((Well hello there you lovely peoples! So as some of you will be aware I've created my own AU World and have written two stories so far within it (My Little Friend & Release The Hounds) which follow the Shield. This is the same world, though concerning different characters, and focused on a time before the Shield turned away from the Authority. I hope that you all enjoy it! As always please let me know what you think as I love reading your comments. This was an image in my head, and I'd love to know if you think I should continue it!))

NOVEMBER 10 || KENNEDY Central Capitol

When he was a kid, the world stood out from his mind like a massive map, ready to be conquered. He saw continents; he saw countries, cities, and people. He saw the chance, the possibility to find the unseen and to walk the road untraveled. He saw it all out that bedroom window in Kennedy. He felt it each time he blew out the candles on his imaginary birthday cakes. He saw it plunge into his skin through a tattoo needle. But for all that he saw, he remained in Kennedy, the Stormy City, his forever home because he didn't have the means, the reason to leave. None did. No one ever really left. They just sank down lower and lower, year by year as their souls were consumed by drugs and crime, as they fell under the spell of the Authority, who promised the best possible things, but couldn't or wouldn't deliver on a single word.

The State of Capitol fathered the vagrants and the lost boys. It took in the criminals and the scoundrels and as time went by and his face started to age, as hair grew on his chin and the ink began to cover more and more of his skin, he refused to be left behind, to stay in that house where he wasn't wanted, wasn't loved. There was no point staying where he couldn't find what he needed. Kennedy was his town, and he would walk its streets with a hollow pride.

At least, that's how it had all started out.

The cold and the wet sank through the coat he wore, splattered the dome of the hood which covered his head. His face was bent down to the floor, his walk solid. Instinct told him that eyes watched from every corner, but that was the way of Kennedy. You were never out of sight, never out of harm and when your name was on the Authority's list, all you had to do was wait for the hell hounds to come after you. He had no fear of the Shield. Just attack dogs on short strings. He'd faced their kind before. Had done favors in the past for one of their members. He was too useful to them to kill completely. A show could be made, the hounds would maul at his carcass, say he'd been punished and he'd fall out of sight for a while. He was not their enemy, not yet.

But he had missions of his own to attend.

The wind licked the forever damp sidewalk. Droplets fell from the sky and dripped from the overhang of those street lights. They littered the streets, every dozen meters or so another stood proud. Most had been broken; stones and bullets had busted their bulbs and left few places to hide. Each alley mouth he passed housed its own special brand of atheism. There was no hope, no faith. If you peered through the shadows, you were like to find the crumpled body of another night victim, a woman with her throat slashed, a kid trawling through the dumpsters for his latest meal. There was nothing safe about Kennedy. It was a city forgotten. His hands were in his pockets, he knew every single street. That map he'd seen of the world as a child had come down to an intricate knowledge of this own place. His own home was sealed in his brain, his own blood marked out the roads and corners, the alleyways and railways. The railway, with its shaking apartments and nearby Mullah; that was where he made his home, was on the other side of the city from where he was now. Most of the streets lacked names; they'd been scraped off years before in the riots, so that the Authority couldn't track the rebellions as easy.

He'd been among those numbers, roaring for revolution, battled until bloody and blue, and found himself in a cell for his efforts to change the world. He'd been too strong for them to break. So they threw him down in arenas they'd started to build underground. They forced him to fight for his life whilst they threw their coins and made their bets. He'd fought so many. He'd seen the life fade from their eyes as he squeezed it out of their bodies. He X'd the back of his hands in defiance against the order they tried to force on them. You lived or you died in the pits. He'd made it out alive. The Hounds of Justice had not yet taken a bite out of him, so he continued.

These were early days. The Game had ruled over Capitol, over Kennedy for less than a year. Already, he had ravaged the cities. He'd claimed them all as his own. He marked out men for their loyalty to him, fed his enemies to the dogs and took money, land and power for himself. He lived the life of luxury whilst the people suffered. The few blues, those badge carrying man who'd made a promise to try and keep Kennedy safe, who pledged themselves to the one who held that old title, that were left on the streets continued their rounds, did their best to try and round up the villains. But there were too many and they too few.

People were too blind to see that there was no good. There were only the shades of darkness they were willing to fall through to get to what they wanted.

He had never considered himself to be a hero, a good man. There were stories of people who had been, of the coppers, the military men who'd risen through the ranks, who'd toppled oppression and found themselves in the position of power, on that throne with the Kennedy title on high. It was that golden opportunity to make heavenly changes to a state lost in the murk. This life was just a dead man's ballet – a puppet show. All were corpses, just waiting to die.

He was no exception, and the toll of the bell carried him faster, faster through those deep cut streets. He'd heard what had happened, had to see it with his own eyes because he knew belief wouldn't sustain his curiosity. The bell, over, over, signaled the coming of the midnight hour. The street lamps flickered as he dashed through their lanes. The bastion, built to keep in and force out, it hulked high, higher than every building, save for the center few, save for that indomitable strong hold in the town hall, the home of the Authority. None had ever scaled its great walls; plenty had hung dead from them, ropes around their necks, bodies swaying against the stone – warnings to all with ill intention. Men like him.

One of the last of the old breed had met the Hounds. He'd heard the whispers on the streets, the screams in the alleyways, the predictions, the fears. One of the last who dared to stand up openly, to roar out defiance was the man who refused to die. They said he was immortal. They said that he could never be buried. Every man could lie in an unmarked grave. No one wanted to die. But the Undertaker dug graves, he didn't sleep in them.

