writing Aqua Mortem

[HigurSan 195]

Pt 1: The Electric Knight

Grey Cliffs, the mountain at the end of the world. I've lived here all my life. Actually, most people for the past couple of centuries have lived their entire lives around here. 'Cept for the Waste Surfers, but I'll get to that later. Now, Grey Cliffs is at the ass end of nowhere. A mountain that rises far into the sky and squats like a dirty homeless man on an endless side walk. Around that wretch are clustered all of the possessions he has, a population millions strong of the poor and decrepit. All of 'em have holes in the fabric and rust on the metal, their backs permanently bent in servitude. From the neck down, he's an ugly and nauseating being. But from there on up, he gleams. Because in Grey Cliffs, the cloud line is where the neck would be located. The piece of the mountain above the cloud line is called the 'Pinnacle'. That's where the families who had enough sense and money in the distant past erected their homes. Below the clouds are the Slumps.

 

The Slumps is called that for a good reason. Everything slumps, from the buildings to the people. My gran told me it was 'caused by the rain'. I was short and scrawny back then and didn't know what she meant. But even then I knew that it was true. Something had gone wrong in the world a long time ago. Perhaps someone living up in the Pinnacle, 'richers' we call em, know what went down. The rest of us don't know, probably never will. Whatever caused it, the rain and water had turned acidic. Over time it made concrete soft so that you could squish it like putty. Metal has to constantly be painted over so that it doesn't rust to crumbs within a week. 'Cept, most of us in the Slumps can barely afford food, so paints a luxury most don't have. Whats more, the rain even causes the people down here to fold over. Even our skin is thicker and tougher to resist the acid.The richers call us 'cavemen' cause of that. I learned in the government's school that cavemen were supposed to be apes that eventually turned humans.

 

I was only in school for a year before I started working. My family was luckier than most in our housing complex in that regard. See, the government wants all of the Slumps kids to go to school for two years, least so we don't have to count with our fingers. But they also require everyone above the age of seven to work. School only starts when you're six. On top of that, they require absolute attendance. Even if your arm just rotted and fell off, you've got to be there. I didn't know what the point was, still don't. Anyhow, I did well enough in school that they gave me one a job with a 'light' work load, 'so I could pursue my studies'. 'Light' meant that I only had to work four hours a day. School started at six in the morning and ended at four. After that, my job was to make sure all the other kids were working.

 

If they thought I was slacking, they'd whip me and my dad, cause it was gon' be his fault for 'failing as a parent'. I had to use a shock prod to hit any kids I found slacking off. If they hit back, their whole family would be punished. So, that all rolled together with my 'short' work hours to make me one of the most hated kids in the area. I suppose in some ways I was lucky, not getting maimed in the assembly plant or being bullied into joining one of the gangs. Sure, no one in their right mind would be friends with me, but that also meant that you'd have to be -really- insane to be my enemy.

 

When I turned nine and was kicked out of school with 'stellar' grades, using the prod became my full time job. Then I really had no excuses to not use the shocker prod. Back in school, I was occasionally able to let other kids off the hook. They monitored how many times the rod shocked someone. If It wasn't used at least five times, I'd get it used on me and dad ten times. Sometimes I was able to convince the 'Child Workforce Manager', Mr Corc that I'd only found one or two kids in just four hours. I guess he'd been in my position at some point, because he'd let it pass on the few and far between occasions I dared try. The number of uses I had to have was raised to ten when I got my full time job as a Shocker. 'Shocker' was the bland but straight forward name the other kids used for me and the other poor bastards who had to do it. When I became a full fledged Shocker, my manager changed to Ms Filts.

 

Mrs Filts didn't let even a speck of dust get by without noticing. The quota was only ten, but if my numbers dipped below fifteen she would lay into me like I'd called her mother something unspeakable. Sometimes, as hard as I looked, I couldn't find fifteen kids slacking off. I was only supposed to use the prod once on each kid, but more and more I had to use it two or three times. I wasn't aware of it, but Ms Filts had been driving us so hard that the other kids wouldn't dare let their guard down for a second. As a result, the number of kids skimping on work went down to record lows and work efficiency increased to twice previous levels. Once again, I didn't know even a hint of it, but my performance and skill as a Shocker was reaching legendary levels. One rumor I know now was that I had made a deal with the devil so that the walls whispered the locations of rogue children to me. Even then, Ms Filts didn't let up for a moment, she just pressed harder. Fifteen shocks became twenty and then twenty became thirty. I was having to virtually burn the shape of the prod into my peers and then drag them unconcious to their jobs.

