1 01: Know, Oh Prince...

"Come on, hit him!"

"Take him down Rhett!"

"You can take him Sim!"

"Beat on the brat!"

"Kick his ass, son!"

At the last shout (or roar, rather) I can't help but roll my eyes a bit, even as I raise up my fists and square my shoulders.

"Gee, thanks mom." I mutter under my breath as I size up my opponent.

The other guy is an Animal (note the capital 'A'), sporting their signature gang get-up such as colorful training pants, a stained wifebeater and enormously overgrown muscles and thick chrome along his joints and jaw. The guy is huge, well past the two meter mark and seems almost as broad in the shoulders as well and anyone outside the gang would think twice about taking such a behemoth on in a chrome-knuckle fistfight with anything less than Trauma Platinum coverage on standby.

Hell, even within the Animals, quite a few of them would strongly reconsider whether or not stepping into the ring with the shaved gorilla was worth an additional supply of the hormone cocktail known as Juice. A bit hard to enjoy your new HGH-boosted, testosterone-fueled, synth-rhino horn grown muscles when your chin gets launched up through your eyeballs by an uppercut from one of the top brawlers the Animals had to offer.

That wasn't a euphemism either. I've seen the guy do it. Twice.

He's trying to turn it into a signature move of his, has even been experimenting with slogans and nicknames. Last I heard, he was fighting under the moniker of "Crush-Your-Skull-Through-Your-Chin Rhett".

Animals, by and large, aren't exactly the imaginative sort. Which also showed itself in the name that I was fighting under.

"Break him in half Simba!"

Why Simba? Easy, he's a prince of animals. I'm essentially the Prince of the Animals, though many of them aren't really hung up on royalty. Still, the nickname stuck and it's what I'm most commonly known by.

Simba, the Prince of the Animals, the first ever known natural born offspring of an Animal.

Though most people call me Sim instead. Even my mom calls me Sim these days, instead of my given name of Michael K. Rose. Then again, I strongly suspect that she was the one that came up with the nickname in the first place. After all, everyone calls her Sasquatch instead of Matilda too.

See, the thing about those big, HGH-boosted, testosterone-fueled, synth-rhino horn grown muscles you get from using Juice? Yeah, big fucking surprise, but pouring a cocktail like that into your body fucks your shit up, big time. Sure, you essentially become a hulking supersoldier that at higher tiers could even survive small-arms fire (which is a depressingly common threat here in Night City), but among its myriad side effects, such as increased aggression and the like, is that it leaves your infertile.

Except, apparently, in the case of my mom. Back in '55, Matilda K. Rose, already Juicing it up within the Animals, somehow managed to get pregnant, the only known member of the Animals to ever do so. It was thought impossible before and yet, here I am. Trust me, it took us both by surprise.

Not everyday you wake up in another universe after all.

After having me, mom got some pretty whacky ideas about me being the next step of human evolution or something, picked the nickname Sasquatch (and I'm almost certain my nickname as well) and beat the ever-loving shit out of everyone she met with a sledgehammer until she ended up the alpha of a significant pack of Animals.

She wants me to take over the entirety of the disorganised and decentralised Animal packs and, I dunno, lead the gang into dominion over the new world or something, I guess?

I'm not entirely sure what exactly she expects of me and whenever I questioned her about it when I was younger, she'd eventually get confused and simply shrug.

"To be stronger. To be the strongest one there is." Was her final answer every time and I had to make do with that.

Unfortunately, the rest of the Animals, being Animals, didn't really feel like kow-towing to some 'royalty' and I've had to fight for my place in the gang ever since I was old enough to swing a punch. Not being a part of the gang was never an option to begin with: like they say on the news, you don't get to leave NC 'cept in a bodybag. That goes double if you're wearing a gang's colors. Honestly, Jackie must've gone through hell and back for as clean a break as he got from the Valentinos. Criminals usually don't appreciate you betraying their trust and taking their intel with you.

Come to think of it, same goes for corpos really.

Any normal kid wouldn't have survived past their sixth birthday, but then again, I was hardly 'normal'. As weird as my mom's plans for me were, I couldn't deny that there was some truth to her whacky ideas about me. As it turns out, being the offspring of two HGH-boosted, testosterone-fueled, synth-rhino horn snorting superhumans (though Ma had no clue who dear ol' Dad might be) can have some interesting side effects.

I've essentially been on Juice even since before I was born, to the point I'm apparently producing trace amounts of the stuff naturally. I grew far faster than a normal human, being almost as tall as an adult man by the time I was eleven and now at soon-to-be twenty (birthday was coming up in a couple months, Sasquatch has been asking around for gift ideas recently) I was finally reaching the end of my gargantuan growth spurt.

In addition, my muscles were both larger and denser than human, or even Animal, standards, effectively giving me a natural inbuilt subdermal armour (as opposed to the actually inbuilt subdermal armour, cyberware I was still strongly considering having a ripperdoc put in me). While the more durable muscles meant I was more difficult to really harm, any damage I did suffer seemed to heal several times faster than normal as well.

If it weren't for that healing factor, I probably wouldn't have survived my sixth birthday.

Even with all of those freakish enhancements (though Ma insisted on calling 'em "gifts" instead) Sasquatch thought that a Prince of the Animals should look the part and had been looking into bodysculpts essentially from the moment I was born. Those kinda augments can get ridiculously expensive, but hey, we were criminals and part of a gang that specialized in smuggling, protection services and "protection" services.

