Okay, we had run into a problem. With their fins, the Probes were not going to fit into the Galena. Not both at the same time anyway.

Testing had shown that the Probe's top speed was maybe 30-40 MPH, not nearly enough to match the insane speeds we could observe this world's motorists going.

I turned to the closest Robo-Buddy, "Do you have some way to attach yourselves to the top of the car. Or can we rig something up so you guys can be towed?" My thoughts were running through several ideas rapidly and discarding them just as quickly. I didn't want to have to remove their fins. For all I knew about them those fins might be critical to their function in some way.

In response, the Probe I had just addressed, landed on the roof of the Galena and did something with its hover field, that perhaps, magnetically locked it tightly to the surface of the metal. I pushed and prodded at it, but the connection seemed solid. The other Robo-Buddy locked on right behind it, ensuring that I wouldn't be able to open the hatchback. Also, I'd have to be careful of the fins when getting in or out, but it was a viable solution for now.

It was there at that moment when we made a critical discovery. One of the Wisps circling around me had run into the first Probe. The accidental contact led to energies sparking in a chaotic field, with the Wisp disappearing into the Probe. My BTC shuddered at the phenomenon.

[ Adjusting...]

[ Khalai Probe

Construction and Maintenance Unit

Armor: 2

Shields: 10

Damage: 6

An AI Controlled Robot for Harvesting Materials. ]

The words started morphing into odd patterns for a moment, before finally snapping into a readable output.

[ Infused Khalai Probe

Unknown Unit

Armor: 2 +2

Shields: 10 +5 (Shields now block Spells)

Damage: 6 +4 (May affect Incorporeal Beings)

The combination of an Elder Wisp and a Khalai Probe. This Unit has partial night time Stealth. ]

"Are you okay?" As neat as those gains seemed, I didn't want anything to happen to my little Robo-Buddy. This one still had a scuff on it's armor. My eyes locked onto that imperfection. Hmm. Scuff. My mind almost clicked as I started thinking of this Probe as Scuff. I also instantly felt a stronger connection to the little buddy.

Scuff beeped at me, "We are fine, Executor." The "we" part was a little troubling, but Scuff seemed much more coherent. Even more live a living entity than before.

I glanced at the other Probe. There didn't seem to be any down sides to the merger of the Wisp and Probes. I shrugged and had the still hovering Elder Wisp fuse with the free Probe. This is the one that was repairing Scuff in the fight. This was a little fixing buddy. So Fix? I nodded, good enough. Once again a soft click rang in my head, and my connection to Fix became stronger.

"You okay back there?" I directed that at Fix.

"Of course, Executor." Well, alright. Fix had also seemed to gain more animation from the merger. More vitality.

Those thought led my mind back to the Valley, it would probably be a good time to check on things. While I had a free moment.

'Meadran, checking in.' If felt far more difficult to reach him than it had last time.

'We seem to be at the edge of the range of our connection, Young One.' His answer returned with far less... substance than any communication with him before. He had said the our connection should extend for about 50 miles. Really? I gazed back toward the Mountains I had come from. I had walked more than 50 miles? Casting Regrowth really had done my body good. Maybe, I could incorporate that into a workout routine.

I filled Meadran in on our current situation. He was troubled at the extreme levels of violence, but he wasn't really surprised. Hostility wasn't unexpected. He was greatly pleased by the discovery of fusion between Khalai and Kaldorei paradigms. He said he would experiment with the process back at the Valley.

'Be cautious, Young One.' This felt just like my Gramps reminding me about the dangers of power tools. It was a drop of warmth in this screwed up place. It was always nice to know someone cared.

'I will, Meadran.' I felt him drop the connection. The realization, that it was just me and the Probes started to sink in. I was venturing into an unknown environment. I didn't feel ready.

Getting into the car, I had a laugh. That was a lot of buttons. At first I had no clue where to begin until my eyes caught one button labeled start. Of course, I pushed it immediately. The Galena's engine purred to life. My hand habitually rubbed the dash.

The radio had also come on, blasting out some kind of Techno Pop. My ears weren't fans. I turned it off as fast as I could find the right panel. I could save experiencing the local culture another time. Right now I was eager to get acquainted with my new baby.

My feet easily settled onto the pedals and I revved it a little trying to get a feel for the sound of this engine. It was different, but I couldn't yet qualify those differences. Later, I'd have to get under the hood and see how everything was put together.

