CabbageAngel

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“Oh my God!” “Eeek!” “What is it doing?!”

Umbri dreamed of mac and cheese.

It was so salty it stung the eyes. There were hard bits in it, and it was served with a generous scoop of… some kind of ground meat, definitely not kosher, and it was heaven. A heaven that all the coins in the gutter afforded her. She was on up high now, dangling her leg down from a drain pipe.

Thunk. THUNK.

The Rat finally finished killing its comrade. Blood ran into the sewers and reflected the cheery smile of an Ares Corp spokesperson being projected above the street. Come join the neighbourhood! We’re more than colleagues at Ares Tech, we’re neighbours… and family. The Rat scampered away after performing his obituaries, scattering an alarmed crowd of so many faces she so clearly remembered, and Umbri looked over her heaped spoon at the gore below and felt nothing. Her spoon swiftly took up her vision again, only pausing when she noticed a bug leg sticking out of the cheese.

“...”

Crunch.

"I don't suppose you're a hooker out of choice either."

“WAAAAAAAAAGH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!”

She sunk into a nightmare. A small, dark, stinking room, littered in the relics - diapers, milk pouches, dirty plates - of a chaotic night, or two, a week, or she didn’t know, when did Mum leave? When did Mum leave her with this monster?

“Please,” she whispered, her voice almost gone and eyes burning red from a long strain of nights of no rest. She held up formula beside blue lips. “Please, please. I don’t know. I don’t know when she’ll be home. Please, I have school.”

Screaming. Just… screaming. It’s all the monster did all day when it wasn’t asleep for a fitful few minutes. Screaming, and no eating. Umbri was going delirious. Did this thing know it was going to starve? The only thing in this house was food for the baby and it wouldn’t EAT IT!

Umbri turned the formula to her lips with a shaking hand and sucked it, just a little to wet them. The guilt and hate she felt all at once racked her. The baby’s shriek went higher, like she was protesting Umbri’s thievery, but - but then why wouldn’t it- why wouldn’t it just eat-

“WAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!!!!”

The crying. The smell. The hunger. The fear. The exhaustion. It all converged until she just screamed.

“I HATE YOU!” She roared. Her voice cracked with youth. “I HATE YOU TOO!!!”

She screamed, incomprehensibly, taking revenge for all of the pain it put her through while Mum was away, then crumpled, hitting her head until she could think right - She’s not coming back. She’s not coming back. Survive. Survive. Survive. Mac and cheese. A dead Rat on the road. YOU SURVIVED BEFORE.

She grabbed her baby sister and pulled a parka over the both of them, making a charge for the door.

“Don’t do it,” Umbri’s words couldn’t reach her child self as she slammed the door on her, leaving her alone in her hell. A shrill ringing came to her ears.

"What's going on?!" The noise was quiet at first, but it grew louder, higher. "Sugar!" It bled into her other senses and drowned her sight in blurs. Muffled shouts and calls slipped between the discord, but Umbri could only hear the shadow of their words.

She was on the floor, her arm tucked at her back at an unnatural angle, her legs straight and spasming out, her head jerking back and eyes rolled to their whites. A pressure clung to her jaw. The fog faded from her eyes. The shadow she heard now loomed over her; a mass of black that slowly cleared up.

"Easy now."

That gaunt face. Pale and purple, like lavenders drained by winter. Vivid yellow pin pricks stared at her from the shadow of his hood. She was looking towards the ceiling, but something silky kept her head from the cold, hard floor.

"Is she alright? What happened?!" A different voice called out, high and trembling with rage that seemed second nature. The voice that had dogged her steps since midnight.

The crags unfurrowed around Stake's gaze as he saw the light return to her eyes. He had taken off his coat, revealing the long sleeves of his black banded shirt, and his spider-like hands. They caressed her face with curling, gentle strokes.

"Her time is running out."

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

"Shit! FUCK! What's going on now?!" Temujin screamed, a cacophony of chaos assailing him from all corners of the train. "And why doesn't anybody ever answer me?!" The ninja's shrieks drowned amidst the squeal of the laser saw, drawing closer and closer towards a cornered Umbri. She couldn’t even scream anymore as her back hit the chairs and blue bloomed across her eyes. Untimely as it was, her final thought was going to be recalling the fact that chainsaws were invented to cut pelvic bone during childbirth.

The saw powered down, right before she could hear the crack of bone and feel the agony of being split from the groin. The blue laser slipped back through the crack. Umbri held onto her breath. Talons curled their way around the crack, sprouting all the way down the line.

Screeching filled the carriage as their claws peeled metal back, tearing a wound through the floor of the train that they burst from like maggots. The civilians had already started to flee down to the front of the train to the other passenger carriages, but some were trapped on the other side of the ravine - people like the stunned ticket inspector, blinking out of his charmed state.

“T-...tickets please -” the officer tried to stop a Rat, before two gnarly teeth sunk right through the jugular. Umbri caught the carnage, but she had her own problems. Like the red-goggled Rat crawling out of the ground towards her.

Green drool flung from its quivering maw. Umbri’s hand tugged at the strap keeping Temujin on her back. Her fingers found the latch and he slumped off her, freeing up her movement as Stabby-Rat launched itself at her. She pulled the axe in front of her, trying to keep the hilt in the way of its snapping teeth. The wood splintered between Rat’s relentless bites. Temujin looked up, the angle of his mask seeming frozen by horror. In a split second, Rat’s eyes snapped to her bloody fingers wrapped around the hilt. Its paw snatched her wrist and it went for the bite. "NO!" Temujin belted out without thinking. Umbri swung her entire body with Rat’s trajectory, driving her fist - and something - at its head.

