The sky was glowing bright purple intermittent streaks of lightning coursed through the clouds, it reflected of the dry leather of Kase’s coat. Unfazed by the most recent sky reactor explosion, Kase gazed across the plains tasting the arid and dying air. His lookout a repurposed above ground bunker that was used during the war, now serves as the first line of recon. “Oi! Shithead wake up we got inspection today dumb ass.” Kase hears through the audio system. Natz his short tempered but experienced colleague never forgets inspection days. He hates being caught off guard.
“Yeah, yeah... I’m up and ready Natz have we all the backup systems online?” Kase checks his display for any pressing issues. “Yeah thanks to me, you useless sack of shit I had to do all the repairs since you had too much fun Sunday night. You owe me for that by the way!” Natz replies. Kase chuckles “Of course man I will hook you up on my next trip to the city.” Natz grabs his helmet and keys. “I am on way to your tower we have five minutes before the inspector shows up.”
The engine of the floater whizzes closer to the tower, Kase walks to his hatch preparing to open it and to get pummelled by the harsh desert winds. Natz pulls up and kicks the hatch hard the power sends a shudder through the bunker or so it feels to Kase. He opens it to be greeted by the most deformed and ugly face you’ll ever see “This place smells like whiskey and vomit, thankfully the inspector only ever visits my tower. Since if you were the reporting watcher we both would have been fired long ago.” Natz brushes pass to check his logs and reports quickly. Kase replies “Well is everything good?” Natz glances at him “Yup, seems like all is in order for once, I will let the boss know about your trip tomorrow, so I can get some fresh blood as a replacement while your off having fun”. Natz turns, documents in hand “Right I have to get back, I will tap you on comms when the boss is gone”.
Kase leans down to retrieve the data-pad partially soaked in vomit. Leaning back in his chair, he takes a sip of the stale coffee siting there from the night before, He pulls up the latest article on the sky reactor story “250 Worker’s Dead in Unknown Accident” the title reads. “Fucking big-energy corps have been blowing those up since this energy race started back in the 50s” Kase mutters to himself before going to his armoury. Shuffling and inspecting all the gauss weapons are working correctly, after all he did make plans with Natz to go hunting scrat with him tonight.
Easy pickings for two ex-military veterans, more of a tradition for watchers than anything else. There is hefty profit to be made from the organs of scrat, many lab techs would pay at least one hundred Trix for a heart that’s four hundred roulette spins for the brave of heart. But like all things the black markets pay more and nobody with a right mind ever turns anything into the lab. Many backstreet vendors make use of them to produce highly neuro-stimulating drugs that get fed to the fiends, that are so whacked out not even a soul devourer would startle them. Seems like scrat have some use after all, other than to wipe out humanity or what’s left of it at least.
While Kase is emptying the gauss cartridges it reminds him of his last rampage where he destroyed a ravage mob of scrat, just so they didn’t leave any stains on Natz’s tower while he was away, A somewhat strange relationship where favours go unsaid and the dysfunctional becomes functional. “Roger dodger, roger dodger! Come in over! Come in over!” Natz yelled across the line. Kase glared up at the intercom “Inspector left?” Natz replies “Yeah nothing out of the usual, he was talking about the recent sky reactor fiasco, apparently some new tech they were trying totally went fucked and now 250 sets of limbs are floating out towards ring nine.” Kase’s grin explodes into a maniac like laughter “You sure are one sadistic piece of work, you still set for our scrat session before I hit the city tomorrow?” Natz’s eyes widen almost as much as his pockets do on the weekends. “I have been dying to die since I met your ass so maybe I will get lucky tonight.” Kase replies “I think the only thing dangerous enough to kill you is yourself.” Natz laughs and says, “Hey I will take that as a compliment and get your ass over here we need to discuss the city trip.” Kase replies “Be over in four.”
