[b]Location:[/b]
[indent][b]Raygon 8 - Leisure District, aka. New Macau.[/b][/indent]
[indent][b]BT-Block Z000-000-102 “Junk Yard”[/b][/indent]
[indent][b][i]Warning: Citizen Wristband connection unstable - please move closer to a Cognito™© ClusterNet transmitter.[/i][/b][/indent]

[img]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fa/d2/eb/fad2eb05dab22bea71c496e45b801ba1.jpg[/img]

[hr]

The sickly, chipped metal of the surrounding acid-burnt buildings drifts lazily on the industrial winds in this part of the city. The crusted sewage smears up against the foundations of structures much taller and much older than what could ever be considered safe, and the air is so polluted that one couldn’t see further ahead than one’s own outstretched arm. Crumbly asphalt, or what had once been it, roughly outlines what had once been a road network, down here, but now one can barely walk straight along it, let alone drive on it. An endless network of pipes and roofings forms a low skydome over the area - in every sense, this part of the Bottom tier is essentially a network of tunnels underneath a grander city. The temperature is unbearable down here, being deep underground and overclogged with hot fumes.

Yet despite all these factors that should approximately equate this area with the surface of a gas giant, it is vibrant with life. Lackluster life, yes, but life nonetheless - millions of outcasts from various societies gathering in one place to live out their misery as a single group. These people are weakened by harsh lives and a harsher environment, starved with little to no access to even the most basic necessities. Members of every race, human and xenos, all gather around relief centres, religious communes and soup kitchens to live another day.

This weakness makes them apt targets for kidnappers and flesh traders.

Grigo Pizarro flicked on the infrared vision on his gas mask. Behind him sat squatting a bunch of equally equipped thugs wearing black suits and wielding stun guns. Pizarro scanned the open street through the fog - infrared wasn’t an ideal spectrum to use when scanning down here, considering the heat of the air. Still, it was the best they had, and these cooled suits their buyer had offered them made this work so much easier. His eyes fixed on a crowd surrounding what looked to be a rabbi holding a sermon before an improvised synagogue altar. His crowd appeared sufficiently large, and their security was nonexistent. 

With a quiet signal, Pizarro and his thugs snuck their way over through the smog. Their approach was completely unseen, and it wasn’t as though anyone would warn the praying crowd if they saw them, either. The first thugs to break through to the crowd opened fire on whoever was in range. A panic immediately broke out, making them all the more easy to round up. Before long, Pizarro and his thugs had caught most of them and were tossing them into the back of a truck. A few more trips like this, and then they could return to their buyer with a proper offer.

[hr]

[i]The Mykola Gogol[/i] docked at the southern surface port of Raygon’s leisure district, before several smaller flyers broke off from it to go down into it’s vile depths. It was a rather large rectangular prism pattern of vessel, the geometric nature of the ship easily marking it out as originating in the Councillary Confederation of Neohumanity.  Anyone acquainted with the CCN would know that prisms were typically transport vessels. This one was of an intermediate size, clearly not carrying something in true bulk like loads of cheap consumer goods but at the same time it wasn’t to be carrying just a few luxury baubles. 

The flyers that descended were cargo carriers each and every one, the security of the LZ being assumed. Nevertheless they kept radio silence and activated their quasi-stealth protocols. It was just in case, for one never really knew what sort of nastiness was around the corner. Besides, the CCN wasn’t particularly keen on any journalists one way or another happening upon the trade here. Although any economic relationship with Raygon was by definition immoral in the median sensibility of Eden, people only really paid attention to things like human trafficking to cause scandal. To Neohumans, this was somewhat puzzling, for the calculated suffering produced by things like buying simple toasters from Raygon was projected to be far higher than the place being drained of a few of its lowest wretches. Really, the outdateds were so unreasonable! 

Still, they were the main population of Eden and their sensibilities dictated what had to be hidden and what could be done publicly and though they didn’t like it, the Confederates stuck to following this duality. All of this raced through the head of Vilho Bulow as his craft made touchdown. Today he was getting a very, very valuable cargo. The CCN always needed more people, exponential growth being one of the defining traits of the state. But mommy cyborg and daddy cyborg could only do so much, and even the mass kidnappings, adoptions, and willing immigration was still not enough to satisfy the demand for the population in the Sol system. Besides, Raygon’s people had thanks to natural selection developed quite some interesting genetic traits. Oh, it wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy, but it was still a matter of scientific interest and would make the sum Neohuman population a little more genetically diverse. In return, the gangers of Raygon would get something very juicy, oh yes. The scum of the planet would be very surprised to see other scum use the fancy toys brought here. As vehicles that carried the shipment of cryoguns, radcannons, sonic emanators and other esoteric weapons made by Neohumanity came behind Vilho, he checked the time and coordinates to make sure he was in the right place. He wanted to finish the transaction as fast as possible and begone. He could easily breathe the toxic air and bear the extreme heat of this place, but that didn’t mean he liked it. It was dark, but from soft but deep red glows in Vilho's irises the Raygonians would be able to see him. 

“Eyo, [i]mekanikk kopeng[/i]. Dis fine day fo’ lil’ trade, yah?” A skinny, lanky man, a mere ant compared to the wonderous fusion of machine and flesh that was Vilho, came out of the smog with gloved hands extended out to the side. “Mi called Grigo Pizarro. Welcohme to de Jank Ya’d.”


