Quoted By:
Personal life is back in order enough for me to keep writing. So let's get back into things, shall we?
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A 22 year old Raul Gutierrez, walking down the alleys of NC having just bought some new snacks from the local Allfoods.
It's around 6:00 PM, nearing sunset. The days into Fall have been getting shorter, but you've always been more of a night person anyways. Hell, most of Night City is night people, for fairly obvious reasons. You munch on the burrito L you got absentmindedly. Supposedly they're working on a burrito XL and maybe even a burrito XXL one day, but you have no idea what that's all about. A burrito L works fine for you, as with most people. The taste of meat, tortilla, cheese, and sour cream blends in your mouth as you chew. The consistency of the meat is a bit chewy and the cheese always tastes just a bit plastic, but that's what you get for only spending a handful of eddies.
The alley you're walking through looks cold, like the color has been gradually drained from it over its lifespan. The bland silver Air Conditioning units with the brick and stone walls felt as if they were continuously closing in on you, looking to squeeze you into a paste. Not that you weren't used to that, however. Most of Night City looks like a threat to human life, ignoring the parts that the higher classes roam in. You wish you were a Beav, living in a comfortable corporate neighborhood without any fear of gangs. But who doesn't?
The smells of the city are plentiful with food and sweat and CHOOH2, but there's something else on the wind that makes your nose scrunch up. It's not really a scent you can put your finger on at first, but a noise down the corner up ahead happily takes your attention from you. The sound of a scream being cut short, followed by the scraping of something metal across the floor. Now, you're no expert on mysterious noises and screams, but your instinct tell you immediately that a situation like this is one you don't want to be a part of. So, of course, you decide to walk the opposite direction.
The sound of footsteps behind you don't seem to be walking away, however. You pick up the pace a little, and the footsteps do as well. It's only when you stop that the footsteps stop, and at that point do you feel more annoyed at the situation than terrified. You turn your head to tell whoever is messing with you to fuck off and-
Oh.
The blood-covered man regards you with a twitch in his neck and a glazed-over look in his cluster of six mechanical eyes. He wears a heavy armor jacket and flack pants, but it doesn't seem to slow him much by the way his body sways back and forth. His right fist drags across the floor attached to the rest of his arm by heavy cable, the chrome already dented by blunt damage. There's a blank expression on his face as he stares directly at you, before a sharp twitch in his body forces him upright. His lips part for a second, like a fish gasping in the air, and then he speaks.
