The City

My hands are stable, and my thoughts are more clear. I can perhaps start writing about our findings.

Alberto managed to trap four out of five sweepers in various rooms in former Green Rodents hideout. Fifth one almost left his guts on a pavement, but luckily Alberto lived, even though now he has debt of eight thousand Ahn. But we are already almost two-third of our way to cover it. Remaining one-third can be covered by finishing a contract related to fog snatchers, or by kicking down door of the associate hideout.

He also figured out their weakness. Two of them, in fact. First was that they couldn't really damage structures - they didn't tried to break doors or windows to pursue Alberto. Second was their weakness to extreme heat. We basically boiled one of the sweepers. In the morning, we then loaded him in the wheelbarrow and got him to office's workshop. There we made a discovery.

It was quite disturbing. Sweepers are likely some sort of organic robots, as the fleshy mass we found inside was definitely human in origin, almost resembling a brain, suspended in red liquid, as some form of life support. With how hatchets had tubes connecting to the tank on the back of the sweeper, and the sweeper's mask too, had a tube, leading to the tank, my theory is that liquid is necessary for them to survive. With how organic mess is human in nature, red liquid is likely human in nature, and they hunt humans as well? It doesn't takes much to connect two dots together.

What I have procured during the mission:

- Gasmask (purchased). NEST-grade. Don't expect anything special from it, other than being reliable).
- Shortsword (purchased). Durable and slightly lighter. Nothing special, but certainly better quality than anything that most of the stuff I can find in the backstreets.
- Vial of high-grade anesthetics (looted). Likely what was used by cannibals to pacify their victims for butchering. Will do well for medical purposes.
- Unidentified vial (muscle stimulant?) (looted). Some kind of muscle stimulant. Can't identify it properly yet. Need further research.
- A trinket (looted). Nothing special or worth keeping, but it will sell for 700 Ahn.

Later I will look for Pete, and see if he has any bounty available for eliminating cannibals. While what I looted certainly is valuable, likely more than whatever he'd be able to pay us, if he will pay at all, having some money in form of Ahn, instead of sellable (and in some cases - hard to sell) goods is always nice. Then I will have to start doing recon and start looking into hideout of the associates of Preying Vipers. Some preparations will be necessary. Maybe Alberto will have more of gas mixes ready, as I doubt street rats, even if they are richer and are associates of the syndicate, will have gasmasks.

If we won't take fight to them, they will certainly take fight to us, and while having home territory advantage is nice, not having to resort to it is always better.

The people we rescued from cannibals are fine. They are not healthy, but they didn't had any life-threatening injuries or conditions. Apparently, they'll be forming office now, to hunt down cannibals, like those who abducted them in the first place. It feels nice, to finally save lives, instead of take them. But I suppose I shouldn't get used to it.

So today we went ahead to pillage and ransack these pendejos that were at the Percival Buffette. I'm glad to say that the threat has been neutralized, altough I'm going to be honest, I just can't fight close quarters specially if I'm on the team of the madwoman. I've seen enough intestines today to make a gore-y rope capable of going from one extreme of the slums to the other and back. And the blood. Good christ, the blood. I just can't.

Either way turns out that those cannibalistic freaks had quite a gang in their fridge. They were cutting them up and serving them as one serves a steak. Either way we cut them loose after that bloodlusting maniac (I really want to see if I can make the armour's mechanisms work. Imagine that monster with superstrenght) turned chefs and patrons into burgers herself. There was this one guy that I let get away, but safe to say after making public what they were cooking at the buffette, the rest of the general public were fairly pissed at the man, so they hanged him in the middle of the street. Quite a display of barbarity if you ask me, but yknow, it's the backstreets, and it's not like it wasn't unfair.

In other news and returning to the guys from the fridge, gave those guys a couple of nice black chef uniforms. Thought it fit perfect since their main motivation is to hunt the malevolent chefs down. Also gave a couple of them bows and arrows, I've learned that the best weapons here are actually the ones that keep you away from harm's way.

I don't know how will they do from now on, but they definetly have determination, and thanks to me, style. I don't think they'll become hot shit, but they do have the opposite spirit to the one the Green Rodents had. Maybe they'll do good deeds for the community. Or maybe they'll just be another fixer office. Only time will tell.

With recent elimination of H-Corp, the food and water prices skyrocketed six times. I am in awe that they didn't go even further. I do hope this doesn't significantly impacts how much payment we receive and how much of that payment actually gets to be spent on something that isn't just food and water.

