Neon Dream of Organic Toys

Chapter 1-5 (https://rentry.org/33k5y)
Chapter 6-X (YOU ARE HERE)

Chapter 6

Chloe silently watched the last of the putrid filth she had just sprayed off of the bathroom partitions circle down and disappear down the floor drain, as she had for the last few days. Her body ached with the weariness of labor, her paws were clammy and cold yet the spaces between her toes were uncomfortably warm and humid. She quickly looked around, jittery and hyperactive from the adrenaline steadily rushing through her blood. She wanted nothing more to fall over and die, yet her thundering heart readied her body for more work only to find nothing more. The last of the water gurgled before the tiles reappeared again.

Her right ear flicked as she heard the faint cacophony of workers outside but none anywhere near the bathroom exit.

She slowly raised the hose sprayer and gave the air above her head a few bursts, a little reward, a single moment of indulgence for a day of hard work. The icy mist settled on her face, droplets of water collecting on her fur before soaking through and chilling the skin of her face. The chlorine and various other harsh chemical purifiers mixed into the tap water burned her tongue and eyes, making her eyelids flutter as she blinked out tears. Despite all that she softly giggled in delirium, her vision unfocused and glazed, remembering the days not so long ago when she would have killed to drink water this unpolluted.

The tired, filthy fox shook her head and broke out of her trance, shivering a bit from both the water and the unease of such a familiar, yet utterly foreign place. The air was heavy and musty, the already unbearable humidity of the filthy public bathroom made even denser from her cleaning. Along with the moisture the acrid stink of the blue chemical cleaner that tickled her nose, covering up every other putrid scent. The formerly white and whole tiles that lined the floors and walls shimmered, still wet from their cleaning. An army of roaches skittered back into the hole in the wall which was their abode, escaping the headache-inducing flickering and incessantly buzzing fluorescent lights above which illuminated the most hurtful, racist, and sexually crude graffiti scrawled and carved onto every wall and mirror with each flash.

And yet, it was all fake. Each tile had been deliberately marked with fake cosmetic cracks and imperfections, just an hour ago she had been cleaning the floor when a team of detail artists entered to reink and restore all the graffiti that had been worn off during the day, and the fluorescent lights were nothing more than a digital screen behind a falsely dirty plastic shell. Not to mention that the toilets weren’t even toilets, just vaguely toilet shaped porcelain seats that you couldn’t even open.

Why?

The roaches, at least, were absolutely real. She had watched as yet another tired employee tipped the box of roaches into the release boxes hidden in the walls, not caring if a few spilled out. They would only add to the ambiance, after all.

The teenage vixen scrunched her eyebrows and confusingly peered through one of the waist-height holes through to the next stall. She poked at the inner edge of the plastic wall, remembering that it and everything underneath it was mysteriously crusty. It had obviously been cut open with a power tool but the edges had been sanded smooth, as if it was meant to come into close contact with a body part. All this effort, for what purpose? Was voyeurism such a popular pastime? Weren’t these toilets fake anyways?

She disconnected the hose from the wall, tossing the roll back onto her janitorial cart.

“Yo, Clo!” her walkie talkie buzzed.

Chloe cleared her throat and grabbed the radio clipped to the front of her overalls to respond, “Yeah, Penny?”

Penny’s gruff but friendly enough voice crackled through with her signature tired city drawl, “How ya doin? Me and the rest of the crew’r done down here. Ya finished cleanin’ the dollhouse gloryholes?”

The fox scratched the back of her neck, still trying to figure out what exactly a gloryhole was while squinting and looking around, trying to differentiate the actual dirt from the simulated dirt, “I… think so? I can’t really tell.”

“Yeeah, ah’ don’t blame ya. That shitroom’s always tripped me the hell up too. Ya at least sprayed it all down, right?”

“Yeah, I did that.”

“Nova, get down here for shits and showers cuz it’s gonna be playtime soon.”

“Gottit.”

Chloe clipped the walkie back onto her front. She slid her dark goggles back over her eyes and with a grunt and a firm kick, gave just enough momentum that her heavily loaded janitorial cart began to slowly roll back outside. If only there was an outside.

Above them the searing, skin-cooking violet grow lights that had blasted down artificial sunlight switched off with a firm, echoing clunk and began retracting back into the dark ceiling-sky, disorienting her for a moment.

She regained her balance, blinking out the weird shapes left in her vision before pushing her cart down the concrete sidewalk which was bordered on both sides by an unnaturally green grass. The worn wheels rattled and squeaked as they were rolled through the small park in the center of a destroyed but otherwise entirely typical inner city, complete with run down buildings and streets more pothole than asphalt.

On que, there was a simultaneous sigh of relief as the remaining day shift workers unzipped and tossed off their sweaty protective equipment they had been wearing for many hours to shield them from the grow lights they toiled under. As quickly as they paused they resumed their work, rushing around the artificial outside to finish spreading prop debris all over the roads. Compared to the beginning of their shift their numbers were much reduced, in the morning there had been nearly a hundred, perhaps more, toiling away. Now barely two dozen or so remained as the day shift had technically ended an hour ago.

She didn’t even bother to swivel her ears around anymore to listen for gossip as Amelia had ordered of her. As she had learned in the last few weeks the minimum wage grunts had very little interest in the going-ons of the high corpo structure. So long as their bellies were full enough and paychecks were signed they had no complaints overall.

Chloe scrunched her little nose in disappointment and more than a little worry. The day of her first report was fast approaching and she had hoped for a little more information to deliver to Amelia. Though it might be dismissive, the truth was that the opinion of low level workers was worth as much as their rank. The fact that the grunts didn’t care was nothing new. She would have to gain access to the big players in order to gather useful information, a chance she hadn’t gotten yet.

The large gantry crane above their heads buzzed back to life then whirred with a shuddering rattle as the giant white orb that simulated the sun and moon rolled back to its original position on heavily worn rails so that it might repeated its daily sisyphean journey across the large, expansive room while witnessing all the debauchery that occurred.

It was lifeless and sterile, like the set to a movie rather than an actual place to go. Why they would go to such efforts for something so fake and frivolous, she still neither knew nor understood.

There was another firm clunk from the control room, shrouding Chloe and all other workers in complete darkness until someone turned on the moonlight.

“On me, Gonkfuckers! On me!”

The short, white furred cat’s voice screeched across the empty set as she commanded her gaggle of Toys out of the elevators hidden behind a wall covered with a brick facade. She waved her clipboard around, gathering everyone around her for the briefing before their play.

She put two fingers in her mouth and released the most soul-shuddering screech of a whistle Chloe had ever heard, “CLEAR THE FUCK OUT!”

On queue, every non-Toy scrambled to pack up their equipment and head for the exits.

Chloe paused for a moment to wait for the exits to clear up. The crowd of Toys were all wearing perfectly normal clothing, a rather unusual sight within the confines of the club building. Listening to her commanding presence was a healthy variety of ages, genders, and species.

“Listen the fuck up! Don’t you dare miss any deets!” she screeched, making the hairs on the back of Chloe’s neck rise. She raised her clipboard and read off of the paper, “Tonight’s scenario is Spoils of War, Zootopia Edition! The humans have invaded and conquered the city of Zootopia, you are all rich suburban families who have tried to escape to the ghettos but have been found and will be forced to participate in the mass victory orgy where your new masters will savor the sweet prizes they have conquered!” she looked up from her papers, “Understood?!”

The crowd nodded in unison, even the ones who appeared to be no older than twelve.

Chloe stared, eyes wide in horror until she was reminded of the fact that even the child Toys were likely older than herself after a fawn, made and kept artificially underaged, caught her looking, trading her open mouthed gawking with an annoyed scowl and a raised middle finger.

She took the hint and began rolling her cart into the still open elevators, still glancing towards the large group that would be ‘raped’ by the end of the night.

“Everyone prep themselves?!”

They all nodded. The cat went around, demanding their confirmation concerning enemas, hymen restoration surgery, lactation-inducing hormone pills, and so on. The only thing Chloe understood was the fact that all the information they had willingly given her would have been extremely embarrassing in any other situation but was nothing more than routine here.

“Nova! Now pair up! Nuclear family style, so no same-sex couples! Each family gets a mother, father, son, daughter! Same shit as always, every hole is open to get fucked! And make it convincing! If your spouse and child gets raped in front of you better start fucking crying!”

Without looking, Chloe hit the button that would take her back to 2-14.

The doors slid closed with a faint squeal and a rattle, interrupting the incomprehensible chatter as the crowd began to partner up into families and plan out their backstories.

The ride down was short and uneventful but for whatever reason she found the gentle rocking of the lift’s worn rails and rollers strangely comforting. The elevator stopped, much too early for the young fox’s confused liking, the little chime ringing to signify that she had reached her destination as the doors slid back open.

Chloe shook her head and yawned as she kicked her heavy cart back into motion and out into the dark hallway, illuminated by only half of the normal lights. 2-14, the central Janitorial and Maintenance level, was mostly empty, its regular day staff having already gone to bed after a hard workday. The only ones left were the final stragglers of the night shift, having already clocked in hours before she had finished and were just now spreading out to wherever they were needed. She pushed her cart back into its spot next to the few dozen others which had already been left here, finally done for the day.

They too cared not for company politics. If this kept up Chloe would have nothing to report.

“Yo. Took ya a while…” Penny stuck her head out of her office next to the cart depot and yawned, stretching her pointy jaw wide open as she slid her hand up her loose fitting shirt and idly scratched her round, soft belly that was covered in patches of rough white and black fur. Her beady, yet still very clearly cybernetic eyes took in the sight of the filthy teenager standing before her.

“Daymn, you look like sheeeit.”

Chloe suppressed a wince as even with only one ear intact she still heard the opossum’s tired muscles pop as she stretched them past their normal range of movement.

“Sorry, I got uh, I got lost during the day and fell behind.” Chloe squeaked, shrinking under her supervisor’s unfocused gaze.

“Neugh…” the slightly chubby opossum relaxed her limbs before shrugging with a soft grunt, mumbling as she lazily rolled her chair back to her desk as she continued to slouch in her seat, “Yer new and ain’t a tard, ‘m sure y’ll learn the place quick.”

“You weren’t waiting for me, were you?”

Penny chuckled as she pulled out and lit another cigarette, her already naturally husky voice made even raspier by filling her lungs with a lifetime of ash and tar.

“Ya tryin’ somethin’ on me, gurl?!” she guffawed, roughly grabbing a breast and her crotch through her clothes, giving them a few good squeezes to make sure Chloe saw, “I’m taken if ya didn’t ‘ready know!”

She fake moaned as sexually she could, laughing even harder as the vixen’s face began to burn crimson. Penny put her hands on her cheeks, mockingly mewling like a high pitched virgin schoolgirl acting in a bad porno, “Ooh! Mister Diesel~! I can’t wait for you to take me tonight, ooh-!”

Chloe hid her face behind her hands as Penny slumped back in her chair and wheezed, her lungs desperately trying to bring in some air past the cigarette smoke.

“Ooh, shit…!” she breathed, before sinking even deeper into her seat and finally calming down, the ends of her mouth still stretched into a wide, stupid grin, “I’ll loan ya the XBD someday. Preem fucking shit, it ends with him…” she licked her lips as she held up the little datachip of pink plastic and a sticker featuring a half-naked muscular black human male looking down at the camera, “...naw! No spoilers!”

“R-Right…” the vixen gulped, “Is there anything else you need from me, Ma’am?”

Penny rolled, then narrowed her eyes in a playful exasperation, resting her head on her shoulder as she stared at Chloe, “Cam’aaaan! ‘ready told you not to call me that! I’d take fish-cunt or fatty-flabby over ‘ma’am’.” she raised her hands to make air quotes while mockingly quoting her.

