RED TIDE: Chapter 1 - Spark
Alternia: The Capital City of Fuchsiaburg, Lowblood District.
7th Night of the 3nd Perigee. Two sweeps into the war with Earth.
Your name is Tavros Nitram, and you are attending a funeral. Or, corpse party, as one might call it. It is a very private one; only one other is present, your close friend Aradia. You've been friends since you were just five sweeps, and were still playing FLARP games in the street. The funeral is because your lusus died the other night. He had been sick for weeks, and you haven't been making enough to feed him properly. It's a small grave, just a mound of dirt and a rock on top, in an empty lot you're absolutely sure no one gives a damn about. Written in brown chalk, there's a simple, solemn statement. "Here lies Tinkerbull Nitram." You're in your workmen's clothes, hat in hand. It's these , a job, and a corner in a cramped apartment that are all you have to your name. Everything is dark, and the air is silent. A little too silent. You aren't crying though. You haven't got the right to. Aradia's has been dead far longer, and she's been working at the same job.
Speaking of your job, you have tonight off. And tomorrow. You had yesterday off as well. The factory shortened your hours. They've shortened everyone's hours in an honestly pathetic attempt to compensate for the unemployment. All it's really done is cut everyone's pay to the point that the grub lines have all run short, and lusii have been dying off left and right ever since the war started and food and medicine started to run out.
Of course, nothing's been cut from the Highbloods. Not even a war as devastating as the one going on now could bring them to make sacrifices for the greater good of Alternia. That seems to be all the Condesce and the whole damn aristocracy seems to care about: conquest, glory, showing face, it's all . . .
"Calm down"
She can tell you're getting worked up about this, since you were blatantly glaring at the grave. It isn't like you to feel this way. But somehow, this just feels wrong. Not because it's happening to you, it's happening to everyone around you.
That's when the noise started.
It began as a low rumbling, but soon the sounds of pans clanging and people shouting became audible. You couldn't discern a single voice from another, until you heard one shrill cry stand out,
"Death to the Tyrians! Life to Alternia!"
You glance each other confused expressions. The suspected crowd approaching becomes visible. They're Lowbloods and Midbloods alike , some of them in workclothes, some in suits, some in downright rags. They're furious, and it doesn't take long before a young troll, no way she's more than four sweeps, looks at you two excitedly, running up.
"The factories! They've shut it down, all of them down! No more work! All the pay, the grub, gone! And we'll make the Royals know the beasts they've dared to awaken!"
She scurries off with a massive grin on her face, obviously a lususless runaway of some sort, running rancid with the mob. You look to Aradia, and she nods. It's not like anyone's got anything left to lose with all that's happened. You start off to join the mob in their procession, marching along staying silent, and she follows shortly after.
The crowd moves towards the city's center at a quick pace, but gradually starts to slow down. Then you realize where you're headed. The Royal Palace. The vast mob has panned out in front of the great abode that houses the rulers you and all the people around you have come to realize are your oppressors and torturers. Standards are raised, and some are even holding up crude, blunt weapons with which to assault any Highblood they see. It's a wild spectacle.
The perimeter of the palace has been barricaded, a long line of stone-faced soldiers, armed with rifles and from across the hemospectrum from the looks of it. They stand at attention before their commanding officer, a purple blood mounted on a hoofbeast, holding his curved saber down as he patrols up and down his lined up troops, gazing across the barricades in front of him for any breaking in them. He pulls out a megaphone and attempts to speak over the loud cries.
"Return to your homes! Her Imperious Condescension understands your plight, and she is desperately searching for a solution to all of your . . ."
His words infuriate you to the point where you're deaf to them. That's when Aradia says loud enough for you to hear above the people, but not anyone else.
"Think it's high time Team Charge shut him up?"
She draws the stone used for Tinkerbull's grave out of her coat, and you nod. You know just how to handle this.
In the midst of the purple blood's rhetoric, his hoofbeast goes berserk under your command, bucking him off and running off. As he tries to stand, he raises his hand to quell his soldiers' fear, to hold their fire and that he's okay. But before he can even stand, he's struck in the head by a rock telekinetically flung from the crowd. A rock that still has brown chalk writing on it. He crumples back to the ground. Dead. The soldiers panic, raising their rifles, discharging them mere seconds afterwards.
You two are already out of there by the time they go off. Others weren't so lucky.
Feferi and Eridan in next chapter.