Now, let's take it for a spin. I reached for a stick shift that was there. Hmm, automatic, disappointing. I shrugged it off, Beggars can't be choosers. I still couldn't guess what half the buttons were for, but it was past time to enjoy the ride.

A few minutes on the road was all I needed to form the opinion that people here drove like fucking savages. Also, I had yet to see a speed limit sign. We almost got hit just getting out of the parking lot. Savages or not, it would take more than some aggressive punks to mess up my driving time. Driving always brought me a sense of peace, and freedom while helping me to focus. Everything unimportant could just melt away in the wind.

More fools trying to get somewhere at warp speeds couldn't harsh that meditative nature to this moment. Something else did that. A few minutes into the drive, I was getting nervous over the ever increasing size of the buildings I was racing towards. It didn't help that ever tall structure was crowned with what appeared to be Holographs. What might be advertising images danced around them. Still that oddity wasn't enough to keep me from noticing a glint of light off of something to my left, towards that mountain...which wasn't a mountain.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

That mountain was a humongous pile of garbage and scrap. Rusting metal and oozing organic slop was scattered along side plastic trash bags. It wasn't just the mountain, whole field of waste product stretched on for miles. Whole but abandoned vehicles and remnants of construction projects dotted the trashscape here and there. Those seemed to be focal points of activity, whether those people were looking for valuable scrap or they just lived in the waste heaps, I could say from here.

"What the Hell?" I had to pull over for a moment, while I processed this new information. The scene beside the road fucking bothered me, deeply. How could folks not burn it, recycle it, bury it, or something. Anything even a bit more useful than just letting it pile up, and then leaving it to rot and fester.

My heart was more bothered by that Monument to Absurdity, than it had been at someone shooting at me. Some fundamental part of me couldn't accept this. there had to be something I could do, some way to make this better.

Well, I'd been sent here to clean things up, but I would never have imagined this atrocity. It painted a picture of a society, I was growing certain, that I didn't want to become a part of.

This place was beyond fucked up. I lacked the words to properly express the turmoil I was feeling.

Night City, huh? Maybe, to make it clean, I should just burn it all down.

Once I had manage to put my mind back on task, my plan was just to follow this freeway into the city. From there, I could try to get a sense of the people, and whether or not I should play things soft or hard.

The demarcation between the desert and the city occurred abruptly as I passed under a massive elevated freeway running north-south. That one roadway would have made the largest cities in my memories proud. I could now see several similar highways further into the city.

On one side, I felt like I could be attacked by coyotes, and on the other I was trying not to get distracted by the sheer physics defying architecture of some of the huge ass buildings. It was far more distracting than I thought it would be. If it wasn't the buildings it was the utterly ridiculous amount of advertisements being flashed on the surface of the very air around us. How could anyone get anything done with all the noise?

Night City was sprawling, massive mess of a maze, and I had fucking no one to guide me through it. So how do you make connections? You go places people gather. Bars, clubs, parties, churches. Maybe not churches, something in the air here screams that the spiritual isn't at all welcome.

I couldn't just drive around all day this place was a tangled mess, a real concrete jungle. I needed a goal. Maybe the Robo-Buddies could scan for info?

My stomach growled. Fuck, I hadn't eaten anything since I had gotten to this world, and the crappy soda I downed earlier wasn't going to cut it. Which brought up the nature of what food here was going to be like. Rat meat? Poor Doggos? As disgusting as some of the ideas in my head were, I desperately needed to eat something.

While I was at it, maybe I could use the opportunity to get directions to local watering hole to try to dial into what was up with this place. The few people I had seen walking around so far seemed a step above the folks back in the wastes, but only a step. They were still run down looking, and most appeared so absorbed in their own little worlds that I feared any attempts at communication would lead to a fight.

As I exited the road into a parking lot, the cracks of nearby gunfire rang out. I could tell already that the sound of gunshots were going to be depressingly common. The place I pulled up next to was called Buck a Slice. and its exterior bore signs of recent combat. did people run around killing each other all the time here? How was anyone left?

My growling stomach refocused me on the current mission, get food. Buck a Slice sounded like pizza? Hard to go too wrong with pizza.

