It’s questions like those that always would get me in trouble with Aunt Jolie. Stubborn questions, you’re-not-my-mom questions, what’s-one-more questions. The kind that my father would ask her and always get scolded for. So in a way, it’s funny that one of them brought me to the capital looking for her.
I’m sitting on a curb outside the gym while the final fight wraps up inside. Nose buried in an electric-blue holoscreen map, I’m just a riverbed stone in the pedestrian flow of the Electric Town. Steam pooling off my skin in the icy night air, tall to a fault, legs awkwardly sticking out into the brick street, I’m one freckled face in this neon paradise that never seems to sleep. It goes by a lot of names. To a girl who grew up in the rice fields half a world away, it's a goddamn headache. And the maps, I have found, are as helpful as a knife to the back.
The Electric Town is crazy. A metropolitan contradiction of retro and chrome, young and old, flash and flair. Old-fashioned streets filled with rowdy bars, pop-up vendors, and public parks rise around me, flowing from balcony to highrise like bamboo fountains. Everything funnels towards a massive tower that stands higher than the rest of the metropolis, an arena that spears out of the district’s electric heart almost half a mile away.
Hectic crowds pack every alley, balcony, and rooftop between me and that tower. Distant roars and cheers from its heights echo distantly over the Electric Town. Far closer, glasses clink as drinks pour in open-air restaurants. Chrome skyscrapers rise side-by-side with holoexperience arcades, training dojos, and fashion studios showing off new collaborations with celebrities from the pro fighting leagues. Electric music and blinking advertisements pour endlessly into the streets. Information overload.
Since the moment I took my first steps in the capital this morning, I’ve never been more lost in my life. But if I’m being honest, I could do with getting lost here. It’s my kind of crowd.
This city lives and breathes the fighting arts. Streetwear, flashy weapons, and openly flaunted supernatural abilities aren’t just everyday sights- you can’t go more than a couple steps without seeing one. It’s a warrior’s playground. High overhead, comet trails streak the starless night sky with rainbow colors as fliers rip away from balconies and metro roofs. And down at street level, a palm-sized metal sphere like the one projecting my map floats in plain sight, feeding users their weapons and supernatural powers.
Those spheres are our common ground. They’re called JOYs, and everyone from schoolkids to pro league celebrities spends our whole lives connected to them. Since as far back as humanity can remember, we’ve always had the spheres and always been using them. There’s no reason not to. The tech is a Pandoran box that turns humans into living weapons at the touch of a holographic key, and the only limits are the classes you choose.
Between the eighteen classes, anyone can summon any weapon imaginable, manipulate the primal elements, soar on wings of aether, or use magic straight out of a spellbook. You’ll see huge Mecha riders walking side-by-side with Tamer pets and Martial Artists out for their daily runs. Here in the capital, they take it a step further. Combat isn’t just a pasttime- it’s a religion. Entrenched and ever-present. Everything, even the champion-king of the entire Section, is decided in these arenas. It’s a gladiocracy: a world stratified by martial prowess. To the strongest warriors goes prestige, power, and absolute rule. Doesn’t matter if the strongest is a hero or a tyrant. No one- not even the most powerful corporations- gets in the way of the Champion. You don’t argue with a living legend who can annihilate armies at the snap of their fingers.
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People that try? They end up like me. Hungry on a curb in the Electric Town, eyes glazing over while I flick and scroll endlessly through a map I can’t even understand.
“You’ve got it upside down.”
I glance up as another girl’s voice spears right into my brooding. Her boots come to a stop in the middle of the projection, scattering it into a snowstorm of electric-blue particles. One small finger enters my vision and makes a vague swishing motion. “It’s supposed to be the other way.”
I glance up to find her looking right back down at me, leaning over the map with humor sparking in her eyes. She’s short, lean, my age. No weapons, and completely out of place with the crowd around us, no JOY floating near at hand. Instead, she’s dressed down like an office intern just off of a late shift. Black slacks, white shirt, two buttons unpinned and sleeves rolled rakishly to the elbow. Long black hair and pale yellow irises that dance with amusement as she straightens back up.
“It’s funny. You look way more lost out here than you did in there,” she says, jerking a thumb back at the gym. The hammering of the thirty-second bell echoes from inside. She arches an eyebrow. “Nice moves, by the way. At least, until you faked that sprained ankle.”
Never once does she look down at my prosthetic right arm, which starts right where my tank top ends. Carbon fiber fingers flick faster than the real deal as I spin the map to the right orientation. “You saw that?”
The girl chuckles. “I hate to break the news, but you’re not going to cut it at the opera with acting skills like those. Might want to consider a different career.” She tilts her head to the side. “You could have waited at least a couple seconds before walking out on that guy. What’s the deal? Don’t like money?”
“I got enough for dinner. That’s all I need.”
“Oof. Bleak.”
“Trying to say something?” I sigh. I spare a glance at a pack of heavy hitters in matching windbreakers who exit the gym together. The guy at the front, that brawler who wanted the rematch, glares daggers at me down the sidewalk. “Might want to get in line. There’s a wait.”
“Not trying to say,” the girl says. “Trying to ask. Take a hint, hotshot.”
I freeze. My real hand, left hand, traces the cracks in the loose brickwork we’re sitting on to see if I can pry it out. Fighting instincts kick into overdrive, sharpening and noting and plotting the fastest escape route. Then my attention finally returns back to the girl in front of me, belatedy processing the absolute nonexistence of a threat she poses.
On the outside, my caution must just look like a dumbass blank stare, because she just arches that eyebrow a little more. “Can I get you a drink?”