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[img]https://i.imgur.com/4uuThLm.jpg[/img]


[b]“Woot! Alright!”

“Thirty units, just as our source promised, Stake.”[/b]

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.

[color=#A4303F][b]“What is that?”[/b][/color] 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. [color=CD09DC][b]"That, Sugar, is GIFT - the Undercity's hottest, most dangerous, most expensive drug."[/b][/color] The bobbing pill reflected upon his yellow eyes. [color=CD09DC][b]"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."[/b][/color]

Stake straightened himself, his arms folded behind his back. [color=CD09DC][b]"Like anything in life, that kind of power comes with a price. One vial lasts for an hour, but the high?"[/b][/color] He turned to her with a whisper. [color=CD09DC][b]"It'll stay with you forever. Most drugs only make you [i]feel [/i]powerful. This one shows you what it's like to be a God." [/b][/color]

[color=DC091C][b]"What… what are you doing with those things?"[/b][/color] Temujin interrogated them, squirming and shifting against his binds on Umbri's back, desperate to take a look. [color=DC091C][b]"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!" [/b][/color]

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

[color=#A4303F][b]“So this is what…? That means those Rogues and… the Templars up there are…”[/b][/color]

[b]“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.”[/b] Stabby laughed.

[color=CD09DC][b]“Or, as is common around here… by chopping off your limbs and chromming up the stumps,”[/b][/color] Stake added, looking straight at Temujin. The ninja was not amused. [color=DC091C][b]“What about you, ‘Stake’? How’d you get those eyes?”[/b][/color] He asked, his question pointed with a hiss. 

The wrinkles of a smirk returned to his eyes. [color=CD09DC][b]“That’s a story I only share over a date,”[/b][/color] he remarked, casting a glance to Umbri. A glance that he swiftly directed to the business at hand. [color=CD09DC][b]“Anyway, GIFT is hard to come by these days. I’d even say impossible. Which makes this haul…”[/b][/color] He narrowed his eyes. [color=CD09DC][b]“...An anomaly. And a profitable one, at that.”[/b][/color]

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

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, [i]lower class[/i] 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.

[color=#A4303F][b]“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."[/b][/color] Umbri said on a sarcastic sigh, slouching into her puffy jacket. [color=#A4303F][b]“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.”[/b][/color]

Temujin did not immediately reply, considering her words in his silence. [color=DC091C][b]"The dregs around here would sooner use GIFT against each other before they'd even [i]think[/i] of going against the upper city. The Undercity is enough of a shithole without souped-up junkies leveling the place every night."[/b][/color]

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.

[color=DC091C][b]“Hey, hey!... What are you staring at?”[/b][/color] Temujin asked in a hushed tone. There was only quiet in his sensors. 

A low [i]shhh [/i]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.

[i]Thummmm.[/i]

The sound of powering down.

Stake looked up from his relaxed posture, with eyes that squinted within the dark. [color=CD09DC][b]“Hmm… that wasn’t part of the plan.” [/b][/color]

[b]“What the hell was that?!”

“Shit! Did the rail lose power?!”[/b]

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. [color=#A4303F][b]“Doesn’t look so,”[/b][/color] 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.

[b]“Fuck, fuck, [i]fuck!”[/i][/b]

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

[color=DC091C][b]“‘He’? He who?!”[/b][/color] Temujin squirmed in his binds, and cast a frustrated grunt against the futile results. [color=DC091C][b]“Stake! STAKE! Who are you fucking with?!”[/b][/color] 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. [i]Oh my God, they’re…[/i]

[i][b]“Rat… protects…”[/b][/i] 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.

[i][b]“... for… [color=FF0080][u]KIRAN.[/u]”[/color][/b][/i]

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, [i]down.[/i]

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

[color=#A4303F][b]“Are we stealing from the Mother of Monsters?”[/b][/color]