24XX

[flames]

Flames clutched his battered cloak closer to his body as the wind roared around him. Teeth barred and a slight growl escaping his throat, he fights to keep on moving forward as he makes through the wasteland between the cities. As dangerous as his journey has been so far, he considers himself thankful that he knows these safe routes where the air is still just barely clean enough to choke down and the radiation levels are low enough to prevent him glowing green.
Trying to ignore the wind blasting rocks, sand and other debris at him and taking care not to slip as he climbs up and down the countless hills made of rubble that span the landscape, he ponders on his destination: Sanctuary City. Perhaps the oldest and smallest of the cities under the Emperor's rule, it was also the furthest away from the others and one that had relatively few Officials enforcing their power upon it. So far away from the rest of civilisation, it found itself rarely getting visits from the Emperor's Army and it was often the last stop wanted men and women made before they tried their luck in the outside world, searching desperately for those few towns and villages that remained standing.

How appropriate that after all these years, the first city he should return to would be the last one he left, he mused. Glancing down at the holstered blaster by his thigh and with a glance out of the corner of his eye to the weapon strapped to his back, he adjusted his cloak once more to conceal his weapons as the wind died down. The silence was deafening.
A deep breath and his eyes were set on the buildings that loomed in the distance, mostly archaic and in need of repair, but standing with a proud defiance to the world nonetheless. A small smile graced his lips as he made his way to the city that had proved its worth to rebels in the wars and would now find a purpose once more.

Things were just beginning...

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin's ocular senses kicked in as his body finished the self-diagnostics that had started a day after the container was breached. He took a few seconds to activate his claws, and even less to cut his way out of the covering. His sensors detected that the room was warmer than what was considered the norm for storage, and soon pointed out the openings in the ceiling and the very ajar door. His nostril ports made a sound similar to a vacuum cleaner before stopping to analyze the air he just took in.
Smog, hints of neurotoxin , but breathable nonetheless. Radiation levels acceptable for optimum performance. In the quiet of the ruined storage building, the thudding of metal against pavement was broadcasted in every corner as Chronin took his first steps since activation and his last steps out of the building that created him...

[Boone Zofox]

Boone choked down the last gulp of his "purified" water. He had been camped out on a hillside near sanctuary city for the past two nights, wondering whether or not he would find the resistance here, or if everything he had heard was just nonsense. Either way, he had to enter the city now, with little food and no water, there was no way he could last any longer out here by himself. He tore down the tarp he was using as a makeshift tent and stuffed it into his backpack, hoisting it over his shoulder, picked up his guitar case, and headed toward the city.

[flames]

Flames paused, still a little short of the city boundaries. Whilst unofficially Sanctuary City was most people's best bet at enduring the oppression (short of trekking into the outside world and hunting down the hidden settlements of course), officially it was still a city underneath the Emperor's rule. This meant that although some buildings were bordering on ancient and the Emperor's power was fairly weak here, the city did possess a more modern protective wall neat its entrances which had guards overseeing those who entered and left.
To say such occurences was rare would be an understatement. Trade did occur between the cities and supplies did have to arrive, but Sanctuary City was so far from the others that travellers were somewhat rare and suspicious. Whilst other people may be able to get by the guards with official paperwork or simply by "dropping a few credits whilst the guard looks the other way", Flames could hardly do either, being away from the cities so long. What few credits he had would likely not suffice to both bribe the guards and get further supplies, but this was hardly the biggest issue.

Indeed, the larger issue was the fact that he was approaching from the exact opposite direction of the other cities, near one of the much smaller gates to the city. This would naturally gather attention and he couldn't trust the guards even if he bribed them to keep quiet. As the Anthro remained out of sight, musing over his options he wished that he had been able to procure one of those stun weapons that seemed to be popular amongst Officials and the guards.
Unfortunately he had to make do with what he had and thankfully there was only one guard. Sitting down behind a dead tree, out of sight of the one bored looking guard by the gate, Flames worked on a plan to gain entrance with as little fuss as possible...

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin's eyes adjusted to the light coming in, quickly shrinking to beads of blue as the landscape became visible to him. The second air test had him revise the previous statement of breathable, and his personality counted himself lucky for not needing to breathe like the humans and anthros he was designed to recognize. He continued to through the land, his GPS looking for him before linking up to his HUD. He could see the map giving him a trail to a place called "Unknown City", and only half a mile to go before he would be in sight of it.