Chloe shrunk under Penny’s unrestricted roughness. She knew she didn’t mean to be rude, but it was still awkward to have a lesson her mother had beaten into her mind to not only be tossed away but outright mocked. Perhaps her lessons in politeness and respect would have been more applicable with a person slightly higher up than Penny.

Something to remember, she noted.

“Just call me Penny. And naw, I got nothin'.” she grunted as she stretched her limbs yet again, sadly nodding towards her terminal with the half-finished order form for more cleaning supplies still sitting on the screen, “For you, anyhow. 'still got some bullshit to take care of so go ahead. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Penny waved her away, spinning around in her chair to give her computer another scowl before her short, pointy fingers resumed dancing on her keyboard.

The fatigue returned as Chloe entered the utility elevator yet again, this time all the way to the underground employee quarters. The ache in her muscles, the damp clothing she wore, the filth she stank of, the short allowance of solitude and self-realization allowed her to realize her state.

She breathed hot, stale air out of her nose as she stared at the ceiling and shrugged, resting her elbows on the rusty railing which was only half-bolted to the sides of the elevator. It was the same as yesterday. The same as the day before. And it would be the same tomorrow. Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, unclog the tampons people keep flushing.

Mop the floors, spray down the toilets, refill the soap dispensers, empty the garbage bins, un-

Inexplicably, tears began to well in Chloe’s eyes. She rubbed her thin upper arms with trembling hands in an effort to calm her shoulders as they shook harder than anything else as her throat began to constrict. Something clenched tightly at her young heart, the weakness that followed afterwards forcing her to slide down to her knees.

She looked around, blinking the tears out of her eyes. The young fox gasped as she experienced a single moment, or perhaps an eternity, of absolute clarity. She sat in a box of scratched steel and dull aluminum, illuminated by yellowed, flickering LEDs. Again, the maintenance-neglected lift shook her back and forth. The vixen coughed and dry heaved, only managing to drool a bit on the floor. There was nothing in her stomach to spew, she had been forced to skip lunch and it wasn’t like she actually felt nauseous.

A sudden wave of extreme fatigue but also a strange comforting warmth washed over Chloe in what could only be called a nostalgic deja vu as the elevator’s well worn rails and rollers made the lift gently rock back and forth with every floor it passed.

Chloe sniffled, clenched her jaw, and suppressed a sob.

She reached up and tightly gripped the scratched hand rails, just as she had grasped her mother’s hands as she sat on her lap as a child. Just like the lift, it was unsteady and unnerving to sit on, no matter how she adjusted herself she had never quite found the right place to settle into without the fear of sliding off. Yet ultimately she never did find another place so secure and comforting.

It had been barely a month and yet it felt like a lifetime. She sucked in musty air through the wide gaps of her missing teeth, wheezing through her rapidly drying throat as she squeezed her eyes and began to panic, trying to remember the rapidly-fading sight of her family’s faces.

Her mother… Her mother? She had… Brown. She had wide, dark brown eyes. Dark enough to be considered black in anything other than daylight. Her fur was the same, or at least she assumed so. Naturally, a light brown but permanently stained grey with ash and grit. Or was it grey with age and stress? Their life certainly was stressful.

Noelle, that was her name. Even now it felt weird to say or even think of her name. It was always Mother or some other honorific. Anything that could properly respect her position as head of the family. Always so thin… Except for some reason Chloe remembered her being rather plump for one so starving. Why would that be?

Her eyes widened a bit as she remembered that her mother had been pregnant. The vixen gripped the railing tighter as she calculated and recalculated the days which might have passed. Had she already given birth? Did she have a new brother or sister?

A short moment of horror stabbed at her heart as she remembered the very last memory of her mother was her trying to fight back, only to be easily swatted away.

Had there been any complications? Just because she got shot with a less-lethal round didn’t mean it didn’t cause damage, especially to a woman of such fragile health and in such a vulnerable state. Did she have a younger brother or sister now? Or, she corrected herself, an even younger sibling? Younger than-

Kita and Mace! The little hellions! Well, Kita was certainly the more adventurous of the two. Despite her mother’s protests, she was sure Kita would be an excellent gunslinger merc come adulthood. Mace was more reserved and cautious. A future netrunner, maybe? Chloe laughed in sheer delirious relief as she realized, from the new knowledge she had gained working here, that both of her little siblings would survive well enough in this hellhole of a city. Or, at least, she believed herself into thinking that.

And Zara! Her sister. Her older sister, the eldest of the children. Their second mother. Chloe breathed slowly, swallowing as she remembered her very first memory. She had been sitting down on a cushion stolen from a diner booth seat. A very bored Zara laid beside her, she couldn’t have been older than six, maybe seven and yet she had already accepted the responsibility of caring for her young sister. She rested her head on her hand and roughly stuffed the spoon of mush into Chloe’s mouth, causing her to cry.

She gasped and laughed, blinking out the last of her tears as the elevator finally squealed to a shuddering stop. The piercing light washed over her as the doors slid open. The vixen breathed in and out, in and out, refilling her lungs with stale, yet very much welcome cool underground air, expelling the uncomfortably hot and humid air that her lungs had been flooded with with each breath.

Despite everything, her family was still with her in spirit. Perhaps they were dead, maybe not. She hadn’t seen them be killed, anything was still possible. Despite everything, she hadn’t been killed herself. She raised a hand upwards and touched the stubby remains of her left ear. Wounded and scarred, perhaps. But not dead. Despite everything, she could still walk.

And walk she did, slowly stumbling forwards towards the showers.

The corridor was long and wide, her exhaustion making it seem even longer and wider than it usually was, and yet her short cry and reminiscing had given her a little boost of energy, just enough to continue onwards. She glanced upwards, wiping the tears from her tired eyes at the digital clock, itself half-dead, as it displayed flickering neon red numbers signifying that the current time could barely be called evening. The final stragglers yawned as they passed her in the opposite direction, having just missed the great migration from living quarters to their workplaces.

She slowly dragged herself towards the showers, trailing a cloud of mud and dust. In the bright lights of the underground she could now clearly see that her hazel fur was thoroughly soiled with the filth of the day’s work, splashed onto her during her shift and dried into crumbly chunks. Though now instead of the concrete and ash grey of her previous life it was now closer to a putrid mix of sewage brown and slimy green. Her boots squelched with each step, its waterproofness meaningless once it had filled up to her ankles with water. Everything ached, every movement she made was followed by a burning sensation in all her muscles and yet, just for now, everything seemed just a little bit easier to deal with.

A pair of light brown bunny girls walked past. One was short and round, her body soft and slightly pudgy with the youth and innocence of a child. The other was tall, her body curvy with the fertility and maturity of an experienced mother. Toys of Vanilla and Cream, Chloe recalled from somewhere in her mind. They wrinkled their noses as the stink coming off of Chloe finally reached their nostrils, giving the ground where the vixen stepped onto a wide berth as she passed, not wanting to get their freshly showered feet filthy before they had even serviced her first customer.

Chloe looked back at Vanilla for a long moment. Though her reaction had been nothing but disgust there was a certain part of her that yearned for a mother’s soft, unconditionally loving embrace, even if it wasn’t from her own.

She made a mental note to keep an eye on them. Rabbit Toys always had a universal appeal and as Main Characters she was sure some high-class cocks had been in them.

Toys in general were more concerned with keeping up with their appearances and personal connections than internal and external politics, though some definitely dipped their feet, paws, and other appendages deep into the hellscape filled with the landmines of drama and subterfuge that made up the silent corpo warfare. Main Characters especially enjoyed frequent visits by various important humans, and some, from the scant stories Chloe overheard, even had the personal ear and cock of Night City’s Mayor Mr. Lucius Rhyne himself. Finding these Toys would be an extremely high priority.

A thunderous roar erupted from the mess hall, echoing long through the tile hallways and ending with a soul-shattering bang. Now temporarily awake from the brief shot of adrenaline she nervously peered around the corner just in time to witness the minimum wage grunt carelessly slamming the heavy shutters of the hole-in-the-wall fast food joint as it ceased operations until the midnight lunch break.

“Uhg.”

Something poked her in the back.

She turned, only for the end of a well-worn baseball bat with its purple anodizing and decorative bedazzling covered with dried blood to roughly but not forcibly smush her in the face, shoving her off to the side and down onto her butt with a wet splat.

“How ‘bout you delta the fuck outta here, shitstain, eee-yuck!” a high-pitched valley girl accented voice ordered, fake gagging at Chloe’s stink as the slender, hot pink scaled snakegirl briskly slithered past.

“FYI,” another voice, this time a little lower but still as mean and condescending as the first, “the chow hall’s for squeaky fucks only.”

Chloe groaned and shook her head to clear her vision, hearing, then seeing a gaggle of about half a dozen anthros walk past. Some chuckled crude remarks at her, others didn’t even bother to look in her direction.

“Mimi!” she heard the first woman squeal in a sing-song voice as she raced into the rapidly emptying mess.

A very familiar voice yelped as he was cornered and buried under the mass of multiple girls. They grabbed and pulled, tormenting their unfortunate victim with kisses and the forcible burying of his face into their large, impressive breasts. He squeaked and squawked, now nothing more than a few blue feathers peeking out of his female prison.

“Aaaw, you got Din-Din for uusss!” the snake girl squealed annoyingly as she joined in, embracing the squawking Naomi in a rapidly constricting hug.

He swatted at them, annoyed but in the same playfully tolerated way a brother might tell a younger sister who had been pestering him to leave him alone. They rolled their eyes and stuck out their tongues, each giving him one last teasing pinch on the cheek before releasing him from their grasp and taking their seats around him. Naomi cleared his throat, smoothing out his thoroughly ruffled blue feathers.

They stared and rubbed their hands, drooling at the absolutely magnificent sight before them. A seemingly endless pile of EEZYBEEF Burgers, cans upon cans of soft drinks of every flavor imaginable, entire XXXL tubs of SCOP chili and jambalaya, takeout party boxes stuffed to bursting with dozens of Hawt Dawgz, sprinkled within were the usual prepackaged slop from the vending machines, and topping the mountain of food was a fancy-looking case of glass bottle of 100% Legit Pure Water.

By some silent, unseen signal they simultaneously descended onto the pile like locusts. Though by Chloe’s rough guesstimate the pile of food was more than enough to feed at least fifty, the six anthros plus Naomi had already put a sizable dent in their dinner meal. One put her deepthroating skills to good use, Hawt Dawg after Hawt Dawg disappearing down her maw without a single chew. No utensil ever touched the chili, its many devourers instead opting for thick straws if not tipping the whole tub straight into their mouths. The snake girl tossed an entire Ultrasized Bucket of Chik’n Strips into her mouth, followed by the world’s longest squirt of Honey’d Musturd from the bottle in one hand and Blastin’ Bar-Bee-Que from the other, again straight into her bottomless maw before swallowing it all in a single gulp.

Chloe could do nothing but stare in shock at the absolute spectacle of gluttony as they each consumed more food in ten minutes than she had ever eaten in an entire month. One didn’t even bother with unpacking her food, she bit down and swallowed, wrapper, cardboard, and all. Bits of shredded plastic and waxed paper slowly fell from above like the embers of a recently exploded firework and empty bottles and cans were launched out of the maelstrom like hot rocks from the raging mouth of a volcano. And yet, she noticed, not a single bit of food had been wasted.

Wrappers were first licked completely clean before they were balled up and tossed. Bottles were sliced open to recover every dab of their sauces. Greasy cardboard was squeezed for its residual flavor, if not outright eaten along with the other foods.

