The blind shuttered the sun, hanging high, from disturbing the occupant of the small room. The only light vented in from the screen of O. Togreta’s marconi, blinding pages of delivery blinking to the rhythm of a clicking board. A faint sound swept by the slumped figure, crawled up his sides, and forced the shadow to open the covering and let the light blind. Eye-level with a dark-cloud cat yawning at the window. Irreversible scratches when their eyes met.
O. tapped the glass. The cat jumped back, startled, but returned to inspect the pressed finger. It tried to rub up against the man, but its nose only hit the window. Stunned. The cat crawled back into a resting position. O. swung back toward the door.
The damping of unblocked locks didn’t faze the noise outside the apartment. Gunfire cut across the sky, explosions rocked towers in the distance. Rails hung to the side of the building, rattling and knocking pieces of cement to the ground with every passing train. O. sidestepped as he saw a shadow on the ground growing beside him. A narrow miss. When O. peered around the corner, nothing remained but an imprint in the dust.
O. had returned back down a level and behind his closed door when a green flashing lit the dim, followed soon by a buzzing in the hall. O. picked up his pace, unhooked the set from the wall.
“Y’ello. Togreta.” The smoke in his voice lifted, a new coat for the ceiling.
An old voice crackled in. “You heard of St. Martinsland?”
O. licked his lips. Eyes to his forehead.
“New company.” The voice answered. “Sells drinks.”
“Flavours?”
“Batshit!” The man howled, his laugh turning quick into coughs and sharp inhalations.
O. sighed into the receiver. “Great. Where’s the machine?”
“Back in the old Beldame’s territory. Little courtyard.Can’t miss it. Oh, but it’s been worked on. No more skulls decorating the walls. Not good for business, turns out. Anyway, the direct area is a safe-zone, so once you're upgrading the thing, you don’t need to worry about being shot.”
O. acknowledged the job, simultaneously moving the set back onto the hook.
“Candlepants, play The Church Of Rock & Roll!” He shouted to the air.
A reply in confirmation surrounded him, followed by a few seconds of buzzing until the album fuzzed on. Distorted guitars rang hollow against the walls.
He walked into his room. Piles of clothes lay discarded along the floor, a layer of carpeting over the old vinyl-style tile. The man bent down and clutched on to different articles of clothing at random until he stood up with an array of coloured articles to choose from. He changed on the spot, his old dress falling back down and covering the space that had only just been unearthed.
Though the Beldame’s influence gone and the area a safe-zone, he wouldn't leave without first giving himself a fighting chance in the case that a battle might erupt. He opened a steel chest hidden deep in a wall-melded closet. O. took precautions seriously, donning a set of dull grey-blue armour. In his arms, he held his helmet and then commanded at the walls to shut the music back off.
A bolt jammed into the wall next to the door held his identification card. He wrapped the yellow cord around his neck and stepped out. A chill clung to the air by the time O. returned outside. Again he heard the cat, now hugging tight against the side of a hover. O. picked him up, entered his own hover, and placed the animal next to him before setting out.
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Grease lined the roads, causing the repairman at the wheel to control the vehicle manually and hover off the pre-set path so the boosters didn’t start a fire, though Irisidiom herself wouldn’t notice if anything else burned aflame. Soon, towers surrounded him on all sides, rubble roving landscapes, others newly erect. Dead to sound. The gunfire of the city only echoed now. Silence didn't put him at ease.
When O. exited the hover, he picked the cat up by the neck and placed it in his bag. A curious head poking out to stare at the surroundings soon found itself face with a man. Scraggly, trudging along, barely standing. Gruff, he called out from behind a fallen block of cement donning the initials of the rail-system.
He waved to the repairman, his arms reaching out to the sky. “Over here!”
O. spotted him and went in his direction. The old man signaled his hand forward and crawled behind one of the buildings in production. Once in the middle of the courtyard, the old man lifted his hand again. O. came to a halt immediately, a group circled, then guns pointed straight at him.
One of the women holding a gun stood forward, addressed the visitor. “We can't allow you to add St. Martinsland's currency into the machine.”
“It's not your orders that I listen to.” O. said quietly. He regretted his words after the old man drew a knife strapped to his forearm and plunged it into his leg.
The old man pulled the knife out, blood fountain formed obsidian. “Listen to her and I'll patch you up.”
O. groaned, but didn't resist any further. Arms still pointed in his direction. The old man trailed behind as they set across the courtyard. The speed he had shown with his knife was a poor indication of his walking speed.
True to O.'s boss' word, the area that had once housed offerings to a bitter void left no trace. Amid the grey-break concrete, the only sound of colour emitted from the red vending machine O. had been summoned to fix. The woman stepped toward the machine, all the while pushing her captive back into the mob behind.
She tapped on the machine with her knuckles, eliciting a hollow metal response. “You don't touch this,” she said. “That new company, St. Martinsland, hasn't been playing by the rules.”
