Her input was a stupid gonk who was going to get himself killed one of these days. He had moved on from being a chrome junkie (mostly, his eyes still unfocused occasionally, and blankly stared into something no one else could see) and moved right into being a fight junkie. She supposed it wasn't too surprising, considering who his current father figure was.

She squeezed tighter, burying her face deeper into his chest and breathing in. He reached a hand up to brush her hair.

"Still not talking huh?" He asked softly. She didn't say anything, and after a moment he continued. "That's fine. I can wait." He was utterly accepting of her. How vile. He deserved better than a woman who showed her displeasure with silence.

David was her opposite. She was a girl who ran away, who skulked and avoided direct confrontation whenever possible, who tried her best to hide her emotions. David wore his feelings on his sleeve, and threw himself against any obstacle that came up without abandon. That's how he won her heart after all, throwing himself at her and her dream the moment he learned about it.

David… he wasn't perfect. His great flaw was simple. He didn't have anything of his own. Not material possessions, but in terms of goals.

Gloria wanted the best possible life for her son. Rebecca wanted to find her place among her friends. Tanaka wanted to get rich enough to retire. She wanted to go to the moon.

She wasn't sure what Adam Smasher wanted, but he seemed to pursue it with the same steady relentlessness that he approached combat with.

David didn't have anything like that. When Gloria was alive he tried his best to accomplish her dream for him, a top student at Arasaka Academy. The moment she died he chipped in experimental chrome, punched a classmate, and started wandering the streets.

Then he met her, and she thought she found a convenient tool to use for a job or two. The moment he learned more about what an edgerunner was, he threw himself into doing that.

…the moment he learned about her dream, he demanded to help her accomplish it. She couldn't help herself anymore, and latched on in turn. She loved him, and she was lucky to be loved in turn. No matter how stressful it was to be working for Arasaka, she couldn't accept going away from him.

David didn't talk about it much, but he had told her of Maine's last words to him.

"Speed is what you do, right? Just keep running."

Running.

Edgerunning.

God damn it Maine, you chrome-addicted gonkass. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? David was like an overeager puppy at times, of course he threw himself into doing that too. Her dream only made it worse, with the eddies required to buy the trip up there. He started chipping in implant after implant, he reforged himself into a tool to fulfill those goals.

Then she got kidnapped. He strapped himself into the Cyberskeleton, killed an army to get to her…

Then he learned that you shouldn't bring a tool to a sword fight.

Even with a frame that was breaking his mind to use. Even with experimental hardware capable of butchering an army. Even with all of his talent and experience. Even with speedware better than anything on the market.

He ran into someone who had reforged himself into a weapon, and got torn limb-from-limb.

Lucy was thankful beyond belief that Adam Smasher was in the market for an apprentice that day, otherwise she would have lost him. She wasn't sure if she could live with herself if that happened, not anymore.

David Martinez was someone who lived for other people's dreams. He didn't have one of his own. Right now he was living for her dream, and for Adam Smasher's approval. That meant throwing himself into unnecessary fighting, that meant chipping in chrome that was very specific and efficient. That meant getting so good at fighting she could barely keep up with him anymore.

It wasn't a good feeling, being unable to help. He kept running forwards in power, leaving everyone else struggling to keep up. In the very distance, right there at the horizon?

Adam Smasher taunted them with a turned back.

Lucynda Kushinada breathed in, then out again.

She needed to be faster if she wanted to be next to him.

She resolved to talk to The Butcher as soon as he returned.

No matter how nerve-wracking it was.

Course, that was long-term. Tomorrow, she had to talk to a Mox bitch who thought she could barge into her input's pants. After David rips her apart in the arena, of course.

