Chapter 1

[thenine]

Who: OTA
Where: Quad
When: Week 1, Day 1 - Week 2, Day 1
Summary: Game launch prompts!
Restrictions/Warnings: Violence, blood, et cetera. For anything surpassing 'R' on a rating scale, please create your own log.
Notes: Please title your subject line in the following format -- Open / Closed | Date. OOC event information can be found here.

Quick Navigation
The Nine
The Company
Leith
True Leithians
Westies
Resistance
The RAC

The Nine

Hushed whispers and conversations behind sealed doors spread throughout Qresh, carrying with them rumor of the Lady Derrish's illness. Poisoned, some say, as they speak their quiet murmurs and the news travels like wildfire. It lights up the nobility with a new cause - there is no heir to the Derrish name. At least, none that is known. A surrogate mother carries the only Derrish child to be related by blood. She dwells on Leith, though her location is obscured to everyone who seeks her - both those who wish to help and those who would do harm. Some wish to procure the heir - whether following the warrant for his retrieval or hoping to gain favor with the Nine by gift or by blackmail. Some wish the heir dead, seeking to cause a power vacuum that could lead to a bloody war as families of the Nine scramble to gobble up Derrish land. All have backring that can be traced back to the nobility, each family pursuing their own agenda. 'False' heirs, those who claim to be related, or bastard children, either rise up in hopes of fortune or hide in fear of those who would stamp out the family name for good. On Leith there is said to be a hotel staffed by the most beautiful woman, run by a man who no one has ever seen. Only those with money or influence may stay the night at Blessed Branches, though anyone seeking fine wine and good company may occupy its lounge. Many come hoping to spend time with the hostesses, though the girls aren't known for taking bribes or slipping away for a 'good time'. It is here, in one of the premium guestrooms, that the surrogate heir and his mother are housed. The other women are unaware of her status - simply taking care of her as one of their own - and how much the owner knows is as difficult to pin down as he is. Any display of violence is sure to be noticed, as Company officials and RAC agents alike guard the building for significant pay. Getting in may be simple for some, but getting out is far more difficult. The mother's room is on the 10th story, with its few windows locked and curtains closed. As she approaches her delivery date, help comes and goes with frequency, but on no specific schedule. Criminals and RAC agents alike chatter in the streets of Westerley and Leith over just who, and where, this woman could be. Many assume she lodges with the surrogate clusters hidden on Westerley - heavily guarded by men and treacherous landscape alike. Others seek beyond the Quad, and some assume she's already dead. No matter the cause, no matter its difficulty, the rush to find the woman and unborn baby only grows. Some may consult information brokers, some may attempt to find their way into the genetic databases, some may rely on word of mouth, and some may lay in wait for others to do the sleuthing work before closing in on their target.

The Company

"We need to send a message," every Company employee receives the same directive, "Loud and clear." Rules are rules, and there is no room for disobedience - neither within nor outside of the Company. The citizens of Westerley have become more unruly than usual, taking out their frustrations with their lot in life on the Company and on society. Or so the directive says. It is for the good of the Company, and for those loyal citizens who keep their heads down and do their duty, to expunge the corrosive minds from society and extinguish the flames of a foolish rebellion. From prisoner guards to those selected to string criminals up for execution, to those who stand watch over the sizzling corpses (or soon to be corpses) belonging to symbols of the rebellion left out in the rain to die, to those in charge of door-to-door or man-to-man ID checks, every bit of available manpower in the Company is being used to secure the city. Some may begrudge their work, while others delight in the lax restriction on violence towards citizens. All should keep their heads down, lest they become yet another target for the efforts to 'increase security' in the city. A heatwave that brings with it Black Rain makes the job difficult and treacherous - stay out too long and you could get caught in a storm. Just the same as the local Westies, all of whom are more or less stranded in their homes - or the bars they passed out in the night before - everyone is scrimping by with whatever provisions remain. Only those Company officials lucky enough to live on Company property, a compound of barracks that provides middling levels of comfort, don't worry for their necessities. Travel through the tunnels may afford the few who know of their existence more mobility - the ability to help others, to stockpile what they need, or to make an impressive capture - but comes with its own dangers. From the culture that lives there to the increased presence of resistance groups making their safe-houses in the vast, winding network, some may decide that the potential dangers aren't worth the trip, and others may wish they had.

