Pariah #1: New Arrival: Perils of Azure City

by Void

  Pariah #1: New Arrival

  Perils of Azure City

  By Void

  ******

  Published on Amazon by Void

  Copyright 2014 by Void

  Cover Illustration by Isikol

  Everything contained within this story is a work of fiction, and comes under the blanket of fantasy. The story contains graphic and explicit adult scenarios depicting sexual and violent themes that may be offensive to some readers. Nothing depicted in this story is intended to glorify or encourage the reality of that content – it is all purely fantasy.

  Names, characters and places within this story are used fictitiously or are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, alive or dead, or locations, or businesses are unintended and coincidental. All characters depicted in this story are aged 18 or over.

  This story is intended for an adult audience ONLY. Only read if you are aged 18+. Keep out of the reach of minors.

  Contents

  Part One: The Pariah of Azure

  Part Two: Alley Snakes

  Part Three: Underhaven

  Part Four: The Aria

  Part Five: Dark Desires

  Part Six: Integrity

  Epilogue

  Pariah #1: New Arrival

  Perils of Azure City

  Part One: The Pariah of Azure

  Azure City

  There are worse places, to be sure. There are ravaged warzones, cities built solely on corruption, and whole countries that have known nothing but abject misery and hell - I have seen these places. To compare Azure City to them would be... unjust. No, Azure is something else, something altogether more elusive to pin down.

  Where there are places that are wholly defined by the worst aspects of this world, Azure defines itself on the end of both spectrums. The very best mixed in with the very worst, like a set of scales barely managing to keep balance between two unimaginable counter weights - always threatening to lurch violently to one extreme or the other. It is a city at odds with itself, ever teetering on the edge as its polar identities clash.

  Perhaps it is the disparity between these extremes that makes Azure seem so distasteful. Here there is true virtue and humility, and it stands in stark contrast to the avarice and filth that it rubs shoulders with. Many a journalist (and politician) enjoy describing this as a city of black and white, with clearly defined borders marking out where stands the purely good, and where lie the objectively evil.

  The reality, though, is that the two inevitably mix, leaving a city of grey that is trapped in twilight and prevented from reaching the soaring heights of its potential. The worst people of this world mingle their lives with the best of us.

  And there is suffering.

  The advent of the meta human which started around thirty years ago has only exacerbated the situation. The cause is uncertain, and still a topic of great debate between academics. The main arguments sway between an irregular solar flare, a natural step along human evolution, alien intervention, or a combination of one or both. Whatever the cause, the effect was undisputable. A very small minority of people across the globe began exhibiting powers and ability beyond the ken of conventional science. What made it that much harder to understand was the lack of any universality to it. A girl in Peru has the ability to morph her body into the shape of any other human, while a boy in France can control the flow of electricity, while in China an elderly woman suddenly has the ability to possess people - there was no order to it, no sense.

  The meta human was understandably feared and coveted in equal measure. The need to understand how it was possible, to understand how they do the things that they do caused many to be persecuted in the early years. Whether by fear or curiosity, or likely both, many metas were severely mistreated; unethically experimented on, imprisoned indefinitely, or simply executed. Any chance at reasonably integrating them into society was woefully squandered.

  There were conflicts. Some were people pushed too far, finally lashing out and fighting back. Others were bad men and women who used their new found power as license to circumvent the law and further their own ends. Others still were simple accidents by those who were ill-equipped to manage their powers. These events widened the schism and hardened attitudes on both sides. Those metas that didn't go underground were usually hunted by their own governments.

  Despite it all, I have some sympathy for the governments and corporations that stepped in. How do you regulate the man that can turn invisible at will? He can break your laws and do so without your pre-established measures from preventing him. Do you simply hope he will obey the law by sheer power of good will? What happens if he does break the law? What happens if he turns to terrorism? There could be no single failsafe because each meta was different and would need different precautions specifically suited to them in order to contain them. It was a problem that left no easy solution, I acknowledge that. If you pressed me on the topic, I might even admit that I don't know what should have been done.

  I might admit that.

  Whatever the case, what was done was all wrong. It led to the vast majority of modern day metas being exiled figures living beyond the scope of civil justice. Many turned to crime. Many turned to things even worse than crime. The situation spiralled, perpetuated, and the world is now a much more dangerous place for it.

  Especially Azure City.

  Perhaps it was the allure of the big city, the promise of a bright new start at the pinnacle of the western world. More likely it was the pre-established criminal cartels that riddled the city like a pox. Maybe you came to hide, maybe you came to work for a criminal syndicate, maybe you came to find others like you - but you came to Azure City. Over the years Azure City seems to have called out to the meta world and it has become something of a focus point for the exiles.

  The conflict for Azure's soul seems a fitting metaphor for the conflict within meta society concerning what their place is in the world. Maybe that's why they like Azure.

