Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.7

1.7

+++

In the year 2020, to get personal registration done, one would have to go to the City Center and look for the City Affairs Building.

This was a necessity for anyone who was coming in from the NUSA, but since Night City itself was, currently, a part of the Free State of North California, identification from anywhere in NorCal was perfectly valid. For those coming from outside of either, registration was also necessary, but the terms were quite relaxed.

It was, perhaps, a bit of a surprise to know that immigration into this city was so easy, but one look at the population and crime statistics had revealed why.

Immigration was the only reason this city was staying afloat. Death rates were so high that they had occasionally outpaced birth rates. Emigration was also very common. Yet, the reputation of the City of Dreams was so alluring that new victims arrived continuously.

A warning, to be certain.

Alas, things were no longer so simple as going to a building in the City Center, mostly because the City Center was currently moderately radioactive rubble, and had been since 2023.

With most of the City’s government and administrative buildings having been obliterated by the same nuke that took out the rest of the City Center, it had proven necessary to split things up a bit.

These days, the city has been divided into multiple different zones, with City Managers handling each one individually. As the City had slowly crawled its way back into coherency, however, they were fading out, and there had been a recent effort to reconsolidate as much of the administration as possible. Part of that reconsolidation had been the push towards digital currency, even though only five years earlier every form of the Eurodollar had been as perfectly valid as the rest of them.

Six months ago, I could have wandered into either the Heywood Industrial Zone or Santo Domingo areas for registration, and that would have been that. Today, there were three spots in the city where I could get it done.

I left the building at seven thirty, leaping up through the opened window roof so that I could avoid making an absolute racket trying to open the warehouse door.

Now that it was daytime, I had effectively zero chance at stealth, what with my massive size and bright, eye-catching clothes. Even so, I didn’t want to be associated with here, so I closed my eyes and felt for attention and opportunity, staying low to the rooftop as I did.

My supernatural bullshit gave me the all-clear a few seconds later, and I burst into motion, my legs tensing and pushing. The world around me slowed to a crawl, and I leapt forwards with a low jump that only just cleared the edge of the roof.

I landed directly behind a neighboring building, the streets and roads on the opposite side of it. I stepped back, near to the wall, but not actually touching it, and then waited another few seconds for another good feeling...

Now.

Again, I dashed off, moving so quickly I would be nothing more than a blur even if I had been glimpsed. Another building served as cover, and then another, and then I ducked into an alleyway, weaving through the messy, cramped passages as quickly as I could. An entire set of them passed, and then I finally judged that I had gone far enough.

I came out of the alleyway fast enough that my robes fluttered around me, turning the moment that I reached the middle of the pavement and shifting into a much slower walk that, due to my sheer size, still covered a deceptive amount of distance.

The moment everything settled in place, a car turned around the corner behind me, curving left. I felt the attention jump to me, a brief moment of incomprehension followed by shock, and then by swearing as the driver had to correct his turn into something much sharper, lest he crash into a pole.

I didn’t turn to look. I simply kept moving, my head facing unerringly forwards. The car went slowly for a moment, the driver continuing to look at me unsubtlely, but then the Night City Civilian Survival Instinct finally kicked in and he promptly accelerated to a speed that was likely not entirely legal.

No one was watching me, so I allowed myself a brief amused smile.

And I continued on my way.

I had memorised the public city map before I left, of course. It would have been sheer foolishness not to. I was heading north, towards Heywood Docks, which, in this time period, had been in operation for about five years. The area was a corporate zone, servicing smaller corporate ships that were intended to help break the Nomad’s grip of travel into and out of the city.

Consequently, a lot of people came through that particular connection, corporations basically shipping them in by the truckload these days. The Night City Council, in a rare moment of sense, had elected to place a branch of the City Affairs office there, which surprised me because I would have expected greed to take over and leave it somewhere less convenient.

On the other hand, it’s not like there’s many other places they could put it. New Westbrook, to the north, is highly overcrowded by refugees living in tent cities. Little China, to the west, is in severe disrepair, and its populations have since moved mostly to Watson, which, in this time period, was the new nucleus that the city revolved around, with billions of Eurodollars having been poured into the zone by a variety of corporations now that the City Center was rubble. Consequently, that meant it now housed the current main buildings.

To the south was only yet more over-crowded suburbs, and everything between the old City Center and Pacifica was an active combat zone.

So, perhaps it was a case of doing the right thing only after all other options had been exhausted.

Ah well.

The path I had to take was long and winding. Night City was built tall rather than wide, but the city was still expansive, and the constant development and redevelopment led to equally constant changes of roads and paths. It also didn’t match the games, whether video or tabletop, save only for rough layout of the districts.

