"They keep on coming back, no matter how much we try to chase them away…"
Klein Judieus, a tall figure in a heavy coat, murmured while hiding in the shadows of a decaying metallic structure that loomed over the ruins.
"There may be more. If we move strategically, we can flush them out…" He said,As his eyes were fixed on the hairy creature crawling and feeding on the bait.
"Distract him, and I'll try to lure out the rest. Alright Akira? …Akira?"
Out of nowhere "Get away you fat pig!" A scream came from the shadows, followed by a cylindrical gadget.
It was connected to a thin black cable, yanked hard from behind.
"Wait no, stop!" yelled Klein, still covering behind the structure.
BANG! A loud burst and a blinding flash exploded from the gadget.
The hairy creature was startled, closing its eyes as it thrashed wildly, tackling everything in its path until it squeezed into a hole and ran away.
"Got him!" A faint laugh echoed as a boy with strange purple hair emerged from the shadows, holding the thin cable attached to his waist belt.
His yellow eyes glowed, a big smile on his face.
"Klein! Klein! Look what I did! I threw him off!"
"Alone!"
The boy's grin revealed Klein's position.
"Akira! You idiot! The gutter pigs never feed alone!" Klein yelled, warning him.
Akira's smile vanished.
One… two… four… no, more than six gutter pigs crawled from each corner. The place wasn't that dark, and Akira could clearly see them coming.
"They'll run away if I do that again!" he said, pulling the cable and grabbing the gadget. "Hot!" he yelped, clumsily dropping it before catching it again.
He aimed at the creatures, ready to use it once more.
Akira, clutched the gadget.
But despite his act of bravery, his knees knocked louder than the creature's growls.
"The Repulsor Flare is dead…" A tear slipped from Akira's eyes as he noticed the thin trail of smoke rising from the gadget. His legs shook as he looked at Klein helplessly.
"What should I do?" he mumbled.
Klein jumped from cover, sprinting. "Make sure to obey your mentor Next time!"
Akira tracked klein's movements.
Pulling a similar but rugged and old Repulsor Flare from his waist, Klein took a battle stance as the creatures charged forward.
"By the way, Akira… make sure to not pull the cable too hard," Klein said, maneuvering the gadget with precision. Each hit struck a pig's head with a small pop, a burst of light sending them scattering.
All six of them scrambled, squeezing into holes and disappearing.
Akira's legs still shook, but he couldn't deny Klein's skill. Just like always, he thought, his head dropping in awe.
Klein brushed the dust off his coat and turned toward Akira.
But Akira peeped over to the hole the creatures fled into. "We might be able to catch up to it."
He pointed his hand, but Klein stopped him
"We only have to chase them till here... beyond that is a sin."
Akira nodded but kept his glance on the hole. "A sin..." Akira murmured.
"Let's scout a bit more… and then leave," Klein said, smiling at Akira, who immediately tried to hide his face.
"I… I made it harder for him again," Akira mumbled, his energy flagging as he stared at his burnt Repulsor Flare.
After confirming that no more gutter pigs were present, Klein Judieus and Akira decided to head back to the settlement. Crossing the decaying metallic ruins, they reached the front gate.
The name was displayed above the gate, though a few letters were missing. It read: "Sanctuary of Idris."
As they walked in, Akira's head hung low. Klein noticed and gave him a pat on the shoulder, trying to cheer him up.
No one came to greet them personally, but a crowd waited in an unordered queue to collect their paychecks for the day.
The one distributing the paychecks was the eldest person of the settlement. It wasn't much just a few old, clipped coins.
Coins clicked in the silence, the air thick with the scent of rusty metal.
"Oh, Klein Judieus is back," one of them called out, and the others followed suit, showing their respect.
But when Akira stepped in behind Klein, the expressions of the crowd changed. Lips muttered, eyes filled with disgust.
Akira knew they were talking about him. Klein was loved by all, seen as perfect; the only imperfection was Akira.
Lowering his head, Akira stuck close to Klein.
Five coins were handed over to Klein three for himself and two for Akira. The Employer hurried as they approached.
Klein accepted the coins without protest but handed one back along with his Repulsor Flare. "Here's the flare and a coin for the recharge " he said.
When Akira handed over his Repulsor Flare, the crowd murmured in surprise. All eyes seemed to sigh at him.
The employer's face darkened as he inspected the gadget. He snatched both coins from Akira's hands and shot a furious glare at Klein.
"You'll only lose more the longer you keep him by your side," The employer growled.
Though his hair was non-existent expect for a few strands. Like everyone else here, he clearly disliked Akira.
"Don't be too harsh on the next generation… they are our future" Klein said, giving a faint smile as he led Akira along.
Just as Akira received his payment, it was taken away. His fingers trembled. "No matter how much I try… I end up the same way again," he muttered, staring at his empty hands as he walked beside Klein.
