Interlude 5: The Mox

It was a strange business to be in, prostitution.

It took a certain kind of person to run a brothel, Rita had found, and another kind of person to patronise one. Disgusting worms, the lot of them, Rita didn't care that they indirectly paid her bills. As far as she was concerned, these brain-potatoes were all the same, just waiting to get violent with one of the girls when she inevitably refused one of their more depraved requests. And inevitably, they did, and inevitably, Rita would kick their sorry asses out.

That had been Rita's routine for years now, and she hadn't expected it to change anytime soon.

In many ways, it hadn't. Outside many of the places she used to work, the same routine would continue, Lizzie's bar chief among them. Still, a girl's gotta eat, and so Rita hustled at many of the other brothels all over town, working security. It was even dirtier work in those places than it was at Lizzie's, the clientele grimier, more desperate for their next fix, and consequently, more violent. If she didn't need the money, Rita would have quit a long time ago. She hated this kind of work. Hated the tough-girl persona she put on as she left for work at night and peeled off when she got back home in the morning, hated the after-hours tears, the desperation, all of it. Given what she saw and experienced on the daily, Rita swore she would never become anything more than tangentially involved in the whole affair. She wanted out, and she wanted out bad.

Well, Rita got her wish, and it was the worst news she had heard in years.

At many of her former haunts, they promptly replaced her when a cheaper, supposedly more reliable option came round. Frankly, Rita couldn't believe her ears. She was a member of the fuckin Mox! When it came to protecting Joytoys and whores, it just didn't get much more reliable than that.

And, to her eternal joy and sadness all at once, it did.

In her off time, Rita had gone to one of the old brothels in Heywood, watching the entranceway for the inevitable scuffle. I mean, come on, she had been replaced by some gonk from the fuckin Valentinos! It was only a matter of time till something happened. However, it was a longer time that Rita had ever anticipated she would have to wait. For three nights, she camped outside the entrance of the old place until shit went down. When she had last worked there, something would happen every three hours.

Still, when shit went down, it went down hard. Rita could even hear the distinctive crack of gunfire in the distance.

However, the incident lasted for less than two minutes uninterrupted before a speeding car with a white siren on top rolled up to the scene, filled to the brim with 6th Street gangoons. Rita predicted a bloodbath, and switched on her engine in anticipation of a getaway. Only, the Valentino recognised them, and began to work with them. It wasn't unheard of, for gangs to cooperate in Night City, but Rita couldn't remember hearing anything about these two factions making peace.

That was... surprising.

Even more surprising, however, was the fact that upon arriving at the scene, they clambered out of their car, a few additional gunshots could be heard, and then followed silence. Rita checked the time. Yep, in less than thirty seconds, a nearby firefight, a situation that might have taken the NCPD hours to get to, had been terminated in less than a minute. Frankly, Rita couldn't believe her fucking eyes.

How?! How was any of this possible!?

She had to be hallucinating, it simply couldn't be anything else. After all these years, the stress must finally have gotten to her, and she had turned into a brain-potato, like all the rest of the gonks. Driving around, she saw more storefronts than she had ever seen before, less people living in alleys, almost no garbage lining the pavement at all, the whole works. The people looked cleaner, healthier, happier. Hell, in some places, there were children playing in the streets under the watchful eyes of their parents, and all without a care in the world.

It was like a twisted dream.

She had spent practically her entire life imagining the world like this. Imagining the laughter of children, the smiles on their faces, of the feeling of safety that only the richest rich seemed to enjoy. She had a line-up of little clay sculptures in her house, made with wandering hands during her imaginings, her version of simulated utopia. She had long since relegated that notion to the dustbin of history, a long, long time ago. And yet here was the genuine article, just a few blocks away, all this time.

How had she missed this?

Suddenly, her concerns about the strange numbers of Animals and Maelstrom patronising Lizzie's all at the same time, of Tyger Claws showing more and more of their ugly mugs in Watson, was reduced to a mere triviality. Even her financial woes were pushed to the back of her mind, relegated in favour of the sheer wonder of a district she had visited a thousand times before, but had seemingly never paid attention to.

She was like a kid in a goddamn candy store.

Taking a deep breath revealed one of the best scents in the world. The stench of the city was still present, of industrial effluent in the river water, of rotting corpses tucked away into various alleyways, of the faeces left behind by those with no other choice but to go on the streets, of burning fuel and rubber, and yet, it all seemed to be more distant, somehow. As if all those concerns were merely a memory, tainting her experience of the smell of progress.

Rita couldn't believe her nose, because like an impacted colon, Rita had learnt long ago that the city never moved, at least not to become better. Something had to be wrong, and Rita remained sure that if she searched hard enough, some sordid secret would be exposed.