We mostly dealt in drugs and the like, black market stuff, offering protection to black market dealers on the side. Very rarely we dealt in wetware or bioware; with people fixated on chrome there's not much call for it these days outside our gang and wannabe-Animals. Still, that means there's plenty of contacts to be made with cloning experts and vat growers looking to offload some off-market gear for a choom in need (especially if said choom is wielding a big fuck-off sledgehammer with ease, familiarity, and a disconcerting amount of glee). Considering the kind of upbringing I had to look forward to (and Sasquatch not exactly being the kind of Mom that takes 'no' for an answer) I had reluctantly agreed to many of the mods that Sasquatch ordered I should get.

Some of them ended up very useful considering the amount of brawling I've been forced to do just to earn a scrap of food at the table, such as my sharpened teeth and the thick claws that she replaced my nails with. Those alone could easily go for more than 8,000 eddies, which just reinforces Ma's (hammer's) great diplomatic skills. Some of the other biomods were a bit more... focused on aesthetics, such as my ears, which tapered up to a sharp point. Honestly, I was just glad that they were still a pink flesh, instead of covered in fur and placed on top of my head.

Cat-ears might look cute on cat-girls, but they look decidedly out of place on a giant of a man like me with a mug like mine. Yeah, Juice doesn't exactly do wonders for your attractiveness, unless you appreciate the aesthetics of square jaws, heavy-set brows and sunken eyes. And, to be brutally honest, even before Ma became Sasquatch, she wasn't exactly "conventionally attractive" when she was still Matilda either.

Suppose I already maxed out the genetic lottery by essentially being born as a primarch, being handsome on top of that was simply asking for too much. Still, it's not like the biomods are really helping in that regard.

At least my new ears seem to actually improve my hearing slightly, so hey, I'll take it. Same went for my eyes, considering I had been practically forced to swap 'em to optics when I had been younger anyways, if I wanted to do even the simplest things like take a call or transfer funds. It was a small step from there to give 'em an animal motif, though Ma still can't decide if they should be more tiger-like or wolf-like. Personally I've slowly begun incorporating a lion theme in my style (hey, the nickname clearly wasn't going to go away any time soon, might as well lean into it right?) but Ma has been somewhat pushing back against that and looking for alternatives.

I'm guessing she feels I only get to incorporate the king of the animals after I've proven myself King of the Animals. Given how there were plenty of gangoons in the other Animal packs that didn't feel much for Royalty as it was (my title as 'Prince' being thrown around as a joke or an insult more often than not) and yeah, I could kinda see where Sasquatch was coming from.

Over the years, she's supplied me with various animal-themed optics which I've sported at various ages, swapping whenever I inevitably outgrew my old ones (and once out of necessity when a Maelstrom fucker went for my eyes with a Mantis-blade he seemingly pulled straight out of his ass instead of his arms like a normal person). Right now I was back on tiger-like eyes (they even glowed slightly!) and as such, for this fight at least, I was sporting orange-black stripes sprayed haphazardly across my back and upper arms.

Some small part of my brain, fully aware of the sheer ridiculousness of my new life, idly wondered if Wakako would end up suing my ass for copyright infringement?

Thankfully it's just a bit of paint and not actually another bodysculpt mod. I know there's an alpha up in Wellspring in Heywood that spliced in 'gator DNA to give his skin a reptile-texture, got scales and everything. Goes by the name of Croc, which once again shows both the level of imagination and intelligence of the average Animal member.

Honestly, Emeric, the bouncer for Afterlife, could be practically considered a genius amongst my kind. Then again, I'm pretty sure he got out pretty early after some gig he did that had Rogue's fingers all over it. Now he's standing outside the doors leading to a former morgue all damn day, trying to look mean and not shiver.

What, you think that jacket he always wears was just for aesthetics? Just common sense man, it gets fucking cold in the Afterlife.

Well, to be fair, it's probably the aesthetics thing too. This is Night City after all, and drop-out or not, he's still an Animal. We don't really do common sense around here.

Anyways, back to Croc up in Heywood, the DNA-splicing thing was hella expensive and risky to boot. Couple of decades ago, when bodysculpting was pretty big before cyberware got more subtle and more powerful, DNA-splicing your skin like that carried a one in ten chance on skin cancer with it, but these days it's (relatively) safe, though people don't really go for bodysculpting anymore.

It's the '70s, everyone just slaps on some Gorilla arms and swaps in some off-shelf chrome and off you go, being the best Animal you can be out in this concrete jungle.

Except for my Mom, apparently, who was hellbent on going old-school on my ass. She's held off on the full DNA-splicing for now, since she's waiting to see if I'm really done growing yet (because who even knows? I don't and I'm me. Sometimes, it kinda sucks being the first and so far only of my kind) before she starts messing around with my DNA even more. She doesn't want to jeopardise my development into the ultimate being or some shit like that. Same reason I've never actually been allowed the Juice, not that I've really needed it so far, since I've basically been on Juice before I even was on synth baby-formula (Ma doesn't trust the 'ganic stuff, considering Biotechnica pumps their cattle with almost the same shit that we use).

Honestly, I personally thought this made the name Obelix far more appropriate as a nickname for me, but Sasquatch was hellbent on keeping the Animal theme going strong (and French comicbooks from a century ago aren't exactly popular anymore) and thus the stupid nickname and the beast-like augments.

The only one against which I had really put my foot down and the one argument I've ever won against Sasquatch, was outright refusing to get a tail fitted. Ma could claim it would aid with my balance in fights all she wanted; I very firmly told her I would throw myself straight into Laguna Bend if she tried fitting me with one.

Even so, between the fucked-up genetics and the biomods that I did get, that still meant that I towered over my opponent, even tho I've never been on Juice and carrying just the barest of chrome. Mostly a few extra organs and the general cybernetic reinforcements to weakpoints like collarbones and joints that all Animals and most cyberpunks sported. I loomed over the average Animal member like they did over normal people, standing tall and bulky to the point I often had to duck my head whenever I entered a room (at the height of my growth-spurt, when I wasn't used to my new size, I even strongly considering getting some chrome installed for my poor, often-bruised forehead). Everything about me was huge to the point of being nearly inhuman.

