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Author Topic: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter Two - Panda Soup]  (Read 2674 times)

Offline redux

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Metropolis (redux) [Chapter Two - Panda Soup]
« on: November 13, 2009, 04:48:54 AM »
Never though I'd be doing another fic here I have to say. One post in the fanfic rant section was enough to get me started though, which I'm quite annoyed at myself for. That, coupled with playing Fallout 3 recently reminded me about this. It's actually a fic I started more than two years ago here and never finished; I'm not continuing from the last thread because I've changed certain parts and am taking the entire story in a completely different direction than what I was going to use in the original. I'd meant for it to be a pretty glum story last time out but I'm hoping to change that here.

Since this first bit is altered parts from the posts that were originally in the other thread it may still come across as quite morbid, I dunno, but pairings and the like will be happening, and things do intend to lighten up!

I also realise the cheesiness of putting my username in the title but it genuinely seemed to be the most fitting word! :lol:

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Chapter One - Welcome to Metropolis

Seeing as you’re not from around here I guess you’re going to need a bit of a rundown,  aren’t you? Don’t worry; I’m used to having to do things the hard way around here anyway. This, as you might have guessed, is Metropolis, the single most important city in the world today, hell, you could just say the only city in the world today. Y’see things haven’t been all that great around here recently, not at all...Oh sorry, I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, we need to start at the very, very beginning don’t we?

The date is March 14th 2089. 8:37am to be precise. Although to be honest date and time are pretty much irrelevant, since most people stopped caring quite some time ago. Things have changed a lot in the last eighty years, and I’m not even going to try to explain the complexities of things, not right now anyway. I’ll just fill you in on what you need to know; and that’s that there have been a lot of ups and downs between your time and mine, mainly downs. For future reference just so you know, world hunger never was solved; poverty just got worse and worse. I suppose you could have guessed that yourselves in the end really but it’s something you need to know if you’re to have a better understanding of how the world is today.

About fifty years ago poverty in the third world increased at a massive rate, and it only took a few more years for a large amount of the population of these places to be virtually wiped out. It’s hard to say exactly how many people died (and that’s because nobody really cares), but I’d say it’s better not to think about the numbers involved. Growing concern in the more powerful nations did nothing to prevent the inevitable and it was just a matter of time before resources had all but run out completely. Now obviously this is pretty grim news, but in the long run this should help all of us that are left, right? After all, resources should last longer, fewer mouths to feed and all that right? Wrong. You see people like to run away from reality, so in order to hide their own shame from letting all of this happen they’ve decided to go overkill. Governments are determined to show that their country is superior, their regime is the best and that the people have nothing to fear. The sad thing is that most people buy into this crap, the sadder thing is that the people who don’t still have to put up with it. That means we’re left with these oh so fantastic works of science that have cost an arm and a leg to make, arms and legs that could have been used to feed some more mouths.

I could give you a longer and more boring history lesson but I’ll spare you. Instead I’ll just say that this place is the fruits of the fat cats labour: Metropolis. Egos got so big that development into industry was considered paramount and the result is this. It’s about as densely populated as New York back in your time but is a hell of a lot bigger. Anyone who’s anyone lives and works in Metropolis; anybody else is simply dog food. Sure you can try to live and work outside of the city but you’re really signing your own death warrant. There’s no protection outside of Metropolis (hell it seems like there’s no protection in here most of the time) so you’re really just heading the same way as everybody else who’s met their end outside of the city. Resources are hoarded by Metropolis and seeing as the government running the city has only one concern: the city, that isn’t likely to change.

Don’t get me wrong though, Metropolis isn’t the nicest place in the world to live in…wait, scratch that. Metropolis IS the nicest place in the world to live in, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s so great. The city’s so huge that areas that were once developed have now been left to rot; you can still just about cope if you live in an area like that but you won’t really be enjoying your existence. It’s usually the case that the closer you get to the centre of the city the more developed and well kept it is. Me? Well thankfully I’m not right on the outskirts but I’m no upper class model citizen either. I know that doesn’t exactly explain things very well, but I guess it might give you a better idea of just how huge Metropolis really is.