Glass shattered. The thresher fang punctured through the red goggles and popped the creature’s left eye. She straddled the animal and yanked out the fang, feeling the way it grinded against the socket on the exit. Red glass and blood scattered through the air. She grabbed the seats, pulled herself up, and hoisted the axe. Stabby-Rat cradled its wound, and Umbri thought, move your arms so I can kill you quicker - a cruel or a kind thought, she couldn’t tell, only that it was spurred by an ache in her - and brought the axe down.

She threw her head over her shoulder to watch the other rising Rats. There were new ones, one wearing the tattered remains of a station uniform.

“Zombies,” she croaked. Her face was darkened by all the blood that painted it, blending with the shadows of her bangs. It washed away almost all the glitter now. A long leg stepped over Temujin’s torso. “Zombie rules. Get the head.”

Flashes of pink illuminated the car in intermittent bursts. Vapours trailed from Stake's gunblades as he spun and slashed, jumped and shot - thrice -, then flattened another Rat with an axe-kick upon landing. He stood back to back with Shanks, each man guarding the other's rear. "You got it, Sugar!" Stake announced, one gun held low, and the other angled across his shoulder. His gaze rolled over the room, meeting the red-eyed snarls of a seemingly unending horde.

Blam-Blam-Blam-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

Stake swung and turned and ducked, his arms flailing and blasting twelve different Rats across three seconds. Heads popped and ichor gushed. Bodies toppled over in quick succession. Two lucky Rats slipped through the barrage, wounded and slavering, their claws outstretched.

"Shanks! Switch!" Stake somersaulted over his ally, blasting a skulking Rat through the eye in the midst of his jump.

"GAH! Get off me! GET OFF!"

The ticket keeper Rat latched onto Temujin's chassis and dragged him. It bit, chewed, and called for a horde of smaller Rats to aid it, its claws screeching across his chest like nails on chalkboard. Umbri swung the axe like a golf club against the side of its head and sent it sprawling.

Stake looked to the back of the train car, towards the faces huddled together and eyes wide with fear. The crew had put up a valiant effort to hold off the endless wall of squealing, slobbering Rat-zombies… but that wasn’t enough. Too many innocents had already been lost.

"Shanks!" Stake called out. "Go on and get the safe out of here." He lowered his voice just above a whisper. "I'll cover our retreat." Umbri blinked. "Hey Sugar." Stake was instantly beside her. "I need a favour.” His hand entwined with hers and gently, effortlessly, drew it to his face. His other hand slipped beneath his mask. There was a click, a whir, and a hiss.

The mask dropped.

Umbri’s arm tensed and jerked back on reflex. A long, sunken face. A bat-like nose. And the fangs, extending from curved, cat-like lips. Fangs that gleamed as he parted his lips above her wrist.

There was a prick, a sharp twinge of pain, and then… a rush, coursing through both of their veins. The colour drained from Umbri’s face, and her balance left with it. Stake leaned forward to catch her. The crags darkened around his eyes, sinking them further into shadows. “Thank you,” he uttered through a ragged breath. There was a gust of wind, her body barreled through a blurred world, before… everything stopped, in a square, off-white room, the door slowly shutting in front of her.

Thunk!

A black and red shape bounced and clattered inside. Temujin’s torso scraped across the ground, skidding to a stop beside Umbri. “Ow!”

Outside, dozens upon dozens of red eyes lit up, filling up the shadows like a galaxy of bloody stars. Stake stood before them. He twirled his revolvers around his index fingers, brought them to his side, then sheathed them behind his back. “Don’t fear the devil, my friends,” Stake announced, projecting his voice to the innocents crowded behind him. He pulled one glove off, then the other. “He’s not coming for you today.”

Darkness radiated from Stake’s chest, darkness that swirled and spread in the form of dozens, a hundred, hundreds of bats. The bats scattered around the car, becoming one with the shadows. Their flapping wings and shrieking calls overtook the squeals and squelches of the Rats as Stake approached, his step never rose faster than a stroll. The bats glided and scraped, scratched and bit, bled them dry and plucked out their eyes. As the last glint of light was darkened by the swarm, the passengers saw Stake hold his arms outstretched, claws emerging from vein-throbbing, spider-like fingers.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Umbri hobbled after the others, using the cargo to pull herself forward (her crutches had spun somewhere over the horizon during take-off) while Stake covered her retreat. Shivs had climbed onto Shank’s shoulders under the hole entrance, her fingers grasping the edge and ready to pull herself up. Umbri stopped dead, her stomach sinking.

“Wait, don’t!” She yelped. Shivs looked down at the woman desperately trying to save her, and saw a crippled bimbo with no way to escape with the thieves onto the train roof scared to be served up as rat food.

“Sorry Sugar,” she dismissed and hauled herself up. “NO!” Umbri shouted after her. There was a roar as the rush of air took Shivs. They barely heard her shriek as the train left her body, twisting and flailing on its way back to earth, far behind.

Stake tossed a sideways glance towards the hole. "...She wasn't carrying any product, was she?" He asked. Shanks lifted the safe. “Jesus Christ,” Umbri uttered in disgust at the both of them and clutched her stomach.

Stake dashed ahead, his coat a maroon flag flapping behind him. He glided to a stop at the door and swivelled towards its adjacent control panel. "Shanks, cover us," Stake commanded. He holstered his pistols and drew a contraption that was halfway between a taser and a personal device - a slicer.

Stake's bulging eyes narrowed to concentrate. Sparks crackled from the slicer's fangs as he dragged it down the panel, his free palm cranking a dial clockwise, counterclockwise, then further, further.

