30 Neko Augmens

1. Cherri Paws

One of the challenges of the being a stripper in the Cosmic Era is that with the presence of virtual sensation and holopornography the average customer has become jaded. Just gyrating against a pole and showing glitter dusted breasts isn't enough to keep the men coming in and stuff twenty cred notes in g-strings while drinking seven cred cokes and twelve cred beers. Cherri found that the way to keep the attention of the men was Neko augmentation. She has the full package, purr mod, and even semi-prehensile tail. She exudes exotic charm from pheromone pumps and carefully applied make up and holographic body appliques. Cherri lives for the constant stream of attention, and the flow of easy money. (Performance/Dance, Social Contacts, Seduction)

2. Pearl Blizzard

The club scene was reborn in the crowded arcologies and arco cities, with the youth gyrating and grinding to industrial house music, passing around recreational pharmaceuticals and engaging in reckless experimental sex. Pearl Blizzard is a snow white neko augment who went through hair modification as well, turning her from plain brown to platinum blond. She dances, drops pills and tabs like candy and is seldom ever seen without some sort of black light emitting piece of jewelry or toy. She dresses in white, to better accentuate the effects of the black light. Pearl is a flippant and vapid major player on the club scene. She knows who's who and what clubs are hot, and which clubs are on the way out. (Streetwise, Performance/Music, Social Contacts)

3. Nathalie Yorso

The club scene is filled with all sorts of people, many of them are compulsively creative and expressive through their dress, music, dancing, and other cultural accessories, and then others are posuers, imitators and followers. Nathalie is one such copycat, and she mimics whatever style of dress is hot at the moment, and is taking whatever the drug de jour is. Young and full of energy, this copy Catgirl is surprisingly unimaginative. Her constant imitation of style and dance have given her a solid grasp of what it is to perform, so long as she either has someone to follow, or someone to give her direction. (Disguise, Acting, Observation)

4. Rob 'Loverboy' Laggone

Not all nekos are girls, some are young men. Rob was a very average boy growing up. He never stood out, and he was forced to keep many things bottled up inside of himself. Once he was out on his own, Rob moved to the arco-city and found the seedy world there, far removed from the conservative commune he grew up in. He was fascinated with the neko girls and the flashing lights. He underwent the treatment and became one of the rare catboys. He is lean and muscular, averse to wearing shirts or shoes and he now exudes a manufactured charm. Rob started as a peeping tom, spying on sunbathers and the like before he was drawn into his calling, being a male trick. The country boy embraced his bisexuality and plays a dangerous game with desperate housewives, men who are still in the closet, and anyone who strikes his fancy. One day he is going to meet an ugly end at the hands of a cuckolded lover, or at the order of a person of importance who don't want their lecherous ways made public. (Acrobatics, Secrets, Intimidation)

5. Suzette Dorval

Suzette has always loved cats, ever since she was a little girl. The chance to actually become part cat was not something she was going to pass up. She underwent the gene augmentation when she 15 and never looked back. Unlike many other nekos, Suzette didn't become a neko for attention, but rather for her love of cats. She has several that live in her home, she works in a pet store, and in her spare time volunteers at a pet rescue and shelter. (Animal ken, Medic skill, Computers)

6. Sizzle

Sizzle is the street name of a young latino man who underwent the augmentation process. With his black hair and dark eyes, he has the air of a panther stalking in the jungle. He doesn't display the fact that he is a neko, since it is usually considered something associated with girls and homosexuals, and he is a member of a street gang. What he does best is breaking and entering and petty theft. Sizzle is the consumate cat burglar, thwarting basic security systems, slinking along rooflines and climbing the sides of skyscrapers with minimal equipment. He runs a high risk operation, between getting caught by the police, turned on by his own gang brothers, or simply missing that grab and plummeting to his death. He got his nickname from the frequent bouts of fever he suffers from. Rather than a proper augment, Sizzle was given the stolen street version and it has compromised his immune system. (Climbing, Security Systems, Larceny)

7. Amber Star

Cold and hauty, Amber Star is what typically comes to mind in the world of high fashion. Stalking the Parisian catwalks and runways Amber is rail thin, almost gaunt, with the easy grace of a cheetah. Her face is chiseled, her amber gold eyes exotic and coldly feral, and her hair is always teased into a grand mane. Not a top tier model, Amber gets more than her share of time in the eMagazines and FashionFeeds. (Etiquette, Fashion Design, Contacts)

