I got back to my Apt without fanfare, or trouble. If people had avoided geared up me before, now everyone was was running for the hills. Everyone fears the Kraken!

I tried to relax watching the slag on the Holo. Nope this sucked, too popcorn brained to be entertaining.

So, I tried out my new skills as a Data Smith.

Since I couldn't interface directly, but only through my ICBD screen, everything went sooo slow.

I had to isolate feeds to pinpoint exact lines of code, instead of being able to just will what I wanted to examine. Joshua had it good.

It was fascinating work though. Each little snippit lead to another bit of code. Finally, I managed to inject code to override my door. Course my door had extra lock so it didn't matter but it was a start.

It took fifteen minutes. A real Tinkered up Smith, could do it in less than a second. Okay a poor start.

Eh, whatever it was fun, so I kept plugging away, building a small library of codes, my first frameworks for mobs, to do my bidding.

Mob stood for Motive Operative Bit. No clue why, but the most interesting part is if you forged them right, they grew and adapted to their tasks. Amazing considering the compact nature of the code. Far more advanced than the learning algorithms of my time.

What's the difference between a mob and a V.I. just scale or is it something else? Something to experiment with later.

My first mob, looked like a stick figure version of a cat. With Horns, I named it Meowser. Heh.

It's initial purpose was to act as a code injector between my ICBD and other devices. It quickly learned to cut through or even trick the simple wards of the devices in my apartment. It even made little "Nya" noises when it succeeded.

Still I doubt it could power through any moderate or better wards, or ones that counter attack.

Good news though, even if Meowser got scragged it's core backed up frequently.

That was a vulnerability, and could be backtraced.

So Meowser was not really a Wardslayer, at least not yet. We'd get there though.

I'd figure it out as I go along.

I was trying to give my Mob a stronger assault code, when the drone with my armor showed up. I used the ICDB to pay, and ripped open my new package.

[ GreyCorp Heavy Assault Armor

Tier 0

Full Body Protection, including Helmet with air filtration

Protection Extreme

Effect: Anti-Ballistic III, Anti-Slash II, Anti-Stab II, Anti-Explosion I ]

Come to Papa!

Ah, fits like a dream.

The matte hunter green armor was molded to look vaguely like a late period medieval knight. Everything had a rounded shape.

The helmet was smooth and featureless. No eye holes needed, the internal sensor suite was quite advanced.

Good. increases the impersonal nature of it. Death has no Name.

The outer coating was a ceramic, followed by a layer of a superalloy then the inner layer was some kind of fabric, smooth and squishy. This was expensive stuff.

It was half as thick as my old armor and weighed in at 35lbs all together. Light as a feather to me. I could wear it all day, everyday. Probably would too, I trusted no one.

I tested my movement, so smooth, I could even perform my weird exercise routine I created, what was it, five or six maybe seven days ago now? It's all running together now.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Wait really? Suddenly I felt like a ping pong ball being battered back and forth. That's ridiculous!

What is my life?

I needed to balance myself, but where the fuck am I going to find wilderness in this World.

"Maybe I should make some?" I whisper to myself, isn't that what a Druid would do?

I didn't have a clue, not really.

But I'm not just a Druid am I? Maybe not really one at all.

My Class is made of up of those others, but maybe it was it's own thing.

I was a Predator, that means I hunt, I kill.

Maybe I could try to figure something out to fix the fucked up environment of this place later.

First, I had prey to find.

Saul found me a juicy target, A meet was about to go down between the Barrens Runners and the Underlords.

Barrens Runners were at one point, not really a gang, they were nomadic and lived in the wastes, raiding the Corps and trying to live as free as they could. They often worked with the Road Knights to clean up the scum out there.

Or at least they did. Last few years, they had been raiding anyone and everyone, even coming into the Cities to snatch up the weaker folk. For Slaves, maybe even food.

Not sure why the big change, didn't really matter. They had a target on their backs. Now I would find them. Then they would die.

The Underlords, haunted the basements of certain ARC's and the maintenance tunnels between them. Something goes wrong with your water, your ac, your power, it's usually them fucking with things down there.

Most things in ARCs are designed to go years without requiring service, but thanks to The Underlords and similar gangs, All Maintenance technicians go through military training, and are armed and armored to the gills.

