Blue

[Angelos]

No one visited Urban Bloc Unit 1344/A. Rods of white sunlight pierced the corrugated metal walls, cutting across the darkness and lighting faded blue paint peeling like birch bark. At the bottom of each wall was a small pile of curled corkscrews of paint, sapphires in the poured concrete floor that stretched far into the dark.

The rust on the walls made it impossible to tell what color the metal was. In some parts the orange corrosion seemed to be fighting against the blue, iron fire clashing with lead ice, struggling to assert their dominance over the other.

Stark shafts of white highlighted the infinte, tiny dust motes that floated in the air. Tiny pools of light were stretched and warped by the machines they illuminated, tiny rivets and screws casting long shadows over the dusty metal.

There was no movement, no sound save for the occasional rumbling of a passing truck. The low thumping of the diesel engine would vibrate the walls, shaking free flecks of paint that would twirl their way through the heavy air towards their comrades below.

No one knew who had owned Units 1300 through 1350, and so they had slipped slowly into disrepair. They were the kind of buildings that people who passed by were careful not to look at, lest some deranged hermit catch their eye. Schoolchildren who were poorer than their friends would run through the street that ran down the center of the Bloc, hand-me-down shoes slapping on the asphault.

-+-

The sun was setting outside of Unit 1344/A, dark red light falling across the dilapidated and weather-beaten biohazard signs that had been attached to the outside of the unit. The summer solstice was ending, the Earth tipped towards the sun at an angle that would not be repeated for another year.

As the planet turned, the light seeped into the cracks and corroded holes in the metal wall. A single beam slice through the dark air, stopping on a dark blue, reflective surface. It hung there for several moments, the waning cresent of light quickly disappearing.

An almost inaudible whir came from below the solar panel. Thirty two tiny metal plates spun, opening the aperature in the center of the crystalline blue circle. There was no further movement for a moment.

Then it moved.

Out of the darkness, a figure rose, flesh covered in a thick layer of dust.

No one had ever visited Urban Bloc Unit 1344/A. And that was their first mistake.

-+-

The man was always well-dressed. Jeans, a grey or white t-shirt and a black windbreaker over it. In the month he'd been in the area, his hair never seemed to grow. It was always shaved close to his head, a dirty blond that gave the impression of a golden fog surrounding his cranium.

Everywhere he went, he made people uneasy. They couldn't put their finger on what it was, but something about him just didn't seem quite right. "It's the eyes," some said. His piercing, bright blue eyes seemed almost unnatural, like they had been crafted by an artist. Others said it was the way he moved. He never misstepped, never tripped. He moved like he had been planning his motions for years, and now, finally, his premeditation was paying off.

Every morning, at exactly 10:30, he would go into the same café with a newspaper under his arm. He always took the same table in the corner, by the large shop windows that looked out onto the street. He never ordered anything to eat, he simply read the paper, cover to cover, for 27 minutes before carefully folding it up and placed it in the center of the table. At 10:58 he'd stand, smile at the old man who came in, and leave.

At 10:46 AM, he was reading the classified section when something caught his eye.

[Cirrial]

FAR UNDERNEATH KAZUMARU'S LABORATORY, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DOJOPOLIS AND PSYCHOTOPIA

"Alright, team! We have a limited amount of time to track this recreant down and claim the bounty that is rightfully ours!"

501 shouts to a team of partially interested saa-kru, standing on a speaker's podium inside the small but developed Maratix base. One of the assembled group looks over to a large monitor with reams of alien text pouring up the screen.

"Sir, we require a sizable satellite network to instantly locate anyone so quickly."

Another saa-kru steps fowards. "From the data you supplied it seems logical to start a search around the surrounding area. It sounds like the target in question would dwell and operate in an urban environment."

501 nods. "What kind of transport technology do we have? My wings are burnt out from a few days back."

A female synthesised, audibly mechanical voice fills the meeting room.
"We do not possess any adequate short-range portal technology on this side of the vector clamp. However, we do have a leviplatform avaliable."

501 looks to the speakers in the ceiling. "Aww, what? Leviplatforms are so slow! Ah, screw it, meeting adjourned." The assembled saa-kru drift out of the room.

501 walks to the equipment room and picks up what looks like a manhole cover with strange panelling on one side. A leviplatform is essentially a glorified metal disk that flies, slowly, barely an inch off the ground.

After leaving the base, 501 steps on the leviplatform and slowly scoots along, a hand held above his eyes as he peers out for troublemakers.

