Lucian awoke to the blaring sound of his alarm clock. Though he slept last night, he still felt like the undead having to rise from their graves, summoned by the necromancer known as reality.
A cockroach sat between his eyes, staring back at him as if reminding him that if he doesn’t get up, he would be late for work. A hand soon swatted the roach away. Rats squeaked in alarm at the sounds of him rising from his mattress on the floor. His wretched apartment was there to greet him with anything but a good morning.
Like a zombie, he shuffled and groaned with his hands out in search of the bathroom, eyes too crusted over from sleep to open properly. His hand brushed past the mole ridden apartment walls and the old dusty floorboards creaked underneath his feet. The rats and roaches watched in the shadows of their hiding places Lucian shuffle along.
Shouting could be heard as soon as Lucian returned to the poor excuse for a living room. The shouting was in a foreign language, yet Lucian was more than familiar with the sounds by now, the noises his neighbors made often.
Lucian covered himself in a dark red jumpsuit with the letters “MHS” on his right breast, a patch on his left depicting an ant holding a mining pick and like him, was readying to go to work. A tool belt soon appeared around his waist as he buckled it on. His precious tools were then placed carefully into pouches and holsters. These tools were his lifeline—his means of making a living. He didn’t even own them. They had been rented. He could never dream of affording to actually buy any kind of Gatetech on his own.
With the sound of jingling keys, Lucian locked his apartment door, his boots already on and his attitude was as it always was—tired.
The door next to his opened suddenly as two people walked out together, a man in a similar jumpsuit to Lucian’s and a woman still in her nightgown, the woman screaming without mercy in the man’s face. Lucian couldn’t understand the Spanish they spoke but he knew the man was in trouble. Not just from their body language, but he actually knew the man as Gabriel, his Mexican neighbor who was always in trouble with his wife.
The man getting his head screamed off, Gabriel, noticed Lucian’s stare and mistakenly, tried to push out his chest with confidence and defiance in the face of his unrelenting wife, to try and retain his dignity in Lucian’s presence. This only made his wife more furious and she began to berate him louder and more fiercely.
“What a racket,” a nasally voice complained.
Lucian turned and saw the last person he wanted to see today. Before him was a man lumpy with folds of fat and wearing an undershirt that wouldn’t stay down over a round belly, his hairy feet in beach slippers, his hairy posterior in stained khaki shorts.
This was the man who ran this wretched excuse for an apartment complex named ironically “Meager Palace”—the land lord, Paul Horker but residents called him something else behind his back.
“Porker—I mean, Horker,” Lucian greeted, correcting himself quickly.
“You owe me rent, Lucian,” Porker grunted, snorting up phlegm before hocking it onto the floor, leaving a wiggling substance of green goop down there. The floor was grimy, cracked, and littered with debris, bearing the scars of disregard. The vibrant green of snot actually gave it some needed vibrant color.
“Come on, Hork,” Lucian begged, “I work, unlike some other people in this building. I don’t have the rent now, but I got ways to get money. Trust me.”
“‘Ways to make money?’ You talking about Sammy ‘Bountiful’?”
Lucian fell silent.
Porker responded to Lucian’s troubled gaze, “Yea, him and his boys been asking around about you—looking for you, not to say that I haven’t. Tracking you down is like tracking down my wife when she’s sleeping around. It gets tiresome.”
Nervously, Lucian replied, “Oh, uh, sorry about your wife. But you know I’m good for paying you back, like always. I’m actually about to work even more overtime these next few weeks. There’s no shortage of Monster Gates and I’m a six year MHS vet now. Everyone in those gates asks me what to do since I have so much knowhow, even the Wardens!”
Lucian grimaced seeing dry skin flakes fall from Porker’s chin as the fat man scratched at his blotchy stubble while he deliberated in his round, balding head.
“Fine, kid,” Porker relented, “I’ll give you two months max to get me at least half of what you owe me in rent. Don’t say I never did nothing for you.” His small round eyes hardened. “But remember, kid. If you don’t get the dough, you’re out. Got it?”
“Got it like the blues,” Lucian answered, relief filling his body. He watched Porker waddle away, the landlord’s slippers slapping against his heels.
Next door, a victor in the marital fight had emerged.
