EDIT: Okay, so the thread isn't going to be up tonight, but there will be five parts (like the one below) as kind of an introduction, then something for how the word gets out to the team to be, and then go time. The thread will be up tomorrow, and should be rolling on Monday as planned. 

EDIT EDIT: Keep in mind this first chapter is set four years ago, so if some of the setting stuff sounds weird it's because its in the past. 

[hider=Part One][center][IMG]https://albaerre.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/cornelia-tat-by-rio-romaine7.jpg?w=479[/IMG][/center]

“Can you believe they reelected that guy?” I mean, what the hell? No one put it together that the economy was headed for disaster if something didn’t change, if we didn’t get spending under control and balance the damn budget already? “I dunno, man. People like the guy,” pfft, as if. “No one I know likes the guy,” the conversation seemed to make Carl uneasy, but whatever. Being angry tends to make people not give two shits about making their coworkers unhappy. The door opened, closed, but Jimmy hardly noticed. His shift was nearly over, and there was one hell of a drunk brewing. Had the day off tomorrow, his buddies were meeting up at that new place in Lowtown with the mechanical bull and the already seedy reputation, even though it opened just a week earlier, and besides, everyone here was gonna lose their jobs soon, anyway. “Well, when the economy collapses I’m sure they aren’t gonna feel that way much longer,” f#$%ing Carl, he probably voted for the guy, too. Good luck paying the bills, putting food on the table and sending money to help Monica with tuition when Anne Scarborough lays half the staff off because those whiny liberals want the part time janitors to get free health care. No one really cared about the stupid social policy stuff, if the right could just lay off their gay bashing and casual racism and just focus on the fiscal economics end of things they’d win every election, but instead they insisted on appeasing the Southerners and those Midwestern rednecks with their bullshit, outdated, hateful weirdness, and now the economy was in peril because of it. 

“Change the subject, man, --, you catch the game? We almost pulled it through, thirty one to thirty seven. Had five bucks on it,” yeah, that was a helluva game, at least Carl knew his football. “Yeah, did you see their line just fall apart in the second? What happ, --,” Err. He knew someone had come in, but it wasn’t really all that important to him. People came in through the door all day every day, and it was always the same old same old. In this building people almost never weren’t experienced enough to know not to leave change in their pockets or avoid taking off their belts or nothin’, they did this every f#$%in’ day, twice considering they had to go through the same shit to get back out, he was practically a paid chair-warmer. Supposedly research and development were designing robots to take over his job, and given the way the economy was going, Jimmy didn’t even doubt it. He looked up. She was young, pretty, blonde, taller than him in those boots by a good three inches, and he stood six feet tall. Everything about her was totally normal shit you’d see out on the street any given day of the week in downtown Halcyon City, she had one of those stupid haircuts with the bangs that cover one side of yer’ face kids these days like, probably cost her three hundred bucks too, nice clothes, really colorful clothes, like, strangely colorful, almost like they were backlit by LEDs or somethin’, odd digital blues and greens that didn’t seem like you could just dye clothes like that, technology these days. 

Everything about her was perfectly within the realm of reason in this part of the city, --, except for the fact that this was a research and development building owned by Scarborough Enterprises, and the most attractive woman he’d ever seen walk through that door was twenty years older than this girl and dressed in a lab coat, just like every other person who had ever walked in through that door had been dressed. "Uhh..." He was speechless, if only for a moment. This was the most shocking thing that had ever happened in his twenty years as a paid chair warming security guard for Scarborough Enterprises, which come to think of it really hammered in just how depressing this job was, and frankly he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was he was supposed to do in this situation. "Miss, I'm sorry miss, but uh, I'm, uh... Gonna have to, uh, wand you, uh, okay?" Carl sputtered out after a few of the most awkward seconds in either of the two grown ass men's lives, he was obviously just as disturbed by this shit as Jimmy was. She smiled at Carl, pretty smile too, guess to live in a place like this, in a City like this, and wear the kind of fancy clothes she was wearing you either had to be pretty, or be smart enough to work at a place like this. “Of course, Mister Blake,” they both froze. How had she known that was Carl’s name? And, just as quickly, they both kicked themselves mentally for being f#$%ing assholes, he was wearing a damn nametag, they both were, f#$%. 

This whole thing was really throwing Jimmy off kilter. “Oh, uh,” Jimmy chimed in as Carl took a hesitant half step toward the girl, acting like she was a crocodile that was gonna eat him or some shit, “and he’s gonna have to see your ID bad, --,” Err. She’d put a bag through the luggage thingy? No one ever put a bag through the luggage thingy, it was used so rarely he didn’t even remember what it was properly called. The lockers were before this station, no one even brought their keys with them this far. He looked to the moniter for a second to see what was inside of the bag, but before he could be certain that there were even things in the bag she spoke, and drew his attention back to her. “Well, Mr. Vasquez,” the girl replied as she casually withdrew a Scarborough Enterprises blaster from her very obvious belt clip holster, “you see,” pffhut, thud, and as Jimmy cast his gaze momentarily to his right he could see that Carl was lying on the ground, bleeding and leaking grey, stringy stuff onto the once squeaky clean tile floor from the hole through what used to be his right eye socket, “I don’t actually work in this department,” she shrugged, blowing at her bang to reveal that the eye covered by her hair was not only not an eye, but something that looked like a neon blue butterfly, one wing above her eye socket and the other below, the two coming to meet in the middle as she blinked in response to the errant breath, and trained the blaster on him. [/hider]