There was an immediate rush of wind that pulled him forwards, rushing to fill the gap the dragon left behind as it jumped back to land a few dozen meters away with a colossal boom and the shattering of the stone ground beneath them. A vacuum-like effect that heralded the dragon immediately fleeing from his counter attack.
Cyberforms can't feel fear, but they can make tactical assessments. Adam was sure that this cyberform was now classifying him as the most dangerous thing it had ever met.
Good. That was true.
"What? Running away? I stood still for you." He called out, spreading his arms wide and taking slow stomps forwards. "Weren't you going to crush me, did you lose your nerve, cyberform?"
The dragon, crouched lower than normal due to missing a fourth of its right foreleg, stared at him for a long moment. It's ceretronic mind was probably doing it's best to figure out how exactly he had taken its arm off like that. He certainly wasn't carrying a big enough weapon to do so conventionally. If he had a proper face he'd be grinning right now.
Goddamn, he had forgotten how fun it was to grandstand like this. Uriel, make a note, we're doing this more often from now on.
'Note made.' Uriel replied in amusement.
"How did you do that, morsel?" The dragon didn't surprise him when it tried asking him directly. It was a cyberform, and that meant it thought like an animal with a calculator at the steering wheel. Asking outright lost it nothing, and has a chance of giving it more information to work with. So naturally, he decided to fuck with it.
"Oh? Wasn't it obvious?" He asked deliberately, tilting his head in mock inquisition. "It's simple. I hit you very hard."
"You do not have sufficient mass to inflict this much damage." The dragon returned, posing somewhat awkwardly from its hind legs still on the ground as normal, and front legs shorter than normal. It was like it was crouching in preparation for a pounce.
"Interesting theory, cyberform, want to test it again?" He asked, continuing his steady, stomping pace towards the hundred… wait no, how much did that claw weigh? Maybe five tons? He continued his steady, stomping pace towards the ninety-five ton dragon. He activated his sandevistan and stepped to the right.
Like fucking clockwork, the dragon fired it's primary laser at him, turning the area he just was into blackened and slagged rock. He started running, and a moment later it activated its own speedware. It showed that it was learning something by using its burst of speed to move away instead of staying an easy target.
Unfortunately for it, the DaiOni was almost faster without speedware, and his speedware was better.
He immediately burst into a sprint, chasing after the fleeing warmachine, only slowing down to avoid that sweeping laser as it crossed over the landscape between him and it. It was doing its best to track him, but between its own movements and his, it wasn't having much luck.
Just like before, its speedware ran out before his did. He timed it this time, two seconds of relative duration in total. He had two relative seconds more to work with than it. An eternity in a fight, there wasn't a way to lose here. Well, if he decided to stand still and let it murder him, that would be a loss, but that was about the only way.
Bigger isn't always better, the superheavy class of tank attested to that. Massive guns, immense armor, and slow as a fucking snail. The thing was a walking beacon of, 'please oh god don't hit me with artillery because I don't move too well.' A bold fashion statement by the designers, for certain. No, better is better, and he's the best there is.
He approached the dragon, which was doing the best impression of panic that a cyberform can feel, clawed feet shattering the stone beneath him as he approached. It backed up to the point of colliding with the stony slope leading up the hills surrounding the quarry.
Then, when he got within range…
He jumped at it.
There were three principles to panzerfaust. Vibration. Rotation.
And Leaping.
A jump-kick was a very delicate thing, tricky to master, and tricky to use. Trying to do so without knowing what you were doing was a very quick way to be smacked down from the air and likely die on the floor. Knowing what you were doing wasn't that helpful, because of how dangerous a leap was in a fight.
Forfeiting your ability to adjust position entirely for the sake of a single slightly more powerful kick? Normally a bad trade unless you made sure that nothing would interrupt you ahead of time. Panzerfaust was slightly different, because it wasn't just a slightly more powerful kick.
Combining the vibration and rotation to the leaping kick turned a strong blow into an improvised mono-lance. Doing this in the DaiOni? A frame that weighed more than a ton, could lift armored trucks, and leap nearly twenty meters in a single running bound? He could stomp tanks to scrap.
Of course, this attack wasn't to hurt the dragon, not this time. It was a cyberform, it thought like an animal with a calculator at the steering wheel. Last time he hit it, he blew off an arm.
Predictably, it dodged.
Predictably, he impacted the stoney slope behind it. His impact cracked the stone beneath him.
Predictably, he jumped off the slope and twisted as he did, taloned mechanical foot crashing into the dragon's side as it tried to turn to keep track of him. The heavily-damaged jet-wing remaining somewhat intact was a little offensive to him.
Naturally, when his leaping kick impacted the already weakened joint that connected the wing to the body, he smashed right through.
