Bricktown sat directly to the east of Little Yukoto. As its name suggested, almost everything here was made of bricks. At least everything short of the megabuildings. They were still the mess of concrete and metal that was in the other districts.

Even though the building material may have changed, this was still Aythryn City. Neon and trash were everywhere as could only be expected. The smog over here was far worse too seeing as Brick Town held quite a few of the industrial grade factories. The population density also changed up, there being less Kaijen influence in this area. I could actually read most of the signs, though there were still occasional shops and buildings with varied language.

I passed by several bikers on my way through Bricktown. If not for the bright red hair, then the laughing mask icons on their cuts give away their affiliation quite well. Neo-Jokers. They were the ‘owners’ of Bricktown much in the same way the Jade Fang ‘owned’ Little Yukoto. Thankfully, they didn’t bother me as I passed by.

Stintith sat on the opposite side of Bricktown, literally on the furthest edge of the city. The drop in population was noticeable as I closed in on the Outskirts. Instead of constant traffic, there was just the occasional person or car driving around here. Even the Neo-Jokers had died down quite a bit.

I heard an explosion somewhere as I pulled into a parking spot and began my walk off to the first location in Sintith. Just another Tuesday. Explosions were less common than gunshots, but this was still Aythryn City, the land of the free and dangerous.

The first stop was an abandoned factory. It didn’t stand out too much from its surroundings; Stintith was an ever-changing district with several companies going out of business every year. In a couple of months, the factory likely would be bulldozed and a new company would be set up before the same thing inevitably happened again. ASCorp was the only company established in Bricktown to last a long time. Most others, assuming they were successful, would try to get outta here at first chance.

The factory had a chainlink fence around it, but c’mon, this was the twenty-first century! No simple chain link fence would really keep somebody out. Especially since it didn’t have barbed wire at the top. Talk about amateur hour.

I cased the place for a while, waiting for night to fall. I had the weird feeling this wasn’t the spot, but I was already here so I may as well check. I marked the cameras and their angles before I picked my spot.

It was out of the way, so no person or device saw me as I hopped the fence and headed inward. The cameras likely wouldn’t be active, but I didn’t want to get caught breaking and entering - or just entering in this case - on film. Blue Crusaders weren’t known for being nice after all.

I edged my way around the factory until I got to a side entrance and found the door unlocked. The factory had been a car manufacturing plant, but now it sat empty. Or at least it was supposed to be empty.

A Hooverville sat inside of it, complete with the pitched tents of probably a couple hundred homeless blokes. Most were sitting around fires gently burning, so there was plenty of room to edge around the place. I carefully edged around towards the offices, intent on making it up to the roof.

I opened one of the doors and quietly worked my way into the offices.

“What are you doing?” A ratty voice called from behind me, making me lock up for a moment as I glanced over my shoulder. Directly behind me sat a guy, his face absolutely covered in scar tissue.

I reached for my gun, barely stopping myself as the guy seemed to be rather laid back as if he didn’t care about my presence. Weird… Maybe diplomacy would work? “I- I’m looking for something… don’t suppose you’ve seen a group of Neo-Jokers around?”

“Ha. They know better to avoid tent cities. Nothing to be had from the poor… you should probably leave. I don’t mind, but some of the other guys ‘round here are quite trigger happy.”

“Right.” Stupid Shiro. Why did you even think there was something here in the first place? It's obvious nothing but the homeless were shacked up here.

It was always embarrassing to be caught. I had been so sure no one was here when I first entered though, so how did the guy know? And wasn’t Fox’s Grace supposed to make Stealth second nature? I don’t feel it with how easily this guy noticed me.

I trudged back to my bike and continued, only slightly delayed by my bike's refusal to start for several minutes. The second location I checked was an abandoned sewer treatment station. It stunk to the high heavens, and I didn’t even try to get close to it. I could see the telltale signs of mutants even from fairly far out. No point in messing with them and getting myself killed. Or worse, infected with HMV.

The third showed far more promise. A bit of searching on my worn-out phone revealed the company recently closed down, so there was little chance of it being a tent city already. I moved in, taking a similar approach to the last as I snuck in and looked around. This time I had to actually cut a part of the fence thanks to the barbed wire around the top. I was more careful than last time, checking the sightlines and making sure no one was around the areas I walked through.

I looked around for a while, not spotting anything that looked familiar. Hmm… the photo was between two small walls, maybe a hallway? No, that didn’t feel right. The halls looked curved in the photo… Maybe they were smokestacks and not walls? I found a spot that roughly matched the photograph on the roof. After a bit more looking around, I found an ashen patch of ground between two smokestacks. A spot further away held the burned remains of the “1%” in a diamond of char.

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I checked the surroundings, looking for cameras but the area was a dead zone. Unfortunate. If there was a camera I might’ve been able to try and klep the footage or something. Burning bodies in view of a camera would be too amateurish though. What was I even expecting?

