Happyland had once been a hell of a place. Dazzling shows to wow the crowds, glitzy rides stuffed full of thrills, smiling carnies running all sorts of satisfying and completely legitimate carnival games, food stands selling every fairgrounds flavor of heart attack one could wish, trinket and souvenir ships for those who wished to try their wallets rather than their luck – it had been exactly the sort of place kids dreamed of going to and parents dreaded setting foot in. A neverending circus of happy fun time…up until Happyland’s owners had been outed as cannibals using their gleeful circus to scout for their next victims.
Looking, as the tabloids had said, for their next Happy Meal.
Now, the disgraced fun park had been shut down and left to rot. Old, dilapidated stalls and stands creaked in the wind, rusted rides occasionally squealed as a bolt finally broke and the slowly decaying hulks shifted another few inches into their unburied graves. The great big grinning clown head over the central administration building that had served as the park’s mascot was canted to one side, its supports starting to rust through and fall away. Somehow, even after all this time, no one had bought the lot that had earned a reputation as cursed, haunted, possessed, or possibly just plain spooky. No one had opted to rebuild the park; more surprisingly, no one had bought the land and torn the accursed place down, paved it over, and built low-income housing where Happyland used to be.
Occasional bits of long-forgotten circus trash flitted around the abandoned carnival, forlorn reminders of Happyland’s days of only slightly bloodstained happiness. Hot dog wrappers, boxes of popcorn, non-biodegradable drink containers of the sort that’d have any environmentally-conscious crusader for social justice frothing at the mouth. The occasional torn-up, filth-smeared stuffed critter, missing most of its stuffing and all of its one-time fluff and luster, looking at once both wrenchingly sad and faintly menacing. At least one shoe – once a cheerful red with a little lacy bow, now as dirty and lost to time as everything else that had been trapped behind Happyland’s long-closed gates.
Today the miasma of creeping melancholy clinging to the park was thicker than usual, as it was raining. A steady, beating shower that somehow did nothing at all to rinse off the dirty disuse that suffused the park, the late afternoon sunlight hidden behind a solid ceiling of sullen grey rainclouds. The weather seemed a perfect fit for the old despair lurking in the abandoned circus, washing away any faint patina of Happyland’s long-forgotten happiness.
It was not the worst place Meteor had ever found herself, but it was a damned far cry from the best, either.
The Shin-Ra Knight was…not actually sure what she was doing here. She’d been making use of some leave time from the Company to wander for a while, see what there was to be found, but she couldn’t quite remember how a stroll around the frontier worlds had landed her in this old, ugly, dirty heap. All she really knew was that something was going to happen here. The knowledge thrummed in her bones, resonating in her mind without the faintest shred of evidence or experience to back it up and yet unshakably, undeniably true. Something was going to happen here. Something nasty, something violent, something dangerous. She would need to be ready.
Meteor was in her Executive Power Suit that day, sauntering through the wreckage of Happyland under a telekinetic umbrella. A charcoal grey business suit with electric violet piping and accents, Meteor’s EPS was a sensible pantsuit design, eschewing the silly skirts most other female employees used. It wasn’t really a combat uniform even then, but it was close enough in her case. The suit’s built-in HUD showed her what scant details were available in local databases for this place on its linked contact lens – mostly tales of the unnatural hunger of the park’s former owners, gristly shots of the now-sealed underground kitchens that had been used to feed that hunger, and the occasional background shot of Happyland in its bright, glittery prime. No explanation for why the poisoned place still existed, save perhaps for the lingering (hopefully purely metaphysical) ghosts Meteor could feel clutching to the grounds.
“What a dismal dump. If not for the rain, I should light this place most thoroughly on fire and let it finally die,” Meteor muttered to herself, one hand drifting down to the hilt of her smallsword. The only incongruent piece of her corporate-officer monkey suit, the lightweight blade and its tooled leather swordbelt hung around her waist like the familiar old companions they were. She had her normal belt pouch with her corporate I.D., various memberships she’d been unable to avoid, and a few credcards as well, but the blade was her only visible armament. No cannons, hand or otherwise. No power armor. No mystic artefacts buzzing with pent-up power. Just one slender little woman and her slender little blade, alone in the rusted ruins of a cannibal’s playground.
They made movies about that sort of thing, back where Meteor was from. Of course, when those movies were about Shin-Ra Knights such as herself, it was the monsters that ended up running in terror. She didn’t look like much – barely more than a meter and a half tall, not even fifty-two kilograms, and built like a gawky fourteen year old girl, Meteor was not and never would be the type of imposing, statuesque specimen that went on military recruiting collateral. She kept her black hair almost mercilessly short, just barely long enough to swish into faintly feminine sass, and no hint of her power showed in her ice-blue eyes. To most onlookers, all she really seemed to be was an unusually small woman in a weird business suit with an anachronistic blade wandering around where she wasn’t allowed.