The dragon roared as it stumbled back, recoiling like the dinosaurs seeing a rock in the sky. He twisted the immense bulk of the DaiOni to face downwards, and made sure to redirect the force of the impact to offset any damage to his structure from the multimeter drop.
Between the two of them, a six-ton wing crashed into the ground, now separated from its original owner. The dragon screamed in simulated pain and thrashed, struggling backwards over slagged and burning rubble of a once-whole military base. Well, a militarized shipping base, not really a full on military fortress.
The DaiOni was the most powerful frame yet constructed. A monster of war and slaughter.
Infantry were pawns. Borgs were Bishops. ACPA were Knights. Tanks were Queens. Artillery was King.
The DaiOni was a God.
Nothing beats being in your own body again.
The dragon, awkwardly balanced now due to the sudden lack of weight on its right side, struggled to bring itself up into a reasonable fighting stance. It was downright pathetic really. Uriel, order the Dragoon to begin firing upon the joint of the left wing, might as well do it a favor here and even it out.
"So, what do you think, cyberform? Do I not hit that hard after all? I clearly don't have the 'mass', right?" To give the Dragoon time to position itself, he started taunting again. This time he stood completely still, one claw slightly raised in a mocking fashion. "Surely that was just a love tap to you?"
The dragon was silent for a moment.
"...Insufficient agility against current threats. Ejecting extraneous components."
With a hiss, massive panels on its torso opened up, and from this dropped two truck-sized fuel tanks. They smashed into the ground, shattering the concrete below them, and the panels in its torso closed over again. At the same time, a hiss from its remaining wing joint sounded off, before it too fell off and crashed onto the stone ground below. The process took less than three seconds to complete.
"Insufficient aggression against current threats. Changing unit priorities."
The dragon reared up on its hind-limbs, taking its now-much lighter upper torso much farther into the air above. It now stood a good twenty or so meters tall, counterbalanced by its now low-hanging tail. Its left claw raised up to clench into a fist.
"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS, MORSEL."
It's malevolent visor glowed a furious red in his direction.
"YOU DIE NOW."
Adam felt distinctly unimpressed by the boasting. A stream of explosions began to burst to life against its spine. The Dragoon opened fire upon its weakened back-armor the moment it declared that.
He began to run forwards, firing upon its body with his grenades to draw its attention again. It proved itself smarter than the average cyberform by ignoring him, and instead jumping at the Dragoon to crush it beneath a three-point landing.
The Dragoon, as programmed, used its sandevistan to dodge. It stopped moving some distance away, and it was then he realized the mistake and activated his sandevistan.
The dragon activated its own speedware the moment the Dragoon stopped moving. He was already running towards it, as was Uriel.
A screaming lance of furious light turned the Dragoon, still firing his Helix, into melted slag and a burned shadow on the ground behind it.
Motherfucker. That was his favorite gun.
Uriel, being closer to where it moved to, leapt in with his own jumping slash. His arms vibrating with the signature motion of panzerfaust, incorporating a massive spin to maximize cutting force.
The Monofour opened up a meter-long gash in its heavily damaged upper back as Uriel passed over it. The dragon screamed again, moving to swipe a Uriel as he landed…
Only to be met with Adam's taloned foot crashing into its claws, counter-vibrating to negate as much of its impact force as possible. Claw forced back, and foot slightly damaged, Uriel managed to roll away and once more disappear into the piles of rubble and scrap surrounding the battlefield.
'Why the back?' Adam questioned as he readied himself to root or dodge as needed, noting that his left foot was now in the light yellow, structure-wise.
'The core might not be in the head, the torso is guaranteed to have something vital.' Uriel responded quickly, logic more than acceptable.
As programmed, the Oni's twin lasers crashed into the focusing lens, causing the dragon to scream in fury once more. It was beginning to get annoying now.
More annoyingly, it proved that this was a particularly smart cyberform by not trying to engage him and instead making another leap, this time towards the Oni in the distance.
The Dragoon was far closer, so he didn't notice then, but with the weight of the dragon reduced so massively, it's movement was far easier. So massively, in fact, that he cleared the dozens of meters in between it and the Oni quite easily. The ground shook as it jumped, staggering him briefly before he could move again.
'Uriel!' He commanded, and Uriel sent the order to make the Oni dodge behind some cover. That would give it enough to survive at least once hit by that laser.
Un-fucking-fortunately, the dragon proved it was smarter than the algorithm Uriel used. As it landed and the Oni dodged, it instead activated its speedware, grabbed a particularly large chunk of slag, and used its massive reach to its advantage.
By smashing the Oni like an ant underneath a rock.
It turned to face him as he ran after it.
The cunt grinded the slagged truck into the ground, deliberately staring at him as it did so.
"Running out of allies, morsel." It taunted him.
