Interlude 1: Michael

Michael was happy.

It was a strange sensation, happiness. It sort of flittered about his chest at different times of the day, sometimes making it's presence known, other times not. Even still, Michael knew it was, at least for the moment, omnipresent. He went to bed happy. He woke up happy, he drove to work happy. Because life was good.

Michael knew he was strange in this sense. Not many of the people at his regular haunts were happy, and he was mocked for his attitude more often than not. But Michael didn't care, because he was happy.

Let me explain.

Once upon a time, young Michael was a kid from the streets, and like most kids from the streets, he fell in with the gangs.

At that point in his life, it would have been difficult not to. An effective orphan for years now, Michael envied those men who walked the streets, whose presence would cause some to look away in fear, and for others to acknowledge them with respect. As a homeless kid, that seemed like nothing less than a superpower to young Michael, who spent his days rooting around dumpsters for any scraps of food he could find and on occasion, begging. He had been, for his whole life, spat on, abused and stolen from.

He didn't even have anything worth taking, and they still stole from him!

And so, Michael, getting ever closer to starvation and increasingly desperate, finally did the unthinkable and approached one of these men, asking for help. And much to his shock and surprise, the man obliged, taking him to a nearby diner and buying Michael a bag of Kibble. It was the most kindness Michael had received in a long while, and so when the man asked for a favour, Michael obliged.

And so an agreement was struck. Once a week, the man would meet Michael at the diner, and Michael would tell him about the goings-on in the most rotten underbelly of his district of the city. In exchange, for one glorious hour a week, Michael could eat to his heart's content.

However, one day, the man didn't come.

Michael, somewhat older and wiser at this point, recognised that the look of the respected men in the streets had changed. These people didn't wear American flags anymore, no, they didn't wear much of anything, preferring to let their bulging muscles and ridiculous proportions speak for themselves. Some even had flashes of gold lining their skin, sporting some of the coolest cybernetics he had ever seen.

But that coolness didn't seem to matter, once Michael realised his friend wasn't just away, oh no, he was dead. And these animals had killed him.

Now young Michael couldn't really comprehend why someone would want to kill the nice man who bought him food every week, but he just knew that he wanted vengeance for the one man who'd ever shown him kindness in his life. And so young Michael gathered his things, though he had precious few, and set off from his home, if, that is, you could call a patchwork tent made of cardboard and scrap fabric such a thing. It took several days of trekking, with Michael seemingly going in circles, before he spotted one of the men with the American flag on their arms. Approaching the man, he asked if he could join, and to his surprise the man said yes.

What followed were simultaneously some of the best and hardest years of Michael's life up to that point. These people, they fed him, they housed him, they even seemed to care for him, even if only a little. However, they also worked him to the bone.

He'd get up early in the morning, cook food for those who lived with him before their morning patrol, and then settle in for a gruelling day of lessons with the old matron who ran the household. She taught him to read, to shoot, to run, all the skills he'd need in his future life as a future 6th Street gangoon.

Occasionally, the men in his house would hand him a backpack, a bike, and a school uniform, and tell him to head to such-and-such address. Above all, he was to never open the backpack. Naturally, Michael obliged.

In this way, Michael passed his childhood by, and grew up to face the big, bad world. He learned lot's of other things as well, like how to mend a car, how to patch a bullet wound, how to hunt, and how to forage, but he remained one of the best when it came to reading, running and shooting. When it came time for young Michael to be inducted into the gang proper, he remembered being ecstatic, completely over the moon, safe in the knowledge that he would be able to fulfil his promise, the one to his friend made all those years ago.

And then everything changed.

You see, Michael, as a new member of 6th Street, would be spending his time at the ground-level of the whole operation. He was the cannon fodder. The expendable resource. After his first fight, and his first kill, Michael realised that the man who had fed him all those years ago may not have been such a kind man after all. He saw the way people looked at him as he walked through the streets, and he realised it was the same looks he had wanted to receive, all those years ago.

Needless to say, Michael abandoned his promise soon after.