All in all, let's just say that even a Warhammer 40k Space Marine would feel intimidated if we had to share a locker room. By that comparison, I'm closer to an Ogryn who has really been watching his calories and hittin' the gym, than the iconic transhuman supersoldiers. As bulky as my opponent is (the shaved gorilla metaphor more accurate than I'm really comfortable with as it seems he has purposefully altered his face to look more like our genetic cousins), I still end up dwarfing him. I'm a good head or more taller than he is and even broader still. In addition, I'm stronger, faster and tougher and have been in fights like this ever since I was six.

The big bad Mister "Crush-Your-Skull-Through-Your-Chin Rhett", champion of the Animal fighting rings? Yeah, he looks like shit.

Enough blood is pouring from his face and down his bruised chest, it would've caused a smaller man to pass out already and I'm honestly a bit surprised he can even see me at all. Man's got some preem optics installed if they can keep track of me through all that blood in his eyes. He's trying to stand tall, but he's swaying on his feet and breathing hard. Occasionally a spark shoots out from the blocky cyberware lining his right shoulder and arching up over his collarbone, a result of a throw I managed to get in during the previous round.

If it weren't for the heavy-duty chrome, I likely would've torn the arm completely from its socket, but even so it's a mangled mess now and he'll need to seek a ripperdoc for some replacement soon if he doesn't want his cyberware blowing out on him in the future.

All in all, Rhett is clinging onto consciousness more out of sheer stubbornness than anything else and I gotta say: kinda admire him for that.

Shame he had to insult me in front of Sasquatch. It was meant as a challenge to my status as a 'Prince', since Ma is looking into taking over the pack of Rhett's alpha as well. Said alpha, a mean looking motherfucker glaring at me from outside the ring, didn't fancy his chances against Ma's big sledgehammer, so instead he figured he'd send his lieutenant to beat the shit out of her son instead.

Sadly for him, he's hardly the first to try it and shit like that has stopped working on me since I was twelve.

Rhett lurches forwards, a fist shooting towards my torso, the chrome in his shoulder groaning and sparking in protest at the sudden movement. It's decently fast, I suppose, especially considering the state of him, but I was faster than him even before I kept beating on his stomach worse than a pimp dealing with his 2-eddie joytoy in the backalleys of Jig-Jig Street.

For those of you unfamiliar with the "charms" of Japantown after dark: pretty fucking badly.

This meant that, experienced as Rhett might be, he's running on fumes and, unfortunately for him, I'm already reading his next move. I step into his attack, left arm sweeping outwards and batting his jab aside with ease. Had that punch connected with anyone not an Animal or a 'borged up Maelstrommer, it could've taken their head clean off. As it is, it barely even manages to bruise my skin as the attack is thrown wide. Destabilized and moving purely on rage and instinct, Rhett tries to turn back in towards me, coming in with a rising kick aimed at my ribs.

However, I already saw his move coming. Like I said, I've been fighting since I was six. I know every dirty trick and tactic in the book. Wrote a few new ones as well. As his leg rises, almost slowly to my senses, my chambered right arm comes around in a brutal downwards punch as I use the momentum of my previous block to twist my torso and put the full force of my body into the attack.

Rising knee, meet downwards fist.

The impact is more something you'd hear in a car crash than in a brawl and I'm fairly certain I heard his chrome tear itself from his 'ganics. Ouch. Not even a ripperdoc can fix that up choom, better to either get a replacement grown or go full 'borg.

… what did you call my Mom again? Oh, right, a "whore who only got to the top by laying down and shitting out bastards". As far as insults go, it's not a very good one (though to be fair, as far as Moms go, Sasquatch isn't a very good one either) but still.

I think Imma suggest going full 'borg for the leg, choom. Heard Maelstrom is always looking for "volunteers"…

Time picks back up again as Rhett's leg is completely halted in its movements and blasted back again so violently, his torso whips forwards instead, right into the rising elbow strike which immediately follows my downwards punch. Considering this one had less of a wind-up and less momentum behind it, it doesn't break Rhett's body any further, but it does send him flying away from me, crashing heavily into the bloodied mat.

He's struggling to get air back into his synth-lungs, the cyberware in a tizzy after the pin-point strike of my elbow applied directly and vigorously to his solar plexus. He's in so much pain, he doesn't even focus on me anymore, occupied with more direct concerns, such as the act of breathing.

His loss. Literally.

Just as he's managed to roll over to his hands and knees, I step behind him, bend down, sling my arms as thick as tree trunks around his middle and heave upwards, easily lifting the 400-pound man (chrome is denser than meat after all) up and onto my shoulder. He's heavy, sure, but really no heavier than a well-stuffed backpack to me.

Turning to face his alpha (who really should've known better), I take a little sprint, before slamming my feet down and using the momentum to twist my hips and veritably yeet Rhett into his little posse, bowling the lot of them over as they roar and scream in surprise.

Rhett ragdolls a little further before rolling to a stop on the bare concrete floor of the gym we had been fighting in. Well, to be honest, neither of us had actually been fighting: he had been surviving.

I mostly had been bored.

I glance in Rhett's direction for a moment to check if I accidentally gave him enough brain damage to the point he thinks of fighting further, but for now it seems he prefers to cool surface of concrete to facing me in the ring again. Good boy. Stay.

Satisfied he's dealt with for now (as far as fights go, he was better than most, but severely underestimated me, which turned it into a snorefest instead of a challenge), I instead focus on the enemy alpha instead.