"Running out of patience, cunt!" He snarled at it, taloned feet propelling him forwards at max velocity, the occasional leap taking him over piles of rubble and scrap and cracking the ground each time he landed. He didn't bother disguising what he was about to do, a headlong jumping kick right into its chest.
He leapt, the visor of the dragon burned scarlet as it washed over his form. His armor charred black, and began to slag. His own visor blackened over. His entire frame reported significant armor and slight structure damage all over.
His kick impacted its central torso, its frame shook with the impact, and his talons cut grooves into its plating. It was all superficial damage at best.
He kicked off the torso, and clashed the swipe it aimed at him with a counter-vibrating monosword. He was batted away, flying for a dozen meters or so before rolling across the cracked stone and crashing into a pile of rubble.
His kick only accomplished one thing.
Distracting the fucker long enough for Uriel to get that perfect cut lined up.
Uriel crashed into its back like a rocket-powered guillotine. The monfour, hitting that gash he opened up earlier and going deeper, hit something very vital.
The batteries.
The dragon collapsed forwards, lights all across its body going dark as its central power supply was suddenly cut off. Apparently this thing had no emergency batteries. Or it was designed to run off those fuel cells earlier, and these were its emergency batteries. Either was possible.
He stood and took stock of the situation.
Three of his frames were destroyed. The Gemini was completely undamaged. The DaiOni was…
He checked his condition monitor.
…Orange armor and light yellow structure. He was halfway through his ammo and completely out of ATGMs. He might not be able to fight a second dragon, but anything less was perfectly in his abilities.
He turned to take stock of the visual situation, growling at the fact that his visor was damaged enough to obstruct his optics. Raising one charred claw, he ripped it off to clear his vision. Scanning the surroundings properly, he detected no other hostiles.
He looked at the corpse of the cyberdragon.
Fucking hell, that was good fucking fight. He made a note to give it a glowing review if Metacorp ever tried to complain. Eight out of Ten, made him work for it.
Now… where the hell was his apprentice?
…Where was the truck?
It took a few minutes of searching, but he and Uriel found it eventually.
Next to an elevator shaft going down, doors opened and the trunk emptied.
His optics glowed a furious red.
A solid fifteen seconds of falling later, and he crashed at the bottom of the shaft like a falling star. The mountain interior shook and his impact echoed as it landed.
The door wasn't big enough for him. His fist corrected that issue by removing the door and its surrounding stone. Uriel followed behind him, scanning the environment and net around them.
There were a few security bots down the hall. They took half a second to tear apart.
There was another few doors, one at the end and two to either side of the hall. He went to the middle door first, as that was the only one with a security lock.
Again, too small. Again, his fist corrected that issue.
There was a corpse inside, and an observation balcony that gave an overview into a tunnel that was at the bottom a massive room. Going to the edge and looking up, he saw that he could have saved time by simply jumping down the massive hole in the center of the quarry above.
He growled at the monitors. Uriel got the message, walking over and plugging in his interface cable to the main monitor.
After a few moments, Uriel spoke. He sounded both amazed and infuriated, an impressive combination.
"Fucking hell…"
The glass overlooking the massive tunnel shifted, and screeds began to appear on it. He crossed his arms and waited to read what Uriel was pulling up.
First was a map of North America with various dots on it, and in the oceans around it. Next was the same map, but with a sprawling mess of blue lines over the entire thing. Next was the same map, but with purple dots and red lines, with several blue lines turning purple and connecting all the dots.
His optics glowed in suspicion.
The next two screens were simple enough.
An automated tunnel-boring drone, and a project overview page.
Project Underground Railroad.
"...Uriel…" He growled out, demanding clarification.
"Project Underground Railroad. A project fifty years in the making to secure Metacorp's long-term power in North America for as long as they can control it. A project to buy up every dried up mine and non-profitable quarry in North America, turn it into a military base, connect them all with millions of miles of tunnels, and sell safe passage through it. A project to completely cut out other Nomads as a factor in shipping deals. It's incomplete, but lots of progress has been made already."
Uriel's voice was carefully blank as he monologued.
"Fighting that dragon took us a few minutes."
Mostly because he was just as furious as Adam.
"David could be in one of the other locations, back in Night City, or anywhere within these tunnels. We're going to have to check them all to make sure he isn't."
Adam's fist relieved a bit of his fury, as he punched the wall and shattered his way into the next room over. It was several long moments before he replied.
"Uriel… Call Arasaka, inform them of the situation. Salvage needs to be retrieved, and we'll need more eyes here."
"And the other teams?"
"Let them finish their assigned locations first, then call them here."
It was around this moment Adam decided that Metacorp would no longer exist if he had any say in it. This went beyond inconvenient. This was grudge-worthy. For managing to waste so much of his goddamn time.