Klein glanced at him, and Akira could tell he wasn't pleased with what had happened.
"I-I'm sorry… I didn't mean to—" Akira murmured, on the verge of tears.
Instead of scolding him, Klein handed Akira one of the two coins he still held.
Akira hesitated but accepted it. "It happened again… and you're left with barely anything."
Klein patted him gently. "Don't worry about anything. Without this, you won't be able to get today's meal, right? I still got one left."
Klein smiled, his warmth radiating through Akira. Inspiration surged within him. "Just wait, Klein… I'll make it out one day," Akira said, gripping the coin tightly.
Hearing this, Klein nudged Akira's head playfully. "You can make that happen after you go to school," he laughed, pushing him in another direction.
"I'll meet you later! Make sure to save me some meat!" Akira called, waving.
Klein's eyes widened slightly, his face shadowed. "Today's meat, huh?" he murmured.
Akira walked through the cracked streets where all the buildings faced the same center blocky and metallic, with giant cables stretching up into the pitch black ceiling above.
Head lowered, Akira stared at the coin in his hand and gripped it tightly. "I-I gotta get stronger… just like Klein" he whispered.
"Then… "I'll be able to see her again" His voice trailed off.
With a faint smile, he picked up the torn bag he had left beside a store that hadn't opened yet.
Akira took his steps towards the darker alley, whose lights flickered as Akira walked by. The alleyway, still covered in mist, led to an open field where the haze was thick.
Despite that, there was a small glow of warm light that slowly made the surrounding mist fade.
Akira entered the place barefooted. The ground wasn't made of metal anymore but something soft and coarse, and in front stood a similar blocky building. "Bayt el Idris," it read.
As Akira got closer, he expected to see some of his friends standing in front of the door only to find it empty. The door was locked tight.
"Guess am first here" Akira said, a hint of excitement in his voice, before pushing his way inside.
The whole building had a single classroom. Akira shivered as he made his way to turn on the lights and the heater. Placing his bag on the table, he sat on the middle bench out of the seven seats.
Slowly, the mist within the classroom cleared as it warmed up but not enough to keep Akira from shivering.
Water droplets trickled down the metallic walls.
The silence was loud, the slow droplets hitting the metal floor, the hum of the heater filling the emptiness.
Akira… he hated being alone.
Mankind, no matter how much we claim we aren't afraid, feels but a strange stirring the moment we are truly alone.
Similar thoughts ran through Akira. His eyes were wide open, trying to stay focused, his legs and hands fidgeting not from fear of being alone, but from the presence he had long grown used to.
"J-just wait a little more…" he murmured, closing his eyes.
The presence carried a strange, niggling sensation. For Akira, it felt like a thousand shadowy hands brushing at the edge of his senses, followed by a strange voice yet somehow familiar.
"B-break… it"
BANG!
A sudden strike on the desk jolted him awake; his classmates were laughing.
Akira stared at his hands. "How long was I out? Again?" He looked up to see his angry teacher, a middle-aged man with a sloughed posture.
"Did you spend the entire night here, Akira? Or did you just get here early?" the teacher huffed at him, followed by his friends' laughter.
Despite his confusion, seeing the others laugh made Akira giggled along with them, and the laughter died down, but the students continued to poke fun at Akira. It was clear that everyone had joined in, except for the student with the long beard who looked like he was in his mid-40s.
and a kid with shaved hair.
They were his only friends, though calling them friends felt wrong since they hardly interacted. Apart from exchanging glances here and there, they kept to themselves.
"Centuries ago! Humanity lost a war!"
the teacher proclaimed as he wrote with a dry chalk.
"A monster so powerful that it challenged the might of humanity!"
"Not in strength or agility, but intellect. They were our intellectual rivals!"
The students in the class were all silent except Akira, who couldn't keep up with the story and started fidgeting.
The teacher raised his hands to the sky. "A malevolent defeat!"
"After losing the war, humanity decided to live in this bunker below, gifted to us by none other than the gods!" the teacher said.
Akira's eyes were somewhere else.
"Tsk," the teacher noticed Akira's distraction. "Is this not interesting to you?" he asked with a grumpy look.
"Eh? It's your fault for telling this every day," Akira said, his face turned away. "And I refuse to believe it anyway."
The teacher's eye twitched.
He appeared before Akira, banging the table again.
"Ahh,here we go again...what is it this time"
Sweat rolled down Akira's face, but he grinned. Pointing his finger at what the teacher wrote, Akira said, "Humans haven't lost... there are still many of us!"
The teacher chuckled. "Many of us? You could walk from this city to the edge and still count everyone here. Even if you overcounted, it won't go beyond fifty."
"Humanity can't be saved, kid," the teacher continued.
