He had eventually found out what those suits from Segatari wanted with him. As it turned out, partially a threat and partially a business offer. Normally he would smear them across the wall for the implied threat, but this was a refreshingly honest griping from a haggard and irritated corpmeat.

Apparently Uriel's scuffle with Whaletits had caused a spike of popularity in their aging brand and product, a spike of players and therefore sales that the mostly distant executives were quick to capitalize on with the announcement of a tie-in movie and claims that while it wasn't planned, it was 'inspiring'.

In short, they wanted to use his likeness for one of the characters in exchange for not suing him for misuse of their product. As this required no active effort on his part in order to get annoying meatbags off his back, he agreed and then promptly told the relieved looking corpmeat to fuck off.

So planned for 2079, Elflines : End Times was set to release. He didn't know the specifics beyond it being 'based on a true story' in the absolute loosest sense. He didn't really care to know more about it either, but would probably have to watch it when it came out. If they made him look bad, he'd have to go kill them all. An entertaining chore if it ever came up.

He had also finalized the date and time in which he would start taking interviews. In a now-abandoned warehouse in maelstrom territory, all the turrets still left in the region linked under Uriel's control, and during the middle of the day. There was nothing illegal about this, after all, the only thing he needed to worry about was people taking the opportunity to take him out in the middle of it. They would have time to prepare knowing that he would be in one place for a day or few.

Being strong means having enemies. Adam was the strongest man in the world.

It wouldn't be hard to find meatbags who wanted him dead. He let out a feral grin at the thought.

The temporary Net-posting he made for the process had already started to fill up on applications, although many of them seemed to not know a damn thing about proper application formatting. This shit wasn't that hard, he used to have to write them all the time back in his meat days…

He considered that for a moment, and realized that paper wasn't used almost anywhere anymore. The only place he could recall seeing physical paper was in Japan, used in the fax machines of Jap corpos. It's been phased out of use for anything except those ceremonial bullshit papers that governments use to pat themselves on the back for trivial nonsense.

So maybe he shouldn't be surprised that the meatbags don't know how to write a proper application. They probably didn't know how to write most of the time.

Unsurprising, but yet another reason that they were mostly worthless. Incompetence at every level, the whole lot of them.

'Look, can you blame them, what with the whole collapse?' Uriel pointed out, referencing how the world got into this situation in the first place, and knowing exactly how it could have been different.

Almost as bad, just in more boring ways. Much less violent and almost no chrome. So really this outcome was better overall.

'Yes.' He answered. He grew up during the collapse and he knew how to read and write. Sure it took some jackass in a suit forcing him through lessons during his time in the Marines, but he still learned how to perfectly fine. These meatbags had no valid excuses for being deficient in any area except being weaker than him.

Hmm… Uriel, make a note. He needed to see about getting another Gemini and an ACPA. They didn't sell those to independent contractors without loyalty clauses, so he would need to scrap and salvage one eventually. Either that or buy an industrial frame and upgrade that. Either would be fine, but he needed a heavy armor frame for situations in which tanks were on the field.

Maybe he could get the new Doc to rip out an alpha frame's biosystem interface and stick it in a backpack mount. That would allow him to use the PA as a frame without too much issue, right? He didn't know enough about fiddly details like that to be certain.

Then probably another airship eventually, after he secured the first contract for the PMC. Then another round of hiring, along with ammo and food for all those mercs…

If he wasn't careful, he'd run out of funds to support this whole affair which meant that his initial investments needed to be focused on cheaper long-term, not short term prices or long term effectiveness. He was all the effectiveness his company needed at that moment, what he needed was a mass of cheap firepower that scaled easily.

Cheap long term costs would be… railguns perhaps. He could buy the initial guns, and a few nanoforges to produce the solid-metal slugs. That would cut down on ammo costs to 'whatever salvage the company didn't need'. Railguns had a higher initial price, and required batteries, but the ship's fusion reactor could recharge those through the outlets given time. It was really the repairs of the guns themselves that would be pricey.

So that would be alleviated by adding armor to the gun itself, which would require stronger troopers, but cheap linear frames were easy enough to get and were useful for more than just carrying guns.

Armored railguns would lower battlefield endurance, but the ammo would be close to free after buying those nanoforges and he needed to buy troopers linear frames anyways. So he needed to find a gun that fit that profile and secure a contract for it.

And by he, he meant Uriel.

