Walking a beat like this took all my willpower not to just start searching door-to-door to get the quest done with and out of the way. There was another, timed quest that needed doing. And if I hjadn’t been so sure that these two were tied in together in some way, I would have left in for later.

There was so much pressure on me that I could feel it in my chest.

It felt like a heart attack.

Lucky for me, rolling through the Brass Crosses’ territory wasn’t too difficult a task. It wasn’t all that big, and what it lacked in size it made up for in opulence. There was money coming out of every single inch, it seemed. Robots cleaned up the dank streets and made them look polished. Even more robots descended from the highest buildings and washed all the windows.

And there wasn’t a Brass Cross gangbanger in sight. They’d been described to me as heavily muscled, tatted up, wearing about 40 pounds of gold necklaces and jewelry. But all that I could see in this neighborhood were distinguished men and women in suits and fanciful dresses.

That was something of a relief, but it kept me on my toes.

“I wonder what it is about these dudes that’s keeping them and their people in the money,” I mused.

And then Patches trotted up next to me.

“Oh,” I said, and reached down to give him a pat on the head. Rather than ask how he’d gotten out of the apartment, down the elevator and found me, I just went with it. He was always great to have around, even if his presence did make me more memorable.

Patches didn’t seem bothered by the samurai mask, and neither did the inhabitants of this… district. Sector. Quadrant.

The map informed me that this was known as a district.

I passed out of the block and into the next.

Here, things changed wildly. Most of the people here were straight out of manga: a dragon slithered by on a cushion of air somehow, being ridden by a young Japanese boy in flowing clothes I didn’t know the Japanese word for.

A huge cyber samurai strode by with his third cybernetic arm grasping the hilt of a sword that was probably a foot wide, and eight or nine feet long. He wore a mask like mine, made of a nose and mouth cover, only it was featureless. The helmet part was also polished to a mirror shine, and undecorated.

A gaggle of those turtle people ambled by, these ones not in mecha-suits or powered armor, but monks’ robes. They even had the bowl cut hairdos with the hole at the top. Tonsure, that was the word I was looking for.

“Monkish turtles,” I scoffed to Patches’ unlistening ear.

Fox people, cat people, human people, small people with iridescent scales, fins emerging from their forearms, and wide glassy eyes in fishbowl-style helmets. Rich people, poor people, humble people, and people with their orange fox fur dyed green, styled up into mohawks.

Still none of the Crosses though.

The buildings were just like the samurai’s sword: obsidian blades slicing up into the ever-present mist of the city, gleaming with reflected color. Several connected to one another with walkways at least ten floors up. Some had platforms for hover cars. Streams of flying cars zipped by here and there, and I presumed they encircled the city just like the highway did.

The holograms and advertisements weren’t nearly as garish as Heso Market at the city’s center, which was a relief as well. Still, every ramen bowl place, every sushi joint, every crab restaurant and every shop selling merchandise was lit with neon somehow or another. Some had screens with dancing anime versions of their food beckoning you to eat them, while others had smaller holograms circling the shops.

And then I stepped out of cyberpunk Japan and into a weird mashup of cyberpunk Japan and what America would look like squashed into a series of small businesses. Since I’d been here, it was the weirdest sensation. Burger joints with dancing animation burgers locked eyes with me and waved me over. An animated hot dog with a dog’s head paraded around, panting happily.

“Look away, buddy. You don’t need to see that travesty.”

I started seeing Japanese people in obviously American style clothes, with awesome spiky haircuts, dyed blonde and red and blaring purple walking down the streets. Mostly young men in high tops and shredded jeans walked arm-in-arm with their girlfriends.

This branched out into numerous alleyways, and each of those were themed in one Western country or another, though there were overlaps. One was clearly British themed, but also Norwegian. Possibly Icelandic. Another was Spanish and French, based on the paella baguettes on sale at the mouth of the alley.

Alleys in the USA would be strewn with trash, or feature dead cars overgrown with weeds and home to entire colonies of bees. Here, an alley played host to dozens of people walking here or there, was full of minuscule bars where you should sit outside, or coffee shops with takeout windows.

Patches and I made our way down through these various alleys, getting the lay of the land. Every block had something cool going on, from the red light district I found to the entire arcade situation just two blocks over. It was literally an arcade, an alley with an arch overtop it, where skylights were letting in late afternoon sunlight. It was full of arcade game places: pachinko, crane games with plushies, dance video games, and a bunch of those ones where you shoot while on the road. Or you shoot all the zombies while advancing through the decrepit house. Or you shoot infinity insurgents in between ducking aside for cover.

