Then I looked around, my eyes blinking rapidly as they adjusted to the sudden change in illumination and atmosphere.
I appeared to be in a filthy, overflowing, trash-strewn alleyway, tucked away in some unfamiliar, grimy residential neighbourhood.
I walked straight out into the bustling, noisy street, and in such a short goddamn time, my ragged, blood-soaked, and generally disreputable appearance attracted a few openly curious, and distinctly hostile, stares from various prim and proper passers-by.
I looked right and then left, my head swiveling like a nervous bird, trying to figure out where the fuck I actually was in this sprawling, indifferent city.
I had no fucking clue, none at all, but it was crystal clear, from a single glance, that I was somewhere deep within the affluent, well-policed Conquest district.
This was obvious based on the imposing, well-maintained buildings, the clean, perfectly paved roads, the almost breathable, relatively unpolluted smell of the air, and the expensive, fashionable clothes worn by the people that hurried past me, pointedly avoiding any eye contact, their faces masks of disdain.
Fucking luxurious, a whole different, alien world compared to the shit I was used to.
I didn't recognize a single damn landmark here, not one familiar building or street sign, and I sure as hell didn't dare try to approach anyone to ask for directions; that would be suicide.
Best case scenario – some nosy, public-spirited fucker would immediately report my suspicious ass to the local policemen or, even worse, Enforcers.
They would then undoubtedly proceed to beat me up for their own amusement, drag my sorry carcass to their station, before finally, magnanimously, telling me to bail myself out with some of my hard-earned, precious shits.
And the worst case scenario – some local, territorial street gang would immediately realize what I am, a vulnerable, out-of-place outsider, clock my obviously loaded backpack, and then quickly find a quiet, secluded way to corner me before beating me senseless, robbing me blind of everything I had, and then, quite possibly, fucking killing me just for the hell of it, or to make an example.
I just walked slowly, deliberately, along the edge of the side-walk, trying to blend in with the shadows, my eyes darting around constantly, looking at addresses posted on the buildings and the names on the street signs, desperately trying to read the unfamiliar, complex Kanji.
I did this for several tens of agonizing, frustrating minutes, basically just going to and fro aimlessly on that same, alien stretch of side-walk, feeling more lost and exposed with each passing moment (it was bloody fucking confusing, and I was getting absolutely nowhere fast).
As I trudged by a certain fancy-looking, brightly lit shop that I was depressingly sure I'd already walked past at least twice before, a stern-faced, bald old man, wearing a clean, crisp, white apron, suddenly walked out from its entrance and directly up to me.
He asked, his voice soft, almost gentle, yet with an undeniable, steely undercurrent of harshness and suspicion, "What you doin' hangin' around here, kid? You lost or somethin'?"
I instinctively gripped my backpack strap tighter, my knuckles showing white, and quickly, covertly, sized him up with a practiced, wary eye.
This motherfucker, despite his age and seemingly benign appearance, might just be lookin' to try something funny, something predatory.
Crooks and assorted other lowlifes, after all, do come in all damn ages, shapes, and sizes.
He was also an Evolve, he felt noticeably weaker than me, as an Evolve.
I decided, fuck it, to just walk right on by the nosy old idiot and continue what I was doing, minding my own damn business.
"Boy, I don't care what you think you have in that bag there, or whatever the hell is going through your fucking little gutter-snipe mind right now.
I just want you to get the hell out of here, right now.
You are scaring away my paying customers," he said, his voice now laced with open irritation, as he gestured sharply with his thumb back towards the brightly lit shop he'd just emerged from.
I glanced over to where he was pointing and saw that there were indeed about half a dozen well-dressed people inside the shop, all now openly watching us, their faces a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity, as the old man talked to me.
Some of them even appeared to be holding up their fancy, expensive phones, their screens glowing, while pointedly staring right at me.
They wanted me to know, the smug bastards, that they could call the police or summon the goddamn Enforcers in a heartbeat if needed.
I looked back at the old man, my face a mask of indifference, and said coldly, my voice flat, "I'm trying to get back to Downtown Sumiyoshi."
"Not surprised in the least," he whispered, more to himself, underneath his breath, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes, before finally speaking up, his voice all business now.
"Then what you should be doin' is this – you will go straight down this here road, then cross over to your left at the next major intersection, and go straight down that new road.
After you pass two more main street entrances, cross over to your right and then walk down just a little bit further.
You will see a station where you can board a train to Abeno-East terminal station.
From there, you will then need to take another train to Abeno-South 1st metro train station.
Then, from that station, you can finally board the train that's heading directly to Sumiyoshi train station."
He said all that in a rapid-fire, no-nonsense tone, making sharp, precise gestures with his hands as he spoke, presumably to help me understand the directions better, as if I were a complete fucking moron.
"Should I say all that shit again, or maybe write it down for you, boy?" he asked, his voice now dripping with undisguised annoyance and impatience.
"No," I replied curtly, my own patience wearing thin.
