Kritikal Krysis

Chapter 6: Akuma

The sun began to rise over the walls that blocked out the horizon of the landscape surrounding the city. All the neon signs and lights automatically powered down as the darkness faded away. The stars in the sky were no longer visible to the naked eye, as each twinkling light disappeared one by one until there was no more. The hours of day was when the city would be seemingly asleep, as if it were nocturnal. The streets weren’t as packed as they were during the night and nearly half of the shops and stores had closed down.
    Nomad ignored all this as he navigated the streets, the shadows of his hood hiding his masked face away from the daylight. The few people that did dwell upon the streets would either continue on or shoot a brief glance to him. Beneath his mask, his breathing was heavy due to the heat of the day, especially with all the apparel he wore. He paid no mind to however, for this was nothing compared to the desert outside the walls of the city. Nothing but hot sand and burning heat.
    There was nothing but streets and shops and the more further Nomad went into the outskirts of the district, the less people there were and they would be low-class, or poor. It was a rather saddening sight for him, to see that those not living in decent or proper conditions. It was one of the reasons he despised the system of the entire planet. People like this suffered and died while the nonsensible residents and the tyrannical soldiers lived in a world of greed and lust, fashion and style, wealth and power. It was all sickening to him.
    After a while of pondering and walking, Nomad soon found himself on familiar ground. He stood in the middle of a small street with two abandoned shops to his right, which both had broken neon signs hanging on the cracked windows. To his left, there was nothing but a solid wall with graffiti art painted across it. Between the two shops, a small alley plundered into the darkness that divided the structure. Nomad looked around to see if anyone was dwelling around, even though he had entered deserted territory not long ago.
    He entered into the darkness of the alley, the walls tainted with more graffiti, most representing many symbols and words. One was the symbol of the Dragonflies, which was a dragonfly from a top view of the wings. The rebellion supergroup served always held rallies and protests against the corrupted system and always supported Nomad’s cause. He was their voice and their symbol.
    Passing the displays of graffiti, Nomad reached the end of the alley to find a manhole lid at his feet. He knelt down to the ground and slid the lid to the side as he looked down to the abyss below. He took a grip to the ladder and began making his way down, sliding the lid back into place beforehand. The climb down was nothing but darkness, yet he found his footing and grip upon the bars of the ladder with much ease. At last, he had reached the bottom of the ladder and found himself in a tunnel of faint light. This was the underworld beneath Neo-Tokyo.
    Nomad, still expressionless underneath his mask, moved onward through the tunnel. Below his feet, heavy-duty glass held up his weight as sewage water flowed on the other side of it. A rather disgusting sight, but once more did he ignore his surroundings, lost in memory as he moved without thought. It was as if he was being guided by something. All was silent in the tunnel, except for the heavy breathing of Nomad and the constant beating of his heart through his chest.
    The tunnel continued on like an endless path until Nomad soon returned to reality, escaping the vault of his memory. He found himself to what was a dead end of the tunnel, but this was his destination. He removed the plated glove on his right hand and pressed the tips of his fingers against the center of the wall. The steel of the wall was cold against his skin, but an odd warmth soon followed and there was a loud beep that echoed through the tunnel. There was a hiss and the wall then split apart vertically from the center, opening and revealing a familiar secret room. His hideout.
    The Nomad entered into the room, the secret door closing behind him with a sound of metal against metal. The area of the room was slightly smaller than that of a shipping container. In the back-right corner, a unmade bed showed signs of not being used for a very long time. In the other corner, there was a metallic desk covered in a mess of papers, pictures, documents, and maps of the Devoran. Behind a glass case inside the left wall of the room, a armor stand contained that of a technologic samurai armor, same color of his current apparel. Just behind the armor, a sheathed no-daichi sword hung on the wall. “Akuma,” Nomad whispered beneath his breath.  Akuma was that of the japanese name for ‘devil,’ or ‘demon.’ The sword had come from a far ancestor from ancient Earth centuries ago. The blade still looked  new and clean despite its age. It was foretold that it stole the soul of its victims, never to live in whatever life that came next.
Nomad found himself mesmerized by the sword and its armor. Without even realizing, he had already typed the pass code into the security device next to the glass. There was a hiss as compressed air leaked from the small crevice that appeared from the glass. After a brief moment, the glass opened up and all became white in his sight.