. There hadn't been anything as big as an argument, and Lucy wasn't avoiding him like she did last time, but she wasn't talking while around him either right now.

He sighed to himself, scratching at the back of his neck. He wasn't really sure what to do about it. He knew that he didn't need to fight in the tournament…

But he wanted those BDs. Besides, this would be good training too, and he'd get good rep outta winning it. That, and Smasher asked him to (well more like demanded, but that was the same thing with him), he was capable of it so why shouldn't he?

He knew the truth, of course, more than anything else, he was going to fight because he wanted to. It was as simple as that.

…His chrome itched…

"Sure you're not going to warm-up, Martinez?" The dry and slightly mocking voice of Tanaka pulled him out of his thoughts. He was doing some sort of rolling bounce in his shoulders and body repeatedly. Becca was bouncing next to him. "You're going to pull something, y'know?"

He let out a 'pft' and replied. "I haven't pulled anything before, I'll be fine. Besides, breaking down a muscle makes it grow back stronger, right?"

"It still astonishes me that you were top of the class."

"Work harder, not smarter." He proclaimed with a confident grin.

"I'm not sure that's how it works."

"Worked for me so far."

"Fair enough." Tanaka finally relented, their banter over for the moment. He continued with the stretches and bounces for a small while, changing them up occasionally, until eventually stopping. David checked the clock, right around fifteen minutes since he started.

"Alright, so… This new fighting style of yours, what progress have you made?" Tanaka asked. Becca shadowboxed a bit.

"Well, I want to use what I can from panzerfaust, but adapt it to be effective for non-borgs. Make it meat-choomly, right?" He responded, "I know that the 'hueerrrrr' parts are what's been messing up my body, but I think I can do the 'yah!' and 'haeh! Parts."

Tanaka stared at him blankly. Becca spoke up. "Davey, are you going cyberpsycho again?"

He almost kept a straight face before breaking out into a snort and smirk. Becca let out a 'pft' as Tanaka rolled his eyes and replied. "Alright, in non-sewerman slang this time?"

More serious, David responded. "Alright, so you know panzerfaust has four main components, right?"

"No." Tanaka and Becca deadpanned in unison. David blinked at that, before reaching up to scratch his cheek, slightly embarrassed.

"Right, so… uhh… panzerfaust is actually pretty simple overall, the basics are easy to understand, but they all build on one another." He got into the basic stance, and slowly went through the motion of a basic punch. His entire skeleton rotating to provide force for the blow, like an uncoiling… machine that uncoils… he didn't know of one off the top of his head.

"Notice how I'm twisting my entire body into the punch? That's how every attack in panzerfaust is, every one of them is a full-force attack. There isn't really a 'weak' attack in it, when you do it right."

Tanaka hummed, and spoke up. "It's a full-commitment style then?"

David nodded "Sorta, I think." He got into another stance, and slowly went through another punch. "You use every muscle in your body that you can for every attack. See how even my legs are pushing me into the attack? When I do it right, I'm using those to enhance how hard my punch is too."

"Alright… and the other components?" Tanaka asked. Becca stayed quiet, staring at his body going through the motions with puffed cheeks and a considering look.

"The next component is leaping. Lot's of jump-based attacks, or attacks based around falling on people and using gravity." David crouched and performed a jump-kick, again pushing his entire body into the motion to maximize the force upon impact. It was really tricky to get that part to ever line up optimally, but from how hard he could hit it was worth the effort. "You reach the limit on how much force you can add to the hit yourself, so you get gravity to help you hit harder. Apparently there are moves meant for zero-g, but Smasher called them worthless for now and didn't teach me. They use acceleration in general to hit harder."

"Makes sense, we're not Highriders after all." Tanaka idly replied. Becca spoke up at that.

"Who are the Highriders?" She asked, Tanaka waved a hand at the question dismissively.

"A bunch of people, mostly Africans, who are born and live in space. They got some weird voodoo culture and took over a couple European space stations a few years ago." He answered, with that explained he turned back to David and gestured for him to continue.