I recognize the guy from the game: Logan Garcia, owner of Tripple Extreme Gym in Rancho Coronado, San Domingo. Well, we're Animals, so we may call it a Gym, but mostly it's just a fighting ring held in a repurposed paint factory (some of the Animals "cleverly" joke that now it's a pain factory. Those are the smart ones too). I know the old rundown place like the back of my hand, considering I beat the shit out of Rhino here in an alternate universe. Haven't met her yet, but I have met Mr. Garcia here.

Well, in that alternate universe I killed Mr. Garcia here 'cause he brained a kid for not being strong enough to run with the Animals. Dumb kid, sure (typical case of a cyberpunk who thinks just cause he slotted some chrome in his arms he can suddenly run with the beasts of the concrete jungle) but that didn't mean he deserved to die for it. Being stupid ain't a crime (yet). Made worse 'cause the Mom of the kid that put in the hit with my V through the fixer El Capitan got revenge killed not long after.

You mess with an alpha, you better be prepared to deal with the pack.

As far as I can tell, that hasn't happened yet, and considering Garcia's prize fighter literally just got used as a bowling ball and he as one of the pins, that's not gonna happen any time soon either. Sasquatch is one tough bitch, but dumb shit like that won't fly unless you wanna meet the business end of her hammer. Seems like Garcia only just recently made the move to San Domingo: he seems more to be from NC proper, somewhere in Westbrook I'd wager, wearing a suit that actually fits his size and sporting more polished chrome than the rest of us (literally, I can see his nose guard shine in the low light of the gym). He certainly has a higher standard of hygiene than the Animal packs I usually deal with. His hair looks like it was actually washed sometime this week.

I easily vault the ropes as I land heavily onto the concrete floor in front of Garcia and his flunkies as they work themselves to their feet again, some of them looking a little worse for wear after getting smacked in the face with 400 pounds worth of unconscious Animal.

The gang leader opens his mouth to speak, but barely gets any noise out before I steadily begin to approach him, my eyes locked with his. Not breaking the gaze, I call out to my Ma.

"Sasquatch. Hammer."

"Sure thing Sim!" a gleeful voice roars back and moments later I feel a heavy weight smack into the waiting palm of my hand.

Shifting my grip on the sledgehammer, I come to a halt in front of Garcia, close enough we're standing practically chest to chest. He has to crane his neck to meet my eyes, which is very clearly messing with his head. Animals are used to towering over others, not the other way around. He's nervous and absolutely still, looking more like a deer caught in headlights than a fearsome gang leader.

"101st street in Rancho Coronado now belongs to Sasquatch and her pack. You can join that pack, or you can get the fuck out of Coronado entirely. Fuck it, move out of NC while you're at it. Either way, this turf is ours."

I slowly bring the head of the sledgehammer forwards, resting it lightly on Garcia's broad shoulder, my voice and expression entirely flat, my tiger-like eyes glowing eerily in the dim light of the gym.

"Trust that won't be an issue for you, right?" I prod and the alpha grits his teeth, before his eyes flit towards the hammer and back to me.

"101st is Sasquatch's. Fine. Bitch can have it. Me and my boys are done here." He growls out, trying to save some face.

He attempts to move away from me, but I increase the pressure of the hammer by just the smallest amount. The reaction is instant though, as Garcia stills completely, his eyes widening and his breath faltering.

"No. You are done here. The offer to join the pack still stands for your crew."

With that, my eyes flit to the Animal members scattered across the gym, though I very firmly keep my hammer exactly where it is.

"How about it chooms!? You've seen what I can do! Seen what the Sasquatch pack can deliver! You want more Juice than you can chug, more turf than you can patrol? Wanna be part of the strongest pack in the Animals?! Wanna rule this fucking concrete jungle?!"

My roar echoes throughout the large gym and I can see the better part of the alpha's pack, about a dozen gonks in total, mutter amongst themselves with either enthusiastic or speculative looks. A few of them just look pissed off and/or scared. Such as their alpha.

"Or… you can go back to being part of a pack where your alpha is too chicken-shit to fight for himself and his second too fucking weak to do it for him?" I ask in a cold tone and I can see something snap in the older man's eyes.

His hand flies to the back of his waistband as a snarl tears itself from his lips, but I'm faster. I'm always faster. My fist blurs forwards and buries itself deep enough into Garcia's midriff I'm fairly certain you could see his spine through the back of his jacket. As he's lifted slightly off his feet, gun clattering to the floor forgotten as his lungs futile struggle for air, I step back, pulling Sasquatch's sledgehammer back and down with me, throwing the alpha to the floor.

Following through, I use the momentum to swing the hammer up and around, lifting it high above my head, before with an animalistic snarl I bring it down in a blur of speed and violence. It goes straight through Logan Garcia's head, obliterating it completely in a shower of blood and gore as the hammer shatters apart the concrete and buries itself into the floor.

All of this, in just barely two seconds.

Guess Monica Steiner won't have to worry about her son Lenny getting his skull caved in 'cause he didn't meet Mr. Garcia's standards for his fighting ring contenders.

The alpha's death happens fast enough his flunkies are still scrambling to draw their guns, some of them haphazardly pulling old Nova's from waistbands and some poorly maintained Guillotines and Pulsar's from shoulder straps. Oh, look, one guy even brought along a Crusher. Paranoid fellow, aren't you?

What, just because we like brawling and prefer melee weapons, you thought Animals don't carry heat? This is NC, everyone and their grandma carries a shooter (no, really, grannies wielding decades-old Tacticians amount to close to 70% of all failed B&E's). You go around without a weapon and you're just asking for some random gonk to hand your ass over to the Scavs to pull out and sell your brain: clearly you weren't making much use of it anyways.