A click, a hiss, and the train's door bellowed with a metallic rumble, the gates grinding against the metal floor as they parted. To reveal another metal door on a carriage, about a death-defying jump or tightrope walk away, with the ground hurtling past in the sky and the sky plates below them.

"I hear the wind!" Temujin exclaimed, amidst the smash and pop of Shanks's blows. "Can you jump it?"

Stake placed a hand on Umbri's shoulder as he slid himself ahead of her. "You will." He stepped out of the gates… and the wind blew downwards, dragging his clothes towards gravity. Stake ran ahead, unencumbered, across the coupling, and thrust his slicer into the next control panel. The gates flung open. He whipped towards the previous car and beckoned. "Shanks!"

Shanks ditched the Rat he was hauling by the tail into three oncoming enemies and jerked his head towards Stake’s call, picking the safe up. Umbri’s knees were wobbling at the edge of the carriage when the boulder of the man came sprinting at her, knocking her onto his shoulder in the process. Her vision was filled with Rats, hissing and reforming and clambering over one another to reach them - and past the wave, sticking out from under the feasting pile, she saw Stabby’s hand. Ridden with teeth marks, twitching… their nails elongating.

She didn’t have the time to process what she saw before Shanks jumped. The moment his feet left the carriage, everything flipped. Umbri’s sense of gravity lifted and took her stomach on a ride. They were drawn down, headfirst. Then they passed into the other carriage. Down was up again. His boots slammed down on the floor and Umbri was thrown down with the safe. It toppled, bursting open, and Umbri’s double vision settled onto two shimmering vials that rolled free within arms reach.

Shanks turned to the doors, glaring the scrambling Rat horde down as he grabbed either side of the metal doors and slammed them together on taloned fingers. They spasmed like a dying spider, a cacophony of shrieks coming from the other side of the door like they all felt Rat’s pain. Shanks punched the door’s control panel, his fist smashing right through. With an explosion of sparks and a crunch, the doors fully shut and the fingers dropped and rolled over the ground. The shrieks were instantly muffled.

They stayed there catching their breaths for a moment. Umbri’s still-beating heart was heavy and felt unearned. All the horrible death was still flashing in her eyes like light spots. She thought she could hear scratching on the ceiling. Eventually, when the screeching had completely silenced, Shanks picked up the safe and held a hand out to assist Umbri. The two of them turned to join Stake and met with about thirty sets of eyes.

They watched the blood covered party pass through the passenger carriage with various expressions of uncertainty, shock and horror. Shanks ignored them. Umbri tried to follow suit, but accidentally made eye contact with the mother of a toddler on an Ipad and snapped her eyes to the ground, sweating. Stake tilted his head to one side and winked at an indignant woman in a suit. "How you doing?" Up ahead and standing in their way was a ridiculous slab of an unamused man whose muscles were bursting from his station uniform.

“Tickets, please.”

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

“Woot! Alright!”

“Thirty units, just as our source promised, Stake.”

Umbri leaned over the thieves, tuning out their chittering. They’d pulled out a tray from the safe. A dozen glowing vials laid inside, pearlescent, occasionally shimmering with a flash of colour and never once the same shade. Shanks picked one up between his finger and thumb and shook it. Umbri stared, fixated, as the colours and glow were shaken away into a thick clear fluid and a pill bobbed into her view.

“What is that?” She breathed, momentarily forgetting her position. Shanks raised a brow at her.

Stake slouched forward to take a closer look, his arms still folded over his chest. "That, Sugar, is GIFT - the Undercity's hottest, most dangerous, most expensive drug." The bobbing pill reflected upon his yellow eyes. "And it's not just any drug. I've seen folks shoot fireballs, sprout wings, or lift an entire dump truck - with their mind… all because of GIFT."

Stake straightened himself, his arms folded behind his back. "Like anything in life, that kind of power comes with a price. One vial lasts for an hour, but the high?" He turned to her with a whisper. "It'll stay with you forever. Most drugs only make you feel powerful. This one shows you what it's like to be a God."

"What… what are you doing with those things?" Temujin interrogated them, squirming and shifting against his binds on Umbri's back, desperate to take a look. "GIFT is a blight on the streets! We need to destroy it all! And blow this train to kingdom come, just to make sure there's nothing left!"

“Save it, Robocop,” Shanks grunted and gave Umbri the universal look of ‘control your dog’. Umbri just couldn’t take her eyes off the pill.

“So this is what…? That means those Rogues and… the Templars up there are…”

“Pfft! No, this isn’t the be-all way of getting powers. You can still take a dive in radioactive sludge. You know, the natural way.” Stabby laughed.

“Or, as is common around here… by chopping off your limbs and chromming up the stumps,” Stake added, looking straight at Temujin. The ninja was not amused. “What about you, ‘Stake’? How’d you get those eyes?” He asked, his question pointed with a hiss.

The wrinkles of a smirk returned to his eyes. “That’s a story I only share over a date,” he remarked, casting a glance to Umbri. A glance that he swiftly directed to the business at hand. “Anyway, GIFT is hard to come by these days. I’d even say impossible. Which makes this haul…” He narrowed his eyes. “...An anomaly. And a profitable one, at that.”

The drug was snatched from Umbri’s sight by the closing of a fist, then the safe shut with a hiss. “Alright, product confirmed. Let’s make way.”

Umbri backed up as the others made their preparations, leaning on a crate to take a breather. This was hard on her body and harder on her head. There wasn’t too much of this ‘superpower’ stuff back home, just heavy Chrome addicts and maybe a few low level psychics. Most of what she saw of this world was Templars on TV, or the damage done to the thresher corpses shipped in. Northbridge was a little world with little problems. Little, lower class problems, to be exact. The big ticket heroes were needed topside to fight wars for the wealthy or were drawn to the maw of the Graves to punch big lizards. The Ms. Nuclear Breath and Mr. Lightning Hands of the world weren’t here to save little girls from big debts.

