The Light of Dawn

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IamLEAM1983
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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"Maybe that's the right attitude," mused the Squid. "I'm still thinking that these people used to call me Augur. They looked up to me, and now I'm the Apostate. The one thing they'd like to snuff out, only I'm better at doing it to them than they are to me. It'll be a while before I can just get up in the morning and do this without thinking it over. You've had the practice."

He looked out the window. "The Drakes and McConmaras latched onto us like lamprey eels for info... These parents already had to live knowing their kids were putting their lives on the line, now they have to live knowing they'll be arrested if they so much as set foot on American soil. I wish we could give them more news. Better news, too. The Seychelles make for a good access point for a lot of hot zones around the globe and they're a natural fit for the selkies. There's no better spot I could think of for a family reunion."

Nereus then looked back to Meris and finished his meal, wiping his tentacles with his cloth napkin. "And it goes without saying, but I miss our son too. They barely pulled Nick Buck out of his body and slotted him back in that Chambers' endgame happened. Now he's half-librarian, half-archeologist and half-oceanographer, when he isn't laughing in the face of tougher things than we've had to face."

He shrugged. "I'm proud, it's just - I wish we could all be here. Together. This city gave a lot to us, a lot more than I would've expected. I'm stuck hoping for the day this all blows over, Archie can maybe see Crystal again, and we can organize some sort of buffet to celebrate."
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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Finishing her meal, Meris nodded,sighing deeply. "I know. It's unfair. They've all had sacrifice so much. Sophia and Ciaran had to break up as well, remember? She's bound to this city as one of its protectors. Does heartbreak have a greater effect on dryads?" she wondered, then rinsing off her plate and placing it in the dishwasher. "I hope things will eventually settle down to where we can all be with each other, but that seems like some point in a far off horizon."
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IamLEAM1983
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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Nereus did much the same, and then holstered his pistol, slipping his suit jacket on top of it. One perk of being bulky was that his carrying a weapon wasn't terribly obvious. Pocketing his frustrations, he set his mind on the task at hand.

"I've gone over Holden's encrypted emails, last night. We're going up against the Nightrisers, a particularly aggressive Loyalist cell that's still in the early infiltration stages. They've dug into one of the old post-Battle Karthian towers, what they called Arcologies. Essentially a massive self-sustaining apartment complex, Sandhill's biggest eyesore after Thomas Quint's old grain silos. The place was an Art Deco beacon back in the eighties and the infighting dragged it down to the level of a self-contained slum. It took the Biggs grandson and the Commission for things to get better, but it's still essentially a chunk of Paradise on Earth."

He then stopped as he finished cleaning up the table. "I don't mean that it's related to Heaven - it has more in common with that old alien penal colony we visited than anything else. A lot of illegal aliens in the literal sense, the highest human density in Hope after the Pedway. Cops have a station there, and they're the most heavily-armed for an individual precinct. I've also heard that one of the demons Shield faced, one called Master Leonard, managed to seed a demonic presence there. That was before Judge Mantus managed to confine the Prince to his mortal role for a few generations..."

He sighed thoughtfully. "A wretched hive of scum and villainy, populated by all manner of belligerent aliens, bellicose demons, drug addicts and criminals - and a Void Weaver cell possibly pulling some strings... Should make for an easy Tuesday, hm?"
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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Meris snorted lightly. "Oh yes, just another delightful Tuesday filled with mayhem and violence," she commented, grabbing her own gun and placing it in her own holster. "How do you want to approach it? If we're entering there, we have to know how to throw our weight around, so the occupants don't think we're easy targets. We also can't stand out, or we'll draw the Nightrisers' attention."
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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Nereus shrugged lightly. "Getting in won't be hard, getting out in one piece will be a bit more demanding. I'd say we should channel the old Augur and Consort routine, act like we own the place. We're both consultants for the local police department, we can have cops rolling in with a few button presses - and we're known associates of Avalon. One phone call and we can have support on a suborbital drop trajectory."

He made his way back up, long enough to brush his teeth and make sure there wouldn't be any food particulates visibly sticking to his tentacles. That only taking a few minutes, he came back down.

"Failing that, well, we're ass-kicking intellectuals. Nerd power and all that. If this doesn't give us some credit, I don't think anything will," he joked.
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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Meris nodded approvingly. "All of those ideas will work and hopefully get us through this assignment," she commented. "Ready to go then?"
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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"As much as I'll ever be," he sighed gamely, "and never as much as I'd want."