Walking down the street and peering down the alleyways revealed little. They weren't what Rita would call clean, but they were a damn sight better than in Watson. Sure, graffiti was plastered across the walls, but she had yet to stumble onto a single corpse, or even a trash bag, though the occasional piece of litter or rotting turd remained to ground her in reality and provide assurance to her mind that she was in fact still in Night City. Popping into one of the new stores for a bite to eat revealed even less. The standard fare could be found, but to Rita's surprise, an equally large section seemed to be dedicated to the sale of produce.

Real fruits, and real vegetables, Rita checked.

How the fuck could they afford this? Even better, how could they afford to sell it for just five eddies each?

She hadn't been living under a rock, had she? To have missed all this, it boggled the mind. She knew she was never the most sociable person, and preferred her own little bubble at home, where things were safe and clean rather than dangerous and dirty, but she couldn't have missed all this. Sure, she avoided the news like a plague, and bulk-ordered Kibble online, relishing the pleasures of her own imagination, but she could hardly have imagined that the world would have passed her by in such drastic a fashion. It was like an entirely different world down here, and asking the shopkeeper a few questions as she walked through checkout with as much produce as she could reasonably carry revealed the man responsible for it all.

A fucking corpo did this.

His company made the food, his company issued the loan that allowed the shopkeeper to open, his company convinced the gangs to provide the security that kept the shop open. The way the shopkeeper spoke about him, Rita wouldn't be surprised to find out he was the second coming.

He was also dead.

Why all of his achievements hadn't yet been pillaged by his many, many rivals remained a mystery. Still, as the day came to a close, and Rita made her way back to Watson, she sent a quick thanks into the ether for the little slice of joy she had found in Heywood. She had never been the religious or even spiritual type, but if that was possible, than hell, who knew what else could be real?

Still, like always, she had to leave it all behind, and make way for Lizzie's before opening hour. As the sun set behind the horizon, it's warm glow replaced by the harsh glare of neon, Rita hardened her heart and coarsened her language, preparing for the inevitably grungy shift ahead of her. Any thoughts of the district set aside for later, she spent her time breaking up fights, kicking people out, barring entry to the more rowdy entrants, and keeping a close eyes on the Claws lingering around the corner.

It was exhausting, draining work, but it was necessary. She was a Mox, and this is what they did.

Even still, it was hard to not notice the strangeness. The volume of rival gangoons had increased, and Rita could swear she had seen some of the ones from the rival gangs talking, instead of ripping each other's heads off like they normally did. In spite of the change in clientele, it seemed to her as if violence in the vicinity of the bar had actually decreased. Not by much, of course, but still, something was up. It was almost as if the three had decided on Lizzie's as neutral ground. Oh sure, there was still the occasional brawl, but there had yet to be a shooting, or even a case of grievous bodily harm in days.

Maelstrom, Animals and Tyger Claws, arm in arm.

It was a strange prospect to consider, and Rita struggled to decide if she was in favour of this new turn of events or not. If it could bring peace, and make her work even just a little easier, than it was surely something to look forwards to. However, Rita had spent too much time on the lowest rung of the ladder to believe that any such efforts would, or even could, last. In Night City, violence, much like prostitution, was simply far too profitable an enterprise for the three to abandon.

There also remained the question of how this would affect the Mox as a whole. They didn't really have a feud with anyone save for the Tyger Claws, but if the Claws made peace with even one of their rivals, they would have enough leftover members to decimate the Mox. Putting the word out amongst her compatriots revealed similar concerns, with Susie in particular fretting over the news. Settling old grudges was a pastime they all engaged in from time to time, and they knew just how bloody things could get once the ball got rolling.

The big question plaguing Rita's mind, however, was why?

Rivalries like the ones between the gangs were commonplace throughout Night City, and as a lifetime of experience informed Rita, they rarely ended well. More importantly, however, was the fact that they almost never got set aside. It wasn't at all unusual for gangs to cooperate at a low level, especially when there was eddies to be made in doing so, but for these three to set aside their conflicts, and all at once? The only reason that could possibly be the case was because they had found a common enemy, one they all saw a reason to band together against. Seemingly, someone had noticed the threat growing on their doorstep, and managed to convince the three of them to work together to see it eliminated.

And, all of a sudden, Rita Wheeler began to fear for the fate of her newfound slice of joy.

Because war was coming.

And the pressure mounts. The MC isn't the only ones with plans for the city...

With most of the setup done, I think we are almost back to the MC's perspective. Maybe one more interlude at the most.

Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Hope you guys are enjoying the story thus far!