Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

‘She’s going into the Yellow Zone?’ Elsie thought with a bit of dismay. She’d been following the gorgeous blonde for half the morning already—part of Wild Fang’s directive to figure out what the foreigners wanted. The blonde had been wandering around the First Hundred Shopping District alone, which had been more than a surprise. Elsie figured that she’d always have someone following her around, to keep her out of trouble.

Elsie saw the way more than a few gangers were staring at blondie’s ass as she sashayed down the street. The First Hundred Shopping District was not under the control of the Fang Eyed, far from it, actually. There were three other gangs silently maneuvering for dominance here.

Red Badgers. Sea Snakes. Silent Paw.

The first two were the typical type of gang found in the lower zones. They ran protection rackets, shook down residents, and painted the walls with their colours. The Silent Paws were a mysterious bunch that were good at keeping themselves out of sight. Elsie thought they stole stuff, AC script, physical representations of Autochredits for discreet spending, or perhaps they snuck into places to nab things.

The Red Badgers often pushed, and consumed, uppers and hallucinogens, while the Sea Snakes ran brothels and doll houses. There were some rumours that they kidnapped people to throw into sex work, and that they had branches in three mega buildings. They were spread thin, as far as Elsie could tell, but their muscle was vicious.

So while Elsie was somewhat concerned that someone as gorgeous as blondie was wandering around without even being armed, she was also looking forward to seeing what the girl could actually do. Lil Blue said that the rest of that bunch didn’t look worried and that they were preoccupied with their own crap. She would have preferred to stare at Heron Muryh though. Now that was a fine piece of ass.

Ah, she went to Simon and Garoll’s.

Elsie waited in the vicinity for a while before she grew bored enough to do a little bit of space diving. Not a full dive, but a partial one that still allowed her awareness of her surroundings. The gun shop had excellent counter intrusion protocols so she simply hacked into the camera recordings of the Shopping Floor. She’d already done so in the past, and these defences were always easy to breach. She observed a few members of the Sea Snakes loitering around the gun shop, and she wondered if they would make a move on the blondie. It was unlike the Snakes to be hasty, but perhaps someone got horny. Actually, just looking at their anticipatory faces, Elsie could practically guarantee that they were horny beyond reason. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t just pay for sex. There was a brothel on the other side of the floor that belonged to one of them.

Well, there was nothing she could do other than warn blondie, but even if she did, would blondie believe her? Besides, it would also be a good way to see what the girl was hiding. If she really is about to be kidnapped, Elsie could step in. She wasn’t confident in defeating a dozen punks, but she didn’t need to go that far anyway.

An hour later, blondie came out of the gun shop carrying a Defender on her hip. Not a bad choice, really. Elsie continued to follow, noting that the Snakes were already starting to gather around the girl. This was going to be it.

Until the daft girl came across one of the lower zone access points and walked right through. Elsie shook her head, noting that the punks hesitated to follow. Who in their right mind would go below the hundredth level? Even the gangs avoided it. Too close to the ground was dangerous. For the mega buildings, the 100th or 101st floor was the ground floor as it provided easy access to outer roads and other skyscrapers.

‘Should I follow her?’ Elsie wondered. Did she want to gamble with her life?

Thinking briefly of the pretty boy and how she’d fallen to being ruled by her loins, Elsie sighed and made her way to the lower floor access point.

___________

The first thing Yuriko did after the door closed on her was to check if it would unlock if she wanted to go back. She could destroy the door, of course, but she’d rather not start her stay in this city by destruction of public property.

Thankfully, the door did unlock when she pressed her hand on the access panel right next to the door knob. Happy she wouldn’t resort to breaking it off, she confidently strode down the stairs. Just like the ones they used to go down from the one hundred and seventieth floor, the stairs were about three paces wide. The stairwell wasn’t in good repair, however, with a multitude of cracks in the paint, actual cracks in the concrete wall, and thick dust on the steps. As she descended to where she imagined the hundredth floor was, she saw old bloodstains in the corner of the landing.

Down one flight, she didn’t actually see a door, and it wasn’t until she went down fifty paces that she found one, at the very bottom of the stairwell. Unlike the ones in the upper level, this one hung off its hinges and wouldn’t actually stop anybody. She peered through, not quite sure what to expect, and found herself looking at a floor that looked similar to the Shopping District above, except that the buildings inside were large, blocky warehouses instead of smaller shops.

There weren’t any people that she could see. Instead, there were automatons, constructs that looked like Steelds, but were clearly not powered by Arcana Weaving, moving around the buildings. Most were shaped like vehicles, haulers mostly, and they had grasper arms on their backs. They carried crates from one building to the next in a pattern that Yuriko couldn’t decipher.

