An Engineer In Night City

"Hey Maine, how are you doing?" Mark asks the large man at their usual booth in the Afterlife. "Adapting well to your new chrome?"

"You finally started using Streetslang? I'm surprised it took you so long, Grandpa." Sasha teases Mark when he arrives, standing up and planting a peck on the man's cheek.

The rest of the group cheered on their companion for the bold move, while Mark appeared uncharacteristically subdued before he decided to roll with the joke. "Heh, back in my day we had to go to school by helping five hills on a snowstorm by foot! Both ways! And we liked it!"

Rebecca almost fell over the ground with the impression from Mark, and the Engineer sat down to ask for the menu as usual for this kind of meeting. "So I heard that Rebecca wants to get the 'Raiden' build installed? I can help you, but the amount of chrome you will put will push you hard. You will need to switch to medical implants when not on the job to avoid overtaxing your nerves. Are you sure you want to go under the knife for that?"

"Hey choom, I'm not a coward, who would turn down the opportunity to get installed some preen new chrome? I become a badass, make more eddies, and help the crew, it's a Nova deal."

"Looking at it that way, you're right." Mark concedes. "So, how are the preparations going."

"Honestly, they're as good as they could ever be." Dori answers, "The only way to prepare better is if you bring an army for the op, otherwise we reached the limit that our group can accomplish alone."

"You already got enough dirt on them to make them into your corporate slaves, what else do you need to negotiate with them?" Sasha asks to quench her curiosity.

"I don't want them to feel cornered." Mark explains, "If I do that they will panic and become more dangerous. Instead, I want to give them a specially prepared lifeline after I cut off their other options to have them in the palm of my hand and have them thank me for it. Getting proof of the shady business they're doing on M04 and MH04 will be the final nail in the coffin before we can negotiate. Who knew they would be keeping worse shit than their complex relationship with the Scav gangs? I'm happy that I convinced Gloria to move out of that hellhole."

"Pacifica isn't much better," Pilar tried to argue, "she might be safe inside the new habitational compound walls of the Factory, but they don't have much there and need to go out for their stuff."

"What the hell have you done with my brother, you impostor, that almost sounded insightful!"

Mark looks away from the two bickering siblings and turns to Maine.

"You said you were adapting well to the chrome, can you give me more details?"

"Yeah," Maine sits up excitedly, "I didn't know that I was hesitating too much while in a shoot-out. As you said, I had so many options that I ended up subconsciously freezing a few hundred milliseconds during combat to make a decision. I guess I became scared of being hung to dry like in the army since we had to make do with the bare minimum possible instead of being properly equipped."

"That's good, I guess you came back to form, then? It's probably different training every day in the army to keep readiness, and going against Cyberpuncks in Night City who think firing their gun sideways is a good idea. You probably picked up a few bad habits in response."

"Guilty as charged, " Maine says with a helpless shrug, "on the streets you're either the biggest fish, or someone takes you down in one bite. Instead of getting better, I took the easy way out and learned how to pick my battles."

"Guess I was right then, you guys have a problem with lack of advanced training. Thankfully, I have two things to remedy that. Miguel is already using them and running the security ragged." Mark hands Maine a special piece of equipment, "Slot it inside your power armor and it will allow you to enter into a special simulation area restricted to Wube Ic. Employees. There you can simulate combat against any kind of enemy through various scenarios. More importantly, though, it accelerates your training by compressing time by a factor of 25. The only caveat is that you can't continuously use it, the device requires a mandatory twenty-four hours cooldown period after each use, but it can stay active for up to twelve hours at the time."

"Nova! This should help me shake off the rust too." Maine exclaims excitedly. "Do you have scenarios beyond the target range and the default basic missions already installed? They have shit default missions and settings.

"Don't worry about it, I managed to get some impressive data to build the scenarios."

"Really, can you tell me what you're using as a base?"

"Adam Smasher's memories."

"You what!"

Mark leans back in his seat and recounts the conversation he had with the butcher of Arasaka.

They are inside a sterile office, lined with weapons and cybernetics like a museum exhibit. Most of the items are either old models or deprecated items made obsolete by new chrome, but everything on the display cases is functional, well-maintained, and ready to use at any time. The Arasaka Executioner himself is sitting in front of his desk doing paperwork, a mundane task that would be incredulous to the average cyberpunk witnessing the scene.

The Engineer knows better since Saburo Araska is the kind of person to stick to old traditions like a lamprey when they benefit him, or he feels his tastes are more important than practicality. Adam doesn't bother to 'look up' from his current task.

"Just because the Jap brat ordered me to listen to you doesn't mean I need to consider your words. Speak quickly and then leave."