“You're pretty heated about GIFT if you'd blow up the train you'd kill these guys for stealing from. Or you're also a hypocrite." Umbri said on a sarcastic sigh, slouching into her puffy jacket. “What’s wrong? It feels… I don’t know. GIFT being spread around down here feels like the biggest middle finger you could throw at the upper city you hate so much.”

Temujin did not immediately reply, considering her words in his silence. "The dregs around here would sooner use GIFT against each other before they'd even think of going against the upper city. The Undercity is enough of a shithole without souped-up junkies leveling the place every night."

Umbri shrugged, content to let idle thoughts lie. She rolled her eyes away, and caught a flicker. A split second of dim in her right top peripherals. Maybe it was that, or the sudden prickle in the back of her head that had drawn her eye to it, but she lifted herself off the crate and wandered away.

“Hey, hey!... What are you staring at?” Temujin asked in a hushed tone. There was only quiet in his sensors.

A low shhh blew through her lips. She scanned up the walls of the carriage, over all the cargo. What was the tickle in her brain trying to tell her? There wasn’t space here for anything to be hiding.

Then a shadow dropped at the end of the carriage and surged over her, blacking out the entire carriage.

Thummmm.

The sound of powering down.

Stake looked up from his relaxed posture, with eyes that squinted within the dark. “Hmm… that wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What the hell was that?!”

“Shit! Did the rail lose power?!”

Umbri half stepped into the only light in the carriage. A dim spotlight cast by the hole the thieves sawed open. She looked up at the ground blurring past them. “Doesn’t look so,” she murmured.

Four crunches followed by sizzles pierced the dark, along with four glowsticks of red, yellow, purple and blue. The thieves held them before their faces, goggles reflecting the colours and masking their worry. Wet sounds started to bubble up around them.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“HE knows it’s here, he has to…” their voices were harder to mask the fear in.

“‘He’? He who?!” Temujin squirmed in his binds, and cast a frustrated grunt against the futile results. “Stake! STAKE! Who are you fucking with?!” He asked, with a quake in his voice… but he already knew the answer.

The gurgles morphed into wet slaps. A familiar, unfortunate snuffling sort of noise echoed around them, and a dozen pairs of pink eyes opened up in the shadows. Umbri’s stomach dropped. Oh my God, they’re…

“Rat… protects…” a voice wheezed. Several more echoed the sentiment all around her. It was undoubtedly Rat. If Rat’s voicebox had gone under a steamroller. Something was wrong with this… these… Rats.

“... for… KIRAN.”

Oh.

Every religious flyer caught in a gutter flashed before Umbri’s eyes. Shrines made of bones in Northbridge’s back alleys. The pathetic mewls of a cat whose mutation had its organs outgrowing its skin. Secretive gestures exchanged outside of tattoo parlors. The image of their God hung on skin across the main street. A hole that went down, down, down.

She turned. Her red eye caught a streak of light and looked Stake dead.

“Are we stealing from the Mother of Monsters?”

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

The thumping of the train was reverberating into echoes. The tunnel was near. Temujin laid his back flat against the hull.

“When the train flips in the tunnel, I’m letting go,” she said, “And I’m breaking that.” She pointed towards the glowy contraption she assumed was keeping them from falling off. She didn’t dare make a fool of herself trying to give a name to it. “Before the minute’s up. I’ll catch you.”

The dark chasm ahead grew larger, closer, like the maw of a thresher ready to devour them. Temujin whipped his attention towards Umbri. The train’s horn blared out in warning, its deafening sound competed with the drumming wheels, their spins in step with Umbri and Temujin’s artificial hearts.

She’d flipped herself back upside down, her legs elongating across the roof of the carriage and back sliding down until she was almost in the splits. Her arms trembled with the effort. She needed to be as low as possible in preparation.

WHOOMP. Her ears popped as the dark swallowed them, not for long. Lights spat at them from all angles and the train’s wail echoed louder. The train curved, following the slope of the tunnel. Umbri’s hair settled back down her neck as her stomach followed the snaking movement, and her arms felt relief. But there was no time to let them relax, she was on the clock, right now. Her pupils enlarged.

She reached over her shoulder and gripped the handle of the fire axe. Her legs snapped together as she let go. She slid towards the hole on an angle, feet first, one palm dragging behind her and keeping her steady. It was fast and felt like falling. The hole was passing on her left in a blink.

And in less than that, her hand shot out and snagged it. She pulled the axe free and army crawled her way back up, eyeing the golden glow of the techo-thingy. It wasn’t too far from her. She swung out with the axe and prodded it. There wasn’t enough momentum or force she could build in the swing. She abandoned the attempt immediately, adjusting her position to reach out with her right leg and slam the device with her heel, again and again, each kick drawing a louder growl of effort from her.

"Thirty seconds!" Temujin yelled, feeling the pressure of his on-board ticking clock.

“It broke my fucking heel!” Umbri shouted back, as the clear stiletto spun off into the void. She still persisted, desperately smashing the front of her shoe against the device.

An alert came to his view. “Ah, shit. Fifteen seconds! There’s not enough time, go on without me!”