  I think that is why I came; my own uncertainty over my place in the world. What better place could there be to decide that than Azure City, where the good meets the bad? Perhaps I just came to hurt people... or to protect people - I have certainly done a fair amount of both since I arrived here.

  My name is Evelyn Lawson.

  I was born twenty-five years ago to unassuming parents in a nice little town out in the backend of nowhere. My early life was quaint; it was nice. I developed my meta abilities around the age of three, when I blew out the kitchen wall rather than my birthday candles. It wasn't until many years later that someone gave a name for what I do.

  Telekinesis.

  It’s a fancy word simply meaning that I can move objects with my mind, given enough focus. Without clear focus I can't much do anything more than the average human being, but with it? I can connect with a point at the centre of my attention and create force.

  During those early years I did all that I could to keep my powers hidden. My parents knew what awaited me if the truth ever came out, and they did their best to teach me to control it to the point that it wouldn't spring up when it wasn't welcome. Of course it would pop up now and again, but for the most part we coped.

  Then one day, nearing my sixteenth, a group of drifters came to our town. Each one of them was a meta. They were kids, really, none older than twenty-one. They were crazed; drunk on power, and filled with fear and anger from the recent persecution that they had suffered.

  They had excuses. Of course they did.

  They ran amuck, doing as they pleased, exerting their will on people that they now considered beneath them. People suffered. My home town, the place of my serene childhoo
d, was changed into a nightmare. When real authorities turned up to challenge them, the resulting conflict pulverised what was left of the town that hadn't already fallen to the hedonistic ravages of the drifters. When the smoke cleared the survivors of the drifters had scattered and fled, and one of the most notorious chapters in early meta history had been finished.

  The siege of Everwood Springs.

  It took everything from me - my family, my friends, my home, the future woman I might have become. The things I had seen in that time tormented me together with my utter helplessness to prevent it, to protect myself or the ones I cared for. I was left with a lot of anger. Anger at the animals who had destroyed my life, anger at the government that could not protect us, anger at society for allowing this chain of events to take place, and most of all I was angry at myself. I was consumed by rage - I would have drowned in it.

  I took to a life on the road, foolishly trying to find the remains of the gang in order to enact some kind of vengeance. I didn't care about hiding my power; I only cared about using it to hurt the people that had wronged me. In that time my misguided anger caused me to do a number of things that I'm not proud of, and I would certainly have spiralled down that path had someone not stopped me.

  My saviour was an unlikely one. I had finally tracked one of the gang down to a drug-running biker cartel operating out of an abandoned rest stop in southern Texas. My plan then was to simply confront them and do as much harm as I could until I was unable to do more - be that because they killed me, or because I killed them. When I arrived they had all already been beaten senseless and lay sprawled on the floor at the feet of the greatest man that I have ever known.

  His name was Shingen Kamura, and he had been a bounty hunter of sorts. He wasn't a meta, but he was terrifyingly skilled and equipped. He had once been a powerful enforcer for a Japanese criminal association by the name of 'Five Shadows' before events in his life had given him a radical new perspective. He used his extensive training and resources from the Five Shadows to effectively destroy them from within. After that he had become a sort of vigilante, traveling the world with many passports and diffusing situations which local authorities might be struggling with. This usually meant hunting down especially dangerous people and handing them over to an appropriate jailer. He wasn't after money or respect; he simply wished to make the world a safer place. Looking at it like that, I feel he was a superhero long before the world’s media started using the term.

  He had tracked this lot down purely because of the danger they posed, and had incapacitated them with non-lethal force in order to cart them off to the local authorities. Back then I could not understand that kind of altruism. I wanted these men - one of them in particular - dead and I would have done anything to do it. Kamura saw me for the wounded animal that I was, and I think he took pity on me... or perhaps he wished to protect the world from the person I was becoming, I'm not sure. He didn't try to talk me down, he knew that I wouldn't hear reason, so he simply knocked me unconscious.

  When I awoke some time later I was bound and blindfolded in a warm room. Kamura spoke to me then, measuring and assessing my character while I could not force him to fight me - when I had no choice but to speak or, at the very least, listen. We conversed like that for many hours.

  They were the most important hours of my life.

  It had been the first time I had really spoken to someone since Everwood, and it was... emotional. He didn't try to smother me in kindness or platitudes of sympathy; he simply listened and responded with the cold truth.

  The cold truth was that I was broken, and that I was set upon a path that would see me become just like the people I was hunting.

  He gave me a choice. I could choose to go on stumbling along the path of hate and regret like I was, or I could choose to try and fix myself - to make something greater of myself. Of course, he also made it clear that he would hand me in to the tender mercies of the US government as a confirmed meta if I chose not to change - which helped along my decision a little bit.

  Choosing to change involved staying under the guardianship of Kamura and thus becoming the man's understudy. At the time it felt like I was a prisoner and I rebelled against him wherever possible. I must have been an absolute nightmare for him - but he managed it well.

