A/N

From a technical standpoint, this story's a Cyberpunk 2077/ Punisher crossover. Fanfiction's tags have some missing categories, but I'll wager that Frank Castle's popular enough to be recognized anywhere, even here.

So, welcome dear reader to another one of my passion projects where in the grim darkness of the far future, there's only chrome and eddies. But every crime-infested city has its vigilantes, then... there's Frank Castle. Story's gonna be lightly AU- some character deaths and non-deaths ALERT. Should be plenty of action ahead, I hope I do the big man justice in his portrayal.

Disclaimer: I don't own Cyberpunk 2077 or the Punisher, just my OC's.

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"Seven minutes, or a refund." - Trauma Team International slogan

.:.

Night City

When they built Pacifica, they started with the usual 'we're building a paradise' and ended with 'where the fuck did we go wrong'. Like most of Night City, it looked pretty on the outside but all rotten in the inside- like a chromed-out corpse infested with writhing maggots. One big unbroken concrete landscape stacked with unfinished architectural masterpieces, only to hand the keys over to the vilest scum imaginable.

'No law exists in Pacifica', the saying or some similar saying went.

Designed to be a tourist trap for the elite, investors poured in massive sums to finance the project in hopes of turning the poorer suburbs of Night City into a booming resort. It was meant to be paradise, in a manner it did. Abandoned in 2069 during the height of the Unification War, it became an anarchist's playground. Nobody in their right mind would venture into Pacifica unless they were asking for trouble, because trouble's a surplus mainstay in that place. So when Trauma Team International got the call and scrambled Alpha Team, the general assumption was that the client must've made a wrong turn or had a deal gone wrong.

Either way, the client was in for a bad day and Trauma had to bail their asses.

The team consisted of an Atlus aerodyne pilot and co-pilot, two security specialists, a lead EMT and an assistant EMT.

The latter would be Nadia, the new girl on the team. She was so green she hadn't the opportunity to even fully memorize her coworkers' names.

Good thing that their names were all scribbled on the sides of their helmets for ease of identification, especially when one of them goes down on an op. Sad reality, it was common knowledge that Trauma Team International had a daunting rate for occupational hazards. Sometimes it made even the best of them question their decision on signing up.

Nadia hadn't gotten there yet.

"Clock's ticking people, move it!" Dodds, her senior and the team leader, held the door to the Atlus open while the rest of the medics hauled ass.

Nadia got strapped in and checked her G-58 Dian smart gun. Top-of-the-line Arasaka hardware, that one. She'd been training sims with it for half a decade now, but this would be the first time she'd get to use it in real life.

Her palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy. She dodged a bullet passing off on that cold spaghetti. But that also meant that she would have to work on an empty stomach.

The Atlus hummed furiously as it climbed up into the sky. Inside, the whole crew compartment was filled with a glaring red glow. Dodds whipped up a hologram from the tiny emitter built into the ceiling to show their area of operations, which was in a narrow corridor between two disheveled apartment buildings. The client was pinned between two firing lines, and more gangers were pouring in.

"Okay, check this." Dodds made his decision, "We're coming up on one end, waste the gonks and secure the client. Wrap up and we delta the fuck outta there. Clear?"

Everyone nodded. A few minutes later, the AV slowed its approach as it entered Pacifica airspace. There was a rattle as the gunship took a dozen hits from small-arms fire. The pilots steadied the AV, took aim, then chewed the gangers to pieces with the ship's powerful 30mm guns. Dodds took point and was first out the door, "Let's make some eddies!"

Trauma Team landed on site, stepping over the mincemeat they'd made out of the gunners on the ground. Nadia tried not to look at them, tried not to slip on all the blood pooling all over the place. She kept her eyes forward and about, anywhere but down. Their client was just up ahead, hunkered down behind some derelict cars which looked pretty hammered with all the bullets flying their way.

"Trauma! Over here!" A bodyguard, all gussied up in his corpo black suit and tie, waved at the team while his buddy hunched over a fallen figure.

It was the client. He was hurt pretty bad. Took a few rounds to the back when he tried to keep up with his men. Kurt Meier, said so right on his file. Not a very well-known name in the NUSA, but perhaps across the Atlantic it would be. Swiss guy looking to get lucky coming to Night City, only to end up in one of the worst neighborhoods in town.

"Medics, do your thing!" Dodds and the other specialist laid down some cover fire while Nadia and the lead EMT got to work.

Mr. Meier looked about the stereotypical golden-haired Euro from some old-money company with an enterprise so large that it intertwined with everyone else's. He looked way too young to be a suit, Nadia assumed it was probably just the name and the kid was leeching off of daddy's wallet. Still, he was the client and Trauma had a job to do.

Nadia helped stabilize the patient, stopped the bleeding and put him up on the stretcher. Mr. Meier drifted in and out of consciousness, but at least he wasn't hurting as much thanks to the painkillers she administered.