So anyway, I’m Fujimoto Miki, Private Detective. I’m sure there’ll be a few giggles out there, but trust me it’s much more depressing work than you’d think. After all, my most common work is murder cases and if someone gets murdered from outside of the city centre then nobody really cares too much, which makes work all the more difficult. I’m not trying to say that I’m say great bringer of justice that you should be in awe of, but I kind of feel that someone’s got to give a damn, even if I am that unfortunate idiot. I’ll admit though that not all cases are worth bothering about though, a lot of people on the outskirts of the city are just those who’ve murdered a dozen others before someone else got to them. Saying that, you don’t get many people from the city centre coming this far out to hire a detective, but I can’t say I blame them. Plus I don’t like working with those pompous assholes anyway.

Well I think I’ve given you a decent rundown of things so I might as well kick things off properly: The date is March 14th 2089. 8:37am to be precise. Things have been particularly dull recently so I’ve taken to these little morning walks, it gives you a little time to yourself as you usually can’t hear yourself think by the time it hits mid-afternoon. My offices are really just a trashy flat that I have rented out (though it has got the whole glass door with my name printed on like you see in the movies on it, which I thought was pretty cool). The only way out is through the back door into the alleyway, so as you can guess it’s nothing spectacular but hey, I’ve seen worse places.

The alleyway is filled with junk as usual and it stinks like a rats ass, it doesn’t really phase me though as I’ve had to put up for it for the past three years now, which is exactly why I wouldn’t have noticed the girl’s body cramped up amongst the rubbish, except for the quiet moaning noises. I tried to get a little closer to get a better look at them, but not too close, muggers have got me that way before (little eight year old bastard stabbed me in the foot). She may have had a fair amount of cuts and bruises on her, not to mention she even stank out the rubbish, but I couldn’t stop my eyes widening when I realised who it was. My old partner: Junjun. It’d probably be more accurate to say partner in crime, as that’s exactly what we were, but hey, I’m clean now. In fact that’s the exact reason I hadn’t seen her in my past three years as a detective, she’d stayed on the wrong side of the law whereas I had learnt my lesson from getting caught too many times.

Knowing her background I probably should have been even more wary than normal but instead I sank to my knees and lowered myself to her eye level. She wasn’t looking at me, she was just staring at the floor; she knew I was there though. I reached out and touched her forehead with my hand, damn was she hot. I pushed her head back slightly and moved her hair from out of the way of her face. Her eyes were staring right at me but she wasn’t making eye contact, she was staring right through me into space. I may have been jumping to conclusions but I’d known this girl a long time, she wouldn’t get herself messed up like this easily so something really bad must have been happening with her.

Maybe my head should have told me otherwise but for some reason I found myself lifting the body up. Or trying to at least, either I’d gotten weaker or she’d gotten fatter. Her body slumped back against the wall, but thankfully she was cushioned against a bunch of rubbish bags (you know, rubbish bags likely to be full of glass and metal...damn). I hadn’t tried making any verbal contact but I didn’t see the point as she couldn’t even look straight, what chance did she have of understanding what I was saying? I was no doctor and there was no way I’d have been able to carry her to one so I did the next best thing instead. I got up from my knees and walked away. Hell, to most people she would have been just more trash anyway, and who knows, if I hadn’t recognised her I probably would have thought the same, right? Well probably not, but I had the faint hope that by the time I got back from my walk she’d be gone, and if not, well maybe she’d be dead, then I definitely wouldn’t have to worry about her.

Now let me get things straight right now; I don’t need you pre-judging me about my decision to leave her lying there. You obviously don’t know the full story like I do, do you? Hmm, I guess that means I’m going to have to explain myself again doesn’t it? Well a lot happened between me and Junjun, like I said we were good friends for some time. We got to know each other in a pretty unspectacular fashion, the usual way really, a couple of young people living in the slum area of the city. You need to stick to groups to stay alive there really, walking around on your own makes you easy pickings. Things didn’t really get too serious; you just did what you had to do to stay alive really. That’s the way I wanted to keep it anyways but Junjun had other ideas, she’d started to mix in with another gang called the Golden Wings. These gangs got pretty popular amongst the youths in the slums, I never really understood it myself; give yourself a dumb name and beat a few people up, apparently that gets you respect. You’re only getting respect from the same scum you’re living with though; you’re not really any higher in the food chain.