—

Bracket 1

1. David Martinez vs Cel

2. Betty vs Nasuke Naito

3. Nahona Gori vs El Tigre Grande

4. Ranko vs Paul Otosuki

5. The Rat vs Sando Adreo

6. Jun Kusanagi vs Jin Dao

7. Obito Sakurai vs Mashiro Mashiro

8. Oro Yamada vs Hetalia Yaoi

Bracket 2

1. Winner of 1 vs Winner of 2

2. Winner of 3 vs Winner of 4

3. Winner of 5 vs Winner of 6

4. Winner of 7 vs Winner of 8

Semifinals

1. Winner of 2-1 vs Winner of 2-2

2. Winner of 2-3 vs Winner of 2-4

Finals

1. Winner of 3-1 vs Winner of 3-2

—

"AFTA THE CONCLUSION OF THAT UTTERLY BANANAS BRAWL IN THE ARENA THA OTHER DAY, WE NOW PROCEED TO THE MAIN EVENT! LADIES AND GENTS AND CUNTS ALL AROUND, VERY SOON WE WILL WITNESSIN' THE FIRST MATCH BETWEEN THE TOP SIXTEEN! I'M HOT UNDA THA FACKING COLLAR FOR THIS ONE."

"WILLIAM WILLAS IS BACK AGAIN TO SERVE AS YOUR COMMENTATOR FOR THIS EVENT! JOINING ME ARE TWO FANTASTIC CUNTS KERRY EURODYNE AND VICTORIA ARMSTRONG!"

"That's right Willas. I know I'm excited to see who comes out on top today. It's sure to be a good show."

"You're doing this deliberately little man. I will break you."

"BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WON'T BREAK ON YOU?! THE QUALITY CODING OF THE NEW MICROTECH CAD-14 'COMMANDER' SEALED ASSAULT DECK! NOW FEATURING A 113% OVERALL PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT COMPARED TO LEADING COMPETITOR MODELS! IN FACT…"

If there was something he didn't think he would ever get used to, it was the roaring crowd. Even as loud as the announcer's voice was, he could still hear the cheering in the background. Listening to it through the intercom was a strangely heady feeling.

He had never been popular, not really, not to this extent. Edgerunners don't typically draw crowds of fans. He had the occasional fan a year ago, and that was always nice to see, but this was a different thing entirely. There were thousands of people in the arena, and they were all here to see him fight someone.

He wasn't against the feeling.

The buzzer started ringing in the side room he was in, so he pushed up off the bench and started walking out to the main arena floor, helmet visor sliding down as he stepped.

A sword on his hip, two blades on his forearms, and a sandevistan. He had this in the bag.

Passing the threshold, the lights of the arena tried to blind him again. His helmet compensated for it, and he saw the cheering crowd all around him as he walked forwards. He grinned under his helmet, the interior of his jacket glowed a neon red, the exterior a white with black highlights (was that even the right word here?). No sleeves on the thing, showing over his armored chrome arms.

It looked a lot like his mom's old jacket, but longer, armored, and the patterns were a bit different. He liked it. It was a tad too grim for his tastes, but he was with Arasaka right now, so grim and foreboding was probably appropriate. He wasn't really into fashion, so he wasn't sure. He asked for a good enough jacket and got one, that was about the extent that he actually cared about it.

Waving once as he walked, the cheering intensified dramatically. Looking around he saw the arena was roughly divided in terms of who was cheering for who. Thousands of holographic banners of his face or 'MARTINEZ' right alongside thousands of banners of 'CEL' and pictures of her…

Uhh…

He was going to stop looking at the crowds. He let his hand drop and focused on his opponent again.

Confidently strutting in his direction on what looked like thick, bladed chrome heels. She was wearing what looked like an armored apron today. It stopped about halfway up her chest, leaving those shoulders mostly exposed too. That left her sides and back as a weak point. Assuming that the apron was armor-weave, that meant a slash to the sides or neck, or stab in the back would be best.

Her oversized chrome arms swung by her side as she strutted up. He narrowed his gaze to look at them. They were big, and would probably hit pretty hard, but Cel didn't have the same intense musculature that Victoria had, it wouldn't be nearly as damaging.

Oversized arms and bladed heels. That meant strong blocks and roundhouse kicks, with the occasional straight punch. Focus on dodging and counter when she kicks maybe?

He wasn't exactly sure what chrome she did have, but that sounded about right for now.

"Ready to go, lover-boy?" She taunted him, posing for the audience as she did.

He gave a cocky-grin. "Try to keep up."