A white flag of surrender was flown in the form of Gabriel turning tail and running off, all the while waving Lucian to follow along and leaving his wife to scream like a banshee after him.
Together, their boots tapped against the concrete steps to go down toward the bottom floor, the elevator unavailable for as long as they could remember. A drug addict lay motionless in his own urine on one of the steps that they had to step over.
“What was that about?” they both asked at once while descending. Both then laughed—a strange sound echoing in such a hopeless place as the Meager Palace.
“Rent’s due,” Lucian sighed, his head downcast.
“Money’s the root of all my problems!” Gabriel nearly shouted.
“They raised the prices on renting Gatetech tools.”
“My wife and kids need more stuff but stuff costs money.”
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They continued on, bouncing their problems off one another, venting. They had reached the bottom floor.
The lobby of Meager Palace displayed the neglect it faced through its peeling paint, flickering lights, and the musty scent that clung to the filthy, grimy carpets. Forgotten trash and decrepit furniture slouched in the corners.
At the door with a sign for “Maintenance,” a few letters missing, there were a woman and man flirting, the woman obviously the provocateur of play between them.
“Porker’s wife,” Lucian said, recognizing the woman.
“Maybe my wife ain’t so bad after all…” Gabriel said more to himself than Lucian as he side eyed the promiscuous pair.
On one of the few remaining intact furniture, the maintenance man had left his portable TV on. A booming voice came through it, “Don’t worry good citizens of New DC! My office has everything under control. No need to worry.”
Lucian glanced at the TV to see on the screen a gray haired man at the podium, his suit more expensive than anything Lucian had ever touched in real life, speaking at a press conference.
“Hey, it’s Mr. City President,” Gabriel pointed out. “What’s he on about?”
On screen, the City President went on, “Thanks to the valiant efforts of the Wardens and my office of course, the city’s never been safer. To prove this, we were able to reduce the Monster Gate breaks by almost fifty percent!”
Hearing him, Lucian and Gabriel looked at one another, paused, and then started to laugh at the absurdity of the president’s claim.
“What’s that cabrón talking about?” Gabriel mocked, “Just the other day, I ran into three monsters on my way to pick up some bread for my kids!”
“A frog monster, size of a dog, lives just under our building,” Lucian gave a scornful laugh, “The only time President Vork isn’t lying, he’s sleeping but even in his dreams, he’s probably still making things up.”
“Why’s he gotta be so fake for?”
“Approval ratings are a politician’s lifeblood. His are in the tank. He’d do anything for better ratings.”
They pushed through two doors to get hit with the decaying and forlorn scent of the city.
“Good morning, Broken Ring,” Gabriel sarcastically greeted their part of the city in all its broken down and crumbling glory. “Is it still as shitty today in New DC as it always is? Good!”
Lucian let out a breath of a laugh, his mood elevating. He’d known Gabriel since he’d moved to the Meager Palace. The man was a dependable sort and despite his faults, a good person—a rare breed in New DC. Instantly, his mood soured when he spotted four well-built men in suits near a sports car. They wore gold chains and sunglasses, even though the sun had yet to breach the horizon.
“…I’ll wait in the car,” Gabriel muttered wearily upon seeing them, then quickly shuffled over to an old truck with mismatched parts and a missing dock door.
“Well, look who it is,” called out the largest of the men in suits, gesturing with wide arms, walking toward Lucian.
“Hey, Sammy,” Lucian greeted as polite as he could, smiling wider than he has ever done in his entire life, “How’s it going?”
“Not good, Mr. Corven. Not good at all. We didn’t get all our money from you and we hate to think that you jipped us on purpose, God forbid meant to disrespect us. After all we did for you, I’d hate for our relationship to sour over petty cash.”
“What?!” Lucian sputtered, confusion and puzzlement taking over his expression. “I’ve already paid this month, as per our agreement!”
“Agreement’s been changed, friend,” sneered one of other men in suits.
“He’s right,” the leader, Sammy, agreed with a provocative stare through the tint in his shades, “you owe us more because we decided you do. Remember, you borrowed from us first. We’re just making sure to collect.”
Lucian was quiet, his gaze piercing through Sammy’s sunglasses to stare into the blues of his eyes, emotions boiling like lava.
