Akaso
Unbroken One
Let me tell you a story about an absolute madman.
Some... Five, maybe six years back, I was running with a pretty decent scavenger crew. Had all the paperwork and permissions, we even had a body mod specialist and a sponsor backing us up.
Now, official jobs from the big boys upstairs always pay ridiculously well. It's a tradeoff for the frankly ridiculous hazards they put you through. One thing came to another, and even though things went sideways on one of the jobs, we did fulfill the mission directive and got paid - in no small thanks to a certain walking tank with hydraulic crushers for arms.
The aforementioned tank ended up paying for all the stimulants we could keep down, and our body mod specialist - let's call him Akuma, just for the sake of anonymity - so Akuma, he's always had a self-control problem. Everything he did, he did hard. In some cases, that was a huge plus. I don't think my mods were ever in a better condition than when I worked with him.
In others... No so much.
Simply put, Akuma went on a stimulant-fuelled mod bender. We didn't hear from him for weeks, though he did show up for our next assignment. A bit different than usual, but he showed up.
Most of us had our reservations about his choices, especially given the fact he refused to share his specs with us. But alas - we've all seen our share of ridiculous setups, and we've all seen many of them work astonishingly well.
The assignment was simple. Seek and destroy - the target, a hijacked Alpha Blank. To explain for those who aren't in the business, Blanks are surrogate bodies - Alpha is a grade of Blank designed for people who have Alpha grade mods and the associated power output - the sort of thing that can bust down a small building in one shot.
Since Blanks are... Well, Blank, they're exceptionally well guarded, because if a Blank falls into the wrong hands, it's easy to hijack given the proper equipment. Higher grade Blanks are basically kaiju waiting to happen.
I won't embellish any more than I have to - we got fucked. It turned out to be way, way stronger than the briefing suggested, 'cause whoever stole it knew his shit and kitted the thing out with enough weapons and plating to make old Piston Arms look like a lightweight.
One thing came to another, and Akuma finally got off his ass in his cozy little sniper spot and got in the thick of it. While we were fighting for our lives, barely dodging livingmetal flechette big enough to bisect a grown man, Akuma just kinda stood there, staring down the Blank.
After a few seconds, his clothes started burning off. Hell, even the occasional weeds near him started burning up, and he got that sort of twitchy look that people with overpowered mods get when they need to charge 'em up. You know the one, the look the Breaker Corps get when they charge their big ole arm cannons.
Next thing I know, my eardrums burst, and Akuma has his arm buried up to the elbow in the Blank's stomach - how he got his hands on milspec boosters is beyond me. The thing screeches in that horrible high-pitched tone, and I'm just staring as I see Akuma's lightweight armor plating fold away and huge fuckoff heatsinks fold out of his back. Not those military compact heatsinks - I'm talking huge, bulky industrial ones.
The Blank thrashes about, and Akuma's holding on for dear life as his heatsinks go from a dull orange to a bright yellow and nearly white... And suddenly back to a smoking, cold black, accompanied by a sound that I will never forget. A sort of head-splitting whine, and an incomprehensibly loud "THOOM".
I always had my doubts about just how ridiculous the whole heat manipulation thing with livingmetal power conduits was. But seeing a guy atomize a twenty-meter walking tank with his fist... It changes you.
