Run for your life, Saki thought. Run. Don't stop...these words went through her, but she recalled having heard them before from her mother.
Old memories bubbled up the depths of her mind.
Running, running. Saki's earliest memories were of running...her homeland of Meiji had, perhaps, lasted longer than the other nations of the Old World-they had recognized the threat, and taken very specific counters to it. Still, by the time Saki was born their time was running out...still, she was born mostly whole and relatively healthy and mostly sane-in a world of broken people and broken things, and she was assured this was a blessing.
By the time she was old enough to realize what was happening, Meiji was under collapse-from it's own internal pressures, and that of outsiders. Armies had invaded the country acting on no ones orders, and when they won they realized they had nothing to go home to, nothing to do with the land they claimed. It was madness. They descended on the lands like a swarm of locusts. She remembered the bombs, and the guns, and angry shouts of men...but, she remembered running, most of all-with her mothers firm grip on her wrist...
...
Running. Running.
17 years old on the streets of Shan-Uin, in the Neo-Qin 'Protective Zone'. A bad place to be, if you were a girl. Or anyone else, for that matter. The milita were as bad as some of the gangs-some of the gangs were decent people, in a way, the others would eat you alive-and sometimes not metaphorically speaking. You had to be fast to survive, and clever. She had seen what had happened if you were too slow...her mother had been gone for years, now-a victim of a district 'Miasma Cleansing'-only passing on her medical knowledge, she had kept and hoarded from her own mother. Saki knew how to survive, and it mostly came from knowing a persons fears and desires and then acting on them-everyone had a need, something you give them. In her line of business, it was usually drugs...but, she found herself adept at doing this with all sorts of things. You could make friends, allies, lovers this way...they could help you, but they were all expendable, ultimately. All that mattered was that you kept running, and didn't let them weigh you down. She most remembers the feel of the cheap shalestone streets under too thin shoes, when she had shoes-which was more often than others, at least. And the screams.
...
Run for your life.
22 years old, still in Shan-Uin, and God how she hated this city. Wouldn't she sometimes dream of watching it burn? Lighting the match herself...but, fool notions-and after all, business was good. Really good. She had a place of her own, a small place. She grew plants, plants people said grew no where else anymore. Blue Buttons, Red Nanks, Sun Nuts, Button Lily, Butter Bells...she can afford these things. Since, people always needed things, and she could always get them. She had burned some bridges, to be sure. But, it had never been personal. Right? The sound of breaking glass. A dozen men in gang colors, wrecking her small shop. Knocking her well tended flower pots to the ground, if only because they hated the scent and sight of living, growing things. It made her angry, more than losing the money, or the stock or the fact they killed the man she had been sleeping with at the time, the one she finally trusted too much, who had finally betrayed her-as she must have known he would. Maybe deep down, she wanted things to change. Good change, bad change? Saki had found they were difficult to tell apart. She still might have shot one of them if Tang hadn't hit her with the taser. Another old Lover. She often wondered later, if he had spared her-at least, indirectly-the gang could have done much worse than selling her off, relatively untouched. At least, he had given her a chance...to keep running.
So, she remembers to run. Never stop. To Keep running.
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Topic: Los Diablos, City of Scum [RPG] 5/6 {IC} (Read 35118 times)