The further I walked, the more people started showing up. A relatively isolated location turned into an absolute swarm barely a kilometre away as the level of development and sheer density of life picked up.

They were wide and varied, in roughly the same way that splatters of rainbow paint thrown against the wall would be. I saw people wearing everything from thick, covering layers of suits and coats, to clothes that could barely even be called worn. People wandered around with hair of every style and colour, some of them with visible chrome and some of them without. Some of them were so unreasonably well-proportioned that it was obvious that they’d been biosculpted, some of them were built like sumo wrestlers, and some of them looked like a stiff breeze would pick them up and carry them away.

I passed an entire clowder of catgirls, and then walked past a crew of people who wouldn’t be out of place on a twentieth century construction site not even a minute later, and then a fluffle of bunnyboys only two minutes after that.

Pure visual chaos, and perhaps the first thing I’d ever appreciate about this city.

Yet, even among this varied sort, I stood out.

Part of it was height, of which I had no contender. Part of it was clothes, with my robes being both of extreme quality and in a style that no others possessed. The rest of it was the fact that, in their eyes, I was a real Exotic.

Not like the catgirls or bunnyboys, who hadn’t gone further than just a few additions of animal traits. The catgirls had been entirely Human save for ears, tails, and nails. The bunnyboys had all only got the ears... Maybe also tails, but I hadn’t seen them underneath their clothes.

Real Exotics were expensive. They’d dropped in price from thirty years ago, but my extreme levels of non-Human traits could still only be matched with enough Eddies to be considered luxurious at the minimum.

People looked at me as I moved through the city. I felt anger, jealousy, confusion, greed, and a thousand other little things as they did, but by far the most common thing that followed up the first emotion was fear.

Caution. This much luxury always meant danger for the common people, and so most of them did their best to not look directly at me. In return, I made a point of not looking back, keeping my head forwards, for gait unhurried, and demeanour calm, projecting an aura of focus as I walked through the city.

That was enough to let most of them ignore me after they got over the first sight. They saw me as someone who was not interested in them, just in some other random bullshit, and that was all they needed to not get involved.

For anybody else, my deceptive speed was enough to discourage.

The streets got progressively cleaner as I approached my destination. I went from seeing dirt and filth in every direction to something that looked vaguely clean as I crossed into the corporate zone properly. The crowds thinned at the same time, and the vibrance of style faded away into workers and operators.

I saw my first police car shortly afterwards, patrolling slowly. I felt their eyes on me, and shortly afterwards, several more cars drove past the area, none of them quite heading towards me, but all of them within my vicinity. Attention spilled from them towards me regardless.

I ignored them. The only time my pace changed at all was when I had to cross a road and actually wait for the pedestrian lights to do so.

I had stopped near a small crowd. They had, all of them, awkwardly left a gap around me, preferring to invade even the personal space of the rest of them rather than stand near me.

I reached my destination exactly half an hour after the office had opened. There were a pair of guards out in front of the building, both of them standing straight in the shade. One looked up, and then startled upon seeing me, but the other quickly stopped them from doing anything.

The second was notably older than the first. I didn’t acknowledge them at all, simply keeping my pace as I approached the door.

It was a door. Just a door. Not even a scanner... Corporate bribery, so that they could sneak operatives in?

Irrelevant.

The door opened on its own, a wave of cool air streaming out. I had to duck through the frame, but the roof was tall enough that I only had to do a slight slouch in order to not brush my feathers against it.

The lobby was wide and open, and I saw more than a few guards inside here as well. Most of them had tensed when I entered, and one’s hand had drifted towards his gun after I straightened up.

Chatter in the room died as others looked up, workers at their desk pausing before hurriedly turning away, keeping watch from the corner of their eyes.

My gaze swept across the room as I read the signs, before stopping at a worker sitting underneath a ‘Immigration’ sign, nobody in front of him.

He looked up. My eyes flicked from the immigration sign to his face. Panic was born immediately, and then it turned into internal screaming as I approached him.

His face showed none of it. The perfect Corporate Smile took over his face, so utterly fake that it wasn’t even him making it, his implants controlling even this basic interaction.

Megacorporations really were the worst thing that had ever happened to Humanity.

I stopped in front of him, continuing to project my aura of focus. I had a feeling that this would get me the best results.

“I require registration.” I spoke, simply and directly. My voice was clear, a slight undercurrent of the harmonic tone emphasizing my words.

His face contorted, smile widening even as his implants moved his body into a just-imperfect-enough sitting position. “Of course.” Said the Cyberware using the man’s mouth. “I shall be happy to assist you.”

One day, I’m going to burn this city to the ground.

Perhaps sooner than I first thought.