8. DJ King Simba

Reggie Clarkson was the sort of kid in school that you just knew was going to A. become famous and B. do something weird. Reggie grew his hair out into a thick mane, studded with beads and feather trinkets and underwent the augmentation process. With his ability to see well in the half light of the night clubs he found that his newfound confidence let him spin serious grooves with his music systems. He made a name for himself, an ecclectic look that was part urban primitive, part African Hunter King, and part technowizard. He pounds out primal beats and likes to sample animal noises along with his synthetic house dubstep. While the critics rail against his lack of coherent style and his horrid taste in animal hide clothing, he keeps raking in money and women. (Performance/music, Computers, Streetwise)

9. Progress

Once a quiet midwestern girl named Helen, Progress discovered that her voice was best seen and not heard. She had her name legally changed in college, just before dropping out. She found that her place was performing acts and random works of public performance art. Initially she was involved in rallies and protest plays and pageants before she lost interest in the cause of the moment. Progress underwent the augmentation process as part of her expression of the Human Animal project. She keeps a dedicated Blog and web journal of her performances around the city where she alternates between the humane animal and the animalistic human. She is a local celebrity and has been seen to do strange things like sit in a tree for hours until someone plays along and gets a ladder, or to hang out outside of fashionable boutiques and act as catty and nasty as the women who frequent the locations. Her antics have gotten her arrested, sued, marriage proposals, and made the front segment of the evening news. (Politics, Animal Training, Psychology)

10. Kesha Scarletti

Born to a poor family, Kesha grew up on minimal food rations and lived in hand me down clothes and hand me down furniture. She was an agile child and had a friendly face. But inside she resented the people who had wallets packed with cash and rings on every finger. She would eventually quit school to join a teenage street gang. While sad, such things were not uncommon where she lived, and most people considered the kiddie gangs a nuisance and the problem of the schools, negligent parents and the like. Kesha became an adroit pick pocket and personal thief. She stole rings, wallets, purses and other such things with ease, selling and pawning them for what she wanted. Seeing how the pretty neko girls on the holovids got away with everything, she saved up enough money to get a minimal neko augmentation. She can't purr but she has the ears, eyes, and sense of balance. More than once she has been caught but gotten away, a big eyed stare and a startled shriek generally is enough for all but the most hardened cop or security guard. Once they realize they've let her go she's 20 feet away and running, vanishing into the crowd, or the dark. (Larceny, Pick Pockets, Misdirection)

11. Vito 'MegaVyte' Elgert

Obsession isn't just a cologne. Vito was in love with anime holovids since he was a baby, and as he grew so did his fascination with the subculture and the people in it. Vito has a day job as a corporate computer engineer where he spends hours pecking away at a keyboard, or working in a cyberspace online laboratory for systems maintenance. In his off time he lives a completely different life. He crossdresses, plays in crossgender and transgender online cyberrealms, and is a regular in clubs that cater to the fringe of anime culture that wants to embrace the genre to the fullest. He has all sorts of special systems accesses and non-commerical use computer tools and programs, and has a deviant lifestyle that make him easy to bully, manipulate or just outright blackmail. (Computers, Business Information, Disguise/womens clothing)

12. Silvia 'Hello Kitty' Clyne

Among the diamond hard core of neko enthusiasts there is no patron saint greater than Hello Kitty! Silvia is a high priestess of the saccarine white and pink feline, to the point of having her own body genetically tailored to match her corporate goddess. She has pale skin, implant whiskers, and neon pink hair. On a scientific level, her augmentation process is the top of the line. Clyne has a full time job as an anime and anime culture news correspondent. Few things are more dreaded than an interview with Hello Kitty Clyne, it is guaranteed to be a half hour of non-stop gibbering and assinine questions, do you like Hello Kitty? Do you like my hair? I like your hair. What is your favorite color? Mine is pink! Can you tell? I like Hello Kitty. Despite her moronic questioning and machine gun dialog, Clyne is a stunningly popular hypernet personality and more than one business or politician has seen the benefit of the Kitty Bump, or felt a backlash from the populace when Clyne abruptly stands up from a meeting, belts out I dont like you anymore, and storms off the set. (Computers, Performance/Acting, Finance)

