-8- THREE CITIZENS
The cold of morning in the ruins of Makuhero City settled upon James and Taggart. Far behind them was their broken jeep, having put them in walking distance of the great ruins of the Assembly Tower before collapsing on a flat tire. They had spent all of the previous day walking from their jeep to the ruins, not daring to enter during the night. Having set up camp for the night in another smaller ruin, the two citizens waited until morning before they made the journey into the fallen Assembly Tower. The same fog from the morning before persisted.
James and Taggart both sat underneath a tilted slab of concrete, fallen from one of the many smaller buildings surrounding the Assembly Tower. The two took small naps to recharge their energy over the night, each waking the other up to stand watch outside their camp and look out for any threats potentially lurking in the ruins. Taggart was the last to have gone to sleep, having rested his head on top of his own box of ball bearings near his gun. James walked up to him and grabbed his shoulder. He gently shook Taggart to wake him.
"Hey, Tag," James whispered, slowly pulling his friend out of repose. "It's morning." Taggart reluctantly rolled himself out of his sleeping position into a crawl. James offered a free hand to help him get up, which Taggart accepted.
"Up you go," James said, hefting his semi-limp friend onto his feet. Taggart grunted in general fatigue, opened his eyes to look at James.
"Well, did you see anything?" Taggart asked regarding James' night watch.
"No," James said.
"Nothing?" Taggart asked in disbelief. "So, an entire day and night, and we've seen nothing, nobody?"
"Sure seems that way," James replied, looking back out into the ruins as if he might then find something to prove himself wrong. He turned to look back at Taggart with a smirk.
"So you see?" James asked playfully. "These ruins are as dead as they look. Nothing to fear."
"I'm still freaked about the Villains," Taggart said firmly. James laughed.
"What Villains?" James extended a hand out into the empty wasteland to bolster his words. "We're near the base of the Assembly Tower for crying out loud. There's no one out here, Tag. Those Villains probably killed themselves with the destruction they rained down upon this city. I'll bet once we find the Quaza, we'll be walking over their bodies." James laughed again after he said this, but Taggart simply shook his head at his friend.
James walked over to where he set down his box of ball bearings and picked it up. Taggart did the same and then picked up his gun. The two looked at each other with different expressions, different opinions about what they were getting themselves into.
"Well, shall we?" James offered, motioning with his head to start walking to the Assembly Tower. Taggart nodded, following behind. As the two left their makeshift camp, they searched through the fog for the ruins of the Assembly Tower.
"Where is it?" Taggart asked.
"I remember our camp faced it," James recalled. "We'll walk straight from here. The fog will let up like yesterday soon."
With no other ideas, the two citizens began walking into the fog. Within minutes of walking, their camp too disappeared into the fog behind them. All landmarks they remembered around them were also buried by the whiteness. Soon the fog became so thick they could not see more than roughly three meters ahead of them in any direction. What was available to their vision was more rubble, debris, and ruin. They occasionally ran into a building whose structure had only been partially compromised. These buildings forced them to take several small detours. Never during the time that the fog sat around them could they be certain of their position, for the mighty Assembly Tower, as it had been before the Cataclysm, was their directional beacon for navigating through the city. Even in the remnants of Makuhero City, what was left of the Assembly Tower acted as their compass. Without it, they were lost.
Both of them took comfort in the fact that they were at least close to it, but as the fog rested around them, they found themselves looking around at their surroundings more now that they were no longer able to focus on the Assembly Tower. The sights of dead citizens and the occasional dead Hero, Quaza core depleted, reminded them of the total defeat of the Hero Factory. But when they encountered half-intact buildings, sometimes they would briefly peek inside. The dark remains of the once thriving buildings surrounding the Hero Factory headquarters and by extension the headquarters of a galactic government showed signs that they had once been bustling hubs of activity. They were starkly contrasted with the complete silence that surrounded them. This caused a mixture of feelings in James and Taggart. There was a sense of comfort, a feeling that they were truly alone and had little to fear. But there was also accompanying that superficial comfort an ineradicable fear that the most sinister things this new world had to offer were yet to come. This fear manifested itself chiefly in Taggart, who had been growing more reluctant of this journey the closer he and James got to the Assembly Tower.
"James," Taggart asked, breaking a small period of silence that had settled around them. James turned back to his friend.
"Yeah?"
"D-do you really think the Villains are gone?" James grunted, looking up to the sky in annoyance.
"Would you cut it out with the Villains?" he spat. "You're freaking me out, now." Taggart looked down, continued walking behind James.
"And, yes Tag, I do," James continued. "They destroyed the galaxy's greatest city, so if they wanted to kill us they would have done it already. I figure they either killed themselves accidentally or got bored of this place and left, simple. If I hear you bring up the Villains again, I'm ditching you."
"Oh, you don't mean that," Taggart observed quickly. James struggled to respond before conceding.
"Alright, I won't ditch you, but drop the subject, okay?"
