Saving the CITY (OPEN)

[>Flighty<]

"Sippin' on straight chlorine, lovin' what I'm tastin'; venom on my tongue..."

Darkness swept over the city and it came alive with violence. A hazy glow filled the smog laden air above the towering buildings. Neon signs flickered here and there and the night life thrived in the ominously lit streets. The weaker inhabitants of the city were long since in their homes if they had one. But not all of the innocents of this city had a home. Screams and whimpers echoed up through the towering buildings.

Silver eyes traced the shadows along the dark alleyways below. Here the city was crumpled and broken, the destruction that had torn her realm apart had not left this place untouched either. Decades later and shattered buildings and desiccated corpses still remained.

She’d only just arrived here a few hours ago. She had heard stories of the things that happened to the innocent here. She’d also heard stories of people that were doing their best to protect those innocents. They were not enough though, so Rave had made her way here to do her part. This wasn’t the worst place she had heard of, but it was one she knew that she could help. If evil had a heart in this realm, this city was it.

Suddenly she herd footsteps on the dark street below and she moved slower along the rooftop trying to spot who was down there. Her sharp eyes saw the dark figure cloaked in unnatural shadow after a few moments. She leapt easily across the gap in the buildings; landing near silently.

With steady, silent steps she crept low over the rooftop and peaked over the edge to see the shadowy figure beneath her. She scented the air and focused her vision on him trying to assess the situation. She could smell something warm and metallic on the air, but it was not precisely the scent of blood, at least not human blood.

As she watched the shadowy person moving she noticed an unnatural flashing of crimson eyes from within the darkness. As she followed them along the rooftops she caught the scents of many individuals despite the rundown, darkness of this edge of the city. Some of the scents were distinctly human, but she also caught the trail of other creatures, some she recognized; vampires, dragons, shifters, and others she did not.

Suddenly the person below stopped and she saw their head moving; eyes darting. She ducked lower behind the ledge so that she couldn’t see them anymore. She was not sure that they couldn’t have heard her; she had no idea what type of creature she was stalking. Their scent was similar to a vampire, but definitely not any kind she was familiar with or at least not a pureblood. She was stealthy, but she had to be extra careful when stalking a creature she did not know thoroughly.

After a moment she heard the footsteps start up again. She waited a beat and then carefully peaked over the edge of the building just in time to see the dark figure disappear into an abandoned building. She did not follow into the building. Typically she was just the type to do something reckless like entering a dark abandoned building following a target she knew nothing about, but not tonight. She had only planned on recon for the first few nights here. This city was massive, and filled with thousands of beings she had never before encountered. She needed to scope things out and find herself a base to secure, as well as a few hideouts throughout the city with emergency supplies.

Still, she couldn’t suppress her curiosity completely. She found the darkest rooftop she could from where she could still observe the building the figure had entered and set about waiting. Something told her to stay. She’d smelled blood on the target, she was certain, and all the various scents she’d caught led into that dark, seemingly abandoned building in the middle of hundreds of other abandoned buildings.

It didn’t take much waiting before she saw three other figures enter the same building. One of them was distinctly human, the other two were completely unidentifiable scents, though they had humanoid shapes, as most sentient beings did.

Over the next hour, more than a dozen individuals entered the once abandoned building. Within moments of each entry into the building there ensued silence. Clearly there was more to the shell of a building than met the eye. This was not a mystery she was going to unravel quickly. She had to admit defeat in this for tonight, and stake out a place for herself in this city.

Rave knew that she could not begin to hunt the evil that stalked these streets until she had a place to retreat. Silently she slipped away from the mystery and deeper into the decaying edge of the strange new city.

Hours later she was standing in the subbasement of a collapsed building. It was within the most utterly abandoned part of the destroyed areas that she had found. The few scents that still hung around were from rats, crows and other scavenging beasts and even those were months old; having picked the region clean.

This place was practically inaccessible. She had entered the basement using the basement of a neighboring building and discovered two levels even deeper underground. The basement housed the remains of the original building’s heating and cooling system as well as what appeared to have once been a mechanic’s station filled with various tools.

The subbasement held a massive room with rows and rows of empty shelving and Rave got the distinct impression that this area had never even had the chance to be used for whatever purpose it had been intended for. The level beneath that was just two, completely empty, concrete, box-like rooms. And to top it all off there was a hatch beneath the bottom flight of stairs that led into the sewer system of the city. A perfect escape route.

She could not have hoped for a better hideout. She unslung a small black canvas bag from her back and tossed it into the corner of the smaller of the two concrete rooms. First she needed to set up a security system. She had come prepared of course. From the breast pocket of her black tactical vest she took a small black case.

She set the little box flat on her palm and brushed her index finger along the top. A soft beep issued from the seemingly innocuous case and then it snapped open. A swarm of tiny black drones, each one only a few millimeters long and half that wide, gently rose into the air. With a few quick taps on the buttons on the inside of the case the little swarm broke apart and buzzed about the three levels that remained of the structure. A few of the microscopic drones placed themselves in the rubble of what remained of the two upper stories of the collapsed building and then the last few attached to neighboring buildings. Each one was capable of recording and transmitting audio, video (including infra-red and ultraviolet), and detecting even the slightest of motion. The signal was tied directly into her neural sensory network.

Now, with a secure base, she could start a patrol and do some actual investigating and maybe even save some lives. Of course she still needed to find a few secondary hideouts in various areas of the city but that could take some time. She grabbed her gear and headed back out into the dark city.

She looked like a creature prepared for war. She was wearing black BDU from head to toe, her hair was jet black tonight with blood red strands and cut close to her scalp; her eyes a brilliant silver that clearly saw everything. Her hands were wrapped in black like a fighter. She wore finely crafted swords of powerful alien metals strapped criss cross along her back and matching daggers on both hips and on both wrists. Her custom black boots had blades in the heals and toes. There was a small gun strapped to each ankle and two more tucked at the small of her back. Slung over her shoulder was her favorite weapon. A customized, lightweight submachine gun that fired a variety of ammunition. Tonight she had it loaded with standard copper tipped rounds.

Her flak jacket pockets each held a small black metal case of various sizes. They were a small piece of technology from her home world called HP boxes or HPs, after the Higgs boson particles that made them possible. Luckily for Rave her training had been intense and vast and it included doctorates in physics and engineering. She had mastered the ability to make the HPs, as well as several other pieces of technology including active camouflage which was part of her clothing. She rarely used the active camo because turning it on caused her nanites to react uncomfortably due to the EM field it created around her.

She let thoughts drift in the background, once more trying to think of a way to re-engineer the active camo and other gear, while the forefront of her mind concentrated on her surroundings.
”-”