A brief moment of doubled awareness told him that Uriel had returned to his frame, a flash of seeing through his array of sensors through two perspectives, before he compensated and Uriel settled back into his mind completely.
'Net-shit handled?' Adam asked idly as he watched the kids handle a group of particularly weak gangers. They didn't look like they had enough chrome to be strommers, but they were here and shooting at civvies, which meant it was fine to butcher them.
Blueberry was still using her missiles too wastefully but had the proper amount of aggression, Bowlcut was a fucking embarrasment having to rely on chips for fighting but his tactics were best out of the bunch, Spares was still too hesitant to move into fire she knew she could take but had good situational awareness.
All in all, it was a wash to say if they were really worth training up, but the boy wasn't here and killing these gangers wouldn't be the best use for such weaklings.
'Yeah, Netwatch finally showed up and handled the RABID, so I decided to leave them to it.' Uriel responded, running a system diagnostic and grabbing the DaiOni's mouth and holding it closed to stop it from barking so much. Adam's small headache disappeared immediately. It took him a minute to remember what a RABID was, before snorting dismissively.
'So that's why I went down earlier. Wasn't the plan to not die, dumbass?'
'Pft, I'd like to see you do better. Besides, we got up again, that hardly counts for dying.'
'So… You gonna like, talk or something?' A distinctly feminine and not-Uriel voice cut him off from the banter. He glanced over and focused on virtuality from his optics.
There was a red-haired meatbag in golden chains floating next to him. Dressed in a form-fitting plugsuit, with a small tail whipping around behind her idly. Unfortunately, the golden chain around her neck led down to tie around his waist.
He stared at it for a moment.
'...Yello?' The meatbag asked, finger on her lips.
'Uriel what the fuck is that and why isn't it dead?' He demanded.
'You know you could just check my memory and figure it out.' Uriel sassed him. He ignored it and demanded again.
'Uriel.'
'I found an AI, thought it might be useful for handling the less important shit to give me more free time. Time to learn more about netrunning.'
He thought about it for a moment.
'Fair enough, make sure to bind it.'
He turned back to focus on how the kids were doing, seeing them duck and weave around the pretty pathetic laser-fire of those Minotaurs. Blueberry disorienting with the occasional missile, forcing the ganger to pull up that pathetic ballistic shield, Bowlcut tossing EMP grenades immediately after to force a momentary stunning, and Spares moving in to throw an amatuer punch that turned the meatbag into a avant garde donut.
A minotaur, two gangers with street-level speedware, and six gangers with jack shit. It had taken them a minute and a half to kill them all, but they hadn't suffered any damage during it so…
Like he thought, a complete wash about whether they were worth it or not. Well… Spares was worth it, being all metal was already better than the vast majority of meatbags in the world, but the other two were mixed at best. Potentially useful, but definitely not frontliner material. Same as his assessment from months ago.
'...Did you just ignore me?' The codebag flapped its fake mouth again.
The kids did a status check, then walked over for an assessment for how they did. He didn't have to think about it too much.
"The Minotaur should've been top priority. Spares, the meatbag had no head armor and you have a sandevistan, it should've been dead immediately. Blueberry, your missiles are for hardened targets or groups, don't waste them on a ballistic shield, angle your firing arc to get around those if you have to. Bowlcut, get a better weapon than just your fists, you have no range."
Blueberry nodded, Bowlcut bowed, and Spares tilted her head down. They were at least not wasting his time debating his assessment, so they were already better than some of the fuckers he used to deal with back in his meat days.
'...you did just ignore me.' The codebag spoke again, conclusively this time.
'The breach is still there.' Uriel threatened in his voice. Referencing the hole in the virtual sky slowly being frozen over by Netwatch programs that he wasn't familiar with or cared about.
'Awful rude to capture a fuckable damsel and then not talk to her, you having first-time jitters hon?'
'You're a mass of code, you're about as fuckable as a painting.' Uriel dryly refuted as Adam led the kids to the next group of gangers. It looked like it was going to be about five minutes of walking this time.
'Calling me a work of art now, what a flatterer~.' The codebag pretended to be bashful, holding a hand up in front of its face.
Uriel, get it to shut up.
'I'm going to electrocute you every time you annoy me.' That works he supposed.
'Oh my, that sounds incredibly kin-' The codebag's next line was cut off by her strangled scream as a brief virtual voltage filled the chains currently around her. The next few moments were blissfully silent as he walked along.
He paused briefly, hearing the crunch of gravel from a street over, then halfway to him, then…
His hand shot out and snatched the strommer with speedware off the ground to his left. He raised the struggling meatbag above his head and took note of its weapon, a hyper-hammer currently clutched in one of the arms trapped beneath his thumb.