Like the shopping floor, this place was just one big floor instead of multiple smaller ones, but it wasn’t a full square. There was a pillar fifty or so paces across in the middle, and Yuriko guessed that it spanned the entirety of the mega building’s height.

Was it a lift that could access all levels, or something just as important? Curious. But she didn’t want to stick her nose into it, especially when she didn’t know how to look into the pillar without using her perception to bypass the material. It was just unpleasant to do so.

She noticed a few buildings that had signs on them, indicating if they were lift lobbies or stairs. She made her way to the closest one, though she took note of where she came down from. Inside were the expected lifts, and when she entered one, she was surprised to see the floors were grouped by threes or fives. There were labels beside the buttons too, but when she linked her Autotab to the lift controls, none of the labels actually matched.

Shrugging to herself, Yuriko looked at the bottom most floor. At least the bottom she could access through the lift. Like the stairwells, none actually spanned the entire height and breadth of the arcology. The bottom floors were still divided into individual floors, but when she pushed at the ground level, the lift didn’t move. Her tab shot her a notification that she didn’t have enough authority to access the ground floor directly. The tenth was the lowest she could go from here, so she picked that. The lift doors closed and it dropped speedily through dozens of floors.

The viewscreens inside the lift weren’t working properly and they showed glimpses of other images behind snowy static. What she could see were filled with videos of naked men and women, though none of them were actually engaged in sex. It was heavily implied though, and the viewscreens repeatedly tried to link to her devices.

When she finally arrived at the tenth floor, the doors opened into a residential area nearly identical to the one on the hundred and fifty second floor. Except when the lift opened to the lobby, there was a corpse sprawled right across the hallway.

It was facedown, and there was a trail of blood leading to the right. Its legs were torn off at mid thigh, though Yuriko could see fragments of metal embedded into the stumps. There was no blood coming out of the legs, which led her to believe that the corpse had ‘chronian legs. The back of its head had multiple round holes and there was a large puddle of crimson underneath. The blood was still fresh.

Yuriko stepped into the hallway and her eyes darted towards her left and up towards the ceiling. A dozen paces away, a gun turret was lowered from the ceiling. It was active and swivelled to point in her direction. It didn’t fire at her though, and whatever controlled it scanned her and her devices at the same time. She let it connect to her watch, which should contain her identity. A few moments later, the turret withdrew back to the ceiling.

The corpse was clad in what Yuriko thought to be body armour. There was a gun a couple of inches from its fingers, a submachine gun, though it didn’t carry the Peacemaker brand. When she moved closer, she saw that half of its ribs, on the side away from the lift, had huge chunks missing from it. The wounds were jagged, and looked like something bit it off.

The trail of blood led around the corner. She tilted her head and listened. Gunfire and screams. With a measured pace, Yuriko headed towards the sounds of distress. Her Anima perception ranged ahead, and quickly, she reached the boundaries of the building. Her perception noted the little moving voids across the hallways, running away from a single point, while others held fast. Bullets crossed her perception and struck an even bigger void. That one moved closer and closer to the resistance, slow, methodical. Hunting.

She hurried up. She pushed herself off the floor with her Animakinesis, anchoring herself in midair by pushing against the ground, ceiling and walls with her kinesis. It was not much different from what her legs and feet were doing except she had to be a bit more mindful of the forces she exerted. Her instincts were well honed with practice and she was shooting down the corridor with her toes a couple of inches off the ground. Her hand pulled the Defender out of its holster and as soon as she came close, she dropped back to the ground and ran. She skidded around the intersection just in time to see what the large void was while it tore someone apart.

It was big. Almost Fluffington’s size, and it was a canid. It had no skin. Red muscle exposed, but protected by bone armour plates. Its eyes glowed like lanterns and its exposed teeth were chewing on the man’s ‘chronian arm. Bullets slammed against its exposed flesh and bounced off the armour plates. The bones covered less than a third of the muscle, but the red mass repealed the 9 mp bullets from handguns and submachine guns alike. Only the bullets from a lone assault rifle penetrated the flesh, but did little more than make the thing bleed. Red ichor. It was like sludge, thicker than blood, and more like slime or mud. It oozed out of the bullet wounds, then coagulated into scabs in a matter of seconds. She saw parts of the scabbing take on a bone white tinge, and she guessed that those would eventually become bone plates.

Her finger pulled the trigger. The 9 mp bullet slammed into the beast’s eye. It gouged a bit of flesh, but the angle of penetration struck against a bony brow, causing it to bounce away.

The miniature sunblade that followed after the bullet didn’t bounce away, and instead tore into the creature’s eye. And promptly got stuck within the eye socket.