Being the mayor of Sidos City was a perilous role to fulfil. As the head of the country’s capital, both sides of the disparity between city and state politics vied to place their puppet in the coveted, cursed position. That in turn, attracted a certain kind of person. The type who wanted to change the city for the better but were so naive that they took the position. Having their backside in such a seat meant their head was in someone’s reticule.
Evalyn had not met the woman herself, but she was the first female mayor of Sidos, and along with the first female Prime Minister Dalena Fault, had run a tag team duo in running the city. That was to say, she was nothing more than Prime Minister Fault’s mouthpiece, keeping the city under tight control as she attended international matters.
One duty of the mouthpiece mayor was showing her face around city projects. Pictures would be snapped for the local newspapers in the hopes that public opinion would be successfully maintained.
Evalyn first saw such a visit when she passed Sidos Station. She noticed a crowd congregating in front of the unfinished project still marred with mud and rain. Considering the rush hour’s passing, there was no reason for there to be such a mob, particularly one so ill-positioned Evalyn saw no path through besides one paved with brute force and quickly depleting willpower.
Her first thought was a protest, yet the crowd was much too tame to be of such nature. Their umbrellas made an extensive canopy that covered the collective and reflected almost blinding worksite floodlights. Seeing no option but forward, she closed her umbrella and began to force her way through the crowd, excusing herself in and amongst the enthusiastic onlookers. She kept her head down and her voice to a mumble, letting her hands and body do the work of swimming through the mass.
Losing her bearing, she somehow found herself at the front of the pack instead and was pushed up against the metal railing. The rain had halted construction at its most efficient, but work had continued now that the worst had passed. Workers in thick jackets and warm clothing were setting up scaffolding and unloading cement bricks, readying themselves for the coming sunshine.
In the middle of it all were two individuals. The man talking nonstop was tall, lanky and in a similar outfit to his workers, clutching an umbrella in one hand and a clipboard in the other. The person listening was a smaller woman roughly twenty years Evalyn’s senior, a tailored suit showing from underneath the standard issue construction jacket. All eyes seemed to be on her.
After further verbal exchange, they trudged through the damp dirt in the unfinished square to a small makeshift podium. The wooden planks under her feet sunk slightly with her weight, and she placed her hands on the podium itself. A grand bronze plaque had a logo seared into it. ‘GARRIS FOR 1939’.
“Thank you, Sidos! To all the people who could make it out here today, thank you!”
A meek cheer drizzled from the crowd, barely leveling over the soft rain.
“As much as you all commute our wonderful city every day from your workplace to your home, I’m sure at some point we have all wondered exactly this city has to offer us. Flourishing industries, easy access to goods, services, and homes aside, our city cannot continue to be the bare minimum! We want our home to reflect who we are! Who we-”
At some point Evalyn tuned her out, her voice—despite the bravado—as captivating as the drone of the rain. Yet, she couldn’t tear herself away from her spot amongst the crowd. A five-minute break was all she needed, and pretending she was but one sheep in a large flock was amusing. Although the role she was ought to play was more akin to a shepherd’s dog, chasing away the wolves hiding in their grey coats.
She had spotted two. One a few metres to her left and another further in the crowd. For security detail they were doing awful jobs at protecting their VIP, and they weren’t cheering in the slightest. Given the benefit of the doubt, they were out-of-the-loop officers investigating what the ruckus was all about. More realistically, the mayor’s security detail was rouge, money or faith had given them a more attractive mission.
As the speech continued, the men barely moved themselves in contrast to the crowd. Evalyn kept her trench coat’s collar over her cheek as she watched. She spotted a third, a ways behind her doing nothing in particular. That was to say, acting rather suspiciously.
She reached inside her coat pocket and searched for her pistol’s magazine release. Weighing the magazine in her hand, she guessed only three to four rounds left, with nothing in reserve. A firefight would only disadvantage her, especially if she used her powers in such a publicised space.
