Today was the day of his death, he could honestly say that he was looking forward to it.

The preparations were in place, nearly everything had gone according to plan, or at least within operational tolerances, and all that was left was the grand finale. Sliding the smartgoggles over his face, he focused on the screens projected over his vision. A small screen in the corner of his vision showed the specific views from mounted cameras, letting him monitor more of the battlefield than normal.

He adjusted his second set of battlegloves, letting them cover his arms entirely in their protective but single-use armor. Unlike the previous set, these didn't have any gene-tailored knockout gas canisters installed. These were just the armor, just the EMP cannons, all he really needed for this last part.

His nanoweave leathers were snugly fit over his skinweave, doubling up on the protection therein. His thick steel-toed boots were secured to his feet, his smartwhip and gun at his waist, a few specialty grenades in his jacket.

Quite a handsome skeleton he would make.

He started stretching, waiting for his agent to tell him when a specific vehicle drives through the way towards his location. He had a few of them posted, and none of them knew each other. One of them would alert him of which path David's crew were coming to his from. From there he could switch screens to monitor and evaluate their current loadouts. The final clash would have to be improvised from there.

He checked the time in the corner of his vision. About ten minutes to go. Five for them to finish with David, five for them to eliminate the ripperdoc witness and leave without a trace. From the point of view of everyone else, they were never here. This kept them firmly outside the notice of anyone who might want to get some justifiable revenge.

Metacorp was going to be eaten alive, both by the NUSA and every corporation that wanted a larger share of the pie. That left the Nomads as mostly uncontested to pick up their shipping slack in the void of Metacorp. Without him to regulate the prices and flow of goods manually, they'd start following supply and demand as was normal. With Metacorp gone, a new corporate war starting over its corpse, and the nomads mostly consolidated in the west, the NUSA would support them in exchange for cheap shipping to continue without the need to empower another corporation.

With the NUSA's support, they would continue to expand as a faction as more and more nomads joined to benefit from the standardized logistics. In a decade they'd be powerful enough to start leveraging for policies to go their way within the NUSA. An economic war was waged and won long before anyone else realized it was even going on. Nomadic culture would start to spread, and the idea of community efforts would gain more traction.

He lit a cigarette and took a long drag, slowly blowing it out to rise in the city air. Of course, for them to start doing that, Vincent Martinez had to get out of the picture. He was respected for bringing them together by force, but not well liked. A popular new leader with a decent enough head on his shoulders had to come in to keep everything together for the following phase.

The phone in his jacket buzzed once. He pulled it out and took a glance as he took another drag.

Chavez : [Hey boss, there's a Kuma coming through, just like you said.]

Right, that was the northmost road. They were trying to come down through the relatively clear region to give a good sniper sightline. He reached up to tap at his smartgoggles a few times, cycling through camera views until he got to that road. There he could see David's crew coming through, Katsuo Tanaka at the wheel.

Alright, top of the order. In terms of threats…

That borg named Spares, Rebecca in the ACPA, Lucyna with her monowires, Tanaka and his gorilla arms, Gloria and her handgun. That's the order he was going to have to do this in. He took note of how fast they were going, nodded once, and sent a text message to Falco. Assuming he was in one of three locations, he'd be here and baying for Vincent's blood just in time. If he was in one of two other locations, he'd be just a hair too late to get the kill, but fast enough to take over.

Within acceptable tolerances.

Alright… now how was he going to go about this? He took another drag from his smoke as he watched the Kuma hit the low-mounted monowire, cutting into the tires and forcing the vehicle to slow to a stop after another hundred feet. It really depended on how they ended up splitting up.

Soon enough, Rebecca had split off from the others, moving up to one of the three prepared sniper spots that would overlook the shop. Not the ideal spot for her, but they probably guessed that he had trapped the ideal spot. That was true, he just so happened to have prepared all the other spots as well. Winning a battle was usually a matter of making sure every outcome resulted in victory, not obsessing over getting a single desired outcome.

The others would be here in less than two minutes, more than enough time.

Rebecca was in place. He reached over and pressed the button to trigger the prepared detonations.

