With the end of the Unification War, the fires that once ravaged the now-independent Night City ceased to exist, leaving broken fates and untold damages in its wake. Both sides saw themselves as victors, but ultimately, the corpos came out as the ultimate winners; Arasaka was once again able to extend its tendrils around the West Coast, rearing its ugly head and imperialistic ambition to make the old United States blush at the thought. The more things tried to change, the more they stayed the same.A year later, the post-war reconstruction is going slow, too slow as many believe. The city council prefers to focus on efforts irrelevant to the common citizenry, who are poorly defended by the understaffed NCPD, bleeding numbers to gang wars that shall shape the city's underground for years to come. The disease is rampant, the birth rates are failing, and the people choose to dig their heads deeper into their BDs, jerking away all their problems. In other words, there's no better place to call home for the downtrodden.It won't be *your* home for much longer, however. Not with the injuries you've sustained - a hole opened in your side, a bone poking out of your elbow, and an opening in your frontal skull that bled down to your mouth, with a coppery taste reminding you that it'll take just a little longer before you'll draw your last breath.With the last of your strength, you dragged yourself into this cold alleyway, down where the sewage went, to escape the unfolding chaos on the streets. Something about a Cyberpsycho escalating a fight, and a truck flipping over. Finer details are eluding you, and so far, you've only been able to flip yourself on your front, staring at the steam escaping from one of the manholes.Details are all mixed up in your predicament, but there's nothing to lose in watching your life flash before your eyes. In your delirious state, you recall that you are. . .>Adam Kisiner, a mediocre accountant who endured a string of failures before ending up in the reopened Arasaka America, grinding through the corporate ladder for survival. A man who never learned to live, only to fight, now bleeding out on a nameless street, never able to taste the fruits of liberating his soul.>Philomon Steele, formerly a young revolutionary who abandoned his passion in pursuit of med school. Result? Cushy job as a surgeon at MT, putting limbs on and off all day. He had it all - a girlfriend, a group of friends, a future to look up to, and it all has been severed in one fine stroke. A death full of regrets is the worst kind of death a man can have. >Imaeda Yasotaro, a self-proclaimed hooligan with no future. Nevertheless, he attended the Night City University with ferocious zeal, all to achieve the approval of his demanding father. Said father once asked him to deliver an innocent little package to a buddy, a fixer, which led him to this tragedy. Dying by the orders of an old man. . . story old as time.
>>6128011>Adam Kisiner, a mediocre accountant who endured a string of failures before ending up in the reopened Arasaka America, grinding through the corporate ladder for survival. A man who never learned to live, only to fight, now bleeding out on a nameless street, never able to taste the fruits of liberating his soul.
>>6128011>Symbipunk
>>6128011>Philomon Steele, formerly a young revolutionary who abandoned his passion in pursuit of med school. Result? Cushy job as a surgeon at MT, putting limbs on and off all day. He had it all - a girlfriend, a group of friends, a future to look up to, and it all has been severed in one fine stroke. A death full of regrets is the worst kind of death a man can have.>>6128016I have suspicions, but let's let OP cook
>>6128018>but let's let OP cookI just want to know what the fuck it means.That isn't too much to ask, is it?
Votes will be gathered after we get more to pass the threshold.FYI, this is my first quest ever, please do point out any retardation or cringe on my part. I hope the opening wasn't too heavy on exposition. >>6128025I'll say that it's a crossover, and you'll be fed more context as the quest goes on.
>>6128011>Philomon Steele, formerly a young revolutionary who abandoned his passion in pursuit of med school. Result? Cushy job as a surgeon at MT, putting limbs on and off all day. He had it all - a girlfriend, a group of friends, a future to look up to, and it all has been severed in one fine stroke. A death full of regrets is the worst kind of death a man can have.Surgeon skills are in high demand in night city. Academic and accounting skills not so much.