There's various clicks and clacks as hammers are cocked and gunbarrels are aimed towards me as I slowly straighten, though none of the Animals seem very keen on avenging their late boss. This is only further enforced by my Mom speaking up from behind them, a Techtronika Pozhar held easily in each meaty fist. The Soviet shotgun was known for its kick-back breaking bones if you didn't have the chrome for 'em, but Ma has been swinging around a man-sized sledgehammer since I was in diapers. She can handle 'em easy.

The Pozhar gets its reputation from being a MaxTac favourite, but they're clearly becoming Sasquatch's as well. Though that's probably because they were a birthday present from me. Loot from the highest stakes heist I ever did. Everyone in the gang agreed it was a nice gesture.

"Don't think so, you fuckin' gonks. What are you, a buncha pussies? We do things the Animal way! You wanna fight my son, you do it in the ring over there!" she spits out, and the sight of a giant muscle-bound woman wielding a spec force shotgun in each hand standing suddenly behind them is enough to make the other gang drop its weapons in a hurry.

A bit too much of a hurry as one of the Guillotines literally falls apart when the Animal throws it to the floor.

Tch. Cheap plastic BudgetArms crap. I'm just glad the thing didn't accidently set off and shoot my toes off or something (BA has a user clause denying responsibility for exactly that by the way, go figure).

Sasquatch just chuckles, before nudging the still comatose Rhett lying at her feet.

"Good choice! The alternative sure doesn't seem to have agreed with your choom here, huh?" she jokes, before lowering her Phozars, eliciting an audible gasp of relief from the burly gang members.

The situation is still a little tense, but for now it doesn't seem as if any blood is gonna be spilled. Well… more blood, at least. It's at that moment that another Animal, this one from our pack, hurries up to me. As far as Animals go, he's pretty slim, having merely a bodybuilder's physique instead of some proper muscle on him, the contrast all the clearer as he steps up beside me.

"Yes Barrett, need something? Kinda in the middle of something here…"

"Hey Boss, the car's, uhh…" the guy slowly trails off as he stares up at me, and it takes a droplet of blood dripping into my eye to realize why.

Damn, you'd think killing your first man at eight years old would traumatize you for life against killing, but in reality it only sticks with you for those first few times. After a couple years (well, more like well over a decade) you instead just get desensitised instead.

"Dammit, I always forget how messy headshots are. It just sprays everywhere." I growl deep in my chest out of annoyance, futily trying to wipe the former alpha's brainmatter from where it splattered all across my face and chest.

"Easy thing to miss, Boss." Barrett deadpans, before handing me a towel that had been lying near the ring.

Well, I say towel, but that's mostly because that's what I was using it as. I suppose a car mechanic would've called it a cleaning rag instead. Eh, it got the job done at least.

Somewhat.

Like I said, Animals aren't exactly big on hygiene.

"You were saying?" I rumble as I pick the last bit of Garcia from my unkept locks of hair (styled to represent a lion's mane, because of course it is).

"Car's ready for ya boss. Got a ping on the corpo cunt, route confirmed, we can move for intercept whenever you're ready. Also, you are not getting in my car like that."

Well, most Animals aren't exactly big on hygiene. Then again, this wasn't strictly speaking an Animal. Barrett was part of my own private crew within Sasquatch's larger Animals gang. If she ran a pack, I had a pride. I had been campaigning hard to form a specialized brand of Animals ever since I was about ten or twelve years old. By the time I was fifteen, Sasquatch finally felt I had the experience and the rep (and she the manpower and eddies to spare) to build the group up.

It had taken five years of brutal combat, underhanded tactics and outright bribes, but now I was in charge of my own squad of Predators. The Animals were wild and unruly and pretty much chaos personified, tying right up there with Maelstrom for 'craziest bunch of irrational motherfuckers in NC'. That was hardly good for business: collateral damage usually ends up bloating the bill. So, I had tried to put together my own little spec ops squad, pulling from both within and outside of the Animals.

We specialized in tracking, data gathering, extraction and elimination. That last one we've gotten really good at and a bit of a rep for: people, vehicles, buildings, it made little difference to us. You wanted something gone and you had the eddies to pay for it, and we'd find it and make sure it was gone. Essentially, we did everything the Animals were too loud or too brash (meaning dumb) to do. Notably, I had not just one but two of the very, very few netrunners within the entire Animals gang on my payroll. We also used more gear than the average Animal pack, with a greater on ranged weaponry (of the heavy ordinance kind: we were still Animals after all) and wearing more armor. Mostly that just mean armored pants, reinforced boots and flakjackets with a stylized lion's head stamped on the back.

Most of them refused to wear anymore armor than that. After all, what was the point of putting on the biggest muscles in NC if you were just gonna cover them up? Let their real guns shine in the sun, death to the oppression of sleeves! After twenty years in the Animals, I was really annoyed at how much sense that was beginning to make to me... Still, certain... eccentricities aside, between the specialized combatants and netrunners and the better gear, we were essentially a fully-fledged merc squad, just operating solely for Sasquatch and her pack instead of for a fixer.

Suited me just fine. Fixers are at best useless, basically being walking, talking wanted ads boards and at worst, they can be a merc's final nail in the coffin. They licked the boots of corpos that needed shady biz done on the sly and lorded over the gonks of NC that had nowhere else to turn to.

Yeah, I don't like fixers, how could you tell?

Still, there was still plenty of work that major corpos were willing to throw to gangs directly and then there was Sasquatch's drive to expand her pack so that I could in time inherit a kingdom (her words not mine). At first this had been limited to just gathering more members and cash, but I had convinced her to actually begin claiming territory as well. It meant more than enough opportunities for a specialized hit squad to shine. This particular bit of biz, however, was notable in that it did, in fact, come from a fixer this time.

Intercepting and extracting a corpo cunt while he was mid transit. Survival of target required. Arasaka job, so high risk too. It had so many red flags over it you'd think the USSR came in and claimed NC for the glorious cause of communism. Actually, depending on whatever ends up happening to Mikhail Akulov, that's not even that far from the truth.

