Plurk paste

FOR @FaeRose

Traits: excitable, caretaker, will wreck shit

Name: X'ael (Ex-ale)

Genre: urban fantasy, cyberpunk

Nos: no body horror


The city of Glory was beautiful, shining, modern. Everything a City for the Future should be. The people of Glory live happy, fulfilling lives where all of their needs are met and they work in various fields to provide for their community and challenge themselves to do MORE. All that is asked of the people is that they push themselves to be more, do more, and be the next step beyond themselves. Whether it be in education, science, creative pursuits, or even modifying their bodies to fit whatever their next stage is, you bring Glory by "never settling when perfection could be your next ascension."

But most people in Glory don't think about the hows and whys of their city. Of how they have been given so many opportunities and why things are so Perfect for them. Because many people in Glory don't know about the Downtown. Because Downtown is where much of the hard labor and heavy work is done to make sure that Glory stays as shining, perfect and clean as many see it to be.

Downtown is where criminals were sent to do hard labor, backbreaking work to build the golden city above, but in the generations since it has become much more. It is where people with massive debts go to work off their loans, where people who were forgotten by the Glorious Citizens slip through the cracks and fight to survive, where the people rejected by the City for the Future stagnate in the past. Without the Downtown, Glory couldn't exist, but the people who work there are never given the credit or recognition they deserve. Where the air is so polluted that lung diseases are common and people wear gas masks or modify themselves with filter implants to breathe easier. Where sickness runs rampant and the healthcare system is always strained and underfunded. Downtown may be necessary for Glory to prosper, but they don't care if the people of Downtown have those same opportunities.

X'ael was born and raised in the Downtown. He doesn't know who his parents are, and he doesn't care. Doesn't even know if X'ael is the name he was born with. Since he was a kid he worked in the factories, didn't have enough to afford a mask and was always coughing, hacking, a snot-nosed brat with too much gunk in his lungs but too much stubborn to ever sit down. So of course all everyone ever told him was to just "exhale" and it stuck.

In Downtown, you take care of your own where you find them. He was raised on the streets by other street rats and then taken under the wing of Doc Z, after she saved his life when X'ael has been injured working in one of the factories. He lost his hand, but the Doc saved his lost and got him a used, beaten up, but still useable prosthetic.

She was medical doctor who had been sent to the Downtown for performing "unathorized procedures" (she had been giving medical care to inmates doing hard labor and providing them with updated body mods when people in the Downtown were prohibited from having anything upgraded within the last five years). Doc Z taught him things no one else had bothered to think mattered to the street kids because the less they knew the easier it was to exploit them. Doc taught him the importance of education.

And now X'ael does the same. He's resourceful and learned from the best on how to make bargains and barter to get what he needs for the kids he looks after. Neverland is the sector of Downtown which has been all but completely taken over by the orphans and abandoned children. A wild and feral land where children are taught skills to survive and how to make their way on their own far too young.

It used to be that those who couldn't stand on their own would be left behind to die and those that lasted found their own crews to support them, but then Doc Z stepped in and the kids liked her. The kids trusted she was on the up. She started organizing the kids and used the older ones to help with the younger ones, X'ael and his friends being the primary helpers. She insisted on providing some sort of education. Sure they couldn't teach them much, but the the kids deserved to know how to read and write and do basic math so they wouldn't be cheated on the streets. She got them medical attention, mostly decent meals, and even did extra jobs to afford for body mods for those with more severe health issues.

But helping all the kids meant they weren't as desperate for the "help" provided by other sources, especially those who sought to exploit them. It put a target on the Doc's back and one day she was Removed. Whether by enemies in the Downtown or someone from Glory, they didn't know for sure, but Doc Z was gone and the damage was enough that it took months for Neverland to recover.

But they did. Because like hell was X'ael going to let everything the doctor has started go to waste. Like hell would he let the kids start to fall through the cracks again. He started doing a lot of lessons himself, going based on what he had learned from the Doc and trying to keep the kids' spirits up, letting them know that someone was still looking out for them.

He gained the nickname "Professor Hook," being teased by the kids, because he was always doing jobs and bartering to get school supplies and textbook-chips were some of the most expensive things to get in the Downtown. And of course for the hook-like prosthetic that the Doc had gotten him after the factory accident. But that's what being in Neverland was all about. You never gave up. You never gave in. You never let down your guard. You never stopped living. And you never forget that sometimes it's okay to be a kid.

But he also never stopped searching. Hunting. Because he was going to find out what happened to Doc Z and when he found out who took her out, he was going to burn everything they cared about to ashes. Because if there's one thing you should never try to take from a Neverkid, it's hope. And there would be hell to pay for that.