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The sounds of thunder made her look up and she felt the rain long before she saw it, the strangers hadn't stopped working.
If a group wasn't cleaning up a street or an alley, it was repairing a building or dragging some garbage toward one of the buildings, or carrying something out of a building.
The world that had stood still for a long had suddenly started to move but it was moving without her.
She felt as if the rain was mocking her, she could feel all of the dirt- oil, and all of the stuff that the wind carried and landed on her over the last few months.
She could feel it stubbornly sticking to her skin and clothes along with the rain as it was soaked into her clothes, yet at the same time most of the water just ran off leaving all of the filth behind.
Leaving her behind.
She could see the lights in the nearby buildings, they weren't just the neon and holographic lights that remained anymore.
They had told her when they had met her that she could stay, but... but the world that they lived in was so different, they had somehow brought a tiny piece of something dead back to life in such a short time, and she...
She was nothing like them.
No, that wasn't right, her place was out here at the bottom and their place was up there.
They were just imitating the corporations, but even if they were nothing more than copies, they were still better than her.
"You're going to catch a cold if you stay out here." the friendly voice of a woman said to her.
"I can't go in." she answered the woman, but it was so dark because the rain had covered what little light remained that she couldn't see who she was talking to.
"Oh, and who said you couldn't, because I'm telling you can." the woman said to her, her voice holding her friendly tone but there was a hardness to it now.
The wind blew and she began to shake as the temperature began to drop.
"You know sometimes when you are stuck and can't move or fall and can't get up, you need someone to either push you or pull you up."
"So I push you forward." the woman said to her before she felt the woman's small hands on her back and she felt the woman putting more and more strength into her arms until she gave a step forward.
"Now with that out of the way, how bout I pull you up from this hole you're it." The woman said to her as she felt a warm hand grab onto hers and she was pulled towards one of the nearby buildings.
She automatically followed the woman into the building she had expected the bottom of the first floor to be dirty and full of trash but instead, she found that it was clean and there were people everywhere she turned.
As the woman pulled her up the stairs she caught glimpses of the woman's white armor, but for whatever reason, she didn't dare look at the woman's face, then in an instant, she felt the woman's grip loosen until it was completely gone.
"Sometimes the hardest choices we have to make are the easiest."
"So are you going to stay where you are or are you going to take the first step." the woman said to her.
She didn't understand what the woman meant there wasn't anything here, even if they had worked all day at best there could only be rooms filled with people.
Then she heard it, the sounds of different kinds of music, followed by the recorded voices of machines announcing some product that was too expensive for her to buy.
"What she said as she found that she had somehow been transported to the bottom levels of the new city, admittedly the hallway she was in was a lot cleaner but it was filled with people and shops.
She turned towards one of the rooms and she could see people crossing the recently built bridge towards another building.
"Asuna good you're here." a man walked past her as he called out to the woman that stood next to her.
"We're just about done fixing this area but we still need to fix the suwar system and well all of the pipes." the man said to the woman she now knew was named Asuna.
"How bad are they?" Asuna asked the man.
"Hard to say, we are having trouble getting to certain areas." the man's voice took a heavier tome.
'There are signs everywhere that someone fought a war here and chemical weapons were used."
"If it wasn't for the fact that we're used to dealing with things like that most of us in the exploration teams would be dead.
"So what can you do?" Asuna asked the man.
"Turn on the water and see where things start to flood, so we can find the areas that need to get replaced first and if we're lucky some of the chemicals will be washed away." the man answered Asuna before he walked away.
"Let's get you some clean clothes and a warm bath." Asuna said to her.
During this entire time, she never dared to look at the woman's face and even now she didn't dare to do so, yet as they stood in front of a red door she felt a pair of hands gently touch her head and forced her to turn.
She found herself looking at a young woman with hazel eyes and long chestnut hair smiling at her.
"You know that you're at the bottom good so are we, we're no different from you."
"So lift that head and look at everyone in the eyes, because no one here is better than you. Asuna said to her as the door in front of them opened and a woman wearing nothing but a towel walked out.
She found herself walking into a room that had small baskets both hanging from the walls and on shelves that stood just far enough for the women to be able to put their cloth in them and still have enough room to move without bumping into each other.
She could hear what sounded like showers coming from the room next door but that wasn't possible because the old City didn't have water and from the conversation, she heard earlier the strangers hadn't turned it on yet.
"Come on." Asuna said to her as she pointed at the room where the sound of water could be heard.
They both soon walked towards the shower and as she was about to walk in she saw another woman grabbing her only possessions and walking away with them.
She was going to chase after her but she felt Asuna's hand on her shoulder but the weight and strength it had was something that couldn't have been natural.
So with little choice, she followed Asuna inside.