She could do nothing but continue to stare at the madness that unfolded before her. The mountain of food never seemed to shrink while the ring of trash around them grew ever larger.

“Ey.”

Chloe jumped as she finally felt Penny’s body heat radiating onto her exposed neck, only just managing to suppress a surprised yelp.

“What’cha lookin’ at?” Penny playfully chuckled as she rested the bottom of her chin onto the fox’s head and took one final drag of her cigarette before shooting it from her mouth with a soft pop. She guffawed, rolling her eyes at the gluttonous sight, “Oh, it’s those faggots again. Leave ‘em, if you don’t do it now you’ll be stuck here for the next hour. I don’t blame ya, they can be uh… uuh… hyp… hypnotic as fuck when they eat.”

Despite knowing better Penny too, accidentally stared for too long, her eyes glazed over and jaw relaxing as she too began to be entranced by the spectacle.

“Shit!” she hissed, shaking her head to break herself free, “Let’s go.”

She lightly smacked the top of Chloe’s head to break her own trance.

The vixen stumbled for a few steps, her brain still adjusting to processing something that was not watching Naomi’s girl group savagely brutalizing their dinner.

Penny laughed as she led her subordinate away from the mess hall, leaving behind the thundering mess behind them.

The showers were completely empty by the time they arrived, with even the very last of the residual water from its previous occupants having sufficient time to dry. Chloe stood and stared in awe for a moment, though she had seen the inside of the showers multiple times it was always when it was a foggy mess. Without it the shower room, of which there were at least a half dozen more, stretched for what seemed like eternity into the distance until it faded away into the darkness where the lights were not turned on.

“Chlo, start her up, will ‘ya?” the opossum ordered, her boss attitude returning for a moment as she tossed the young fox her jingling ring of maintenance keys.

Penny yawned and grunted, emptying out the contents of her pockets into her locker before struggling to squeeze out of her sweaty uniform off her body, depositing her stained, stretched-out clothing into the laundry tub for the morning crew to take away.

Chloe gulped and looked away, trying not to but finding it impossible to not look at her now very much naked boss who always stripped off her clothing much faster than anticipated by not wearing underwear. Faint scars and old chemical burns dotted her skin, her skin simply too disfigured for her fur to hide. While she was not outright obese, it was very clear from her build that Penny ate very well. Her limbs were thick and many parts of her jiggled as she walked. Despite all that and a seemingly permanent limp, her gait and movements were smooth and deliberate, the layers of fat just thick enough to hide the powerful muscles she had built up from years of slaving.

While it hadn’t been the first time she had seen her in the nude there had always been at least a dozen others to distract everyone else. Now it was just the two of them and nothing else to focus on.

Penny groaned, her distant swear quietly echoing as she returned to the closest showers once she realized that her favorite sitting spot was now under a broken spray head.

The old valves squeaked as the young fox turned them again and again until the shower sprinkler closest to them began to sputter.

“Gaah!” Chloe yelped as she was accidentally covered with ice-cold water.

Penny guffawed from the side as she watched it all unfold, joining the still clothed Chloe under the shower head which had finally begun to deliver warm water, filling the enormous shower room with a comfortably welcoming steam.

“Our tap water comes fucking cold from the city for some reason. Like so cold we had to insulate the utility tunnels or it sucks the heat from the entire building!” the opossum yelled from inside the cloud of steam as she wearily sat down on the cracked tiles before rolling onto her back with a rough grunt and deflating with an infinitely relieved sounding sigh.

Chloe leapt out of the rain, clothes now heavy with water. She nodded, quickly stripping herself bare, now awake and well motivated after being splashed. The sound of the water changed from a steady flow to a soft, bubbling sound as the automatic soap mixers began pumping bodywash into the shower. The teen steadied her steps, now cautious of slipping and falling.

Penny continued to lie on the floor, eyes closed as she let the warm water wash away the day’s filth. Chloe watched as the opossum’s short fur released all the dirt and grit it had accumulated before walking into the showers herself, evidence that even she, as their supervisor, was not free from hard physical labor and filth.

Suddenly, the opossum grabbed a breast and grinned lewdly at her again, “You still want some, don’t’cha?”

The fox jumped, not realizing that she had been watched.

“Sorry, I-” Chloe stopped, not knowing how to finish the sentence.

Penny laughed again, although this time from the heavy humidity her voice was now much smoother and more melodic, almost but not quite erasing a lifetime of puffing cigarettes. She closed her eyes, spitting her mouthful of water off to the side, dark with streaks of pollutants.

“Ya gotta ease up, girl. Can’t be pushed ‘round. Not here.”

Chloe nodded, looking away while slowly stripping off her own clothes. She blushed a little bit as she realized that the extremely lacy lingerie loaned from Charlie’s drawers was still the only underwear she had.

Making a mental note to buy more and thankful that Penny had not seen her wear Charlie’s underwear, the young fox stepped into the showers. The thick steam that had accumulated thankfully shrouded her nude form, allowing her to stand and enter more confidently. She looked down at the tiled floor, following the stream of dark, dirty water that came from her left, the only evidence that she was not alone in the showers.

Incoherent words came through the haze as Penny began to idly rub the grit from between her long toes. Today, however, it was Chloe who had gotten the worst of the daily dirt on her, and the chubby opossum began to scooch away from her own stinking puddle as it began to expand towards her.

“Ey watch the shitwater, choombatta!” Penny laughed, playfully whipping Chloe’s leg with her long, thin rat-like tail.

“Oh! Sorry!” the teenage vixen softly hissed, looking around to see if she could move away.

Penny guffawed as she scrubbed her arms, “Oh com’on, don’t be afraid to hit back ya gonk! I ain’t no bougie. Lil’ poop’s not gonna scare me!”

Chloe forced a small, awkward grin to her face as Penny’s uncontrolled howling boomed throughout the empty showers, the hard tiles reverberating her laughter right out the door and possibly all the way to the living quarters.

“So what district shat you out?”

“Pacifica.” Chloe finally answered after a long pause.

“Good ol’ asshole of NC.” Penny muttered as she scrubbed her round belly that wobbled slightly with each pass, “No wonder you ain’t scared of crawling through literal shit. We get most of our workers from Vista and Coronado. They’re… usually… good folks who aren’t afraid of getting dirty, but most won’t go that far.” the opossum shuddered as she remembered watching Chloe reaching into a drain cleanout earlier that week, pulling out a mass of condoms and other bodily wastes that had been flushed down the last few months, eventually solidifying into an unholy amalgamation of unspeakable filth, “Maybe we should start hiring more gonks from Pacifica…”

Chloe paused for a moment, sensing an opportunity.

“Well… I know some people.”

“They your folks?”

Chloe nodded slowly.

“Sorry, girl.” Penny shrugged, “But policy says no blood family employees. Lovers and fuckbuddies are ok, but no family.”

“Oh.” the vixen drooped her shoulders, her hopes for a reunification and a good job for her mother and sister dashed, “Why’s that?”

“Well…” the opossum began as she stuck her fingers in her ears to clean them, “A while ago… think I was like… fourteen or some shit? We had a huge fuckin’ nomad rat clan working for the club. Like eight outta ten workers here were rats. They were cheap and hard working as fuck. What no one realized was that all of them were the fuck family of one of the execs. Like they were all his blood bastards. One day they started fucking up the place, cutting wires, bustin’ water pipes, shit like that, demanding that Mr. Wilkins step down and their ratty daddy replace him ‘else they’d finish the job and burn the place down. Course’ he wasn’t having that shit so he flew in basically every single Animals gangster in the city and paid them some serious scratch for every rat they killed.”

Penny squeezed out a soft, yet horrified chuckle as she remembered possibly the darkest day of the Organic Toys club.

“Shit was wack. I watched a roided up Astartes-ass pitbull with ‘ceps thicker than a propane tank tear my old supervisor in half ‘fore tossing him out the window. Like literally,” she raised her arms and mimicked the pit’s exact movements she remembered, even adding in a few wet sound effects to add to the theatrics of the gory reenactment, “-grabbed his neck with one hand and his dick with the other and pulled him apart. Ain’t saying he didn’t deserve it but, man, fucked up way to go…”

Penny coughed and spat, her viscous phlegm, streaking black with pollutants, landing on the drain with a heavy splat.

“Last I heard Richard just shot the ratfucker exec who started this shit before taking OT private. I heard Ms. Charlie poked around his guts for shits n’ giggles and they found out he was a fucking ‘xotic.”

Chloe cocked her head in confusion, “Z… zotic?”

Penny nodded, “Exotics ‘r people who get their appearance surgically changed. Toys are technically ‘xotics but because they’re completely melted down and rebuilt than just modified they’re considered more than just ‘xotics. Us’ully it’s just some gonks who wanna change their fur into a neon nightclub carpet or fit their crotches with a novelty horse cock but some go crazy. Ratfucker? He was a full ‘xotic. A rat who modded himself to look human and climbed the corpo ladder. In this fucking city? The testicles on that guy… Legendary.” Penny shook her head in awe at the memory, “2020, he looked sus as fuck but you’d really have to squint. Short and scrawny, definitely mousy, but it was good enough to fool Richard. Anyways I would’ve given my bro a steady job here if it wasn’t for that but thankfully his food stand started making good money. Lucky bastard. Bangin’ burgers but… lucky bastard.”

Chloe scrunched up her face, trying to think of any way she could bypass that restriction when Penny shook her head.

“I know what you’re thinking, girl. Don’t do it.”

“Wha-?” the fox stepped back, not realizing that she had been read so easily.

“Yeah.” The opossum grunted as she lifted herself off the floor, wincing subtly as she began to put her weight back onto her tired, worn out knees, “Aw, fuck!” Penny hissed as she dropped back down on her back, breathing hard for a moment before looking backwards at Chloe, “Ey, mind givin’ me a hand?”

Chloe nodded, washing the soap off of her hands before holding them out. Penny grasped them tightly, wriggling her legs under her body so that Chloe wouldn’t have to lift up her whole weight. Still, the vixen grit her teeth as she pulled the chunky opossum back onto her feet. Chloe winced, hearing Penny’s heavily worn joints and tendons popping and creaking as they strained.

Penny put her hands on her thighs to support her weight and gasped, out of breath, “Thanks, choom. And naw, they DNA test everyone who applies here. If they match any of the employees as closer than cousins they get automatically rejected and I dunno if I got the pull to open that door. And believe me, this gig you’ve got going on ain’t something you want to throw away.”

“Throw away? I thought I was stuck here? I got a choice now?”

“Naw, not like that.” Penny coughed, clearing her throat again, “Listen, we might be stuck dealin’ with literal shit but it still ain’t the worst job we could be stuck doin’ here.” she glanced around before leaning in and whispering with an ever so slightly quivering voice, “There’s more underground levels deeper than here, even deeper than the Mariposa BioLabs. I dunno what the fuck they do down there but I know for a fucking fact that I’d rather be fixin’ toilets.”

She groaned as she pushed herself up, pretending to any who might be watching that the last few sentences were not spoken. She stretched her back as she turned to look at the currently out-of-order showers she usually used, the ones she liked because they had raised sitting areas underneath that eased her leg pains when standing, “Fuckers,” she hissed, “How the absolute fuck do you break a ceiling sprayer? Goddammit… this is gonna be expensive…”

“How expensive?”

Penny sighed as she scrubbed her head, “Like I-gotta-get-the-fucking-GM-to-sign-off-on-it expensive.”

Chloe scrunched her brows. Penny wasn’t just some minimum wage grunt. Not the highest ranking manager but she was still part of the Organic Toys administration in some form or another. Perhaps there was something to learn here. “Amelia? Is she gonna be a problem?”