“Says a woman whose mercenaries walked a repairman at gunpoint into a newly reclaimed safe-zone.”
“There's no other choice. The indescribable methods of torture they employ… We can't allow them to advance any further. Only by cutting off a source of supplies might the city stay free of them.”
O. attempted to lean into the woman and impose his point, but the stab wound forced him back on the other foot. “If they're that much trouble, then find somebody who might actually be able to help.”
She tensed her muscles, restraining herself from inflicting further harm. “You are that somebody!—”
The ground shook, and O. broke balance and guard due to the sound of static streaming out from somewhere below ground. The woman stomped her foot. A speaker emerged from below the sand.
“— is enroute. I repeat, St. Martinsland is enroute.”
“Hide the repairman!” The woman shouted, stepping forward, tugging the man's identification from his neck and tossing the flimsy piece into an open fire nearby, burning it blue for a short period.
The woman ordered the old man to cut the repairman’s field of vision. Something tightened around his head, he felt hands push him forward. He stumbled and tripped on rubble amongst the familiar sound of pulsating gunfire until what little breeze he’d felt blowing came to be replaced by a still, recycled-cold air. The sound of gears spinning indicated he’d been tossed into a room.
In the commotion, O. hadn’t removed the band covering his eyes, but did so after everything had calmed back down. He saw nothing but a small light emitting from the ceiling, surrounded by three metal walls and a sliding door. The area small, as though a vertical coffin. O. slipped his fingers in a gap between the door and wall. There hadn't been time to reinforce the door and, with a good amount of effort, it shifted open.
Ahead of him, amidst the smoke and rising above the screams of the dead — the machine O. had arrived to work on. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds. The metal blinded. The light drew the repairman forward through the scarred landscape. Into the dust and gunfire. Over bodies that lay riddled with holes. His being all consumed by the machine. Singing.
On top of the machine, sirens announcing its contents spun around at a dizzying speed. “Please select where you would like to pay.”
O. ignored the voice and shimmied behind the machine, pulling out a drawer of coin slots. Fiddling in his bag, he came upon the new socket and placed it into an open area holding one of the former company’s currency. In place, he rebooted the machine and shut the drawer.
The shining red kiosk shouted once again. “This machine accepts any form of payment.”
His call committed, O. fell to his stomach and pushed himself under the battle that only raged stronger now. Boots landed next to his face, and he turned his head to follow their direction. He watched as a dust-obscured figure worked the machine with the new currency. When the machine emitted a round of ammo and a drink, O. quietly cheered and pushed his elbows toward the hover at a faster pace.
“Countdown from five, sir.”
Where did the light go? It’s dark. Wasn’t there a battle? Where did all the noise go? My head. I’m thirsty. Why am I thirsty, didn’t I just drink? My wrists are cold… and my ankles. Wait, where am I? My leg! I was… I fixed the machine. It works, I saw it. I can go now. Let me go! My head feels light. I feel light. I need to drink. Water. Cold water.
\\\ \\\ \|/ /// ///
“Up, worm!” The dark called. O. lifted his groggy head. His extremities black, chained to a metal chair.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t speak to you like that. You are the one that just supplied my troops, right? Of course you are. I have a request of you. I’d call you by your name, but I can’t seem to find your nametag anywhere.”
Another figure walked into the room, but his features melted into the wall. The repairman still couldn’t see through the blur. Neither of the voices sounded familiar.
“What’s its name?” The new voice asked.
“I don’t—” O. spotted the cat as his eyes slowly pulled into a soft focus. “It doesn’t have one.”
The first man, his face now visible, frowned. “Pity. I had hoped to use it as a bargaining tool. I guess you can dispose of it, Victor.”
The second man turned and walked toward a metal table where he stood motionless, his face dropping slightly.
“What’s wrong, Victor?”
Victor took a deep breath and grabbed a hammer from a hook in the wall. He slammed it down onto the table.
O.’s eyes fixed on the pool of blood that poured like a waterfall at his feet. Victor juggled the bloody hammer between his hands.
“Thank you, Victor. You may go.”
“Sir.” He said, ascending a flight of creaky wooden steps.
“So, you’re going to help us, right?” The man asked.
\\\ \\\ \|/ /// ///
Victor dragged O., bound to a wheelchair, back to the site of the vending machine. All sounds of battle had been put to rest. Just him, his captor, and the wind. The repairman opened the drawer once again and asked for his captor to dig through his bag for a tool. Once in hand, he removed every currency collector other than the St. Martinsland check he’d just installed.
“This will do perfectly.” His captor told him after O. replaced the drawer.
As Victor pushed him away into one of the distant buildings, O. heard the winding rotation of the machine’s guffaw.
“This machine accepts any form of payment. At this time, however, we can not accept: SnowBits, Shards, NoSecCoin, Quicklight, Tozai Record, Coriander, Value, MINIMUM, Satellite Flowers, Itoh, Dollars, Capitol Currency, The Phantasmal Bug, END11.11, K,