Khanman wrote:
It's somewhat late, but +1 to Sythe.
Many thanks, and on that note, I'm just going to quote it here as I feel like it got swept up in the wake of the other ideas.
Sythe wrote:
A Game In Shadows
Slashing, sleeting, soaking, seeping.
The dark cave cast by a buzzing hoverlight over a quiet overpass splits open, the crack and spit of a lighter in a moment, illuminating the moving spaces between droplets.
A drawn breath.
The moment passes, the glow between drops winks out, leaving a fitful, ruddy red dot and the stink of burnt ozone as its only remainders.
Pursed lips, a thin stream of gunmetal smoke escaping, two eyes open, two iridesant blue dots joining their red cousin. The high tech cousins in from the city, the dark lines of tiny circuits crossing their round bodies. Angling down, they flowed with gallons of water, rushing over sidewalks and down along drains, splashing and gurgling. Lips curled, an annoyed tsk, another draw.
The red cousin swells, ruddy light showing a sharp jaw wreathed in stubble before fading back to dark once more.
A rustle in the dark, a thin, black leather dress shoe stepping into the yellow hoverlight glow, bringing with it a black, red pinstriped pant leg, fat droplets hitting shiny leather with a pat. Blue dots come close to the very edge of the light, but hold there, an ear cocked.
A scream, distorted by buildings but not so far off to his left, and a faint, vibratory rumble, close, to his right.
Then nothing.
An absolute nothing, pregnant with an unnatural lack of anything at all, a dead calm in even a quiet corner such as this. Eventually this nothing changed, coalessed in the mind into a low humming that slowly grew louder before dissapearing with a strange sensation. Like a pop in the brain but without any noise, all the sounds of the night came rushing back in. The growing rumble of the tram, sirens far off, animals calling, and two feet, hurrying in the new sounds of the powered down Grossman-Field Dampener.
Hard leather clacking on pavement, close, above, passing onto the overpass.
A rustle of cloth, a dark, thin figure stepping out into the light, a leather bound hand pressing something in it's palm.
With the rushing and cracking of magplates sliding, the tram rushed overhead on steel struts, its burly noise drowing out any noise that three microthermal bombs could make.
Both hoverlights crashed to the ground first, seconds before the overpass crumbled. As chunks of plasticrete hit the pavement below, a dark figure came down with them, ungainly but with enough poise to land on its feet. Before it could right itself, two irridesant blue dots glowed into life a foot away.
A rustle of cloth, a small, sharp intake of breath.
The slump of a dead weight.
Sirens in the distance, growing closer.
Thin leather shoes, clacking off into the distance, gunmetal smoke in the air behind.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Noir-ish Cyberpunk game of assassins and spies. Anybody interested?
In a time when the golden glow of cities covers more than the majority of not only earth but the moon and mars, when humanity sits in what it believes to be its new golden age, an age where technology and science can get anyone almost anything, with enough cash, conventional war has no place.
Ruled by one body, the United Council of Planets, what struggles humanity sees now are the small ones, the gang wars, the drug busts, the petty crime lords.
But the largest struggle, the one humanity generally does not see, is what the players generally refer to as the shadow game. All the major corporations, of which there are many, as well as radical and major political and religious groups, powerful enough gangs and crime lords, as well as a number of independently wealthy individuals have 'representatives' in the game, most working solo on different initiatives, some only gathering information, others specializing entirely in 'wetwork', but most dabbling in both.
As of late however, there have been tremors throughout the players of the shadow game, someone is disrupting the dance. This is not the first time someone has made big enough waves for everyone to notice, but for the first time they are not targeting the players.
They're targeting the representatives.
Someone is killing the killers.