13. Networked Electronic Killing Organism (N.E.K.O.)

Barely human, N.E.K.O. is what happens when dangerous people with too much money go off the deep end. An accomplished cyborg special forces agent, turned bodyguard, turned bounty hunter turned assassin, N.E.K.O. is a military grade cyborg. He? has wired reflexes and electronically wired skills for swordfighting, hand to hand fighting in several different styles, as well as extendable Wolverine style claws. She? has subdermal armor plating and at least two limbs are known to be completely artificial. N.E.K.O. likes to stalk and ambush its victims, attacking them with it's claws and tearing them apart in what is considered 'Horror Murders'. The government and the corporation that financed and built N.E.K.O. would really like to bring their rogue agent in, or just take it down but the iron cat remains elusive as ever. There are rumors that N.E.K.O. is just a series of different cyborg augments that are sent out, field testing through the criminal underground in shadow wars between megacorps. (Survival, Stealth, Killing)

14. Seleya 'Pele' Perret

Seleya was a gifted and talented girl. She grew up in the lap of coddled luxury, so it was with great alarm that her parents discovered that their daughter was a latent parapsychic with a flare for pyrokinesis. She spent years on psi-controlling medications, receiving counciling and therapy on how to suppress her paranormal ability. Her parents heard that sometimes genetic augmentation treatments could cause paranormal abilites to become recessive without constant need for medication or isolation. Seleya was selected to receive the Neko treatment as it was considered the least offensive of the choices and it was at worst considered childish. The treatment was fine, but it changed Seleya's attitude towards her parents. With her silent step, excellent hearing and night vision she learned that rather doing what they did out of love, her parents were motivated by a desire to not be humiliated by having a mutant daughter in the family. Distraugh, Seleya lost control and had a parapsychic eruption. The resultant firestorm destroyed the house, caused millions of creds in damage, and left her free to escape. Since then she has reinvented herself on the streets as Pele, a feline goddess of fire and wrath, a divinity to be placated with gifts and flattery. She is a strong pyrokinetic, with a sharp aristocratic mind and a love for the fierceness of even the most mundane house cat. (Pyrokinesis, Etiquette, Parapsychology)

15. Natsuko Watari

Neko augments are generally considered to be in the most liberal part of the political spectrum, more likely to be at peace rallies and ice cream socials or generally doing weird things to get attention. Watari is a conservative woman in the military. She serves aboard navy ships as a communications officer, but is also trained for military police and hand to hand combat. She is easily overlooked, being short and very typically Japanese. Her ears are hidden under her uniform hat, and she doesnt make a point of showing off her augmentation. She likes taking night patrol duty, eschewing the flashlight for her own low light vision. More than one 'phantom shitter' or coffee pot pisser has been caught with their pants down by the whisper quiet night security officer. (Stealth, Martial Arts, Communications)

16. Felicia Powers

The younger sister of a world reknowned professional martial artist, Felicia grew up in her brother's shadow. Rather than sit back and ride his coattails, she learned martial arts on her own, adopted a radical neo-primitive wardrobe and underwent neko augmentation. She practices a mix of capoeira and judo, mixing kicks with grappling holds and throws. She is strong and fast, with a seemingly naive personality. Unlike many professional level martial artists, Felicia is a very spiritual woman, professing a great love for Christianity, while defeating foes in a furry whirlwind of helicopter kicks and flying throws. Her brother refuses to fight with her in public, but in private the two have spared on many occasions. Felicia donates most of her earnings to an Christian orphange that bears her name, and she often dons a habit and has put in many hours there herself. While considered strange, naive, and twittish, Felicia has a personal charm and personal honesty that quickly win over all but her most heated detractors. (Martial Arts, Theology, Animal Ken)

17. Beth Morressy

Sometimes the things gained in an ill-spent youth can pay off later in life. When she was young Morressy underwent the augmentation process and was a typical neko girl; shallow and fawning for attention, be it gifts, drugs, petting, or sex. She eventually grew out of that phase of her life and found that there were many doors closed to her. She had no money, no professional contacts, and was covered with the tattoos of neko gangs and the ears. The cost of reversing the neko augmentation was out of her price range and she had to keep searching until she found a job that didn't care what she looked like. She ended up as a night watch security person at a warehouse and shipping facility. After foiling several break in attempts and stopping one employee theft ring, she has since been promoted to the head of the night security detail but has found the glass ceiling. Until she can gather the funds to have the Normalization Therapy done (Cost x5 of Neko augmentation) she cannot hope to advance higher in the security department, or hope to get off the night shift. She genuinely hates her augmentation and will become quite vocal about discrimination against augmens and why augmentation should be discouraged in the first place. (Security, Business, Bureaucracy)