>>6128028Fellow first time QM myself- you’re gonna rock this.>Philomon Steele, formerly a young revolutionary who abandoned his passion in pursuit of med school. Result? Cushy job as a surgeon at MT, putting limbs on and off all day. He had it all - a girlfriend, a group of friends, a future to look up to, and it all has been severed in one fine stroke. A death full of regrets is the worst kind of death a man can have.
>>6128015>>6128016>>6128018>>6128079>>6128081You grind in your teeth in agony, choking in the pool of your blood as the realization hits you like a truck and pours a handful of salt over your wounds. What will she think? Mother will be worried sick. Momentarily, everything is silenced by your concern for the other, so much that you fail to spot something emerging from the manhole, hidden under the shroud of the night and your partly faded vision.It catches you off-guard and snaps you back to reality - forcing your gaze onto the peculiar shape that seemingly dripping your way. An oily, gooey substance extending its tiny tendrils, clearly alive and eager to get ahold of your arm, disabled from the blood loss. There's no resisting this thing, only hoping that if it's here to kill you, it'll do the job fast. But, you only find your fingers, then the palm, slowly ensnared by the intelligent blob.Then, it strikes you. Pain.A sharp knife stabbing through your brain, trying to make you see something that you were unequipped to understand. The goo pulsated, with a rhythmic pattern resembling that of your heartbeat, as it surged forward to envelop you before you went limp and became useless to it.It was a parasitic organism, and it sought to bond with you, one way or another. And now that you've had a better look at it, you could describe it as. . .>Pitch-black, like oil, with a glistening sheen to its texture. It was fast in its efforts, grabbing onto every spare inch of your body, tearing cloth and burrowing into your wounds. It needed you, here and now, more than you needed it. Its touch is hypnotizing, making you feel so much stronger, so much *better*.>Lively red, with the texture subtly mixed with patches of oily black. It was brutal, piercing your skin with thousands of tiny needles, for a stronger, more permanent fusion of masses. It wants to be the blood and sinew that holds you together from falling apart. Its touch is painful but feels so good...>Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.
>>6128113>Pitch-black, like oil, with a glistening sheen to its texture. It was fast in its efforts, grabbing onto every spare inch of your body, tearing cloth and burrowing into your wounds. It needed you, here and now, more than you needed it. Its touch is hypnotizing, making you feel so much stronger, so much *better*.Ah I gotcha. Venom here we come. The White does sound mysterious though. Some kind of more mentally inclined symbiote.
>>6128113Ah, I see now. Guess the symbiote will uproot the status quo described for each character in the previous vote.>Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.
Is the symbiote a chick? Can we fuck it? Does it know a good recipe for gazpacho?
>>6128113>Lively red, with the texture subtly mixed with patches of oily black. It was brutal, piercing your skin with thousands of tiny needles, for a stronger, more permanent fusion of masses. It wants to be the blood and sinew that holds you together from falling apart. Its touch is painful but feels so good...
>>6128028>please do point out any retardation or cringe on my partUsing "-punk" is both of those things.
>>6128399Back to the /qtg/ with ye.
>>6128400I did as OP asked; don't be mad at me for following up on requests.
>>6128430Look man I don't make the rules, just go back to the containment thread. You can talk like a victorian era sex fiend in there.
>>6128113>>Lively red, with the texture subtly mixed with patches of oily black. It was brutal, piercing your skin with thousands of tiny needles, for a stronger, more permanent fusion of masses. It wants to be the blood and sinew that holds you together from falling apart. Its touch is painful but feels so good...lets see how good they are with chrome
>>6128399Getting upset about the use of -punk almost two decades after it became a standard shorthand for 'prominent setting element' is very low-IQ. At this point you're one of the only people who's pretending to be confused about its usage.
>>6128113>Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.I hope he will get an awesome street name.
>>6128113>>6128150I'll switch from Black to White>Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.
>>6128113>>Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.