The rain started to heave, to tide down and he felt the winds billow. The last few tolls were creeping as he reached the edge of the bastion. Ladders ridged its great spine, hundreds of meters up, skinny rungs. He clutched a hold with gloved hands. The fingers peeped through and smeared on the wet metal. Up above were flashes, he could hear the throws and the groans. He could feel it inside as he turned his face up and started to climb. The water smeared across his face, caught in his hair and the thick beard that obscured his chin. His strength was absolute, but the weather did not falter. He tangled his booted feet in the rungs as he went, had to stop as the wind tugged at his coat, tried to pull him off, send him falling to his death in the ghettos below. His hood blew back but he couldn't stop to pull it back. Every heave pulled him closer. The bell struck again. Closer, closer, his heart heaved and his breathes were short. But he reached it, the brink on which some patrolled, rifles at the ready. His arms hooked over the ledge, and he saw them, just as the knot was tightened around the neck, as the body was hauled over the side.

The last bell tolled as the Undertaker hung from the bastion. The search lights swung round – the flashes he'd seen. There, the three men stood, victorious over the fallen. The Hounds. They were damaged goods, he could see in how they stood; the blood which trailed down their arms. The last of his strength pulled him up, feet onto the slippery platform. They didn't hear him until the first thunder rolled. His lungs expelled the air, his heartbeat stuttered to a base rate. They found him in a flash of lightning. The rain illuminated, drew down from their eyes. There – the mad one, a ferocious brute who had to be held back as they tried to undo the chain wrapped around his throat, it made his eyes bulge. When it came free, he took it in hand. To his left, the thief, their leader with blond roots and a smart mouth – more words came from him than the giant who lurched behind them both. He'd met them before. They'd fought. But he'd lived. Tonight they'd murdered the Undertaker.

The search light rounded, blinded him for a moment, from its shadow the small one, Ambrose darted forward. But he scrambled to a halt when he saw what was in hand. His mission had nothing to do with the Shield. Nothing to do with the dead man. He'd been paid for something stronger, a bite at the core. He had bigger things in mind, and the fuses were lit. This wasn't a suicide bid, or an assassination.

It was demolition.

Each bomb was perfectly snug in the palms of his hands. The rain made slick the rest of the world but his grip was solid.

'Don't be a fool.' Rollins, the smart one. They'd made deals before, helped each other when they needed it; scratching backs and kicking out lights, blowing up doors and buildings...safes. But those days were long gone. He'd been the one to blow the doors in the asylum, to free the madman Dean Ambrose out onto the streets. 'You'll take us all out.'

Thunder shrugged his shoulders and he braced his legs against the strength of the wind. There was no turning back and no undying.

'Nobody lives forever.'

He let go.

The tails of his caught the wind, and he ran. There weren't enough seconds to get completely clear. Another search light, within grasp, built in a long metal column encased in the stone, the sturdiest of all the towers on the bastion. His hand somehow grabbed the metal. The bombs hit the stone. The blast smacked them all, threw them back, and threw them aside as chips and blocks and twisted metal flew. The art of building a bomb was simple to him. He could create blindfold and neatly put them to rest in their cylinder houses. The fun came from the boom.

He held on for life. The platform on which they'd all stood started to give. The foundations in stone were simple. Blow from the bottom and the top would tumble. From his pocket he pulled more free, homemade grenades that he pulled the pin from with old teeth. He spat out the metal and hauled them into the tumbling wall. This was a show for the ages. A spectacular experience of light and heat. He laughed against the bombardment of the storm. He saw the Shield scramble for safety. He saw as Seth stumbled, near fell, but his hand was caught by Ambrose, his foot clutched by their fellow hound, Roman Reigns.

He caught the giant's eyes across the divide. Reigns too clung to one of the search lights. He heard the swirl of oblivion and felt as the wall crumbled. Thick blocks of stone disappeared down into the dark of Kennedy, crushed the nothingness below. There were no honest hearts or men to worry for. He was the last endeavor, the lifeline for the few remaining rebels. But he was no soldier. A gun for hire, a bomb ready to explode. He was a mercenary and he didn't care what it brought. The endless storm, the fury of a world on the edge, it was his to claim and to conquer. He heaved, brought his body up, somehow managed to hitch his leg in the metal bracket of the search light. The wall succumbed. A deep V gouged itself open, cracks that trailed down to its foundation. Particles were carried on the hurricane.

The bastion, infallible walls of stone, had fallen.

But bombs are unpredictable.

One left, clutched in hand, but knocked free by the bent metal of the ladder he'd climbed. It tumbled, smacked against the tower he'd stranded himself on. There was nowhere to go. The blast burned the skin on his neck, set alight hairs and he felt his grip on the light begin to slacken. The white faces in the storm saw him, the hand of Seth Rollins reached out –

'Punk!'

He only just heard it as the tower crumbled. The bricks and mortar flew the metal bracket inside overheated, buckled and bent. The stone collided with the earth and he felt his lifeline begin to give. If he believed in a God he might have prayed. But there was nothing beyond the dull earth, and the sky he fell through like a meteor. Perhaps this was the day that he died. Time started to slow. He could see the pieces of that wall, the tower fall down with him. Animals and men all died in the end; all were beasts in disguise. He thought he saw the faces of the Shield above him. He counted his sins.

The world stopped with a sickening crack.