#ca reckoner

Harleen might have enjoyed this strange new city if she wasn’t preoccupied with running for her life. Was it so wrong to be curious?

“Please!” She stopped when she saw a man who looked approachable enough. “You have to help me! There’s a man trying to kill me-- I haven’t done anything wrong!”

herestothelittleguys

He isn’t here to fight.

Not the people he’s been told to fight, anyway, because those people he’s seen little of so far. What he’s seen, however, is the mobilization of forces from the Hive-- his Hive, not this one that was just suddenly there-- sent out with little more than some claimed need to fight for survival; a us-or-them mentality that he just couldn’t stand behind. Not this time.

So far, he’d subdued the stragglers, the smaller squads of the militia that’d lingered around the ‘portal’; trying to clear a way to the city, perhaps even catch a glimpse of the supposed threat.

There was still the possibility that he’d been wrong. The signs of destruction he’d glimpsed from his City, fire and ice alike raging, explosions that surely couldn’t have been caused by any human-made weapon-- he had little idea who was responsible for it, but he intended to find out.

... Right after he found out who was responsible for the constant itching feeling that he was being watched. Followed. Soldiers had dropped even when he’d caused far too little damage to them for that to be the result. He had a shadow.

The captain turned, eyes carefully scanning the surrounding area; over the bodies and streets, the alleys, the carnage and havoc that’d been wreaked long before he’d even set foot there. Did he dare call out? The fighting should’ve drawn attention to him already, if noise was an issue.

... Yeah, he was gonna get nowhere quick if he kept to just looking for that shadow.

“You gonna creep after me all day? Because believe me, pal, I’d much rather get on with my life and not have to worry ‘bout gettin’ sniped while I’m tryin’ my best to do some good here.”

“Saturday in the park, I think it was the fourth of July...”

Tinny music blared from the phone on the counter of the communal kitchen as its owner, a small man with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, rhythmically kneaded a mixture of ground beef and eggs in a bowl.

“Can you dig it, yes I can- RESIDENTS OF HIVE CITY, I BEG FOR YOUR ATTENTION-”

The bowl of proto-meatloaf nearly flew off of the counter as Steve basically jumped out of his skin, hands flying up to defend himself from the voice that reverberated from seemingly everywhere. He never saw any speakers down here, were they in the walls or something-?

And as abruptly as it began, the announcement ended. The only sounds in the entire Zeta dormitory were the ticking of the clock on the wall, Steve wheezing as he caught his breath, and “Listen children, all is not lost, all is not lost, ohh nooo-”

The music cut off as Steve’s thumb swiped across the screen, carelessly leaving a smear of meat-goop in its wake. 

So. ‘Under siege’ from something in the sky, huh? The weird city-reflection he saw after work a week ago was seeming less and less like an exhaustion induced hallucination by the minute. Better go make sure nothing weird was coming in through the elevator.

“If this is truly how my life ends, then I have no regrets...”

She wasn’t scared in the slightest, or even sad. Without a proper way to defend herself, the nurse figured this would happen eventually. She was an easy target for the untrained NPCs, not to mention they were probably angry at her allies for suddenly attacking their city. So there they were, wielding makeshift weapons, positioned to attack her. Accepting the fact that she was trapped, she closed her eyes and waited to be struck. But that moment never came. Opening her eyes, she witnessed a single man.