Adipose City: What is the Word

By Psion

An Adipose City Story

All Rights Reserved

After events in Eyes of the Oasis...

Adipose City, rotund cyberpunk city of the future, one of many silicon and titanium jewels of high technology and heavy waistlines. Controlled by corporations with interests in fast food, food processing, and agribusiness, Adipose City and the world around it were a strange and potentially wondrous contrast of both plentiful abundance and an unapologetic hunger for more. Nowhere was any of this expressed more then in the sprawling corporate farms and the antics that often surrounded them...

In the Midwestern portions of the North American continent, home to massive farms and ranches the likes of which the world before the Petroleum Crash could not imagine, strange sightings were reported on the edge of civilization. With incidents of previously unknown GMO animals, mysterious attempts at sabotage, unexplained malfunctions, the corporations of SALAD, Taco King, and PanAsia began to investigate the strange occurrences affecting their holdings in the region.

Outside of Adipose City and the traditional Asian-American demographics of the West Coast, PanAsia didn't have many assets of note on the North American continent. Yet the few rice farms they operated in the American Southeast, in the heart of Cajun country outside of New Orleans, were increasingly coming under attack from strange, bird-like creatures. Brown-feathered, with red bobs on their heads, the creatures allegedly looked more like dinosaurs then poultry. At first these reports were dismissed but as the number of sightings grew, a team of agents were assembled and dispatched to the area.

Soy shifted her considerable weight uneasily as the panda animan waited in the meeting room for the rest of the team to arrive. A giant panda in size as well as name, Soy was a huge bottom-heavy mountain of a woman. Delicate hands were folded onto her lap as the ursine Big Tool watched the LED clock on the wall with a nervous pair of green eyes. Seeing who else was on the roster for this assignment, she couldn't help but feel uneasy. Bansh was familiar, the two of them had been on the Adipose-Munich run only a few weeks ago, but so was Goi and arguably the Vietnamese raccoon was significantly less welcome. At least Wasabi and Namul would balance him out. Yet the most eye-catching entry on this list was Sushi, the Barehanded Hunter sponsored by PanAsia. Everyone else was a trained company agent; the Asian black bear was a sports celebrity. Why she was on the line-up was something Soy couldn't quite figure out, did it have something to do with the rumors of strange chicken-monsters attacking the rice farms?

In a few minutes she would have her answer as the rest of the team started to slowly waddle into the meeting room for the briefing. Bansh was first, the Mongolian wild ass smiled at her as the Road Hog squeezed his effeminate thunder thighs into a seat across from Soy. Long black hair was tied back in three cylindrical plumes as he smiled at the big panda. "Hello Bansh, do you know what this is about?" The tech-savvy ursine asked as she watched other agents filter in, her coworker merely shrugged.

"We're being asked to investigate reports of a new genetically modified organism that appears to have been deliberately released into the wild, some sort of new designer predator." Namul interjected, the team leader the Korean leopardess had been put in charge of the briefing. The spotted big-bellied Street Sumo regarded the rest of her division with a faint feline purr, gesturing to a flat-screen monitor hanging on the monotone meeting room wall as she continued.

"Our operations department has been receiving reports of strange, avian-like creatures attacking workers and livestock in the area. Unfortunately reports are limited and at present we have been unable to get security footage of these creatures so we've been forced to work off of artistic renditions." The rotund white-haired bruiser continued on as a photo-realistic image of their quarry appeared on screen. Looking at it, Soy's first thought was that someone tried to imagine what a prehistoric chicken looked like. Tawny brown feathers, a bright red crown on its head, and a body that otherwise looked to be as much of a lizard as it was a bird. And then there were those long talons and sharp teeth...

"At present there have been several injuries but no worker fatalities as of yet, nor has there been any injuries that couldn't be attributed to pre-existing GMOs. Productivity has been down so the board has sent us to see if there is any merit to these reports. If they turn out to be true, we are to exterminate the creatures... and preferably see if they are edible so we can put them on the company menu." Namul smiled, her stomach grumbling softly. Like dominos lined up in a row, once the brown-eyed leopard's body made its demands known, the others responded in kind. There would be no trouble testing to see if these creatures were edible once found...