A few minutes later I found out I was wrong. This mess was not anything that could be classified as a pizza. The "pizza" was so terrible, that now cardboard crust had an all new definition. The toppings were most definitely not the meats that they looked like. They all had musky bitter flavors. The worst part was the sauce, no real tomato had ever been anywhere near this pasty chalky substance. It all smelt of ashes and pain. Then the horrid aftertaste lingered for ages, cutting into my brain like a bandsaw.

I choked it down, anyway I had to get some calories. And I had no guaranties that there was anything better, though I doubted that there was any real nutrition to be had with this slop. No, I was betting this gunk would beat my gut into submission, and it would stop asking for more.

How the hell do people eat this without killing someone? My eyes trailed back up to the bullet holes in the walls. Oh, right.

Well, at least I managed to get directions to a place called Lizzie's. The girl running the "pizza" joint said that club was probably the best place for somebody from out of town to get situated. "You'll have a preem time input." She giggled at some joke that went right over my head. Talking to her revealed there was a lot of language drift and new slang to absorb. But hey, fake it till you make it.

It took a while to get to Lizzie's. I ended up on more than a few wrong turns, especially in the area called the City Center. I'd crossed a few bridges, getting this far, which lead to the a new discovery that the water around here looked terrible, and more trash was piled up everywhere in this City. It was driving me into a deep depression.

This was just one city, and I'm suppose to fix the world full of places like this? Even with magic, that seemed extremely unlikely. Unless, I could somehow enlist help. A ton of it.

I'd gotten to the club near nightfall and parked in the lot. The building was topped with a pink neon sign of a eye patch wearing girl wielding an axe while kicking. I thought it was cute. Wait a minute, Lizzie and an axe? Grim realization set in. Was this all a Lizzie Borden reference? Umm, maybe this wasn't the right place after all.

Nah, I needed to man up and fucking dive in. Trying to distract myself, I let my mind wonder what the whole Moxes thing was about?

I marked a few people walking into the bar, a couple of ladies nodding at them. Though the ladies wore very different clothing, I noticed that all the colors matched. The same greens and purples with a bit of pink thrown in. It reminded me of something I couldn't quite place.

Throughout my trip, I'd kept getting sidetracked by the sheer level of modifications people had subjected themselves to. This was magnified by the crowds here. Some people had metal looking skin. Many possessed hair that glowed with neon lights. Almost everyone I could see had at least one limb that looked absurdly powerful. A few folks looked down right weaponized. Maybe, it helped them feel safer. Cause, I sure didn't.

Well, at least I could tell this was a place that lots of folks liked to visit.

"Watch the car, guys." As I walked away, the Probes beeped their affirmative.

As I got to the door, one of the ladies called out, "Hold up, Input. I don't recognize you." She was short but more than a little intimidating. Her tough appearance was augmented by the spikes on both of her forearms. Yup, those were definitely part of her. Her smooth skin had a plastic sheen. Her pink-purple hair was done up in cute buns, which went well with her sharp, almost foxlike facial features.

Were her looks real though? I'd imagine it would be easy to get whatever face you wanted here, judging by the variety of mods I saw on folks.

The fierce lady pulled my mind out of it's musings as she started bouncing a bat on her should. Of course, it was a pink one. She now had my full attention, I barely even noticed the other woman on guard. Though that one's hand was on her gun, a purple and green pistol, that just didn't seem as menacing as the smaller woman blocking my way.

What kind of place was this? This seemed like overkill for a club's security. Or was it that everything was far more dangerous here, even relaxation?

Her eyes flashed at me. Literally. "Ganic, huh? Haven't ever seen anyone your age who wasn't a little chipped." She cocked her head at me, trying to suss me out.

"I'm from out of town." Risky move, but figured my deer in the headlight moments would be too obvious to hide. Better to be honest about some things so I could hide others.

"Bennie," She nodded to herself, "Well here's the deal. You do not touch the Staff. If you see someone you like, you go to the front desk and pick them from the catalogue. They'll set you up with a BD." Her bat came around and tapped at my pocket, with the Omaha. "Leave your Iron at the desk on your way in. Got that?" She gave me an obligatory glare, it said "Don't make me deal with you."

"Yes." I agreed while nodding.

"Then welcome to Lizzie's. Have fun Input." She stepped aside, gesturing with the bat at the door.

I stepped into a very new experience.