She could. He was stuck on the train, he wasn’t going anywhere. She would be thrown off any second now if she didn’t duck inside, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but

Umbri shouted as she gave it a final kick, her eyes turning almost entirely black. The explosion of adrenaline shot down her leg and slammed the tech with a CRACK. Metal broke off and the device popped free of the roof, scattering. Umbri didn’t watch it go. She pulled herself up and hooked her legs into the hole, ducking as the detached pole came spinning at her. Temujin right behind it, coming in wide. She lunged towards his trajected path, and realised with a chill - she won’t make it - and he was falling past her, and she decided just as fast -

THUNK.

A sharp pressure was embedded in his spine and held him still. He looked back to Umbri, stretched out after him with the axe.

Temujin gasped. The axe's impact sent more of his guts out to spill, dribbling away into the wind. The ninja watched Umbri in shock, all whilst his interface nagged at him in beeps and whistles. He cast them aside, and whispered, "...Thanks." He looked to the other side, towards his guts disappearing into twinkles in the chasm. That could’ve been him. Even as he came to terms with it, he couldn't help but lament, "I will never financially recover from this."

The telltale flip of her stomach marked the end of their window. Umbri grit her teeth, tensed her legs, dug her nails in and braced herself.

“You’re… wel… comeeeaaaAAAAAGHHH!!” Her breathy reply morphed into a roar. The tilt of the train slid Temujin to the right and jerked her, but she held fast. As gravity began to take him, she was forced to release her grip on the train and take the axe in both hands. She felt like she was tied between two cars and they were slowly putting a foot down on the accelerator. All she could do was scream with all her efforts. Her fingers twitched, and slowly, they committed to crawling up the length of the axe to draw Temujin towards her.

Something grabbed her legs from the inside. She was yanked in. Her roar switched to a squeak as she disappeared. Temujin hit the roof and was dragged after her.

Her stomach didn’t backflip, it felt like it was floating in space. For a moment the entire word seemed to rotate in reverse as they flailed in the air, before crash landing on the ground. Umbri’s head bobbed with a gulp, swallowing back the sick brought on by the agony of her ankle and violent nausea from that fleeting past second. She looked up - and though her sense of balance told her she was upright, through the hole in the ceiling on top of her, she saw the distant ground. A pair of red goggles popped into her view, followed by yellow ones.

“Wow, you were so loud up there, we felt bad for you.”

“Idiots. Now we actually have to kill her.”

“Hey Shivs, how about I kill YOU if you don’t get that safe open in the next minute! What’s taking so long?!”

“Like you said. She was loud.”

Umbri scanned past Shanks and Stabby, over the ransacked cargo carriage, towards Shivs, who was taking a break from fiddling around with a very secure, techy looking safe to load a bullet into a barrel.

“So let’s deal with that.”

“You should have just held on,” Shanks resigned, stepping back.

“Ohhhh… Ohnnnzt!” Temujin’s voice was distorted by glitches, but they could not hide his fury. “That’s… it! Hooker! I have - HAD - it with these smug, pussy-footing, no-good CROOKS!” He twisted to lay flat on his stomach, the axe handle sticking out of his back. “You’re lucky I don’t have my limbs right now, cause I would be ripping your GUTS out of your assholes!”

There was a chill in the air. The train lights flickered once, twice. A shape leaned against the wall, tucked at the edge of Umbri’s peripherals.

“That won’t be necessary.”

A voice. Smooth, velvet-like. The voice of a handsome man, radiating with a cool sort of confidence. He was a wiry figure, cloaked in shades of purple, his arms folded, his coat swaying against the momentum of the train - even as he remained perfectly still. A hood obscured much of his features, complimenting a gas mask that matched his peers - save for a lack of goggles, exposing warped brows, gaunt cheekbones, and a pair of solid yellow eyes, glowing with hellish light.

“Sorry, lads. I forgot to mention,” the shape continued, strolling towards Umbri. His steps came in calm, even strides, casting no sound or stumble. He slid behind Umbri, standing a bit shorter with a slouch, and slipped a hand over her waist. His black-gloved fingers pressed in with an appreciative squeeze. “Meet our fifth member… Sugar.”

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

“Hey! HEY! Don’t touch him! That’s mine!” Umbri interrupted Stabby’s thumb scratching at the blood. She hadn’t figured out a path for her lies to go before speaking, all that was in her head was stopping these thieves from figuring out they’d caught a thief murdering Rogue. “Put whatever you just took out of him back!”

“You own the funny robot?” She felt she was being mocked by Shanks.

“I do.”

Temujin shot her a double take. The scowl on his mask seemed to deepen just a little. “You-... I…” His hot-headedness reared up for a second. The thick globs of white spitting from his spine convinced it otherwise.

“And who are you supposed to be?”

“Stake didn’t say anything about a fifth,” Shivs paused her power sawing to interject, readjusting her position. “Better drop the problem now before this job leaves any loose thread.” She finished, deadpan, before starting up her saw again and grinding against the train roof with a horrible shriek. Umbri felt Shank’s grip loosen.

“DON’T…! Please don’t do that,” she rushed out, “You can keep whatever you found inside the robot. It can’t be that important, he still… talks.”

Stabby stroked their chin. Their gaze twinkled with a smirk. “That ‘whatever’ was an expensive little trinket, missy. It isn’t exactly standard issue in funny robots. In fact…” Stabby leaned forward, arms clasped and stretched behind their back. Their attention wandered down what remained of his jet-black synthetic body, the shadows of once raw, honed muscles lingered between the cracks and crevices, and they whistled. “Nothing here is standard issue. You don’t just trip over Fontaine synth fiber or nanoblast steel over any ol’ smuck in the black market!” They looked up to Umbri, down to Temujin, and back again. Their eyes squinted in suspicion. “...How did you say you got this funny robot again?”

“I didn’t say,” she forced through gritted teeth, when she really wanted to scream, “And I’m not going to say until I can stand and think.”