“Hope she ain’t gonna be.” the opossum turned her head upwards and stretched her jaw wide, catching some of the hot water in her mouth before gurgling and spitting it out, “‘melia’s pretty good with spending money to keep things running, thank fuck she ain’t an eddy-pinchin cheapass. But holy fuck is she autistic with deep detes. She wants estimates and margins on everything. How many work-minutes it took to fix shit, what kind of rep our supplier has, weight and materials of the installed part, even meaningless fuckin’ shit like how much water it’s gonna take to properly test the new part. Shit drives me crazy…”

Amelia, a micromanager? Chloe nodded, perfectly believable. But was it worth reporting?

The two exited the showers, turning off the spray heads before enjoying the comforting hot blast of the overhead air dryers in lieu of towels. Chloe ran her fingers through her puffed up fur, feeling the absolute softness and cleanliness that all Toys were required to have. The fact that all were allowed to use the same soaps and conditioners was a bonus to the rest of the workers.

Chloe grabbed her sweat-soaked underwear and bunched it up for her armpit to hold, having learned quickly that casual nudity here was less attention-grabbing than wearing lingerie in an attempt to cover one’s self. And yet she still blushed as she exited with Penny, deliberately kept her walking speed slow to match her boss’ subtle yet obviously pained limp. It was about time she got used to her new normal.

“So what’s goin’ on with you an’ her?”

Chloe's remaining ear twitched, betraying her shock.

Her mind raced, tripping over its metaphorical feet to come as it was forced back to full throttle to come up with some sort of response. A remark dismissing her question would only arouse suspicion. A quick lie would accomplish much the same, though favoritism by management was nothing new. Perhaps that was the direction she should pursue.

The young vixen’s eyes flicked up to meet Penny’s, but immediately turned away. She found her tongue tied into a tight knot by her mother’s strict discipline. If only she had more time to think.

Or perhaps she was overthinking things.

She steeled her throat, taking firm control of her usually quivering speech and forcing it to not taint her response with a suspicious sounding stutter, “What do you mean?” Chloe responded slowly.

Penny reached into her wallet to display her own teal-colored Priority Four Ration Card, the very same one Chloe had been issued.

“This… fuckin’... thing…” the opossum’s voice went low for a single moment before warming up, “took me a decade and a motherfuckin’ half to earn. P6 and P5 cards are a load of shit. You can barely buy a meal’s worth of chow with those each day. Shit, I used to be supermodel-thin if you can believe that. But P4 cards let you actually eat til you're full. Even allow you to have some fun with a Toy if you skip a few lunches and save up. You’re good, Chloe. Real good. But there’s no way in fucking hell you could’a earned this in a month.”

Chloe gulped. Penny chuckled, thankfully neither mockingly nor maliciously but just in confusion.

“And what’s up with the undies?” she pointed to the very sexy bra and panties Chloe held in her hands, trying to hide them from the world.

“Oh,” Chloe nervously held them out. Presented to her boss and in the light of the hallways they seemed to become more and more valuable then she had initially realized and Charlie certainly seemed like the type to not worry about how expensive her underwear was. “Charlie let me borrow these. And I don’t have any others.”

Penny paused for a moment in thought, then shook her head as she deflated.

“Sure.” she cleared her throat, “Look, I ain’t askin’ because I’m-” she paused again, “Naw, no lies, I am a bit jelly that you’re getting the preem treatment. But I gotta know, as your boss…” Penny leaned close and narrowed her beady eyes, asserting her authority over Chloe for the first time but also in an attempt to hide the bit of fear her clenched jaw quivered with, “You’ve got a fucking P4 rat-card, wearin’ some expensive lookin’ lingerie, and a direct connection with the GM, our head Ripperdoc, that cunty VP, and Mistah’ Richard ‘Daddy’ Wilkins him-fuckin'-self. Are you or are you not someone I should be fucking scared of?”

Chloe shook her head, of that much she was certain.

Penny continued to narrow her eyes for a moment before easing away.

“Fine. Frankly, I dunno know who the fuck you are or if I even wanna know. You’ve got a huge fucking debt. But you’re getting the good treatment. But you’re still unfuckin’ toilets. Willingly. Why?” she muttered to herself.

A line of vending machines buzzed as they entered the now nearly empty mess hall. The mess made by Naomi’s gang earlier had been swept away, leaving nothing but distant echoes of their gluttony. Chloe glanced at Penny to make sure she was free to leave before she walked to the vending machines, wondering what to eat.

“Shit…” Penny mumbled as she waddled over to the pizza joint.

The scruffy, skeleton-thin cig-smoking tanuki solo manning the small food joint mindlessly unwrapped a new yet already inedible looking frozen pizza, carelessly launching it in the oven like a frisbee while nodding to Penny as she looked at the week-old slices and sides still sitting in the hot displays.

“Sup, bitch.”

“Sup, cunt.”

He took a long drag of his knockoff cigarette and tossed it backwards over his shoulder into the overflowing sink.

“Don’t you dare fuck up my display.” the tanuki grunted, resting his greasy elbows on top of the even greasier warmers.

“Oh fuck off, Masao, it always looks like shit anyways.” Penny grunted in return, squinting her eyes to peer past the dirty glass before sticking her ration card in the half-broken reader, “Gimme one’a them.”

Masao raised an eyebrow but didn’t object as he slid the window open and scooped up a medium Honey’d Locust and Extra UltraCheeze pizza onto a paper plate before handing it over. The crust was well beyond cardboard, having been baked into a disc of unbreakable adamantium that could’ve been used as armor plate. The cheese had formed into a single dark brown flake while the locusts fossilized from being heated into oblivion.

“I’ll be honest Penny, I dunno how the fuck you can stomach this slop. I can eat here for free and I still don’t eat here.”

Penny shrugged as she rolled one of the slices into a burrito, stuck half of it into her maw and bit into it, aiming her teeth towards the largest concentration of fried locusts so that it would create the loudest possible crunch, grinning mischievously as she watched the tanuki scrunch his face in sheer disgust at his food actually being eaten.

“Goddamn possums…” Masao shook his head and grabbed a ladle, turning around so that he wouldn’t have to see any more of the disgusting rodent who only continued to chew with her mouth wide open to maximize the sound.

The opossum cackled as she made her escape, ducking her head to dodge the ladle that had been flung at her head.

Chloe stared at the long line of vending machines. She had passed by machines selling the very same items many, many times in her youth as a streetrat, yearning to fill her empty stomach with the delectable goods hidden within. And now, with a surprisingly generous allowance she could buy it all, anything she wanted was hers. All she had to do was slide her card and press a button or two. The last few times she had defaulted to the same Burrito XXL that she last ate with her family before she was dragged away, but now…

“Suh what’choo havin’?” Penny spoke through her full mouth, chewing audibly with each bite.

Chloe shrugged as her boss walked up behind her.

“...I dunno.” she finally mumbled, still staring at the seemingly endless options presented before her. The machine right before her advertised something called “Mexican”, whatever that was. The fact that she could now afford anything and everything the machines could offer only made choosing anything much more difficult.

“Yeah the chow here ain’t too great, even if you got the scratch. The best you can get here is probably Molly-O’s. They’re good, but they sure as shit ain’t worth the eddies they charge. Ya gotta go out for the good stuff.”

Or at least that’s what Penny would have said had she not been speaking through a mouthful of half chewed locust pizza, the foul smell of which finally made Chloe wrinkle her nose and look away.

Penny grinned and held out the remainder of her pizza, playfully mocking the one disgusting tolerance she still had over Chloe.

“Want some?”

Chloe shook her head, trying not to look too disgusted for politeness’ sake, “No thanks.”

She let out a final chuckle before waddling away, “Suit yourself. Imma head out. G’night.”

“Good night…” Chloe mumbled back before returning to stare at the vending machines. After a while she randomly pressed a button, making the machine whirr and buzz softly for a minute before two freshly microwaved tamales wrapped in flashy plastic flopped out of the bottom.

The vixen slowly crawled back to her quarters, wincing a bit as her phantom pain stung at her left leg with each step. During work it was something minor enough to be ignored but now with her mind free there was little else to focus on. She gently squeezed her warm, paper-wrapped dinner with her hands to feel their soft delectable innards, her stomach yearning to be filled. Chloe swallowed, resisting the urge. Her mother had hammered into her mind that dinner was to be eaten at the table and not while walking around.

Once upon a time she would have killed to be free of her mother’s constant nagging, but now? It was so strange, being so far away from home she thought she would have long abandoned everything she had taught, to have made her own rules and ways. Yet here she was, constantly squeezing her eyes to remember the ways of things her mother had said to her.

The door to the boiler room, or at least what used to be the boiler room, swung open smoothly. The spiders skittered away as the old, tired light bulb flickered back to life with a pull of the little metal chain, revealing a tiny room of dusty bare concrete, filled with rusting pipes and machinery whose purpose was unknown to her. Milk crates and stolen sofa cushions made her bed in the corner while what little personal belongings she had collected was hidden away in a small drawstring bag. Her uniform for the next day was placed on a box that was her only table, folded neatly. She'd have to pick up a new pair of boots later.

The modified corn masa seemed even gritter than usual as she bit into her dinner.

Chloe looked around her silent room and began to think. Everyone else had been stuffed into long rows of barracks bunks, all except her. Was it part of that “preem” treatment Penny was referring to to receive her very own room or was it a punishment of a shitty room that was simply not shared by anyone else?

She casually brushed off a centipede that had crawled up her leg. Preem treatment, she decided as she rolled onto her back, blowing out a cloud of dust from the worn out cushions. There was nothing here worse than what she was already used to.

Chloe finished off her dinner and balled up the wrappers before tossing them into her dedicated garbage box.

She laid in silence for a few moments to get her thoughts in order.

Worry, as she was failing Amelia for not having any information important enough to report. Being useful was the only reason she was not starving. Hopefully she would understand that she hadn’t had much contact with the important people.

Gratitude towards Penny for not being a horrible boss. Chloe shuddered as she imagined a different life in which she was forced to work under Samantha.

A longing to be reunited with her family once more. But without an address or communication implants even talking was impossible. And a bit of guilt towards them as well. A whole month had passed and what had she done to reunite with them? She couldn’t reasonably expect to be rescued, she was on her own. And yet here she was, mindlessly grinding away at her job. Her mother would have given her head a firm whack with a rolled up screamsheet for even implying that a day spent on honest work for honest pay was a day wasted.

She felt Zara’s hand playfully smack her on the shoulder, reminding her that boring days weren’t bad days and that’s all she needed to worry about.

The bulb flickered once more. A sudden rush of fatigue and tightness gripped the back of her eyes, making her yawn widely. Today had been no different than any other but for some reason she felt more tired than usual, as if six months had passed and this was the first time she had laid down.

The teen rubbed the sides of her head as the yawn made her jaw muscles painfully yet heavily satisfyingly ache. She sluggishly reached upwards and tugged on the light string, plunging her and her room into darkness.

Not every day has to be an adventure, Zara had said.

Chloe huffed, flaring her nostrils as the annoying little sister she was resurfaced once more before closing her eyes for the last time that night.

In this fucking city?

Sure.

Chapter 7

Zara kneeled as she tossed the jagged shard of scrap aluminum aside, its usefulness as a makeshift spade now unnecessary after the deed was done. The grimy, oily mud thankfully came off of her hands easily under the cool rainwater splashing out of the broken downspout, though completely picking it out from under her cracked and yellowed nails proved almost impossible. She scrunched her nose as the earth below her began to release its signature stink of sewage and rot, growing more intense with each additional drop of moisture it drank.