He knew he wasn't the good guy of his story anymore. Thieving, murdering, threatening, these weren't the actions of heroes, no they were the actions of the villains. However, instead of facing up to this fact, like all his compatriots, Michael sank deeper into booze, drugs and sex.

And then he met a Joytoy.

And she was beautiful, and oh so painfully fragile and delicate when she wasn't being controlled by a computer somewhere else. He loved her, and after a while, he got her to love him back. Really, truly, till death do us part, love him back.

And then she got pregnant.

Michael didn't really know how that happened, Joytoys were supposed to be sterile, after all. Still, as he held his son in his arms for the first time, he gained a new appreciation for the idea of God. He was quite literally holding a miracle in his arms, and all of a sudden, the world didn't seem to be such a dark place anymore.

It was then that Michael swore to himself that he would stop being the bad guy of his story. He had a son, and he loved him, and villains didn't love their children, much less have any in the first place.

He left his life of sin behind, and he managed to convince his newfound bride to abandon hers as well.

The first few months were tough, the cost of a new infant piling up and eating through his savings as he struggled to find a non-violent job. For a moment, Michael feared he would wind up back on the very streets he worked so hard to escape in the first place.

And then he saw the sign. "Help wanted", printed in clear black and white on the wall of a rundown old warehouse, and Michael breathed a sigh of relief.

Little did he know that that sign would be the source of his happiness now, so many years down the line. It wasn't particularly difficult work, but as Michael put on his overalls every morning, the company logo plastered across the front and back, as he kissed his wife, ruffled the hair of his child and clambered into his company truck, Michael felt pride. Perhaps more that he had ever felt before, because he wasn't the villain anymore. He wasn't even working for him!

No sir, his boss wasn't the soulless agent of some faceless megacorp, one running guns and starting wars and making the world worse and worse by the day. No, his boss was instead one of the most curious little men he had ever had the privilege of being around, who spoke as if he were from the 19th century rather than the 21st, who was one of the bravest men he had ever met, in spite of being one of the most vulnerable at the same time, who turned his single abandoned warehouse into an empire practically overnight. And best of all, he didn't even have to hurt anyone to do it, no they didn't start wars, they grew food, and they were very happy to be doing so, thank you very much.

When he got to work every morning, that same sense of petulant, defiant optimism greeted him wherever he went. His colleagues faces usually sported wide smiles and grins during their breaks, the atmosphere lively and hopeful. All the men here were lucky, and they damn well knew it.

And then things changed again.

It seemed as if a switch had been flipped by the world, and the full force of it's awfulness came bearing down once again. Seemingly at the flip of a coin, the NCPD would raid their little warehouse, and tear it apart, ripping potatoes out of their pots, and toppling the shelves, and leaving just as suddenly as they came. The first was a cause for a panic, the second a cause for suspicion, but by the third, it became clear to Michael what was happening. When the next raid came, the usual joviality of the warehouse was replaced by a grim determination. All the men here came from nothing, and thanks to the company, they now had something to lose.

And they weren't going to lose it without a fight.

Naturally, they were barred from actually fighting. The boss always insisted that their lives were worth more than some damn potatoes, but his determination to keep them safe only incensed their desire to return the favour.

And so the members of warehouse team one began their campaign of passive resistance. And silently watching the frustration of the officers build as each raid proved less effectual than the last at disrupting their work was worth every bit of extra effort it took to frustrate them. Soon enough, an NCPD raid was nothing more than a minor annoyance to the team, and they would have everything back to normal within minutes of the NCPD leaving the premises. Some officers attempted to slip biological weapons, but they had been trained for this, and were now able to deal with it just as expediently as they could all of the other mess the NCPD made.

And then, as if magic, the almost routine raids just... stopped.

And though many of his colleagues were happy about the change, Michael found himself unhappy for the first time in years.

Because just outside the doors of the warehouse, standing guard every day, were two members of 6th Street.

Hi guys, I had an idea for something like this a while back ,and so I decided to post it and give it a shot.

Regular chapters will resume in a couple days, when I have a chance to finish them.

Feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

Hope you enjoy it!