[Coolpikaaa]

It was a pleasent morning on the station.The controls were working fine, systems were humming peacefully, the dojo was a colorful orb below.Coolpikaaa was happy.

A control panel rang out on the side of his captain's chair;the news had arrived.Skimming through the headlines, coolpikaaa found a listing for some sort of wanted killer.He continued on, not even worring about the dangers below on the planet.

"Go back."The little voice in his head said.It was not one to usually speak up unless it was important, so coolpikaaa moved back along.

...

"500000 yen!?"Coolpikaaaa burst out of his chair, reading the panel again.That was an insane amount of money!

"Prepare a pod, I'm going down to the surface!"

-coolpikaaa

[Iman al-Rashid ibn Aali]

Iman had heard people talk about these so-called newspapers during his travels. It's a concept that he had never imagined possible, that a single written document could provide you with the days news from all around the world. He wouldn't believe it until he saw it for himself, so when he awoke this fine morning he decided to buy one.

Just my luck, he thought as he sat down in the cafe across the road from the so-called "newsagent" to peruse this wonder of the modern world, It's written in the infidel tongue.

Indeed, every last word seemed to be written in the language known as English spoken by members of the Crusaders from the west who still plagued his home despite the war being over over 20 years ago. He had taught himself to read certain words in the language, but a lot of this seemed to be in a dialect that he had never heard before... there was however one thing that caught his eye, though. He couldn't understand all of it, but he could understand enough to get the general idea of what was being said...

[rosebarks]

A girl with blonde hair was walking down the street as she smiled kindly to the people. she was a bounty hunter and she had already seen the newest bounty. His name was Philip "Blue" Angelos, and his price was 500,000 yen. a hefty price.

This girl looked a lot like someone everyone seemed to be getting used to seeing around the Dojo these days, she looked like Lilic KanKaren. To be more precise, she was Lilic's twin sister, Lily Ares KanKaren. She was 17 but already had a decent amount of captures under her belt.

Today however, Lily was simply going to survey the landscape that the wanted criminal might be around and thus trying to spot him. She wished the wanted info had come with a better description of what he looked like but she would have to do.

"Well, off to work I go, again." Lily finally spoke as she looked around the area, in the cafés and the other shops around here for whom she thought might be the perpetrator, it wasn't going to be easy to tell who it might be and who is really was like this, not easy at all.

[Kazumaru]

Kazumaru sipped a can of root beer, boredly watching the readouts on Sentinel's shiny, shiny monitors. Nothing was happening today; Even the sky was a boring and dull gray near his lab.

"Hey, water balloon." Sentinel said.

"What, Sent?" Kazumaru responded, expecting a jab at his intelligence or some such.

"I've got something that might interest you. Someone put up a bounty for some guy named Phillip Angelos, AKA 'Blue.'"

"So?"

"I've got no record of him."

"... How much is the bounty?"

"Five hundred thousand yen."

Kazumaru spat out his root beer. "Holy Frak!"

"Yeah, that's a lot."

"No, I mean... that root beer's hard to get, man."

"Idiot. You going after this or not?"

Kazumaru stood up, removed his top hat, and set a fedora on his head. "His arse is mine. Y'fallah?" he said, in his best cliché mobster voice.

[TheBlackSoul]

Walking into town was a mysterious figure, clad in a black cloak. Not much of it was visible, except for the face and the hands.

Around each red eye was a black ring, and a few wisps of red and black hair hung over the left eye.

Anybody who was wise would get out of this person's way, or so she thought.

The only reason Tamae had left her hut in the Southern Frontier to head to this town was to claim a bounty she had heard about so much. This was for a person named Philip Angelos, or "Blue."

If this guy was brought to justice, the reward was 500,000 yen. That in itself was a reason she was here-but it was far from being the only one.

She knew the huntee was "wanted," but did they care how he was delivered?

If they didn't-that was her main drive in hunting him down. If it didn't matter, she planned on finding him. Then she'd kill him before delivering the body to the client.

It was said that he "should be considered extremely dangerous, even if unarmed." To Tamae, that meant absolutely nothing. As far as she was concerned, she was the most dangerous person in the Dojo, and this man didn't even measure up to her.

[Cirrial]

501 continues to scoot along at an excruciatingly slow speed. Around him is a crowd of Psychotopian citizens, slowly following him as a snail barely catches up to the softly warbling leviplatform.

One of the members of the crowd reaches out and pokes 501 in the arm. "I don't get this perfomance art sometimes."
Another crowd member nods his head and twitches slightly. "Issorta what they call pretentious, innit? Nothin' much to get. Art fer art sakes, or somethin'."