The skies above them thundered with the rage or perhaps coughing of Mother Nature herself, tortured by the same pollution that poisoned all their bodies. The dense, acrid smog settled hard that night but the intense neon and glamor of Night City blasted through the haze without issue, screaming for their advertisements to be heard over their ancient mother’s desperate cries to return to a simpler, saner life.

She moved aside, letting Kita and Mace wash up as well. They were short enough and the downspout broken high enough for her two siblings to squat below the outflow of water, scrubbing their whole bodies of the filth they had accumulated in the past hour.

Zara watched them rub their little hands together, trying to ignore the smashing of scrap metal and the yelling of poorly paid workers emptying out the old scrapyard. She winced, her throat clenching as she heard the deep soul-crushing crunch of what was definitely the old Arasaka shipping container as it was unceremoniously dumped into the back of a cargo truck. She tried to focus her hearing on the relaxing white noise of the rain instead of the cacophony of all their things, all their work of the past decade, tossed out without a second of hesitation.

Had the shootout brought unwelcome attention? No, it couldn’t have. Gunfights occur so often in Night City that NCPD wouldn’t bother responding to a minor, casualty-free shootout happening in the asshole of Pacifica. Her thoughts went back to the pig and the weird monkey thing that had taken Chloe away.

She wanted to feel angry at them but the righteous piece of her heart that her mother had forged into her soul simply couldn’t. They were simple mercenaries, working for shelter and food. Distasteful, perhaps. But legitimate. And Chloe had done wrong. Considering the fact that it was only now that their home was being demolished, a full month after her swift and forced departure, it was likely they hadn’t been the catalyst for them going homeless either.

She allowed herself a single quick glance backwards to the lot that once hosted their old home and saw nothing.

Just the maw of Night City consuming another livelihood, what else was new.

Tire tracks and booted footprints were all that was left, erasing even the outline of where everything had sat in the dirt. She watched as the large electromagnet crane trundled on over to the next lot over, loading the next empty truck with more metal. The familiar sight they saw every morning would also soon be gone. She had woken up that morning cursing their life and situation, cursing the rusted heap of unwanted trash that surrounded them and now there was nothing more she wanted back.

Her tired eyelids sagged as she looked off in the distance, red and blue lights and guns flashing in the darkness as the drug lab they worked at was raided. Smoke and flames danced out of the upstairs windows where the powder mixers had turned cracked crystals into readily inhalable and meltable dust.

The roof launched into the air as a huge fireball ignited, clearly visible even from a mile away. The pressure distillers had run dry with no one to refill them due to the ongoing raid, Zara idly thought to herself as the flames turned a lovely iridescent green and laundry detergent blue from the unique blend of illicit chemicals. She felt a slight pang of pity watching tiny figures, now on fire, roll around in agony as the rest of the drug lab burnt to the ground.

Now they truly had nothing.

The elder teen squeezed her eyes shut, her tears hidden by the rain. She could remember the very first day her mother had moved into the dilapidated shipping container. She herself had been barely seven, silently resenting the infant Chloe in her mother’s arms for the attention she stole from their mother, that little bundle of joy then no more than a month old.

But there was no bundle of joy, not this time.

Noelle kneeled in the mud, her ashen grey fur barely visible in the low light. Her emaciated arms drooping limp and weak by her sides, the same spade of muddy metal still sitting in her open hand. Her head leaned to her side resting onto her shoulder, her neck too weak to hold the weight.

Zara sighed as she looked back. The shredded remnants of her mother’s clothes were soaked, sticking to the frail, skeletal figure of the woman who had birthed her. She looked as if a stiff wind could tip her over, turning her into dust before her body could hit the ground.

Kita and Mace continued to scrub themselves, talking casually as they washed the other’s back with tainted water. Zara only stared with sad eyes, not wanting to break them out of their childhood innocence. They had a whole life of bad memories to look forward to, they didn’t need another one.

They finished and left, still seemingly covered in dirt. Zara narrowed her eyes and flared her nostrils with a frustrated exhale, about to give them a stern talking and a glare until she remembered that that was their natural fur color.

She raised her shaking arm, scratching her rough fur. Though the grime of the streets had dyed their fur all the same ashy grey that never came off with mere water, in reality they were all a bit different. Chloe was the closest to their mother, with a gentle brown fur that was common for their type. Kita and Mace, being twins, both had a much darker coat. As far as she remembered she herself might’ve possessed pure white fur, though it might’ve been nothing more than a childhood dream she had once.

She looked towards her mother.

The soft, grassless earth below her squished with each step, deforming easily but also sticking to the bottom of her bare paws with a wet squelch each time she raised her feet.

She stopped behind her unmoving, unrelenting mother.

Zara loved her mother. All of them did. But for a single, horrible moment all she could feel was a little grinding frustration and maybe even a simmering resentment. All she had to do was raise her fist and the obstacle preventing her from attempting to lift them out of poverty would be gone.

She clenched her hands and jaw, anger drugging her blood with adrenaline, ready to beat this useless woman for preventing her from pursuing the many opportunities this city offered. They were always looking for mercs, even the gonk jobs paid better than the drug lab. One of their big buyers was a freak who ran an underground XBD studio, considering the amount of nerve stims and souped-up beta blockers he bought it was no secret he was profiting greatly.

After what seemed like an eternity she finally exhaled through her teeth, emptying her lungs of air made hotter than normal by her frustrations. Now was not the time but the silent anger of being restrained while everyone else had the freedom to savagely make a life for themselves burned at her heart.

No, now was not the time.

Noelle continued to stare blankly at the little mound of dirt before her, topped with the littlest cross crudely cut from the cleanest piece of plastic they had found.

Zara slowly squatted down next to her mother, resting her chin in her arms and her elbows on her knees, blinking out the stinging rain from her eyes. For a single fleeting moment she was relieved. Not happy, but in a disgustingly guilty sense, relieved that she did not have another crying mouth to feed. Not one more thing to wake her up at night. No more diapers to change and clean. And with Chloe gone that responsibility would be hers. And though it was a horrid thought Zara was silently thankful that another innocent life had been spared from this suffering without it being anyone’s fault in particular.

As penance, she closed her eyes and murmured a silent prayer.

The first ten minutes of the baby’s life was spent crying heartily, her tiny hand gripped her finger with formidable, respectable strength. For an infant, anyways. But the moment she began to suckle from her mother’s teat she froze up and never moved again. Kita and Mace hadn’t even had the chance to meet their smallest sister.

She didn’t know if this was the pig’s fault either. A pregnant female suffering physical trauma would have a higher chance of miscarriage, but that had been a whole month ago. If he had something to do with it it would have occurred long ago. Or, at least she thought that was how things worked. Perhaps it was the myriad of pollutants breathed and consumed with each breath of air and mouthful of scavenged, processed food.

Yes, she deluded herself into believing, that was probably it. Besides, he had been nice enough to leave a little something as an apology, even remaining calm and civil despite having a shotgun shoved into his chest. Just another good person in a bad world, no different than them or every other poor soul stuck in this hell. In hindsight they should have remained calm and asked him where Chloe had been taken but in the heat of the moment and while the pain of being shot by the pig merc's revolver still throbbed in their bellies, they had demanded his immediate departure which he did so with quiet grace.

Zara opened her eyes to the same bitter dreariness that had been there before. Unfortunately during her prayer God hadn’t descended from the heavens and waved his hand and made everything magically better. At this point she wasn’t quite sure if this whole worship thing was doing much. Perhaps they were already in hell.

Minutes passed in silence until her mother’s mouth began to gape without speaking. Zara could only stare. Confused, then worried as she began to gasp for breath like a fish out of water.

“Mom?” Zara whispered as her mother’s head began to rock back and forth like a bobble head doll, her neck was too soft and weak to hold the weight of a lifetime of stress that had filled her head to bursting.

Raspy gasps were all Noelle could make until her exhausted tongue could twist into the right position and speak the right name.

“Elijah…”

“Eli…jah?” Zara gripped her mother’s shoulder as softly as she could.

Noelle placed her own cold, bony thin hand weakly above hers and spoke, her lungs only managing a soft whisper, barely audible through the rain, “You… had a baby brother… another one…”

Vague memories of another sibling before Chloe flickered to life but disappeared just as quickly.

“Elijah wasn’t even a day old. He was so small…” the wrinkles on Noelle’s face seemed to get darker as the reality hit her, “A-And now Sylvia… Oh, God…”

She began to fall to her side, her body now completely limp. Zara jumped into action, managing to catch her before she fell into the mud. Noelle continued to talk, not even realizing that her body had no energy to even keep herself up.

“Elijah he was… He was named after your great-grandfather… I remember going to his house in…” Noelle’s tired eyes softly glowed with long forgotten nostalgia for a fleeting moment, “... in… Iowa. He was already dead but I saw pictures of him. Painted pictures. Arcadia… His home was a little bit south of Arcadia. They built it in 1888… the last slice of America that hadn’t been burnt down yet. It was so… so beautiful…” Noelle weakly waved her arms around seemingly randomly, her glazed and unfocused eyes giving her the appearance of a rambling crazy having a mental episode, “and- and the people there were wonderful. They were so nice… We ate corn. There was so much corn…! None of it fake. They grilled a giant pile of it over Uncle’s fire pit an-a-and then momma put a huge heap of good butter on mine...”

Zara held her mother’s much smaller, much lighter body in her arms as she looked back at her oldest daughter in the eyes. In that moment, Noelle could do nothing more than to press deeper into Zara’s embrace.

Her eyes went wide, not realizing just how physically pathetic and powerless her mother actually was. During her childhood and certainly well past that it was always her mother who worked extra hard, who doled out the physical punishment, and never seemed to falter no matter what maelstrom they sailed through. But now all she held in her arms was a vaguely fox-shaped mound of sobbing skin hanging off of bones heavy with lead and arsenic and yet still barely enough to weigh down a balloon.

“Great Auntie Sylvia was… when I was little I thought she was the meanest lady around but…” she sniffled, “She saw. She knew. She knew the world I was gonna grow up in. Momma didn’t listen, she just kept loving me. I watched Auntie yell at her. And then she beat her. Auntie didn’t like that I was being raised weak. Auntie didn’t like how Momma wasn’t hard on me. One day she took me away. She taught me things I thought I didn’t need to know. How her family survived the Collapse and escaped Virginia when she was little. How it taught her to survive after the Datakrash ruined her netrunning gig…”

Noelle continued to ramble about the long lost past. Zara’s eyes slowly grew wider as her mother began speaking about things she had never told them, not while lucid.

The old, tired mother began cackling madly.

“I only knew Great Auntie Sylvia as a farmgirl… She refused to use anything more high tech than a tractor, a landline phone, and Grandpa’s shotgun. And her answer to any talkback was a grand ol’ whoopin’ as she called it. She beat momma. She beat me too. She kept beating me until I stopped being weak. And then she liked me.”

Zara looked at the grave for the baby, named for the aunt who had, even many years after her own death, kept them alive. Noelle’s shoulders continued to shake with grief at failing her. Her faded brown eyes quivered with tears as she finally broke, her bony fingers somehow clutching at Zara’s tattered hoodie with a strength her failing body shouldn’t have had. The softest whisper, quivering with helplessness and surrender, tinged with a childhood long lost, escaped her mouth.

“What happened?”

Zara stared at her youngest sister who was never meant to be, now nothing more than a slowly rotting clump of flesh hidden by polluted dirt, the only physical evidence of her existence being the plastic cross they had made for her.

Zara stared at her mother as she laid in her arms. Her poor, spent, half-dead mother. Her naturally light brown but permanently grey stained fur was patchy and incomplete, her exposed skin cold and leathery. Her soul was not much more than a few pitiful embers in a sea of ash after a lifetime of sacrifice and hardship, giving her all despite getting nothing.

