The neon sign flickered erratically, casting an eerie glow onto the rain-soaked street. 'Ripperdoc,' it read, its letters seeming to dance in the downpour. Kai stood outside, a stranger in a body he was yet to fully understand, staring at the signage with apprehension and intrigue.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door, stepping into an environment unlike any he had seen before. The room was a macabre amalgamation of a doctor's office and a mechanic's workshop. Surgical tables were strewn with tools that seemed as likely to dismantle a robot as operate on a human body.
A woman behind the counter looked up, her face a fascinating blend of flesh and machine. One side was aged, showing signs of a hard-lived life, while the other was metallic, her eye glowing a bright blue. Her voice echoed with a distorted, electronic resonance. "Can I help you?" she asked, studying him with a clinical detachment.
"I… think I need help," Kai admitted. He felt the uncertainty seeping into his voice, revealing his disorientation. The woman studied him longer before nodding and gesturing to a chair.
"Sit. Let me take a look at you."
As he complied, Kai watched as she moved about the room. Despite her cold demeanor, she moved with grace, her metallic parts moving fluidly with her organic ones. There was an inherent danger in this world; that much was clear, but there was also beauty. Beauty in adaptation, resilience, and, as he saw in this woman, a kind of beauty in survival.
She approached a scanner in hand and began to run it over his body. Kai could feel a strange humming, making his borrowed skin tingle. "What happened to you?" she finally asked, her glowing eye fixed on the scanner's readings.
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Kai hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. "I woke up like this, in an alley," he admitted. "I think… I think I'm in someone else's body."
A moment of silence stretched between them before the woman finally nodded. "Your neural processor's memory logs are empty, and your cyber ware shows signs of recent hard resets. It seems you might be right."
Kai felt a knot in his stomach. In some corner of his mind, he had hoped that he had been wrong. But the reality was harsh, and this new life was his now.
"Do you know what I—what this body does?" he asked, desperation seeping into his voice.
The woman's gaze hardened. "You're a Ripper Doc," she replied. "But not a very good one. You've been scamming your customers and doing poor jobs. Not to mention, you owe a lot of people money."
Kai felt a pit form in his stomach. "That's… That's not me," he said, shaking his head. But the woman merely shrugged.
"Maybe, maybe not. But it's the life you have now. You better figure out what to do with it," she said, her voice devoid of sympathy.
Kai swallowed hard. He didn't know how to be a Ripper Doc or navigate this cybernetic underworld. But one thing was clear: he needed to survive.
With this new life, he had been given a second chance in this body. A chance to change, to make a difference. And Kai decided then, in that peculiar clinic under the neon sign, that he would do just that.
"I'm going to fix this," he declared, his voice full of newfound determination. "I'm going to be a Ripper Doc—the best this city has ever seen."
The woman merely stared at him, her electronic eye flickering slightly. "Then you better start learning, kid," she said. And for the first time, since he had walked into the clinic, Kai saw something in her gaze that he hadn't seen before—a spark of interest, maybe even the faintest glimmer of respect.
Thus, Kai began his journey to becoming a Ripper Doc to redeem the ill reputation of his predecessor. It would not be an easy journey, fraught with dangers he couldn't yet comprehend, but it was a path he was willing to take for himself and the city that had become his new home.