Thud. The laser saw powered down. “We’re in. Drop her.”

…

“Well? Shanks, come on. We’re not letting some unknown tag along on our crime.”

“Oh yeah, that would be bad, so let’s commit another one and kill her instead!”

“And you should leave the robot. This whole thing’s fishy. I don’t want that stink on me.”

“Aww, fuck you. You're right.”

Shivs and Stabby gathered by the hole, Stabby sneaking Temujin’s part with them. Shanks and Umbri looked at each other. Umbri saw consideration cross his face, followed by her life flashing by. No, surely, they were thieves, but not murderers… a sentiment Umbri began to doubt as she watched Shivs and Stabby gearing up. They lived up to their monikers. Shanks shook his head. Umbri slowly shook hers back. He dipped his hand into one of his deep pockets, pulled out a small metal cylinder, and pressed a button.

Shlunk. A metal staff sprang to its full length in his hand. He planted it on the train and yanked Umbri in. She snatched the pole with her other hand before he let her go and she transferred both hands with a yelp. He walked between Umbri and Temujin to rejoin his companions.

“Just hold on. Next stop’s in thirty minutes,” he said, and grunted to Shivs, “Keep the magnet field up.” The three of them jumped down the hole, not before they heard Shivs grumbling over lost gear.

Then it was all quiet, apart from the deafening sound of being left dangling off the side of a sky train.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Umbri dropped the power cell and lunged for Temujin. Red glow surged through the cell’s circuits. The object fell beneath Temujin, the red spreading through every inch of the cell, until…

Every sound ceased around Umbri. An invisible explosion propelled the duo off their feet. Umbri’s hair flapped like mad from the force. Temujin’s armour shattered, and his innards scattered into the winds in a pale mess of goo and flesh. Even with Temujin’s body firmly between her and the blast, Umbri's breath was knocked out of her. Her ribcage felt like it had been knocked in an inch. The silence gave way to ringing that lingered in her ears, and only became louder the higher they went. Higher, higher, and higher. She squeezed her eyes open. In a moment of clarity, she looked out on the world beneath her, knew that she would follow her stomach down to it any second now, and even if gravity didn’t claim her, she had just launched herself with an air cannon towards a moving train.

This idiot killed me, was her final thought. I ALLOWED this idiot to kill me, she amended.

Their velocity slowed. Umbri’s entire body lurched. The bangs lifted from her forehead. Her legs flipped up over her head. Ah. Going down.

WOOOOOOSH.

The train screamed over their heads past them as they began to fall - and the metal hunk in her arm was jerked in its direction. Umbri shrieked and hung on as her date with the ground was completely swept aside by Temujin hurtling back towards the train. Her legs kicked out behind them, the force of wind pushing on her arms and almost tearing her away from him.

“Temujin!! Are you flying?!” She shouted, struggling to keep her arms wrapped over his chest. Whatever this was had to be the plan, right? He hadn’t just shot them up in the sky and that was that, right??

“I.. I am!” He shouted back, his astonishment as naked as his innards. The shrieking wind wailed against sensors, and his bare stumps flailed worthlessly as he zipped over the train's roof, scraped against its hull, and scattered a trail of sparks behind them. The grating that came competed against the train engine, loud enough to drown out a stream of curses from his mouth.

Finally he slammed into the roof of a carriage with a thunk and stayed there. Umbri could feel her arms bleeding. If Temujin wasn’t equipped to be repeatedly slammed into the side of a moving train, then she definitely wasn’t equipped to be hitching a ride on him while he did it.

“Oh my god... oh my god...” her voice warbled, legs still kicking out as the train stopped for nobody. Temujin was firmly fixed against the train for reasons unknown. Umbri? Her fingers were hooked around his armour plates and slipping. “T-T-T-TEM! OHMYGOD-”

Her fingers slipped. Umbri went with them. Her arm stretched out impulsively to her companion with no hands to catch her. Just as she started to shriek, her shoulder was almost popped from her socket by the force of something clenching around her forearm. She grabbed back.

“... Ah. Tch, ow, what...” She winced as she followed the arm keeping her planted up to a huge man standing there with far too much confidence or someone whose head was pointed directly at the ground. Ground that he should have been plummeting towards, but for some reason, she was the one flailing around in the wind, and the only thing flapping on him was his long jacket. It looked annoyingly cool.

He squinted at her through the goggles of his mask, tinted by a yellow glow, and cocked his head back.

“Oy. Shivs, Stabby. You know anything about this?” Umbri followed his gaze towards two other upside down passengers. The three of them were dressed in semi-uniform black attire, all wearing the same gas mask with coloured goggles. These other two were red and blue. On their feet were matching metal boots, and by those boots, a pulsing contraption with a golden core attached to the train roof. Red skipped across the train and squatted over Temujin, poking through his insides with a shotgun.

“Blagh, I dunno, Shanks, some junk the magnet picked up? Looks pretty worthless… hang on. Woot! A hyper-reflex capacitor! Gimme gimme gimme -”

The blue-goggled passenger didn’t look up from pushing buttons on some heavy duty weaponry in her hands. “Whatever the issue is, just keep it out of my face while I’m working,” she grumbled, and a spinning laser powered up on the end of her machine. She nonchalantly lowered it and sparks spewed up in a sheet as it made contact with the roof.

Not passengers, Umbri corrected her inner voice’s vocabulary. Thieves.

It’s a fucking train heist.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Several hours later, through a metal wasteland in the shadows between two sun lamps and miles away from her goal, Umbri was still walking.

