Work Text:
"Good work as always, Smasher. I'll log today's report. You're now off-duty."
The monotonous voice barely made its way to his Dakai voice receptors. Without so much a glance or a nod, Adam Smasher walks towards the elevator to return to his VIP chamber.
It was another boring day. Another street rat going cyberpsycho from too much chrome. He wasn't even a borg. All he installed were rudimentary implants and a pair of knock-off gorilla arms. The fight, if you could even call it that, was just him flying in and punching his head off in one swift motion. As far as jobs go it was lucrative. Punch an idiot and get paid twenty thousand Eddies. It would be the 17th time this week he wondered why he was even doing this in the first place. Food and accomodations are given to him without charge by Arasaka. The best augs available fresh off the testing phase. The number of eddies in his bank account only serves as random string of numbers that holds no meaning to him.
Night City is beneath him.
Still he fulfills his duty. His master, Saburo Arasaka, told him to protect his company so he obliged. He owed that old man a life debt. When he was just a lump of flesh after those RPGs blew him up he thought it was the end, until Saburo came by. Years passed by blike a blur. Night City never changes. It's the same pool of miserable shit and piss that he came to know since he was born. Nothing will ever change the status quo. Humanity was a mistake. Which was why he rejected it in the first place. In a world filed with idiots and chromes, being organic is a fool's choice.
The elevator dinged and he stepped out to his chamber. An entire floor for a room seems excessive but nothing for the best is expected for Arasaka's number one muscle. The decoration keeps reminding him of those cheap corpo ads promoting a better future to Night City's folks. One of these days he should file a request for a make-over, but he never felt the need to as he only uses his apartment for charging anyway.
Adam walks past the full-stocked minibar and enormous TV to a door tucked in the corner of the room. On the side shined a hologram displaying "Workshop" in purple neon. Adam glanced at the sign before the door opened with a hissing sound. Stepping in, Adam stomped past the broken augments and his spare bodies to a medical chamber filled with green liquid and looks at the floating head supported by wires in it.
Seeing the brown-skinned head with a bullet hole on the forehead, Adam pulled a barrel and sits in front as his Kiroshi optics followed the gentle bobbing of the head.
"...It was fun."
It was indeed so. The event last year played again in his organic brain, the last part of his original body. A boy, not yet a man, geared with so much cybernetics that would make any adults go crazy gave him a fight that actually made his Kenjiri hearts, both of them, to beat in a familiar rhythm he felt during the war. The fight couldn't be called legendary or awe-inspiring. In fact, due to both of them using sandevistan for the fight it was actually over pretty quickly. The boy had no strategy, no experience in using the cyberskeleton, and not even much time left with the amount of those cheap immunosuppresants he kept injecting to his body. From the very beginning of the fight Adam already knew the boy was a dead man walking. He could've just dodged for an hour and the boy would die on his own. He didn't even suffer a scratch to his cyborg body. And yet.
"It was fun, David Martinez."
For the first time in a long time he felt human again, for just a few minutes. Imagine if the boy had discarded all of his organics like he did and had some time to train with the cyberskeleton. Replace the inferior sandevistan to the latest model. Then fit him with ammos and explosives as much as yours truly did. Oh what a fight that would've been.
"...I've decided."
Adam pressed the red button under the glass case and the green fluid flushed away. After the container opens he grabbed the head and then pulled out a purple shard from his belt, one he requested from Saburo after that night.
"Will you survive it? I guess we'll have to see."
He plugged the shard into the neck of what remains of the boy. There was a beeping noise for a couple of seconds and the boys eyelids flashed orange as the shard does its job. Releasing the head and closing the medical chamber, Adam sends a short email through his neurons to Arasaka tech department. There were no polite words or preambles. Just two words: [Engram Order].
"Arasaka HQ contacting Adam Smasher. Report in, Adam Smasher."
Just after the email was sent his brain picked up a priority call. With a grunt of annoyance Adam answered the call.
"What is it?"
"A new mission. Yorinobu Arasaka-sama is going to Konpeki Plaza. You're assigned to escort him."
"Affirmative, I'll go to the roof right away."
A babysitting duty. It's supposed to be beneath him, but for Saburo's family it's very well within his duty. Watching the medical chamber refills its green liquid Adam turned away and walked out of his workshop. Heading towards the elevator.
"I'll be waiting for another round, Martinez."