She lowered her smart goggles and raised her arms in a boxer's stance, and he blinked as he noticed the scrolling advertisements on it. "Are… are your arms showing ads?" He didn't think he had seen that before.

She blinked, and loosened her stance, raising one arm up to look at it. "Ah, yeah, So long as I stay sexy and keep them uncovered in public for four hours a day, I get a preem twenty eddies in my account every month per limb. They're on my legs too, see?" She twisted to show her thigh to him, letting him see the scrolling 'Bell-Bottoms' logo on it. Also letting him see that the apron did very little to cover her behind, another potential weak point.

It also told him that her legs were probably all chrome under synthflesh, he'd have to look out for that. "Huh, so like eighty a month for you?" He asked, doing the math instantly.

"Yup, it's not a lot but it gives me a little spending money, yanno?" She replied, getting back into stance. He nodded, he could see where she was coming from, he had grown up with his mom having money troubles after all. He got into his own stance, letting his arm-blades unsheath as they waited for the ref to announce the start.

So, target prioritization was the thing that Smasher had honed into him. What was the most dangerous part of his opponent? He didn't know.

The announcer called the start of the match.

What he did know was that she was covered in weak points.

He activated his sandevistan and jumped to the side.

She didn't react very fast, eyes dragging after him. She had speedware, but it wasn't as good as his own. He narrowed his eyes at her, seeing nothing of particular note that he had to be wary of.

The biggest dangers were the ones you didn't notice. Cautiously, he took two steps forwards and stabbed out at her side. She twisted her body, moving slower but keeping up because he spent time taking a wide angle.

She brought up her arm to block, he let the stab carry him forwards.

The moment his left arm-blade connected, there was an explosion of white. He threw himself back to get away, unsure of what he was facing.

His speedware expired about halfway through the air. He slid to a stop as he examined what had just happened.

…A smoke cloud hung in the air where she had just been. A proximity trigger smoke-cloud in her arms? Was that it? He frowned to himself for falling for that.

He raised up again and slowly prowled around the smoke cloud, waiting to see if she was going to burst out of it or not. After about fifteen seconds of waiting, it didn't seem like it. The smoke cloud dissipated and she was still standing right there in the center. She turned partially and swayed her hips at him.

"What's wrong big boy? Did little ol' me scare you off?"

He didn't feel the need to taunt back. He made a note to ask to upgrade his optics to see through stuff like this in the future.

His speedware was refreshed. He activated it again and jumped to her right.

She had activated hers and was twisting in place again. Shame that he wasn't doing the same thing this time.

He lept back to where he started and immediately burst forwards. She was still turning to the right, her eyes barely tracking him and widening in slight fear. He didn't have a good angle on her, what with those massive arms in his way of her upper torso, so sliced at her hips instead.

His monoblade sliced through skinweave…

And then meet heavy resistance with her hips. Instead of cutting her in half his blades threw her away from him. He frowned, skinweave and an endo-skeleton? That made her quite a bit more durable than he would like. Well, either that or reinforced hips.

He took a step to continue his slice.

Something beeped.

He was engulfed in an explosion of pain and weightlessness, otherwise known as 'being engulfed in an explosion'. His speedware deactivated sometime while he was in the air, and rolled for a bit before throwing himself up and shaking the dizziness out of his eyes.

He glared at where he had just been, seeing a settling dust cloud.

He straightened up, and got into a defensive stance again. What the fuck had she just done? Did she load her arms with multiple types of proximity explosions?

Carefully cycling flexes to specific muscle and myomer groups, he took stock of his damages. Most of it was in his… legs?

Glancing down, he saw that his boots and pants were in tatters. His legs were still mostly functional, but he could definitely feel it. So the explosion was strong enough to hurt him through his layers of armor, but not enough to take him out in one go. About as strong as a micro-missile then.

He looked up again to see that the dust had mostly settled. She was standing a few meters away from where he had been, holding a big hand on her now bloody hip. She was saying something, but he was ignoring her now.

The explosion had come from below him. The payload was about as strong as a micro-missile. It hit him on the second attack but not the first one. What was the difference between those two incidents?