 

Then, when the kids couldn't take the brutality any more, they became murderers. People, even Slumps people, want desperately to think that their children are innocent and violence is a foreign concept to them. They tended to ignore the rampant gang fights and battle scars their sons and daughters acquired. However, on this night no one could ignore it even if they built a wall between themselves and the truth. I was twelve on that night, just turned that age a week before. One kid, his name was Kensky I think, had been the bane of my life and a quota filler ever since I became a Shocker. He was thicker than a prison wall and angrier than a drunken arena fighter. I had used the prod on him so much that he had actually started to enjoy the feeling of its touch. By the time I was twelve, he was thirteen a full foot taller than me. I was five feet one inch tall. He had gotten good at evading me, so good it would take hours just to get within eyesight of his fiery red hair. In order to make up lost time, I had started to hold the prod against him until the equivalent amount of electricity was spent. This night in particular the chase took five and a half hours.

 

The only reason I caught up to him then was that I got lucky. He was belting down a back alley, when his foot punched through the ground into a cavity that had been worn out by the rain. When I got there, his foot was twisted towards an unnatural angle. I was stunnned. Kensky, as much as I hated him for wasting my time, had been of a decent sort. We'd developed a sort of rival relationship that allowed us to share a snack while we hitched a ride on whatever vehicle was going in the direction of his job. This was always after I'd caught him of course. During those moments he had been friendly in a grudging respect sort of way. We'd swapped rumors and tall tales and passed crude jokes. So I hadn't the faintest idea of what I should so when I found him like that. I didn't like seeing people in pain. It made me sick every time I used the prod. Even Kensky, with his cocky attitude and constant running wasn't someone I wanted to use it on. Now here he was, wailing in pain worse than any toddler. I didn't hesitate to help him, making sure I got him off the ground and into the nearest shop, a mechanical parts store.

 

The problem I was having was whether I should use the prod on him or not. Common sense and my heart told me 'hell no'! Ms Filts on the other hand, had never let me not use it in all the time I'd known her. The shop owner, gritty as he was, knew I was in a tight spot. He made a call on his shops phone. Phones were so rare that even a minute of their use was worth a full days pay. He called the medical building to send someone over to collect Kensky. When the rickety injury truck showed up, I climbed in back and went with them. During the ride back a couple of miner's who were coughing up blood and an old woman with tumors the size of my fist on her arms got in. All the while, Kensky wasn't able to stop sobbing. Pain killer was so expensive that riot police had to guard the truck that brought shipments to the medical establishments, so using them on Kensky was out of the question. They ceremoniously shoved us off the truck when we got there and told me to carry Kensky to the waiting room. Dragging him inside was what felt like one of the longest walks of my life, still feels like that even now.

 

Inside the waiting room was a veritable hell of the sick and dying. There were things in there that would make a grown man vomit. I was too focused on getting to the reception desk, or I'd have turned around and ran away. The nurse was so old that cave drawings propably showed her as an elderly crone. Her piercing gaze could cut through steel, least it felt like that when she focused on me. I hadn't even noticed that there was a line of people that I'd shoved in front of. The guy right behind me, at the former front of the line, had a jagged length of metal speared up through his armpit and out his shoulder. I'm still not quite sure why, but not a single person in there complained and were hustled into the next room. The waiting room was bad, but the treatment hall was worse. There were no walls, curtains, or anything blocking the view of deathly ill and mortally wounded that were packed like rotting ground beef into a rusty can.

 

Kensky was set on a bench with his leg propped up my something that looked like a tripod. His foot hung in the air, it was turning a nasty color. Only now did he turn quiet. He had finally passed out. Only now did I have enough space in my brain to notice the people and pain around me. I puked so hard that I passed out as well. When I woke up, Kensky and I were in a different room. Some manner of luck or fate had somehow shuffled us into one of the private treatment rooms. I knew vaguely that every minute in here was worth a week's wages. All of that was crammed into a small portion of my brain. The rest was filled with the sight of Ms Filts. I had not a clue how she had found us, when she had gotten here, or even -why- she was hear. Part of me realized that she must have hunted me down when I didn't report in after work hours were over. In her hand was my shock prod, with the custom grip I had scrounged and stolen to pay for, the stickers of my favorite comic character that I could never afford to read, and the myriad of other things that made it mine.