It was about that time I realised I wanted out, sure we’d looked out for each other for a long time but calling us friends would be a bit of an assumption. I would have stabbed her in the back at any time if it had benefited me and I’m sure that she would have done the exact same thing. We looked out for each other because we had to, not because we liked each other. It took a lot of time and effort to get myself where I am today, and I’m still not in any great position. Now here I am faced with her again and for all I know she hasn’t changed one bit, which means it’s likely that this is really just some ploy by her. Now what exactly she’d be planning I don’t know, I’m not a mind reader, but there’s no doubt that it was a definite possibility. I didn’t know if she’d come searching for me but if not then it seemed a bit of a coincidence that I’d find her right outside my flat. Though for some reason I found myself rushing my walk, this was supposed to be time to myself but I couldn’t shake Junjun’s fragile image out of my head.

I was almost running by the time I’d made my way back to the alleyway and was pretty surprised to see a figure stood over Junjun’s body. I wasn’t taking any particular care to be quiet so they heard me coming pretty easily. The girl whipped around and drew a pistol on me, call it second nature but my hands went into the air automatically. I didn’t recognise this girl but she was certainly quick to whip it out…so to speak.

“Who the hell are you?” the girl asked. A fine question for her to ask I thought, she was the one in my back yard not the other way around.

“I just live here” a couple of years ago I would have undoubtedly given some smartass answer in return, I still did that sometimes, but I’d leant to control it a little more as I was sick of getting shot.

“Is that so? Well in that case you can help me get her into your place” I suppose I should have been grateful, I was kind of hoping she’d tell me to get lost and I would have pissed off back the way I came from. If I’d done that though it would have only meant that I’d have been curious as hell about what exactly had happened to Junjun and probably would have gone crazy.

Needless to say it was quite a job to get Junjun through the door and the up the stairs to my flat, I made sure to watch her feet though, she wasn’t helping herself along which meant it was more likely that she wasn’t faking whatever exactly it was that was wrong with her. We placed her body onto the sofa in the living area before the other girl headed over to the sink and started to wash her hands from the dirt she now had covered on them. This told me one thing: she wasn’t from around the slums. When you’re in the slums dirt gets pretty much ingrained into your hands and you don’t even bother trying to wash it off.

“So who do you work for?” I asked nonchalantly.

The girl turned off the tap and proceeded to dry her hands.

“No-one actually, if you must know” she didn’t bother to look up at me but headed straight for Junjun’s body and started to check her pulse, temperature and the like.

I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of the current situation, was I being kept hostage in my own house? Expected to help her? Leave? I decided it was probably best to stay quiet as opening your mouth would more than likely get you into more trouble than it’s worth in this kind of situation.

“I’m Qian Lin” the girl finally said after a few minutes silence. “I used to be a bounty hunter but right now I suppose you could say I’m unemployed.” The whole time she was speaking she still didn’t look up at me.

It was strange to hear someone refer to themselves as a bounty hunter, regardless of whether or not she was clean now it was still the kind of thing you’d only want the right people to know about. Potential employers basically, otherwise you’re probably not going to be much use. On top of that something pretty major must have happened to her if she was out in the slums as fees were usually astronomical for the kind of jobs they were given. Obviously I was expecting pretty much everything she said to be complete bullshit, but I did listen very closely to what she had to say just in case she was, on the off chance, telling the truth.

“We’ll be staying the night” Qian Lin said finally getting up and making eye contact with me. Who was I to argue? I did have a spare room that I had always been annoyed at myself at for never using. I guess this might make me feel a little better eh?

I’d had plenty of restless nights in the past, for plenty of reasons. Tonight wasn’t out of fear though, more morbid curiosity as to what exactly was going on. The spare room was across from my own on the other side of the living room, I was surprised that this Qian Lin had let me stay in there on my own…the spare room that is, Junjun was in my own room as there was actually a bed in there. She’d put Jun Jun (I suppose I should explain that her real name is actually Li Chun if I haven’t already) in the spare room and had put herself on the sofa in the living room. I stayed awake for a couple of hours just lying there staring at the ceiling, there was virtually no noise other than the rare shout or sound of traffic from outside.

Why I started thinking it now I don’t know, but I started to think about how life had been with Junjun, and even further back than that, remembering all that crap that had happened. Having some extra company with you for just one night, however potentially hostile they may be, was still company all the same. It had been almost as long as I could remember that I’d slept without a familiar face around me.

