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[i]A silent boom. The air was sucked in, pulled out like the tides, before something [b]erupted[/b] out from the Graves. It could not be seen, but it was as though a volcano had gone off - one of the grey ones. The killers. Rushing the Undercity at an alarming speed, with the force of a natural disaster. But there was nothing natural about it. A wave of psychic energies tore through settlements and crushed the minds of their inhabitants under its weight. Screams rose to join whatever was making that inhuman [i][b]NOISE[/b][/i].

The noise was a whistle when it reached Northbridge. A few heads turned up as lights fizzled out. A bin on wheels was pushed a few meters down the street. Then like dominos, hands flew up to temples to cradle a sudden migraine that struck the settlement street by street. Babies began to shriek in pain and confusion and stray animals went into a frenzy. A strange feeling of something [i]wrong[/i] followed the wave of headaches taking over the town, past Umbri's street. Where she laid in her apartment in the dark, eyes shut, wires strapped to her head, her mind safe and sound and somewhere else.
[/i]

[hr]
Two Umbris walked through the Northbridge slums. The one keeping her head up and wearing a pissed, [b]don't mess with me[/b] face, and her distorted companion beneath her, rippling every time Umbri's clear heels stomped through a puddle. Rainbow oil swirled over the water flooding the streets, along with some other gunk seeping down from [i]somewhere.[/i] For a place with so many food stalls cluttering up the street, it was [i]not[/i] the most... nothing here would be FDA approved, that's for sure. But telling from the chatter and smoke and lines - some as long as the ones to get into a club - the locals loved it. [url=https://www.artstation.com/xtasy33](Link: The locals.)[/url]

A burly food vendor stuffed intestines, wide and long enough that he had to shove his whole arm up there. People were gathered around a monstrous skull big as a barrel, with flames flicking through its eyeholes. It was being used as a BBQ pit, slabs of meat being cooked over the hot coals filling the space its brain used to be. An angry beep parted the crowd and a grumbling, smoking pick up truck plowed through. Its bed was heaped high with smelly bags of offals and other beast parts. As the driver hopped out of the car and jumped on the back, he was swarmed. Clatter was exchanged and bags thrown out into the crowds, the street clamoring like it was Christmas.

This was the only way Northbridge ever interacted with the beasts of the Graves. Dead and chopped and ready for consumption. They got the off-cuts once the other defender settlements had picked through the carcasses. Umbri had never seen one alive. That skull - she considered as she stared at the BBQ pit, the flames licking its eyes reflected in hers - was the closest she'd ever gotten to comprehending the mass and horror of the monsters terrorizing the settlements that protected hers.

And good. She had enough terrorizing her here already. She'd take the off-cuts over dealing with those things any day.

Well, except she didn't, really. Too expensive. Umbri dug into a plate she bought from another vendor as she watched the chaos of the shipment arrival. Big, juicy... leeches, it looked like, with split and blistered skins. They floated in a thick sauce she scooped up with a gooey dough into a crunchy, chewy, spicy mouthful. Ahh, [i]delicious.[/i] 

As she munched her way through town she couldn't deny that there was something weird going on with the colourful characters of her home. Many people were huddled in dark corners - which was actually pretty normal - but hanging their heads in their hands and grumbling in pain. It felt like the town was suffering from a collective hangover. Whatever it was, Umbri had been gracefully spared from it. 

She hurried her way to a building on the corner of a street, grungy and built from the scrap of shipping crates. The word [b][color=hotpink]H[/color][color=yellow]Y[/color][color=hotpink]S[/color][color=yellow]T[/color][color=hotpink]E[/color][color=yellow]R[/color][color=hotpink]I[/color][color=yellow]A[/color][/b] flashed on its roof, along with the LED face of a woman screaming. She stopped before one of the screens on display outside of the building, under the neon sign - 'Now Showing!'. A woman who looked just like Umbri was featured there, backlit with purple light. A candy yellow wig swayed by her thighs and splatters of paint just barely formed a bikini for her top half. She trailed a finger across her collarbone, cocking her hip and slinging a pink paintball gun. Then she stretched a paint-dipped finger out to the screen and scrawled across it - 

[color=#e285ff][i]Marionette.[/i][/color]

Punctuated by a kiss against the screen. She winked then smeared the paint into a blur, and the image faded out. Umbri saw herself reflected on the black screen before the image began to play again and the other Umbri took her place.

Umbri watched the loop a couple more times, when a sudden [b]THUD [/b]coincided with Marionette's hand striking the screen. She jolted with a gasp, when a voice grabbed at her - [b]"Hey, Umbri! You coming in or looking stupid?"[/b] A woman called from inside, knocking against the door to get her attention.

Umbri looked back at Marionette. In the split second she thought it had actually struck the screen, she swore its red eyes had a glare to them. She rubbed her own stupid peepers with her palms and hissed, [color=#A4303F][b]"Come on, girl,"[/b][/color] then followed her coworker inside.