JANUARY 4TH COMET YEAR 5000
"All aboard the aquatic blue!" The lady on the intercom shouted, "Train numbers 100 to 310 are allowed to leave the station, all others please remain on hold."
"I can't believe how many people are actually here." Justine commented on the amount of people who had showed up at the station that day.
"Well, maybe if your dumbass knew how to drive, we would be the first ones here." Jericho spat, "Now all the evidence or whatever has been tampered with."
"Hey, then why don't you drive next time. Drunkard bitch."
"What did you just call me?"
"NO!" Angel snapped separating the two, "We've got an important job, I will not have the both of you make a fool of me in front of everyone here."
CHATTER!
"Seems to be a lot of people. I wonder if they were also hired."
Teddy had made a fair assumption, most of these people did look out of place in the normal world. Some wore comically large hats or even had entire weird body modifications, whoever they were they weren't normal.
"Underworld sorcerers maybe?" Justine said, "But they wouldn't be out here with everybody else."
"Maybe they were sent by different factions, after all its not like the Vatican has hold over all sorcerers." Angel confirmed.
"Maybe they're 3 star or lower sorcerers hoping to make a quick buck." Teddy also threw his into the ring, "What do you think Iman?"
Jericho wasn't really paying attention to what her team mates were yapping about. Her eyes were busy scanning the room. It was filled with people, not just any people.
'I can sense intense fragment pressure, there are so many sorcerers here for whichever reason.' She thought to herself, 'It was dumb to assume that we would be the only ones here, or even be top 3. In truth each and everyone here has motivation for whatever reason.'
"Iman, are you okay." Teddy shook her.
"Mhh? I'm fine, just thinking."
Justine looked around, his expression showing boredom, "So are we gonna split up or no?"
"That's actually a really decent idea, I hate being stuck with you guys." Angel began walking in an opposite direction to the group, "I'll go check out the west wing."
"Guess I'll head East." Justine moved as well.
Soon the two were left their on their own, "Iman, we should head to the south wing."
Teddy's reasoning for this stemmed from the fact that the north wing led directly to the tracks, it wouldn't be very smart to start their.
"Why don't we split up this time?" Jericho suggested.
"?"
"We'll cover more ground that way, in any case I have doubts we'll even be able to find anything here since people have tampered with the evidence."
"Isn't that why we should stay together, maybe both our eyes can spot something."
"Yeah, but what if there's something in the North that you could've spotted easily and we just didn't go and see."
Teddy shrugged; he didn't like the idea of both of them being apart on missions. It just didn't sit right with him, but probably not for the reasons you're thinking.
"I guess."
Jericho tapped him on the shoulder, "I'll be fine, I promise not to go berserk on anyone. Deal?"
Teddy smiled, "Deal."
The two parted ways to go and begin their individual hunt, each one was about to encounter a little surprise that would leave them speechless. But until then, why don't we follow Jericho and try to understand her thought process, shall we?
'When I was just a little girl I had to vacate and move in with Teddy and the Williams family back in Old London. Their house was big and nice, an upgrade from my previous dumpster fire of a neighborhood.
Anyway, during one of the many history lessons miss Williams would give us, she had mentioned a peculiar incident that had sparked my attention.'
The incident was known as 'Decaying Malediction' (If you can't remember the word go back to NO.14).
"The continent to the East of the super continent we call the main continent is now uninhabitable due to massive amounts of chemical radiation. The radiation itself is over 2000 years old, meaning that…"
"Oh, I know…" A young Jericho raised her arm.
"Yes Jericho dear."
"The time taken for the initial amount of radioactive sample to decay to half its original amount must have been extremely high (She's referring to the half-life.)"
"Yes indeed. But the special case about this decay is that its self-sustaining, thus the original amount of radioactive sample remains the same.
If you have 1.6 grams of Uranium 238, it would take just that one sample 4.78 billion years just to reach 0.4 grams."
"WOW!" Both Teddy and Jericho noted this down in their notebooks.
"However, the sample that was spread across this continent wasn't Uranium, but something less potent. An element that would only take 20 to 50 years to completely run out."
"But mom, how is it that it's still around. For a regular sorcerer 1000 years isn't a very long time, shouldn't most people have outlived the radiation?" Teddy asked.
"That is a very good question. The thing about this type of radiation is that instead of breaking down to a more stable form, it actually repeats itself. When the atom breaks down to release two sister nuclei, instead of both of them breaking down even more, they instead fuse back together and break again."
"Oh, that's how it's self-sustaining." Jericho gasped.
"Yes, and this will allow it to never end. As you can probably tell, this isn't any regular decay, its one caused by sorcery. This incident claimed over 1.2 billion lives, reducing our population drastically."
'As anyone might have guessed.' Currently Jericho walked around the halls of the station continuing her train of thought, 'As a child hearing that it might not have hit me much back then, mostly because in the grand scheme of things numbers were just numbers. For me to be able to see those numbers as people I had to experience actual death and tragedy.
I could barely bring myself to watch as children were stripped from their parents, men were pierced through the heart for being heretics, small villages were wiped out for not paying taxes. Now I can only imagine, how was he even able to bring himself to wipeout and entire continent? Does he have no heart, no empathy, no love at all. What was it even for? All those people, men, women, children, died horrific deaths due to radiation poisoning and there was nowhere to run. Their skins peeling off their bodies as their eyes turned inside out, their organs beginning to fail one by one. Him, I will be the one to bring vengeance upon all those tortured souls. I alone will make him beg for mercy, but will give him none. Akame Saikyo, you best be ready to pay for all the lives you have taken.'
Her footsteps grew louder as her blood began to boil and her rage began to build. She would find him at any cost.
***
It was a cool and quiet day, the winds blew the sea, which in turn sent rippling tides towards beach.
A small girl in Kimono (Traditional Japanese clothing). Hers was bright pink and had a flowery pattern on it, on her feet were wooden sandals. Her hair was jet black and her eyes green.
She looked to be worried, very worried indeed.
"AKAME!" She shouted.
"AKAME!" She repeated.
"Just where could that boy have gone?" She hurried her steps across the beach fearing the worst had happened to her son. Unknown to her, Akame was safe and sound, with a man he would soon come to rely on for as long as they both lived.
TO BE CONTINUED.
(NO OTHER CHAPTER TODAY, AND A BREAK TOMORROW)