shylarah — Roleplayer Guild

_______________________________........@ The Core   ·   A |@Theyra], |@Exit] & |@Shylarah] Collaboration@ The Core   ·   A @Fiber, @Exit & @Shylarah Collaboration
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Exit   
It was hard to tell if the activity spilling in and out of the front entrance of the Core was typical, but for a place that had recently been flooded with RSF and had also had its owner removed by force, it seemed a lot more lively than one might expect. Word was, Hunang’s Dìjī had splintered into rogue cells of resistance operating on their own, leaving a vacuum of power for any one of the many gangs of the Underground to fill. But standing outside the Core, and really everywhere beneath the city, the story was very different. It was as if everyone was reminded why they were forced out of the sun. Reminded who the real enemy was.

The core at the very bottom of The Underground, in a large basin where much of the waste that escaped collection in the city sewers above emptied. The sludge was mostly contained in the troughs lining a central causeway that seemed to empty into the walls themselves. There was no telling where these went. At the far end was a raised platform and the entrance to The Core itself, smothered in noxious fumes that drifted from slow moving, toxic rivers and stretching all the way to the cavern ceiling concealed in the retreating dark. The signature red of faux lava was absent, the large rings lining the walkway to the front doors left off and little more than curved black screens with nothing on them. Instead, lights had been placed on the ground. This was less an area of entertainment now than it was a base of operations.

The front entrance was guarded by two men who were armed with rifles. They held them across their chest and stopped anyone who was entering. On the ground outside the club was what looked like digging equipment, crates and material for a build. Spooled cable and some beams of wood were piled to the side.
shylarah   
It had been almost a week since she vanished. Ryo wasn’t stupid -- He’d picked up on the fact that something was wrong, but had trusted that Ziotea would talk to him about it when she was ready. He had not expected her to just up and leave without a word. He knew she had difficulties with trust, but...had she really thought he’d turn on her over something so stupid as whether she could bend an element?

It hurt.

Almost as much as the possibility that she’d run into something she couldn’t handle, but he wasn’t going to think about that. The timing and her actions lined up too well. And the only person he could really think of who Zi might go to for help as a bender was Hunang.

Of course, word said Hunang was dead. Ryo wasn’t sure if he believed it or not -- if she was dead, wouldn’t the RSF have displayed the body? Either way, her people were still here. They didn’t look particularly welcoming, with two rifle-carrying men guarding the entrance. Ryo had only a knife -- not that he intended to use it. 

He made his way towards the pair of men on guard. 
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The guards’ demeanor remained relaxed, even when they both locked eyes on Ryo. One of them gave him a head nod.

”Business?” He asked, his voice sounded slightly muted as he spoke through a mask covering half his face. 
shylarah   
“I’m looking for someone -- or information about someone, I suppose.” 
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”If it’s Hunang, you’ve heard correctly that she’s gone. Yuri. Zolta is in charge now.” []
shylarah   
Zolta...? Ryo had heard the name, mostly in connection with the Triads -- and the Upper Ring. Damn, if Upper Ring folk were running the gangs now, there was going to be trouble. Trouble he wanted to steer clear of. ’No, it’s...that’s not who I’m looking for. Her name’s Ziotea, she’s got bright orange hair, less than five foot tall. I’m...trying to figure out where she went.” 
Exit   
The guards gave each other a look and then turned again to Ryo. Although already relaxed, their demeanor seemed to soften further. The one already talking to him, let his rifle drop and hang loosely to the side.

”Was she a Bender?” 
shylarah   
“I’m pretty sure she was, yes. Or...well, that she became one in the mess last week.” And why hadn’t she just talked to him about it? He would have gone with, would have gone anywhere for her. 
Exit   
The guard nodded an acknowledgment as if he understood. ”If it helps, they all made it out of the city. Beyond that I have no idea, but I think Yuri may be able to tell you more. Come on…” he beckoned toward the doors for Ryo to follow and then turned to the other guard. ”Get this while I’m gone.”