[Lilith, find and list all known railguns for order, in order of descending durability and robustness. Then find and list all known commercial nanoforges by order of number of known sales.] Uriel ordered by message, because by Uriel, he meant the Succutary. Having a glorified sapient search engine was saving them quite a bit of effort and time overall. Sure, it wouldn't be quite what he was looking for, but that's where his own round of evaluation came in after the initial sorting.

In the distant Net, Uriel heard a frustrated yell.

Eh, she'd be fine.

So he'd need to get the guns squared away, and some cheap linear frames for everyone using one. Uriel made a note to revisit this once the prices were settled on the guns, but that alone would be in the ballpark of…

…ninety-thousand per person or so? Then the cost of armoring them would be another nine-thousand. So that's just short of 100 thousand per meatbag before the cost of guns and ammo.

He leaned back on his bench, against the wall behind him, and glared out into the distance. Three squads of five would be 1,500,000 before the cost of guns were factored in. Not nearly as expensive as his own frame was, but none of them could ever hope to match him, so that was a moot point. In order to constantly expand, he would need contracts that paid unrealistic sums, or another way to earn profits.

He always had his personal funds, but that wouldn't last forever if he kept using it, and long-term thinking is what he needed to prioritize. Best for initial investments and then letting it replenish after the pmc became self-sufficient. But in order to do that, he needed more ways to earn money…

A second investment then, one that would primarily earn him money, but could also be left in someone else's hands. Ideally something that would help him with something else in the meanwhile.

"Thinking hard, Pops?" The blueberry dragged him from his thoughts with her interrupting voice. He decided to not acknowledge her, and instead kept glaring into the distance.

"...Pops?" The voice of Spares called out, slowly and unsure of her question. Spares was looking up from her position seated on the floor, back to the wall and arms around her knees. Her power cord was extended and plugged into the wall outlet of the hotel that they were currently renting. The ship wasn't done being retrofitted yet, so the brats eventually settled on renting out a decent hotel for the month.

"Big guy's been dad-ing all over the place for a while now, ya'know? So calling him pops is only natural, makes sense right?" The fucking smurfette explained in an innocent tone of voice.

He growled in response. "Swear to god brat."

He wasn't particularly mad, no reason to care what meat called him, but he hasn't had an excuse to threaten them in a while and this was as good of a reason as any other. Putting a little bit of fear back in them would do them some good.

Unfortunately, the brat only gave a micro-flinch, small enough to be invisible to humans. She used to give full-body flinches whenever he growled, this micro-shit was just irritating. Cower properly brat!

"...Papa." A monotone voice called out.

He drug his glare from the horizon, slowly and with an expressionless face, over towards the brats sitting on the balcony with him.

Spares was equally expressionless, simply staring blankly at him. The smurfette had a familiar shit-eating grin growing on her face as she rapidly glanced back and forth between him and Spares.

Unfortunately, threatening a gynoid would be completely pointless. It's not like they were programmed for fear responses. So that would be a complete waste of time. Instead he turned his glare towards the grinning blue one.

Immediately, her grin wavered just a tad before she forced it back on her face again. She let out a nervous laugh as she slowly retreated back, opening the door to the balcony with her foot, and slipping inside once more.

"Hah-ha… I'll just leave you two to it then… hehe."

He kept his glare up for a while longer, tracking her through the tinted glass door with Infrared until she ducked behind the kitchen counter inside. He turned his gaze back towards Spares, still blankly staring at him.

He turned his gaze back towards the horizon, and tried to remember where he was in the thinking process.

"...Is that designation acceptable, Master?" Spares called out.

He snorted. "Meh. Sure."

So he needed to invest in something that would earn him money and alleviate another one of his issues at the same time. So what other issues did he have?

Well, the guns and nanoforges still needed to be purchased, so perhaps finding a corporation to invest in in exchange for a cut of revenue and cheaper prices on those. Ideally he could find one that he could purchase outright and then delegate to the previous owner. He didn't know of any corporation that made both guns and nanoforges, so that would be at least two purchases…

He had around 2 billion he could safely spend here, it would have to be very small corporations, and maybe only one of them. He could probably just buy the nanoforges, they lasted longer and wouldn't be damaged in battlefield conditions. It was the guns he needed a cheap bulk supplier for.

Uriel.

[Lilith. Compile a list of arms manufacturers and order by current overall estimated value. Do it after the list of railguns and nanoforges. I'll need all three.]

Another distant yell of frustration.