The ride into Sandhill was uneventful, Shield's former network having kept this operation on a confidential basis. They'd have known if Holden's email had been intercepted, as Avalon had its own moles in the city's shadier corners. The Sterling Arms arcology beckoned them from as far back as Mertown's shores, visible in the morning light as a smog-shrouded slab of shimmering glass some thirty stories high.

The idea of self-sustaining buildings wasn't new. Even back when Meris had been mortal, stories circulated of the way some Norse contingents beat back the New World's humid coastal air by digging their homes at the base of grassy hills. Newfoundland's Anse-aux-Meadows had arisen out of this, sheep grazing on the roofs' fertile and clover-laden grass. From human-sized Hobbit holes to repurposed caves and mine shafts to the last few decades' advances in eco-friendly construction methods, only the level of sophistication had changed. Today's floorboards filtered the average household's air, high-end models coming with compost heaps that fueled a growing fraction of the house's heating and cooling needs. Biomethane was starting to rank as high on the stock market as oil once had, Hong Kong's exporting of human feces pitting it neck-and-neck against the Saudi oil barons.

Unsurprisingly, the Karthians had long been at the forefront of these small rediscoveries and revolutions, coming from a world with no atmosphere or renewable resources. Turning communities into symbiotic organisms was something that was a natural part of all of their urban planning proposals, mitigating refuse and runoff while allowing for bigger, bolder projects that wouldn't impact the city's power grid too considerably. Grant Sterling had inaugurated the Arms in 1987, and it had spent a few years gentrifying parts of Sandhill. For a while, things seemed to work out.

Then, inexorably, the apartments deprecated. They'd never been aesthetically designed, having instead focused on efficiency. Thirty stories, one giant sunroof with panels designed to move and follow the sun across the sky, one open central courtyard running like a hollow spine down the middle, and four accelerated maglev elevators - on top of four loft-sized biomethane tanks in the sub-basement. Everything that was flushed or thrown away in Sterling Arms ended there, the natural processes of decay providing energy and warmth at no cost. Maintaining all this was what happened to be costly, and it drove rent prices up the roof.

Time passed, the tech grew more common and cheaper to both produce and maintain, the upper-crust rents now being difficult to justify. Rent prices were fixed and the locals started pouring in - along with the rabble. The two shopping mall floors ended up becoming obsolete, while the office floors failed to find renters. The shuttle bay on the roof became deserted, charters preferring less overcrowded spaces to drop off their clients. The number of legal renters dropped off, squatting increased, and attempts to optimize power usage were undertaken. Three of the four biomethane tanks were burnt out - what should've been a controlled exposure to high temperatures going out of control. Plenty of people believed that the natural gas reserves underneath the arcology were still burning, even if the tower hadn't been crowned by four jets of flame in decades.

With systems failing and the tenants being more trouble than they were worth, the realtors abandoned it and more or less tossed Sterling Arms to the wolves. The HPD kept a precinct on the first office floor, but they lacked the space to respond to what was essentially a small city within a city - a chunk of offworld lawlessness on Earth's soil, according to some.

Few cops from the outside dared to step inside for long periods of time. Immortals and Clanks had more success, but Sterling Arms had a reputation for asking of undead that they bare their fangs to survive, and of Clanks that they capitalize on their mechanized natures...

From afar, it wouldn't have been hard for anyone to imagine the promise the arcology could've fulfilled. The sun blazed in its large panels of tempered and mage-proof glass, light glinting off of the dramatic Art Deco gargoyles that flanked each corner, like ship prows thrusting outwards into a once-hopeful future. Bronze-casted arms reaching out ahead of bowed heads, suggested torsos alternating between male and female designs, abdominals and hips captured in what looked like heroically-endured strain. Verdigris clung to them now, the once simplified and bold features having stopped to evoke strength and now suggesting resignation.

Nereus waited until they were on the highway and had an unobstructed view of the structure before voicing more thoughts. "I'm reminded of Dalarath's palaces, in a way," he confided, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. He scoffed lightly and exchanged a look with Meris. "We were so proud, we stuck squid heads everywhere.

It felt like this, sometimes. A good idea gone wrong, noble intentions spinning out of control and turning against themselves... The architects who built this place poured their heart and soul into it, and they probably lived to see it fester."
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: The Light of Dawn

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The archmage nodded. "Well, I have my doubts we'll bring back any hope to this place. It'll likely keep festering, but we have to dig out a particularly rotten part of it, before that wound has a chance to spread," she noted. "It'll take a lot to improve this place, if it ever does. Now we have to don the facades we used to have, when we made the Prelacy believe we were suitably evil enough for the others."
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