Zeirdin turned the key in the door handle with a click and entered room 542. His room. Five dynats. That was how much Zeirdin paid for a night in a Lexipod housing facility. The price was dirt cheap for Tennia but it came with one drawback. To call his room small would be a little of an understatement. Zeirdin tossed his few belongings onto the very limited floor space. The room was a concrete box two meters wide and three long with a thin mattress on the floor. There was no space for furniture as the mattress took up most of the floor. A thin slit window was placed high on the length-side wall opposite the door. A single dim light illuminated the room poorly.

“Now I feel bad calling that place in Splinter a prison cell...” Zeirdin muttered to himself. He put the elastic band with his room key around his wrist and picked up his extra clothes. It was shower time. Zeirdin flicked the light switch off and the lonely bulb’s humming buzzed to a stop. Zeirdin’s shoes clacked against the concrete floor of the hallway. It was rumored that the Lexipod housing facilities had functioned as barracks before the Cataclysm. Back then, The Tower’s purpose was as a training facility so mass housing was a necessity. The massive concrete buildings were all over Tennia, with the majority of them being owned by the Lexon group. The high supply allowed the price to be low, squashing smaller lodging businesses in the process.

The white fluorescent lights cast a sterilized hue on the shower stalls below. The sound of running showers and bare feet on wet tiles echoed throughout the shower room. Zeirdin stood locked in a face-off with his reflection in the shower stall mirror. The smell of the free chemical soap filled his nose, carried by the hot steam. The person in the mirror was himself no doubt. Yet the version of himself that lived in his head was vastly different from what faced him. Matted and shaggy hair cascaded down his head in a mess of black. Patchy stubble dotted his jaw. Tired red eyes nestled themselves on a face with a hardness beyond his age. Earned through countless battles and exchanges with death, the last remnants of the angry yet boyish face he once wore were now mere whispers. Buried behind the hard exterior was a faint glimmer of innocence. His once skinny and narrow frame was replaced with corded muscle and mass. In the center of his chest was a silver crescent scar the diameter of an apple. It was all the work of the jungle.

“I’m a little… different… than I remember,” Zeirdin whispered to himself in the steam-covered mirror. It was the first time seeing his reflection clearly in a long time. He kicked off his pants, shoving them in the corner of the stall with the rest of his clothes. The corner was furthest from the water nozzle. The hot water streamed down his face carrying months of dirt away. The swamp baths he’d taken in the jungle were still 20% mud at best and couldn’t compare. Zeirdin closed his eyes and sighed, relishing the first comforting warmth in months.

Sleep did not come. The stagnant air of the small concrete room weighed on Zeirdin’s chest. His heart drummed in his chest and the sound of blood filled his ears. Footsteps echoed through the halls outside the room. Each footfall reverberated like a thunder crack inside Zeirdin’s head. His heightened senses were working against him. At around midnight, the foot traffic inside the complex did not decrease any further. It was to be expected of a city of entertainment, shrouded in eternal night. He kicked the thin blanket off and stood up in front of the door. For the third time he that night, he turned the door handle. For the third time, it rattled but did not turn. Zeirdin’s paranoia subsided slightly, and he retired back under his blanket.

Footsteps registered differently within his head after the jungle. His brain placed Noises into three categories, his own sounds, natural sounds, and sounds that disrupted the natural baseline. The last, his brain typically registered as a threat. No matter how many times he told himself the footsteps outside were not a threat, his brain would briefly panic the second he relaxed. It was an unconscious level of function reinforced through many bad experiences. The stagnant air was not helping; Zeirdin was used to sleeping outside.

Zeirdin wrapped the blanket around himself and huddled in the corner with his hands over his ears. Each distant footfall was reminiscent of a twig cracking in the jungle. Twig crack means creature. Creature sometimes go away. Creature usually scream, cackle and hiss. Scream means bite and scratch. Bite and scratch means pain. Pain means fight. Zeirdin’s brain painstakingly went through the list of associations with each footstep. His heart pounded in his ears, each beat the hit of a war drum. Embedded deep within the frequency of his heartbeat was a faint primal voice, something he had never noticed before. A constant backdrop drowned out by the chaos and clamor of life. In a language as old as time, the voice quietly screamed, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” Now that he heard it, it was impossible to ignore.

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut... up,” Zeirdin muttered. Fatigue from the day began to set in, a gradually creeping vignette. “I want the quiet. Give me the quiet. I want the quiet. Give me the quiet,” Zeirdin whispered his new mantra. He counted his heartbeats and his breaths. Like a feather falling from a cloud, slowly, Zeirdin began to drift off.

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“Jeun, the showers are this wa...” Zeirdin jerked awake, startled. The voices faded away with the clacking of boots on concrete. He groaned.

