The Neko position is simple and the city keeps mishearing it. In a place where the danger arrives unannounced, out of static, out of alleys, out of contracts, the tribe decided the only real armor is knowing first. Everything else, the ears, the tail, the look, is the hardware and the flag of that one decision.
The augments are working gear. Audio-receptors tuned past human range, low-light oculars, and the tail, which outsiders read as decoration and owners describe as the difference between falling and not, balance at height, in the dark, at speed. The tribe cuts across every Origin, though it lands mostly on Runners, who want the vertical city, and the Vaulted, who want the look and wear it as couture. An Outlander spends chrome on surviving the Wastes, not on ears.
Play the awareness, not the aesthetic. A Neko in a scene knows who came in, who’s armed, who’s lying about being relaxed, and the strongest Neko roleplay is quiet, the character who was already facing the door, who left through the window before the trouble had a name, who says what they heard on the stairs a full minute after everyone else needed to know it. The punk flag on top of that is earned, the tribe dresses loud because being seen is safe when nothing can reach you unseen.
The cost is real, play that too. Tuned senses in a loud city means the Whispers arrive sharper, crowds cost more than they cost other people, and the augments need upkeep a street Neko can barely afford, which is why half the tribe runs courier work for the other half’s ripperdoc bills. And the city’s contempt is its own tax, being read as decorative by fools, right up until the moment they learn better, is a scene this creed gets to play weekly.
The tribe keeps its own founding story and tells it straight-faced. The first Nekos were gate-crew, tuned by a Chrome workshop to hear Static-hounds coming through a whiteout, and the engineering that could do it took a shape the old world had already perfected, the cat. The job ended. The tuning didn’t. True or not, every Neko can tell you the moment their new ears first caught something moving that nobody else heard. That moment, not the aesthetic, is the conversion.
[GUIDE ENDS. YOU HEARD THIS COMING. THAT’S THE POINT.]