Leith

Every season brings a new batch of harvest workers—old, young, adventurous, desperate. But it doesn’t matter whether a worker has tended to the same hokk farm for ten years: when the limits of a work visa are reached, they must return to their planet of origin or face severe penalties. Sometimes, though, people slip through the cracks. Sometimes people change their genetic records altogether to make sure it happens. Whether it’s an individual who refuses to return to the cage of Westerley or a merchant willing to look the other way for off-the-books labor, visa law enforcement is critical to the Quad. Targets identified as “high risk”—those individuals who have a profile of criminal behavior or have given the Company reason to take a second look at their credentials in the past—are being routinely rounded up to ensure their genetic identities and visa information still coincide. Killjoys and Company enforcers are being deployed in equal measure to address this potential security concern in the days leading up to “harvest week”, the seasonal break where workers return home and a new batch of hopefuls arrives on Leith. For some, this can be a minor inconvenience, taking DNA samples and conversing with understandably irritable workers—for others, this could be a potentially fatal encounter and lead into Leith’s darker underbelly. For whatever reason a target has chosen to stay or change their identity, they have done so at great and calculated risk. They will fight without discrimination to stay hidden and maintain their secret--as, at times, will their employers. Maybe they've decided to pursue a more lucrative line of work, using Leith's fertile soils to grow illicit substances, or perhaps they've simply decided that their fate should be in their own hands, and not that of a visa agency. Either way, they won't go quietly.

True Leithians

Gunfire is lost under the sound of the rain. The pitter-patter of acidic water beats in tandem to Company rifles and shouts, the flash of grenades like fireflies in the distance. The Family Registry Bureau, well-guarded and set on the outskirts of Old Town, shakes and shudders with each successive boom, debris falling as the battle escalates. “For Leith!” A single voice rises above the commotion and for a moment, the night is still, the incessant rain seeming to take heed, as if the clouds themselves have paused to see what will unfold. The building collapses. Fire billows out in violent plumes, snaking through the twisted metal and broken glass. Survivors on both sides disperse like scattered marbles. By morning, the dead have been dissolved to bone by the rain, and Company enforcers are out to ensure that scavengers don’t take their pick of the remaining materials. Officials are tight-lipped about what, if anything, was taken during the attack, but word on the street spreads fast—there’s a man hunt and hundreds of genetic identities are up for grabs. Criminal activity in Eulogy sees an all-time spike as bartered goods come in, though not everyone in Eulogy or the criminal world takes kindly to stealing from their own. Nor do they care for the sudden attention drawn to their illicit little den, making it a hot bed of Killjoy and undercover Company activity. But Eulogy isn't the only place to see unwelcome guests. On and off Westerley, news of the attack spreads, and agents of each organization race to come out on top. Whether it’s a Killjoy tasked with locating the perpetrators, a True Leithian conspirator on the run, a Westie out for revenge and securing their future in the Seventh Generation accord, or a Company Enforcer on orders of execution off planet—everyone has someone’s number, and time is quickly running out for each of them.

Westies

The heat hangs over Westerley like a blanket laid down over a fever, suffocating and addling. Sign posts flicker erratically between Company propaganda and storm advisory warnings. Old Town’s streets, normally buzzing and bursting with life, are like a ghost town. The few stragglers that remain move like worms, slowly and carefully, their bodies bowed over the carts they push as if the sun has melted away their will to walk. In the square of the town, a group of well-clad Company men and women hurriedly work, bolting modern day stocks into the concrete. Prisoners, red jumpsuits and heads covered in black shrouds, are roughly shuffled between the soldiers as they’re chained and bound to the stakes. Only once they’re secured are they allowed to see the light of day—for the first and last time in years. The squadron commander, a stalwart woman, takes up the intercom on her truck, her voice booming through each sign post in Old Town when she speaks. “Westerlens, for high treason and threats to the public good, these prisoners are hereby brought to this place of execution where they shall be exposed to the elements until dead. By order of the Company, serving the Quad.” Seconds later, the sirens start. The soldiers finish their work with haste and pile into their vehicle. The sky, moments before overbearingly bright, disappears under inky shadow, bruised green and red as violent clouds spread out like reaching fingers. The storm rolls in without mercy or pause, enveloping the light of the day by visible inches. Acidic rainfall begins to pelt down, not lightly, not drifting, but in a hard, unrelenting stream. Anyone caught within it has but hours to survive, and moments to escape disfiguring injury. The storms will rage for three days with few breaks in between. But the environment is hardly the only, or even the worst, thing Westies have to worry about.