Zara looked at the baby’s grave. She didn’t even want to think of her name. The less she connected with her the better. They had gone through enough, losing Chloe was already the most devastating recent event. Losing a younger sister whom they hadn’t known for more than a few minutes was nothing to her, not when there were worse things going on in the world.

Zara looked at the baby’s grave.

But she couldn’t do that.

Zara looked at the baby’s grave.

Zara looked at her sister’s grave, she corrected herself.

The eldest daughter gently tightened her embrace, careful not to snap her twig of a mother in half.

“Goodnight, Sylvia.”

The rains continued into the night, reduced to a soft misting as Zara stumbled slowly through the drowsy slums of Vista del Rey, first her forehead then the rest of her body warmed with the third sunrise of her secret expedition.

She pulled the hood down onto her head, compressing her ears uncomfortably pressed against the top of her skull as she kept her gaze low to the ground. A mysterious ache twisted her neck, spine, and collar with each step, likely a combination of waking up on unfamiliar cardboard for the third night in a row and having to shoot her shotgun more times than she had in the last year combined.

Each step she took stung at her bare paws, evolved to tread on dirt and grass, not concrete and asphalt without shoes. Her pockets swung like pendulums with each step, weighed down by one half-eaten Burrito XXL, a juice bottle refilled with the cleanest water she could steal, and her trusty shotgun though now with considerably less shells than she had started out with.

Her empty stomach growled for attention, eager to be filled yet again with more sawdust and plastic. Rationed smartly, the food she had taken would have been enough to last a few days in Night City though with the dawn of the third day her hopes were slowly being withered down. With what little of the money the pig had given them remained she used to buy a new, actually loaded Slaught-O-Matic pistol which she had left at her sleeping mother’s side for their protection.

The heavy glob of guilt settled into the pit of her belly, having departed many hours before her mother had woken up. Zara closed her eyes and exhaled, trying to release the uncomfortable heat that had built up in her chest to calm herself down. Her mother’s cautious and honest ways were ultimately not compatible with Night City’s rotten heart. Was it her fault that Chloe decided to steal food with such a dramatic method? Had she been more willing to accept the more distasteful yet controllable methods of earning her scratch, would her first son have had at least basic medical attention available to him?

Zara gulped as her ultimate objective crept into her mind.

And, one day, she would have the eddies to find her sister.

The thought of whether she was even alive to be saved, she suppressed deep into the pits of her mind.

Of course there was always a chance, nay, guarantee that Night City would consume them as it had consumed countless others who had stood up and reached their hand upwards for a better life. But would the pain of falling back to the bottom be worth a few short months of not being at the bottom?

She adjusted her heavy shotgun nestled inside of her tattered jacket, wincing as the heavy plastic and unrefined metal bits poked at her bruises and pulled at her thin belly fur with each step. An inanimate object it might’ve been, having spent nearly her entire life with it she could swear that it had its quirks and mumblings like any other being. And today, like her stomach and wallet, it grumbled to be fed.

Its uncomfortably empty tubular magazine echoed with each step and no more shells hung in its sling. A lonely 4-gauge shell sat in the chamber with two more ready to force feed Zara’s next assailant with a hunk of lead larger than most eyeballs. Luckily she had been able to afford enough ammunition from the Budget Arms vending machine to scatter away the normal street trash though it would not have been enough to defeat an organized gang. But now she walked the streets of Night City nearly unarmed and unable to buy any more ammo.

She uncomfortably shifted it around under her jacket like an old friend now turned roommate. Not unwelcome, just a change of normalcy to get used to after a lifetime of it sitting quietly against a wall. Still, it weighed down on her shoulder and belly, firmly embracing her exactly like an old friend that she could rely on. It could even be a club if need be.

Above her the early morning sun blinked in and out as she passed under the many walkways and elevated N-Cart tracks that had been strung between buildings like a giant spider web. Her steps were light and unsure on the worn concrete, having never remembered a time she had been outside Pacifica for this long in her life. What information she had learned about the other districts was from overhearing the many dealers who had visited and bought very much illegal recreational consumables from the now defunct drug lab she and her mother used to work at.

A cry of a baby shocked her out of her daze, awakening a long-suppressed instinct.

“Unwanted pregnancy? Fear the criminals outside your home? Your daughter’s boss demands ‘Extra Work’!?”

Zara paused at one of many screens that blasted out its infernal nonsense, unable to resist the temptation and curiosity forced upon her as the specially designed advertisement expertly began to pull and pluck at the vulnerable neurons of her mind. Was it something to defend yourself? Something to keep you awake and alert?

The ad began with a depiction of a tired, worn-out, defeated looking rabbit mother, surrounded by a gaggle of screaming children, all clearly sired by different fathers. In the background was yet another anthro male, walking out of her life.

The screen switched to a crude depiction of a screaming mare in a strangely sexy business dress as a faceless gang descended upon her late at night, tearing off her already tight fitting clothing in a played up horrifically titillating manner. The actual act was skipped but the message was clear by how she laid there on the ground, tears streaming out of her eyes with her cybernetic limbs torn off as a mysterious white fluid leaked out from between her leg stumps and formed a large puddle underneath her.

Another switch, this time one that made Zara’s stomach clench in disgust as a fat, ugly bull with a lit cigar in his mouth reached out of the darkness and lecherously groped the rear of a teary-eyed, quivering, clearly underaged fox girl as her mother watched helplessly from the side.

“NO PILLS, NO SURPRISES, NO WORRIES!”

The ad zoomed into a cartoonish depiction of a pregnant womb, showing eggs being gangraped by similarly cartoonish anthro sperm from many different species to the beat of thudding electro music. In the place of an umbilical cord connecting the unborn child to her uterus it was instead a rusty chain.

“NO MORE BRATS!”

What appeared to be a tesla coil radiating golden swords swung in from the side, stabbing her ovaries until they exploded in a burst of blood and cries of offspring never to exist.

“EXPERIENCE TRUE SEXUAL FREEDOM!”

The same females were now partaking in an orgy. Their tired bodies now somehow more attractive than before, wearing revealing clothing as they willingly engaged with the males around them. They moaned in an orgasmic unison to a splash of white over their faces as the cartoon womb returned, still full of sperm but now not a single egg to be found.

“With our revolutionary At-Home Do-It-Yourself procedure, our patented targeted electrostatic applicator requires no expensive ripperdoc, no daily meds, no invasive procedures, and no recovery time! It’s permanent and irreversible until the day you flatline making you or your daughter worthless to those breeder gangs! Even works through belly fur and is compatible with all chrome! Estrogen remains unaffected so you can unleash your full femininity!”

The three females were now running nude in a field of grass, waving their arms around without a care.

“No eggs! No chains! NO FEAR! Buy the INSTARILIZER now for the low-low-low price of only €$150! AvailableAtYourNearestMed-SCSM.”

Zara looked away quickly, slightly shocked at how easily the ad had managed to obtain and maintain such a tight chokehold on her attention in a few moments. She fought the nausea down and left, the particular timing of seeing such a thing after the events of last week leaving her angry, confused, and, to her shame for feeling it yet again, intrigued.

The humidity after last night’s storm soaked in the air, leaving it heavy and hard to breathe and sometimes even difficult to move through. Beside her the morning commuters zoomed by, making her eyes water from the clouds of fresh exhaust they left behind.

The thought of birthing children had never actually occurred to her. While it wasn’t like she was unfamiliar with sex, it had only been through sheer luck that she also hadn’t become pregnant with her boss' offspring alongside her mother. The vixen slid her hand into her jacket and placed her warm palm over her lower belly and thankfully still dormant womb.

No chance of pregnancy would open up a lot of options. And with her body already tainted and used it wasn’t like a human would ever touch her. They liked their females virgins and clean while anthro males were forced to be less picky, especially those unfortunate enough to be physically unattractive.

Zara shook her head, she was already going behind her mother’s back and looking to join a gang. She would be beaten senseless if she found out she had killed off her bloodline just to earn a few extra eddies whoring herself out some more.

One step at a time, she reminded herself.

The acrid stink of industrial pollution seemed to settle into her fur and soak into her skin with every minute of exposure, making her exposed arms itchy and irritated. How Chloe was able to regularly sneak out of Pacifica in the short amounts of free time that could be spared, she didn’t know. What exactly she did here was also unknown to her, save for some kind of involvement with a gang called The Hayriders.

Lizzie, Zara reminded herself. She was looking for a Lizzie, whoever that was. The name Chloe had mentioned during her screaming match with their mother that fateful night.

How exactly she and Chloe knew each other, she didn’t know either. But if they were already familiar with each other perhaps they would be more willing to let her join.

More than a little shame filled her weary heart as she remembered holding herself back from beating her mother for stopping her children from pursuing gang opportunities. But it made sense, dumb muscle was cheap and plentiful and to actually be paid anything worthwhile one would have to be particularly strong or be very willing.

But maybe, just maybe, the Hayriders would be willing.

And if not she could always whore herself out. €$150 and she’d be golden.

Zara walked for a little longer, ignoring the faces and noses that scrunched up in disgust as she passed them. Low class they might’ve been, it was clear she herself was little more than filth that had escaped the sewers. She passed by a dead screen that would have shown an advertisement had it not been for the multiple bullet holes accidentally blasted into it from a recent gunfight, leaving it as nothing more than a glossy mirror.

She quickly ran her hands over her ruffled fur in a futile attempt to at least look presentable, picking out the bits of dirt and grime but finding it to be an impossible task. After a few minutes she kept walking, trying to ignore all the odd, judging looks she got.

Fortunately after a few minutes she had reached an area trashy enough to fit back in, or at least not have anyone take a second look at her. But the familiar smokey air and cracked asphalt did little to calm her down. She had wasted three days wandering Santo Domingo and Heywood, even ending up in Corpo Plaza once before she had been quickly shooed out by a bored and slightly disgusted Militech security guard.

That was the day she saw a human with her eyes for the first time in her life, from a far distance perhaps, but a real life human in the flesh nonetheless. She wore a stunning crimson and sapphire dress that glittered in the sun as she raised her arm and waved to her crowd of rabid fans, her sun-blessed dark coffee skin somehow still visible in the sea of drab furs and scales. Some actress, Zara guessed from how vaguely familiar her face was. The crowd cheered into a frenzy, attempting to break the protective wall of her anthro males. Big, buff, forced to wear black suits a few sizes too small to show off the muscles of their arms and bulges in their pants. Clearly she had a type.

Zara only rolled her eyes at the religious levels of human-worship. They were flesh and blood like the rest of them. Perhaps the reason for their appeal was that everyone wanted them. Were they only famous for being famous? Did their successes only come from anthros willing to sacrifice it all to make their whims a reality?

The city ignored her as she stopped in her tracks. False gods they might have been she could see the appeal. There would be so many more wandering, purposeless people if they hadn’t had something to believe in. Had her mother not been so loving and strict she would have been one of those in the crowd, sliding down her pants to present her ass to the first human she met. Or deepthroated her shotgun, whichever came first.

Zara’s mouth stretched into a small grin and chuckled, even now finding it very hard to blame those who threw themselves at the humans for the faint chance to be given the mercy of escape from this wretched reality.

And a wretched reality was where she found herself.

She still had no plan, no real direction. She couldn’t go up to someone and ask about the Hayriders, not without some cash to make the interaction nothing more than an impersonal information exchange. Talking to the wrong people would mean death, no matter many eddies you offered asking about a gang to the wrong people means death..

She stopped and thought hard, squeezing her eyelids and fists tightly in frustration. Going home was not an option, not without something to show for her efforts. Any clue that would lead her to the right direction. Anything.