"Dodds! Client stabilized, ready for extraction!" The lead EMT, Rosetta, barked at the team leader.

"Copy!" Dodds signaled for them to start moving, "We'll cover you, go!"

The gangers worked just like the sims. Predictable wild shooting, uncoordinated swarms, and a whole lot of name-calling. The two security specialists, with Meier's bodyguards, mopped them up on the way back to the opposite end of the corridor where they came from. Nadia helped carry the client all the way to the AV.

But just as the ship hovered within meter off ground, an anti-tank missile struck the cockpit- killing the pilots and destroying the AV in a great big ball of fire. The ground team was sent reeling, and Nadia stared in horror at the pile of twisted burning metal that should've been their way out. Dodds was noticeably enraged, he raised his G-58 and shot down the rocketeer who was leaning out of a nearby shack.

"I'm calling it in!" Modi, the other security specialist, announced before tapping at his helmet. "Control, AV- Alpha is down! They took a direct hit from an RPG! Requesting immediate backup!"

"Copy, Alpha Team. Have you secured the client?"

Figures they would prioritize their client over their own team. Modi sighed, "Affirmative."

"Can you hold position?"

"Negative, we're about to be surrounded. We have to move."

There was silence on the other end while Control prepped another team to bail them out. "Help is on the way. Be advised, ETA is six minutes. Protect the client at all costs."

"Reading you loud and clear." Modi acknowledged, "Kindly tell Beta to haul ass, over."

A lot could happen in six minutes. Dodds did the smart thing by moving his team up a few floors to a more defensible position instead of the death-trap of a corridor they'd just come out of. Her first real mission, and Nadia landed right in a middle of a clusterfuck of epic proportions. She barely got it all together, for the sake of the team. Some of the Trauma vets have done this kind of work for years, and none of them seemed fazed at all. It would be a shame if she failed where the best of them succeeded.

Dodds kicked the door open to one of the apartment rooms. In rushed the whole team, with a whole bunch of gangers on their tail. Stray rounds whistled, snapped and bounced all over the hallways as the gunmen sprayed everything they had at the fleeing medics. Modi got shot in the arm, but the adrenaline kept him going. He didn't even notice the wound until after his whole sleeve was drenched in blood. The fighting narrowed his vision into a tunnel, and all he could see was the thin line between his weapon and the mook in his sights.

"Hold on, lemme patch you up." Nadia offered, putting a stop to the bleeding and administering some stimulants so Modi could keep fighting. Already, he was swaying from the blood loss.

"Easy..." Modi rasped, feeling his blood pressure rise sharply. "Don't blow my fuckin' heart up..."

Dodds leaned out the doorway from one side, Modi on the other. Rosetta set up a beacon for Beta Team to find them, then stood watch over the client. The two bodyguards with them were spent, but they were just as eager to earn their paycheck as the rest of the team. Nadia listened to the din of several dozen gangers putting them through the wringer, hoping that none of them would get close enough to throw a frag inside the room. Dodds went down first. Steel slug penetrated his ballistic plates built into the helmet, turned his brains to mush. He died instantly.

Next was Modi. Cranked up on adrenaline and pissed off beyond belief, he leaned out to empty his mag and got someone else's mag emptied into him. Nadia recalled hearing Rosetta yelling at her to take their spot so that the horde wouldn't shore up against the door.

That's when she saw him.

6'3 and 200 pounds of pure un-chromed muscle. The peak of human fitness, even though he looked like he was pushing fifty. Hardly anyone in the NUSA, in 2077, went around without implants. And the guy, decked out in all-black, was hefting a heavy machinegun that looked like it weighed half a ton. Ancient piece of hardware too, Nadia had never seen the like before.

But it was definitely American. Big, loud, had its ammo belt hanging loose. Black overcoat, well out of style half a century ago, with a big ballistic vest hiding underneath its flaps. Something was painted over it, Nadia got a good look at it when he stopped to reload.

A frowning white skull with soulless black eyes.

"Hall is clear." The man said simply, then walked away. His footfalls steadily stomped across the freed-up space he'd just emptied a whole belt of 7.62's in.

Nadia mustered up the courage to peek out into the hall. She found the gangers, all of them dead. The stranger in black was gone.

"Who the fuck was that?" Rosetta blurted.

Frank Castle wasn't supposed to be in Night City. He wasn't supposed to exist outside of the confines of a Pre-War comic book. And yet, he was here- like he walked right out of a poster into a world gone mad. In a manner, he actually did. Not a very strange thing considering the kind of world he just stepped into. A world run by corporations, where life was measured in eddies and everyone had some form of cybernetic augmentation.

Frank surveyed the unfamiliar metropolis with a calculating glare, like he usually did whenever he found himself on new terrain. Concrete jungle, cracked and burgeoning, Mr. Night's flawed legacy. He would learn of this place, its people and the kind of scum running its streets.

It wasn't New York, but it was definitely his kind of town.

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