”Yep.”
shylarah   
Out of the city? So she had left, then. There must be somewhere outside the walls where she thought she’d have a better chance than inside them. 
Exit   
Ryo was taken through the front doors and down a dark hallway that opened up to the landing at the top of a flight of stairs. Already visible here were the scars left behind by whatever fight had taken place. The area was riddled with bullet holes and much of the walls and parts of the ceiling and floor had been damaged as if something large had come barreling through the relatively small corridor. However, much of the debris, bullet casings and whatever blood stains had been left behind had already been cleaned up or collected into piles off to the side. It seemed time had been spent in an attempt to clean the place up.

Heading down the stairs, the main floor of the club was revealed to Ryo slowly, his descent peeling back the low ceiling until he could see clearly what remained of the carnage some few days ago. The landing at the bottom at the stairs was nearly unusable as the thin metal and concrete beneath were chunked away until they no longer resembled steps. In fact much of the area surrounding the stairway had been defaced by bullet impact craters alone. Surprisingly, there were no blood stains here. Opposite this, the club floor and everything in it had been destroyed or at the very least already removed. There were no tables in sight. No stools or sound equipment or even the booth on stage. Half the bar had been smashed through and much of the liquor bottles lay in piles of broken glass.

In the once open dancefloor were more crates, piles of wooden and metal beams, and an odd looking contraption strapped to a pallet not unlike a large synergy rifle or cannon.

Standing near the broken was a man who was quickly joined by a second. The first was oddly well dressed given the location. Dark hair was combed smoothly to one side. He had dark brown eyes and a sharp cut cheek and chin half obscured beneath a well trimmed shadow. He wore a white dress shirt with an unbuttoned collar and no tie that was tucked into black slacks. On his feet were dress shoes, polished despite the Core sitting at the bottom of a bowl catching all of Ba Sing Se’s shit. Covering his hands were a pair of black gloves.

Despite his out of place wear, he was also not wearing a breathing mask but made no signs of finding the tainted air difficult to breathe. Instead, he was fairly relaxed, drinking from a whiskey glass that was missing a glass shard on one end while looking at a pad lying on the remaining section of the bar.

The second man was only slightly older in appearance. He had tightly cropped facial hair, styling gel visible on his head. He had a collared shirt that had stains on it but no tears or even wrinkles, stiff enough to be freshly dry-cleaned. The sleeves were rolled up and revealed a wiry, lean muscle on his forearms, and the polished metal of his mechanical watch and designer sunglasses reflected around whenever there was bright light. He had walked with a slouch and an expression that never seemed to get far from “generally pleasant”.

”Yuri. We got another one looking for a Bender.”

The man with the drink in his hand half turned to Ryo and the guard with a cocked brow. ”Who?” he asked before they’d even crossed halfway to him. He nodded at the guard who abruptly turned and began heading back. 
shylarah   
Both men looked...clean, in a way that Lower Ring folk never were, though one was decidedly better dressed than the other. That one was from the Upper Ring, then -- and the guard addressing him as Yuri confirmed that assessment. Ryo took a steadying breath. ”Her name’s Ziotea. She’s got bright orange hair and stands about this tall--” he held a hand up to the middle of his torso. “Kind of hard to miss. She’d...have her spear with her, if she was heading out of the city.” 
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”And who are you?” Yuri asked and then snapped his fingers at another individual in the room. The man he signaled too shuffled around some boxes and then picked up something out of sight. He brought it around to Yuri and placed it on the bar next to him. The object in question was a rectangular contraption with a lens on one end and a capsule on top. Within the capsule was a bloodied eye with wires protruding out the back that connected into the device itself.

