He had learned two things since entering Arasaka Tower, one good and one bad. First, was that the meatfucker was actually half-decent seeming from all the bodies left in its wake. At least one sword or knife and one very big gun, or several big guns. From the way that most of the corpses fell, they were usually killed simultaneously and quickly, meaning that meatfucker had a decent sandy installed. All in all, they were shaping up to be a proper fight, assuming they were even still alive.

The second thing he learned was that the elevator was broken, forcing him to take the much slower stairs with his DaiOni. The DaiOni was very big. The stairs were only 'kinda' big. This slowed him down significantly, so most of his sandevistan usage for movement so far had been reserved for it. That was the only real issue with the DaiOni, was that meatbags didn't make their buildings big enough for it most of the time.

Get your shit together world, and start making buildings scaled for actual people already.

Needless to say, being forced to take the stairs when you were eleven feet tall, and maybe… six? Feet wide was not a very fortunate event. Uriel made a note to check the scales of all the doorways in the Zenith before they got built, they might have to delay it in rescaling everything. No way he was going to fit in a door fit for meatbags.

He stomped on another corpse as he ascended, letting the gore splash across his still-damaged armor.

In retrospect, it probably would've been wise to resupply his ammo but he probably wasn't going to need it. A damaged DaiOni with no ammo was still more than good enough for him to slaughter an entire city district. There were vanishingly few things in existence that could properly threaten him in it, and he was more than fast enough to maneuver around those things. Even if the tower collapsed again, this time he had that panzertrick from the knight, so he'd be fine there as well.

No, the real issue here was the ticking clock. If the meatfucker was here, then it was probably to kill the Old Man, and Adam had to get there before they got the engram chip at the very least. His LTC forced him to go as fast as possible when it came to preserving the life of his primary contract holder.

He passed by the corpse of Oda slumped against the wall and chuckled at the sight without slowing down. Good job meatfucker, you did him a favor, he'll make your death quick as a thank-you.

Uriel's fire returned from scouting the building.

'Adam, the two DaiOni are up ahead. I think the enemy netrunner hacked them.'

He considered that for a second, then considered the blueprints for the DaiOni.

'Fucking how? Their wireless-control-frame connection is metal-meat-metal.'

'Either they have different specs than us, or this is more net bullshit I don't know about.'

'Fucking net-magic.'

'Preaching to the choir, Adam.'

He thought about it for a minute or so as he ascended the tower, staircase after staircase. Aoihachi and Akakyu were absolutely not on his level, but dealing with them was going to take up some precious time for the ascension.

'You see where meatfucker is?'

'Floor 129, but the inside is being blacked out. I can't see or get inside.'

His optic glowed red in mild irritation as he squeezed through the next set of stairs, stomping on another corpse as he moved.

'...I thought Cunningham wanted to eat the mikoshi or some shit? Are your memories fucked Uriel?'

'First place I checked, Mikoshi is empty except that AI. Don't know why she was left over. Might not be Alt, or she might be on a time-crunch too. No way to tell.'

Adam grumbled to himself, wishing for more information that had no real chance of manifesting at this time. All that was left to do was plan the approach from here. Two DaiOni…

The Gemini couldn't fight that alone, but the DaiOni could. The Gemini might be able to fight the meatfucker, but Uriel couldn't hold off both the DaiOni and the enemy netrunner if they could block off the entire Arasaka Tower like this. So what's the fastest and most efficient way to deal with this problem…?

He glanced at the window that led to the outside. He narrowed his optics.

As he was running, Uriel took over remote control on both the DaiOni and the Gemini. The back of the DaiOni's head opened up, the Gemini reaching down to extract the Biopod before slotting it into the Gemini and closing up both frames again. Adam blinked back into awareness now riding on the back of the DaiOni.

That panzertrick allowed him to deal with the fall real easily. The other DaiOni didn't have that, and their frame would be destroyed in the crash to the bottom. They weren't one-hundred and thirty stories up, so their biopods would be fine so long as they landed on their feet or backs first.

The Gemini would have to fight the meatfucker alone, but that was easy enough, it was still completely undamaged. The DaiOni would be on standby at the bottom. If he wasn't forced to go as fast as possible, then he'd just fight them and move on in the DaiOni, but he couldn't do that right now.

