PRIVATE Full Metal Black

Catriona contemplated the kebab.

In contemporary cultural history, she had learned much about the nature of doner meat (lending credence to the theory that her degree would have been worthless had she obtained it). In early 21st-century western Europe, it had apparently been a staple meal of the weekend drunk carved from an upright rotating, glistening spit of questionable meat. It was a joke that society had been in on, cracking wise about eating the slow greyhounds or one-footed pigeons not smart enough to evade capture, although the truth was never too far behind. This was probably why the people of that past ate them slathered in wilted salad and drowning in chilli sauce while three sheets to the wind.

She held the pita bread aloft, her own personal Yorick. Was the donor kebab the only food that came out the other end of their modern society improved? Real meat was for the high-powered corpos; everything else was synthetic, openly so. Rover and Lassie were safe, at least here.

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"You going to eat it or eye fuck it?"
PCS snapped, bouncing on the balls of her feet to expel some of the pre-fight energy. She was a short-tempered creature on the best of days, and this was very evidently not one of those days.

"Hm?" Catriona lowered the kebab, her focus on the fidgeting street fighter behind it, who played the part of her mercurial frenemy, and whose fist-dented face had a sheen not dissimilar to the rotating synthlamb behind them at the stall. "Girl, you look peaky. Are you feeling okay?"

They stood in a sprawling network of alleyways on the outskirts of Watson's industrial area. It was the kind of place where life found a way to survive, mainly by being out of the way. Scabby little neon food stalls and junk vendors lined against the walls, the conflict of a melting pot of music clashing into a wall of noise that made the place seem more cramped than it was (quite the feat). A small space had been laid out, where two chromed-up organ donors were smashing lumps out of each other for petty cash, encircled by an enraptured crowd seeking to sate base desires in the forms of violence and gambling. Ah, the joys of unsanctioned street fights. Catriona once believed that she was above this sort of thing, now, the woman was simply pretending.

"Got new chrome," she grunted, firing off a few rapid-fire punches into the ether (although perilously close to the kebab). "Brain package. Faster reflexes. Still adjusting."

"I thought Esky had banned you until you paid off the gorilla arms."


"Didn't fuckin' go to Esky."


There was a pause as Catriona gingerly picked up a long strand of sauce-covered 'meat' and dangled it in the air to cool off for a moment. "Christ, you didn't go to one of Badger's butchers, did you?"

"Nah, fuckin' gonk last week gave me the name of a guy. Said he'd hook me up on the cheap," PCS responded, her expression growing angrier (and somehow sweatier) the longer she contemplated the meat. "Are you gonna fuckin' eat it or what?"

"And you gave me shit for letting strange men play with my body," Catriona replied before finally indulging in the synthetic doner, lowering the long section of shaved 'meat' into her open mouth. It was hard to tell whether it was good, as the capsaicin in the sauce slapped her tongue so hard it forgot how to taste anything except for heat. "Who's the guy?" Devine asked through the mouthful. "I assume you've still got your kidneys."

"Burke Hare."

She almost choked. Maybe she didn't still have her kidneys.

"...what, like Burke and Hare?"

"Do I look like I fuckin' know what that means?! Fuck! Don't know why I let you tag along. You're throwin' me off my fuckin' game,"
PCS fumed, turning her back to Catriona and resuming her ritual shadowboxing in preparation for the fight. She was up next against some bionic, bald fortress of a man whose idea of getting amped up was headbutting a concrete wall behind him. Very sane, very normal. Made PCS look like a well-mannered lady by comparison.
 
"Fuck me he's up for this one."

Remi's remark was met by a low murmur of agreement by the crew. They were accustomed to the typical level of violent on display, but the headbutting was a sign of possible cyberpsychosis. Remi would keep them away from the front row for this one.

The best way to enjoy a night out was to have someone else pay for it. The tickets were barely a handful of creds each. There were some big hitters from the gangs were betting large. Meanwhile, he'd hidden a bottle of home distilled gin in his jacket.

His crew ran an autoshop on 32nd in del Ray. Even with the illicit shop work, they didn't have much to spare. In Night City, very few did.

"If the Borg keeps smashing his head into the wall and she has a reflex Mod..."

Remi was annoyed that Drake had a good point about the fight. He looked up to see two street kids climbing some rigging to get a view from above.

A groan ripples through the crowd, who soon parted to allow the loser of the previous bout to be dragged out. Someone followed with a dirty brown mop, barely cleaning the trail of blood off the concrete.
 
Catriona continued her glacial consumption of the kebab while observing PCS's pre-fight rituals. The pair didn't spend too much time in the company of one another, usually buffered by their international man of mystery (otherwise known as an incomprehensible Scottish man with a van), which allowed them to be content in ignoring one another after another heated argument.

They were from two different worlds, one a scrappy street kid who quickly learned if you're gonna be poor, you better be tough, and the other suitably middle-class and primed for a series of increasingly nicer ergonomic office chairs in the pursuit of financially stable mediocracy.

A small, terrible part of Devine did feel superior to the other woman in that aspect. However, she was quickly chided by the rest of her, who was quick to remind that the circumstances of one's birth were entirely uncontrollable. Anyway, had they not ended up in the same place, sleeping in the same shitty warehouse, eating the same artificial garbage and using their bodies to get by? More of a slight on herself, the fall from grace arguably worse than the stagnation of the lower classes.

As the bodies were cleared from the ring, she couldn't help but notice a slight cause for concern in PCS's behaviour as she continued limbering and amping herself up to fight the machine mountain.