18. The Night Stalker

Sometimes people do strange things, and the Night Stalker is a prime example. In normal life, Kyle Vaughn is a wealthy son of privelage, his parents being shareholders of megacorporations and major landowners. He wants for nothing, but grew up indulged and reading comic books. He is athletic as befits a college athlete, tall and good looking. His parents were horrified when he underwent augmentation against their wishes. He sneaks out at night, teaming up with a group of like minded wealthy miscreants. They use gadgets bought with their parents money under the aegis of fighting crime. Vaughn has a suit of ballistic combat armor, clawed gloves, and all sorts of non-lethal weaponry such as flash bang grenades, tear gas canisters, and a 'squirt gun' that shoots a stream of either emetic fluid (Puke juice) or fast acting sedative (sleep juice). He has thus far thwarted muggings and drug dealers in the local parks and spent more time running from cops than anything else. He tries to promote himself as the Night Stalker, but the one time he ended up in the news, he was lambasted as a lunatic and called Cat Man Strikes Again! (Gadgeteering, Leadership, Acting)

19. Patient 19N45D23400100

Called Molly by the staff of Kingdom Rodinia Hospital, Patient 19N45D23400100 is an enigma. She was dropped off by the local police as a crazy homeless woman and was taken in for psychological evaluation. Molly has apparently suffered some sort of horrible trauma and her mind has isolated itself behind the persona of a cat. She acts very much like a cat, as to where she sits and what she choses to do with herself. She spends a great deal of time grooming (with appropriate grooming supplies, not her own tongue) and humming to herself. Who she is and and where she came from is a mystery, but she has displayed some interesting skills that have taken the staff by surprise. (Computer Hacking, Pilot: Helicopter, Professional Chef: Asian Cuisine)

20. John 'Lion-O' Armstrong

John grew up a skinny and frail boy, engrossed by vintage cartoons and comic books. Once he was old enough, it was just a matter of science, time and money before he was able to become the man he always wanted to be. Between strenth augmentation and the neko augmentation he literally became a lion of a man. He is tall, broad shouldered, and strong. The treatments were considered extreme, altering his bone growth and muscle density. Such things were easy for him to bear after a youth of sickness and weakness. Armstrong is couragous to the point of disbelief, something that has seen him both reprimanded and decorated for his service to the local police force. He has leapt off of buildings and overpasses, dangled from the bottom of a helicopter and jumped from one moving vehicle to another in the line of rescuing a child or apprehending a fugitive. He has spent a good deal of time in the hospital as well, for pretty much the above reasons. He has a reputation in the city such that his public assignment to a case has improved police approval ratings, and his presence has ended several stand-offs just because the criminals involved have seen some of the things he has done and are suddenly afraid for their own wellbeing. (Law Enforcement, Daredevil, Acrobatics)

21. Miss Kitty

A professional dominatrix, Miss Kitty, aka Sarah Worthington, has an exclusive clientele as well as a popular web order company for selling sex novelties and dominatrix gear. In the seedier parts of town, her billboards and posters are fairly common, hawking promotional offers for her online store for whatever needs a person might have. She is a true neko augmen with enhanced olfactory senses, meaning that with a sniff she can gauge a person's emotional state. In the dark, with her cat eyes and sharp nose she can leave even the most jaded submissives quivering and on the cusp of fear and arousal. She seldom takes clients herself these days, instead farming out work to dominatrices she has trained and financed through their own augmentation processes, as well as working more on the business side peddling sex toys. (Performance, Empathy, Computers)

22. Sissy Cheshire

Bedecked in tattoos, surgically implanted jewels and piercings, Sissy Cheshire is a sight to behold. A freak in an era of freakishness, Sissy is the sort of person that society abhors. She has no morals, no qualms, no remorse. She has tattoos on her face, and has an entourage of likewise freaks who form her own demented sort of street gang. Her cartel is designer drug cocktails, mixing oldies like cocaine and ecstacy with new tailor made pharmaceuticals, backing bars and promoting rappers and DJs that spin music about doing drugs and getting wasted. While not a major player in the street crime game, she is an aspiring drug lord. There is something decidedly unhinged about Sissy, as she has demanded potential lovers cut off their own ears, kill people for her and mutilation and torture are like picnics are concerts. (Chemistry/Pharmacology, Intimidation, Streetwise)

23. Jessie Ocampo

A California girl with an interest in vintage clothing and retro music likes to play her acoustic guitar in public venues. She wears bright colors and sings old country songs and accepts donations. She is a part time activist who does most of her work though online venues, and a part time musician, when she isn't playing in public she does small gigs in coffee bars, low key singles bars, and other similar locales. Her augmentation was done out of protest for the animals driven out of their homes by human encroachment and resource exploitation. Her own songs feature many scent and smell based lyrics, along the lines of people smell bad. (Music, Computers, Bio-Science)

