Episode 25: Rats

Arson had never committed a raid. He wasn’t a part of the Junior Graves, and he found it odd that his supposed criminal mother wanted him to join.

Apparently her mother had once led Graveyard, the law enforcement agency which his mother felt still hadn’t recovered from his grandmother’s death.

Arson didn’t feel aligned with the goals of the young HonorBorn youths he saw on television that were a part of the Junior Graves. Not that he wanted to be a gang leader, more an untouchable merchant and crafter.

He hadn’t spent much time tinkering as he once did before he’d gained access to a Cultivation core, but Xani had already requested that he join her and the Bookish for a few crafting sessions and Arson had accepted quickly.

He was excited to see what he would be able to create with time. Under Xani’s direction, and from what his holo-watch had stored internally, he had some major ideas to test and develop.

He had plans to rebuild a weapon lost to his family. He wanted to create a better way to use the basic spacial magic that he could access to optimize space for Blackhole stores. As well as be able to craft an entirely new technique. An enormous trial that he’d already begun to undertake.

Regardless of all his academic plans, he found himself on the roof of his nightclub, moments away from a trial raid on a group of orphans that refused to stop work for Mr. Kim. Arson would change that.

“You sure you want to go alone? All of us are ready, boss,” said Khalif behind Arson.

“No, I need to get a feel for something like this anyway, corporate raids are said to be beyond dangerous,” replied Arson.

“You can’t be serious. You want to corporate raid one day,” asked Khalif. Arson merely nodded. Then jumped off the roof.

A thunderclap was heard when Arson broke through the sound barrier and tore through the night sky. He’d pushed his flight speed as far as he could but knew he was far from fast aerially compared to many Cultivators. Regardless of his own lack of faith in his speed, he closed the distance in a breath.

Arson swooped low into an alleyway when he was only a dozen or so buildings from his target. From what he’d learned from his mother he needed to police the area.

Find any and all scouts or lookouts. Ensure that any patrol’s patterns were disrupted as much as possible. All without being discovered as an infiltrator.

Arson lifted his cowled hood and was surprised when shadows draped his upper torso. He was shocked to witness in the reflection of a nearby store’s window, a pitch black mask fill with stars as they spun to life in a vortex across his face.

He immediately wondered if his cowl and mask changed based on his needs? None of his face could be seen. Even less than when his normally illuminated rainbow like facial features were disguised by his cowl, underneath his current hood nothing could be seen but the dark of night and a twist of stars.

“Well that is cool.” His voice was deep and completely unrecognizable. The closer he got to his own reflection the more he noticed how the dark drank in his upper torso and made it appear to be intangible.

“I think I can use this to my benefit,” said Arson. He dropped into a crouch similar to how he’d seen Khalif move.

When Arson had been even younger, he would try and scare the older boy, as Khalif had often done from the shadows of the orphanage. Arson had never been successful, but he’d at least come close. Close enough that he now knew how and when to move in the dark to remain unnoticed.

Arson climbed the closest building and began his scout hunt. He was climbing rather than flying around, as a recommendation from his mother.

She believed the air was the kingdom of magic, and the ground was the kingdom of martial skills. She’d even mentioned a few blundered jobs that resulted directly when she was learning how to fly. Arson smiled beneath his cowl at the thought of the stories and pulled himself onto a fire escape. A young man stood unaware of Arson’s approach as he looked at the streets below. Arson silently took a knee behind the man and listened as the young man spoke through a flatscreen.

“Yeah, it’s silent as always boss. Ain’t nobody gettin’ through all the traps that line the streets between our border and here anyway, I keep telling Micro that we need those damn drones the Automaton is putting out. We don’t know how many of our enemies fly pass our what three aerial scouts at night. That is our only problem. Everywhere else is locked up tight,” said the young man. Arson wondered how high up in the ranks this guy was after what he’d heard him speak about. Most low ranking members of an organization weren’t always aware of their group’s weaknesses, but maybe this street gang operated differently?

Arson looked around momentarily, and took in the lavish apartment behind him that the young man seemed to either, live in, guard, or both.

“Why are you so sure that no one could make it through your traps?” Arson climbed down and made his way toward an adjacent set of rooftops. Before he knew it he stood above an area saturated with different types of mana. The different patrols all seemed to stay away from the heavy mana dense areas, which wasn’t odd for Arson to understand, because the higher mana areas of the dump were deadly. Even worse was the Junkyard that Jade, and even now Xani had warned Arson to stay away from.

Jade feared Arson would be killed by something too powerful for him to handle at this stage of his development. While Xani and her Bookish group could barely approach the barriers and edges of the junkyard before they were swarmed by robotic creatures, the Bookish had managed to gather a lot of what Xani wanted to further her own plans and designs, but there were tasks Arson wanted to do that couldn’t be achieved without being able to delve deeper.

“Could this gang really only have one perimeter weakness,” asked Arson to himself. Then he got an idea and begun to look through his inventory and found what he needed in a breath.

Arson pointed his palm out toward the highest density area, and began to pore out mana stones into the street below. Multi colored orbs filled with various energies and levels of stored power rolled in every direction. The mana twisted chaotically around the orbs, yet none of the traps Arson assumed were there ended up triggered. Yet what he wanted to happen, still occurred regardless.

“What the sparks, Yo, is that mana stones,,” said a young woman as she tore away from her group and directly toward the stones.

Arson had dropped hundreds of stones. Jade no longer needed the lowest tear of stones as Arson brought her much higher quality stones, and so did Troy. This left his inventory jam packed with unnecessary amounts of stones he used for various projects… and now a trap of his own.