>>6128113>VenomThe good ol goopy boy>CarnagePlaying a psycho is fun, sometimes. But in a city full of them, you're just another dime in the dozen>Anti-venom i thinkA doctor doing literal miracles in shithole central is pretty cool, i think so >Pure white, with not a hint of dirt. It's methodical, granting you a moment of respite to understand your circumstances as it swallows you, calming you along the way. The pain was going away, and so were your worries and deepest fears. Its touch is warm, almost soothing.
>Black>Betrayed, left to starve...>Red>>6128360>>6128516>White>>6128657>>6128770>>6129216>>6129228>>6129348Die has been cast. Response soon!
>>6129682is it soon tm yet?
>>6129682As it consumes all space on your hand, the parasite reaches the head and spine, with full access to your grey matter and spinal cords. What happens after is hard to discern, for your sense of touch vanishes, and the eyesight grows blurrier, a side-effect of a nervous system experiencing some "re-arrangements".Your wounds are healed at a moment's notice - the hole filled with its biomass, the bone popped back in place, and the missing chunks of your brain being gently piloted by the pseudopod, allowing for greater control over your body. There was no time to study your biology and perfectly re-create you, as even in your poor condition, you could hear steps growing behind you. Desperate vultures looking to claim the 'loot' from that truck, no doubt.But that didn't matter. The symbiosis, as imperfect as it was, was complete. As your passenger nudged you into doing so, you could stand again to greet incoming danger at full height. Two extra inches from your standard, your nails sharpened into claws and your mouth turned into a beast's maw ready to bite into junk metal.The chance to glance at your horrifying transformation is missed as you see brightly glowing eyes gaze at you, all three of them, with a rifle of some kind pointing in your direction. Psycho, confused by the sighting, only gets a single line out of his mouth before you lunge at him, driven nothing but by your new goal: Revenge."What the *fuck* are you. . .!?"
>>6130481The dirty gangster is blown away in one long-winded punch, sending his frame into the armored truck, leaving a dent and a splatter of blood. Before an inner conflict arose from the deed, you're pushed further to seek perpetrators of violence, throwing another firm uppercut that flips the truck over, finally alerting everyone of your presence, both the surviving escort security officers and the gangbangers, whom you could identify as being from Maelstrom. The cold red eyes and disfigured bodies revealed as much, the bastards were practically stars on TV.They're spread out on both sides, with Maelstrom forces taking a heavy toll but ultimately reducing the mercenary force to only three men, scrambling behind another crashed vehicle. "Oh, shit! There's our paycheck!", the one in a leather coat points out, a dirtied steel plate replacing his face in its entirety to perhaps hide the ugly features beneath. You could recognize him easily - he's the one who started the fight, and by the looks of it, he wanted the thing that bonded with you. Not a *chance*."OZ-04 has escaped. I repeat OZ-04 has escaped confinement!" That's another peculiar bark your ears catch, spoken by one of the mercenaries calling for backup. It is their pleas for help, and the eventual sound of automatic weapons blasting that urges you to start moving and dodging, rushing in the way of the man who dared to agitate you.The passenger, now clear in its ability to puppeteer your body, forces you to leap to the left, then right - weaving past bullets that appeared slow in your vision, and catching up with the first trooper, who impotently attempts to ward you off with his prosthetic arm. Now he had one arm less, for it took you nothing to bite through the whole thing in one swell swoop, finishing him off with a roundhouse kick to the back!The two other men manage to get the better of you, mainly thanks to a shotgun that manages to graze your back, leaving you stumbling over. But their little victory doesn't last long. The wounds, just like before, heal momentarily, and from them, tendrils emerge to whip them into shape! One is bitch-slapped for leaving a mark, and the other is pulled by the leg and chunked at your target, immobilizing him under the weight of his colleague, not to mention the damage his implants received from the forceful knockback.Just like that, the man was out like cold, and their leader could only observe in horror as his impending doom marched forward. He tried escaping, getting his friend's limp body off him, but to no avail - your reach was longer, and you could move faster than his robotic eye. Your arm gripped tightly around his neck, and tentacles hanging from your back all pointed at him. Eager for the opportunity to mince some meat, all that "humanity" left in this soulless machine of a man.
