Animals of Mirai City

Although the city does not have a full-fledged zoo of animals from around the world, the City Aquarium displays a wide variety of both native and exotic fish and ocean invertebrates. There is also a petting zoo in District 13 with rabbits, goats, sheep, and other docile animals for small children to learn about. Some classrooms have a school pet, and some schools allow students to have pets in their dorm; policies are up to each individual institution.

Plants of Mirai City

Several botanical gardens such as the Ziggurat Gardens have much more exotic flora on display, and Eden Project condo buildings in District 12 have enclosed courtyards to grow community gardens year-round.

Creatures of Science

Pekemono

Animals or tissue from biomod experiments are supposed to euthanized or disposed of properly with biohazardous waste. But on rare occasions, unexpected resistances or regeneration make it possible for these ‘rejects’ (peke) to flee from the trash and make it into the wider city.

Pekemono are rare finds, and generally not capable of even animal-like sentience, with most being somewhat animate amoeba-like blobs. They may have unusual organs or growths, and many are highly resistant to poisons and adverse conditions. They are almost exclusively small and harmless, with many being eaten by rats or stray animals before even being discovered, but a few have enough capacity for survival to become city fixtures, for example...

The Wallwriter

This pekemono crawls along sewer walls and ceilings in irregular patterns, leaving behind a faintly phosphorescent trail of goo in its wanderings. Unfortunately for others (but fortunately for it), it also emits a hallucinogenic compound that affects people’s perception, making it common to read the squiggles of goo it leaves as a strange kind of graffiti that says different things depending on who reads it. That the hallucinations make it almost impossible to see the camouflaged Wallwriter itself is the real bonus.

Many assume the “graffiti” is the work of some rogue biochemical artiste instead.

The slime decays in a day or two, fading along with the localized hallucinogenic effect.

GECs

Genetically Modified Cultivars (GECs) are animals or plants modified and spliced to an extreme degree at a purely genetic level, essentially creating an entirely new type of creature.

For obvious reasons, GECs are strictly controlled, microchipped, and are definitely not are allowed to leave Mirai City. Some that include human DNA do exist, but the current accepted standard is to keep it at a level below 10%, ideally less, to avoid ambiguity on issues of personhood.

Handimal

Started as a project to improve helper dogs, there are now both cat and dog genetic lines available as pets that have small opposable thumbs. Of course, this means they can get into a lot more trouble...

Rabehund

Not a true GEC, rabehunds are closer to biomodded dogs, giving them the loyalty and tracking ability of a dog with the intelligence and low-end tool use of a crow. Rabehunds tend to have shaggy fur and a ragged, cawing bark. They also have longer toes than most dogs, enabling them to grip items.

Rabehunds have become a typical companion animal with Black Operatives, assisting in operations where tracking might be necessary.

Triffyds

A generic joking name initially used when talking about genetically modified plants within the city.

Enterprising researchers have taken that a step further and made these sunflower-like mobile plants. Unlike the original fictional triffids, these are not carnivorous, but their ability to slide their roots from the ground and go in search of better sources of water and sunlight is a real headache for researchers when they escape.

Id Monster

Poorly understood and far from common knowledge, id monsters are created from disruptions within multiple interlocked psi fields. As physical manifestations of uncontrolled energies and emotion given form, they tend towards erratic and destructive behavior. Creatures of unordered thought, they are generally amorphous or misshapen and generate appendages and sensory organs as needed, and able to use all of the psi abilities of those who are part of it. Students who are ‘participants’ or ‘members’ of the pseudo-gestalts that create id monsters generally fall unconscious until the crystalline core of the creature, somewhere hidden within the blob, is shattered and the creature destroyed.

Glitches

These sparks are, in fact, extradimensional entities brought to Mirai City involuntarily through experiments involving dimensional folding or warping. They are not ‘intelligent’ in any comprehensible sense, and can cause malfunctions, short circuits, and other ‘gremliny’ problems with electronics and technology before eventually fading out or finding a way back to their interdimensional home.

Creatures of Magic

Vampires

Originating as mages who dabbled too deeply in blood magic ages past, modern vampires labor under the constraints of the magic that sustains youthful immortality: draining the life force of simpler creatures. Not many remain in the modern world, shunned and exterminated from magical societies over the centuries.

The Green Dragon of Octex

After a major collapse in the industrial waste management facility in District 19, Octex took it over and rather than simply cleaning it up, used the negative energy to summon a spirit to potect their holdings: the Green Dragon. The dragon very much resembles a european one, with 4 legs and wings, but the cracks between scales and its breath and eyes, glow a sickly yellow-green. It belches radioactive napalm-like fire, burning with heat, and even its phoshorescent stare can burn. Its scales are dully metallic like lead, but resist damage and reform around the beast's energetic core -- even allowing it to can change size and shape to be able to slide through smaller spaces. Octex is currently using it to guard their assets; released from the recycling complex, it lives under their research building and suffles at the air ducts.