The street underneath her exploded, and she was sent falling into the sewers below. The fall would shake her up, but it wouldn't kill her. More importantly, it was far enough down that she couldn't jump out, she'd have to go the long way around. The nearest exit was a thirty minute walk.

He set the detonation trigger down and picked up a radio currently linked to the internal speaker system in that section of the sewers. She wasn't going to last long, she just wasn't as talented as his son, nor Adam Smasher, and she didn't have the potential to be. That was no sin, but his son cared for her. So to keep her alive, he had to make sure she stopped trying to get into that level of combat.

He had to destroy her confidence.

"Congratulations Rebecca. You did exactly as I was expecting you to. You're predictable that way." He gave her five seconds to pick herself up and start cursing, even as the others paused to run to cover and call her, to see if she was okay. After a moment, he continued. "Before you are two options. One, you call for the others to come help you, and waste enough time for me to get David even farther away. Two, you tell the others to move on without you, try to get out on your own, and maybe they can get David back without you slowing them down."

The ACPA stilled in pushing itself up, staring down on the small mountain of road-rubble that it had fallen on. It raised a fist, and slammed it down, shattering some of the rubble further. He gave them a good fifteen seconds to talk before continuing.

"Let's face it kid. You're not cut out for this level of combat. You're deadweight here. Go home."

The ACPA began to slam its head into the stone beneath it. Thrashing in anger. He couldn't hear her, but she was probably screaming. Sorry about that kid, but his son would probably prefer you to be alive then fighting next to him. If he had to be mean to get that point across, then that was the correct decision on his part.

One down.

The others started moving forwards again, cautiously trying to make progress without falling into another trap. That was fine, because everything here was a trap. They were already in it.

They began to split off into two groups, Gloria and Lucyna in the backline as medic and netrunner ought to be, Spares in front, Tanaka in the middle. This was about the best they could do here. They really needed David to act as an anchor, and without him the only frontliner they had was Spares, and she was just too heavy to go most places.

Places like this tower he was on, surrounded by thin metal walkways leading up to it. Really, he needed her taken out first, he didn't have any effective way of dealing with a borg with speedware. Unlike Rebecca, this one was a borg, she'd be fine at higher level combat.

No, her problem was different. Her problem was that she was trying to copy Adam Smasher while not having a fraction of his experience. She needed to learn to not rush in like he could, and carry a bigger gun.

Now then… How was he going to go about separating them?

Easy, exploit their personalities. He stood up and walked over to the flagpole that was mounted next to the small concrete tower he was in. Grabbing onto it with one loose hand, he slid down at a controlled pace until reaching the bottom. Jogging lightly while keeping a screen on the forward team, he reached his second line defenses.

A bench on the street, one of many on this side of the street. Walking over to it leisurely, he sat down, pulled out a second smoke, and started pretending to relax.

He looked at the cameras, cycling through them until he found the crew again. They were about to round the corner. From what he could guess of their relatively cautious nature, Tanaka would ask Spares to use her speedware to scout around the corner and then come back. From the earlier monowire that took out their tires, they'd be on the lookout for more.

Which means that the proximity mines filled with BOM Wire Obstacle mounted under each bench on either side of him would go unnoticed until they caught the borg when she tried to retreat. They would have a good chance of killing a normal person, but she had more than enough armor to essentially ignore the countless 'piano wires on weights' that would fill the area. He leaned back far enough into the bench for the raised sides of it to fully cover him from what was about to happen.

Five seconds later, they reached the corner, and Tanaka waved a hand. The borgirl disappeared from sight. One second later, the proximity mines burst, and the street was covered in countless wires. In the center of those wires, tangled in their web, the borgirl struggled to get out of their bonds.

She struggled and squirmed as he burst up and ran forwards, unholstering his smartwhip and cutting through the thicker wires with its monowire edge. The others were cautious for another second longer, held back by the corp-kid's natural paranoia and risk-assessment. He was close enough half a second later.

He pressed his battleglove to the borgirl's back, squeezed the internal grip to make the EMP cannon unfold, and spoke.

"Might want to be more careful girl. You're no Smasher." A second squeeze fired the EMP Cannon and rendered her internals destroyed. Assuming normal biopod life preservation durations, she'd been fine so long as she got medical care within an hour. More than enough time. She'd be more cautious in the future, and that caution would make her live long enough to get enough combat experience.