  The first few years with him were tumultuous and a very steep learning curve for me. He equipped me with a new identity and I travelled the world with him, learning from him and watching how he operated. He and I clashed many times; perhaps like a teenage girl might clash with her parents, but increasingly we developed an understanding. I, in particular, started to mature and gain some mastery over my past. Soon he was addressing my meta ability and teaching me to hone it as best he could, and not long after that he started allowing me to assist him on his various marks.

  Some might think it cruel to bring a young woman into his world. That perhaps he should have left me; that taking me under his wing was a selfish act of a lonely man. His world was a violent one, with frightening people lurking behind each new target, I will definitely grant that. Equally, while I was being educated as any teenager should be, I was being vigorously trained in the arts of violence. These are not things for your average person, but they were most definitely what I needed. Violence had already forced itself upon my life and I had been broken long before I stood before Kamura. Knowing he could not reverse time, he instead sought to make the best of me as I was and guide me to be a force for good - for my own sake even more than the sake of others.

  By the time I was twenty-three I was a different creature altogether than the helpless girl staring out over her devastated home in Everwood Springs. I was an apex hunter; a force not to be trifled with. I also liked my life. I liked the poetry that I was bringing a kind of justice to people not dissimilar from the pack that killed my family. Kamura and I lived in balance with each other, and we were a great team when it came to doing what we did. I think perhaps I was content... maybe even happy.

  Of course, nothing in this life lasts forever.

  It all came to an end one fateful night in Hong Kong. A terrorist cell by the name of 'Black Hydra' had amassed a small army of metas and professional thugs, and was tightening its grip around the city - inveigling itself into everything, gradually corrupting the whole city - like a giant plague-ridden snake crushing its prey. Kamura and I sought to lay a deathblow on the organisation, taking them out from the top down. This meant infiltrating the Tsen Yun building near the centre of the financial district, from where the Hydra was based. The plan had been a good one, mainly hinging on taking out the cell's leaders and leaving them unable to operate as they had before - making them easy pickings thereafter. The odds were pretty steep but we were pretty sure of ourselves.

  Perhaps we had gotten too confident.

  We had not counted on the remnants of the Five Shadows also being involved - expressly to hunt down Kamura for his past betrayal. It was the most trying night of my life and I shall never forget those frantic hours in the Tsen Yun building, fighting tooth and claw with some of this world's real monsters. If I ever had any qualms about facing down my own death then I well and truly dealt with them that night. When the sun rose the next day, the Hydra had been slain and the phantoms of the Five Shadows had been exorcised - but Shingen Kamura was dead. We had apprehended the whole lot of them, delivering a salvation of sorts to the entire region, but the cost had been high.

  After I had seen to Kamura's burial, I was left with the pressing question of what to do with my life without his guidance. I had always followed his lead and now I was in a world without him; back with bitter regret and a bubbling anger.

  And so Azure City called to me.

  Kamura had long been planning to head to Azure City; it was fast becoming a hotspot for the kind of activity that attracted an eye like his. The growing meta community, the elaborate organised crime, the endemic corruption, and the alarming density of unadulterated psychopaths; it was a natural target. Apparently he wasn
't the only one to consider it so. What newsfeed we saw often reported clashes within the city involving vigilantes. Prominently, one of the first people to ever be dubbed 'superhero' was a heroine by the name of Lady Avalon, who seemed to be a powerful meta taking to the streets in a costume in order to protect the people. Not long after her, a more secretive, seemingly non-meta heroine appeared by the name of Night Spectre, and the two separate heroines seemed to maintain a kind of order in the city. It is probably why Kamura kept holding off our trip - perhaps he thought the city was guarded enough.

  However, as I sat listening to worsening reports of the state of Azure City, the prospect of heading back to the states and commencing the work that Kamura had long planned to do gave me a sense of direction. It just felt right. So I took what resources that Kamura had left me, and made my move back home to America.

  I brought back my true identity of Evelyn Lawson and made sure to craft a life for myself such that I wouldn't need to be a non-existent shadow all the time. My finances from Kamura left me quite secure but even so I started a modest career for myself as a free-lance artist - perhaps the last real talent of my life before all the violence came - and I made for Azure.

  I came for many things: Kamura's legacy, to find some kind of home, to try to protect people, to take out my anger on people deserving of the treatment... But I think most of all, I came simply to try and find my way - to find out what kind of person I am with only myself to decide right from wrong.

  I eschewed hiding in the shadows as Kamura had done, and instead followed in the footsteps of the City's current guardians. I would not hide... or at least I would claim ownership of my own actions. The gear I had used from my old life hunting marks more than sufficed for a 'heroine' costume, all I needed to do was go bolder than Kamura liked to do - to announce myself. The way I see it, heroes mean something to society as symbols. Be that a symbol of hope to those who are oppressed, or a symbol of terror to those who would abuse others. With Azure City's conflicted identity, these symbols matter a great deal. So be a bright, vivid, undeniable symbol. Be a beacon that washes out all the darkness and leaves only light.