Scrambled brains and a broken body can't really wipe away the weird feelings I felt while wandering the streets of Night City.
I wasn't what you'd call a obsessive fan of the series, or at least I don't think I was, but I always felt something relaxing about being in Cyberpunk's dystopian setting. I can recall hours spent ignoring the quest lines and just exploring the urban jungle and all it had to offer. I never bothered memorizing street names, or exact locations, for me it was all about the environmental storytelling. Finding what had happened from clues and hints scattered around a back street, or concealed in a nook away from the public eyes.
That same wanderlust was overtaking me again, if severely stunted thanks to my body's desire for sustenance.
I say 'sustenance' because I am certain what the people of NC consider food and what I call food are two wildly different things.
I'm genuinely worried that If I eat a Yikes tofu bar I will vomit out my entire insides.
… I'm slightly tempted to try Mr. Whitey if only to see what corporate-legal meth is like. It can't be any worse than certain twentieth-century burger joints. You know the one. The one with the arches. The one who's burger meat doesn't decay.
Moving back to my more personal quest for food.
With the tech in my body still dead or turned off I wasn't sure if I had any credits to my name. So paying for my food wasn't an option. I was either going to have to steal some food, steal some paper money, or find a third option that had yet to come to mind.
Luckily for me and my survival there were plenty of morally acceptable targets in Watson. Tygers, Scavs, Maelstromers.
As I walked the streets I collected a few pieces of refuse that caught my eyes.
Glass bottles, a worn out belt, and a few spools of shit quality wire.
Best part of a concrete jungle, there was plenty of stone all around to make an improvised weapon.
Five empty booze bottles were broken on their base, doing my damnest to bust them at an angle. Then came the sharpening. The first one shattered entirely when I failed to get a good angle and used too much pressure. Two to five came out all right, and vaguely knife shaped. Annoyingly fragile, but they'd have to work.
The crap-wires were wrapped around the mouth of the bottle-knives to give them a better grip, and the rest was braided to make a barely passable garrote line.
A strip of cloth was torn from my ragged shirt and used to hold the glass shards as I stomped them into a finer pile of powered and slivers. Another strip was used to loosely bind it into a easily unfurling pouch. I didn't have pocket sand, so pouch glass would have to make do.
Not the best weapons, but for a desperate ambush they'd be more than enough.
More marching, more calories burnt, and eventually I made it to the eastern slums. I knew just where to go now.
The shanty-town sheet metal shacks were right as a remembered, and with the half-dozen Tyger Claws loitering around.
I didn't need working optic enhancements to spot them.
Three were watching a TV on a couch at the end of their hobo style dock.
One was at the gate of the fence that wrapped around the place.
Two were 'patrolling' with all the attention and enthusiasm of a solid C plus student during a class about trade agreements
during the civil war era.
-
I don't like to hoist my own ego from where it should stay buried in the dirt, but I like to think I'm good at improvisation and maybe a little skilled in planning.
Neither of these really applied as I entered the shanty-fort with the subtlety of a Zergling rush.
A solid toss of some tech garbage struck right behind the gate grunt. I rushed when he turned, shoving the gate open and slamming it into him with all the weight my body could provide.
The blow stunned him, made him stumble. All I needed for knife number one to go to work.
As fast as I could I stabbed into his guts again and again, only switching targets to his neck when he tried to defend. I dragged him into the shack beside the gate. He was out of sight, but there was no missing the blood all over. I swiped his piece, a Unity of all things, and tucked it into my belt. The gun would be a last resort, if I alerted the others I'd be dead and this isekai would have a shit ending.
Not gonna lie, leaning really hard into the meta here to hide my nerves.
As expected another guard heard the noise from my entrance and came over to check it out.
The blood trail led him right to me.
The moment he crossed the threshold and spotted his choom, he took a glass edge under the chin and a second to the neck just beneath the chip slots.
Adrenaline was running high and I was feeling light headed. Two outta six down. Claw number two had a Shigure, and I was mildly irked that I could see how little gun was cared for. The grips had food embedded in the groves. A belt from one of the bodies was used to make an improvised gun strap.
I only got one bottle knife back from body number two. The one I'd driven in the side of the neck had shattered inside him. A fair trade off I hoped.
The second patroller was a woman, and I could see the heavy cyberware she was sporting. The Tyger's mantis blades obvious without having to see them unveiled. No doubt she'd have subdermal armor if she liked it up close and personal. With the tattoos I could see over her skin it was impossible for me to tell where her implants ended.
My only saving grace was the fact that she was too preoccupied skipping rocks to do her job properly. If she was standing on the sheet metal dock I doubted I could sneak up on her. I selected the bottle knife with the longest spike, and held it tightly in a reverse grip.
She had a ponytail. It made for an excellent handle.
I pulled her back with all the force I could muster. She fell back into the sand and I fell on her with my weapon ready. The tip went right above her right eye and went in with no resistance. Driven to the makeshift hilt by my weight.
I dragged her to the edge of the dock to keep her just out of sight and gave a quick pat down. No extra weapons. Just my luck.
Now it was time for the finale.
I approached the couch trio, holding a freshly untied pouch of glass in my right hand and my swiped Shigure in my left.
They failed to notice my approach.
The noticed me when I bellowed "Pocket glass!"
Startled, they jumped up and took a cloud of the meanest glitter to their faces.
I held down the trigger and kept the gun pointed at them till the magazine was empty.
Three more dead Tygers and an adrenaline high that I'd never experienced in any of my jumbled memories.
I was overwhelmingly light headed. Like I'd tried to laugh my lungs out after an asthmatic coughing fit.
With all my threats currently dead, I could do a more thorough and morbid inventory.
The three couch dwellers gave me a second Shigure, another Unity and a Tanto. Their clothes were ruined, which was a disappointment since some of them looked kinda nice... or they would without the blood and bullet holes.
Some rolls of paper money were laying on a table, and still usable... even if I had to wipe off some blood on the outermost bills.
Pulling the other corpses together with the couch trio let me go over their remains as second time as well. Checking pockets and so on, I managed to get more loot.
Two Max-Docs, a bounce back, more rolls of cash, ammo for my guns, and some shards that I think were money holders. At least I hoped they were. If I got pulled into some dramatic hidden story bullshit now I was gonna be pissed. I was hungry, achy, and quickly coming down from my murder high.
Hangry.
I was Hangry. Emphasis on the capital H there.
Searching the shanty shacks was next on the agenda.
To sum it up: junk, more junk, revenge of the junk, return of the junk, and legacy of the junk.
Sure there were broken parts and salvage to be made but it wasn't what I needed.
In my mind there was no way that a gathering of gangoons wouldn't have at least one stash of snacks somewhere around.
Since I started my search from the shacks beside the guarded gate, of fucking course it would be in the shack behind their improvised entertainment spot that would have what I was looking for.
A Fridge. Humming with electrical juice. A siren's call to the hope of something edible.
I opened it and had to hold back a scream of frustration.
Booze.
It was filled with various bottles of booze.
Booze and a half eaten burrito.
I'm purposefully ignoring the tray of EEZYBEEF sitting innocently by itself. I'm not that fuckin desperate... yet.
I'd like to tell you that the burrito tasted like victory. Like mana from heaven. That it was at least loaded with synthetic flavorings that made it appealing.
It tasted like a three day old Taco Bell burrito that had been left in an office mini-fridge the entire time. There are no words in existence that are synonymous with the amount of dissatisfaction I felt.
This was how I started my life in Night City.
Violence, adrenaline rushes, and disappointment.