Just to set things straight, I haven’t given up on my Big Brother fic already, far from it. In fact I planned on writing two fics simultaneously anyway, one of course will be BB and well. The other is...this one. I wanted to write a completely fantasy fic as well so that’s what I’m gonna be doing here. Yah, I guess that’s all I need to say, in to the action then…
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Chapter One: Old Faces
Seeing as you’re not from a round 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 single city in the world today. Y’see things haven’t been all that hunky dory around here recently, not one bit. Oh sorry, I guess I’m getting ahead of myself a little here, we need to start at the very very beginning don’t we?
Well it’s currently March 14th 2087, 8:37am to be precise. Though to be honest date and time aren’t that important as they’ll be pretty irrelevant for you. 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 that is. 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 really but it’s something you need to know if you’re to have a better understanding of the world today.
About fifty years ago poverty in the third world started to increase at a massive rate, and it only took a few more years for it to really have an effect. It’s hard to say exactly how many people died (and that’s because nobody really cares), but I’d say around three quarters of the worlds population has gone down. Now obviously this is pretty grim news, but in the long run this should help all of us left right? After all resources should last longer, less mouths to feed and all that right? Wrong. You see people like to runaway 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.
I could give you a much longer and much 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. You guys thought New York was big huh? Metropolis is about one fifty times bigger than New York and the population is just as dense. Everyone 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 horded 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 nicest doesn’t necessarily mean nice. 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 nowhere near the middle either. I know that doesn’t really explain things very well, but I guess it gives you a better idea of just how huge Metropolis really is. I’ve tried to make that geography and history lesson as brief as possible for you so just count yourselves lucky I didn’t go on for longer than I did.
So, 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 to much, it 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, a lot of people on the outskirts of the city are about people who’ve murdered a dozen others before someone else got 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. It’s currently March 14th 2087, just gone 8:37am to be precise (yeah, time didn’t pass while you were reading that last bit). 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 here yourself think by the time it hits mid-afternoon. My offices are really just a flat that I have rented out (though it has got the whole glass door with my name printed on which I thought was quite 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 girls 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 could stop my eyes widening when I realised who it was. My old partner, Jun Jun. 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 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 though 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.
Topic: Metropolis (Read 2886 times)