Hobbling would be more apt. Time hadn’t healed her wounds, it left them festering. The adrenaline had ebbed out in the first hour and the weight on her back wasn’t the only thing dragging her feet. The woman was exhausted. But every time she blinked just a little too long her heart scared her awake, unsure if it was fatigue or the poison about to take her out. She knew her heart was the only thing that had prevented her from succumbing to it sooner and not just because it kept jumping.

So she was dying slowly. And on these crutches and under this weight she was walking even slower. At the very least, away from the bustle and flashing lights of her settlement, she could find in this quiet junkyard… a peaceful place to die.

“Hey. Hey, Hooker!”

… Or not even that.

“This isn’t working out,” the pile of scrap tied to her back spoke, having kept himself quiet for a moment that seemed too fleeting. "At this rate I'll rust before we get to Shieldtown." He glanced over his shoulder and whispered, "And you don't have that luxury."

“Thank you,” Umbri replied, “For pointing that out. I’ll make it faster if I drop you off here.”

“...” Temujin sighed. He shook his head and grumbled, having no way to refute her point. “Why’d you take me along in the first place?”

Umbri’s eyes darted behind her. “That’s - you were - Look. I don’t need a reminder going off every hour saying I’m gonna die. It’s not making me walk faster, just - just shut up. Shut up or talk about something else,” she exasperated, looking back at the road. The long, dark, impossible road. Like she needed reminding.

“...Mmm,” Temujin grunted in reply. From where he laid, there was only one way to look: the long way back. Had he had his legs, they could’ve crossed this whole trek in minutes. Seconds, if he was trying. He felt every ragged breath from her back, every creak of metal, every wasted second… it was all anathema to his very nature. “What do people even talk about?” He asked. “All my… acquaintances… care about is that dumb video game! And cooking.” The ninja shrugged. “I don’t need to explain why I don’t care for the latter.”

So he doesn't even have a stomach. "Is there anything about you that's organic?" Umbri asked, not knowing the first thing about anything else he mentioned.

“Of course there is!” he replied, his pitch high and defensive. “My brain - the only thing I had from before…” He shrugged his entire body in an attempt to gesture. “...All of this.” He gazed upwards, to the dark, metal plates that passed for their skies. A few seconds of contemplation passed by, apparent only to Temujin himself. “...I don’t know why they bothered, but because of it, you’re stuck with this lovely personality of mine.”

Umbri scoffed. “You are not self aware enough to say that,” she said with a shake of her head.

Temujin looked over his shoulder, stretching his half-torn flesh to its limit. “Hey. I may be many things, but a narcissist ain’t one of them.” He groaned, twisting his head back to its default position as he mumbled, “I’m ‘too intense’ to have friends… as Ako put it.” He paused, staring up at the sky-plates again. “Huh…” Flapping his servos like this was… preferable… to suffering in crippled silence. “What about you?” He asked, then clarified, “You got… friends?”

Umbri clammed up. Her smile, subtle as it was, fell away and the creak of the crutches was the only thing that answered him for a good few steps.

“...Right.” Temujin exhaled. “I’m glad we found something in common.”

Before she could process that, an otherworldly shriek pierced the air, headed towards them.

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

| | CHARACTER THEMES | |
Looking to the Future
Looking to the Past

Profile

✖|| Full Name ||✖ Umbrielle Spencer
✖|| Aliases ||✖ Marionette
✖|| Age ||✖ 27
✖|| Gender ||✖ Female
✖|| Nationality ||✖ American
✖|| Hair ||✖ Black/Hidden under candy coloured wigs. Most common is a hot pink asymmetric bob.
✖|| Eye color ||✖ Red
✖|| Body ||✖ Long, lean musculature, covered in body glitter. Floral/snake tattoos on her shins, a sneaky fish tattoo on the underside of her right wrist.
✖|| Height ||✖ 5’7’’
✖|| Hometown ||✖ Northbridge / Undercity / Titan’s Fall / Texas / USA
✖|| "Affiliations" ||✖ JAHANNAM (in debt), Menagerie Tech (in debt)
✖|| Face Claim ||✖ Original Design

---

✖ Personality ✖
{ Reserved | Loyal | Untrusting | Sly | Resolute}
Umbri learned from a young age to not run her mouth. After a certain point, she also learned not just when to talk, but the right things to say to the right people. Not only to survive, but to live a little comfier. She’s worn so many faces and kept such a tight lid on her true feelings it is difficult to say you even know the right Umbri. But at her core, behind the tight-lipped mask, is a fiercely independent survivor. She's someone who trusts no one but herself with her situation, who will tear this world apart out of loyalty to her sister, and, even when her life or integrity is on the line, someone who white-knuckle grips a strong sense of pride and a kind heart. Two things that the world should have ripped from her long ago.

✖|| Likes ||✖
✔ Liselotte Spencer
✔ Dancing
✔ Bugs (to eat)
✔ Fish (to look at)

✖|| Dislikes ||✖
✗ Chrome, and in most circumstances, those who have Chrome implants
✗ Her Mother
✗ Asking for help
✗ “Doll” + any other pet names

✖|| Fears ||✖
☠ Lockdown/The debt collectors
☠ Liselotte's passing
☠ Losing more organic material
☠ Cyberpsychosis

✖|| Skills ||✖
★ Pole dancing
★ Gymnastics
★ Seduction
★ Lying/Acting
★ The power of human will and resolve

✖|| Background ||✖
Umbri was born and raised in Northbridge, a settlement in the Undercity sheltered from the horrors of the Graves but ravaged by gang warfare. At the precipice of puberty she had a little sister, and a year later, her only parent abandoned them for good – for reasons Umbri is not open to sharing. She raised her sister on her own. Unfortunately… her sister was sick. Really sick. An autoimmune disorder that was going to shut down her organs, one by one.