Orphan; in case you wondered, though that isn’t really that rare in the past few years. Kids are usually either a mistake now in the slums, it’s just another mouth to take away the food that’s hard enough to get in the first place right? Petty theft is probably the best way to get by when you’re a kid in the slums, well the only way to get by should I say; if you’re not killed that is. When I was 14 I turned to what may be considered an even less desirable way to get by, prostitution. As I’m sure you can understand this isn’t a part of my life I like to reminisce about so I’ll skip the gory details, instead I’ll just say that the amount of money you make extra from the work than you do simply stealing isn’t worth it simply for the amount of times you have the shit kicked out of you and the money ripped straight back outta your hand. That pretty much leads up to when I met up with Junjun and well…you know all that. Sure there is a lot more major stuff that happened to me, but my eyes started to droop and I felt myself going to a happier place.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2009, 02:38:36 AM by redux »

Offline rndmnwierd

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter One - Welcome to Metropolis]
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2009, 05:52:09 AM »
Well, you definitely have my attention. I wonder why Lin's so concerned about Junx2?

Offline badsaints

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter One - Welcome to Metropolis]
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2009, 05:23:26 PM »
Reading this kinda make me think of those classics black/white detective movie where the main character will do a voiceover on what's happening XD

Quote
The girl whipped around and drew a pistol on me, call it second nature but my hands went into the air automatically.
Quote
I still did that sometimes, but I’d leant to control it a little more as I was sick of getting shot.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Offline redux

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter One - Welcome to Metropolis]
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2009, 04:37:49 AM »
^ Haha thanks, that's kind of the feel I was going for so I'm glad I managed to get it across at least a little bit!

Offline redux

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter One - Welcome to Metropolis]
« Reply #4 on: November 16, 2009, 02:38:11 AM »
Chapter Two - Panda Soup

Tomorrow was potentially going to be the most important day of my life, but sleeping now wasn’t an option. It was difficult to decide what exactly to do. One thing was for sure, that detective wasn’t to be trusted. I’d come across enough of the upper class society before to know them when I saw them, and she was one of them, no matter how well she tried to hide it. God knows why they call them “upper class” anyway; most of the time they’re the lowest of the low.

Life is full of its little perks though and maybe having this snob around wasn’t going to be as bad as it first seemed.  Having Li Chun watch my back was far more reassuring since she knew how to handle herself, but at least I may have someone with me now who may be able to pack a bit more of a verbal punch. I was never too confident that Li Chun was ever doing much of the dirty work when we were together anyway and so at least now I knew I had to watch my back, rather than thinking she had me covered only to find out that I was sorely mistaken. With this detective character with me I should at least have someone who can talk to these fools on their level.

I didn’t seem to have much choice; I couldn’t risk messing things up tomorrow so I really had to get some rest tonight. It was a damn poor way of doing things but my only way of protecting myself was by moving a chair in front of the door, hopefully that way I should at least hear it scraping against the floor once the door is being opened. I hate how desperate I’ve gotten recently, it’s been a long time to wait though and knowing that tomorrow we finally get what we’ve worked for all these months...it just can’t go wrong now.

Thankfully time moved quickly while I slept, in fact probably a little too quickly for my liking; I’ve been doing this job for years but for the first time in a long time I was actually starting to get a little nervous. I had to remind myself not to get an itchy trigger finger as it could mess everything up, I also had to calm myself down over the detective as I was probably being a little too cautious last night. The chair hadn’t been moved since the night before and I could hear her snoring from the other room. Feeling slightly more relaxed I swung my bag over my shoulder and had one last glance over at Li Chun before leaving the room.

Raiding the cupboards for food in the kitchen didn’t prove very successful; they really were living off scraps here.

“Help yourself to some food if you like.” Came a voice from behind me.

I whipped around to see her stood there looking extremely sleepy.

“There’s nothing here.” I replied.

“Really? Someone must have taken the cake I’d made especially for us.”

She was one smart comment away from getting a bullet in the face.

“Well, we need to get moving anyway so it looks like we’re going to have to do it on an empty stomach.”

“Get moving? You honestly think you can carry Junjun for...well however long you plan on carrying her for.”

“No.”