24. Ranger Rosanna McKeen

People in the arcologies and megacities are soft, dependent on their devices and computers for their survival. The power goes out and people die because they are weak and helpless. McKeen was raised in the city but soon fled to the wilderness, finding a job with the forestry and wildlife conservation service. She would spend days at a time out away from man and technology alike. Once she had the augmentation process, she found the wilderness to be a different place, a web of scents, and things hidden from electronic eyes. By modern standards McKeen is an anachronism. She doesnt own a computer system and is proficient with a bow and arrow, knows how to hunt and survive in the wild. Armed with a solar charged radio, McKeen can vanish into the forest for weeks at a time, hunting poachers and illegal timber operations. (Survival, Archery, Science)

25. Gena Rundle

Broadway still exists and its still putting out plays. The performances are holocast out for matrix viewership. Unlike other programs there are systems in place that ensure that the broadcast isn't perma-recorded and can only be viewed during the small timeframe when it is performed by the actors and actresses. Gena has a staring role in several broadway plays, ranging from costume dramas to her masterpiece, Cats!. Gena is a consume performer, who after doing the show for years underwent augmentation to better become her character. (Acting, Dance, Negotiation)

26. Anouke

In the Cosmic Era, many old traditions were reborn and reworked into the new age. Egyptian mythology and Egyptian spirituality were resurrected in strange new forms. Immortality cults appeared, and seeing the old gods venerated alongside new gods was increasingly common. Anouke forsook her Muslim upbringing in Neo-Memphis Arcology and adopted the faith of the Pharoahs. She took a new name, and worship of the goddess Bast. She has dyed her skin almost black and with her neko augmentation she looks the image of Bast herself. Deeply involved in spiritual research and magical quests Anouke is starting to discover the truth behind magic and her sanity is starting to unravel in the process. She leads a small cult of like minded women who venerate Bast and the New Egyptian Pantheon. (Leadership, Occult, Theology)

27. Nyan Girl

Another performance artist, Nyan Girl is actually local news achor Elizabeth Parks. She is well known for her professional reporting and insistence on wearing rainbow colored dresses and hair accessories. She also affects a piece of jewelry that is related to cherries, such as a cherry shaped necklace or cherry blossom hairpiece. Parks got started as a 'cable access' teleblogger who gained a cult following for her bright personality and sharp questioning technique. (Diplomacy, Negotiation, Concentration)

28. Tania Borail

Tania came from a family of servants. Her parents were servants to a wealthy family, just at their parents were. She has continued the tradition, being a maid and lady in waiting for the wealthy matron of the house. At the behest of the Lord of the house she underwent neko augmentation and he now shows her off as his neko housemaid. She secretly loathes this sort of parading around and she knows its just a matter of time before the lord decides to cash in on his investment. Does she have the courage to buck three generations of service to a wealthy and powerful family or does she submit to his desires. The worst part, is that Tania cannot speak of this to anyone as it could see the entire family disgraced and exiled from the ancestral servant's home. (Cooking, Finance, Diplomacy)

29. Violet #33 Ellsworth

Motorsports have never faded from popularity and the newest generation of race cars are aerodynamic craft that are more like powerboats and aircraft than the stock cars of old. Sitting in the cockpit of a 1200 kW race car, fast reflexes are a must, as is intense concentration. Piloting the craft around the racetrack is something only a small number of people are capable of doing. Many have gotten around this by computer augmentation, and Limited AI control systems, but in the older race leagues, this sort of mechanical magic is banned. Ellsworth is one of the rare women in the sport, and has won one World GT6 Championship, clinching her win in the third from last race in Hong Kong. Her neko augmentation has made her a cultural icon as much as her winning record in racing and the number of photo layouts shes done for bathing suit calendars and the like. (Drive, Concentration, Athletics)

30. Wendy Bunker

Wendy is 9 years old, and is the daughter of a well known celebrity entertainer. She underwent neko augmentation at her mother's insistance, something that caused a great deal of public outrage over what the acceptable age is for genetic cosmetic alteration. Her mother successfully argued in court that if gene augmentation is legal to be done in utero to correct genetic illness, then there is nothing wrong for a girl getting a cosmetic change before puberty, and that the appearance of pubic hair isn't a legal precedent. Wendy is a largely happy girl, tended by servants and living the life of indulgence that only Hollywood can provide. (no major skills, she's a kid)