Umbri was a viable donor.

Now Umbri does what she must to pay off the gang she borrowed money from for her sister’s hospital bills and the instalments required to keep Menagerie Tech from reclaiming her Chrome heart.

✖ Powers ✖:
|| “POWER” || Chrome Enhancement: Adrenaline Shot
CLASS - RATING Mover - 1 | Brute - 1
Umbri’s cybernetic heart is equipped with emergency adrenal glands that when opened pump her with an adrenaline rush abnormal of a regular human’s. These controlled spikes heighten her senses, give her a temporary rush of stamina, shut off pain, and push her to the full strength a human is capable of – with a crushing price to her body.

---

---

Color Code: A4303F

---

Visual

Soundtrack

Adventure 1

"You're just... perfect."
Northbridge - Intro
On the tracks of a train headed right for her... she ran.
The Eyes of the Rogue
Down to the Wire
That's Lockdown
Northbridge - Outro

Adventure 2

It's a Fucking Train Heist
Tunnel Flip
That, Sugar, is GIFT.
Stealing from the Mother of Monsters
He's a Vampire...
Umbri Memory Suite, I

Adventure 3

Shieldtown
Big Man vs. Bad Kitty
Dove's Story
Awakening in an Operation
You Can Do It! / Let Me Go!

Titan's Fall: The Abyssal Paradox

Umbri pocketed the stinger, limped over and hooked her fingers into the armoured plate of Temujin’s shoulder to slowly drag him with her. The cyber ninja groaned. Static spurted out from his wounds and zapped the streaks of white blood forming beneath him. She felt every pound of the cable-like muscles and metal armour that made up his mass, far too heavy for someone so silent.

"You…," he whispered, his broken neck barely allowing him to glance over his shoulder. "You didn't leave me."

Umbri kept her gaze firmly forward, despite the wobbling her staggered stride had her doing. It took so much effort to even move an inch. This dead weight was going to have her pop a shoulder.

“Hm," she said, "You did."

Temujin cast his gaze low. "Yeah," A twinge of guilt pricked what passed for his heart. He was glad they couldn't see eye to eye at this moment. "That was really shitty of me."

Umbri let him wallow in that thought for a moment. “Can’t say I didn’t anticipate it. I wasn’t…” her annoyance cut through her teeth, “Expecting a new client.”

Temujin glanced back at her at that word. Client. His blood had stopped flowing, and in its place, his body grated, unlubricated, against the hard, coarse pavement. An ungodly noise followed, a cross between nails on a chalkboard and old stones grinding. "Not a fan of fucking cyborgs?"

The grating stopped. A torso she had JUST SAVED at a sacrifice to her autonomy and (before Lockdown let her keep it, she had assumed) the ONE thing that could save her life had the gall?

"No. I'm not a fan of fucking cyborgs. Now shut your fucking mouth before I leave you in the fucking dirt, you fucking cyberpsycho."

"You-...!" Temujin stuttered. He reached out to clutch, to handle, to throttle… only to realise that he had only phantom sensations to spare, and no choice but to submit. "Hmmpf."

Umbri paused, looking down at the helpless metal lump, and realised that she felt a bit better. The night wasn't done and the nightmare was going to extend long after it, but she could cry and tear at her skin about it later. She had somewhere to go. And half of an asshole she had absolutely no reason to take shit from anymore.

---

Temujin laid neglected, blending into a pile of scrap and waiting for Umbri to limp her way out of a back alley doctor’s office. She moved faster and on one leg. She came out of the alley with beat-up metal crutches before she set them aside to haul up the ninja.

“Upsie daisy.”

The cyber ninja was as stiff as a plank. Dirt and grease from the back alleys clung to and sullied the colour of his armour. "'Upsie daisy'?" The snarl on his mask seemed downright offended as he muttered, "What do I look like, five?"

Umbri strapped him to her back with great effort, over her backpack and the axe. "You're about that size," she grunted under the weight and started to shuffle forward.

"Huh. Didn't realise you were so chatty," he replied, keeping an eye on the harness that secured them together. It was a surprise… but not an unwelcome one.

Umbri slowly walked on crutches with a crushing weight on her back through the Northbridge streets. By the time she was at the precipice, the sun lamp had already started to wash the grime in a faint glow.

And she was staring out. On the edge of a plate, into a great, dark expanse, through a scrapyard that seemed to last forever. The end of Northbridge. Had they always been so far away? She couldn't take another step.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Temujin suddenly spoke, having left her to silence for so long. The sarcasm was dripping from his whisper. "How the piles of refuse never end. You think you've seen it all, but…" He shrugged. Even without limbs, he could manage that much. "It's a whole lot of world out there. A whole lot of world for the inbreds of the upper city to shit on."

“Yeah,” Umbri echoed, and did not move. “A whole world.”

"Well. What are you waiting for?"

“Permission, I guess,” slipped honestly from her lips without thinking.

"Huh," he replied. Mostly a scoff, also a chuckle. "You're the one with legs, Hooker. You don't need permission from a dead weight."

Umbri crinkled her nose. “Not from you,” she muttered and looked out into the crevice. She took in a resolute breath. “Alright,” she said to herself. “Let’s find a way down.”

The one-legged dancer hopped across the expanse on a clear heel, the crutches, her belongings and the half a cyborg on her back keeping her heavy and slow. A lone pink beacon covered in the glitter and gore of the night’s adventure. Neon veins wrapped her neck like a choker. The blood in her mouth was her last taste of home.

Come on, girl.

This body isn't yours to let die.

Roll credits.