"Fine, fine." Taggart appeared in better spirits, now that it appeared as though there were no Villains around to face. The nervousness did not escape him entirely though, and despite efforts to hide it, neither did it leave James, who had been in secret dreading the moment they entered the Assembly Tower. Pride kept him from admitting it.
As suddenly as it had the morning before, the fog began slowly lifting across the landscape. At first it was unperceivable, but when more of the wasteland around James and Taggart could be seen from where they were walking, they took notice and stopped.
"The fog, James," Taggart said. "It's lifting."
"Look around," James began. "Look for the Assembly Tower." Their eyes began seeking out the Assembly Tower again, pulled away from the brief moments of idly looking at the ruins around them. They panned their gazes in all directions, looking for that sleek white shape that so clearly distinguished the Assembly Tower.
"Stay put," James said. "We'll see where it is soon." Standing where they were, James and Taggart studied the expanding landscape around them.
Within minutes, the fog began to fade, revealing the world around them. That was when a massive shape began taking form near where they stood. Taggart took notice of it and dismissed it, before doing a double take at what he just saw. Rising from the debris and rubble, unlike any of the forms around them, a great streamlined structure of white color stood. The structure only grew as the fog faded. Taggart's eyes were pulled upward and upward at what was beside them, nudging James to do the same. James turned at this and saw where Taggart was looking. He too was absorbed by the sight.
The fog finally passed. In its wake was the capital of the ruins of Makuhero City. James and Taggart stood then at the base of the Assembly Tower. They were immediately and completely dwarfed. There were no words for the first few minutes after absorbing the sight. James and Taggart briefly strolled around the fog-cleared area, examining the huge white blades of ruin that made up the remnants of the Assembly Tower. They saw not far from where they stood the other top half of the Assembly Tower, having fallen from its height and crashed to the ground during the attack of the Villains on Makuhero City.
"Well," James finally said, the first words of the two since they saw the ruins. "We're here." Taggart only nodded, jaw hanging open in awe.
"Got your gun loaded?" James asked. This was enough to pull Taggart away from the ruins and cause him to look at James.
"I thought you said there wouldn't be any Villains," Taggart said.
"That'd be no reason to go in unprepared. So, I take it your gun is loaded?"
"Nothing I fired at it with on our way here," Taggart said, good humor returning to his voice.
"There you go," James said, trying to solidify his confidence in the success of their trip. Taggart returned to gaping at the titanic ruins before them, dumbfounded by their size.
"Where in the world do we start?" Taggart asked with bewilderment.
"If I remember right, they stored their Quaza in a special chamber in the Assembly Tower. Like in a bin or vat, or something. That's what we need to be looking for." Taggart grumbled.
"That chamber could be anywhere," he replied, then pointing to the portion of the Assembly Tower that had fallen from the top. "What if it was in there, and was crushed when that part fell?"
"Then, we'd be screwed," James admitted. "But it seems too precarious a place to store such a valuable substance." James then started walking in the direction of the ruins before them, continued, "Let's find an entrance, a crack or hole somewhere." Hearing this, Taggart began studying the side of the ruins they were facing. James did the same, looking in a different direction than Taggart.
"There," Taggart said, pointing to a distant but visible tear in the exterior of the white ruins. James turned to look where he was pointing, saw the crack.
"That's our entrance," James said. "Let's go."
Taggart and James said little between the time when they spotted the crack in the ruins and when they reached it. Taggart had already been consumed by nervousness again, his breathing stiffening as he approached the gash in the base of the Assembly Tower ruins. James' agitation was less visible, still clinging to his exterior of confidence. But he too felt fear, and like Taggart that fear intensified once he reached their chosen entry point into what remained of the Assembly Tower.
The two citizens carefully walked up to the opening in the ruins, considerably larger than they had imagined from the distance they had located it. Slabs of rock and debris sat on the other side of the crack, explaining the opening in the wall in the first place. A larger piece of debris in the Assembly Tower's interior had fallen from a great height and smashed into the wall, creating the crack that stood before James and Taggart. If they wanted to pass through to the inside, they would have to duck and crouch through a maze of fallen rubble.
"In we go, Tag," James said with a sigh of reluctance. He then began lowering his gun and ball bearing box and crouching into the cracked opening. Before moving fully through, he looked to see if there was any possible path through the rubble he and Taggart could crawl through. Although tight, there appeared to be a small, snaking tunnel formed from the fallen debris. Taggart was peering into the opening behind James, trying to see what he was looking at.
"Hope you like crawling," James said, somewhat muffled now that he had entered the tunnel.
"Shouldn't we go one at a time?" Taggart asked. "See if we can even get through here at all?"
"And I take it you're not about to volunteer for that honor," James replied with sizzling sarcasm.
"You did go in first." Taggart countered.
"No more complaining about the mission from you, then," James asserted, before sliding himself into a crouch and crawling with his knees and elbows and squeezing his cumbersome gun and ammo box ahead of him. Taggart then waited and watched from outside the crack at James inching through the small tunnel. The tunnel arched to the left, and eventually James disappeared around that bend. When he did, Taggart lowered himself and prepared to follow James through.