When they have to go down to check on things they hire Shade kill teams to clear the area out. They still go down in squad style teams, just to be sure they got to come back alive. It was a cruel vicious place down there. Kill Teams sounds like a good idea. Good for exp that is.

Other than that the Underlords, did it all; Junking, Scrapping, Cycing. There were also rumor of them being cannibals, feasting on the victims of their other activities. Sometimes people called them ghouls.

According to Saul, the Underlords found something in the deeps, something the Barrens wanted badly. Should be in a well protected case.

My Job was simple, kill them all, recover whatever they had, bring it back to Saul. Only Catch, "Please avoid puttin' a big slaggin' hole in the goods."

Aright. Time to play.

Just north of ARC 11-A, beyond what were consider the city limit proper, was where the meet was taking place. In some old warehousing. There were still buildings, people, businesses, and so on, at least till you went a couple miles further north, then wastelands. Fringes they were called. They had their own thing going on.

A lot less clean, less safe, a lot more of a reclaiming the land after an apocalypse vibe.

Smart choice for the Barrens, no one wants to meet the ghouls underground.

BWPD doesn't come out this far though, so everyone is a bit more fire happy. More hopped up, and motivated towards violence. Best way to survive.

There's a cool Club out here called Howlin' Jack's Dead Head. Someday I'd have to go, it was iconic in the TTRPG. Oh, there was it's big ass sign off in the distance. Good to know.

I parked just down the street from the warehouses. My gear made sneaking up kind of pointless, but I didn't want my poor Anky to get trashed.

I just started walking towards the main gate, no subtly here. However, Unnoticed kicked in, combined with Covert, and no one thought twice about the giant armored guy stalking at that. What a cheat!

I could see them two clusters of rusts(fools) about to get canned. I could even see a case in the hand of the leader of the pale as fuck Underlords.

I swung my HMG around made sure the selector was on burst fire, I was going to save full auto for when I could get a belt feed setup. Even without that, it felt like I held real power in my hands.

I had reached the gate and I opened it with a kick. You know the one, with the name of my, not, homeland belted out. Sounding like I was descended from Hercules himself.

Finally they noticed me. Took em long enough. But too, too late.

The shocked expressions though, on their grimy faces. Pale worm people or sun burned tanned people, didn't matter now.

I tilled my barrel at a slight downward angle going for their legs.

I unleashed the Kraken!

It roared. I walked it right to left. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

I walked it from left to right. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

What the rounds touched tore apart, meat or Metal didn't matter, all fell before the Kraken.

Their screams couldn't be heard over the Fire I dropped on them.

I don't even know if any of them fired back, couldn't hear it if they did. I didn't feel anything hit me either way.

More like an Autocannon than a HMG. But then again Future materials went into the gun. Crazy future propellants in the ammo, Insane future alloys made up the bullets. That was a whole lot of bang, I wasn't expecting.

I felt like I was a mech from Wartech! The power, the rush!

The stabilizer, cut the kick to almost nothing. What a trip. I could shoot it till the barrel melted and it would stay on target, every shot.

I calmed down, a chilling rational thought of becoming a psycho, just because I had the big guns.

I changed out the mag, calm as can be. All I felt was a cold burning in my veins.

Once the Kraken was reloaded, I set it back to it's resting position.

I pulled out the Avenger, and delivered the Coup de Grace to the few remaining Cold Cracked (Cold Cracked or just cracked - Broken, often by stress- In this sense it's a way of saying someone's fucked) junkers.

Sayonara, fuckfaces.

I grabbed the case. Checked it over for damage. Nope, it's good. Time to leave and get this to Saul.

An hour later I was home again, reviewing the action. Longing for more. Worrying about addiction.

There is a term in the TTRPG for Metalpunk, when you're nulling rusts left and right, and don't care. You're forging yourself, Burning away your Soul, hardening yourself into Metal, an alloy of what you were and the monster you're becoming. All part of becoming the best Chaser, riding the line of sanity and madness.

Victor had no Metal, but it hardly mattered, he could feel it burning.

And he didn't care anymore.

(AN: This last part with the change in perspective is intentional. I'm trying to communicate some thing here.)