Yuri hit a button on the side and the eye began to blink white light while the lens flickered on and projected a moving image in the space above the ground between all three men. It was a recreation of the goings on at the core entrance though it was impossible to tell exactly when. 
shylarah   
“My name’s Ryo. I’m her partner.” Not spouse -- they’d never done anything so official as that. But more than friends, more than lovers. They’d been together practically their whole lives. He looked curiously at the eye, hiding a wince when he realized it was someone’s actual eye -- well, probably a prosthetic, but still rather gross, with the blood still on it. 
Exit   
”Partner, huh? I take it she didn’t tell you she was leaving. Do you know when she would have come down here?” The projected playback of some dead guard’s point of view continued to scroll quickly, blurring the individuals who came and went and moving them just slow enough to make out individual smudged colors and general body shape. For the most part it was staring in the same general direction, the image projecting the same background. Every now and then it would linger a half a second longer on a particular individual, shifting the guard’s point of view away from the basin backdrop surrounding the core. 
shylarah   
Ryo flinched at the implication. No she hadn’t told him she was leaving. Hadn’t told him anything. Hadn’t confided in him when it really mattered, hadn’t trusted him. Had she ever trusted him? “No, she didn’t,” he said softly. “Um, it...probably would have been morning, six days ago? She’s an early riser, and I’m guessing she came more or less straight here....” 
Exit   
Yuri touched a sequence of buttons on the side and the images jump cut. Still generally the same activity though the position was slightly different than before. Again, the man would pause for a moment to more closely inspect an individual before they were allowed in and the cycle would continue.

”Spirits preserve, it’s like this man never takes a piss.” Yuri took a sip from his glass, emptying it, and then placed it down on the bar. ”Ryo. The good news is, if she showed up, she made it out, but there is some bad news…” Keeping his eyes on the scrolling video, Yuri reached over the bar and retrieved a gun.

A synergy gun.

It was placed down with the barrel facing Ryo. ”...I don’t know a Ryo. Tell me about yourself. What do you do?” Despite the obvious threat, his voice remained light. Friendly. 
shylarah   
Ryo immediately put his hands in the air, trying to show that despite his size and build, he wasn’t a threat. But he was distracted from an explanation by the sight of Ziotea in the recorded image. Indeed, the visual lingered on her for a moment -- she had her sandcloak hood up, but there was no mistaking the red hair, the height, and the spear. His eyes widened, and then threatened to tear up. He started to brush at his eyes, then remembered the gun, and stopped the motion. “I...uh...I’m a -- I guess you’d call me a tinkerer? I fix whatever people bring me -- electronics, mechanical stuff, occasionally a prosthetic. Folks in my part of the Lower Ring know me, but...I’m not surprised you don’t.” 
Fiber   
Ah Jong walked off to the side, looking both men in the eye. He didn’t dare try to interrupt Yuri’s threats, but he paced around the room and said “I’ve heard of him. He’s never done work for me, but I know some people that have used him. No complaints, even heard my boy Jiang had a friend pull his papers at the local RSF station and it came back empty. But, that only gets you so far. I’ve got my people on this job, and I don’t need another. I don’t think you mean trouble, but I don’t think you have much reason to stick around here, either. Understand?”
shylarah   
Ryo’s gaze flicked briefly to the second man. “I’m not...not looking for work. I just want to know where Ziotea went.” He said it with quiet desperation. She’d left the city -- to where? He didn’t know of any other places, much less how to get to them. How was he supposed to follow her if he didn’t know where she was?! 
Fiber   
Ah Jong sighed and adjusted his sunglasses “I know you aren’t looking for work, but there’s a simple principle here. If we go out of our way to help someone, then it’s only fair that they can do something to help us. Ain’t that right, Yuri?” He looked over to his boss, trying to get a read on how he was feeling about the situation. 
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Yuri gave a nod. ”And you can relax. You ain’t gonna die unless you give us a reason. Besides, this is for me. You’re a big guy,” Yuri stated, measuring Ryo’s height with a wave of his hand. ”Take it as a compliment.”

