The sky was cloudy, blocking out the sun with its grey body, threatening to rain at any moment while the street below suffered from negligence. The sounds of puddles being splattered by the sound of residents walking was unnerving and unnatural, as a strange squelch sound would follow it.
The street itself was decaying. Walls covered in graffiti and black soil, with street vendors selling food that seemed too good for a place like this. Overall, it was completely grim and yet, strangely habitable.
Akira was shocked at how the people here were living, while Min-Su looked relatively unbothered. Shinomiya on the other hand, was purely disgusted.
"This place is horrible. How could they force people to stay here?", Akira questioned.
"The image of perfection is a tough one to keep up. Of course, they have no reason to care for the garbage they toss here."
Strangely, all the people who lived here were wearing armbands too. Some wore red, while those behind stalls wore orange, while even fewer wore yellow. Children who were mindfully playing didn't have any armbands.
Shinomiya was the first to notice this, and the other two wouldn't realise until much later on.
Not long after quietly observing, a large man began to cause trouble, at one of the stores. He was bald with toned skin, and also wore a black bone gang jacket with ripped sleeves. He was shouting something at the old lady behind the stall.
The man had a white armband while the old lady had orange.
'Again with those armbands... so is this where they came from?'
"Fuck you mean you've ran out of sweetbread!? Don't you see this armband!? You better fix me up some more right now, before I trash this place!"
That disrespectful talk was angering Akira, and so he was about to teach him a lesson. Shinomiya quickly put her hand on his shoulder, telling him to stop.
"We don't know enough about this place to interfere. If you expose yourself now, we risk getting caught."
"I can't ignore this. I made a promise to someone."
Akira was about to step forward, but then the sound of a bicycle bell began ringing through the street. The people in the path cleared a way for an average sized man on a green cycling bike to ride through.
He was wearing a suit with black padding covering his torso and shoulders. His face was hidden behind tinted safety goggles, and his hair kept in a green helmet. He too wore an armband, however it was a combination of white and yellow in a strange pattern.
Carefully he got off his bike, while also shifting it into parking mode.
"You! whatever your issue is, stop it right now! I believe it can be resolved peacefully."
The gang member just looked at the cyclist with a hint of boredom, before smashing one of his fists into a tray filled with normal bread. The food spilled everywhere causing some ordinary people to grow angry.
The cyclist could no longer hold back at the sight of wasted food.
"Don't you understand the pricelessness of food in this place?! Don't you realise someone hungry could've eaten that!? I WON'T LET YOU CAUSE HARM ANYLONGER! I, METRO RIDER SHALL STOP YOU!"
He then struck a stylish pose before running up to the gang member, and punched him in the gut with all of his weight. What he hadn't realised however, was that this person was a borrower while he was just a mere human.
The punch did absolutely nothing as he stood there unfazed. He didn't even flinch, but instead started to laugh. Strangely, the small crowd which had gathered began to laugh too.
While clearing the tears from his eyes, the Black bone gang member grabbed Metro Rider's hand, before lifting him into the air and slamming into the ground. He then started to kick him repeatedly in the stomach, fracturing some of his bones.
The crowd started to cheer at the brutal beating.
"Alright! You really are a hero! I feel so much better now!"
The gang member started to walk away, while the crowd began to disperse, leaving the cyclist on the floor. Weakly he pulled himself up and started to head home with his cycle. The old lady on the other hand was forced to clean up after their fight.
Akira didn't know what to think after seeing that fight. He should've intervened, but keeping their identities secret was far more important right now. Shinomiya then said,
"Lets move to higher ground."
**
The group had moved to the roof of the ally, with the corpse still being left on the ground to rot.
From this place they could see the city in it's entirety. It was the size of an average city, with it being perfectly circular in diameter and being surrounded by around 50 metre tall steel walls, with only a single entrance being at the north side.
A clean Asphalt road travelled in a straight line, from the entrance all the way to the centre of the city. There, a tall white tower surrounded by smaller walls climbed into the sky with several lights beaming off it.
Unison council soldiers were clad in a white military like uniform, with very thin white padding for extra protection. Holding guns, they endlessly patrolled the area close to the Tower, and they also had white armbands much like the Black Bone gang.
Strangely a fourth of the city appeared to be missing, with a giant dirt crater where it should be. Another portion had a bottomless pit in it, which many people appeared to travel in and out of.
More white soldiers appeared to be guarding it, while citizens in red armbands primarily travelled through it.
"The council really are sick to their stomach. How could they be hiding all of this?", Shinomiya said while clenching her teeth.
"Anyhow, we need to check out those key points. That tower looks like the councils main base of operations, so I'll try infiltrate it."
"You?? By yourself?? Isn't that too dangerous, no matter how you think of it?"
She went silent for a moment before responding, "I have experience in this kind of thing. Nevertheless, we still need more information before we can make a move."
The three then heard a scream down the Alley. Akira went down to check, and saw that someone had discovered the dead body. Having a bright a idea, he quickly asked Syn for some help.
Akira extended his right hand out, which caused a red and black shadow to extend from it. It elongated all the way to the bottom of the street, while sneaking up behind the man. It quickly wrapped around his neck, before pulling him all the way up and tossing him onto the floor.
This was one of 2 new Talents Akira had acquired in the past week, through training and experimentation.
[Talent: Black Mould]
[Talent Rank: B]
[Talent Description: The lords formless body grants limitless flexibility.]
It was a Talent that allowed Akira to make constructs from the black and red shadows which Syn's body was made from. He tried making weapons from them, but they weren't very sharp, instead more solid or rope like shapes were much more suitable for this Talent.
Just before the man could scream for help, Shinomiya quickly blocked his mouth with his arms, before pointing her rapier right at his neck.
"Struggle anymore, and you die. Scream, and you die. Try to run away, and you die. You will answer all the questions that we ask truthfully, and if you refuse then you will die regardless. Understood?"
He just silently nodded, allowing Shinomiya to let him go. This side of her scared Akira a little, as he knew she was threatening but not this terrifying.
"First, what do those armbands you heave mean? I've noticed that some people have different colours and patterns."
He was surprised after calming down a little. Since not many people ever get to leave this city, everyone basically knew each other. Seeing three new people wearing much cleaner clothes then he was, greatly alarmed him. It was incredibly obvious they were from the outside.
"They're used to represent our jobs, miss."
She flinched a little from that name.
'I'm not old enough to be called miss?? I'm only 19!', she wanted to shout, but she needed to keep her calm demeaner.
"Elaborate."
"The armbands range from red to white, with red being the lowest, and white being the highest. Red armbands means that your a miner in the underground mines over there, orange means that your a distributer who hands out the rations we get daily, yellow means that you work in the entertainment district, and white means that your exempt from all the rules, and either work as a law enforcer for the unison, or are part of the Junk gang. As long as you have a white armband, then you can enter and leave the city as much as you want."
From this, Shinomiya recognised that the massive hole people kept going into was the mines. The stall that was getting harassed earlier was a distribution point for the rations, and obviously there must've been a limit on how much one could take at once. The rations themselves were imports from the outside which the Unison council brought in.
However, he was omitting certain details which she caught onto. She slashed her rapier far to close to his head, cutting away some of his hair while scratching his cheek. The man panicked as he crawled back, but had to stop before he fell of the roof.
"That cyclist from earlier, he had a different armband from the rest. Explain it. Or you can say goodbye to your head."