She jerked in the webs as the invisible beam lanced through her torso, destroying the electronics that allowed her to move her limbs, and putting her into emergency power-saving mode for life support. She went slack in the webs as the others finally rounded the corner on the end of the street.

It would take them around thirty seconds to get through using Lucyna's wires, he immediately ran back down the street.

A few shots bounced off his back, leaving nasty bruises underneath his armor and making him stumble. Good to give them some encouragement. His fury screamed at him to kill them immediately. His fear wailed for him to keep running.

His logic told him to stick to the plan. Two down.

Now all that was left was the Tanaka kid, Gloria, and Lucyna. He had to take out all of them in the same area, and he had to take out Tanaka first, otherwise he'd call for a tactical retreat. He was a smart kid that way, just unfortunately not exceptional. His biggest flaw was his reliance on those skill chips.

The thing about skill chips is that you could only move in pre-programmed ways, The kid was really good at putting the pieces together in the best way, but they were still pieces of a pre-set lineup.

A line-up he had memorized specifically for this. Relying on those chips was going to get him killed one day, it was important for him to realize how dangerous they were. The best way to do that was to crush the kid completely, countering his exact moves.

He reached the end of the street, slowing his run down and turning the corner. He stared at the ripperdoc shop again, and checked his clock. Five minutes had passed already, he had to delay for at least one more minute, and up to five if possible. That was easy enough to do.

He turned and took a stand in the direct middle of the street. Reaching up and taking another drag of his smoke. Delicious, cancerous air filled his fourth set of lungs, and then emptied out.

He tapped the smartgoggles again, switching the camera view. They were debating furiously at the end of the street, inspecting the body of the borgirl. If he had to guess it was about whether or not to split up to stay together.

It didn't matter either way, all roads led to him. All roads were prepared. All paths they could take were already accounted for. All of them ended the same way.

His death.

He was almost giddy thinking about it.

After about a minute or so, they continued forwards down the road. Lucyna was getting frustrated by the lack of anything to hack, the lack of any network in the area to move into and observe.

Everything in the region was specifically prepared by the Technomancers. There wasn't a thing that her cyberdeck could actually recognize as wireless, as it all operated off an entirely separate type of connection.

Well, not type. Frequency perhaps? The exact wording for it was lost on him. It was a coding language that was specifically designed to be incompatible with META, and thus incompatible with all modern cyberdecks. He knew for a fact that the girl didn't have a custom that let her connect to outdated software like this.

There was only one thing in the entire region that she could actually access.

It was another trap. Of course, she was a netrunner first and foremost, that's the first thing she'd try in order to feel useful. That's the first thing she'd resort to when possible. She needed to learn to carry her own weapons and remotes, to make her own opportunities, rather than relying on existing structures like this.

A hard lesson, but one she had to learn quickly, otherwise the wider world was going to eat her alive eventually. He'd prefer to keep his son's output alive and healthy, he trusted them to get that happy part on their own.

Like clockwork, Lucyna saw the first accessible system and dove right in. Like clockwork, the Black ICE inside immediately forced her to fall unconscious for the next few hours. He started running forwards down the street, time to be proactive.

Three down.

The last two hesitated for a moment. Tanaka was clearly about to announce a tactical retreat.

Vincent didn't give him the choice. He rounded the corner and started throwing punches.

The Tanaka kid threw up a routine series of blocks.

Vincent weaved through them to give the kid love taps in the predetermined windows in his moves.

"Not bad kid, Arasaka Ninja Master 300 I'm assuming?" He made idle conversation as the sloppy shots from Gloria's handgun bounced off his heavily reinforced leathers. It just wasn't a strong enough pistol to do anything to him, and her microwaver wasn't much better.

Tanaka tried to use a counter-routine. A routine Vincent had already memorized. He caught the kid by the bicep (confirming that it was metal and not meat) and spun, twisting to throw the kid against the wall.

Dazed, the kid pushed off…

Only for Vincent's battleglove to snap his cybernetic arm in half with a punch aimed at the elbow. Tanaka yelled out in pain, struggling to twist into a kick.