The early morning damp air clung to Zeirdin’s clothes as he took meandering steps through the back alleys of Tennia. He lightly circulated his mana to keep the dampness from leaching into his bones. He still had hours to kill until he could sign up for Blood Brawl 18. With heavy eyes, Zeirdin searched for novelty, something to distract him for just a moment. Weary eyes washed over garbage bins, trash, feces, rats, drainage grates, rusty pipes, tubes, and wires. Finally, something caught his attention. Growing at the entrance of a gutter drainage pipe, a patch of irregularly shaped lichen faintly glowed blue. The faint light emitted diffused through the surrounding mist, amplifying the glow. It was a mystifying and unexpected beauty. Zeirdin knelt down next to it like a fascinated child.

“Peculiar, isn’t it?” A gravely feminine voice said as if replying to Zeirdin’s thoughts. Zeirdin sprang into the air like a startled cat and whirled around, letting out a faint eep. Anyone who could sneak up that close to him was dangerous. Two meters from him stood a short woman wearing a black trench coat. Her facial features were shrouded in darkness. Alarm bells were sounding in Zeirdin’s head and he began to circulate mana on high alert.

“Ah, yes. I suppose that’s the reaction I would’ve had too,” She chuckled to herself. Zeirdin just glared back. “Seldom trod paths hold many secrets,” The woman said before disappearing into the mist without a sound. Zeirdin stood still, quite shaken by the interaction. Did she tail him all that way just to taunt him? Was it mere chance?

“I do not have a good history with alleyways, do I,” Zeirdin scoffed to himself.

“It’s 15 dynats for standard entry, 90 to bypass the Shredding,” The young man behind the counter yawned, eyes squinting into crescents. His work day had started seven minutes ago and he was already this unenthusiastic, Zeirdin noted.

“Sorry, what’s this shredding now?” Zeirdin asked, holding back a yawn of his own. The clerk yawned again, this time covering his mouth with a pale hand. The constant dark seemed to be doing no favors for people’s skin and circadian rhythms.

“’Scuse me. Ah, yeah, you must be new in town. Well, I guess that’s not uncommon. The Shredding… shredding… what was that thing again” The man seemed to wrack his brain for the answer, rubbing his eyes with his palms. “Oh, right, the shitter matches. To qualify for the main bracket of Blood Brawl, you have to win two qualifying matches in a row. These are held in designated warehouses all over the Redstrip,” The tired man explained.

“Shitter match?” Zeirdin repeated what he heard.

“Sorry, that’s what we locals call them. Too many people register to have a decent tournament. We get rid of most contestants using the qualifying matches. You can skip them for extra, but usually, only weak richies do that. The shitte-, I mean qualifying matches end up being the most boring, so we get them all over within a few days.”

“And if I lose one match?”

“Sucks for you,” The man yawned again, this time irking Zeirdin slightly. “Are you gonna buy an entry ticket or not?” He gestured behind Zeirdin where a few people had already lined up.

“Standard entry, please,” Zeirdin handed him his chrome card. Zeirdin was not in the mood. As the man grabbed the metal card, Zeirdin briefly expanded his aura violently. It only lasted an instant because he retracted it quickly, but it was enough. The man momentarily froze, then dropped the card as he tripped over his own feet, all the while not knowing what hit him.

“Fuck!”

Although subtle, the air shimmered slightly and blue flecks floated toward the ground.

“There are people waiting in line here, if you don’t mind,” Zeirdin said, voice oozing with sarcasm. Yes, I’m petty. And? The man disappeared into a back room before returning with a paper ticket. He looked over the ticket before handing it to Zeirdin.

“Looks like you’ll be headed to the Harlok House tonight.”

“Alright, thanks,” Zeirdin nodded before turning around and leaving with the ticket. Thanks my ass. Eat shit. Zeirdin was… crabby.

Zeirdin decided not to do any drop-in fights before his qualifying matches. He wanted to be in top shape in case his opponents happened to be tough. In the meanwhile, he searched for a barber, or somewhere else he could get his hair cut. The neon lights of Tennia were atrocious he decided. The main street was packed. Perfume, body odor, and smoke melded into an overwhelming miasma. No matter where he looked, he could not find somewhere that would cut hair for less than 10 dynats. Zeirdin refused to burn into his food budget for the day and settled for buying a pair of utility scissors for a third of the price.

Zeirdin stood in front of the mirror in his stall back in the Lexipod facility. It was the only place he knew that had a mirror. Only a few showers ran, and water splattered on the tile floor. The showers seemed to stay empty during the day. One man sang loudly and out of tune. Starting from his bangs, Zeirdin began to cut. Snip. Snip. Snip. He made sure to cut along the lengths of his hair to avoid strange straight lines. Black locks of hair fell to the ground like raven feathers. Zeirdin felt lighter inside with each cut. It felt as if the jungle grew more distant with each snip. It was awkward trimming the back. He had to contort his neck and arm in such a way that he could see what he was doing in the mirror. After around half an hour, Zeirdin had a result he was satisfied with. It was short, practical, and low maintenance. Far from perfect, in some places, straight scissor marks were clearly visible. Zeirdin didn’t care though. All he cared about was that it was barely too short to grab well. He looked himself over in the mirror.

“Been years since I’ve been able to see my ears,” He chuckled to himself.