“...I don’t like where this is going.” There was more a sound of annoyance than fear in her voice.

“You’re coming with me; think of it as a thank you present for letting us stay the night. Also, I don’t really like you very much; I wouldn’t be surprised if you were the one who don’t this to Li Chun so you don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Li ch-? Oh, I haven’t heard her called that in a long time.

“So what do I call you?” I asked, thinking of her as “the detective” all the time was becoming annoying, but hopefully we weren’t going to be around each other much longer.

“Fujimoto Miki.”

“Well Fujimoto, as soon as you get your shoes on we’re leaving.”

“So you guarded Junjun all last night only to leave her here on her own anyway?”

“I have much more faith on her making it safely through today than I did last night with you out of the way.” As I was speaking I could see a puzzled looking starting to form on her face.

“What exactly is it that I’ve done for you to come to the conclusion that I’m not to be trusted? Last time I checked you were the one who kidnapped me and starting telling me what to do and where to go, is that right?”

“Well if you count kidnapping as being made to sleep in your own home then yes, I’d say so. Telling you to put your shoes on is the first thing I’ve told you to do.”

“A fair point I guess, but I suppose even if I had thought of a better argument it wouldn’t have made much difference would it?” she said with a wry smile.

“No.”

“Well at least do me one favour: tell me where exactly we’re going.”

“You might find it quite exciting actually; we’re going to collect some treasure.”

“You’re kidding right?” Fujimoto said after a few seconds pause, a look of disbelief now on her face.

“I had a feeling you’d say something like that, but I’m not quite sure how else I could describe it, it’s damn valuable anyway so isn’t that good enough?”

“So what is “it” exactly?”

“That’s something I won’t be telling you, if I did you might try and take it for yourself and take me out of the picture.”

“Aren’t you just going to do that to me once you get it for yourself though?”

“I’ve got no reason to, once I’ve got it me and Li Chun are out of here. If you don’t get in our way then I won’t be bothering you ever again.” It was true, it was pretty much a certain that she wasn’t going to know when or what it was when we collected it anyway.

“So I’ve got to live the rest of my life living in morbid curiosity of what it is you guys are getting away with? Well I suppose I can live with that if it means I get to...live.”

“Glad we’ve got an understanding, now let’s get going.”

Sleeping with the windows shut is always a bad idea because when you set foot outside it always hits you about just how bad it smells out there. Rotten food, rotten bodies, rotten air all mix together to make one of the worst aromas you could ever imagine. The closer you got the outskirts the more you could smell it, living closer to the centre wasn’t any better though, the amount of chemicals in the air from all of the crap that the factories pumped out probably would have killed you much quicker too.

I could sense a growing sense of uneasiness from Fujimoto as it became clearer that we were heading towards the edges of the city. I have to admit that I wasn’t at my most comfortable either, looking around constantly to make sure nobody was going to attack you was second nature but at least I usually had one person with me that I was sure that I could trust.

Li Chun and I had looked out for each other for some time now and we knew that we could trust each other. I’d picked her up off the streets after finding her in a similar state to how she was right now; she definitely knew how to get herself into trouble. I guess I have to thank her though, if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be on my way now to what could potentially change my life forever. I just wish that I knew who exactly had got to her in the alley, and why. It made me suspicious that someone else out there knew what we were up to. Just the two of us were meant to know the whereabouts of the treasure, and almost as few people even knew that it existed at all. I leave her for five minutes and in that time she’s been busted up so badly? That can’t be a coincidence, a random mugging or something, someone else must know.

“You given up on keeping an eye out for both of our asses?” Fujimoto’s voice snaps me out of my train of though.

“What? No....no. You should be keeping an eye out for us too you know.”

“Sure, hand me one of those guns you’ve got there and I’ll be more than happy to.”

“Yeah right.” I snort.

“Ha, if I’d wanted to shoot you I could have done it; you were away with the fairies just now.”

“Then why didn’t you? It’s obvious that you want to.”

“You think I want to head back to my place on my own? I’d much rather have you catching bullets for me, but you’re certainly doing a good job of convincing me to go through with it.”

