My name is Yellow. A shitty name given by shitty parents that left me alone in one of the shittiest cities. Night City. I was left on my own with no knowledge of eddies, ripper-docs, the gangs, chrome, self-defence, school, hell I only learnt to read and write a couple years back and i'm 24 now.

So they were pieces of shit that left me in the shit. Fuck I sound like such a gonk with how much I say shit. Yeah, I was fucked from the beginning on smart enough to cut it with the big shots, to unskilled to work a normal job and not cut-throat enough to work it with the fixers and gangs.

I can be pretty good with my hands nowadays at least from fixing and selling old scrap in Dogtown, too bad I only started recently and am not experienced enough to fix something with some real eddies to its name.

No, I am simply fixing old TV's, Guns, Knives, Armour and shit Chrome. Then I go and get scammed at the market because everyone knows that I don't have anything else, it's this or starve. Maybe if I didn't keep trying to help others and didn’t repeatedly get robbed and cheated for it I would have some actual income.

I snort every time I think of that cause it’s never going to happen. I could never get myself to leave someone seemingly innocent in trouble to die or get robbed. No, I simply travel down to the market and let myself get scammed for the shitty ramshackle wares I sell for a handful of the eddies I should be getting. Still it's enough to eat.

Then something weird happens. I don't make enough to eat. Two weeks in a row. I know i'm gonna starve like this... so I leave. The reasons I live in Dogtown range from my poverty to the constant lockdowns due to being in the combat zone. That won't matter if I starve to death. So I walk away, well more like stumble away. I'd rather die in the actual city than the shitty slums. I take a knife and the hopes that maybe I won't have a horrible last day alive. That is all I truly own right now.

Maybe someone will remember my shitty name. Yellow. No last name given. I don't even know how my parents stripped me of that, but they must've.

I shouldn't even be standing if i'm being honest with myself, the only thing pushing me forward is my desire to see the beautiful city I remember from my childhood. To see what could have been. To see what never will be now.

I never realized how depressing I could be until I know that I am gonna die. I am sure that no matter what bar killing someone that I will die. I tried trash but it won’t last me. Too many drugs and filth for it in this city.

I'm going to die. Alone and forgotten in a city that has eaten so many children, so many families... so much life and innocence. A city that devours the light, a city that is pretty much always light. Damn, if I could write more than two years ago I could've been a poet, ha-ha. I desperately search for some humour, yet I can't find it in myself to actually feel that joy. I wish I could. Maybe this wouldn't hurt so much.

Maybe I could distract from my failures, from all the times I could have spent working towards a goal to save myself… instead of trying to save another. Still I know I wouldn’t do that. That I wouldn’t ignore those others nor their suffering. I was truly damned by my parents when they left me in Night City.

I am scared. I am already mourning my death, yet I have not stopped moving since leaving Dogtown. I stumble desperately, never stopping. Because I know in my heart that no matter what, no matter when death comes for me? I will keep moving forward until the end.

Not until I’ve seen what I can be. Not until I have changed another’s life for the better. Not unless I stop for another journey. Not unless someone needs to be pushed forward more than I.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

So I stumble onwards through the grimy neon-lit and graphitized streets. Down alleys and through crossings, many people see me, but they all look the other way. This is Night City, and no one is enough of a gonk to save one being devoured by its shaded streets.

The sky shifts from day to night slowly but surely telling the tale of my end. A fool trying to be a just person in a city of murder and crime. A gonk trying to save people when I couldn’t save myself. No one but me is trying to be some sort of hero, some saviour.

No one but me. A fool. A gonk. Whatever I deserve to be called.

I hear a struggle down an alley i'm creeping past hugging a wall. I hear a kid no older than 15,

"Hey, fuck off you scav-scum I aint got any worth-it chrome for you gonks to cut me up for!"

That doesn't seem to be working cause the kids still struggling. I feel that same old fire burn in my chest, I know that i'm gonna do it again. I'm gonna stick my neck out for this kid I don't know. A kid who’s just as likely to screw me over the second he can.

But this is a kid. A kid probably with a family, friends... a future. I got none of that. He has so much to lose that I don't. So I take up my shitty scrap knife and stumble-charge my way at the scavs.

I lunge at the first one I see, nothing noticeable chrome-wise. Skinny with spiked out hair and weird ass goggles, skinny and shirtless with a light tan on his formerly pasty white skim telling of how often he is without a shirt. I go for his neck. I shove the blade in with no real technique or know-how. Just the element of surprise and the willingness to jerk and twist it as much as I can. He goes down choking on his own blood. I can see the indie of his throat fucked up like a tumour even before the knife went in.

The other scavs are on me in a minute beating me and stabbing me. I'm down in second bruises and swelling already appearing. One of the scavs digs their finger into my right eye-socket and begins to gouge out my eye. I scream and buck, but they don't stop dig their fingers so far my brain flashes and screams. Warnings from my neural link flaring up as I kick and claw at my attackers. Two of the scavs seem go to my legs and left arm respectively and I don't have time to realize what they are doing before they start hacking with what feels like a knife at my arm and a katana of some kind at my legs. Finally as my legs and left arm are mangled and butchered a final one begins to bash my head in with a bat. Everything is going hazy and dark. My eyes are filled with errors and warnings.

I don't know how long it lasted all I know is that, at some point, they left me to die. My head pounding and blaring, my pitiful neural link and shitty 20 years out of date eye not able to compute what is happening. Not able to understand that i am dying.

Seconds, minutes and hours, I hope desperately not days. My mind can no longer understand time as it is, as I desperately cling to hope that my death is swift. I listen to sounds of passer-by’s leaving me aware of how truly alone I am in my final breaths..

I hear a sound although I don't really process it in my sorrow until I hear a sound. A boy’s voice calls out, 

"Hey fuck, hey old man, are you okay!?"

That’s strange why is this strangers voice familiar? Oh, oh it’s that kid the one I saved! I try to voice my opposition to him returning to the place he was just attacked but I can't open my mouth enough to speak. The boy speaks instead.

"Oh-oh thi-this... goddamnit!"

The boy continues immediately after talking to himself,

"Alright I can do this, it's just one guy I can carry him."

The dumbass must've caught whatever crazy I got because that shit doesn't make sense in Night City. There are no heroes, there is no justice. Only fools. The kid grabs me,

"Shit, hey old man, I'm gonna get you to a good ripper-doc I know, cause I aint up for owing anyone any shit... So don't die before I can pay you back!"

This kid was clearly stupid or insane, probably both, but it didn't really matter to me what with my consciousness fading in and out, I go to say something before I die... to help alleviate the guilt I can see coming for the kid under that tough guy persona, but then I see it. A light that permeates my very soul. A light that I have never seen the likes of before. I don't have enough energy in me to properly articulate it to the kid. Still I say with a gasping breath, "That’s a weird fuckin screen." Before collapsing into unconsciousness.

Justice +1

Saviour + 2

Reflex + 1

XP +200