Akira distanced himself from him. "M-my mom... said there are humans out of the bunker... just like our sanctuary there are more out there, and when we meet them, we all will be saved!"
The class erupted in laughter again. The teacher's smile faded, and his eyes narrowed.
"Just what I'd expect from that woman's spawn."
"Clownery," he let out a sigh.
Akira wasn't happy with what he had said,he tried to hold back.
He could handle being laughed at..humiliated...accused, but when it came to his mother, Akira just couldn't but he held himself there.
The teacher placed his hands on Akira's shoulder. "Listen, Akira... I don't care about what your mother said. If you spill this bullshit in here, you'll end up like her."
"Just try to live a normal life, kid. Humanity has accepted its fate, and those monsters up above have probably perfected their life.
There's nothing for us out there and nothing to fight for. All we can do is just pray to our gods that at least our afterlife would be better."
Akira didn't respond to him but silently let the teacher chew on him.
For Akira, it was a norm, and for the others, a running gag to laugh at.
A makeshift bell silently rang, ending the class early and the seven students started walking through the alleyway. The mist was now clear and the roads were warmer.
This was what they considered to be "noon" in the bunker.
"Why are we even coming to school if that's all matters" a young boy with heavy hair said
"They say at least while before we all go extinct it would be respectful to our ancestors if we followed what they did" a bald boy replied
The six of them were walking all the while akira lagged behind.
Every other kid had something to talk about, except for Akira. He looked up at the pitch-black ceiling and watched as the giant lights dangled.
"How many coins will its battery cost?" Akira asked himself.
"Why would the moon need a battery ?" One of his classmates replied.
Akira gave a small nod. "What do you think lights them in the first place?" Akira asked.
"The teacher said two youthful goddesses hold them and turn them off when it's time to sleep," the boy replied.
"Pft-" Akira held back his laughter. The boy did not like how Akira tried to mock him. "What else do you think happens?" the boy asked.
Akira just shrugged, pushing his arms wide. "But my mom says no matter what the truth is, it's never two goddesses pulling it up! That's way too lewd." Akira said.
His voice was intentionally loud, as if he were trying to make sure everyone heard him.
And Akira's wish came true. Among the other children who ignored his rambling, one of them, the shortest one, stopped.
Turning back, he grabbed Akira by the collar and pushed him down.
"Wait, Stop!" the children tried holding the boy back.
While Akira's friends watched from a distance, Akira's eyes were wide open and a small grin appeared on his dusty face, as if he was saying, "You have caught the bait."
"Why are you protecting him?" He tried to break away from the others.
Looking directly into Akira's eyes, he spat, "I don't understand why the Chief still lets you live alongside us..."
"You should've been put away just like your clown of a mother"
"You foreigners!" He said, and a silence fell.
Akira got up alone. He had no one to help him stand. "Clown, you say?"
Akira murmured and cleaned the dust off his pants.
The boy let out a sigh, instantly breaking free. As if they thought he had finally calmed down, instead he went for a punch, directly at Akira's face. "Live like everyone else! Just live like a FUCKING NORMAL PERSON!"
The boy said as he walked away, followed by the others, including except akira's freinds.
"Be a butcher... or a tailor. Put in some work and be grateful to the Chief..." The boy said.
But Akira, who had just been punched, understood what he meant by "normal."
It was something his mother hated, and Akira remembered what his mother said.
"For them, being normal means pretending that nothing is wrong, even as the city decays before their eyes."
"Neither!" Akira yelled.
The boy turned back.
"I-I hate everyone of you...maybe exept Klein" Akira said with a slight stutter.
Akira searched in his pockets, taking out the coin from before. He jumped on top of a ruined pillar and spun the coin on his fingertips.
"I don't want to be a butcher... or a tailor."
"My mom told me great things about humans, not the lies you believe. Defeat? It was just a strategic retreat! I will take the lands back from those monster! I'll become a conqueror! Akira yelled out loud.
There was another drop of silence, and all of the children's eyes widened. "Seriously..." Each of them laughed as they walked away. "I told you, punching him is the way to go. All he does is speak absurd things..." The boy didn't even care.
But Akira's face still had that lousy grin that he refused to give away as he gripped the coin.
"One day I'll free my mother and save each and every one of you..from these lies"
A sudden chilly breeze blew from the weathered statue behind him, pushing Akira forward. The canal water rippled strangely, catching his attention.
He dug his hands inside his pockets and walked, tracing his daily steps back through the alley into the streets. They were a bit more crowded now.
Sweat rolled down Akira's face.
He didn't hate the crowds, he felt uncomfortable around the people, especially those who had a wide smile but their eyes lacked a glint.
He tried squeezing through them, avoiding being brushed against and ducking his head.
The canal within the city was overflowing with smelly waste. The streets sometimes had a variety of things, maybe a bread seller or maybe a person rotting away.