Kase pat’s his ragged coat for the keys to his floater and finds it in the last pocket “Typical” he huffs, Preparing for the dry and equally blinding winds Kase covers his face with his trusty camouflage facemask that has seen more war then the human race did back in 20th century, fixing goggles onto his head Kase braces the restless winds closing the hatch behind him so his quarters does not become more a part of the desert then it already has to be. While boarding his floater he spots a nasty looking desert twister about four kilometres out sucking up scrat and spitting them out like a blender, this was Kase’s idea of art.
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Kase pulls up to Tower 91A kicking the hatch and awaiting an ugly sight. “Right disable all your communication devices and step in” Natz tells Kase. “I know the drill” Kase proceeds to disable everything with a chip inside of it. Natz pulls out a dusty notebook from an overhead loft. “First order of business is turning in the scrat orgs we got over the last 4 weeks same spot as usual” Natz flips the page “After that you got to catch that weaselly fuck Mak he owes me three thousand Trix he is lucky I am on watch this weekend or he would be losing more than Trix”. Kase asks “What if Mak ain’t got nothin?”
“That sleaze ball does all sorts of shady jobs. Guns, drugs, lab tech, old school books you name it he does it, in every industry. He always has something of value to hide, I will leave it up to you on how you extract it.”
Kase replies “There are many ways to boil an egg.”
“And yet you still could not boil an egg if your life depended on it” Natz remarks.
“That’s why we had chefs in army” Kase replies.
Natz rests his arm on Kase’s shoulder his boulder like form notched into Kase’s outfit “Oh before I forget grab me some springs for a model forty-two when you’re in, my floater is acting up and I won’t be walking over to your tower any time this century.” Kase stands up and leans on the hatch “Will do, I spotted a twister earlier, so we might want to get out sooner before we get caught out in a storm. Even scrat become dangerous when visibility is low.” Natz opens the hatch “Yeah good idea, pick me up around eight your driving tonight.”
Kase departs back to his tower, the same one he was worked in for the last three years. The watcher’s logo blessed its outer wall, a glorious black phoenix with wings made of emeralds. Many days have passed since then, now it more resembles an upside-down boot soaked in demon bile. No birds nor clouds to be seen, the scenery is as non-existent as the fauna that inhabits it. Drifting sands shapeshift constantly the only thing that ever changes on the plains. Kase enters his quarters. “Fucker every single time” Kase says after banging his head of the upper part of the hatch. A typical occurrence given the hatch was designed for normal sized people, being well over six-foot Kase knew this well. Kase lays back in his bed thinking about his plans for the following day. He finds himself dazing off, kicking off his hard cap boots in a quest for comfort.
Kase falls into a deep sleep, a mistake on his behalf as Natz is unforgiving to those who do not show up on time. Sleeping on work hours seems dishonest but given the infrequency of large scale scrat or even less frequent demon attacks, the chances that another watcher would not see it Is so slim that the general population of the Aegis can sleep easy.
The whispering winds battered against the tower, it leaned towards total anarchy and chaos where nothing lived or survived apart humanities last enemy. Every watcher lived in the exact same tower perfectly uniform all the way around the Aegis like petals of a leaf. In Kase’s time as a watcher he had never witnessed any attacks of any significance worth worrying about. Natz had though and he had informed Kase very well of how the protocol went any watcher who seen the “wave” as it was coined, first had to immediately report back up the chain of command and give the area section code being 91A-B in this instance. The next step was gathering your weaponry and sliding into your transport tube where you would be brought to the first line of defence manned by humans. Everyone would hope they would not need to fight as the automated system was so reliable that it had a success rate of over ninety one per cent. If it failed thousands or tens of thousands would die, we were at the mercy of percentages thought Kase as he woke from his slumber.
Kase sits upright on his bunk that creaks at the most minute movement, he checks his clock 7:40 it reads, he still has some time to prepare before Natz roasts him for being late, he puts on his boots standing to face the window, it always became more silent and peaceful in the evening the occasional screech and demonic echo would ring out from the distance but Kase was so accustomed to this he was starting to find it meditative. Kase began strapping up, filling an extra bag of gauss cartridges just in case. A few anti-material grenades and of course six beers the last six he had in fact.