Resistance

The rebellion suffered a crushing blow. Of course, rebellions in Old Town are used to that--but with key leaders gone, Resistance members are scattered like grains of sand across glass, rolling further and further apart. Some individuals seek to take the power vacuum as their own chance at power, but they're met with staunch rebuttal, splitting this already fragile organization into smaller and smaller cells. Under the cover of the acidic storms, the remaining members of the Resistance take to the undercity, whispering into the ears of the discontent and angry. Follow the branch that's extended to you, they say, and you'll find a new place to grow roots. And so those roots do grow, down walls, on pieces of passed paper, across the hands of those who harbor dissent. It's a symbol, a living, growing map, of a new haven. Innocuous to those who don't know what it means, symbolic and religious, but to those who seek out its meaning? They'll delve to the very deepest parts of the undercity, a place manned only by those wearing the yellow and gold of the Scarbacks. There, a secure military bunker is hidden beneath the layers of Old Town, lost to all but the original blueprints of the city. Its concrete walls hold the barest bones of supplies, but there's potential, a skeleton upon which the rebellion can build its strength and muster the will to stand again. Finding the bunker, though arduous, isn't the hardest part. Getting in? That will take connections, charisma. Trust. The Resistance is in awful short supply of that last right about now.

The RAC

The RAC, as ever, maintains its neutrality and follows its singular mandate: the warrant is all. But that isn't to say that there can't be a little fun in the process--between serving out warrants issued on behalf of the other factions and singular individuals, the top teams within the Quad will receive a special directive. Black Warrant For all teams, whether temporarily formed for the sake of pursuit or permanently aligned, this presents a unique opportunity to compete against their fellow RAC agents. All manner of subterfuge is encouraged, although directly attacking your fellow Killjoys will receive at least one bad review on social networking apps. But while killing your competition isn't allowed, making their life impossibly difficult and taking the prize for yourself? That's the very definition of the game. This is a competitive warrant, open to all Killjoy teams with a level 4 agent or higher. Your task is simple in description but far from it in nature: find and secure an heir for Land Derrish before your opponents. The catch (there's always a catch, isn't there?) -- you'll be fighting off more than your compatriot Killjoys. Criminals and mercenaries will be gunning for the same targets, and there's a mountain of bureaucracy standing in your way to figuring out who is a legitimate heir, if one exists at all. Your time is short* and your competition is fierce. May the best team win. *Week 1, Day 2 - Week 1, Day 5

Comments

[lotusmesenpai]

[To be fair, everything about this place is offputting to Kanda.

At that quirk of a brow and words that sound nice but feel like a taunt, Kanda's own scowl deepens slightly as he frowns and leans back from that smoke a little.]

The fuck would I know about honor.

[Because, for him, he's never really considered any of his acts as 'honorable'. To him, they'd be closer to 'surviving' and 'hates the leverage that favors provide over oneself', but not something so lofty as acts of honor.

What would a false human, a tool for wars, know of something so very human as that?

But then the drink shifts closer and his scowl sifts into the hint of a satisfied smirk before he takes another long sip of his own glass. An easy resolution, now, and he can forget this ghost from a past long dead and buried...]

[shikomizue]

[The scorn on the other's face deepens and Takasugi wondered, as only a man inhaling the sweet smoke of narcotics could, if the scowl could cut so thoroughly that it left scars.

So much more could be learned from a wrong assumption than a correct one, and Takasugi leaned back, eyebrow raised as he was faced with the gruff rejection of his statement. A hollow laugh, low and more sardonic than jovial, preceded his first sip of the offered alcohol.