The bread sellers were pretty rare
Akira walked by some, but their baskets were empty. He ignored them.
But their smiles? They never changed, as if they had stopped caring about anyone else... and that's what Akira disliked about them the most.
If there was a device that could block the scent of these people, Akira would have definitely purchased it, even if he had to sell his soul for it.
For him, there wasn't much of a smell difference between the living and the rotting dead.
These streets always haunted Akira. The start of his hatred for these people all began years ago when Akira was a seven year old boy who had just started to live alone.
Akira was coming back from school one day
He was beaten as usual, but he had a bright smile on his face, for he hadn't yet seen the horrors of the city.
From the dark alley, a tall, fat butcher was dragging a homeless old man in front of the crowd.
"Help!" a painful whisper was heard from his dying throat as blood dragged through the streets.
Akira screamed, calling to everyone, pointing at the butcher. Despite the packed crowd, it was useless. A man was being murdered before their eyes, yet they chose to ignore it and kept on smiling.
The seven-year-old Akira, who could barely stand on his feet, watching this,ran away in fear, vomiting into the canal.
"Mom... they are monsters... they all are monsters..." he cried.
A strange man in a long coat approached him, munching on a piece of peasant's bread. "Whatever you say... the monsters still make nice bread."
Akira was terrified by the sudden voice and tried to move back. The man handed a piece of bread to Akira. "Aren't you the son of Syuri?" the man said.
Just after witnessing the horror, Akira was afraid to accept bread from him, but hearing his mother's name, Akira looked at the man's face and nodded.
There was something different about him. His smile wasn't as wide as the others... and in his eyes, there was a glint.
Akira accepted the piece of bread.
"Your eyes look just like hers..." the man said, and Akira's eyes started to fill with tears.
"M-my mom... she was taken away by the Chief," Akira said.
"I know," The man replied.
He took out a Repulsor Flare from his coat pocket and handed it to Akira. It was the first time he had ever held something so valuable.
"I too hate this city... and its people, Akira," the man said.
"There is a way to get as far from here as possible... it's a bit of a hassle doe, but you can get stronger with this."
Akira watched as this person handed him something so valuable, but what interested him more was the mention of getting stronger.
He had heard that phrase before, the day his mother was taken. They were the last words Akira could remember.
"Akira... get stronger... and one day... conquer this city."
"And brighten your smile till we meet again"
Her Faint smile was etched into akira's eyes
Akira immediately grabbed the Repulsor Flare tightly. "I want to get stronger..."
"Straight to the point, aren't you... haha," the man laughed.
"Who are you, mister?" Akira asked.
"Klein... Klein Judieus. And from now on I'll be your mentor! Akira!"
Akira's eyes widened. His dream of becoming strong, he nearly forgot about the butcher and the fact that Klein... knew Akira's name.
But hating could be done another day. Right now, Akira had some other plans because today was one of those days when he had money!
"Klein would have saved me some nice brisket,It sells out before I can lay my hands on " Akira grinned, making his way towards the center of the city.
It was one of his forever dreams to eat meat for the first time.
*Smack*
"Move, boy," a man bumped into Akira, sprinting towards the center.
"Watch it!" Akira yelled, but the man didn't care.
Akira looked around to find more and more people rushing towards the center.
"Did everyone receive their paychecks today?" He was confused but that would have been hilarious, since earning even a single coin was considered a great achievement.
Akira made his way through the tight and packed crowds, all surrounding a giant platform in the exact center of the whole city.
What could possibly be so interesting in here to draw such a huge crowd?
"It's all because of that woman…"
Just then, he heard people complaining.
"Mom…" was his first thought.
Akira's pupils trembled slightly, his heart racing with unrest.
Now it didn't matter who he brushed through. Everyone was staring at him.
"That's her kid..." a few people murmured.
His heart skipped a beat.
He noticed the shivering hands and their empty baskets. Usually, the meat would have been sold out by now, yet the crowd was huge.
Hands pushed him to the front, where he came face to face with the scene. The floor was flowing with fresh blood.
On top of the platform in the center, Klein stood as the light shone over him from above. His hands were covered in blood that dripped onto the floor.
Drip... Drip
In his other hand, he held a bloodied, rusted butcher's knife.
"Klein!" Akira yelled.
Tears came to Akira's eyes as he tried to rush toward his mentor, but several hands grabbed him from behind.
The soulless look in the people's eyes didn't help Akira understand anything either.
"Klein!" Akira cried.
Klein heard his cry. His eyes twitched in pain. A single tear, as red as blood, dropped from his eyes.
Despite all, Klein gave a gentle smile.
"Sorry, Akira..." Klein said. "I couldn't save you any meat."
"H-how could I...How could I.. feed you the flesh of your own mother?"