"Okay then. I don't want your thanks, or any of your gutter trouble. Just get the hell out of here… Your very presence is disturbing, bad for business," he said dismissively, using his hand to wave, to shoo me away like I was some stray, diseased dog.
I just looked at the gawking people still peering out from inside his shop, then back at his stern, unforgiving face for a long moment, before finally turning and leaving without another goddamn word.
*In the Coffee Shop
As the grime-covered thug, reeking of dirt, old ash, stale blood, and other unidentifiable, foul-smelling coloured-liquids, finally shuffled away, I went back into my shop.
I addressed my customers and my employees, who all seemed to still be visibly on edge, their conversations halted.
"It's quite alright, everyone… He was just a bit lost, and he is leaving now," I said, injecting a reassuring, calm tone into my voice.
"Thank God! I really thought something bad was going to happen when you went outside to talk to him like that," a rather portly young man with a prominent, fleshy nose, probably in his late twenties, said, his face still visibly sweating with relief.
Before I could properly respond to his somewhat dramatic comment, a woman with a similarly sized, distinctive nose, who was sitting opposite the young man at a small table, asked with genuine curiosity.
"How did someone like him get so lost, to end up all the way out here, exactly?"
"He seems to be one of those so-called Mercenary-Guards, probably from the Sumiyoshi district, based on his general appearance, the state of his clothes, and that desperate, hunted look in his eyes.
And as for how he got here…" I paused, looking back at her thoughtfully, then continued.
"A Gate apparently opened up a few blocks down from here earlier this week.
It is, of course, completely contained by one of the local Towers now, so he is most likely coming from there, having just crawled out.
I served as a Guard for a couple of different Towers myself, back in my younger days, and I know his kind of people like the back of my own hand.
Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, it's far better for everyone if we just let him crawl back to whatever wretched hole he crawled out from, instead of calling in the Enforcers on him.
That would just create more problems than it solves."
The lady just stared back at me for a moment, her expression unreadable, and then said nothing further.
She didn't look particularly frightened or anything of that sort; she probably just listened to my explanation with a lot of unspoken questions no doubt springing up in her astute mind.
"You used to be a Guard yourself? Well, that certainly explains why you were bold enough to go out there and face him down like that," another customer, a man dressed in tennis sporting gear, commented admiringly.
"Indeed. I served first under the prestigious Glass Star Tower – a real upper-tier, highly respected Tower back in those days.
Someone like him would have been running scared if he'd faced me back when I was in my prime," I chuckled, allowing myself a small, reminiscent smile, and then replied.
"He certainly did run away in the end…" the portly customer chimed in again, jokingly.
"Well, now, let's try to forget about the likes of him and his troubles… Would you care for anything else with your black coffee, sir?" I said, smoothly killing the uncomfortable topic of the thug from earlier, and refocused my attention on attending to the more pressing needs of my valued customers.
Still, I can't quite believe the stupid, bleeding-heart government actually gave dangerous degenerates like him the official-sounding label – 'Mercenary Guards.'
Punks, most of them, who don't even dare to go truly deep into those nightmarish, otherworldly Gates.
They just clear out the relatively safe, bare surface areas to get their hands on some quick, easy money – money that ultimately comes from us, the honest, hard-working tax payers!
I couldn't care less what happened, or what will happen, to that particular kid.
He might be young, but mark my words, he'll end up as nothing more than rotten scum of the earth, just like all the others from his background.
A leech, a parasite, and an utter failure of our otherwise orderly society!
*Shitsubo
The old man was a prick, no doubt about it, but the directions he spat out were, surprisingly, legit.
I hopped on a crowded, noisy train heading towards Abeno-East terminal station, my bag clutched tight.
Which, predictably, wasn't a fuckin' pleasant ride at all, because almost immediately after I managed to take a seat, a fuckin' whole train car full of people started openly staring at me with thinly veiled discomfort and outright disgust.
Others whispered loudly behind their hands while pointedly lookin' right at me.
Before long, as I knew they would, two uniformed Enforcers came swaggerin' into the carriage where I sat (which was clearly not a goddamn coincidence), barkin' for an ID while lookin' me over like I was something they'd scraped off their boot. They didn't so much search me as give me a cursory, contemptuous pat-down.
I'd already, thank fuck, hidden my bag under the grimy bench as soon as I'd sat down, right after takin' out my own worn, barely legible ID.
I didn't know how these uptown Enforcers usually operate when searchin' passengers on these fancy trains, so I couldn't risk them seein' the valuable, and highly illegal, elixirs I had stashed in my backpack.
Thankfully, I'd done this quick-thinking bit of business before the rest of the clean-assed people in this particular car had fully registered my unwelcome presence, right when I'd first boarded the train.
After glarin' at my ID and then at me for a few more uncomfortable seconds, they just moved on, the bastards.
They didn't bother searchin' anybody else in that entire goddamn car, of course.
A few minutes later, the train finally started movin' with a pneumatic hiss.