"PC, are you sure that you're good? Only you haven't blinked in a hot minute."

"J-just fuck off, Cat!"

Did she stutter? Now, that wasn't right. However, before Catriona could cautiously approach with any concerns for her sweaty, not-blinking, and now stuttering frenemy, PCS had bounded off into the pit to square up to the absolute moon howler set to be her opponent. Blood trickled down from a gash in his forehead courtesy of the wall, which, in turn, had sustained damage from a no-doubt titanium skull.

There was no pomp or ceremony to affairs, the two just going at it as soon as they'd stepped up to one another.

PCS hit hard and fast, opening with a rocket of a right hook into the man's kidneys, meat-wrapped metal colliding with the reinforced bulkhead of a man (who she had come to learn through feral cheering was named Tiny). It barely seemed to register beyond a thick grunt. Jesus Christ. He responded with a double-fisted overhead hammer blow that was so telegraphed that even Catriona felt she could avoid it. A simple sidestep and rapid response came from PCS, who followed up with more midsection rockets, focusing on the same area before Tiny swung around with a heavy overhand.

The reflex package clearly kicked in, as if the woman had seen the hit coming three weeks ago as she ducked and then...

...screamed?

Devine froze mid-chew as she bore witness to PCS reeling away with her head in her hands, hunched over in apparent screech-worthy pain. Fuck. Was it cyberpsychosis? No fucking way, PC didn't have enough chrome to be snapping like that; she was enhanced, but not a straight borg. Even her opponent, for all his dim-witted appearance, seemed puzzled, probably wondering if he'd hit her so fast that he'd broken her.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" PCS suddenly yelled through her teeth, rearing backwards with wide, feral eyes.

She almost inhaled pita bread into her lungs. Was that Karl fucking Marx? Catriona wasn't well acquainted with cyberpsychosis, but she was entirely sure that communist rhetoric wasn't a symptom. Not that she had much time to think about it, as her friend suddenly barrelled into the crowd in a frenzied attack on the bystanders.
 
"Told you we didn't wanna stand near the front!" Remi called out, his voice weaving between

"Choom, you thought chrome dome was gonna lose it!"

That was a fair point, Remi thought to himself. His crew couldn't afford good augment, he had barely been keeping up with the fight.

The crowd started to jostle. There was a scream. Remi passed off the bottle of gin. He had also hidden a heavy wrench on his person.

Being from an autoshop, he could just about convince the police that he was carrying a work tool and not just enough steel to crack a skull.

A swing and people gave him and his boys space.

His crew were laughing. Remi's expression darkened. He was hardly the thinker of his time, but was a little more thoughtful than his crew. It was why he was in charge.

No one was stopping the psycho. But who would? The Borg was quivering in place, unsure what to do now. They could hardly call the NCPD to an illegal street fight. If everyone hear called in their contacts there would certainly be bad blood and a shoot out.

"First a tradegy!" screamed the psycho as she poked her fingers into the eyes of a bystander. "Then the farce!"

"Hey girl, you can stick your fingers in me next!"

Remi started to turn to Drake in disgust. Unfortunately, so did the psycho. Except her gaze honed in on Remi. She launched herself into the air.

He barely had time to curse - which was a shame as it was his favourite pass time - before she came crashing down.
 
It was hard to balance out the marvel of witnessing PCS fire off communist rhetoric with all the grace of a juiced-up Animal on fight night with the immediate panic of looming consequences. The moment this got called in, it would be pegged as a cyberpsycho attack, and no doubt, MaxTac would be on the scene with their 'spare no bullets' methodology for problem-solving.

PC was annoying, but not 'shoot on sight' annoying.

As the brawler collided with one of the spectators, chrome limbs mindlessly attempting to knock seven shades of shit out of the poor guy in her sights, Catriona leapt into the fray. Okay, maybe not into the fray, but she at least moved closer to the chaos, the kebab still held firmly within her grip (because when you're poor, you didn't part ways with what you'd paid good eddies for).

"Hey hun," she simpered, sidling up to the big guy with the self-inflicted head wound, who just stood there like a confused, augmented tree. "I don't suppose you'd be able to grab her for me?"

Tiny looked down at her in picture-perfect perplexion.

"It's her time of the month,"
Catriona lied, knowing that the power of the period might have been able to dissuade him from believing it was a bout of cyberpsychosis. "The red tide, if you get me." Oh fuck, that was wasted on him. "Us ladies, what are we like? Just need to calm her down and get some chocolate in her." The escort looked up, giving her best helpless, pleading little lady expression with shameless eyelash fluttering. "Please?"

The chrome shithouse grunted and lumbered forward to try and restrain PCS from seizing the means of production (caving in a man's face), that was unless her victim had it in hand and didn't even need the assist.
 
"Ah!"

The cowardly cry came from beneath PCS as she wound up a punch. He threw his head to the left. A fist came down, faster than his eyes could follow, and put a crack in solid concrete.

Remi tried to get his knees up to put some space between them. She didn't weigh a lot but the first solid punch was going to do some grievous bodily harm.

Suddenly her weight was lifted. She was held, upper arms pinned to her chest. One final swipe directed down and Remi could taste blood.

With a string of curses he rolled to his side. He had both hands to his face, sheltering his broken nose.

He stood up, helped by his crew. Bloody hands fell to his sides in clenches fists.

"You fucking..."

The Borg had no initiative beyond his initial instructions, holding his opponent up. Remi looked like he was going to throw a punch for some token revenge.
 
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