The nearest market zone had an explanation on the map reading DECLARED NEUTRAL TERRITORY BY THE TWO RULING GANGS OF THE CITY and was called Heso Marketplace.

By that point I had 1300 credits, and I assumed I wouldn’t be able to afford any attack drones, mech suits for Patches, or even a decent weapon system, but it was better to get the lay of the land in either case. 

The two largest gangs you could be affiliated with were the Ringo-Dango, who seemed to hold most of the city in a Pacman-like shape of territory, while the Kebukai-Kogan Yakuza held the city center and a widening area up to the east. Smaller blobs of gang territory indicated the Ringo-Dango were a loose confederation somehow, and The Boss held the northernmost part of Pacman’s lower jaw, in a long line that gave him several teeth. 

There was  bit of a problem there, though, looking at the map. One of those teeth now belonged to me. I knew that I’d have to fight The Boss at some point. Was looking forward to getting leveled up and geared up enough to do it even.

But my introdction to the game, and subsequent actions, had put me in his crosshairs at level 6.

I had a feeling that I would need a lot more oomph before I faced off with the man. Especially since, looking at the map view and thinking about the production and unit capabilities already at my disposal, it looked very much like this game zone was not just focused on individual quests and encounters.

It would also require strategic acumen at a time-down level. This was a strategy game with heroic side quests.

I trembled a little, wishing I had Patches with me. Despite my words to the people at the apartment, I wasn’t a general. Not even a captain. I’d left the service as an E-6 Staff Sergeant. Hadn’t even been in charge of my Troop.

Didn’t matter much, though. I’d figure it out or find people who could help me do it. I wasn’t going to trust them to do it for me, though, because I’d already been through that ringer. And we’d lost.

I marched forward to my destination, the hologram of the giant kawaii girl prancing around hovering in the sky, pausing to ball her fists to her face, tears streaming, jumping up and down in utter delight. Every time she jumped, it was upon the discovery of some shop, undoubtedly in the zone, whose personal ads would play shortly after.

There was the talking noodle cup, cheerfully inviting you to come in, dump boiling water into his head, and slurp out his noodly brains. 

After that there was the pig in the chef’s hat, bearing the huge skewer and the even bigger meat cleaver to butcher himself. He too was grinning suicidally, beckoning me to come partake of his flesh.

I grimaced.

As I continued, I watched little chicks jump gleefully into a hot vat of oil in an advertisement for MyoungOk’s Nuggers. A winking shrimp spinning around and begging me to come rip his tail off and eat it. Anime already-cooked chicken waving me over.

And tons of cutesy anime girls, either big-headed chibis or cute kawaiis. All of them blushfully satisfied with whatever product they were panhandling, and all of them wearing skirts way too short to properly hide their underwear. 

As I got closer to Heso, street vendors started popping up with more elaborate tiny stalls, and I began to notice the local fauna. There was a lot of scifi going on here. I was passing guys full up with neon tattoos, and modded up with some heavy-looking cybernetics.

They honestly looked hardcore dangerous. 

And while I wouldn’t have run from the fight, I doubted I had the levels to take them. Luckily. some of them pointedly ignored me, while others gave me blank, dead stares as I passed.

And the further I got in, the more the people varied in shape and size. Beyond the standard humans and demi-humans of rpg game, there were many exotic types up to and including cybernetically-enhanced centipedes walking on a dozen legs.

It made me question who all got character creation when absorbed by the Deus Ex AI.

As I walked, a seven foot samurai of obviously demonic heritage sneered at me, and I found myself stepping to the side. Angrily, I checked my sidebar and saw that I’d failed against an Intimidation check.

I glowered, pissed at how far the system was interfering into my life.

So rocked was I by this whole slew of cyberpunk chaos that I almost got stomped upon, a fifteen foot tall mech suit clumsily stomping through the packed environs of the throughway. This suit was all charcoal black, except in places where lines of bright neon raced up and down the limbs and up to the transparent neon pink shield showing the heads up display for the Middle-Aged Sentient Mecha Tortoise.