An action which placated his company quite markedly. Takasugi set his drink down, fully intending on savoring the glass. It was a timer - a man so dedicated to repaying a forgotten debt would stay long enough to see it through - as drink remained so would this stranger.

No, not a stranger.

A ghost.

They never did stay dead and buried long.]

Did you enjoy your panda? [As Kanda's tone cut between them, the memory cut it's way from the fog of smoke that concluded the festival ten years ago.]

[lotusmesenpai]

[So he's not the only one that had recognized the other then.

Even so, the questioned tossed so casually his way is enough for his hand to tighten into a white-knuckled grip, blue eyes widening and then narrowing hard as he slips from his seat.

It's automatic, the way his hand snaps forward, fists in the older man's shirt. Because for a moment, all he can see is broken bodies under shattered walls, his sister's foot the only thing remaining to be seen.

Just that, before a second explosion had left him in darkness, had delivered him into ungentle hands.

Blinking back the memory, the scowl deepens, lips twisting angrily.]

Fuck you, bastard.

[shikomizue]

[Takasugi's recognition was delayed, not unmarked by doubt, but confirmed the moment worn fingers curled into a fist. He knows the reaction will be violent, something inside the other was surely twisting, writhing in anger.

He wonders what Kanda sees when he looks at him. Is it the destruction, or is it the smiling family that left him behind?

With no care to test reaction time seeped in alcohol and opium, Takasugi only leans away from the insult spit in his face. There's no urgency on his face, the most concern he allows that of a glance to his alcohol to ensure it hadn't been toppled in the upset.]

You're the only survivor. [Levity is gone from his voice, now a flat tone that doesn't accuse. Rage like this couldn't be banished, he understands that all too well.]

[lotusmesenpai]

If you want to call it that.

[Neither letting go nor moving back, Kanda's glare stays focused on the man before him as he tries to reign in the sharp spike of raw rage that curled through him at the terse assessment.

Watching the other's impassive expression, it's all the harder for him to draw his anger back, to leash it. Instead, he lowers his voice, measures his words with too much care.]

But look at you... same face as back then. No new scars that I can see. So? Where'd you go? One minute you were there, the next I woke up government property. Must have been quite the escape.

[shikomizue]

[The first response, not the threat, is what brings life to Takasugi's eyes, with a slowly dawning smile of recognition, not of the boy, but of the churning sense of loss. The child he'd met died that night with his family.

What he's looking at now is not a man, but a creature born of misery and bitterness.

Takasugi relaxes into the other's grip, allowing himself to be held, leaning closer not out of defiance but out of intimacy. Teeth slip from his grin, a voiceless laugh preceding his reply.] There's a first time for everyone to be engulfed in flame, and that wasn't mine.

[Not a lie - he doesn't intend to spin a web - but a simple answer that allows Kanda to fill in the blanks himself. Direct his anger as he wishes, provided it can be controlled at all.]

[lotusmesenpai]

[Tendrils of anger curl through Kanda, spark down his spine, makes the skin on his knuckles burn with the need to plant his fist in the older man's face.

To bash in an expression that finally comes to life at what seems his own expense, until there's nothing left but blood on his knuckles.

It's unconscious, the way his fist draws back, muscles tensing to deliver an unforgiving blow.

(Bloodlust is a dangerous path for people like him - leaves him little better than the Company dogs, or the shattered kids that hadn't made it through the military's experimentation and like hell would he let a ghost bring him that low.

Not like them. Those kids too weak or too broken to endure.)

Inhuman control stays his hand then, forces it down before he can act - enough, at least, to shove the man back in his seat before letting go with a disgusted look.]

Lucky you.

[His voice is still tight, body wound with an inflexible control as he sneers at the man.]

Still. We're even, asshole. That's all I give a shit about.

[shikomizue]

[His teeth are bared; his chest rises and falls with measured breath as he watches the man's body twitch and writhe with anger. Heat like the fires that lit up the festival pulses between them, and Takasugi's grin grows more severe in excitement.

Kanda's fist raises and Takasugi's hand drifts to the hilt of the blade on his hip. Bloodlust is all he knows - and it's all he sees in the other.