It made me antsy.

"It's not even your car Berrett, we stole it just two weeks ago-"

"I'm driving it, that makes it my car and you are still covered in literal, actual brain."

"You always get so hung up on details-"

"Just spray yourself down with the hose, Sim. You'll need to clean my hammer anyways." Sasquatch interrupts our talk as she stomps closer, arms crossed in front of her broad chest.

"Or you can say 'fuck it' and leave that fixer asshole out to dry, help me out around here. It's a lotta eddies, sure, but we can find other ways of getting those, 'specially with the new manpower." She continues in a lower tone, frown on her face.

"We took the biz, we're gonna finish the biz." I say, attempting to brush her off.

It doesn't work. While Sasquatch wasn't the best Mom at times (or most of the times if I'm being honest), she did care about me in her own way and she was a very stubborn Juiced up woman.

"You hate fixers Sim and the guy gave me the fucking creeps. The whole biz stinks and then there's the push you've been having us make towards Pacifica for the past two years…"

"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet about a gang war Sasquatch."

"You know I don't, I just can't figure out why you want to go after the Voodoo Boys. Let 'em have Pacifica. It's gone to shit and that's all it has to offer: shit. Hell, even this part of Coronado ain't exactly a huge prize neither."

Perhaps. Rancho Coronado was cyberpunk suburbia down to a T and as such made every edgerunner, solo and gangoon want to tear out their hair or blow up a cityblock at the sheer mundaness of it all. No wonder foolish little Lenny would've stopped by the Animals fighting ring, it was one of the most exciting things to do around these parts, which was depressing enough in and of itself. Still, I managed to convince Sasquatch to expand Southwards anyways because at least it connected the turf we already had throughout the rest of Coronado and greater San Domingo to the San Morro Bay. Access to the harbors of Night City was worth its weight in gold to smugglers like us, especially since we actually operated out of territory of our own, which was unique among the otherwise turf-less Animal gang.

That was the argument I used to convince Sasquatch to expand here anyways. The real reason was because we now had turf bordering on Pacifica. An excellent staging ground for further conquest.

Ma was correct about that decrepit region though. A giant pile of shit, rotting away in the corpse of the corpo paradise that should've been built there. Then again, I didn't give two fucks about Pacifica itself, just who was there. I wanted to wipe the Voodoo Boys out of fucking existence, send their souls off screaming towards the AI gods they worship so much.

Wonder if dear Maman Brigitte will still look so smug when I trash her, her chair and all of the VB's as their minds are fried by the AI's beyond the Blackwall. Almost makes me want to dip a clawed toe into the terrifying world of cyberspace.

Almost.

"Between the biz, the Predators, Pacifica… I'm just worried 'bout you. Wandering what it is you're up to." Sasquatch continues in as close to a motherly tone as she can get with her deep, distorted voice, earnestness clear in her optics.

For a moment, I merely mulled over her words as we moved away from the centre of the gym, my Ma already signalling several of our Animals to get the new pack settled and integrated as we leave the squat, run-down building.

Barrett wisely stays silent as his alpha starts questioning my actions.

Even as I get a nearby hose and start washing off the blood, brains and luminescent paint, I can't help but think on what Sasquatch said as my mind goes over my plans and long-term goals.

What was I up to? What was it that I really wanted? Sasquatch already had some vague ideas about me leading the next evolution of mankind or some shit like that, and it wasn't as if leaving the gang, especially after almost two decades, was much of an option either. But these were just restrictions placed on me, restrictions that I could break free from. Not easily, and I'd be burning a lot of bridges, but not impossible either.

Yet, after twenty years in one of the most violent gangs in Night City, I was still sticking around.

Why? What did I want? What did I hope to achieve in this new life? Building up my Predators, motivating Sasquatch to grab and expand territory, forging contacts on the black market in wet- and bioware outside of the fixer network, what was it all for?

Well, honestly, what I really wanted from the moment I recognized the ugly mug looking and cooing into my mismatched crib, was to turn my back on Night City, run away as far and as hard as I could and never once look back. This place was a soul-crushing, depressing shithole. It took every aspect of my previous world that was seemingly designed to hollow you out from the inside and dialled it up to eleven. Wealth inequality, lack of healthcare, rampant criminality and drug abuse, homelessness, you name it and Night City offered it in spades and then some.

There really was no future here, as so much graffiti kept rightfully claiming. But the undeniable fact was that I was forced to make one here nonetheless. It wasn't as if the rest of the world was in a much better state after all, with a possible Fifth Corpo War on the horizon. I had to make do, which gave me my two priorities:

1: I had to survive Night City. Everything from its common gonks, to its gangs, to its corpo armies and even to its cops.

2: Sasquatch had to survive Night City. Most notably her encounter with V once Netwatch hires us as protection in the field.

Sasquatch hadn't been a particularly good Mom, but at least she tried and she did care in her own, weird way. That was more than many people here in NC could hope for. She may have been a shit Mom, but she was mine and I refused to lose her in one of the Voodoo's schemes by putting her in the path of a desperate, rampaging V.

Which was a whole thing on its own, something so fuckin' weird it's enough to push someone straight through cyberpsychosis and right back into sanity again. Because I have been V. Multiple V's even. Sure, it was just in a game and had hardly been as immersive as even the most basic BD's available on the streets here, but the point still stood.

I've played as a V from every lifepath and have seen V die in every possible ending. I knew the guy (or girl, in my corpo V run. God, I hope this V is not my corpo V, she was a netrunning god and an absolute nightmare to fight) almost like I knew myself.

Which gave me my next priority:

4: If, at all possible, make sure V survives Night City.

