The sounds of obsolete combustion engines and screeching metal machinery met in the sky above Neo-Tokyo. The aural juggernauts raged on, locked in a cacophonous battle whose purpose was long forgotten and never relevant. Beneath the colossal sounds of industry and commerce, beneath the Babel-esque skyscrapers and the concrete domes that housed the government, and beneath the bright, distracting shopping centers that acted like storm drains for the money of the misguided, stood Tetsuo Shima.
As he stood, shuddering beneath the roof of a small aluminum bus stop, almost but not entirely protected from the acid rain he'd grown to associate with home, and under the strict supervision of an IkariCorp EnforcementTech Armed Escort, he thought about his breath. Specifically, he wondered how long the city oxygen would stay in his bloodstream after he'd been shipped away. One. Two. Three. Exhale. The smell of soba noodles stuck in his nose for a while. That and stale urine. He thought about how this was the only air his lungs had ever touched, how he didn't know what it'd feel like the be filled with the artificial stuff they used in corporate colonies. It was supposed to be better for you, especially compared to the smog in Neo-Tokyo, but whenever he heard someone say that, all he could think of was the one time he threw a piece of fresh bread to a sewer rat and it puked its guts onto the floor. So he waited, and gripped his bag a little tighter, and inhaled until he felt like he was going to pass out.
When his bus came, Tetsuo took his first good look at the IkarCo rentacop. He was in his mid-twenties, probably doing this as temp work before something else lined up for him. He wondered how much he'd have to bribe him to let him go. Not that it mattered, since he didn't have anything to begin with. Before he could entertain the thought much longer, the escort glanced at the bus then back at Tetsuo, gave a brisk but deliberate nod, and that was that. When he got to the bus's top step, Tetsuo took a second to close his eyes, filled his lungs until they hurt, and embarked, sails set for another planet.
He moved back through the bus until he came upon an empty row, at which he sat down bag first. Once he was settled, he took a look out the window, back at the rentacop, who was currently on the phone. His eyes eyes looked absolutely relieved, any of the tension that was there before had left his body. Tetsuo thought about this, figured he was probably telling some manager somewhere that Tetsuo was his problem now. It seemed so simple when he was talking to the judge: Do I wanna be in prison until I'm forty or do I wanna live as a free man on some posh experimental colony? At least no one would bother him on the colony. He'd probably just be dropped of and left to work things out for himself, they just wanted bodies to put there anyway. On the bus, though, things weren't so clear to him. Nothing was.