>>6130495But just as your maw opened wide for some delicious snack, something probed at the back of your neck, in an attempt to bring you to your senses. The suit. . . disagreed with your decision?"Spare." The words resonated strongly in your head, but made little sense - wasn't it this thing pushing you into taking the life of this criminal scum? Who took the lives of so many innocents, so he can have the cash to chrome up? Your mouth is closed shut, and you're forced to think, as the suit refuses to let you move even an inch."Not you", the suit argued at the back of your thoughts. "Philip won't stain his hands. He doesn't do that. *We* don't do that."These words manage to reel you back in from your short-lived, explosive display of power. You argue some more, drawing lines of control, figuring out who's in charge of the whole thing and who gets the last say in the matters of mercy and where it's best given.>NEW MECHANIC: STRAIN>When your will is exerted to control the symbiote or otherwise complete the strenuous activity, you accumulate mental exhaustion known as Strain, weakening your ability to resist these tough streets. Your limit is 5, and going above could end very badly for you.>The amount you gain is directly proportional to the weight of an action you take - fighting your symbiote or its nature, stopping yourself from falling into shock from pain or finding reasons to keep going. You reduce it by forming connections with people and maintaining them, reminding yourself that you're not alone in your struggles against this damned city. After all, what man can hope to hold the weight of the whole world on his back, all alone?>Using Strain will eventually allow you to mould the Symbiote to your wishes, but high Strain will enable it to take greater control.Finally, you're considering your options, whether to act against the one principle that separated you from most and come to a conclusion. . .>Butcher this pig, and his cronies too. Send a message to all these subhuman that they can't walk around and sling their guns without consequences. This is only the beginning. [Strain 1]>Hippocratic oath means nothing in today's world, but disregarding it completely won't fix anything. Restrain him and his buddies, and let the badges handle their outburst. Maybe they'll bribe their way out, but at least they'll taste the boot of law.>>And how do you plan to deal with the mercs hanging on?>Knock on their heads hard enough that they won't remember a thing, and hope that they don't have recording devices in their eyes. Hopefully.>Kill them, plain and simple. They're going to call for a city-wide manhunt for this fancy piece of alien you're wearing, and people will only end up getting hurt. It's not worth the risk, not worth the blood unspilled yet. [Strain 2]
>>6130512>Hippocratic oath means nothing in today's world, but disregarding it completely won't fix anything. Restrain him and his buddies, and let the badges handle their outburst. Maybe they'll bribe their way out, but at least they'll taste the boot of law.Shatter their more independent bionics, arms and legs. If they get o7t make sure its more difficult for them to hurt people again. And maybe that pain will make them more unwilling to try again. Probably not. But we can always kill em next time. Once is mercy. Twice would be weakness>Knock on their heads hard enough that they won't remember a thing, and hope that they don't have recording devices in their eyes. Hopefully
>>6130717Support if we tell them that ‘’Once is a mercy- there will not be a Twice, tell your firends
>>6130512Supporting >>6130717Should we simply not take the chance and destroy any cyber eyes on the mercs?
>>6131240Ugh IP change, I'm >>6128360 >>6128018
>>6131240That might work. If the storage for such eyes wasnt burked deep inside their braincase>>6130717Its me. With a change in ID due to being on mobile
>>6131249Huh. I was sure my id would have changed by now
>>6130512>Hippocratic oath means nothing in today's world, but disregarding it completely won't fix anything. Restrain him and his buddies, and let the badges handle their outburst. Maybe they'll bribe their way out, but at least they'll taste the boot of law.Break their bionics so they can't misuse it again. >Knock on their heads hard enough that they won't remember a thing, and hope that they don't have recording devices in their eyes. Hopefully.Once again, destroy independent bionics and electronics, especially those with recording and/or communication functions.
>>6130717Support