Yet finding them was ultimately the problem, Bansh decided as he rode along on his Trailblazer quad later that day. Four fat, all-terrain tires tore through the marshland mud of the American southeast as the animan Road Hog continued driving through the humid swamp. Wiping the sweat forming on his brow, the mounted scout shook his head. He had been driving through the rice paddies and swamps for hours; these creatures had to be cooked up in the imaginations of bored tractor drivers, they had to be, he decided as the equine male continued onto the last leg of his patrol. Just had to make the last bend on this empty stretch of dirt road and... Bansh silently cursed as he finished turning. Right in front of him were three avians that could only have been the "figments" he was sent out to chase, crossing the road. Why did the mutant death chicken cross the road? He found himself silently wondering for only the split second it took to get his fingers around his Samurai assault rifle and fired off a quick burst at his targets.

Killing one and sending another off running into the underbrush with a wounded gait, Bansh was left with only one of the feathered beasts. One proved to be plenty though, the creature turned out to be quite fast for something that was only a little bigger then a modified turkey. Within seconds the bird had closed the gap between Bansh and itself, getting in too close for him to use his assault rifle effectively. Letting his rifle fall and hang on its strap, the donkey animan reached for a little dagger tucked away on the small of his back. A relatively small blade, at least compared to the ridiculously oversized Bowies that Burger World agents favored, the Julienne was still a nasty little blade ideally suited for slicing vegetables into long strips. Bansh also found it surprisingly handy for cutting long gashes into things like the augmented predator he was fighting now. Claws raked against his armored jumpsuit as the Road Hog stabbed and slashed his opponent right back, managing to jab his blade right in between the bird's ribs.

His foe defeated, the equine anthro exhaled and let the adrenaline in his blood slowly subside. To his left came a sound like a tree branch being broken and Sushi appeared from out of the underbrush, the broad muscle-fat ursine having the last dead mutant chicken slung over her shoulder. The black-furred Barehanded Hunter smiled and nodded as she gathered up the other two slain chickens with a beefy arm and squeezed on the quad, taking a seat behind Bansh as the sturdy vehicle sank deeper into the mud. Time for them to head back, looks like there was something to report after all...

Namul had hoped these creatures were pure fiction, she knew they all did. But their mission was clear; if the creatures were real, they needed to be wiped out and their origins investigated. Though as she sniffed the air while waddling by Goi's kitchen, she couldn't help but smile. Once the tissue samples were collected, sealed, and sent back to PanAsia's own laboratories in San Francisco, the agents were free to cook these birds and see if they really did taste like chicken. But that particular culinary experiment was still marinating and it would do no good to rush Goi, the raccoon Steel Chef was abrasive even at the best of times; it would do the feline Street Sumo no good to hassle him or steal a taste before it was ready. Gently resting a paw on her grumbling belly, the leopard turned her attentions to the sight of Sushi and Banshi sitting in the employee lounge, their heads bowed in intense conversation. The she-bear was studying a topographical map of the area on her PDA intently, tracing a particular stretch of swampland out with her finger. The pear-shaped warrior woman smiled as she asked them what she already knew, they had tracked down a likely location of the creatures' nest. All that remained was for them to receive word from Wasabi, the vixen Grabboid had been sent out to investigate another matter that had been nagging the armored feline. It probably wasn't related but they might as well look into it while they were here.

Meanwhile, Wasabi...

Wasabi was as silent as a ghost as she walked through the harbor district of Post-Peak New Orleans in all its built-up glory, the sun beginning to set as the brown furred fox navigated the heart of the city's industrial quarter. Hips swayed alluringly as the PanAsian ninja quietly followed up on Namul's lead. While far from the typical Adipose City heavyweight, Wasabi was definitely on the chubby end of the chubby chasers that also populated the world with most of the black-haired vixen's weight settling in "the right places" and squeezed into a black Expandex bodysuit. Green eyes glistened in the late afternoon light as she finally spotted her target. In addition to the predator birds that the others were looking for, there were reports of strange Al Ain vehicles spotted in the area shortly before the animal attacks began. It was probably nothing related but it had to be followed up all the same.

The Al Ain van she had been looking for was parked in a secluded lot outside of a small warehouse near the edge of the city. Tying her black hair into a neat little bun, she took in the building at a glance from her rooftop perch across the street. No guards or security drones roaming the exterior, three digital security cameras watching the front entryway and the parking lot, nothing that seemed out of the ordinary except for the Al Ain cargo truck being parked in a Burger World lot though that in itself wasn't too unusual. Pulling a Scorpio grappling cannon from a pocket in her trenchcoat, the vixen swung herself across the street like a comic book heroine, landing effortlessly on the roof in a perfect squat before padding off to see what she could see from the skylights in the roof.