Except for the fact that rain simply stopped falling a foot or so above her head, sliding off a circular barrier visible only because of the wet it was keeping off of Meteor. That was probably a clue.
Now if only whatever she was here to do would present itself. She was starting to get bored, and there wasn’t even Enki around to harass into doing something amusing…
Looking, as the tabloids had said, for their next Happy Meal.
Now, the disgraced fun park had been shut down and left to rot. Old, dilapidated stalls and stands creaked in the wind, rusted rides occasionally squealed as a bolt finally broke and the slowly decaying hulks shifted another few inches into their unburied graves. The great big grinning clown head over the central administration building that had served as the park’s mascot was canted to one side, its supports starting to rust through and fall away. Somehow, even after all this time, no one had bought the lot that had earned a reputation as cursed, haunted, possessed, or possibly just plain spooky. No one had opted to rebuild the park; more surprisingly, no one had bought the land and torn the accursed place down, paved it over, and built low-income housing where Happyland used to be.
Occasional bits of long-forgotten circus trash flitted around the abandoned carnival, forlorn reminders of Happyland’s days of only slightly bloodstained happiness. Hot dog wrappers, boxes of popcorn, non-biodegradable drink containers of the sort that’d have any environmentally-conscious crusader for social justice frothing at the mouth. The occasional torn-up, filth-smeared stuffed critter, missing most of its stuffing and all of its one-time fluff and luster, looking at once both wrenchingly sad and faintly menacing. At least one shoe – once a cheerful red with a little lacy bow, now as dirty and lost to time as everything else that had been trapped behind Happyland’s long-closed gates.
Today the miasma of creeping melancholy clinging to the park was thicker than usual, as it was raining. A steady, beating shower that somehow did nothing at all to rinse off the dirty disuse that suffused the park, the late afternoon sunlight hidden behind a solid ceiling of sullen grey rainclouds. The weather seemed a perfect fit for the old despair lurking in the abandoned circus, washing away any faint patina of Happyland’s long-forgotten happiness.
It was not the worst place Meteor had ever found herself, but it was a damned far cry from the best, either.
The Shin-Ra Knight was…not actually sure what she was doing here. She’d been making use of some leave time from the Company to wander for a while, see what there was to be found, but she couldn’t quite remember how a stroll around the frontier worlds had landed her in this old, ugly, dirty heap. All she really knew was that something was going to happen here. The knowledge thrummed in her bones, resonating in her mind without the faintest shred of evidence or experience to back it up and yet unshakably, undeniably true. Something was going to happen here. Something nasty, something violent, something dangerous. She would need to be ready.
Meteor was in her Executive Power Suit that day, sauntering through the wreckage of Happyland under a telekinetic umbrella. A charcoal grey business suit with electric violet piping and accents, Meteor’s EPS was a sensible pantsuit design, eschewing the silly skirts most other female employees used. It wasn’t really a combat uniform even then, but it was close enough in her case. The suit’s built-in HUD showed her what scant details were available in local databases for this place on its linked contact lens – mostly tales of the unnatural hunger of the park’s former owners, gristly shots of the now-sealed underground kitchens that had been used to feed that hunger, and the occasional background shot of Happyland in its bright, glittery prime. No explanation for why the poisoned place still existed, save perhaps for the lingering (hopefully purely metaphysical) ghosts Meteor could feel clutching to the grounds.
“What a dismal dump. If not for the rain, I should light this place most thoroughly on fire and let it finally die,” Meteor muttered to herself, one hand drifting down to the hilt of her smallsword. The only incongruent piece of her corporate-officer monkey suit, the lightweight blade and its tooled leather swordbelt hung around her waist like the familiar old companions they were. She had her normal belt pouch with her corporate I.D., various memberships she’d been unable to avoid, and a few credcards as well, but the blade was her only visible armament. No cannons, hand or otherwise. No power armor. No mystic artefacts buzzing with pent-up power. Just one slender little woman and her slender little blade, alone in the rusted ruins of a cannibal’s playground.
They made movies about that sort of thing, back where Meteor was from. Of course, when those movies were about Shin-Ra Knights such as herself, it was the monsters that ended up running in terror. She didn’t look like much – barely more than a meter and a half tall, not even fifty-two kilograms, and built like a gawky fourteen year old girl, Meteor was not and never would be the type of imposing, statuesque specimen that went on military recruiting collateral. She kept her black hair almost mercilessly short, just barely long enough to swish into faintly feminine sass, and no hint of her power showed in her ice-blue eyes. To most onlookers, all she really seemed to be was an unusually small woman in a weird business suit with an anachronistic blade wandering around where she wasn’t allowed.
Except for the fact that rain simply stopped falling a foot or so above her head, sliding off a circular barrier visible only because of the wet it was keeping off of Meteor. That was probably a clue.
Now if only whatever she was here to do would present itself. She was starting to get bored, and there wasn’t even Enki around to harass into doing something amusing…