The red irises focused on the fellow identifying as Grigo, scanning him for weapons and analyzing heat signature, as well as facial expression and other factors to determine if this was friend, or foe. "It is… a pleasure to meet you." Vilho said, his voice smooth and silky but possibly synthetic. Save for the irises he was fairly human looking, although this was perhaps a little misleading. Save for his brain and skin grafts to hide and protect the cybernetics beneath Vilho was entirely machine. "You may call me Vilho. Do you have [i]the product[/i]?" he asked, except, not quite. The universal translator implanted in him would have done the work of perfectly expressing his intended meaning in whatever the dialect that Grigo used was. 

“Oya, [i]kopeng[/i] Vilho, you kno’ Pizarro oh’ways delivah, yah. Right in dat dere trukka, yah. Fifty-six ‘a dem, drengens ‘n pikas, yah - ol’ ‘n youngs.” He gave an impatient whistle and waved over an approaching truck, flanked on the sides with thugs equipped with improvised and home-engineered guns, wearing the same cooled black suits as Pizarro along with shabby gas masks. 

Pizarro cursed under his breath. “Oya, oya, oya - hurry de fuck up, yah! [i]Kopeng[/i] here busy man, yah!” The truck stopped a few metres away from them, backdoors facing Vilho and him. A pair of guards each grabbed a door handle and pulled it open. A crowd of terrified civilians, both human and xenos, screamed and tried to escape, but froze in their steps upon seeing the rest of the guards aiming pipe guns and rusty pistols at them.

“Oya, stay de fuck down, yah,” one of the thugs warned a teenage human as she attempted to jump out of the truck. Pizarro rolled his eyes behind his mask and thumbed at the crowd while facing Vilho. “Dis wha’chu want, yah? Proppa’ flesh, dis - best mi find down ‘ere.”

“Yes, yes I’m sure he does.” Vilho said, sighing as he walked over to the truck. As it opened he looked inside to examine the contents of it. He took about a tenth of a second to count and recount all fifty six to make sure he wasn’t being gypped, and satisfied he went on to take a look at the individuals. 

One he picked up by the neck with a hand, raising the poor fellow to Vilho’s towering eye level of two hundred centimetres. In a flash several surgical tools sprouted from his back which took off the man’s head, then cut a small circle in his scalp to throw aside and remove his brain with. Like a cashier’s barcode scanner wide lasers came from the eyes of the Neohuman to analyze it. “The usual contaminants. We can deal with that though.” he muttered, and another small mechanical limb came from Vilho’s back to seal the brain in a plastic-like material, before yet another cooled it. Another Neohuman came from the lander with a box in which the remains of the dismembered fellow along with the sealed brain were placed, and then he went back inside. 

Vilho took yet another look at them, scratching his chin with one of the cybernetic limbs. “The mean phenotype is semitic and expressed stronger than usual. I take it they’re largely from the same place?” he asked, picking up yet another by the neck to turn this way and that, before dropping her. “For the future it’s better if they’re different. The more different, the better.” 

“Yah, mi keep dat in thinka’, [i]kopeng[/i],” Pizarro promised faithfully. “Mo’ not de same, de betta’, yah.”

He hopped up on the truck, noticing one of the aliens. “This one is a xeno. We’ll take it, but it’ll fetch you less. For the future, it’s better if you grind down any xenos you bring us, they’re easier to transport that way.” The Neohuman might surprise even the Raygonians who had seen his kind before when he A) demonstrated the sheer amount of his hidden limbs when one emerged for every single xeno and B) demonstrated the strength in the otherwise thin and frail looking cybernetic tentacles holding the aliens up in the air well above him. 

“Still, this is a good batch.” the transport cars that were behind Vilho opened and in either hand he place rather large and very strange looking weapons. “Your pay is here. It can be tested, if required.” 

“Oya, [i]kopeng[/i], you too kind, yah,” Pizarro said and accepted one of the weapons. He aimed at a nearby pile of trash and unleashed a cone of ice that instantly turned the garbage into fragile blocks of frozen sludge. The thug let out a crazed cackle and cocked the weapon. “Oh, [i]shazza![/i] Dis gon’ wreck dem Hermanos Pendejos, yah! Aight, both’a dem for dis batch, keh?”

“Yes.” Vilho said. “There’s also a few radcannons and sonic emanators. I hope I don’t need to tell you: ‘don’t point them towards your face.’ Ideally, the radcannons and sonic emanators you shouldn’t be using without protective suits or power armour, but if you’re careful you can make sure the last thing the enemy hears is rock music just a little bit too loud without your own ears bleeding. What I’m saying is be careful. I don’t want such good partners to accidentally bake themselves alive; it would be very, very unfortunate.”

The several Neohumans stepped out of the lander to carry the weapons out of the cargo cars before sending a signal for the vehicles to change their functionality to instead store live people now. While the exchange of products happened Vilho looked back to Grigo. “So, when might we meet again? We’re always happy to take a few souls and hand over these [i]toys[/i].”

Through his gas mask, Grigo was grinning from ear to ear. His thugs were already grabbing and marvelling at their new weapons, showing them off to each other with mad laughter. The bandit leader stretched out an open hand and let out a flattered laugh. “Oya, [i]kopeng[/i], don’chu worry ‘bout us. We seen ‘nuff radiashan ta know when git out, yah. ‘Bout dem new batches, mi give ya comm a lil’ ring-ring when we ready, yah? Should be some time next month, ke. For now gotta lay low - let dem [i]bilgeas[/i] come outta dem homes again, roam de streets, yah. Makes dem easy peasy roundy uppies, yah.”

“Right, notify our representatives at your leisure then. Oh, and make sure to let us know when your little friends get accustomed to your new weapons. We’ll make sure to bring in something else then, chem dispersers and arc weapons. We may well want to one day put this partnership on an even larger scale, if that becomes possible.” 

Grigo snickered. “Sure t’ing, [i]bossmang[/i].”