[Boone Zofox]

Boone approached the front gates, they weren't impressively enormous, but they were still imposing. As he approached the gate one of the guards held out a hand announcing, halt, state your business.
Boone simply pulled out his Badge from Teravale (The village he used to be chief of enforcement at, before it was destroyed). The guards bravado faltered for a second, obviously Boone outranked him. But he still needed to check.
What's in the case.
It's a heavy caliber Mercenary rail gun. He said sarcastically, what do you think it is. The guard let him pass, sometimes there were perks to still being considered an official, although if the guard had checked closer, he would have been able to tell the ID was outdated.

[flames]

Flames' idea of "as little fuss as possible" apparently involved throwing a rock against part of the wall near the gate the guard was stationed at. The noise and movement in the corner of the guard's vision led to him abandoning his post and looking too and fro for what had caused the disturbance in his otherwise dull day. Just as he about to discount it as his imagination and was returning to his post, a single shot of plasma sounded somewhere behind him and impacted the ground a little way in front of a dead tree.
The guard readied his own MK-III in one hand and a stun baton in his other. Moving cautiously and looking for anything out of the usual, he moved towards the tree. A sound from near a pile of debris past the tree caused the guard to focus on the debris and what could be hiding near it, totally ignoring the tree as he moved past it and-

THUNK! The guard's eyes rolled into the back of his head and he collapsed onto the ground. Flames stood behind him, the hilt of his melee weapon in his hand but with the weapon clearly deactivated. "Pfft, didn't think that would actually work", he thought to himself as he stepped away from the tree, glad that the guard hadn't seen that the cause of the disturbance of the debris was actually Flames just throwing another rock at a rather unstable piece of rubble in the pile.
Thankful that the guards clearly hadn't been trained to call for assistance when something suspicious was occurring, that this gate was one of many without surveillance and that the tricked man hadn't been wearing any head protection, Flames decided what to do with the unconscious body. Upon looking back on the sheer insanity of what he had just done he decided to continue with his madness, half-carrying and half-dragging the man back to his post where he quickly found several bottles of alcohol near where the guard had been standing. Obviously it was a very boring job as several bottles were already empty. The Anthro slumped the guard's body against the his post, scattered some of the bottles near him and spilled one of the non-empty bottles on the ground around the guard and onto his uniform before leaving the half-empty bottle near his hand.

"Perfect", the fox thought to himself. The guard was probably a little tipsy already and with the scene like this nobody will believe him even if he does remember anything unusual. And with his ridiculously unlikely to succeed plan actually a success, he continued into Sanctuary City, weapons and what few supplies remained hidden beneath his traveller's cloak.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin continued following the map that was set as a sandstorm obscured his distant vision. He sprayed air out of his jets, keeping the sand from getting under his armor and as far away from his inner circuitry as possible. He turned on his motion sensor, then turned it off as the sandstorm had completely covered the display in 'movement'. I don't think I would be designed with a motion sensor this sensitive if sandstorms were common. Most logical reason is that my activation has been delayed for quite some time. Most troubling...

[Boone Zofox]

Boone sat alone in the room he had rented until he could find the rebels. The only problem was he had no idea how to find them. All he had heard was that a large amount of them were somewhere in this city. He scratched the fur around his bionic eye, why does it always itch there, he thought idly to himself. He stared at the bionic half of his body. None of the parts used to rebuild him were new, most were rusty to the point where it blended in with his fur, but he liked it. These additions made him better, especially his eye, which made him more accurate with his Mercenary rail gun then anyone out there, or so he liked to think.
Well at least getting here was succesful, he thought while laying back on the creaky spring mattress, I'll just have to see what I can do tomorrow.

[flames]

As Flames entered the city he was quite thankful that the area near this entrance was empty of other people, who might be a bit taken back by his gaping. To see the city from the distance was one thing, to hear about it was another, but to be inside it was completely different.
He'd gotten so used to the small towns and quaint tiny villages and the endless wastelands with the occasional piece of somewhat healthy landscape still intact...he'd quite forgotten just how large the cities were. And to think that in the past they would have been so much larger, so much more alive...

He shook his head and returned to a fairly neutral expression. Truth be told it had to have been at least 10 years since he'd last been in any of the cities and he was pretty much making it all up as he went along. Sure, he had what information he had managed to gleam from the countless settlements outside the Emperor's control, but that information didn't amount to much. Most homes had been destroyed or struck by natural disaster, some were reduced to but a few people slowly dying and others wanted to completely ignore what was out there.
Only a few wished to do something about it and out of those even fewer actually had any ties to resistance groups. The information was outdated to be sure, but Flames knew that somewhere in this city, the main resistance movement hid and planned. He was unsure how to best go about finding them or convincing them he was trustworthy, as there were indeed a good few Anthros and Androids who were actually spies...just as there would be the occasional human who saw what his fellow man was doing as wrong and decide to join the resistance.