“We are fortunate enough to have such cooperative construction companies willing and ready to assist us in our quest to make our city a friendlier place. My associates and I have thoroughly inspected the site and have assessed no potential threats to public or worker safety. We can safely say that this project is on schedule and progressing smoothly for your use early next year.”
The speech began to wrap up to a close as the mayor began to thank a long list of supporters. One name after another, local donor after small-time practitioner after big business partner. With every passing name, the time ticked by and the window for an attempt on her life shortened. She could feel it in her fingertips, the panic when the mayor’s head would go pop.
The window only got smaller as the mayor returned to her car, walking by the conglomerate of supporters, waving, shaking hands and kissing babies. One final wave and her driver close the car door.
The window had passed, and the men still did nothing. Behind what Evalyn hoped was ballistic glass, the mayor’s smile was out of reach from the outside world.
Car bomb. A possibility Evalyn had been too focused to consider.
Evalyn rushed to the front of the crowd, shoving people out of the way without a concern for the mud they fell into. The moment the ignition key was turned, there was a possibility half the crowd would be taken down with the car. She struggled and struggled, but the car was nowhere in sight. She shouted in frustration, wishing she had the power to just part the bodies at her will. One she could use freely, that was.
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She burst out of the mass, gasping for air as if it was a second birth and clutched the metal railing, ready to fling herself over it.
But the car was gone. It had already made its way down the cramped street, running as smoothly as it had when it had arrived. The window had effectively closed, the future was out of Evalyn’s hands.
The crowd she had cut a line through begun to eye her up as if she were mad, but she paid them no attention, keeping her gaze on the car until it turned well and truly out of sight. She eased herself and let the tension subside. For once she had overestimated a threat incorrectly, a welcome mistake.
She switched her sidearm’s safety back on and opened her umbrella. She took deep breaths to calm herself, bringing her back down to earth.
Boom.
The monolithic sound and the shockwave that knocked her off balance heightened her senses again immediately. The force had sent a torrent of panic throughout the crowd. The people around her were still in shock, many were running off instinct, others quivering on the floor at the sudden injection of adrenaline. In contrast, she was used to it. Shaking her head, she bent a knee and hauled her weight off the ground.
She looked behind her. A plume of smoke rose from an inferno, a burning beacon in the dark; what used to be a semi-truck full of bricks. Shrapnel. Lots, and lots of shrapnel.
The screams only continued as Evalyn once again pushed herself towards the front of the dispersing crowd. She cursed the fact that she had no radio and prayed there were Federal Police agents nearby. As she got closer and closer to the railing, she started to see the hellish aftermath of the blast.
Anything flammable had ignited, bursting into smaller secondary flames. The onlookers and workers standing a ways away from the blast had been hit by stray pieces of metal or brick and in some cases were bleeding badly. Other workers who were closer were missing limbs. Raw, crimson red flesh and stained bone exposed to the rain and mud. Their jackets had been riddled with holes, bodies mangled beyond recognition as the seedy mud and grime mingled with their exposed flesh. It was a warzone in the middle of a city; a horrible reminder of what it used to be.
Without thinking, Evalyn pulled her beanie as far over her face as she could and leaped over the railing.
“Someone get a phone box!” she shouted as her boots hit the mud hard. The first man she spotted, she tended to. A pulse existed but was weak. He had been hit centre mass with fragments of brick and was fading quickly. She hooked her arms under his and dragged him across the mud to paved ground, immediately bounding back into the dirt. She repeated this several more times, dragging broken bodies towards the pavement. The men in the grey coats were nowhere to be seen.
Soon enough, Federal officers in their pitch black arrived and partook in Evalyn’s tireless struggle, dragging bodies to the pavement where the field doctors that had cleaned up her safehouse invasions had begun to arrive in droves. Some Metropolitan Police officers even entered the fray. The operation she had started was starting to run at full steam as the line-up of the wounded, workers, and onlooker began to lengthen and lengthen.