If someone had been watching us make our way towards our destination they would have thought we were watching each other more than our surroundings, and to be fair this wasn’t too far from the truth. It stayed that way for as long as it took us to finally arrive about two hours or so later. The journey had seemed to take more than a lifetime and yet all of a sudden here I was, face to face with destiny. If I’d known then what would happen by going inside would I have changed things? I definitely would have preferred to do things a different way but I couldn’t ask for a much better outcome.

“This is it.” I said, unable to take my eyes of the building in front of us.

We’d wandered away from the majority of life in the city; the only people near us were in the sand, six feet under. If you didn’t know where you were going it would have been pretty hard to find as it was built into the rocks and purposely coloured the same to blend in. It was about twice the size of a semidetached house but only had one floor, made completely from some sort of metal, it was the first time I’d seen it in person.

“Is there anyone in there?” Fujimoto asked me.

“I’m hoping no, but I’m guessing that there is. They wouldn’t leave it unattended.”

I was so nervous that my feet were refusing to move unless I consciously told them to do so. Reaching the door to the building I saw a control panel to the side, just as I had been told there would be. Reaching into my bag I pulled out the eye that I’d kept wrapped in paper, it was slightly squashed.

“I hope that didn’t come from someone important.” I heard the detective call.

“Nobody that will be missed.”

I raised it to the control panel and held it in front of the retinal scanner that appeared, sure enough the door slid open, grinding along the floor the whole way.

“Come on.” I said with a gesture to call Fujimoto over, “not far now.”

It was clear that Fujimoto knew nothing of what she was doing; she was quite stealthy as we moved our way through the building but still managed to be strides ahead of me. The lights flickered with purpose as we went deeper inside. I just managed to grab her before she walked straight into two figures that were unaware of our presence as they were muttering to one another. She opened her mouth to complain but I managed to clasp my hand over her mouth and point towards the two figures in the shadows with the other. I was hoping to avoid people for as long as possible but it was inevitable really, I wasn’t going to make any rash decisions though. I readied my pistols and pointed each one at the heads of those blocking our path.

“Turn around, slowly.” Suddenly I seemed like the law enforcer.

The two figures seemed to oblige with no resistance. From what I could make out they were both female, around my age too. They both had their eyes squinted from the flashing of the lights overhead and had raised their hands up without me having to say anything.

“Please, we know we shouldn’t be here but we just want the mutation cure.” One of them said in a pretty pathetic voice.

“I don’t know anything about that.” I wasn’t lying; I had no idea what they were talking about.

“It’s for Kamei, she’s-“

“I don’t care. Let us past and I’ll think about not decorating the wall with your brains.” It may have been harsh considering it was obvious these two figures were pretty fearful but intimidation was one of the few things I still managed to do reasonably well.

They didn’t need to be asked twice, they moved to the side to reveal that they had been standing by a door similar to that at the entrance; thankfully I hadn’t thrown my trusty optic friend away just yet. As the door started to rattle open one of the girls started to speak again.

“We need to go in there.”

“Unlucky for you, you’re staying here.”

“We can’t, we need the cure for-“

“I’ve already said I don’t care about that. Don’t make me kill you now that I know I don’t need to.”

“She’s as good as dead if you don’t let us in there though.” The one of the right said gesturing towards her companion her was hanging her head.

Sometimes I wished every element of my good nature had been wiped out of me but I wasn’t that lucky.

“Fine, more targets for them to shoot isn’t so bad I suppose.”

“They’re all dead, they won’t be shooting you.” The girl said with what seemed like a hint of grim satisfaction.

“What?”

“I came all this was and I’m not going to get shot? This must be my lucky day.” Fujimoto said sarcastically.

“I’ll gladly change that for you if you like.” I was really getting to the edge of my patience with her. “What do you mean, they’re all dead?”

“I mean what I said, they’ve all been killed.”

“But why?”

“We’re not exactly sure, we’re here to collect a prototype of a mutation cure they were working for down in the lab, but it seems like the president ordered for everyone down here to be killed.”

“I think I know why they were killed.” Things had started to click into place for me, “Well done Michishige, maybe you’re not crazy just yet after all.” I couldn’t help but smile to myself.

“Michishige?” Fujimoto suddenly sounded very interested.

“How do you know her?” I asked, I knew that there was more to this detective than she was letting on.

“She’s...a scientist right? I’ve heard of her stupid ideas in the past. Just surprised anyone else here has heard of her.”