I still had yet to spot a Cross. And with every step deeper into their territory, the apprehension grew, itching at the back of my neck, like I’d turn around and find one with filed teeth and eyes that didn’t point in the same direction.

I made my way through the arcade with only a few paranoid glances over the shoulder.

I couldn’t help but throw some Credits at the counter-terrorism game, because why the fuck not? Patches wandered a few feet away and found several young ladies who wanted more than anything to pet a German Shepherd, but were terrified of the prospect. It took them a good ten minutes of egging each other on in hushed tones and backing away like Patches wasn’t sitting on the floor, totally docile. After a little while he shook hands, allowed them to rub his belly, and got a whole series of photos with them.

Patches the ladies’ man.

As for me, I just blasted dudes popping up from behind cars, blasted their super slow rockets inching their way toward me, and blasted even more dudes parachuting in toward me. I got in a jeep and blasted dudes on the road, got on a helicopter and blasted dudes all trying to shoot me down with shoddy bazookas.

I eventually gathered a crowd, quite by accident. I was only down five Credits and about forty minutes into the game. About this time, I thought I heard the whispers starting, and later definitely heard the cheering when I blasted through a boss jeep, which failed to jump the gap in the freeway. Which made sense, since I’d just shot the damn thing about six million times with my automatic weapon, and blasted it with grenades until that power up ran out. It careened into the broken freeway, forty feet above the earth, and exploded into a fireball. And I reloaded by snapping my wrist off screen.

My fans cheered. My FPS Gaming skill went up by yet another point. I laughed.

I liked the recursion going on: I was in a game situation, surrounded by games, playing a game. Now all I had to do was find a game about a kid learning how to play a game to save the world or something.

The wagers started up after that: how long I’d go before I died, how long before I’d have to put another credit in, whether I’d beat the next boss before having to slot another coin.

During cutscenes, I snuck some glances in the mirrored surface at my adoring fans, and finally caught my first glimpse of some Crosses.

Big and strong, arms open to the air, crisscrossed with tattoos. And jewelry that sparkled and obviously had some game effects. Great..

I ended up beating the game some forty minutes after the mimes showed up. There were three of them, one broad and muscular, the others thinner. All had jaunty hats, makeup, and striped outfits.

Some money changed hands, and though I really wanted in on some of the winnings, I didn’t bother with accosting anybody. Instead I shook a couple of hands, did some smiling and nodding, and high fived a couple of people who’d made good bank off my shooting skills and jacked up reflexes.

And proceeded to follow the Crosses around town.

Patches joined me the moment it became clear I was headed for the door. The pack of adoring teenaged fans cooed even more, and the ones who hadn’t gotten up the guts to pet him were crushed. He trotted out of the arcade several dog biscuits richer.

“Ya done good, buddy.”

He huffed in response.

“You see those chuckleheads over there?” I asked him. “We’re after them. We fly casual, so you might have to disappear once or twice, got me?”

I received a low bark in reply, and wondered not for the first time what Patches had in the way of stats.

I swapped out my mask for another one at a stall, this one a featureless bundle of abstract colors with two eyeholes. That done, I put my jacket in my inventory, along with the gun, and strolled along with only the blade in the holster on my back.

At one point the three mimes disappeared around a corner, and I passed by, only to discover they’d vanished entirely. After circling the building and coming to the alley from another direction, I sussed out there was no ambush waiting for me, and peered around.

“You got any idea where they got off to, Patches?”

He put his sniffer to the task, and nosed around the alley a bit before giving me another quiet ‘ruff!’

I headed over to the panel in the side of the building and gave it a more thorough examination. It was mirror polished, black, and seemed to be the same sort of futuristic plastic substance that made up my own turf. Aside from that, nothing.

“I’m lost,” I told him. “You got something I don’t?”

He put his nose to the dirty pavement, and I noted a seam I hadn’t seen before. It led around in a rounded but squarish shape that was easy to miss. I still had no idea how to get into their underground lair thing, but it was a clue and I’d take it.

An hour of watching later I got the intel I needed: by hiding aways off, I spied the next batch of Brass Crosses enter the alley and press on the wall with a bare hand. Now, these were the worst kind of Brass Crosses; the one had a thick pair of black leather pants that was circled with a jeweled belt. And every one of the jewels radiated a field whose color corresponded to the jewel type.

It might have been magic. It might have been cyberpunk scifi. Whatever it was, it worried me.