And no, I didn't skip a number. 'Cause, while it was a priority of mine, it was currently also 2075. Making it two years before V even attempts the ill-fated Heist and meaning that there's another edgerunner's life that's about to burn out into legend.

3: If, at all possible, make sure David Martinez and Lucyna Kushinada survive Night City.

If the opportunity presented itself, I'd try to help out the rest of the crew as well. Prevent Maine from going cyberpsycho. Prevent Pilar from getting his head blown off by some random gonked out 'borg on the street. Prevent Rebecca from… well. They didn't really deserve to be saved, if you looked at it objectively. Very few people in Night City do. Not even me, if I'm being completely honest with myself. Maine's crew, while likeable as characters from a fictional show, were now a very real merc group that didn't hesitate to put as many bodies in the ground as they felt they needed to, and considering they were in a fixer's pocket, said bodies could one day very well belong to my Animal pack.

But, it had to be said, if there was one person worth saving in this wretched city, it was David Martinez, if only because his mom sacrificed so much to make it so. David had been right about himself: he was special. Just not in the way that he thought he was.

And while I personally thought Lucy's dream wouldn't amount to much, just trading one cage for another, I had been too invested in their romance to have her die on David.

Fuck, I couldn't listen past the opening chords of 'I Really Wanna Stay At Your House' for fucking weeks after I finished the show.

It had just been… been so fucking unfair. It wasn't right, the way Night City props you higher, just so it can watch you fall deeper. Someone, just once, ought to get their happy ending in this fucking city. Considering mine was apparently dependant on leading the human race into a new age of world domination (according to Ma), I might as well make sure someone else gets theirs.

Which led me right back to the fixer's biz and why I had ordered my Predators to take the assignment instead of a regular Animals pack.

I speak up as I shake the water from my wild mane of hair and get to work on hosing off the head of Sasquatch's sledgehammer.

"I know Ma. I trust Faraday as far as I can throw him. Well… quite a bit less than that actually, he's a pretty thin guy-"

"Sim."

"We're taking the biz, Ma. We have to. Another crew would just get it wrong." I state firmly, finally finished with cleaning myself off enough Barrett will let me in his car.

My preferred car is a heavily modified Quadra Type-66 Avenger, to the point it more resembles the Javelina Badlands variant V is able to buy in the game. RWD Drive Train and 777 horsepower before I tuned it, it's a beast of a car and my baby. Well over a 150,000 eddies if you wanna go through the official channels, I managed to get my hands on one from a small-time fixer who intended to sell her to the local Raffen Shivs.

What do you know, Kirk Sawyer was a dumbass in two dimensions.

All it had taken was tracking down a small group of Wraiths, brutally murder them, have my netrunner lift their digital sigs and network codes and pose as a potential buyer to the NC car thief. For someone who willingly and knowingly dealt with the absolute worst scum the lawless Badlands had to offer, Kirk was foolishly lax in his security, both digital and physical. Probably figured that giving himself the title of 'fixer' meant no edgerunner would be willing to lift a finger against him anyways.

Just too bad that, going by NC slang, I'm not an edgerunner, but a gangoon. A gangoon who happens to hate fixers. Bad day for him.

He looked so surprised too when I didn't show up with the promised eddies. Moron. His huscle had tried to intimidate me into holding up my end of the deal, which ended up a very short-lived mistake on their part (honestly, he was just a big fucking slob and I was a fucking mountain of a supersoldier, what did the gonk think was gonna happen?). Kirk got spooked (now, to be fair to the cowardly shit-stain, most people short of Adam fuckin' Smasher himself would be too after they saw how I helped "Big" Joe drop 250 pounds in just a minute), but as said, he had also cheaped out on his digital security as well and thanks to my netrunner, his calls for back-up never went through.

To this day, Dino Dinovic still doesn't know what happened to his car dealer (maybe he thinks Kirk Sawyer got a hunkering for the open road and joined the Wraiths?) or if he does then the fixer is smart enough to pretend that he doesn't.

A bunch of trouble and bloodshed over a car and Sasquatch had almost disciplined me with that sledgehammer of hers, but goddamn had it been worth it.

Finally, something that I could call wholly mine. The slightest sense of self-determination and normalcy for the first time in my fucked up life. That Quadra was a fucking lifeline for my mental stability, the days where I was just driving or cleaning her (and of course repeating "wax on… wax off" as I did) being some of the most relaxed and peaceful I've ever had in this life. I wasn't sporting much chrome, but given my… unique circumstances, if it weren't for the beauty of a car that was my Avenger, I probably would've gone cyberpsycho by now as 2077 kept creeping closer and closer, and it's easy to see why.

The Type-66 is my favourite car in all of Night City, even when going up against Caliburns or Aerondights or even other Quadras like the Turbo-R V-Tech. The Avenger is just plain the sexiest edition of the Type-66, but sadly it wasn't exactly designed with a monstrously large Animal gang member in mind as its intended driver.

As such, it's more my… 'pleasure' vehicle. My workhorse, and really the workhorse of my Predator crew, was a juiced up Chevillon Emperor 620 Ragnar. Chevillons are common so they don't stand out (much), and they're already quite durable and easily upgradeable. And, it had to be said, offered more headroom for behemoths like myself than my sleek and graceful Type-66.

But, Faraday's biz was an Arasaka target. More red flags on it than over in the USSR, especially here in NC. I insisted that nothing about it should be traceable back to us in any way. Masks for everyone, netrunning only for tracking purposes, not hacking, no equipment we owned ourselves, only gear we could dump safely afterwards.

And I didn't mean that in the way BudgetArms meant it either. Their shit was literally 'throw away after using' considering their guns had a tendency of melting right in your hands. Side-effect of using plastic to house the gun, which also meant that (especially in the hands of an Animal) the guns could outright fall apart before you even got the chance to melt 'em in the first place.