Down in the warehouse below, between pallets of flimsy cardboard boxes, a pair of freelancers sat at a folding table playing cards. Not digital cards on their data pads and PDAs, good ol' fashioned poker with actual cardstock cards. A portly human and a vulpine animen, virtually indistinguishable from any number of other freelancers, idly sat around the table waiting for something.

"So how long before the client calls us to make another delivery?" The human, a chesty woman with an enormously pronounced hourglass asked her partner, playing with her long brown hair as she eyed her hand of cards contemplatively.

The big-bellied red fox Street Sumo with a mop of red hair worn straight, her cohort in this endeavor, sighed. "He'll call us when he calls us. He's been paying us well so far. I'm more interested in when our new Big Tool is getting his fat ass down here and hopefully this guy will have taken the hint to pack some decent Tuff Weave." He replied, oblivious to the plush vulpine ninja looking down at him from the rafters above and recording everything they said while taking notes of the building and its general layout.

"Where's he coming from anyway?"

"Some guy named Thunder from Adipose City, don't know him and I don't care. If he can keep the trucks working and the cages locked until we open them, he can't come here soon enough."

"Where the hell did Dr. Z get his merc Rolodex anyway?"

"Don't know and he's paying me too much money to care. Look, he's probably just keeping us here long enough for Thunder to come in and replace Lenny. Damn I wish Len were more careful with that Shogtle bull when we were up in the Midwest; I hate switching up the team in the middle of a job, that's never a good omen."

"You worry too much, Lenny should be out of the hospital by now and like you said, we'll probably be moving onto Dr. Z's next site soon anyway." The human woman replied dismissively as she took a huge bite out of a Burger World double-bacon cheeseburger.

Licking her lips and grateful that she wasn't that hungry yet, Wasabi exited as quietly as she entered. She had learned enough, now it was time to head back as quickly as she could to report her findings... barring a few minutes spent satisfying a sudden craving for a hamburger of course. And a little while later, with a Burger World Triple Stack in her stomach and her hand around an ice-cold cola, the vixen disappeared back into the crowd and idly watched the people around her as she headed off to report back to Namul. With a smile on her face, the black-haired female uttered a thankful prayer that the Post-Peak world... expanded so grandiosely. People like her now had so much to admire thanks to corporations like the Six. Her grin broadened as she eyed a particularly broad-figured bear woman before the vixen had to turn into PanAsia's local headquarters. Yes, she most certainly had a lot to be thankful for...

Meanwhile, Goi...

The brown-furred raccoon smiled as he wiped the sweat off his brow and finished mixing up a zesty orange sauce. The geneticists had been given their tissue samples, their pound of flesh, now he was free to see what he could do with the raptor-chickens. The beer-bellied Vietnamese Steel Chef felt his ample stomach grumble approvingly as he took a taste of the cooking GM predators. The flavor was definitely chicken but there was a certain essence to it that his tongue couldn't quite place. Perhaps a bit of North American turkey had gotten into the mix when whoever bred this creature was tinkering with its genome. No matter, where Burger World would foolishly deep-fry it in grease and unimaginative Aristo would simply use recipes stolen from its "lessers," Goi had PanAsia's vast collection of spices, seasonings, and sauces to flavor these lizard chickens with. Whatever came out of this, he knew in his heart that it would be better then anything his competitors could come up with.

Namul was silent as she went over the vixen's information while the others finished up preparations to attack the nest tomorrow. Wasabi's search had answered one question only to produce six more. The Al Ain vans were related to the current problem but not in the way she would have expected at first glance. Who was this Dr. Z and what were they trying to gain by framing Al Ain for industrial sabotage? What did they have to do with the mutant avians that had been attacking PanAsia's rice plantations in the area? And wasn't this Thunder person a friend of Soy's? All very important questions, unfortunately they were also all going to have to wait until further investigation. Though as both females sniffed the air experimentally, they discovered that another question had been answered, Goi had finished cooking up the predator chickens and the resulting meal smelled positively divine....