He tilted his head for a moment, before chuckling audibly. "All for naught." Maybe if this one had some better legs, it would've gotten to him in time. All the same, not the worst attempt today. He clenched his fist, and the valiant strommer had their torso and one arm turn into meaty chunks. Another layer of fresh gore painted his fist, and he dropped the scraps of skin and metal on the ground.
"...a little warning next time, big guy?" The Blueberry spoke, annoyed. He turned his head back to see that a good portion of the gore had splattered the front of her body in red. He snorted and went back to walking.
"It's just gore."
"It's in my hair!"
"Take a shower."
She conceded the battle, and started to grumble resentfully.
Unfortunately, the codebag spoke again. '...Hot…'
Uriel raised a virtual hand and let sparks travel along his fingers. The codebag didn't get the hint. It floated over to settle down on one of his massive virtual shoulders, kicking its codebag feet and tail waving.
'Hey, what did you want me to actually do, huh?' Unfortunately, that was a good question.
'I'm in charge of a region, it's a pain in my ass, you get to file reports when we get back.'
'Oh!' Codebag exclaimed, snapping her fingers and shifting her icon. Her plugsuit disappeared, and a button-up long-sleeved white shirt appeared, tucked into a black miniskirt with stockings and heels. Completing the new look was a pair of thin-rim glasses. 'I can do secretary! And you can come in and bend me over the des-!' Her sentence was cut off again by a yelp of pain and a burst of electricity.
Adam said the obvious observation. 'You don't have a body dumbass, I can't bend you over jackshit.'
Her cry of pained frustration was somewhat amusing.
His ears once again detected the next group before he could see them, mostly because there were buildings in the way most of the time. They were relatively near to the shore right now, so if he had to guess, that would mean that they were down the stairs leading to the concrete docks and around the corner.
He couldn't hear any particularly heavy stomps, so that meant no Minotaurs. He raised a hand and waved for the kids to go ahead and take them out.
Bowlcut nodded, and the three opened an internal call to discuss strategy. Bowlcut went up to the corner, but not around it, and crouched to listen, Spares knelt behind him, and Blueberry brought up the rear.
Spares had the best sensor suite, but Bowlcut had a mini-map of some kind that helped track targets once detected, using his internal agent to mark them through his own sensor suite. It was nifty, but they would be better off with an internal radar or seismics detector. Blueberry only had some basic optics and audio, so she wasn't worth anything in that regard right now.
Uriel make a note, the brats needed to optimize their sensor suite for maximum coverage.
Uriel moved to do just that, before a thought occurred to him.
'Secretary, make a note, the brats need to optimize their sensor suite for maximum coverage. Remind me of it later.'
The useless codebag stared for a moment, slightly baffled. She audibly sighed, before pretending to pull out a notepad and pen from her cleavage. 'Yes sir.'
That was more fucking like it. You might get a proper name in a decade if you keep that up, codebag.
He looked to the building next to him, and considered its integrity for a moment. The brats started moving forwards, Spares using her own speedware to scout ahead then run back to report.
He activated his sandevistan, and walked over to the comparatively squat building. Spreading his claws out as far as they could go, he dug through the hardened concrete with one taloned foot. He raised his matching arm, dug his claws in, and pulled up to sink the other claw in higher up.
It wasn't a well known fact, but the DaiOni was more than strong enough to climb. It wasn't the fastest method of travel, but the modern sandevistan heavily offset that downside. His sandy was almost expired by the time he pulled himself up the two-story building, leaving grooves in the concrete wall below him, and moved over to the roof on the water-side.
Just as he thought, around the corner was a chain link fence, piles of garbage, and a group of strommers furiously whispering among themselves. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the fight unfold from his improved angle.
The kids had scouted them out well enough, taking two sandy cycles from Spares to confirm everything. Their opening move was to throw a grenade over the garbage, which landed to the side of the central table. The strommers immediately cover, which was just second nature for meatbags in Night City.
The moment the grenade started to hiss, Spares activated her sandevistan and rushed in. That meant that the grenade wasn't anything dangerous to her, Smoke or Flare probably. He was proved right when the grenade exploded, revealing it to be a flashbang. Something that Spares' optics and auditory suite was shielded against.
Spares followed up by approaching the nearest strommer and unleashing a rather by-the-number punch, which punched a hole through the strommer's…
No, not a hole, the strommer had both skinweave and subdermals it seemed. Her fist only left a bloody crater the size of her target's head. More than enough to kill, not enough to punch through. She still wasn't lining up all the vibrations as best she could, not enough constructive interference in her fist.
Beginner quality.
She had enough time to move onto the next target, punching again and turning the second strommer into a bloody mess before kicking the table up and grabbing it as an improvised shield. It took her about a second to get all this done. As with most speedware, normally he wouldn't be able to keep up.
But he was in the DaiOni right now, his current reaction speed put every other borg in existence to shame.