"The next part is aiming. I'm pretty sure every style in the world does this, so I'm not sure it counts as a unique thing though." He thought about it for a moment, before dismissing it as unimportant. "Anyways, you aim all your attacks at vulnerable areas specifically in order to maximize the damage you do. Joints, the neck, eyes, things like that. You aim at things that don't have as much armor as everything else."

Tanaka nodded. "Yeah I'm pretty sure every style in the world tries to do that." He agreed with David's initial statement. Becca nudged him in the thigh.

"You know that much with your skill-chip, huh?"

"I've been reading about styles, so no."

"Net-nerd."

"You're a nerd too, blueberry."

David raised a brow as he watched them devolve into a small squabble. He was curious to see where this was going.

"You're one to talk, mr. bowlcut. How many outputs do you pull with that style, huh?"

"More than you've pulled in inputs apparently, wannabe rimbo."

Becca growled at him and attempted to punch his side, multiple times. Tanaka slapped away each of the punches as they came.

"Aren't rimbos supposed to use guns?"

"Shut up, bowlcut!"

David snorted and piped up. "Are you two done flirting?"

Becca jumped away from Tanaka like she had been burned. She turned a glare at him. "Davey, you're adorable, but you clearly don't know what flirting is."

Tanaka decided to feed the fire. "Ah, Martinez, help me! I'm being harassed by an older woman!" Despite the sarcastic exclamation he put into that sentence, David figured he didn't mean it judging from his completely flat tone.

"You shut up, bowlcut!" Becca was not having it.

"Now she's threatening me to stay silent! I'm in danger!"

David clapped his hands and brought their attention back to him. "Right, last component. It's the one that's been putting micro flat-lines in my cells." He walked over to a target meant for destruction. He performed the same basic punch as before, denting the thin sheet metal of the target.

"That's a basic punch. It hits hard right? Now I'm not really sure how I do this, but Smasher told me to 'think of boiling water' and I was able to do it afterwards."

He got into the basic stance.

"It's really simple in practice, I just sorta…"

His fist started to vibrate, slowly at first but then building up. An oscillation that traveled from his core into his limbs, or maybe from his limbs to his core?

"Shake and attack."

He did so, letting his body twist into a rapidly-vibrating punch against the metal target.

The metal target that exploded like an anti-material rifle had it hit. Exploding inwards with a destructive boom that echoed through the room. He paused for a second, closing his eyes and furrowing his brow at the sudden resurgence of dull pain in his joints where metal met meat.

After a moment, he suppressed it again and withdrew his fist, turning to face the contemplative look of Tanaka and the excited look of Becca.

"Course, I can't do that last part unless I go fullborg, else I'm going to get cancer or something."

Tanaka raised a brow. "Cancer?"

David shrugged. "Metaphorically. I can still do it if I really need to, but not too much."

Becca nodded. "Right, so never do that ever, got it." Her arms crossed over her chest and she nodded confidently. "If you die, I'll never forgive you, got it?"

He smiled at her. "I'll keep it in mind Becca. I'm not intending to anytime soon."

"You were right, It's a pretty simple style in concept." Tanaka interrupted. "It's all about hitting harder, and nothing else. It has one goal and pushes everything to the limit to achieve it."

"Right, but without that extra oomph from the shaking, I'm not going to be able to match them in punching power. I need to compensate for that somehow."

"Maybe try chipping in gorilla arms? That would.."

David shook his head. "A borg could do that but better, It can't be a chrome solution I think."

Tanaka nodded and changed his mental parameters. "I suppose a change in doctrine? Focus on kicking instead and carry a back-up weapon in your arms instead of punching."

He weighed that mentally. "...that would let me hit harder than punching, but that still doesn't let me match up if they decide to kick too. Might be good for a stop-gap solution though."

Becca spoke up. "Why are you trying to match them in raw power?"

