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!
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Chapter One - Welcome to MetropolisSeeing 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.