The projection continued to dance on the floor uninterrupted.

”How much do you know about what’s going on right now? I mean everything.” 
shylarah   
Ryo cautiously lowered his hands to his sides. ”I don’t know much,” he replied. ”Just that the accident at the SynEn plant seems to have caused a lot of trouble -- people going violent, others becoming benders. And now people are being taken -- I’m guessing mostly benders, but...well, I wouldn’t be surprised if those helping them vanished too.” 
Exit   
Yuri nodded. ”Yeah, what you’ve been witnessing are the opening moves to a war. None of this was an accident and now your partner is a part of it. And so are you, whether you want to be or not. We all are.” Yuri reached over the bar counter again and retrieved a half empty bottle of some dark liquor before opening it and pouring it into his glass. He stopped when it was about a quarter of the way filled. ”So here’s the deal,” he began again, replacing the top and setting the bottle down. ”We can tell you where she went and we can also get you to her, but we’ll need something in return. Nothing big. Not money. Something you may already be familiar with. But it requires me to kind of…” Yuri made a motion with his hands: a shaky wave as if he were trying to decide something. ”...To kind of fill you in. So what I need to know is how badly do you want to find your friend.”

Yuri took a small sip from his drink, letting the pause linger for a moment so that Ryo could understand the weight of the situation and the seriousness of his ask. He then held up a finger. ”Oh. And you don’t have to worry. If you refuse, you’re free to leave.” 
shylarah   
A war? Spirits, but he was worried now. Ryo swallowed hard. “I want to find her more than anything. I’m in.” Yuri had said it wasn’t a big ask -- so not killing someone. He didn’t know if he could manage that. But anything else, he’d do. 
Exit   
Yuri simply nodded though his expression read as impressed and a little surprised. The response he was given was quick. Resolved. It was clear that nothing further needed to be discussed besides the task at hand, so Yuri wasted no time. ”The explosion has put SynEn on the defense. They’ve been forced to resort to backup reserves of power until they can repair damages and reestablish communication with the power plant. To help stretch those reserves, they’ve begun systematic shut downs of Lower Ring districts. Now, this is bad, yes. But for us, it’s an opportunity.”

Yuri nodded toward the corridor to his left which led to a room. Strangely, the corridor began as steel and concrete before abruptly turning to turned dirt and rock. A sheer section of the floor, walls and ceiling looked as though it had once continued, but whatever other end of the hall it once led to had been ripped away. ”Through there is a network of tunnels. One of these tunnels leads to the prison, the one sitting at the edge of the Middle Ring. The plan right now is to breach the walls. Now obviously there are sensors in the ground detecting digging but these sensors do not share the same grid of power as the prison itself. The net of sensors closest to the Lower Ring runs on Lower Ring power. You see, when the original walls were repositioned, the grid beneath never changed, so… when the power is shut off here, the sensors will go down giving us a window to get in.”

”The only issue we’re having,” Yuri gestured between himself and Ah, ”is the backup. There’s a substation on the surface that will redirect power from the Middle Ring to the Lower Ring to preserve essential systems, the prison sensors being one of them. The switch happens automatically.” He turned to Ah. ”Most of our engineers are tied up down here. You think you could use him for that job?” 
Fiber   
Ah Jong ran his fingers through his hair and said. “If he matches what they say about him, he’ll fit in just fine. And if he doesn’t, well I think word of that will get around and work might be a little scarce. Not worried about that, nah, I know my people and what they say doesn’t steer me wrong often. C’mon, we can get going and maybe you can meet some other of my pals.”
shylarah   
A prison break? Ryo knew most of the folks in the prisons were Lower Ring people who’d just gotten on the wrong side of the law while trying to get by. And taking out the substation’s switch or reprogramming it should be simple enough. “I’ll need some of my tools, but I think this should be a straightforward task,” he said, nodding slowly. He fell in behind the second man.
shylarah Member

the crazy one

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