 

Her eyes burned into me in a way that they never had before. I had seen it all, boiling anger, icy bitterness, iron like hatred. But the expression on her face made me think of all of those things but none of them. I can't describe what it looked like, or what the word for it was, but it made me so scared that I started to shake. She hoisted me off the seat I was on with a grip like steel. Actually lifting me through the air, she stood me up and set me down facing Kensky before pressing the shock prod into my hand. Only one word passed her lips: "Thirty". At first I didn't understand and when I did the only thing that made sense was that I was dreaming, or having a nightmare rather. Kensky only had ever gotten three shocks for wasting each hour of my time. The most he'd ever gotten at one time was seventeen. After that time he'd been unconcious for a week. Ten shocks would make a burly miner beg for mercy. Thirty? Twenty five would probably cause permanent and crippling damage to him. He'd likely never walk right as it was.

 

But I knew that I wasn't dreaming. The pain my stomach was giving me made me sure of that. For a long minute I couldn't move in horror. She was taking a breath to repeat herself. The last time she had done that my dad had been shocked ten times as punishment. Spurred by something I couldn't identify, I started. I will never recount to anyone what happened in the next twenty minutes. By the end of that, I was standing numbly in front of an apartment door. It was already late at night. No one was to be seen. Eventually I managed to make my arm rise up and bang on the door like a lead weight. I still had the shock prod in my hand, though it was broken so badly that it would never work again. Ms Filts had broken it and fired me. My last work duty was to go see Kensky's family. When a woman with a vague resemblance to Kensky warily open the door, I said all that I could. "Your son, Kensky, is dead ma'am. The morgue says to pick the body up by tomorrow, or they'll burn it." I then simply turned and walked away, hearing nothing else behind me as I went.

 

Somehow I made it back to my own family's apartment. I guess I found my way inside, because next morning I woke up on the couch. What woke me was a steadily louder banging on the door. Even if you were half dead, ignoring a knock like that would be a bad idea. I limped over, my right leg so sore that I could hardly move it, and opened the door. A solid slab of a man stood in front of me. It took me a second to realize that it was a disciplinary officer. I'd never actually seen one before, only knowing what they looked like from stories. They were only called out when the government had a problem that it couldn't shove under the rug. Once again I was lifted off the ground, but thrown over his shoulder this time. I could hear shouting in the background, but I had a hood put over my eyes so that I couldn't see. After being handcuffed and thrown into a vehicle, I had a moment to think. Surely they weren't here about Kensky? I'd been commanded to do what I had done by Ms Filts. I knew enough about the law that they couldn't punish me for that, or rather that they shouldn't.

 

After a few minutes of driving which threw me around a good bit, the vehicle stopped and I was hauled out of the back seat. They kept the hood on, but I was pretty sure I was near the Discipline Institude, the officer's headquarters. I'd only ever seen that from a distance. Common rumor said that the place smelled like boot polish. This place I was in reeked of it, so that was a pretty fair bet. I was unsure of what would happen, but I knew it couldn't be good.

Edited July 15, 2013 by Higurashi

[JeanHover 326]

You said to read this in the OOC thread. That was a good suggestion. I highly reccomend you to continue with this. It's very good! Also, if you ever come across the need for an editor, I'm always here.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Jverne

[HigurSan 195]

Pt 2: The Fleshclad Paladin

X-5 had once been able to speak like the criminals that ran away from it. His throat could, at one time, yell, scream, and eventually cry as they did. But that time had passed so long ago that it took X-5 a long time to remember it. As well, X-5 had been a man at that point in his existence. On matters of technicality, X-5 could conclude that he was still a man, in some ways at least. The concepts of 'identity' and 'personal' had ceased to have any useful meaning, so distinctions like male or female became unimportant. True, his body's physical make up had most of the correct attributes that would make him male, other than the various pieces deemed vulnerable or unnecessary. Those had been removed somewhere around the time when he lost his original name and voice. It was easy to conclude from those facts that at that point in time, he had been changed. What processes took place to change him was a category of information that he was denied access to. X-5 knew that if he stumbled upon the correct information by accident, while in pursuit of what he was ordered to do, his memory would be wiped clean and his body would be incinerated.