The city ignored her silent pleas as it did everyone else’s. In the distance street vendors called out to their customers, fanning the delicious smelling steam into people’s faces, tempting them in for a bite. Zara covered her nose in an attempt to prevent her hunger from distracting her. Advertisements flashed and flickered. And the morning traffic jam was in full swing, locking angry drivers into their expensive, temporarily immobile prisons.

Zara paused for a moment, defeated but not yet done.

Her stomach clenched, this time painfully. She slid into a quiet alleyway, scouting out all the nooks and crannies for any hostile hobos before settling down, sweeping the concrete free of trash and drug needles before pulling out the final half of her cold burrito. The heavily caloric, very unhealthy but very welcome edible matter easily satisfied her hunger, allowing her to think clearly even if only temporarily. She chewed, both with her mouth and her brain.

Gangs were named how they were for a reason. The Voodoo Boys had their netrunning magic. The 6th Street gang were from 6th Street. Maelstrom were a bunch of chromed out crazies.

Muffled, distant gunfire. Tires screeched. A normal day in The Glen.

She chewed and swallowed, relishing the saltiness as it was washed away with the remaining water in her bottle.

Their name implied that they had something to do with racing or riding? Zara lightly tapped her forehead with the hell of her palm in frustration while licking the fake cheese off of her lips. Being street trash, she was quite familiar with the many gangs of Night City, however the Hayriders were not one of them. Were they a nomad group? Some nomad clans certainly tended to act like gangs.

More gunfire, more tires.

She racked her mind for any clues, anything that would point her into the right direction.

Now that she thought about it, the fact that Chloe had been in contact with them at all was rather odd. Gangs were either big enough that gonks would be attracted to them or gonks would already be attractive enough for gangs to reach out and invite. The Hayriders definitely weren’t big enough to be famous, so Zara had to assume Chloe had skills that were attractive to them.

She took one last bite of her burrito and wrapped up the rest for tonight’s supper. It was when she stood up that she realized just how light her pockets felt. All this time hunting desperately for the Hayriders and she had only accomplished making her mother worry while wasting precious food and shotgun ammunition.

So what skills did Chloe have?

Her athletic ability amazed all and from the stories she occasionally told her but not their mother she was great at sneaking.

Zara slapped her forehead, those were especially common in-demand skills that most, if not all gangs would love to have. Another dead end that failed to narrow down anything. She balled up her hands into fists and punched the brick wall in frustration. And again. And again, until her knuckles began to sting.

The late morning sun glinted off of the grit under her bare feet, the remnants of a glass bottle long broken and ground to dust.

Fucking Chloe. Where did she go?

“Lizzie’s bringing in a hundred eddies every week!”

That memory made her pause.

Zara bit her lip in thought, feeling the hopeful start of a much needed epiphany.

Gangs did not just pop up out of nowhere for no reason. Some are externally sponsored, others grew organically out of pre-existing communities. But the most common birth of a new gang was as an offshoot or merger involving established gangs. And despite Chloe’s excitement, truthfully one hundred eddies a week was a pitiful amount, not even the wannabes would be willing to work for pennies. Though the Hayriders simply being a new gang would explain their relative poverty it would also be likely that their parent gang was also on the poorer side.

For a while she kept walking in a vaguely easterly direction, towards the rising sun and away from north Pacifica.

Maelstrom, Scavs, and Tiger Claws members all made too much money. The Animals might’ve been impressed with Chloe’s physical agility though their forte was pure brute strength and little else. Mox was more of a defensive organization than an actual gang, last she heard anyhow. And the Voodoo Boys straight up didn’t allow outsiders to join, much less someone with absolutely no netrunning chrome.

Hours passed as she slowly walked south on MLK Boulevard towards Megabuilding 06, passing under more monorail tracks after crossing the bridge which formed the border between The Glen and Arroyo. Though this far away from the city she saw far more cargo trains than passenger, most likely feeding the many industrial factories south of the river.

She jumped in surprise as the orange glow of the setting sun glinted in her eyes, signifying the end of her third day. Zara allowed herself to voice a soft growl of frustration, balling her hands into fists hard enough that her nails pierced the skin of her palm for only now noticing that she had wasted yet another day. What little hope she had left home with was now fully gone, lost along with the last of her food rations. This was it, the end of the road. She had wasted too much in her efforts to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Zara sighed, stopping where she stood right as the first of the filthy streetlights flickered on. She had failed. And the only thing left for her back home was a screaming and a beating from her mother that she absolutely deserved.

The last of the rush hour traffic wove around the streets like fish, rushing to return home yet ever graceful, somehow never hitting one another. The whole of the square fell eerily silent. Zara glanced upwards, surprised by just how quiet it was as she accidentally stumbled on the few moments after rush hour traffic but before the late night joyriders. Sunlight turned to neon and her eyes turned to the flashy advertisements of the nearby CHOOH2 fuel station, now even more obnoxious than before due to the darker surroundings.

There seemed to be an impromptu party going on behind the building with multiple barrels filled with burning refuse and a boombox blasting the latest manufactured audioslop as a group danced their lives and the night away.

She made no eye contact as she walked in, knowing that that would only invite conflict as she was now solidly into 6th Street territory. The fog of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air despite there being no one actually smoking inside as Zara quickly passed shelves filled with unhealthy snack foods lest she be tempted into stealing one.

The Gas N’ Go was about the same as any other medium sized convenience store, filled with shelves of overpriced high-speed products, overhead lights both flickering and dead, days-old food still sitting in the hot bar, multiple registers, all closed except for one manned by a tweaking teenage raccoon, and a small food court at the front so that the patrons could have a front row view of their vehicles being stolen.

The filthy, aging plastic chair creaked as Zara slowly pulled it out from under the table and sat, her knee joints creaking with relief at the realization that she had not sat down at all that day. She eyed the hot food, knowing it was only slightly edible but being warmed up it was still preferable to her remaining chunk of burrito.

The wrapper crinkled as she spread it out on like a little tablecloth. Pathetic it might have been, it gave her just a tiny bit of comfort to at least pretend she was partaking in a civilized dinner. She adjusted her posture, putting her knees together and straightening her back like a proper lady as her mother would say. She put her hands together on her lap and paused for a moment, letting her shoulders relax and stretch out from a full day of slouching.

The final bit of burrito disappeared into her mouth quickly but she chewed slowly, allowing herself the luxury of enjoying the food at her own pace instead of being forced to scarf it down and move on.

And then it was over. Zara washed it down with the remainder of her water, leaving her to sit in the distant cacophonic silence of Night City as neon lights began to ignite. The rave party disbanded, driving away to who knew where in their beater cars and exhaustless motorcycles, leaving her and the gas station in relative silence.

The crackle of half-dead screens advertising the latest craze went ignored as the scraggly, twitching raccoon behind the counter tore open yet another pack of drugs and snorting up both powder-filled sticks within seconds before his eyes rolled up into his head and he somehow began to convulse while still standing.

Zara rolled her eyes, her sadness forgotten for a second at the disgusting sight. Mr. Whitey’s Sweet Sweet Clean Speed wasn’t sweet, clean, or even speed as it contained no actual amphetamines. In fact it would better be described as a powdered synth-caffeine concentrate, something normal people would use before a workout or a particularly hard workday, repackaged into a shiny pack to sell to children.

The displays of snacks and goods hid shelves of familiar colorful tiny boxes of pills, single use autoinjectors, and inhalers that laid deeper in the store. ZAZA 4.0, ZyKlown-B, MYOKO, and a million other street-legal recreational drugs. Most were nothing more than a teenager’s first foray into getting high after they had gotten used to light beers and cigarettes stolen from their mother’s purse. Some were straight up impotent placebos.

Zara’s ass twitched at the memory of the absolute spanking she had received from her mother that one time she had shoplifted a box of CHOO-CHOO-CHOOMBA and taken a hit. A small giggle managed to escape her tightened lips. The high was enjoyable and was certainly a welcome escape from their dreary reality, at least until her mother forced her to chug gallon after gallon of water to purge the substance out of her body while beating her silly with her slipper.

The teenage raccoon clerk shook his head after a few minutes, the high already worn off. He brazenly reached out and took another box from the display, consuming it immediately. Zara stood up slowly, perhaps she might have failed but that was no reason to go hungry. Maybe her mother would be less mad if she did a Chloe and brought home food. But maybe after she had eaten first.

She cleared her throat.

“‘ey wuz lit, choom.”

It felt odd, wrong even, to be speaking like that. Her throat immediately began to twist, Night City slang requiring the use of muscles she did not normally use. Her mother had beaten into their heads that they were to speak properly and not like the rest of the street filth.

“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a–a” the clerk stuttered, his chem’d up brain trying to regain normal functions.

Zara paused, trying to make sense of his response until she rolled her eyes and just pointed to the hot food.

“Is it alright if I take some?”

She wasn’t quite sure if he had the authority to do so but considering he was stealing and using the very merchandise he was supposed to be selling she was quite sure he or the people who hired him couldn’t care less.

The raccoon somehow managed to break through his mindfog and focused one of his eyes on her, twisting his upper body in what was probably a shrug of indifference, returning to enjoying his high.

“Nova, thanks.”

She took one final look around the store. The only ones that could witness her theft were the clerk and the cameras, both nonfunctional. And it wasn’t like it was theft anyways. The waist high door that led behind the counters swung open with a creak, leaving her to stuff her disposable meal box to bursting.

Soggy fries, unusually hard SCOP chicken tenders, a big spoonful of melted yellow plastic that was labeled Mac n’ Cheese, all topped with a good shake of imitation bacon bits from the dusty shaker.

Zara drooled, her mouth readying itself to consume exceptionally dry food. Without thinking she pulled the cooler door open as she passed it, chugging the first drink she saw.

What exactly a “Poppin’ Pomegrenade!!!!!” was, she didn’t know. All she knew was that it was good.

The first mouthful was a godsend to her starving belly, sending a warm, satisfying glow as her scrunched up stomach finally began to relax knowing there was food on the way. The tenders were hard but a chug from her soda made it go down easily.

Zara pulled another drink and chugged that down too. And the next.

But as she grabbed her fourth and fifth cans of soda her back tingled with more than a little guilt. It was like her mother was standing behind her, silently judging her, disappointed that her efforts had only resulted in raising an uncontrolled glutton.

Proverbs 25:16, something about eating too much honey.

Zara rolled her eyes in reluctant acceptance and put one of the cans back. How exactly she had remembered the exact line her mother would have recited, she didn’t know. But it was true. The hard food was gone and her thirst was satisfied for now. She didn’t need it now. It would’ve been easy to justify it as making up for her life of not drinking sodas, but she could take another can if she needed it.

The humm-buzz of the coolers only barely muffled the chewing of extra crunchy SCOP chicken tenders. So enthralled in her meal that she barely even noticed a vehicle silently slithering into place at the heavily worn fuel pump. What appeared to be a pencil-thin, heavily tattooed rat dressed in skimpy punk clothing slid out of the driver’s seat and stuck the nozzle into her car in a single smooth motion.

Her form was dark, barely a silhouette under the broken lights and clouded moon, her headlights suspiciously also dark.

What was not inconspicuous was her cursing and the banging of her fist on the pumps.

She took quick glances out of the corner of her bored, half-lidded eyes. The little rat’s angry muttering was the closest thing to entertainment but she was still careful to not directly stare, or at least make it not obvious that she was staring, as that would only bring trouble.

The little bell over the door dinged as the rat stomped inside and slapped the counter.

“Ey, puto!”

The raccoon clerk continued to stare with unfocused eyes.

She growled, bringing her squeaky voice as low as it could go which was not much.