As of recently, there wasn't much to write, or at least, anything noteworthy. If I was to write down every single small talk that occurred between me and office members, the journal entries would be unreasonably bloated. On the other hand, at least there would be much of something to write, I suppose.

I don't even remember why I started writing down this journal in the first place. It's a liability, someone could find it and utilize information in it against me, be it as blackmail, source of information for arranging my death, or as a source of information on how to flirt with me more successfully. Though to be honest, while I find Blackburn's flirting with me annoying occasionally (like stubbornly refusing to keep nine hundred Ahn to himself, instead of giving it to me), I did enjoyed his more light-hearted approach to various situations. Perhaps it's his natural charm, and coincidentally how he got a kid to care for in the first place.

But enough talk. Hunt for cannibals doesn't wait. And with any luck, we'll find more of those 'E-vials', and if this happens, I will allow Alberto to drink one, since he was clearly volunteering last time to drink suspicious and possibly harmful or deadly substances. Even if he doesn't, then twenty five thousand Ahn for a single vial is still a good deal.

So the fight earlier got me thinking. The last time I saw such a gruesome spectacle was by the hand of sweepers at night. So I wonder, what might happen if I outfit the butcherer with sweeper equipment?

It sounds like the start of a very interesting project, honestly I just hope the head never hears of it, because it can be... as dangerous as a gun, or even more probably.

Either way, I headed out to the supermarket and got myself a sweeper arm to commence my little project. I got it to my workshop and started investigating the object. The alloy is extremely strong, one would require explosives to actually pop it open.

I investigated the inner workings of the arm and found out that a human arm fits in perfectly, which is a great first step. It has a rubbery tube inside which is where I imagine the red goo used to go, and a human arm fits perfectly in it.

The bad news is that it's extremely uh... clankey let's say, and hard to control. The thing runs with a series of inner pistons powered by the goo, which makes it harder to control and make complex movements with.

I disassembled the fingers and now one can move his hands freely inside of the thing, which opens two new roads for this project.

The first road would be the simplest one, although the one to return the less benefits, It would simply be to remove all the internal mechanisms and use some ropes, chainmail and wires to keep the armor pieces together while still being capable to perform complex movements.

The second road and possibly the most interesting seeing which awful idea kickstarted the project, is to figure out how to activate those mechanisms while allowing the user to control them at will. This would result in the mechanical strenght of a sweeper, but in the hands of Rebecca. I feel personal preference for this option because of morbid curiosity of what would she do were she to realize the new limits of her body.

Either way, I can't do much towards that endgoal at the time being. I believe I will need a chestpiece of a sweeper to be able to bring the project foward. the chest of the monster should be able to give me further insight of the inner workings of this possible pseudo-power armor.

I could try to get one from the streets one night or... I also know that there are several sweepers locked up in the rodents' old apartment.

However I can't do much as long as I don't have the equipment to crack the armor of one of those things to disable it.

Ah whatever. I'll try to figure out something before Rebecca notices that I've spent all of the office's budget in an arm

Apparently the big boss isn't gonna be our big boss anymore. The lasses decided to choose me as the new chief. Just but the first bad idea of the day.

Anywho with Meline taking a let's say mental heal break I decided to go with 80's terror film slasher spinoff Rebecca to figure out what was up with the delivery crates. Found this guy with a cigarette. A little bit of a bitch. But I heard them talking about it being just a mistake. Assumed that'd be about it. It wasn't. The guy appeared like a cerdo en salida de matadero. Not really digestible at all.

Whatever, decided to take the box with the guy back. And we got a crate with Pete's stuff. Instead of my usual of staying near the roofs or looking from reaaally back behind I decided to go with the machete lady, just a couple steps behind. That was another bad idea, as we quickly got encircled. The fight with the four cannibals was a show, I got stabbed in the kidney and before I knew it machete woman had murdered gruesomly three out of the four cannibals.

She literally ripped one guy's spinal cord off hermano, how do you do that with a machete?

Anyways I panicked in the end and tackled the last guy to the floor because I might hav gotten traumatized if I had seen just one more flying liver that day. Either way he told me he worked for some percival bufette, kicked me off him and started running away, and at that moment I started looking somewhere else because I could see crazy machete lady about to gut the man. Luckily for him he managed to run away.

It appears we're burning down their restaurant tomorrow

The smoke, which is what I assume, is a side-effect of L-Corp singularity, covered the Backstreets. From what I have seen and experienced myself: Tampers with the thought process, induces euphoria. Likely causes slight psychosis, judging by my thirst for blood, which came after inhaling a lot of smoke by accident.