"Still", he mused to himself as he headed closer to more active parts of the city and nobody took any notice of him. "I should worry about that after I've got some more supplies."
He made his way deeper into the city to where there seemed to be a small marketplace of sorts...

[Boone Zofox]

I hate cities, Boone thought to himself while traveling the streets, Too many humans, too many prying eyes. He checked the piece of paper he was holding again, confirming the address for the 10th time. He had only been in Sanctuary for 2 days, and already he was hating it, but earlier in the day he had finally caught a break in searching for the resistance. His sour demeanor and attitude must have screamed Anarchists because he was approached, subtly, by another anthro, "Pain and suffering shouldn't be a common occurance, Emperor Draconis sits on his throne letting the land die. Change is coming though, come here if you're interested," he had said, passing Boone a slip of paper with an address and time on it. "We're fighting for a better tomorrow brother," and with that he was gone.

[[Sov]]

Katayida was near the exit of her underground dwelling, and could hear the howling winds above the wooden shelter doors. The sound alone sent chills running through her spine, but she had made a promise, and intended to keep it. She lifted her backpack up to resettle it on her shoulders because she knew there was a few miles to trudge along in the sand before she got to Sanctuary City. She toyed with her bracelet nervously before pulling the collar of her coat up to protect her neck from the roaring sands above. "Sand storms are always fun," she thought, but wasn't very happy to be encountering one "maybe it will lighten up by the time I get there." She pulled her jacket closed, and tugged at her collar once more before opening the tunnel doors and entering above ground. She squinted, because though it was hazy it was still brighter than her eyes were used to. Gripping her staff tightly in her right hand, and holding her coat up to block the sandy wind from attacking her eyes and face she moved towards the direction of the city.

Kay knew there was some sort of resistance forming in Sanctuary to rebuild a better tomorrow, but wasn't really sure where to begin looking for them once she arrived, only whispers of it had traveled through the tunnels. She kept moving forward now using her staff as more of a walking stick to help her navigate the dunes, and desolate terrace. Finally the borders of the city were in plain sight "dealing with the guards isn't going to be easy" she thought, and pondered what tactic she would use to get past them. She only knew stories of Sanctuary City as her family spoke highly of it, and often, and how wonderful it could be. Though she knew other stories of it being a horrid place, not much better than any other city, only with less radiation. Pffft, as if that mattered to Katayida anyway.

Katayida walked to the entrance of the city, expecting there to be gates, bridges, motes, and lots of guards. Instead, she was shockingly surprised to find one guard sitting outside in a slump at the gate passed out from drinking too much booze! The mare chuckled, "well this is a lot easier than I thought it would be." The guard stirred, "Wha-ah-whozzare?" he slurred and tried to sit up rubbing his head, and looking more disoriented than she'd ever seen any individual before. "Erm...I" Katayida stuttered, and decided to just move past once the guards head slumped over onto his chest again.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chronin arrived at the city roughly the same time Katayida had, even though they had made no contact the entire time. He however, was not able to sneak in as he stood over most of the inhabitants, and his coloration only enhanced his uniqueness. In a minute or two, three guards had pulled him out of the crowd of refugees and merchants and held him at gun point by the walls.

"Look what we have here... a war-time android. Boss would like to have him rewired." Another guard looked at him as if he was an idiot.

"Of all the people you want to give more power to, you want the Boss to have this one?! To heck with that, lets make him ours!" Chronin stood there, his eyes running a scan of all the equipment, then giving the emotional response of an inward sigh, he slowly shook his head.

"Your weapons are in poor condition at best, I would be amazed if your pistol could even scratch my pa-" A bullet pinged off his armor, and he glared at the guard with the gun.

"Just shut up and stand there, that is an order!" Chronin looked at him with curiosity, but he still had to respond to hostile actions...

The guards jumped back and the crowd panicked as Chronin shot jets of fire from his body and effectively immolated himself and everything within three feet of him.

"Your authority does not concern me..."