“Ey!” the rat snapped her fingers in the cashier’s dead face, “Ya flatline’d or somethin’!?”

She received no answer.

“Fuckin' Fentie-!” she snapped her fingers again and resumed with an even louder voice, emphasizing each syllable, “Non’a yo’ credreaders are workin'! I need a hundred gallons on pump four!”

The clerk snorted, wiping his bleeding nose with the back of his hand before pushing a few buttons on the register.

“Fukkin’ finally.” she growled, the rat’s eyes flashing blue for a moment as eddies were transferred.

Zara chewed idly on her dinner, but paused after a moment. She slowly turned her head to look at the rat’s ride which sat silent. It clearly had the heritage of the old American muscle cars of the past century with lots of exposed chrome and chunky racing tires but for some reason it was still sporting white primer without any kind of a personalized paint job.

And it was definitely not fitted with a fuel tank large enough to fit a hundred gallons of CHOOH2.

The rat scowled, trying to look tough but clearly nervous as she first filled up her car and then a gas can. And then another. And as if she rode a pyromaniac clown car, what seemed to be an unending collection of fuel canisters, filling one after another, eventually just filling them without removing them from the trunk.

At first glance the rat seemed like nothing more than a nomad on a fuel run in the dead of night.

Zara froze, narrowing her eyes as the lights above the car flickered brightly for a brief, wonderful moment, illuminating the faint outline of a painted over 6th Street emblem on the side of the driver side door.

Maelstrom, Scavs, and Tiger Claws members all made too much money. The Animals might’ve been impressed with Chloe’s physical agility though their forte was pure brute strength and little else. Mox was more of a defensive organization than an actual gang. And the Voodoo Boys straight up didn’t allow outsiders to join, much less someone with absolutely no chrome.

The back of her knees launched the light plastic chair back with a hollow clatter as she shot to her feet, the realization making Zara forget her usual cautious nature.

Time seemed to freeze as she recovered from her stumble out the door and the rat had begun fueling another jug, their eyes meeting for but a single glance.

Every hair on her body pricked upwards as her pupils widened instinctively. The rat girl didn’t even squeak, her own instincts forcing her to freeze for a single moment before scrambling into her vehicle. The overloaded muscle car grumbled and farted a cloud of black smoke as the straining, unmaintained V8 roared back to life, grumbling about being twenty thousand miles past its required oil change. Its driver slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

The nozzle twirled out of the can that it had been filling, now spewing out a steady rush of gas out onto the ground as the still open trunk waved Zara a mocking farewell with each pothole the car hit.

Which left 6th Street and Valentinos. Both standard opportunistically for-profit gangs, both with territories bordering Pacifica, both relatively poor.

And both with a love for chromed the fuck out rides.

Hayriders.

She sprinted into the darkness, chasing faint red brake lights and sparks flying out from the lower than normal bumper grinding against the asphalt. Though it could go no faster than a crawl it still managed to outpace her. Unused muscles in her thighs burned but adrenaline dulled the actual pain until it could be ignored. The whisper of her ancestors led her forwards, giving her a strength she didn’t know she had. Savages and barbarians, they were. They raped, they conquered, they butchered their way to glory.

And though she had very different plans for her own prey, the foxes of the past would have nodded in approval as they watched one of their far descended daughters chase a rat to survive as they had done many times in their own prime.

Lukewarm midnight air froze her constricted throat, drying out what little moisture her mouth could produce as her lungs wheezed with each short breath. And yet her mind and soul were clear for the first time in forever. Even the sky seemed to encourage her, the smog retreating to keep her view of the car clear and sure. The moonlight shone brightly, bright enough that she would later swear her back had been warmed by it, pushing her, embracing her in its ethereal light as she crossed the bridge back into Arroyo.

A raspy laugh even made it out of her mouth, Chloe would’ve probably teased her for not being able to last a mile without being winded.

Hacking and coughing but giddy with newfound hope, the vixen stumbled forwards, driven by adrenaline and instinct of the hunt. Without stopping she rattled her lungs and collected the thick phlegm that had stuck to the back of her throat and launched the black sticky mass onto the sidewalk, silently cheering her reunification with the simple freedom to breathe again.

A headache began to form as her eyes were forced to adjust and readjust from the intense streetlights to pitch black repeatedly, almost to the point where she couldn’t even make out the floating holo-ads that appeared from the city center. A horn blared angrily as she narrowly dodged her sister’s fate as a bloody smear on the ground. Eventually she reached the corner of a quiet intersection, the dusty road in front of her forming the border between the Glen and Arroyo.

In front of her was the industrial heart of Night City, one of several. The moon had disappeared again behind some clouds, the dense smog blocking any sort of happiness or love the heavens might have blessed upon her. Heavy webs of insulated copper and fiber optics hung from lattice pylons, forming immense crosses of rusting steel. Heavy particulates and acrid contagions belched out of the ever yawning churchyard of the new era, with automated factories and chemical refineries becoming the new places of corporate worship, their smokestacks standing tall, taller than even the redwoods that had once occupied the same soil in the last age.

The car was gone, but the faint bangs and screeching of its underside slamming into the asphalt could still be heard, its panicked driver unable to maintain calm and stealth from the terror of being followed.

It was only when exhaustion forced Zara to slow that she realized just how loud her heartbeat was. The vessels in her head throbbed with each contraction, filling her mind with the comforting white noise of rushing blood. Her whole scalp burned hot and she stuck a pinkie inside one of her ears in an attempt to clear her hearing while keeping up the pace.

Her ears swiveled around like radar dishes, leading her to one of the empty factory lots. Cracked concrete turned to bare soil, contaminated with decades of oil, soot, and cigarette butts. The few hardy weeds that managed to find root could barely stand upright, brown and sickly despite their freshness.

The chase ended with a single bang as the car drove into a pillar next to an old RV, crumpling the front end and sending a shower of sparks and metal fragments which started small fires in the carpet of dead grass. Zara slowed to a slow, steady, victorious stomp, knowing her prey was disabled and defeated. The door swung open weakly as the rat tumbled out, dazed and disoriented from the collision.

“T-The fuck you want, maricá?!” she stammered, her voice squeaky and terrified, crawling backwards away from her pursuer. Her small hands scrambled to her belt only to grab onto an empty holster, her iron having been flung out somewhere during the chase. Beady eyes grew wider, now realizing that she was truly helpless.

The fox’s hunched, tensioned pose brought a primal terror into her very being, closer to a feral, rabid beast than a civilized person.

“I wanna speak to Lizzie.” she rasped, her throat rattling and crunchy, as dry as the dirt underneath.

The rat allowed herself one nervous swallow to steady her nerves.

“W-What?”

And then Zara’s vision flashed as a well worn baseball bat smacked her in the back of her head.

“The fuck outta here, bitch!”

Zara gurgled out a curse as she saw the broken off end of the bat twirl into the distance before a few more hits came in from all around her. Scrap pipes hit her body with dull thuds, not sharp enough to break skin and swung weakly enough that it wouldn’t even cause much pain, but it was still a mass ambush. Flashlights lit up the brawl as more joined in.

The adrenaline dulled the minor pain into an even milder annoyance. Her sigh turned into an low, grinding growl. The zipper of her jacket released with a single buzz as she unleashed her iron once again with her other hand. With a well practiced swing she brought her weapon up to her shoulder, her hands perfectly wrapping around the grip and handguard after years of familiarity. Her pupils shrunk into pinpricks, now laser focused down the crude iron sights as she layed her deathbringer onto her first target.

The runt of an axolotl girl froze as the muzzle end of Zara’s heavy shotgun stopped within an inch of her nose. Her pink feathery gills flared, her instincts smelling the faint smoke the gun had released during its last bout of anger. The steel pipe clattered onto the hard ground as it fell from her webbed hands, the splatters of fox blood that had covered it during the assault washed away by a stream of urine unintentionally released in absolute terror.

A weight lifted from Zara’s shoulders. These were no gangsters but a rabble of children. Not harmless but Scavs they were not. Some of them were even younger than Chloe.

They continued to scream like the children they were, their immature minds driven by little more than instinct and savagery. Just like hers had been.

She yelped as a rock hit her side with a dull thud, thrown by the hands of another brat. The assault seemed to reinvigorate them with the exception of the axolotl girl who was now crawling away, mewling for her mother.

Zara grunted, enduring another hit. She couldn’t kill these kids, not when she had her own family to save. Bridges she hadn’t even crossed yet shouldn’t be burned.

“I SAID-!”

Ignoring the rain of gravel assaulting her she heaved her shotgun into the air and pulled the trigger. For a brief moment night turned to day as the massive muzzle flash illuminated the courtyard. The children, their night eyes ruined by the intense light and eardrums singing a single, pure ethereal tone could only stare in horror as they finally realized their powerlessness compared to the god of thunder Zara had purchased from a vending machine. The empty shell he had been sleeping in clattered onto the ground as she worked the pump, releasing an immensely satisfying metallic sound.

“-I WANNA TALK-!”

Once more she pulled the trigger, the blast blowing back the rat girl’s hair. She stared at her pursuer and assailant, her full-throttled, redlined mind finally realizing the danger of her hunter as the vixen effortlessly tamed the savage beast of a shotgun that was the Carnage.

“-TO FUCKING LIZZIE!”

Absolute silence pierced through Night City’s distant hustle and bustle as Zara unleashed the final act of thunder and lead. Those who had failed to run blinked before realizing that the silence was not from the metropolis being shocked into quiet but their ears unable to properly process anything that wasn’t screamed at them.

The rat clutched her chest as she took deep breaths that never seemed to be deep enough, her tiny rodent heart more vibrating than beating. Her beady eyes remained on the rear figure of Zara as she pushed herself backwards, driven by the last remnants of her conscious mind while also accepting that she might not be alive by dawn.

She flinched as a warm, gentle hand pressed against her cold head.

“Ahem.”

Zara turned slowly, foam and blood bubbled from the fox’s slack maw, her pupils still no more than dots on heavily shot eyes.

The rat girl shuffled herself out of the way as the alpaca matron of the Hayriders slowly descended the creaking crates that formed the steps leading into the mobile throne of her RV. Her coat was a dirty white, her eyes almost invisible under a thick layer of slightly untrimmed yet clearly taken care of fluff. Her body was not as slender as a supermodel’s, nor did she wear clothing that didn’t have at least one patch sewn into it, yet Zara could almost feel the regal aura that radiated from her. The gentle yet unquestionable presence that demanded one’s respect, the very same her mother possessed.

“What do you want?”

Her voice was sharp and precise, accented with a more refined version of the rat girl’s. She stared down at the rabid vixen with steeled, yet tired eyes. Wary, yet understanding, silently acknowledging that this odd girl had every chance to massacre most of her children but had chosen not to for some reason. The least she could do was stall her until help arrived.

Zara gulped, trying to clear the lump in her throat. It was so easy, too easy. All she had to do was to say one word, the single word that would end her hunt. Her mouth gaped open like a fish looking for breath but finding none.

Finally, with her throat somehow rasping and dry yet gurgling and flooded, she managed to speak.

“...Hayriders…?”

The alpaca’s eyes went wide, her form instantly growing a few sizes as her hair stood on edge.

The rat girl’s hands again reached for her empty holster out of habit, hissing at herself as she was reminded that she was unarmed.

“How do you know this?”

Zara sniffled, her shoulders falling in relief as the adrenaline of the last few hours seemed to melt away in moments. The still smoking muzzle of her shotgun hit the ground, her arms no longer having the energy to hold up her steel beast. She swayed a bit but held on, her knees straining to keep her body weight up. By force or by sheer luck her hunt was over.

“Lizzie.” she finally gurgled out past a hoarse throat and bloody lips.