I gasped, reaching down again to where Patches would usually be, then grimacing when remembering that he wasn’t there. It shook me up. I paused and gave the whole thoroughfare a good looking over.

It was okay. Everything seemed safer now. I wasn’t gonna lose it here. The mech was the only one of its kind. Besides it, very hairy and tall dudes dominated the immediate landscape, followed by a gaggle of feathered swan ladies in kimonos.. 

And after them, there were guys in trenchcoats with glowing eyes, ladies in trench coats with jaded eyes, old men in traditional clothes but floating on clouds.

Honestly all sorts of nonsense.

The sensory overload probably caused me to miss a lot, so I grabbed a bit of wall near a brothel, and used the map to get a bead on what I was looking for. It looked like the marketplace divided different categories of goods into districts, one big ultra-futuristic dirty open air department store just fuming itself into the sky.

There, a block or so north, were several shops that sold arms. 

“What’s your fancy, gaijin?” one of the ladies of the night asked, sauntering over. 

I’m a good boy despite all evidence to the contrary. I was raised in a good household. Jesus watched us from over the sofa, Mother Mary watched us sleep at night. In every room she watched us and made us remember our duty to God.

Duty to country and duty to God.

But what I saw made me understand heresy. Pure exoticism. It was a nearly-nude catgirl batting her eyes at me. Behind her, rubbing against the doorway, was one of those multi-tailed fox ladies. 

The other side had a basically-nude guy with a veil over half his face, arms crossed and nodding at passersby. And also giving me appraising eyes, like perhaps seeing if I was going to damage the merchandise. Or possibly play for the other team. A combination bouncer and gigolo. 

“I’m good,” I said, waving them off. “Thanks.”

“Mmm, how good?” the catgirl purred. “I’ll rock your world for fifteen hundred credits.”

In the silty sands of the wastes, women would marry you, bang you, then divorce you over the course of an hour. It was a desperate thing. None of them bought into the loophole. But many of them did it anyway.

I cast my eyes on the woman, giving her the old up and down that I’d given them way back when. “Ohh, sorry. But I’ll definitely come back once I’ve got more money.”

“I could give you the best fifteen minutes of your life,” she said. “Just five hundred.”

“No can do,” I told her, and pushed off the wall to retreat away from this harassment. 

You just failed a Persuasion Check. Way to go Rico Suave.

I dismissed the prompt. I had a mission, and that mission was to acquire firearms enough to punch big messy holes in the next hunter-killer I came across, so I could end up with more high tech components and badass cards.

Or just go blast a hole in Boss’s face, take over the burrough, and activate that next segment of my super card..

A robot appeared from the entrance of the brothel, and strutted over my way. The way it was built was definitely female, but aside from the realistic human facial features, she didn’t have a single hair on her head, and the skin tone of her face disappeared into the gleaming metal that made up the rest of her body. 

“Three hundred,” robo-girl said. “I promise you won’t even know I’m not the real thing.”

“How do you figure?” I asked. 

The humanoid face sneered at me. 

You’ve failed a Charisma check. Maybe up your skills in conversation?

“You know what, screw you,” I growled at the pop up.

The big dude with the veil over his face cracked his neck, sighed, and came forward. “The hell did you say?”

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Apologize to the lady,” the dude said, and indicated the robot with a nod.

“That’s not a lady.” 

The crowd murmured. “Robo-racist!” someone yelled. The splatter of a thrown slushie jetted out over my boots. 

It was like I stopped time. People came to a stop on the street. Foot traffic started piling up. Some people walking by kept walking a few steps and nearly fell over when they started rubbernecking. Those nearest gasped.

I received a notification from Cybernetic Enhancement that this guy was about to deck me. Another popup informed me that, this being neutral territory, I wasn’t allowed to kill anybody without both the big factions getting heavily involved. Literally, for what seemed like ten long seconds, I saw the guy’s form bunch up and tense, expressly telegraphing his intent to clock me a good one. 