…about fifteen seconds where he couldn't see her in the smoke cloud. It was something she was setting up then.

He narrowed his eyes.

He detached one of his monoblades, and threw it at her as hard as he could. It scythed through the air, and her sentence was cut off with a strangled yelp. She brought her arms up to hide her body entirely behind. She looked away from him.

He activated his sandevistan and ran as fast as he could around the arena. Detaching the other monoblade, he threw it low, like a boomerang, towards her legs from behind her.

About three feet before it reached her, two tiny red lights on the ground behind her beeped rapidly. A moment later, an explosion engulfed the second monoblade, sending it flying away.

She was close enough to it that she was flung forwards into the first blade, block no longer ideal. It crashed against her arms, cutting deeply into the wrist-myomer on her left hand.

Time resumed its normal flow as she staggered forwards, clutching at her wrist and almost giving a scream at the sudden pain. She whirled around with wide eyes to where he was standing.

He pointed a finger at her.

"Your heels." He simply stated. He had figured it out.

She got into a defensive stance again, forcing a nervous smile onto her face. "Heh, like, whaddya mean handsome?" Her left hand wasn't able to close anymore.

He took a confident step forward. She took an automatic step back.

"Your heels have blades on them, but that's a distraction. They're thick enough for something the size of a SCOPdog to go through. Your arms are filled with smokepacks, and while the line of sight is broken, your heels shoot spike-shaped proximity landmines into the ground."

He snapped his fingers. "You have some kind of signal being broadcast, and when you leave close range, they lose the signal and arm themselves."

He grinned cockily and shrugged. "Neat trick. I'll keep it in mind from now on."

"Hey now, even if you know about a ladies' secret, you can't do much about it. You like, have to approach to hit me, yanno?" She waved her hand. "You only got one sword left. My babies are gonna blow you up regardless."

He let out a 'pft'. Yeah right.

He crouched and activated his sandevistan. He raced forwards as hard as he could. She took a step back, he saw the tiny lights below where she was flashing once.

He kicked off the ground as hard as he could, twisting into a fourteen-meter long leaping kick.

She forgot about jumping.

His foot crashed into her arms. Smoke erupted out, but that did little to stop his kick.

Panzerfaust used four main principles. Full-body strikes, target weak points, leaping strikes, and vibrating limbs. He could use three of those without harming himself.

His foot collided with her guard, and shattered both of her arms. His speedware deactivated.

They both flew as the attack landed, he kept moving forwards as she was thrown back. He landed on his feet, well away from the mines now behind him.

She skid on the ground for a while, unable to stop her rolling without her arms working. He waited for her to stagger up to her feet, pushing off the ground with her face and shoulders to get her feet beneath her.

She glared at him through her now dirty and messy hair. "...those were expensive you ass." She clearly had a pain editor for those arms, because that looked like it hurt a lot.

He shrugged. "I'll buy you new ones after I win." He had literally hundreds of thousands of eddies now. As it turns out, working for Arasaka paid a lot.

She charged in a final roundhouse kick, not trying the trapping strategy anymore now that she was missing her arms. He grinned, and raised his hands in a defensive stance that Katsuo and he had worked on.

He can't use the most important aspect of Panzerfaust without dying or something, so he needed something to compensate.

The thing they came up with was counters and throws. Would you look at that? A limb he could grab.

He grabbed her ankle as she attacked, stopping it cold before the heel could reach him. Her eyes widened in slight panic. She jerked her leg back, but his grip was too strong for her to do much about it.

He raised his other hand and grabbed her thigh. Now with leverage, he flexed the myomer in both his arms…

And slammed her into the floor like a person-shaped sledgehammer.

She bounced off the ground with a satisfying smack before landing again.

She didn't move again, out cold.

He raised an arm to a roaring crowd, his visor unfolded to reveal a grin on his face. The Arasaka agent raced over to carry her off to the Trauma Team ready on the sidelines. He made a note to get her contact later so he could actually pay for her new limbs like he promised to.

"HOLY SHIT LADS, I'VE HEARD OF POUNDING THA PUSSY BUT THIS WAS RIDICULOUS!"