The scent of burnt pork was the first thing that hit my nose as a chilly breeze passed along the top area. Gross. No matter how many times I smelled it, which unfortunately was quite frequent around the city, burnt corpses always made me sick.

Okay… what now? How do I even investigate… hmm… should probably take some pictures. I noticed something as I snapped photos of the scene using a high-res camera I got from Taru. The bones were gone. Whoever burned the Jade Fangs either cleaned up or used a strong enough accelerant to burn the bones to ash… I looked around a bit more. Something about the scene was bothering me, almost like an itch in the back of my head.

The ash wasn’t disturbed. No prints or anything. Sure the wind could’ve covered some tracks, but all of them? Then the bones were probably burned to ash… why did that matter? I dunno, but maybe one of the Jade Fangs actually good at investigation would know something, so I wrote it down.

That itch remained though… I poked around the place a bit more trying to figure out what was bugging me so much. It was like I had a sixth sense that something was wrong- maybe it was thanks to Insight? Could be…

Honestly, I was so unskilled in deduction and investigation that it only made sense the thing with the bones was thanks to Insight. I looked around a bit more as I tried to think what the issue could be. I even began checklisting the things I knew about the Neo-Jokers as I looked around.

They were a biker gang, obviously. Probably parked their bikes down below somewhere… maybe I should check that on my way back out. Um, they loved smoking. The Neo-Joker gang was one of the only places in the entire city to get authentic tobacco cigarettes-

That’s it! There were no cigarette butts around. Anywhere. I highly doubt the Neo-Jokers would clean up their trash at a crime scene. Especially not with the image they sent to the Fangs marking the kills as theirs. What kind of self-respecting career criminal would go through so much effort to pick up cigarette stubs and then send an image claiming the crime as theirs? It just didn’t make sense.

‘Course, there could’ve just been no one smoking. But surely one out of at least eight would’ve lit up at some point, right? Hmm… maybe I’m really not cut out for this investigation stuff. I marked it down as a potential clue though.

I poked around a bit more, but nothing else stood out. Of course, I did my due diligence and took photos, collected samples of the accelerant using a Chemical Analyzer the Fangs loaned to me, and even used the fancy BugHound™ to check for anything left behind.

After that, I went back down and looked for where the killers parked. It really wasn’t that hard. The freshly disturbed debris made easy tracks to follow as I came across a fire escape on the side of the building. I looked around a bit, especially across the street as I marked down the spot. There was a Thudder™ vending machine right across the street the Netrunners might be able to get into.

Other than that, the tracks were weird. Insight once again held my hand as I realized the tracks were from cars. The tiremarks were far too parallel to be bikes. Yet another sign the Jade Fang Matriarch was right. What self-respecting biker didn’t drive a bike?

Sure, an argument could be made that they drove a car to carry the corpses, but then why were all the tracks cars? There were at least eight - seven in the photo and the one that took it - people who did this. Surely at least one of them would’ve driven a bike considering, you know, biker gang?

So, what was my deduction? Right? That was the word for detectives? Hmm… based on the clue- evidence, the Neo-Jokers likely weren’t the culprits. Then who did it? Who would benefit the most from a gang war between the Jade Fangs and Neo-Jokers? Scavs and Savants obviously, but this doesn’t really fit their MO. Most probably some other gang, though it could be a corporation looking to push the gangs out.

I had a feeling there was more to this, but I simply didn’t know enough. And I wasn’t an investigator. Petty kleptoid, remember? Welp, I did my duty. Came to the scene, collected clues, and now it was time to head back and collect my pay. Yay!

I returned to my bike just in time for my vision to be obscured once more by the box. I wasn’t as irritated as I had been this time around though. Its evident power afforded it at least some attention.

「Name: Shiro Tsukuyomi

Traits: Fox’s Grace, Quick Healing, Insight

Stealth - 6

* 1 Perk Point

Perception - 2

Data Pending - Duration One Week」

Weird… so it was grading me on my skills? I got the feeling that I was right, and considering my recent feelings had been coming from Insight it probably was. So I had a week to show off my skills to this weird interface?

I had a six in stealth. Was that good or bad? I had a feeling I wasn’t too shabby at sneaking around- or at least I did till that hobo caught me… what was up with that? Wasn’t Fox’s Grace supposed to help with all that? What a useless trait- I suddenly felt extreme danger at finishing that thought, so I skipped along to my next question.

What was a perk point? I could buy a perk with it maybe? What good would that do though? I mean logically, assuming this was similar to games like I originally thought, perks would grant me some kind of benefit or something. How do I even spend Perk Points though?

「Spend a Perk Point?

Warning! Only use Perk Points when you are in a safe, well-ventilated environment!」

Well, that wasn’t ominous. Nope, not one bit. I’ll take the warning at face value and wait till I get back to my container before I mess around with the interface more. With that thought in mind, I straddled my bike and headed back to the Dragoon Saloon.