Cybernetic Enhancement had really done a number on my body, because holy hell, I had time to think. 

This is not going to go well. There are a ton of bystanders. Half the people here are armed to the teeth, and I’m not even in sight of the arms shop. Also, if I go ahead and show this guy the back of his own head, I’ll have both major gangs to answer to, and they’ll bring a lot worse than a trio of toughs to my section of town. 

So I naturally did what anyone would do in this situation, given cybernetically enhanced reflexes and no feasible way of fighting back: I began the overuse of the tactical dodge.

I’d seen just enough martial arts films to know that ninety percent of every fight is just dodging around, so I did that. I fell backwards over a foot I knew to be there, and security gigolo threw a wild punch. 

It sailed over me as I turned my fall into a frantic curled up spin, whirring into a stance that had me standing upright and facing the man with a toothy smile.

I’d overdone it though. The gigolo had thrown too hard, too confident of his target, and was now falling sideways into the pavement. He glared at me, and gave a loud roar.

I raised my hands defensively, saying, “Hey, look, this was an honest–”

I didn’t get farther. Instead of wrapping one of my arms around his overreaching punch, I made the whole thing look like a tangle of bodies. Cybernetic Enhancement did this thing where it hyper enhanced my reaction time, and also placed helpful markers in my field of vision, so I had the option of a) roll over this way, or b) step right there instead. 

The resulting twister game on the wet pavement ended with the security gigolo getting a dislocated shoulder out of the deal. He scrambled backwards, flinching his pain to the crowd, and I got experience points, a card, and a brand new notification. 

PRO TIP: YOU’VE INITIATED NON-LETHAL DAMAGE! the game blared in my face. THIS IS A METHOD OF INCAPACITATING OPPONENTS WITHOUT KILLING THEM. YOU WILL KNOW IT BY THE APPEARANCE OF A PINK HEALTH BAR BELOW THE TYPICAL RED BAR.  

“Good to know,,” I grunted, barely registering the +75 experience points and the ‘A Gentler Touch’ card that had pinged to my sidebar.

A bigger guy stepped out, and I knew things were leveling up for this particular encounter. He growled, then lunged, his own speed apparently aided by the very same card that I possessed. I took a kick to the ribs and gasped, realizing that his booted heel had sprung spikes right before slamming into my ribs. I took 19 points of damage and dropped into a roll.

I needed space to think. That was a lot of hp for one hit. I let myself roll to the edge of the spectator-created fighting pit. 

This new Boss-type Security Gigolo had his teeth bared, growling like a man infected by rabies. He snarled and he rushed. But this time when he came in range for that nasty front kick, I faked a stumble and got out of his way. The kick ended up blasting somebody’s teensy girlfriend straight in the chest and back into the press of people.

Blood sprayed from the wound and I briefly wondered if he’d just killed her. There was no time to find out, though, because the troll who’d been standing by her entered the impromptu ring and busted the security guy in the side of the head. 

“That was my girlfriend!” the monster roared, reaching down to the prone and dazed security guy and grabbing him by the head.

All around them, people howled for blood. “Tear it off, tear it off!” came the chant.

The other arm seized the security guy’s legs and I turned away, using the distraction to move out of there. Nothing good was going to come from it all.

I was disappointed, though, when I got neither new XPs or a new card. Still, that whole scene was going to touch something off, I knew, and I couldn’t afford a turf war.

Not yet, anyways.

My sidebar notifications kept rattling through, and I was informed that my standing with the Ginroku Street Geishas had fallen by -50, but my rating Heso Market general public had increased by 100. The title of Zero disappeared, and was replaced by Favorable.

I now wove through the traffic, ignored the anime signboards and holograms, and followed the mini map towards the arms shop. 

“Hey stranger,” someone said from a side alley. “Fancy a talk?”