[Self-sain]

Meredith stood in front of the city limit, the mighty walls showing nothing but hostility. As she walked towards the gate, two guardsmen came out, eying her, before confronting her.
  "Now what is such a pretty lady doing out her alone? You know it isn't safe?" One of the guardsmen said with a smirk. Meredith opened her mouth to begin speaking but was cut off.
  "More importantly, how is such a pretty thing going to get into our city?" The other guardsmen let out a chuckle, Meredith rolled her eyes as she began to got through a small pouch. "I'm sorry mama, we can't take your money... but we wouldn't mind finding some other way for you to repay the favor." The guardsmen reached to touch Meredith's face, but she wouldn't have it. She grabbed the mans hand, pulling him towards her before twisting his wrist and pushing him back snapping his wrist with him falling to the floor. The other guardsmen, surprised by the female, raised a baton to strike the women down, but he had her Mp4 that was strapped around her covered by her coat pointed at his face.
  "If you move I will shoot you. Now you simple minded fools, look at what is in my hand." She and her barrel eyed down the man, her words as cold as her eyes. In her hand was an official contract that granted Meredith into any city until the contract expired. The man nodded, and then Meredith proceeded to walk into the city with a large grin on her face. Now was the fun part, she were to locate the resistents grop and pay the leader a visit.

[flames]

Flames had been faring relatively well, all things considered. He'd managed to acquire some further supplies and he'd been able to keep a low profile so far. He'd heard some disturbances in the distance and although he wished to investigate and possibly lend his aid, he grudgingly reminded himself that he still had to recover from his long journey and some previous wounds. Although mostly healed they still flared up from time to time and he had to admit that his rationing had kept him a bit weaker than usual.
"That's one problem I don't have to worry about now, though." The cloaked anthro thought to himself as he rested against an alleyway way in one of the quieter parts of the city. Sure he was now broke but he had managed to acquire a cheap portable water purifier and a good supply of old food tabs. Sure the former probably wouldn't be able to make entirely pure water, but he was fairly certain it would at least make water drinkable, if not pleasant. On a similar vein, the food tabs weren't the most pleasant or filling things to eat in the world, but they did make for a good supply of daily nutrients and remained safe to eat for a very long time.

A voice shook him from his thoughts. A quick glance around him confirmed that he was no longer alone in the alley. A few humans were around him and none of them bothered to hide their clear contempt for the anthro. One of them who looked particularly vicious approached him and sneered. "We don't like your sort in OUR territory, you got that you sneaky fox?"
The man, who appeared to be their leader, made a show of drawing his weapon, a battered MK-II, as the others also levelled their weapons at the cloaked fox. Flames didn't even flinch, although an eyebrow was raised at the crude metal clubs a few of the humans held and the arm cannon that revealed one of their group as an android.
"I apologise gentleman on intruding upon your area and I must regretfully inform you all that if it is money you seek, I have none to spare." The cloaked figure said calmly and politely with only a hint of amusement in his voice.

Whatever they had been expecting, it wasn't the calm reaction that met them. Just as the leader's frown deepened and he was about to squeeze this trigger to give the Anthro a piece of his mind, Flames revealed his fangs in the briefest of smiles as he blurred into motion, his crimson eyes burning all the time. There was chaos, confusion and a few shots were fired before the last body hit the ground.
The fox stopped, caught his breath for a moment and glanced down at the unconscious humans before his eyes flickered over to where the android remained standing, clutching what had previously been his arm cannon, which was currently lying on the ground. She was almost indistinguishable from a human were it not for the sparked wires and leaking fluid that the remains of her limb revealed. Fairly young in appearance and clearly she'd been having a hard time in life judging from the numerous cuts and minor burns on her synthetic skin.

Flames approached her slowly as she flinched and shuddered, unable to move, still staring with a mixture of horror and awe at the bodies laid out before her. As the anthro came closer she clenched her eyes shut. Time passed. She opened her eyes again and the fox was gone. She turned around to see that he'd just wordlessly walked past her. He stopped and simply stated "They should be sore and angry but mostly unharmed when they wake up. I'd suggest that you don't stay around unless you want them to harm you further."
He looked back with a little gleam in his eyes and simply said to her with a hint of mischief "Now would be a great time to taste freedom, huh?" before he turned back and vanished off into the city. The android remained still for another few minutes before she decided to take the stranger's advice and leave her tormentors who had captured her but a few weeks ago.

As for Flames himself, he was glad he was able to get away with that and avoid using lethal force. The idiots had little more than reinforced kevlar and their clothes for protection and thus the simple thugs were little match for one who had fought for his life with some of the wild, mutated beasts that roamed the more polluted areas far from any city. None of them were trained for combat in the slightest and probably hadn't even run afoul of the guards before, simply choosing to do their activities out of sight and with minorities.
Even the incompetent guard Flames had dealt with to get in could have probably dealt with them in a flat-out fire fight. And with that thought and a quick wish that the android got to safety, Flames searched for somewhere else where he could rest undisturbed...