If the Company has leashed dogs, then he'd rather be a feral thing, a beast with it's snarling, bloody maw gnashing and chomping until it's quelled. The world isn't a place for good men - it will make weak and broken everyone within it, those who stand the tallest snapping the most violently.

He sees it in the other's stature, as his arm lowers, the strain of a back ready to break.

Shoved back into his seat, Takasugi takes his place, sprawling into comfort the moment he's released.] Are we? [His voice is a threat, interrupted by the placement of cool glass on hot lips as he finishes his drink.]

If I remember correctly, the game was free. So- [He sets his glass down.] I owe you, don't I?

[lotusmesenpai]

Like I give a shit about whether you paid for that game or not.

[It was the memory that carried the weight of debt. His last moments of freedom. His last moments of trying to do something that would make a sister smile and relieve a mother's burden, if only for a little bit.

But he's under no obligation to explain that to Takasugi.

To tell this man that the taunting words and needling challenges of their game had been a reminder that there was more to his life than one series of test after another.

Which is why he shrugs now, the scowl still in place as he forces his breaths into a slow, steady measure. Control over himself, this one has. Unyieldingly so, so much of the time.

Still parts of the soldier that drift to the surface, even if he'd never been one to follow the orders perfectly.]

But whatever.

[Reaching for his own glass, he scowls deeper to see it empty.]

Shit.

[shikomizue]

[Takasugi knows the power of memory. Looking into the past can be as visceral as witnessing the present - scenes churn and repeat while the observer's gut grows more and more strangled by old ties.

Far more valuable than Joy was the weight of the gun in Kanda's hands, the release of adrenaline as he snapped at the strange one-eyed man, and the expression he imagined on his sister's face when she was given the panda.

Watching control wash over the fettered creature, Takasugi's posture slackens. Disappointment replaces adrenaline in his veins, the promise of a fight snuffed before it could come to fruition. Their blades would sit in the fire longer, steel tempering for the day the other's conditioned humanity finally cracked.

Takasugi breathes a condescending chuckle in reply to Kanda's predicament, giving the other a lingering gaze before turning to the bartender and ordering him a drink. Something strong.] Now we're even. Try it, and if the flavor isn't to your taste we'll find another.

/end?

[lotusmesenpai]

[There’s something about this man that resonates uncomfortably for Kanda – and not because of a moment shared years ago, before Kanda’s world had been blown apart. No this… it’s much more intrinsic, echoes the days spend in endless battles, when he’d been fueled by a toxic mix of adrenaline and rage with nothing to brunt the sharp edge of it.

It’s not a time that he’s proud of, not something he wants to return to. Here, as he is now, he can choose his battles, weigh the lives pitted against him with his own interpretation and judgement.

It’s no longer ordered slaughter, death delivered for a cause he didn’t give a damn about.

But this man?

There had been a moment where that eye reflected something almost manic…

Shaking his head, he takes the offered glass, knocks the contents back in a single long swallow, and then sets the glass down without pause or hesitation. The liquor burns down his throat, a welcome distraction from the turn of thoughts, before he scowls at the older man.]

Tastes like shit.

[And then a smirk, before he pushes back to his feet and steps away from the bar.]

Clearly, your taste in hokk is as bad as your choice in games, pops. Next time try something better.

[And with that, he turns on a heel and begins to stride away, steps sure. Sometimes, it’s better to leave the past where it is, but he has the feeling this is a past that isn’t likely to stay buried.

He’s never been that damned lucky.]

[shikomizue]

[It's ordered slaughter, death delivered for no cause at all. People perish in agony every day, their bodies broken or their souls turned to ash within them. On a battlefield, beasts can bare their fangs freely, each kill glistening in glory.

Living - only existing - in a world of dull blades only meant for a more agonizing demise. Blunted metal hacks and hacks until it turns flesh to pulp and shatters bone, the precision of a slit throat forgone.

And for what?

The reserved youth has an answer to that question flicking behind his eyes, contempt burning itself to fumes as it fuels him. Takasugi only offers a smile to the harsh evaluation spit in air bitter with the scent of alcohol.] Aa. Next time.

[He's looking forward to it.]