David and Tanaka paused, and turned to look at her. She continued explaining. "You just said you can't measure up in raw power right? So just don't focus on raw power. Focus on something else."

They considered that for a moment.

"...panzerfaust is about hitting as hard as possible, so keep that part for yourself, but also incorporate more defensive moves?"

"Right, like blocks and whatnot?"

"No…" Tanaka trailed off a bit, considering. "You have a sandevistan…" He stared David in the eyes.

"Have you considered counters and throws?"

—

David sighed as he plopped down on the concrete stairs outside of the Smashcastle, watching the sun set to his right. It had been exciting to make tangible progress on his style, something that he had been putting off developing anymore since Kagekaze died. He was still pretty torn up about that, but he had only known the guy for a couple of weeks.

He wasn't going to cry over the guy, it had been a pretty long while since his death anyways…

…like a week? Jeez, he had lost track of time, it felt like longer than that. He suppressed the twinge of guilt and focused again on the sunset. The radiation had apparently cleared up enough to be outside without a rad filter, but going in the water or underground was still a big no-no for people who didn't want to die from radiation.

There were apparently a few crazies who did, gonks who just walked into the water and stayed there until they died floating in the water after days of diving to the bottom and back to the surface. He had heard that on the news-cast that Tanaka listened to. There were a lot of deaths from people who apparently used to live in the sewers too, their bodies got picked up whenever the rain came by, and washed them out to sea.

The bay used to have some official name, he didn't remember it off the top of his head. People were calling it the corpse-sea now, apparently. For obvious reasons.

The door to the main reception room opened up, Tanaka walking out with a case of root beer soda. He plopped down next to him on the concrete stairs, pulled off a can, and offered it.

David took the can, Tanaka grabbed one of his own, and they cracked the cans open at the same time.

David didn't really like soda, but it was growing on him.

After a moment, Tanaka spoke up. "...so, entering for that BD huh?"

David groaned and Tanaka raised a hand defensively. "I'm not judging you for it, I'm sure you get enough of that already from your output and mom."

David sipped the drink, and waited a moment to reply. "...I want to see it. It'll be good for getting better at fighting too."

"Don't need to justify it to me, just curious is all." Tanaka sipped his own drink. "So that's what you want to do, get better at fighting?"

"Yeah."

"...That it?"

"Whaddya mean?"

Tanaka looked out to the minimally irradiated sunset. "What do you want to do in life Martinez? I'm a bit curious about that."

He sipped his drink, letting Tanaka elaborate.

"It can't be getting to executive in Arasaka, not like most beaverkids that went to Arasaka Academy. You left as soon as your mom died after giving me a bloody nose."

"You deserved that one."

"I'm aware. You left school and went off to become an edgerunner. That lasted until Smasher performed his iconic smashing on you and offered you a job. So… if you're not trying to go out in a blaze of glory like most edgerunners anymore, what are you trying to do?"

He didn't even have to think. "I'm going to get Lucy to the moon."

Tanaka raised a brow, so he elaborated. "Lucy told me her dream when we first met. She wanted to go to the moon, be safe from corporate bullshit. I promised to take her there."

"...You work for Smasher." It was a question disguised as a statement.

"He promised to buy us tickets to anywhere we wanted to after a year if we wanted out by then."

Tanaka nodded. "...going away Temporarily or Permanently?"

He sipped the drink slowly. Simply staring out into the sunset. "...I haven't been thinking about it, to be honest. Whatever Lucy wants I suppose."

"...What do you want then, Martinez?" Tanaka asked him more directly. "You want to get better at fighting. You want that Smasher BD. You want to take Lucy to the moon. All of that is short-term stuff. What about long-term? Like 10 or 30 years from now?"

David looked at the can in his hands, before lifting his gaze to the streets in front of them instead.

"...I don't know. I didn't think I would get that far."

Tanaka stared at him, before mimicking his streetwards gaze.

"...Alright."

And that was that.