I hadn’t been less convinced in my life, but we needed to move on as fast as possible; I didn’t fancy being around when people showed up to collect the item.

“Right, come on then. If what I’ve been told is right there should be a lab down here, we should both be able to find what we’re looking for down there.”

As all four of us made our way down we were greeted by a pretty eerie sight. Everything was functioning perfectly, the lights were fine, the only noise was of the air conditioning fan; yet there were bodies in radiation suits lay all around the room. There wasn’t a scratch on them, I had no idea what had managed to take them out without making a mess, whatever it was, it was damn efficient.

“Can you hear that?” frowned the one apparently called Kamei.

There was a slight ticking sound, a sound that not many people in Metropolis had ever heard.

“Is that a clock?” her companion asked.

“Looks like you’ve found your treasure,” Fujimoto sighed, “A clock? I can’t believe some people.”

“Shut up, I wasn’t looking for a damn clock. But what the hell is something so valuable doing here just lying around? Find where the ticking is coming from.”

It may seem strange but clocks where not commonplace in Metropolis, or any place on earth for that matter. If someone owned something like a watch then they must have had a fair amount of cash to be able to afford one. It was more likely that they’d killed someone for it to sell on though as the lower class people had little use for them.

“Hear!” Kamei shouted as she seemed to have spotted something over by the way we’d come in.

It didn’t take me long to figure out why it was there.

“Oh shit, get out of here now.”

“What’s wrong with you know?” the detective said rolling her eyes.

“We’ve tripped a silent alarm, there’s a bomb attached to it.”

“Why would anyone rig a silent alarm with a bomb?”

“Who cares? We need to go now!”

My heart was in my mouth as a huge bang went off form the back off the room, I thought that was it. I whipped around though to see the room filling with armed soldiers dressed in black armour, the Metropolis royal guard. Without thinking I pulled out my pistols again and started firing in every direction, not stopping to think that there might be something that could blow us all away if I’d hit it.

“Get the hell out of here!” I shouted again over my gunfire, the guards hadn’t quite worked out was going on as the bullets rained down on them.

“Come on you idiots!” Fujimoto shouted. I saw her grab the others around the collar and drag them off into the corridor.

I covered them as best I could but it was only a few seconds before the return fire started and I knew I didn’t stand a chance in there.  I turned and made for the exit myself, shooting the locking panel on my way out. I was stunned to find myself running straight into a person when I turned round to make my way down the corridor.

Kamei’s accomplice was stood there talking to another person, someone I hadn’t even seen before.

“What the hell are you doing?” I couldn’t believe they were stood talking at a time like this.

“I’m Tanaka, you?”

“Takahashi- Oh, this girl, she was locked in the room here. I could hear banging on the way out.”

“You should be more worried about yourself!”

I could see the other two further ahead in the corridor and pushed the two idiots in front of me. Get going now!”

It seemed like they’d finally caught on as they ran as fast as they could towards the steps leading back up to the surface. They made it to the top just as I was about to start climbing but before I could there door blasted open and the guards came spilling out once more.

Maybe it was a moment of madness, maybe I was placing my faith too strongly in others but at that point I decided to let the bullets fly one last time. Suddenly a rumbling could be heard from the other end of the building and I knew what was coming. Stalling the guards for a few seconds may not have been worth it and I guess I’ll never know, but it was a risk I knew I had to take. If I couldn’t get my hands on it, nobody could. The flames from the bomb blast soared through the lab at an incredible rate, even if I’d wanted to get out I would have had no chance, but at least I knew my job was done.

Offline rndmnwierd

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter Two - Panda Soup]
« Reply #5 on: November 16, 2009, 04:21:00 AM »
Ah, panda soup, I see now. Poor Lin Lin, hope she makes it out.

Offline badsaints

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter Two - Panda Soup]
« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2009, 10:51:26 AM »
LinLin is da girl! :inlove: Little Ms Panda is sure in hot soup rite now :lol:

You a fan of action movies Redux? XD

Offline redux

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Re: Metropolis (redux) [Chapter Two - Panda Soup]
« Reply #7 on: November 28, 2009, 03:25:31 PM »
^ Haha I thought I'd pretty much failed getting an action film vibe fromt his chapter.  :P
Who isn't a fan of action films anyway?!

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