He entered the alley with a lady whose almost-nudity would have been shocking if not for the writhing cybernetic grafts and tattoes that covered all of her exposed skin. Her face jingled slightly as she sashayed, its every available fold pierced or clipped. These two threatened of power and ability.

I wondered what challenge rating this quest was. Or even if Deus Ex had caught wind of who I was, and had trapped me into an encounter that I was clearly not prepared for.

And the last companion in their little entourage was an ogre as far as I could tell. His tattoos looked normal, as if they couldn’t take. Or maybe he hadn’t been high-ranking enough to warrant the cost. But he wore a variety of simple brass and copper chains, ringlets, and piercings all the same.

I examined them and the game informed me that they were named Mister Tyson, Rose Bud, and Colossus Jones.

I scowled at them from afar. This felt like a boss battle. And I was damn sure I wasn’t ready for one of those yet.

But I had to do this. With a reassuring few pets, not shaky at all, I told my best boy to remain here while I went and visited some righteous beatdown on these OpFor dicks.

But I belayed my action when I saw Colossus Jones place his many-ringed hand against the wall panel I’d been looking at.

It flashed with inner light.

“Print accepted,” a nasal feminine voice intone.

The wall folded open, revealing a section of alleyway that sank into the earth and formed stairs. The wall panel itself disappeared up and back into the building.

“You hear about the new guy?”

“What new guy?” Colossus asked, while the door mechanism slowly got to work.

Rose Bud shrugged. “Some guy tore up the Boss’s enforcers and took over East Gojira-X. Carved out Boss’s territory like it was nothing. Somebody said the guy just knocked Boss’s dragon out of the park.”

“Chuck?” Colossus asked.

“Yup. Couldn’t have happened to a better beast neither. Things a real monster. Enjoys killing. Somebody finally gave him what he deserved.” Mister Tyson ducked the retracting wall panel and disappeared to the left.

“I like killing,” Colossus said, his voice suggesting hurt.

“Yeah, not like he does. Not the same at all big fella,” Mister Tyson said.

Rose Red followed after him, Colossus coming up last. I followed after as quietly as possible.

“Ah crap,” Mister Tyson said. “We’ve got another summit coming up.”

“Don’t remind me,” Rose Bud complained. “Seems pointless. We’ve got the power. Why do we have to spend time treating everyone else like they was friends and stuff?”

I had Colossus around the neck squeezed in my powerful grip before I he knew what hit him. The other two kept yammering on, not noticing their large flailing companion struggling to pull me off from behind them.

I quietly activated my Cybernetic Enhancement, adding +10 to my finesse for the purpose of acting first in combat, and hoping it would give me the drop on them.

Almost dropped my chin to the floor when it worked.

 

You’ve succeeded a Stealth check, and have a surprise attack! These enemies are less likely to notice you back here. They’re off their game. You’re on yours.

 

Game on.

Colossus passed out after only a minute of me choking him. In the meantime I’d slipped into the building and taken him down with me. The secret stairway entrance had started to close, but now it recognized somebody was still here, and retracted back open.

“Patches! Here, boy!” I called softly. I couldn’t believe I’d just dropped this ogre to the ground without anyone being any the wiser.

By the time Patches appeared, I was swearing under my breath, heart racing, certain that a bunch of level 20 Brass Crosses were about to turn the corner looking for their buddy.

Lucky for me, Colossus didn’t weigh nearly as much as he looked. My buffed out body dragged him along the corridor, turning right instead of my enemies left. Patches didn’t show any sign of having scented any enemies, so the coast was clear. Soon enough I had him stashed in an unlocked storage room, filled to the brim with scrap and other crafting components.

The game awarded me some XP and loot while I flattened myself to walls and snuck around this basement lair.

Tensions were running high. It was probably best I got situated next to the Brass Crosses early, so I wouldn’t have to face any super powerful ones later in the game’s difficulty progression. I was under the assumption that this was still relatively low level territory, given that Colossus had only been level 11.

This basement had been pretty soulless until the Brass Crosses got to it. The walls had been plain beige plastic under plain halogen lights, but had since been spray painted with glaring graffiti: gang names like The Crusher Kid, and Blooded Fists. It was a little off-putting and made me rethink the whole low level territory thing.  

I passed out of that horrible section of hallway and into the next room.

“We gotta be caref–“

I got no further. Instead I felt the tripwire against my shin the moment before a gigantic bucket of acidic red goo swung forward and doused me from head to toe.