Taking delight in cutting people apart and beheading them is not healthy, not by any means. I do not have any hope in having the effects of the smoke be gone after a night of sleep, but not being exposed to a smoke is still better than still being exposed to it.

At least, now we know where our boss is. Our boss, Blackburn, was transfered to Zwei section six, something about exchange program. They could have told us earlier. So now Alberto is a temporary office leader. Or permanent, if Blackburn won't return. I was surprised someone actually voted for me.

In other interesting news, I now possess interesting collection of low-quality knives, as well as a single high-quality one. As well as a vial of something called 'Enkephalin'. Contact of ours gave us an information about it.

It is the substance, the one that grands L-Corporation it's reputation for as energy producers. The vial of this substance is enough to power half of the Backstreets. It can be consumed to induce euphoria, and was used this way to maintain mental health of L-Corp employees, which raises a question, why it is needed to maintain their mental health in the first place. Potentially hazardous to machines due to it stickiness. It was also mentioned that it has some true purpose. Can be sold for the price of twenty five thousand Ahn. But we decided to hold on to it for now. If we need to, we'll sell it off. But for now? Let it be an emergency option. Both in case someone is about to go insane, and in case we desperately need money.

I do wonder, what our next job will be. The choice is between job from Pete, eliminating cannibals. Or our contract, to eliminate Viper's associates.

Dear dia

Hoy he

Today 

Ah whatever, I guess I'll just write whatever comes to mind. Yesterday was an interesting day, got to catch up with some old friends. Amalita still runs the desk of the orphanage, honestly she doesn't look that old but it makes me fear for my own age. She didn't even recognize me at first when I came through the door but nevertheless I'm glad to see that the place is still up and running. Poor kids, knowing the backstreet this is definetly going to be the best part of their lives, and they'll remember them as shittily as I do.

I had my first out mission with the new gang of fixers I'm with. Who would've said I'd end up a fixer. I remember when I exchanged bolts with some grade 9s back in Zermiato alley, oh those were the days. I don't know how to feel about the team however, I'm with two lasses and some mime. Quite a show. One of the girls is called Meline and there's something about her that smells weird. At first I just thought she'd be the kind to look for herself before the office. Yet she did hand over the cash from last operation to Blackburn, against my expectations. Hell we did have a very tense encounter right outside of Pete's.

I still don't like his pizza, feels too cardboardy by the way. Had one with the mime the other day. I'd say we had a nice talk but it was very once sided ((HEH GET IT BECAUSE HE DOESN'T SPEAK)).

Anyways, I haven't seen the boss since the first day and there was this other chick as well on the gang, Rebecca she's called. Saw her cut a guy in half with a machete today. That's pretty much all i will say out of fear of her finding this journal.

The night was also pretty productive and I managed to sell that bullet I had  for quite a hefty amount. Decided to pay off the loans on the office as well as install me a nice little workshop. Familia first and all of that, the only good thing I've learnt from the Rodents.

The workshop's lovely honestly. Altough I do need a little bit more practice.

Anyways, nice talk me. See you around.

This night, I have dreamed of my first days and nights in the Backstreets again.

I was exiled from NEST, what I called home for my entire life. I do not know why, as the official reasoning of “not contributing to society” doesn’t works, when you are fully capable of paying taxes. I still think to this day, that I was just unlucky, and ‘chosen’ to be exiled, when some more promising person, likely a fixer, applied for a citizenship in the NEST.

I didn’t know what to do. My grandparents didn’t know what to do. My friends didn’t know what to do. No one did. We weren’t prepared, as we never ever considered a possibility of something like this happening. But there wasn’t much that we could do, other than accept my exile, and give each other our final goodbyes. We knew we would likely never each other ever again.

My first days and nights in Backstreets were chaotic. I didn’t know how to live in them. I didn’t belong there. Never did. Each day, I thought it would be my last one. Each day was a struggle to obtain enough Ahn to have something to eat, and find a shelter before Sweepers hit. Each night was a moment of respite – unless I was without a shelter, that is. Then it would be a struggle to hide from Sweepers, or run away from them. I had to rapidly adapt to the Backstreets to survive. And to do that, I needed to act on instincts.

Ironically enough, even though I wanted to be a doctor once upon a time, nothing in my oath stated that I must not shed any drop of blood. Neither did it stated that I need to be pacifist to be a doctor.