501 waves away at the crowd. "Hey. Heey. Go on. Shoo. I'm busy."

Another member of the crowd peers at 501, mimicking 501's pose, a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun. "You aren't with the chickens, are you? We've had a little bit of trouble with them. Only a week ago, as a matter of fact. Took out Bob's Café. I miss that place. And Bob."

501 sighs and puts a hand to his head. The leviplatform scoots ever slower along. "No, I'm not a chicken. I'm a robot. There's a big difference."

A small child rushes up to and pushes past the crowd. "Pollo de mutante! Pollo de mutante!" The child's parents push past the crowd, apologising, and carefully drag him away, giving 501 odd looks.

501 fidgets uncomfortably, as does the crowd. After a few minutes of protracted, awkward silence, he speaks. "Sooo... any of you seen a guy with a hexadecimal tattoo under his right ear?"

One of the crowd members replies. "Oh, right ear? Sorry, no can do, old chap. I've got a rather fetching tattoo on my left ear, though. It's the colour code for a rather spiffing shade of greenish purple I devised in between developing a cure for hair rot! Course, a few of the others back at the lab call me crazy for working on such a thing, but them? They're the crazy ones-"

501 nods, more and more eagerly during the spiel, finally interrupting. "Alright, okay, I get the point. And for your future reference, I don't think hair can rot that easily anyway."

He looks over to the building the crowd is parting around. "Oh, finally, maybe I can crash this thing and just walk to this guy."

"What guy?"
"'E's havin' a bloomin' laugh! That plate's too slow to crash into anythin'!"
"I say we sell him. Anyone say we sell him? He's probably filled with gold of the most luxurious kind. Oh, alright, no-one reply. Jeez."

501 clamps his hands over the whiskers on his head. "Do you people ever stop talking?!"

[Angelos]

Angelos read the wanted ad, expression unmoving. Instinctively, his hand went up to the barcode that was tattooed on his neck, slightly behind and below his right ear. He hesitated, running over the possible options in his head, before ripping out the ad. The tear was exceptionally perfect, like it had been cut with scissors, and Angelos ripped out a few chunks from the edge.

He stood, pushing in his chair and quickly leaving the café. It was only 10:48. The sound of the bell jingling as the door closed was lost in the buzz of the crowd. Angelos walked, his stride casual but determined, no unnecessary movements. People, if they caught sight of him, moved out of his way, and he only had to slow down twice.

The girl stood out in the crowd. She was the most normal person among them, and she had the expression of someone who was looking for something. Looking for me, he thought. He bent down, unsure if she had seen him or not, and grabbed the arm of a man, pulling him to face Angelos.

"Who is that girl?" he asked, pointing at her. The man gave him a blank look, and rattled off a sentence in fragmented, frightened spanish.

"¿Que está la niña?" he tried.
"¡No se! ¡No se!" the man all but screamed, wide eyes roving over Angelos' face. A look of recognition flickered across his face, rapidly replaced by outright fear.
"Por favor, no me matas," he whispered, and Angelos shoved him away. They were on to him.

[rosebarks]

"Who is that girl?" he asked, pointing at her.

This made Lily stop for a moment. Lily just smirked at the comment before she turned around and walked over to him, the minute she saw his face she knew who it was but she didn't react.

"Hey...you were asking about me?" Lily asked him as she stood there her bluey-green eyes shining a little like a cat's did. She just smiled. "I'm Ivy" She put her hand out to shake his in a friendly gesture. "And you are?" She asked in return to him.

Lily had given a name only a few people could know her by, it was her nickname, Poison Ivy, or just Ivy for short. She had earned this nickname from the other people she usually worked with because of her knowledge in poisons. How they had gotten the Ivy part she could only assume was to make it more plant like, kinda like her name.

[Cirrial]

501 steers the leviplatform smoothly towards the entrance of the building he's on a collision course with.

Café. Huh. He fidgets uncomfortably, as the mob slowly walking around him seem to be whispering to each other.

Then, one member of the crowd's face contorts into amazement, then shock, and finally a boiling rage. "HE'S WITH THE MUTANT CHICKENS! GET HIM!"

501 stares vacantly. "...what are you even talkin-"

He stops, as the entire crowd somehow manifests burning torches and pitchforks, and starts to close menacingly in. 501 quickly reaches for his ion pistol and points it menacingly, slowly spinning around on the leviplatform. The enclosing horde stops. "Okay, now, you're all going to put the torches and other nasty looking implements down, and we can discuss-"

An expertly swung rake knocks the ion pistol clattering to the ground from 501's claws, still in a gun-holding position.