No way was I gonna take equipment on board for biz like this when it could fall apart at any moment like that one dumbass' Guillotine back in the Tripple Extreme Gym.

Faraday had tried to push it off on me, saying he'd match my additional costs for new gear by upping his price, but I had shut that down hard. He delivered the intel and the gear and we'd use both to deliver him the target. No intel and no gear meant no target. He had tried to stiff me (because of course he did), the fucking asshole, but he wasn't as big time as he'd like to think he was and I had given orders to every Animal willing to listen not to accept any biz from the guy.

Which, to my bafflement, actually worked. No matter the eddies, no Animal would touch Faraday's offer with a ten-foot pole. Guess there's actually something to my title as Prince of the Animals, huh? That, or a fixer with a bad rep is more toxic than a dumped barrel of overripe CHOOH2.

… yeah, it's probably the latter. On the Edge, the world of fixers and solos, rep is everything and I had taken a chunk outta Faraday's.

This had pissed the four-eyed fixer off something fierce and he had hired Maelstrom for the gig instead, just a little over three months ago. This was the kind of intel that usually comes at a price if you wanna get it from another fixer, but this time I got it for free from Ziggy Q right on the evening news. Like I said, Animals are tied for the prestigious first place of 'craziest gangoons' in NC and Maelstrom's sense of subtle blows even our own out the water and straight up to the fuckin' Crystal Palace up in space.

They tried to intercept the corpo cunt… by blowing up a bridge. There's some beauty in the sheer simplicity of their logic: car need road. No road, car no go. Ergo, remove road.

Sometimes, the line between outright genius and sheer stupidity is worryingly thin.

Thankfully, the 'borged out gangoons had placed the bomb near one of the insert lanes towards the end of the bridge and while Maelstrommers are some of the nastiest fighters I've faced on the streets of NC, they are hardly terrorists, meaning their bomb didn't outright destroy the bridge itself.

The tarmac, sure, but the rest of the thing still stood tall and unbroken. … well, it stood tall, at least.

The corpo cunt's car had been armoured to hell and back (because of course it was, this was Arasaka after all) and the Maelstrommers had set their bomb off too early, meaning the driver had floored the gas and punched straight through the fire and smoke and out the other side.

Arrogant 'borgheads hadn't even figured to set up a block with their own sprayed over Chevillon Thraxes, meaning the corpo was able to get a decent headstart on 'em as his limo raced across the rest of the bridge, smashing any unfortunate Galenas and Maimais (the sport version of the compact little car coming with a manufacturer's warning to "not accelerate the car beyond 60mph when flanked by winds of more than 20mph") that happened to be in its way aside with ease.

Maelstrom eagerly set off in pursuit of course, but a bomb is something even the NCPD can't really ignore and the mark was on his way towards Corpo Plaza, so an actual response time was needed and off they went to catch the bad guys. 'Cept this was the NCPD, so after a bunch of crashes and shoot-outs, Max Tac was called in to end the situation, the only way Max Tac knew how: permanently.

Far as I could tell, not a single Maelstrommer survived the gig.

Pretty sure they won't be missed, even by the rest of Maelstrom. Crazy 'borgs aren't exactly the sentimental sort.

I suspected Faraday hadn't told 'em either about the level of armor the limo had or the amount of security the target could count on and I likely wasn't the only one in NC that had figured the same. Sure, officially none of it traced back to him (Maelstrom being dumb enough to carry the gig out on their own on nothing but the promise of eddies and their own chromed up chutzpa), and the failure of the gig was partly on Maelstrom for being a bunch of gonks.

However, for those in the know, the failure was on Faraday as well for being gonk enough to hire Maelstrom in the first place and then not even providing them with appropriate intel. The failed biz burnt him and he knew it and when he came to me just a few weeks ago, it was essentially with a blank grocery list in hand.

It had been one of the most gratifying things I've ever seen in my new life, the way his three stacked eyes nearly fell out of skull as he saw a list of my demands, but, eddies where they're due, he delivered on every single item.

It took him a little while, but I was fine with that: the more time passed, the more the heat from the last gig died down and increased the chance of our target using the public roads again. When he finally dropped off the last bit of gear in one of my warehouses (none of them placed in San Domingo, just to be sure), I had Barrett boost two cars (and one truck) that we'd need for the gig.

The two weeks since then had been spent fixing 'em up enough so that they could handle the biz and monitoring the actions of their owners so we could be sure NCPD wouldn't pull us over 'cause of stolen plates before we even had a chance to pull up on the Arasaka corpo.

Finally, after two weeks, the heat had died down and the cars were finished, which is what Barrett had come to show me in the first place and I motion for him to lead on even as Sasquatch has a troubled frown on her heavy-set face.

Her mood is bad enough that Barrett hesitates for just the barest moment, eyes flitting from me to my Ma. She's so deep in thought I have to clear my throat for her head to snap up and even notice Barrett still standing there. She shoos him away with a nod and my Predator scurries off with a brief look of apology towards me as he leaves.

Annoying, but I get it. I was still only twenty and Ma was right here. Still, he ran with my crew, which meant he follows my orders, not Sasquatch's. Detecting my annoyance, Ma steps closer to me, meaty fist coming up to clasp my broad shoulder.

"Alright. Do what you feel you need to do. But, make it back, cub. Don't get in over your head and if you do, know when to pull back. If you need me, call me and I'll murder everything and everyone there, yeah?"

Unusual, as far as a parental pep-talk goes, but that's just how we NC Animals roll and after two decades I've gotten used to it. I clasp Sasquatch on her shoulder and rest my forehead against hers.

"Will do. Thanks Ma."

"Go on, get out there and show 'em what you're made of."

"Will do Ma."