The Blueberry finished scampering over the mound of trash as bullets flew out to fire at Spares, most of their impact first being absorbed by the table before plinking ineffectually off her armor. Using cover to weaken the bullets enough to ensure her armor could handle them. Good.
Blueberry, having been free to line up a good shot, fired two missiles. Both of them exploding at the feet of a pair of strommers, taking out their relatively unarmored legs but not killing them.
At this point Bowlcut threw another grenade, apparently being fed targeting data from Spares and Blueberry, as it landed right in the center of the now legless strommers. Blueberry pulled back behind the mound of trash once more, and Spares moved to behind one of the shitty couches they had.
The grenade proved to be a standard model, as chunks of shrapnel bounced off his helmet as it exploded. He made no move to avoid them, they wouldn't even scratch his paint after all, and continued watching.
That would take care of the meat strommers, but what were they going to do about the street-borg pretending to be scrap over in the corner?
The borg activated its own sandevistan and rushed forwards, mantis-arms unfurling and lashing out at Spares.
Apparently nothing, because they didn't notice that one. He sighed in irritation, both at the stupid arms and their lack of awareness.
Spares engaged her own speedware quickly enough, but quickly fell backwards in an amatuer set of barehanded parries, her (his replacement) hands being scratched but not actually damaged by the thrashing blades in front of her. She was weaker on the defensive than on attack, something he'd need to correct in the future.
She was still too hesitant to take blows, even as well armored as she was. He didn't really know why, but it was something she'd need to get over soon.
Their speedware deactivated soon enough, and Blueberry shot twice with that big shotgun she found. The first shot connected, staggering the streetborg, but then the streetborg threw an arm down and extended the mantis blade into the ground sideways. It threw itself to the side to avoid the second shot, but then pulled itself back immediately with the extended blade as leverage.
Unleashing a kick against Spares to stagger her, the streetborg assessed its situation and moved to escape, mantis blades stabbing into the concrete wall to its side and throwing itself up like a monkey. He hadn't thought of using them as mobility tools before, mostly because he was far too heavy to take advantage of such. That was clever of the streetborg.
Unfortunately for it, none escape the slaughterhouse.
A burst of auto-shotgun fire from his left arm cut the streetborg in half mid-air, splattering gore over Spares, who was just now recovering from the kick. He dropped down from the rooftop, slamming into the ground and cracking the asphate under the whole dumpsite.
He didn't need to look at the brats for them to know he was disappointed.
The next five minutes were spent telling them exactly why, and in exacting detail. By the end, they looked downright pitiful, but decently determined to not mess up again.
He began to stomp off for the next group of strommers. Pausing for a moment as one set of footsteps ran back first. Judging from their sound, that was…
"Blueberry, what are you doing?" He called out without looking behind him.
"Taking these arms." She answered. He turned to look at what she was talking about.
She was holding the Mantis Arms, both weren't quite her size and were covered in rust and blood.
"Put those back."
"You saw what that chromegonk could do with them, I could use that kinda scampering."
He growled audibly. "That's street shit, we'll buy a proper set later. Drop those and come on."
The Blueberry huffed before throwing them over her shoulder and sauntering up. At this point, Spares interrupted.
"David Martinez and Falco are late."
He turned to stare at her for a moment, before checking his internal clock. She was right, even accounting for a fifty percent increase due to delays, they should be back by now. He narrowed his optics briefly.
"Bowlcut, call the Brat."
"Yes Sir." Bowlcut's eyes lit up for a moment. That moment dragged on for a minute. Then his eyes flashed once.
"...no signal." The Bowlcut spoke slowly, frown growing on his face. "I can't think of anywhere in Night City where he'd be out of range."
"...I'm not getting any signal to him either…" Blueberry spoke up, worry growing on her face.
…
'Uriel.' There wasn't a need to verbalize his command beyond that.
Uriel disappeared.
In the meantime, he called the NCPD. A few rings later, and a haggard voice answered the line.
[You've reached the NCPD hotline, please be aw-]
[Wire me to Max Hammerman before I butcher you.]
[...right away Mr. Smasher.]
It took a few moments before the line was picked up again.
[Smasher, what the hell is it?]
[David Martinez, did he arrive earlier?]
[Around thirty minutes back. Why?]
He ended the call, clenching a fist.
Uriel returned.
Adam didn't bother asking, instead just opening his recent memories and quickly scanning through.
The car left the police blockade, drove for a bit, then pulled to a stop inside a warehouse near the badlands in the northeast.
Five trucks drove away from the warehouse and into the badlands ten minutes after.
His optics burned a furious red.
"We're returning to Pacifica for full resupply immediately."
It's been a while since he was this angry. It was downright refreshing, really.
Uriel, start making calls, we're calling in all the favors we can here. He had spent entirely too much fucking time on that brat for him to get fucking kidnapped.