"Okay, it seems you're all a little angry, but if I could just explain-"

A spade knocks him off the leviplatform. As he falls, he exerts just the right force to push the leviplatform at just the right angle, causing the leviplatform to suddenly fly overhead in a dramatic arc, landing miles and miles away in the Black Forest.

The black, blue-glowing hovering disc would then, for the rest of its days, do nothing more but hover, intimidate the local animals and eventually self-destruct for no reason, leaving nothing of its existance but a small scorch mark.

501 raises his arms to offer some protection from a large crowd of angry Psychotopian citizens. "This one's for Bob's Café! And for Bob! And for the mocha latte that fleeing mutant chicken made me spill as it ran out the door! And for the fact that a mutant chicken feather got stuck in my friend Carl and now he thinks he's a mutant chicken every full moon!"

501 screams, partially due to the pain of being battered by an angry mob, but mostly out of sheer annoyance at being subjected to the fevered rantings of Psychotopian vigilantes. "I'M ow NOT ow A MUTANT ow CHICKEN ow, I'M ow A KEYNAIN ow BASED ow ROBOT ow ow ow FROM ANOTHER ow WORLD! Ow."

The crowd gasps, and pauses, unsure of itself. A resident dressed in a labcoat elbows past the group and kneels down in front of 501. "We're so sorry, Mr. Alien! We were confused! Please don't abandon us! We want to be enlightened by your fellow beings from the stars!"

501 slowly and sorely stands up. "No, I'm not here to enlighten you people, I'm here to track down a homocidal maniac so I can get big cash money, dammit!"

The whole crowd erupts with sound once more. "I'm the guy!" "No, I am!" "Take me with you, robotic space chicken!"

501 grabs his ion pistol, sets it on the lowest setting, and uses it as a makeshift taser gun to get past the crowd. "THE ALIEN CHOSE ME! I'M THE CHOSEN ON- agrgrhrghghrg" "I for one welcome you, my alien overlo- arrghghrhgh"

501 kicks the door of the café through the frame, to the bewilderment of the patrons inside. "WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SO ANNOYING?!"

[Iman al-Rashid ibn Aali]

Stepping outside of the cafe, Iman noticed something strange. A big built man seemed to be harrassing someone. He had grabbed his arm, and was asking about a girl that was walking by.
The man seemed to be replying in a language that Iman recognised as European... spanish? italian? He couldn't tell. But what he could tell was that the man was afraid.

Moving closer along the street, being careful to make sure it looked like he was taking a leisurely stroll, he listened in to their conversation and it wasn't long before Iman could tell why the man was so afraid. This man fit perfectly the description in the newspaper's wanted ad. Praise be, thought Iman as he broke away from the crowd to "peruse" a market stall nearby, it seems that Allah is with me for once.

Looking over the items on the market stall, including assorted fruit and veg - some of which Iman had never seen before - he noticed that the girl had joined the conversation.

[Kazumaru]

Kazumaru's eyes scanned the area in front of him, taking in every detail, hoping to find the man named Blue. Cafés, book stores, men on fire, crowds of unsuspecting citizens unaware that a violent murderer might be hiding in their midst...

Strange beings, weird demon things, scaled men... Things that defied imagination. All of these wandered through the area.

Unfortunately for Kazumaru, he was in the entirely wrong city.

[Angelos]

He was not in the mood to make friends. He just wanted to stay free. Angelos looked from the extended hand to the smiling girl. The crowd around them seemed to be thinning, moving towards the café he had just vacated.

Time to go, he thought, turning on his heel and following the crowd. He ducked behind a large, barrel-chested man with a beard and thinning hairline, disappearing into the crowd. They were all clamoring for a floating robot of some kind, and Angelos felt something. Something he hadn't felt before -- what was it called? Empathy.

"He picked me, you idiots!" he shrieked, slinking by the robot. He was on the other side of the mass of people when he heard the robot comment on the irksome quality of the people -- people who had just facilitated his escape.

[Iman al-Rashid ibn Aali]

What? This isn't right!, Iman thought to himself as he looked around. All he could see was another of those mechanical things flying over head with a crowd clamouring to get to it. Where's he gone?

The turn of events troubled him... he'd never let a target slip from his view before. Cursing himself, he walked towards Ivy.

"In future, I'd be careful of who I make friends with", he said to her, "That man's a wanted murderer".