The Pale Prince

Regiment

Area  0-Down was a ruin.

The section of San Francisco that had been brutalised and destroyed by the attack of Meltdown's Regiment was a mess of cracked concrete and fallen buildings. What tower-blocks did remain standing were bombed out and largely composed of rubble haphazardly piled up against what structure remained. The roads that had once criss-crossed through the large district were fallen and broken, sometimes dipping into pipes and tunnels that remained underneath the city – old sewer and underground lines that had led to the different districts within the city – and sometimes simply being indiscernible thanks to huge excess of rubble that coated the top of the black roads with its jagged edges and broken glass.

A few of the apartments on the outskirts of Area 0-Down had been picked up by buyers, the location that had once been one of the more affluent parts of the city now seemingly abandoned by the majority of its old inhabitants, with those who were living there only doing so out of either bravery and lack of fear of the possible resurgence of the Regiment or because they had to – places in the state were scarce. What apartments were left on the outskirts of the ruined part of the city were usually covered in graffiti - a sad way for the buildings, which were mostly designed by world famous planners and made for only those who were rich enough to buy them, to be treated – and parts of them had cracks and rubble stuck within the main body of the exterior, huge shards of glass or metal embedding itself within the material made to form the buildings. All of the homes had been refurbished so as to be able to support a comfortable life for those who wanted to live there, but they were hardly as nice as they used to, with the bombed out buildings looking more like a shadow of themselves.

When the Regiment had come in and began to destroy and mine beneath the city, it had taken Fortress and huge swathes of UNARC military power to shut down the machines, with Fortress focusing on getting those who could not get out of the city any other way whilst the Air force and the Army attempted to shut down whatever they could, though the armour on both the interior and the exterior of the Robots was almost impervious to anything that didn't fire '50cals'. Whatever Naval forces could be quickly mustered made sure to remain by the coast in case the machines had decided to leave the city and head to LA, where work on a new class of Research Submarine was taking place – the sub' having been built in the Chinese Tri-State but now having been relocated to the American Tri-State, where they were testing it to make sure that it was capable of withstanding the immense pressures that it was predicted to.

Within the ruined city walked three young men, sifting through the rubble and carefully lifting up pieces of stone. One of them – Jonzi – muttered to himself as he looked down at his palm and pulled out a shard of stone that had dug itself into the soft flesh of his palm, grimacing as it slid against his skin and out of his hand. "What are we doing here guys?" Jonzi called out, his two friends turning around to look at him.

Denzel laughed at him as he pointed towards the blood that was pooling out from his hand, muttering to himself. "Man," The boy yelled out over the rubble, his bottom lip stick out further than the top one, giving it the impression of being fatter than its partner. "You're just like one of those whiny little white kids up by Osaka District." The boy laughed to himself as he picked up another rock and threw it to the side of him, the brick crumbling against the floor before cracking and falling into several smaller shards of rock. Jonzi mumbled insults as he turned around and carried on sifting through the pile of stones, wincing every time a small piece of rubble rubbed up against the deep wound. Watching as a few small trickles of blood welled up and out of the wound, Jonzi muttered to himself before ripping a small piece of cloth off of the bottom of his t-shirt and wrapping it around the wound, being sure to shake the rag in case there was any dust or splinters of stone left within it – the shirt itself was old and unused, though Jonzi had thrown all of his bags into suitcases whilst Dave had disappeared in the night.