One expedition took her close to ground zero where the truck was now flipped on its side. The cargo container was torn open like a plugged shotgun barrel, not a semblance of the original shape left. But the cabin was somewhat still intact, if not mangled beyond repair. Somehow the diesel in the engine had caught fire as well, the flames slowly eating away at its fuel. As far as Evalyn could remember, the truck’s engine was silent. Without even idling, the temperature was nowhere near hot enough for diesel to vaporise, fire should have been impossible.
Aether, that was the only way. She felt a tingle from her chest to her fingertips and down her spine. She could sense it around her, if not as strongly as Spirits did. There was Aether involved in this somehow. Was S.H.I.A. the type of organisation to trade in conventional explosives for magical ones? It went against their convictions.
Unless that was their intention.
As her adrenaline subsided and more and more help arrived on scene, the soundscape returned to her. The rain, the squelching of mud, the fire near her…the sound of pained moans.
She turned towards the truck’s cabin. That was the sound’s epicentre. Avoiding catching herself on the fire, she mounted the unsteady vehicle. Inside was a driver. Horribly burnt but barely alive. The exposed skin of his face and hands had been charred a hellish red and he could barely make a sound. Without thinking, she grabbed the door’s handle.
The heat the metal had accumulated seared her flesh. She violently retreated and cussed the pain away. Evalyn tried again, this time withstanding the tear-jerking agony of her nerves slowly dying. The door had been mangled to the point it had intertwined with the chassis.
Evalyn knew she could save him, but being the centre of the entire city’s attention made her job difficult. A Witch in Federal police clothing. If the Sidosian conservative outlets didn’t get a hold of it, the Geverdian one’s would. Her disguise was backfiring splendidly.
“Argh! Fuck it!”
From this distance, no one would be the wiser if she was quick enough. With a dull flash, Evalyn forged her right Gauntlet underneath her jacket, her hand turning gold. She grabbed the door by the broken window frame and began to pull, all the while willing the shapes to pull irrespective of her arm’s strength. Her power was multiplied, and the door was torn off if it’s hinges.
As gently as she could, she used her magic like tendrils, gently wrapping around the unconscious driver and pulling him up into her arms. As soon as she applied pressure, however, he began to scream.
“I know, I know. It’ll be over soon.”
She grabbed the man’s torso and slung him over her shoulder, clearing him from the truck. As gently as she could, she walked with the man to the other end of the site, her boots sinking into the mud even further with the weight of two bodies. Every step felt like a goliath task in itself, and every moment she was growing weaker and weaker. Death sucked the life out of her, and she had seen so much recently.
The medics and officers received the man as Evalyn collapsed onto paved ground, her chest heaving for breath.
Targeted towards civilians. The Aether bomb a plant. Such convenient timing. Create distrust towards the Mayor, towards Geverde, reignite the notion of Spirit attacks. The men in grey coats being there all but confirmed it.
If their possession of the Higher Order Armour wasn’t enough, they were setting everything ablaze in preparation for it. Their big finale. Evalyn was too tired to think of when it would come. She was tired of being one step behind.
Jamie Welrod had proven to be one step ahead once again, the ploy being met with both celebration for himself and condolences toward the victims. The network was abuzz with the news of a devastating attack, and the intelligence divisions were already spreading rumours amongst the Police forces that the bomb had been magical in nature, a rumour that forensics would no doubt confirm.
This rumour would spread to the public. Spirits or Geverde, he did not care. Either way, one taking the blame would be favourable for him. Discourse, distrust. The beginning of a war did not need to be genuine as long as the cause behind it was.
It was this notion that carried him, fuelled him, and kept him from looking twice at the deaths he had caused.
The telecom centre was awash with Police communications. Squad cars from virtually every patrol in the city was being redirected to the town centre. The blast had blown a crater spanning every nearby building, even the station itself. As of now the situation was still unsecure.
The trucks had been successfully hijacked not long before. In the cover of twilight, three teams had managed to remain undetected, and the commotion had covered their escape. Three trucks were now headed west across the border where they’d await their next role in a few days’ time. Their roadmap moved at a blistering pace from one event to another, yet they had no choice.
“Relay a message to the sponsor, the attack was successful, and our plan is progressing.”