Knowing this did not make X-5 afraid, as emotions like that had been subdued. There was only enough to allow adrenaline to be deployed through his veins when necessary. At this moment in time, X-5 was having to draw on the secondary reserves of adrenaline in order to keep up with the fast changing situation. The situation briefing he had received was much more complicated than he could understand within the minute and a half it took for him to fully awaken. Reports were coming in by the second that changed the growing overview of what was going on in Grey Cliffs Residential Sector Thirteen. As far as X-5 was able to gather, a massive civilian uprising had taken place due to unknown events. Inquiries as to the cause were already in progress. One possible source had been identified as a youth identified only as 'Citizen 13-45-21-17', whose employment was as a 'child workforce minder'. X-5 knew that that profession meant that the Citizen would be equipped with a Model IV 'Submission Rod', which was used to subdue unruly citizens. X-5 made a note to himself that he must be wary of the Model IV, in case the Citizen tried using it to resist apprehension. This was because X-5's deployment objective was to capture Citizen 13-45-21-17 and bring him back to the Discipline Institute for processing.

While chances of complication or failure were near to non-existent, X-5 would be taking no chances. Civilian rebellion of this scale had not taken places in little under four decades. If the Citizen was the source of such massive chaos, he was no doubt more dangerous than the current files stated. As such, X-5 was given permission to operate one of the few armored ground cars currently within the Institute. Out of the thirty normal parked in the docking area, twenty three were already deployed in order to stem the tide of rioting Citizens. Those that remained were still formidable, but were not equipped with crowd control countermeasures as those deployed were. In case of the impossible instance that Sector 13's Discipline Institute had to be evacuated, the remaining seven were normally requisitioned for the high ranking staff and Discipline Colonel in order to get them to safety. That X-5 was now given exclusive use of one did not go unnoticed by him.

 

As soon as he drove the car out of the docking bay, the signs of near open warfare were as obvious as was possible. Signs of combat were everywhere outside of the Discipline Institute. The nearest buildings were a hundred meters away, in order to provide a protective cordon. Almost all of these showed scars of fighting in the form of bullet impacts from the Civilians' explosive based  and highly illegal firearms along with scorch marks from the Discipline Officer's advanced heat beam weaponry. Most of the time, the beam intensity was lowered so that it would only cause mild burns on a Civilian if they were hit. But safety parameters had clearly been disengaged in order to throw back riotous crowds. Here and there bodies had been moved out of the way, almost all of them Civilians. A few appeared to still be alive but severely injured. Discipline Officer casualties were next to nothing in comparison. But the fact that even one Officer had been damaged enough to be put out of action showed just how grim the situation was. A full complement of four hundred Officers had been deployed according to X-5's briefing and even more were being drawn from other sectors. Scattered sightings of fighting were beginning to spread to neighboring sectors. The situation would soon warrant military intervention if even more Civilians were drawn in. As such, it was critical that X-5 completed his mission before Enforcer Aircraft started to purge the Residential Sector, which would very likely kill his target.

 

The streets were clogged with burning wreckage, making driving conditions even worse than the normal patchwork of potholes and trash. A number of tight angle curves and hastily applied brakes allowed him to evade the worst of it, though the paintwork would have to be redone and the tires had to be replaced. As he got out of the car, X-5 detected the sound of fighting, which was steadily growing louder as it drew near. Sprinting up five flights of stairs, X-5 approached the correct apartment door. His knock was so heavy that it shook the door frame.  X-5 did not interact much with Citizens, but he had enough to hear the common knowledge: ignore a knock like that and you're a dead man. A few moments passed, the turmoil grew louder, and he knocked again. After just a second longer he was preparing to bust down the door, when the shallow youth identified as Citizen 13-45-21-17 opened the door. The appropriate barcode was stitch onto the torso of his shirt, right above the heart as it should be. Wasting no time, X-5 hauled the boy off his feet and raced down the stairs. Now he could actually see the horde of rioting Citizens, all brandishing weapons. They were currently being driven back by the deployed Discipline Officers, though both sides were taking hits. One of the crowd noticed him and yelled out directions to those around him. Throwing the youth into the back seat, X-5 hopped into the driver's position just as the first bullets started to ping of the back windshield.

 

With a screech of burning rubber, the ground car launched forward into motion. If the drive out had been bad, now it was even worse. Citizens were everywhere, blocking his path. Some were fleeing the violence, others were causing more violence. As much as X-5 tried to avoid them, one or two went down screaming under the tires and were left behind in a bloody pulp. Rounding a bend, X-5 sighted the Discipline Institute and pulled into the docking bay. As he was hauling the youth out of the car and towards the building, a faint rumble in the distance made X-5 look back. A plume of smoke went up in the horizon, followed by one of the most awe inspiring sights he had ever seen. In a brilliant pillar of explosive energy, the energy convertor suffered a critical failure and shot all of the collected power into the sky. Buildings around it were sucked into the air and partially vaporized, sending tons of broken metal and concrete into the sky. X-5 knew that soon enough they would be coming back down with deadly effect. Making a dash to the safety of indoors, he narrowly avoided a falling boulder of smoldering metal as it crashed into the front steps just after he had entered the building.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Higurashi