Another chip-standard roundhouse. Vincent caught it in both hands and spun, lifting the kid up to slam him face-first on the asphate ground. The leg was cybernetic too, which meant that..

Ignoring the bullets bouncing off his back, Vincent gripped the leg in both arms, and tore it in half.

"You need to learn to fight, kid, chips won't help you against anyone worth a damn." He offered casual advice and kicked, his boot crashing against the kid's head and sending him to dreamland with a concussion.

There were a few more bruises on his back now. He ignored them as he reached for another smoke and lit it. He could feel Gloria staring at him as he took a drag.

Four down.

…Sorry 'Ria, he was gonna have to be mean. You needed to move on. You needed to hate him.

"...W-why…?" She started to cry in frustration.

He breathed out smoke. "Why do all this?" He turned, looking at her furious tears behind the barrel of her handgun. She could shoot him in the head and do some pretty serious damage, but she was entirely too emotional to manage that. She just wasn't a fighter.

"...Just make up a reason. It doesn't really matter what it is." He replied.

There was silence for a moment.

"What the fuck do you mean?!" Tears flowing freely. Logic didn't let him cry with her. Good, he didn't deserve to. "I know you! You always have a reason! Why! W-why!"

"I do." He replied calmly. "The real question is, does my reason matter? What's done is done."

She glared for a long moment. "...what did you do?" She growled out.

"The same thing you did, I'd imagine. I gave our son the best help I could." He raised the smoke up again, and took a drag peacefully. "You'll find him in the basement of that ripperdoc. He'll be dazed and confused for a while, but soon enough he'll be back up and better than ever."

"What the fuck did you do!" She screamed at him, hands shaking.

"Full Conversion Cyborg." He spoke three words. She froze, and he kept explaining. "The very best body I could get him, the best chrome, the most rugged self-repair features. It's a body better than just about any corporation could ever give him, and it's his without any strings attached."

"...The Long Term Contract…" She whispered in realization. He raised a brow, he wasn't expecting her to know about that. Good luck for him, it made explaining easier.

"Arasaka isn't the only one with control chips. Just about every faction in the world wants an Adam Smasher of their own, and David's a thing they want to control."

"He isn't a thing!" She snarled through wet cheeks. "He's your son! An-and you… You put his brain in a fucking borg!"

"It was going to eventually happen anyways. This way I can preempt them. This way I can make sure the frame is clean. Putting a slave chip in him now needs a surgery he won't ever need. He's safe so long as he stays wary."

"Why! Why did you just… talk…" She trailed off, breaking down into sobs.

He gave a weak grin. "The kid's got a dad now, he's doing better than I really ever could… It's better he just thinks I'm a random maniac, don't you think?"

"No! N-no I don't think! That's bullshit!" Gloria wanted her family to be together. He knew that he was a danger so long as he was alive. This very conversation was an example of it.

Because even now, his logic was forcing him to manipulate her.

There was no one who hated Vincent Martinez more than Vincent Martinez.

"...Take the shot, 'Ria." He said, knowing that bullet would just bounce off his skull with how hard her hands were swaying.

She stared at him, incomprehensibly. "...what..?"

"Take the shot 'Ria. I've done what I can for him. Now it's time to leave it up to him. I'll just drag him down by sticking around."

"...no, we can… we can fix…" She trailed off, looking down to wipe the tears off her face with a sleeve. "It doesn't…" She couldn't even get a coherent sentence out.

"Take the shot, 'Ria." He said, this time slightly louder.

"N-no!" She choked out.

"Take the shot!" He yelled.

"NO!" She yelled back.

Vincent glanced at the corner of his vision. At the camera just behind him.

Falco was there, Burya in hand, currently taking aim.

He resisted the urge to grin.

Good job Falco. You always were a reliable guy. Vincent knew his guilt would force him to take over, and that same guilt would force him to help his son however he could moving forwards. A new power was rising up in the NUSA, and he just guaranteed its leader would feel obligated to support David.

Everything went according to plan. At least… well enough that was.

The rest, he'll leave in their hands.

Falco pulled the trigger.

The hand-railgun barked.

Vincent Martinez fell.