“Problem?” Sammy prompted, his unnaturally white teeth all showing in a wide smile.
“…I’ll get you the money,” Lucian conceded, his head falling.
“Be sure that you do. Or else we start collecting what we can. Don’t make us work too hard.”
With that, Sammy and his boys left cackling into their sports car, tires screeching as they pulled out of the decrepit parking lot of the Meager Palace.
Lucian then silently slid into the passenger seat of Gabriel’s truck. He remained wordless, unfocusedly staring ahead at nothing.
“Jesus, Lucian,” Gabriel asked, genuine concern in his voice, “Why’d you even borrow money from those guys? They’re scumbags. Everybody knows they’re scumbags.”
Lucian let out a sigh that felt like a part of his soul went with it and answered, “Like I said, Gatetech tool rental is getting high. How am I supposed to work as a Material Harvesting Specialist with no Gatetech tools…?”
Gabriel nodded, saving his advice and comments. Everyone had their own situation. His own problems weighed heavy as well. He wanted to sigh but felt the sudden urge to resist it.
“Fuck this,” Gabriel grunted. He grabbed a cowboy hat from the backseat and placed it firmly on his head, and then he turned the dial of the radio all the way up, blaring mariachi music. “Let’s have a good fucking day, Lucian. Fuck those guys and fuck this place. Let’s go to fucking work and make some fucking money.”
Lucian couldn’t hear a word he said over the music as Gabriel floored it and took them racing down the street.
They arrived at a scrapyard filled with white transport vans and work trucks, each bearing an image of an ant holding a pickaxe, with “Worker Ant Company” written in cursive below it. Men dressed in the same jumpsuits as Lucian and Gabriel stood nearby, some smoking. An atmosphere of grit and struggle emanated from them.
An unworldly sight stood spinning not too far away from those waiting. A vortex of whirling energy reminiscent of the top of a whirlpool, spun without end, wind turbulent around it. The distinct sound of whirring came from the energies in motion within.
The spiraling energy was the entrance to their work for the day—a pocket dimension, a world beyond their own. This was a Monster Gate.
“Yellow color,” Gabriel muttered, pointing with a finger from one of his hands on the wheel, at the color of the spinning energy, “What’s that mean, Lucian?”
“Do I need to remind you, Gabe?” Lucian chuckled, a playful tone in his voice. “Yellow gates, my friend, are considered Elevated Threat Level. The monsters inside are way stronger than the ones from those green and blue gates – the Low Threat and Moderate Threat Level ones. The ones in yellow gates? They're nasty. If those monsters got loose, they could bring buildings crashing down. Heh, I still have to remind you of things like this and here I thought you wanted to become Anointed.”
Gabriel laughed, “Sorry, amigo. I forgot. But if I could become Anointed, I’d be so happy.” The Monster Gate’s yellow energies reflected in his eyes which begun to sparkle. “I’d like to become a speed type like King Rusher.”
Another reason Lucian liked to hang out with Gabriel was that they both loved to daydream about becoming Anointed, those gifted with the strength to fight monsters. The chances of that were slim, but when two people shared a passion, both benefited from simply being able to get their dreams off their chest.
“Attack type Anointed for me,” Lucian stated, staring with purpose at the Monster Gate. “I’d love to kill monsters. They’ve taken too much from me. I’d like to get them back for it.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a support type,” Gabriel remarked, shaking his head at the idea when thinking about it, “That’s the only one I’d refuse.”
“What do you mean? Support types can change the tide of battle by themselves.”
“I don’t know…I also wouldn’t want to be a healing type.”
“Come on, Gabe,” Lucian laughed with disbelief, “Healing types are usually the richest among Anointed. They heal the sick and the dying who are willing to pay an arm and a leg just to live.”
“Defense types aren’t so bad,” Gabriel commented, scratching his freshly shaven chin, “I wouldn’t mind being a beefy knight unable to be hurt.”
“Heads up, Gabe. We’re up.”
Gabriel saw what Lucian meant by the sight of five people fazing through and emerging from the Monster Gate energy vortex, each dressed like a medieval character. The Wardens. Heroes to all and saviors of mankind. Monster slayers, idols, superheroes, and some even called them gods. They were among the Anointed tasked with closing Monster Gates.