I put my backpack on my lap and hugged it tightly against my chest as I leaned the back of my head against the vibrating, dirty window behind me.
I stared blankly outside the streaked window, watchin' the blur of people, the flickering holographic billboards, the faded recruitment posters, the delivery drones whizzing by, and all the other mundane, everyday shit that we passed at high speed.
I thought about my day today, this absolute clusterfuck of a day, and felt a tiny, fleeting flicker of gratitude just to have fuckin' survived, once more, against the odds.
My mind quickly went to those two Enforcers from earlier.
They seemed a bit fuckin' gullible, now that I thought about it, as they didn't even bother to ask how I got here, lookin' like I'd crawled out of a grave, or what the hell I was doin' so far from my usual shithole.
They were almost… nice… compared to the brutal, corrupt Enforcers I was used to dealin' with back in Sumiyoshi.
I thought, then, of how much I would possibly get for all the valuable elixirs currently stuffed in my bag.
A small, hopeful smile quickly flashed across my face, but it died, went down in flames, almost as soon as it fuckin' came.
The soul-crushing reality of the massive portion of the fuckin' debt I had to somehow pay off in just two short weeks made me crash back down to earth hard.
Those loan-shark bastards, they didn't even give me a specific, fixed amount to turn up with.
Which meant I am well and truly fucked, because the actual amount of cash that will be considered 'big enough' to stop them from beatin' the ever-loving shit out of me, or worse, from goin' to my apartment and terrorizing my family, will be based entirely on their fuckin' mood that day, on a whim.
I quickly began feelin' seriously vexed, a knot of helpless anger tightenin' in my gut, and I turned my head away from the window to glare at the flickering TV screen on this train.
It was a surprisingly nice, modern TV, one that didn't even have a cracked screen and wasn't encased in a protective metal cage for security, but it was, of course, tuned to the usual bullshit government propaganda TV station I am all too familiar with.
It was some kind of mind-numbing talk show, featuring a high-ranking, smug-looking Guard Officer, or somethin' equally important, and another well-dressed, slick guy in an expensive suit, probably some kind of 'expert' analyst.
Anyway, they were dronin' on about a whole lotta different topics, rangin' from the recent viral outbreak containment efforts in Kyoto, to the heroic response of the Black Dragon Tower, the estimated number of new Gates expected to be sealed this year, and the many glorious, new plans the government supposedly has to handle future outbreaks and so on and so forth, blah fuckin' blah.
It took about a goddamn hour, an eternity of forced listening, for the train to finally get to my designated stop.
It was only when I stood up from my seat and was about to leave the carriage that I noticed most of the other passengers were openly usin' their hands to cover their noses while some were giving me openly hostile, disgusted looks.
This finally made me realize, with a jolt, that I probably stink like the unholy, reeking ass of a dog currently havin' a prolonged, violent bout of diarrhea.
I just sullenly put up my frayed hoodie to cover my face as much as possible and quickly left the train, ignoring their glares.
I walked a little way through the crowded, noisy underground train terminal, and I quickly hopped onto the next connecting train that made a crackling announcement of preparing to depart for Sumiyoshi train station.
The next train moved, blessedly faster, and I finally got to Sumiyoshi train station just as night was beginnin' to fall, the sky already a bruised purple.
I deliberately avoided passin' through any of the main, brightly lit streets where local punk-heads and assorted other night-crawlers usually hanged around, instead goin' through a series of dark, narrow, winding back alleys and shadowy corners, tryin' to avoid as many potentially hostile bastards from seein' me, and my valuable bag, as humanly possible.
I finally made my way to the familiar, grimy entrance of the 'UnDerGrounD,' but it felt strange, off, because Razor and his usual boys weren't hangin' around the entrance like they normally were, guardin' their turf.
I decided to walk cautiously inside, down into the gym proper, with a growin' sense of unease, a bit of hard-earned caution keepin' my senses sharp.
As I got closer to the gym's main entrance, down the echoing concrete steps, I could clearly hear folks wailin' in pain and others shoutin' angrily.
I pushed open the heavy, creaking metal door and there was a fuckin' bloody, chaotic scene unfolding before me.
Nobody was trainin', that was for damn sure.
The usually bustling gym was now almost completely filled with people, dozens of 'em, either lyin' prone on the dirty floor or leanin' heavily against somethin' solid, with dark, glistening blood all over their bodies and clothes.
Other, less injured people were frantically attendin' to their comrades' horrific injuries.
Some were usin' common household scissors or unsterilized utility knives to crudely dig into festerin' wounds to try and remove embedded bullets or shrapnel.
Others were usin' red-hot, makeshift metal rods to cauterize bleedin' injuries, as their unfortunate patients bit down hard on rolled-up rags or pieces of wood and still screamed in muffled, unbearable agony.
The entire concrete floor was thickly covered in overlapping, smeared shoe-prints of drying blood and different, viscous streams of fresh, dark blood.