[HigurSan 195]

Pt 3: The Rusted Crown

"Keep fighting!" a voice roared over the din of screams, breaking bones, and gunfire. "Make these unfeeling freaks die for every foot of ground!" The throat and lungs urging its companions on, so loud that it could be heard over the tumult of battle, emanated from one who shouldn't have been capable of such noise. In physical form he was just a scrawny old man who was missing his left arm and foot. His bedraggled hair and unkempt face made one think of the poorest kind of beggar, as did his attire. But in presence, mentality, and aura; he was ten feet tall and smote his enemies like the hand of a god. His voice cut through the chaos and gave his comrades the courage they normally lacked.

 

This was because the yelling old man was the legendary Gutter King. In the city of Grey Cliffs, there were two types of people. There were the Slumpers from below the cloud line and the Richers from above it. Both groups, as human beings typically did, would procreate. With each successive generation the tension between the workers of the Slumps and the overseers of the Pinnacle only grew. So, in the youth of either group, gangs had formed. The wealthy and well educated heirs to the Pinnacle founded the Aetheral Eyes, who specialized in a type of combat best described as magic and wizardry. On the other hand, the stubborn and resentful delinquents of the Slumps joined together into the Gutter Rats. They could do things with explosive based fire arms that seemed to defy the laws of physics and common sense.

 

Greatest of all the Gutter Rats, the Gutter King was the embodiment of the rebellion that plagued the Slumps. Government bounty hunters and law officials had tried to kill him so many times that you could destroy an entire army with the amount of weaponry wasted upon him. Now here he was, in Sector 13, leading the riots against the Discipline Officers. It was very likely that things would never have escalated to this scale if he had not been there. But the fact was that he was here and there was nothing even he  could do to slow down the tide of violence by this point.

Edited July 18, 2013 by Higurashi

[HigurSan 195]

Pt 4: The Blazing Apparatus

"Feeling toasty yet freaks?" a boistrous and overly enthusiastic woman cackled as the dim alley was roasted by a spear of flame. In one hand she held a nozzle, out of which boiled highly flammable vapors that spewed hot death when lit by the pilot light. In the other was a crude device, a portable metal stripper of some sort. It was refitted so that it could be weilded much like a club or axe. When swung, the whirring teeth would rip and tear into whatever it touched, powered by a motor on her thigh. The Discipline Officers, quite simply, were not able to handle her. It was common logic that a Citizen would duck for cover or run away when suitable firepower was pointed in their direction. But this woman dived forward, right into the barrels of the Officers so that she could get to grips with them. Three Officers were already permenantly downed by her auto-saw, unacceptable losses by any measure. Nearly a dozen others had been crippled or severly burned.

 

The danger that she represented, even when cut off from the other rioting Citizens, made her a key focus for the Enforcers when they arrived on seen. The Discipline Officers were already taller than most Citizens and far more muscled. Enforcers made the Officers look puny in comparison. From head to toe their were clad in metallic body armor, shaped to look like knights of a far gone age. Finding a [racism 3] in their armor was more difficult than locating a single scale in a sea of a billion fish. Their hands had long ago been melded into their impressive weaponry, ensuring that they always had a firm and accurate grip when aiming. Even their armaments made the Discipline Officers look insignificant. A short barrel lead to a massive magazine, from which came an icy blue glow. When fired, the guns were completely silent, with only a small puff of displaced air to be heard. The impact was signficantly more loud. This was because whatever was hit by the Enforcer's shots was instantly cooled to a temperature near absolute zero. In short, a human body would explode into a thousand shards of ice which were lethal to the touch. Even if one was not hit directly, the resulting shrapnel could be just as deadly.

 

So in a rather cliche fashion, fire battled against ice. Movements too quick for the eye to see decided life or death as Enforcer Aircraft materialized in the air above the woman, Enforcers dropping from the exit ramps like meteors. As enthralled with the fighting as she was, the woman knew that she couldn't fight back against that kind of retaliation. The flames flickered out with the turn of a switch, axe grinding to a halt as she darted into the shadows. There was not much darkness to be had, as the Enforcers began to light up every patch of ground with search lights. So she was quick, skittering from spot to spot as she made her escape. As loud as she had been while fighting, she was now as quiet as the grave when fleeing. Soon enough the Enforcers would discover the discreet tunnel that she had bolted through, but she'd be long gone by then.