[IC] A Man Is No One's Fighter VS Parz1vol's Monster — The Banking District (Quarantined), Omira City

Omira City, Capital Of The Confederacy Of Freehold

The Banking District, Quarantined

21:30

Omira City. The gleaming jewel in the crown of the Confederacy Of Freehold. Its head of state, Alphonso Tallo, was elected by the Council Of Kings. A representative from each of the 19 states in the Confederacy voted for him to take on the role of Dictator. The position is absolute, but the Dictator can be removed from office by a simple majority in the Council Of Kings. The High Lord Morlat is the head of the military. Both of these men are native to Omira. They are popular with the people, and are considered loyal to the Council Of Kings as a whole, rather than to any individual state. Briah, the northernmost state, is unhappy with recent policy changes. They are known as the Witch State, and terrorists from Briah have begun to strike at Omira City to punish Morlat and Alphonso for recent decisions in the federal government.

The Banking District Quarantine was rather small. By the time the Briah Beast had been conjured there the walls had been put up to keep the creature in. Eighty feet up into the air rose the steel, wood, and bronze that had been built by the Omira Teamwork Corp., a manual-labor organization operated by the state.

The outer Banking District was outside the wall, and contained smaller private banks.

The state bank was trapped inside the walls, with two other mercantile buildings. An inn with foreign lettering, the Northwest structure. It was two stories. The first story had a door facing East, into the main street. That same floor had two East facing windows. The first floor had a front desk by the door, to the left of which was a staircase leading upwards. To the right of the front desk were several tables with chairs. Under the stairs was a kitchen. The second floor had three East facing windows that looked down on the street. Walking up the stairs on the first floor took you to the second floor, which opened up into a hallway to the right. Three doors for three small rooms with a bed, a bucket, a desk, and a window each could be found.

The Northeast structure was an identical floor plan. The three rooms on the third floor were a bedroom, a surgery room, and a cold room. Our bottom floor was a space dedicated to boxing and exercise, with a raised square in the center. The bedroom and the stairs and the front of the building were torn open by rubble, with a horseless-carriage burning at the bottom of the gash in the building. It looked as though it had been thrown through the building. Its driver’s seat was shredded, and the leather torn open. The inside of the vehicle dripped red with blood, and many of the jagged metal bits had flesh still hooked onto it. The corpse was carefully butterflied open with its guts strewn out. The skeleton was kept in place in such a manner that the red flesh and innards seemed to have been carefully removed and picked away without actually disrupting the corpse from where it had landed. This single body painted most of the stone on the street red.

The actual banking facility in the southern section of the quarantine had a large staircase leading up to it from the road. Nine horseless carriages were parked to the side of the staircase, six to the left and three to the right. They were recent, pricey models. Their doors were torn open and each had a carefully vivisected body like the crashed vehicle just across the cul de sac. At the top of the steps were four trees, carved from marble. They were each ten feet apart. Between the center two were iron doors, smashed open, leading into the bank. It was a tall building with a tiled roof, but the building itself had only one floor. The center room was round, and a fractal design was printed onto the floor. There was a locked, steel door directly across from the entrance. To its left was a desk, locked down and closed up, and to its right was another desk similarly locked with a sliding steel plate. Bank notes are still scattered across the slick floor.

@A Man Is No One

[Parzivol]

The terrorists from Briah had been working as a collective referred to as the New Briah Liberation Movement, which had a public office with NBLM painted on the front. This office burnt down a month prior when several of the proto-terrorists thought it clever to construct one of their monstrosities there. These creatures, which had since began to spread throughout the city as independent witches began to conjure them, and the original threats spread from the slums district, had become to be called Smog Ghosts.

Any individual Smog Ghost was a threat due to the nature of its sturdy physiology and its adaptability. It was when they were allowed to congregate and the thick gas that they produced as a byproduct began to develop into sheets of bad air that things worsened. It was a heavy gas, and the steel walls were all that was needed to keep it out, but it was still a rather substantial threat. It caked onto walls, weapons, and the skin in a suffocating manner. When breathed in it caused tumors, swelling, and internal bleeding that spread quickly throughout the body. It was a truly dangerous material. The danger was then amplified with the fact that the Smog Ghosts were smart enough to move around quietly through the understreets, and to congregate in larger numbers while laying traps in their territory.

The slums had been claimed too thoroughly for a recovery mission. A lone terrorist had constructed this particular Smog Ghost using an old diving suit stolen a week ago from Omira’s port docks. The only reason the threat had been secured so quickly was due to scrying efforts on the part of the magistrate, as well as a disruptive pulse of magic that had been laid over the central Banking District to ensure that the Smog Ghost was too confused to replicate.

As the elevator on the quarantine edge was lowered, its inhabitant (@A Man Is No One), could see the Smog Ghost rather clearly. The thick diving suit stood at about six feet tall, and was a mix of bronzework and leatherwork with some additional imported materials. The helmet of the suit had two lenses over where a human wearer’s eyes would be. The lenses let off an eerie orange glow that matched the coloration of the thick fog that was peeling out of the suit’s ventilation points. The fog, as it was in fact orange, could be seen pulling into and being pushed out of the suit as the monster breathed. In its left hand it held the large bloody kitchen knife that was likely used to disembowel the citizens that had been unlucky enough to be caught in the zone when the summoning occurred.

From within its casque all it could feel for the moment was a chaotic confusion. It understood its purpose, and it was prepared to seek it. Every time it turned to orient itself and understand its environment, however, it was left lost. It was being interfered with. It was being disrupted. The best it could do was wait for the confusion to pass, and defend itself until it could pursue its goal.

That screeching of the elevator was unnerving though, and in the dim orange night through its own smoke it saw the individual on the elevator and was made greedy. It needed to remember, to force itself to recall, all that it could be.

As the confusion began to dissipate, the smog thickened. It saw a singular image in the back of its head. A primordial calling. It had wasted bodies by killing the people in the streets and by flipping the car as it had. Perhaps this new humanoid would grant it the opportunity it sought. This wall could be scaled with help. It understood with a clarity in that single moment that striking down this other creature and making it, as it should be, kin would be what enabled its escape from the enclosure. Its thoughts developed along a rather predatory progression.

It retreated to the steps of the federal bank, South, and stooped to an athletic position with its knife held in its left hand. The smog followed it, but remained thin at its position.