A/N: It's been a little while since I posted something new, hasn't it? Although in this case, I should say 'we'. Since we stopped updating Redemption, Mids and I had a long period of not really writing, and then she wanted to join the RP community on Tumblr, just to try it out. I eventually tagged along and made an account from there.
We were able to explore some new character approaches and concepts within that think tank, and we came up with an AU Zero-series concept. This project is a complete departure from Redemption, so please consider it a wholly distinct story.
We're formatting this into short, concise chapters, bounding forward through the timeline to tell the story of the founders of Beacon City, the alternate version of Neo Arcadia we've imagined. This will be somewhere between character study and slice-of-life, and we sincerely hope you'll enjoy visiting as much as we do.
Because we can't tag on this site like we can on Ao3, I've been advised to warn potential readers of one thing: there is an oc/canon ship in here. If that's a hard 'no' for your fandom tastes, please turn back now.
If you're the more adventurous sort, there's only one thing I can say: welcome to Beacon City!
Character Notes: X goes by Xander Light, Zero is Zachary (or Zach) Weidlich
The Elf Wars had certainly taken their toll.
Like survivors after the storm's fury had finally settled, they'd tended their wounds and started taking stock, assessing the damage and looking for others who'd weathered the storm and mourning those who hadn't. The scattered remnants of the Hunters and Federation alike had been all but crippled by the initial numbers, by the scope of devastation that ravaged their world in four short years, not sure how they'd rebuild.
The numbers just kept rising as time went on.
68 percent of the human populace lost.
72 percent of the world's flora wiped out of existence.
83 percent of the known species of fauna lost.
87 percent of the Reploid population lost.
92 percent of the planet's land area no longer safe for human habitation.
Perhaps it was the weight of uncertainty that had so many survivors turning to Xander Light for answers. For all he'd suffered, for all he'd seen, he alone had survived the tumult from the start of the First Maverick War.
It certainly didn't make him unshakable or infallible, but he'd meant something to them, was something more than anyone else.
The thought crossed Xander's mind more than once whether they'd look at Zach the same way, if he'd be all but deified once he finished his stasis testing. He wondered, too, whether they realized that the 60-year cycle was as much a testing cycle as it was a self-imposed sentence for the crime of being born with the Maverick virus.
Either way, Zach was asleep, and so the world turned to him alone. He'd responded with a simple and massively profound plan: they would rebuild.
Temporary shelters erected to keep humanity safe slowly, steadily, became more permanent colonies. Reploids, by far more resilient than their biological counterparts, volunteered in droves to help where they could. Burned-out husks of once-grand cities became scavenger sites, salvage that would become a true shelter, a bastion against the whispers of ruin that threatened what faint glimmers of hope they could find.
In the dawning days of 2236, crews broke first ground in the now-dried out basin of Lake Zaysan in Kazakhstan, near the ruins of the only Orbital Elevator still remaining in the wake of the wars. The devastation of Weil and Omega's assault was evident even here, where mountains had been leveled to craggy plains, but here too was hope. Here, too, was a dream for a future. Though the land had been ravaged, it wasn't near any of the irradiated sites from where nuclear weaponry had been unleashed. Deep drilling in the site would provide the groundwork for planned geothermal plants. Wind turbines and solar farms would ring the nation's barrier walls, providing a stable, safe energy source, another comfort in a sea of uncertainty.
The sheer scope of Xander's plans, covering over six billion square kilometers, was by all accounts and estimates nothing more than an insane fever dream of a plan. And yet they pushed on.
Factories went up in designated industrial sites for the sanctuary's 78 districts. Scrap brought from the wastelands of cities became the framework for new buildings, became the foundation of the massive barrier walls and the shielding dome.
Despite every estimate, every naysayer of the project, every whisper that it wouldn't be possible, on 23 September 2267, just over three decades after the project had started, the final panel in the Eden Dome was set into place, and construction on it was done.
He'd meant for the district surrounding the Zaysan Elevator to be dubbed 'Beacon City', given that both the remnants of the Elevator and the district tower built near it were to be the eastern beacons to this fortress nation. Instead, as word spread, the entirety of the sanctuary kept being addressed as Beacon City, no thought given to the sheer size of this 'city'.
So the eastern district became Neo Arcadia.
It was odd to some that he'd settled for that, given that the architecture of the district was a mix of modern and traditional Japanese, when so many other districts took names in the language of the country or region on which they were based.
Others knew he'd chosen that name because of the project's reputation as an impossible, Elysian, Arcadian dream he'd never see realized. So his home district became Neo Arcadia, and the district based on the Mediterranean Isles had been given a new designation as well—Nar Elysia.
Standing on the roof deck of the newly-dubbed Neo Arcadia Tower, his hands tense on the perimeter rail, his attention was fixed out toward Gate 01, one of sixty massive multi-sectional airlocks that closed Beacon City off from the outside world. Within the gates, the ships that were inbound from the colonies would be docking, their passengers taken through decontamination before being provided new clothes, being registered as citizens of the City, and welcomed to this new life, finally safe from everything that had strained them beyond the breaking point.
He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding when the access door to the roof slid open, and he turned and offered a wavering, nervous smile to his visitor.