He burst onto the next floor, DaiOni immediately being pelted with twin auto-shotgun rounds and launched grenades. He ignored this and activated his sandevistan as Uriel piloted the DaiOni. The Gemini hopped off and ran around, Uriel crashed into both DaiOni with arms spread wide and twisted into a run against the nearest outside wall.

One DaiOni normally wouldn't be able to overpower two DaiOni. Unfortunately for them, their speedware was worse, and now their feet were off the floor. They couldn't do a thing while in the air like they were.

One wall shattered. He kept running for the next flight of stairs.

Two walls shattered. Uriel laughed in the DaiOni, delighting in the upcoming stunt.

Three walls shattered. The two DaiOni attempted to get free in slow motion.

Four walls shattered, and all three DaiOni entered the open air directly outside of Arasaka Tower.

Adam entered the stairs up in the much more maneuverable Gemini without needing to slow his pace once. Parameters of the LTC were upheld, enemies neutralized. He wished he could've actually fought them, but he was on the job right now. Work before pleasure and all that shit.

Uriel roared in laughter as he crashed into the ground seventy stories down, the legs and torsos of the other two DaiOni disintegrating even as he left a ten-meter crater in the asphate road work. Then, without pause, Uriel powered the DaiOni down and activated its retrieval beacon. The grunts could pick it up later, right now he had a fight to get to.

'Holy shit I love the DaiOni.' Uriel commented as he returned, massive grin apparent on his bodiless fire. Adam returned the grin in realspace. Yeah, the DaiOni kicked ass didn't it?

All in all, it took him less than a second to deal with two DaiOni and sustain almost no damage in return. He was the strongest goddamn man on the planet for a reason. Adam passed by a few more corpses on each staircase going up. A few security agents, a few corpos with their weapons drawn, a few cyberforms (those who like gimmicky garbage, who the fuck made those?).

It was quiet on the way up, nothing was moving anymore, nothing was breathing. The only sounds he could currently hear came from his own movements and the city outside.

When was the last time he heard Arasaka Tower being this quiet? Not since Kei's death probably, and the mandatory mourning period after. That was… fifty years ago probably. Fifty four or around that long. Well, Arasaka Tower Tokyo was that quiet, Arasaka Tower NC was a fucking radioactive crater by then.

He glanced out the windows he passed by as he kept running, taking in the skyline of the city as he ascended. The city had grown taller, but everything in it seemed to get less impressive as time went by. Shouldn't the meatbags be getting better as time went on, not worse?

He dismissed the idle musings and went back to running. He passed over another set of corpses, these were fresher judging from the relative brightness of their blood. He was getting close.

Another set of stairs disappeared under his boots. Another floor was crossed. Another set of stairs.

Fucking Netrunner, why didn't you just leave the elevator alone and let him use it, it would speed this up for everyone involved. Uriel pointed out amusedly that the elevator being disabled might be a security feature, not a bug. Adam chose to ignore this possibility, as that meant his grumbling was pointless (which it never was).

He kept this grumbling up all the way to the final staircase to floor 129. Once there, his optics sharpened and he refocused on the real world. Time to unmask the meatfucker, time to see who it was, and if he could've murdered them earlier if Uriel had a less shitty memory.

'Gimme a break, I wasn't all that interested in it.' Uriel complained.

He stepped forwards, taking note of the gentle Biwa playing on the other side of the doorway. It had a stupid name, but the Old Man forced him to memorize it a long time ago.

Raising his foot, he kicked the doors off the hinges.

The shattered inwards with a crash, slamming into the ground in front. He glanced at it briefly, noticing that it wasn't steel like he was expecting. Genuine Mahogany huh? The Old Man splurged on this floor it seemed.

…maybe he shouldn't have broken this door. He was probably going to get mildly criticized for it later. He banished the consideration and stepped through the doorway. The room was ravaged utterly, not a single square foot left intact. Everywhere he looked he saw evidence of cuts, stomps, slams, cracks, gunshots, and more. The windows looking out over the city were completely shattered, exposing the room to the disgusting city air.

Four corpses and a borg. The Jorogumo sisters in various chunks scattered across the room, the old man slumped against a fancy looking chair, robes stained red, and a single robotic fucker playing the Biwa to a tune he didn't recognize, staring out over the city.

