From The Shadows They Reign

FTSTR

As usual, the streets were heavily cramped, people in rags or tattered clothing with patches attempting to not bump into one another. The washed out tan to brown color pallet of the clothing was nearly identical to that of the buildings around them, crafted from sheet metal and whatever scraps they could find in the city. Exposed, rusted bronze piping ran along the exterior walls, reaching into alleyways where coal generators sat, often packed together like the people in this section of the city. Visitors or those from other sections described the overall aroma as being that of "Low Class Trash", an entirely accurate description, even if it was rude.

Walking with the crowd was twenty one year old Hakeyo Jira, a Japanic Asian born man in a light brown leather coat, a faded green scarf wrapped around his neck. The black pants he wore were dirt crusted at the bottoms from mud splashing onto them as his steel toed boots stepped through puddles and potholes, most of his pants having fallen to the same fate. Beneath his jacket was a plain black t-shirt, one he had owned for years now since he had stopped growing at 5'10. He kept his eyes trained to his surroundings and hands in his coat pockets, trying to look inconspicuous while still being watchful. The crime rate had only increased in this part of the city and anyone could be the next victim of a robbery or mugging.

Hakeyo was a Fennis Humanis, an F-Class citizen in the round city of Veraskum, a society driven entirely by it's class system and government control over the businesses. Not only were the citizens split by class, the city was as well, with slums as the outer edge, mid income housing and corporate businesses further in, and the walled off center, where only the rich and owners of the corporate world stayed. Harsh laws against F-Class civilians were put in place at the beginning of the city's construction some hundred years ago, stripping them of access to proper schooling, technology, privatized healthcare, vehicle ownership, freedom of speech, and many other things, rendering them the bottom of the barrel rats in an infested city.

It didn't bother the young Japanic man very much, he kept his head low, stayed quiet, and far away from causing trouble, spending his days working away at a coal processing factory. When he wasn't there, he was at home creating artwork or learning some engineering from a workshop he visited often, the owner having been a close friend of his late parents. The class system didn't hurt him and he could have cared less if he was in a lesser position than some others, he just wanted to live the quiet life he had, throwing coal and drawing.

Turning down a street to his left, Hakeyo accidentally bumped into an older gentleman, both nodding their apologies and continuing on as if nothing had happened. He was glad most people didn't take things like that personally, it was hard enough to walk freely without touching arms with another person as is. If this was in the inner C Ring of the city however, it would have been a beat down and likely an arrest, unless both were of the same class. It wasn't exactly commonplace anymore for Fennis to be beaten by other classes, but arrests did happen often enough, and mostly for insignificant reasons. Hakeyo himself had only been arrested once as a teenager, but it was warranted after he had been caught trying to steal from a C-Class grocery store. Now with a job, he didn't need to do that kind of thing anymore and learned from his mistakes.

After a few more minutes of wishing he couldn't smell the scents coming off of those closest to him on the street, he arrived at a two door garage next to a small two story building. Like the other structures in the F Ring, it was constructed from rusted metal and scraps of other materials, sturdy enough to withstand light storms at least. Both of the garage doors were pulled up, showing a workshop inside with wires, bolts, screws, random metal plating, bits of machinery, and tools scattered about. The back wall was lined with shelves, filled with boxes of items and other trinkets that probably didn't need to be there, only adding to the mess that the workshop was.