"Alright. I want to buy any old records of your missions that you have available for sale."

The fullborg looks at Mark in complete silence, only the servos in his frame indicating that he isn't a statue. "What did you say, meat?"

"I heard you also do occasional consulting work, so I asked for a reference from Yorinobu. I want to train my security with the best on the market, and the best is you."

"You're damn right I'm the best there is," Adam Smasher growls back at Mark, "doesn't mean I will just give you access to some of my old classics. Most of them are classified missions from Arasaka that you have no right asking even with the Jap brat recommending you."

"I am fine with buying only missions related to your public appearances, and you might edit or change the BD whenever you wish to censor the sensitive details."

"Most meat would cry at the kind of combat I get myself involved in, even during my youth. You will ruin your employees with them."

"Does that mean you don't want them to suffer?"

"Don't put words in my mouth," Adam grunts out. "If they can tough it up it's another story." Adam pauses for a few moments, thinking it over. "I can license the BDs and rent them to you for one year, with allowances for extensions so long as Wube and Arasaka aren't in open conflict."

"Great! If you can recommend something for fighting against an entire army while swimming in a sea of blood, please put it in too."

"If you hate your employees that much, I am happy to contribute to their suffering."

After Mark finishes recounting the tale the group regards the Engineer with new eyes. "Do we really need to go through it?" Rebecca asks quickly in an uncharacteristically cowed voice, "I, I mean, sounds like super hard."

"The Adam's Classics are more for personal training but otherwise it's reserved for elite forces, and to create a baseline for certain simulations for the advanced training. You can challenge Adam's Classics once you feel confident enough in your skills, but the derived scenario helped a lot with my combat skills. Though I recommend you to start with the tutorial."

Maine looks a the dangerous thing in his hands. "Can I use it now, I'm curious to see what I'm dealing with here."

"Sure," Mark answers, "just make sure to turn off some of the settings in your armor, we don't want any accidents happening."

"Got it." Minae goes through the practiced safety mode of his chrome, installing the new piece of hardware on his power armor. Once installed, the equipment connects with his neural port and he leans back to enter the simulation.

Maine wakes up to a locker room full of guns and armor. One in particular had a silhouette similar to his current armor. Instead of black the armor is green, with a golden visor instead of a metal faceplate. Once he put it on, Maine couldn't help but admit the cut of his figure. Before his rebuild, Maine was a large man thanks to the redundant chrome he had, but now his size had a focused purpose that allowed him to perform better as a soldier and fighter.

He walks towards the directions pointed by the arrows, turning left for the tutorial area. There he finds several targets for him to shoot.

"Nothing special, but the interactivity is better than a normal braindance, with a better engine." There was a time when the countries tried to train a new generation of soldiers using VR, but the training never produced the right result, and the initiative was eventually scrapped.

"Then again, I shouldn't trust what the corpos or the government says. Especially now after what Reed asked from me."

After the stationary targets, Maine switches to moving targets, and he starts to feel the strain on his body. Mainen looked at the biomonitor and realized that if he didn't shoot and act with the proper posture he would gain a debuff, with the opposite being true as well. "Hell of a way to incentivize people to do what they're told."

The Edgenrunner forces himself to use the proper technique and goes to the next phase. Now he fights against dolls that shoot back, but they are dumb as rocks. The next group of dolls have better accuracy, and better reflexes, and can work in a group instead of each wandering on their own.

The teamwork alone made them a greater threat, and Minae had to use all his skills to defeat the group without being injured in the process.

In the next stage of the tutorial he had to fight against mercenary-grade soldiers, and his chrome and other debuffs would be taken out for him to try and fight at full power. Maine also had a 'shield' bar that would slowly recharge when he was not being shot at, and he used that to his advantage to pick off the soldiers one by one, occasionally coming close to the enemies and using his enhanced strength to crush their skulls on the ground. Eventually, the tutorial ended, and Maine was in front of two forking paths. One read retry and another read "Reach." Curious, he turned to the Reach path, but unfortunately, it was under construction.

When Maine leaves the simulation he is tired and hungry, but thankfully the food has already arrived. "I like what you did there," Maine admits, "I will look over the various scenarios later. This might be a BD training tool that works instead of promising the moon. What are you going to put on the 'Reach' setting."

Mark stops mid-bite and thinks back on what he wants this simulation training aid to be. To take advantage of the advanced technology to create a true super soldier that can go beyond winning battles, someone that can turn the direction of wars and change the world with their actions. Someone who can oppose monsters like Adam Smasher and bring hope to the grim reality of Cyberpunk.

"You will see. I have something special planned for that." The Engineer answers before returning to his meal, the possibilities running through his mind.