Welp, the old man's head was in one piece, which meant the engram was in that neck of his right now. Contract was still intact, which meant the fight was still on.

The borg stood, setting down the Biwa and turning as he did so. His armor was pretty ravaged, as was that cloak on his shoulders. It might have been a jacket at some point, but right now Adam couldn't really tell. Underneath all that damage was pure, shiny, silver superchrome paneling, the kind that almost hurt the optics to look at (if you were a dumbass without Anti-Dazzle installed).

Adam could stare at the sun and be fine, shiny chrome was nothing in comparison.

One hand gripped a Malorian Arms 3516. A decently big handgun with a decently big kick. Less damage than the Hellbringer but more shots. Sidegrade option at best, but at least it was still in production.

The other hand held a… empty hilt? Was it one of those fancy retractable swords that increased the convenience of travel or something? Easy to snap, nothing to worry about then.

When he reached the face, he paused.

With an audible groan he reached up and palmed his face.

"Of course it's a fucking poser." He grumbled to himself.

He pressed an inadequate hand to his cybernetic forehead to try and quell a headache. It was completely pointless of course, but he wanted to get his aggravation at this bullshit across. A fucking poser was the climatic fight he had been waiting for. The type of dumbass who dressed up and played pretend was the thing he had gone through all this bullshit to prepare for.

"Hey steelhead. Let's rock and roll." The synthetic voice of the Cheerleader called out calmly, bright blue optics glaring at him.

The poser was even quoting the dumbass' lines in his stupid dumbass voice! Receiting the words that he said right before he killed the fucker last time!

…Fifty years ago…

With only himself and Rogue as the known survivors…

…In a Tower that was utterly destroyed, leaving no camera evidence…

He paused, and slowly raised his head. He glared at the borg for a few moments. Taking in his stance and face and comparing it to the last time he saw the cheerleader.

…an exact match…

He narrowed his optics, straightened his stance.

"...You're not a poser… are you?"

"I'm a real as they fucking come." the borg spoke, speaking in the exact stupid tone of voice as Smasher remembered.

Slowly, his shoulders began to shake. A slow chuckle began to well up in his chest before it exploded out in uproarious laughter.

The cheerleader stared at him, not moving at all as he kept laughing.

Eventually he forced himself to stop laughing, and rose from his slightly bent stance. He let loose a few spare chuckles as he addressed the cheerleader again.

"Hah…ha… It's a very rare day that lets me kill the same meatbag twice. How long has it been Johnny-Boy? Fifty years or so since last I cut you in half?"

"Hard to keep track when you're dead Smasher." The cheerleader retorted, gesturing with the sentence. "You weren't fast enough to stop me this time, looks like."

"I'm going to have fun killing you again, I think." He mused aloud, beginning to move forwards, sword drawn and Hellbringer in hand. Silverhand pretended to crack his own neck and started stomping forwards in return. "Look at you, you've gotten quite the upgrade Johnny-boy. You might actually be a threat now."

"Look at you Smasher, not one change in the last fifty years." Cheerleader retorted, matching his words and pace.

Adam stomped, and dragged his foot in the stained and shattered ground. He grinned maliciously, and Uriel manifested in the Net to his right. "If I had to guess, you have your little girlfriend with you right now, don't you?"

Cheerleader glared at him and didn't say a word.

Adam continued idly. "It'd be rude for her to interfere with our little scrap here, don't you think?" He growled out, face going serious for a quarter-moment.

The form of Alt Cunningham swirled into existence next to the Cheerleader, a face like an angel, a body of a devil, and a dress made of starlight. Cheerleader glared and retorted. "Are you going to keep talking or are we going to kill each other yet?"

Uriel grinned to hide his nervousness about what he was about to do. He raised both hands in a prayer-like pose.

"Oh don't mind me, I'm just…"

Uriel's right hand twisted forwards sharply.

"Removing the temptation."

All at once, the entire local netspace was gone. Uriel and Alt included.

Cheerleader's optics widened.

Their sandevistans activated simultaneously.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!" The Cheerleader roared.

Adam grinned.

Daedalus was a bitch, wasn't it? Good job Uriel.