Arson took in a deep breath as the young woman raced right toward the nearest mana stone, before a yell went out behind her. She stopped in her tracks entirely and looked back at the voice.

A young man approached slowly, and pointed at a nearly unseen white line that divided the street in front of the young woman.

“They’re in the trap line, they’re probably not even real. Micro probably figured out some sort of simulation to make the traps better. Come on, we have to get back to patrols,” said the young man, but before Arson lost his opportunity, he shot a grape sized conductive water’s orb at the nearest cluster of stones as the two turned to move. The sound of the orbs sounded like wind chimes as they bounced off one another, and the young girl was hit in the leg by an orb. She froze and so did the young man.

They both stared wide eyed at the orb at their feet. Then looked back at the near thousand orbs scattered in the streets around them.

“Hey, wasn’t there a mana stone cargo dropped from the sky last summer over in Aspire,” asked the girl, who still hadn’t looked away from the stone at her feet. The young man only nodded, also unable to look away from the stone.

“Yeah, a fight broke out on a plane and the entire ship exploded, sent luxury goods flying all over the city,” said the young man.

“What are the odds of something like that happening in Maelstrom,” asked the young woman.

“Probably higher, we don’t have air traffic control for our upper stratosphere, which is the main reason why we are still known as a criminal nation,” said the young man. The girl nodded and picked up the stone at her feet with a gasp.

“Yeah, it’s real,” whispered Arson on a nearby rooftop. Then the rest of the patrol joined them and more gasps of amazement could be heard.

It was then that Arson knew he’d successfully done one of his three primary objectives, and crossed “distract patrols” off his mental list.

By the time Arson made it back to the fire-escape, he couldn’t help but grin.

“What do you mean half the patrols are hunting for sparking mana stones at the borders,” yelled the young man in frustration.

“What kind of idiots would risk entering the trap lines for mana stones?” Arson kneeled behind the young man once more and continued to listen.

“How many stones… and we know they’re real?” asked the young man as he jumped off the fire escape and sped through the night below Arson.

“Anastasia, scan for alarms and disable any that you can. If the system is too encrypted, just let me know and I will find another way in,” said Arson to his holo-watch just before he touched the windowsill for the lavish apartment.

“Apartment unlocked, home of Randy EagleEye, scout leader for the Wretches of Maelstrom infiltration completed, further commands needed,” said the sweet voice that accompanied the AI he wasn’t supposed to use.

“Thank you Anastasia, let me know if I have any incoming, please and thank you,” said Arson.

“Security system for Randy EagleEye enabled, would you like me to trigger the offense/defense protocols?” Arson froze, then shrugged.

“Sure thing,” said Arson and he continued on throughout the apartment. It didn’t take him long to find a room full of screens filled with various camera points and angles of the city abroad.

The screens flickered with random datapoints collected by Randy or his scouts. Arson had apparently hit the jackpot on his first attempt to find the lookout for the Wretches.

He learned that Randy had taken over the position recently from a woman named Micro, and that his normally very perceptive eyes were undergoing an evolution of sorts that left Randy nearly blind. Which explained why he hadn’t seen Arson approach.

“Well looks like you’re not a super spy, Arson,” mumbled Arson to himself as he flicked through the camera channels to find the street he’d left all the mana stones.

Chaos had solidified in the area and what seemed like hundreds of the Wretches flooded the street.

Young men and women tried their best to enter the trapped area of their gang territory, only to be flung around by gravity explosions; electrified by hidden trigger plates, and even sniped at with turret based Gatling guns, hidden in nearby windows.

“I see why they felt so confident,” said Arson as he continued to look for their base’s primary location. It wasn’t at the center as he’d assumed it would be and after a while, he nearly gave up.

“Where are the sparking rats hiding, in the sewers or something…” Then it struck Arson. How many of the patrols disappeared from cameras to reappear on cameras positioned far away from their original positions.

“They are using the sparking sewers…” It was the only thing that made sense. Arson asked Anastasia to pull up the sewer grid for the city and a projection of holograms filled the area above his watch screen. When he asked her to project the map of the city above the grid projection, he wasn’t surprised to see where the patrols disappeared and reemerged, lined up perfectly with the sewer tunnels that couldn’t be seen above ground.

“How much do you want to bet the wretches main compound is underground in the sewer system, Anastasia,” asked Arson playfully, as he assumed the AI wouldn’t nor could it answer a question of that nature. Only to be surprised once more at the AI’s capabilities.

“Nothing, as my parameters wouldn’t allow for me to place such a bad bet, Arson. With the information gathered here, I place the odds of your assumption being nearly 85% possible.”

Arson merely looked at his watch momentarily before he shook his head astonished. Then Anastasia alerted him to Randy’s return and Arson attempted to make a quick exit, only to be further shocked by what occurred the moment Randy entered his apartment.

“System alarm triggered, Defense grid online.” The robotic voice filled the entire apartment and Arson watched from the now hacked security system Randy controlled as he exited.

A grid of lasers began to destroy the apartment as Randy panicked and rushed through the area, completely caught off guard.

“What the sparks!” Randy screamed as he dove behind his own couch only to be nearly severed in half by a Laser beam.

“I’m going to sparking kill you, Micro. This place is supposed to be offline!”

Arson looked at his watch and tilted his head at the device as a woman’s face smiled back at Arson before it disappeared.

“Well… this could be trouble.”