"Holler if you get through!" Taggart shouted to James down the tunnel.
"Yeah." James' replied was muffled by grunting as he shoved his way through the tunnel. Taggart on the outside could hear the rustling of dirt and rubble as James squirmed through the tight tunnel.
"There's an opening!" James shouted back through the tunnel to Taggart.
"Can you get through?" Taggart asked back.
"Looks like. Come on through!" Taggart then copied James by setting his gun and ammo box in front of him and pushing them through the tunnel with his arms as he crouched through. Jagged outcroppings of pieces of fallen debris made the tunnel unpleasantly tight and difficult to navigate. One spike of metal smacked into Taggart as he rounded the first bend of the tunnel, sending pain through his shoulder.
"Gagh, what am I doing here?" Taggart grumbled to himself, shaking off the pain and pressing onward.
"Tag, I'm through!" James shouted, no longer muffled by the tunnel confines or grunting from his uncomfortable movement. "You won't believe this!" Taggart wanted to respond but decided to just push through the hole to the end. One of the fallen slabs of concrete that made up the tunnel ceiling leaned downward in a light slope, slowing making the tunnel even tighter towards its end. Taggart was now on all sides pressed into the tightest position he could manage. For a moment, his questioning of the point of their mission returned, but was defeated by the daunting claustrophobia he felt in the tunnel.
"James!" Taggart shouted. "Help me out!"
"You're almost through," James said, his voice closer now. "I'll grab your stuff. You keeping squeezing through." As Taggart progressed, he eventually saw James' yellow-plated hands grab both his gun and box and pull them out of his way. Taggart began hurrying his pace with the prospect of finally escaping the tunnel. James' hand returned, offering itself to help pull him out. Taggart grabbed it and felt James tug him out of the increasingly tight confines and into the air of the interior of the ruins. Taggart tumbled out awkwardly from the tunnel, but stretched his limbs in newfound freedom. James had set his box and gun off to the side.
"Tag," James said in a whisper. "Look." Taggart stood himself up next to his friend, and was greeted by a surreal sight. The two citizens exited their tunnel onto an outcropping of fallen ruin. This piece of debris was situated such that it allowed the two to survey the surroundings before them.
From their elevated perch, James and Taggart looked into another world, walled off by what remained of the Assembly Tower's outer walls. A soup of jagged ruin unlike anything outside was situated in the vast bowl of the interior of the Tower. The outer walls of the Assembly Tower created a valley within their interior. The environment told a story. The Assembly Tower had a number of facilities deep beneath the surface of Makuhero City, and after the upper section of the tower was destroyed and ruins came crashing down from its height, they pierced through the surface and smashed into those underground facilities. The Assembly Tower's outer walls acted as a cage for a titanic crater made from a rain of rubble and debris. It was a chaotic sight and looked especially treacherous, but just like outside, nothing within this great crater was alive or moving. It was as tranquil as the wasteland outside.
"Unbelievable…" Taggart said, overwhelmed by the size of the landscape within the Assembly Tower. He shook his head with mouth hanging open in awe. James looked upward. Once, where they were standing inside the Assembly Tower would have been covered by an angular roof rising high off of where they stood. With the collapsing of the top half of the Tower, there were several cracks of varying sizes, letting the white daylight of the outside wasteland into the enclosed world of the Assembly Tower's ruins. Even then, the landscape within the ruins was dimmer than the world outside.
"No way we'll be in-and-out of this place in one day," James said with exhaustion in his voice. Taggart looked at him with some distress.
"Relax, Tag. We'll just set up a camp in here like we did out there." Shortly after James' words of assurance, a noise erupted into the air. It was the sound of long and low creaking and moaning, the sound of some worn out thing succumbing to physical stress. James and Taggart scanned the ruins below for any sign of where the noise was coming from, but as it echoed throughout the interior there was no telling.
Suddenly, Taggart saw the source.
"James, look," Taggart said, pointing in the direction of one of the walls of the Assembly Tower. Both looked at a section of the wall far above the jagged floor of the interior. Dust was floating off of this region of the wall, and a faint crumbling noise could be heard trailing off through the massive open chamber. The crumbling sound intensified until the upper section of that wall above where the dust was rising began lurching forward. This large slab of the wall was collapsing.
James and Taggart stood petrified as they watched the great piece of debris tilt forward into the interior before completely sliding off of the part of the wall it once stood upon. There were perhaps two seconds where this piece was airborne before it smashed into the ground of the interior and exploded in a cloud of rubble and dust. The sound of its crash was deafening, and the vibrations of its impact could be felt even from where the two citizens stood.
As the dust from this great impact began to settle, a new feature of the landscape below had appeared. The walls of the Assembly Tower, once thought impregnable, were falling in on what they once concealed. A great piece of those walls had joined the ruins of the interior.
Gasps escaped Taggart, who was unconsciously walking backward from the sight. James too was shaken, but had been frozen in shock. His eyes darts from the walls to the grounds below, then back to the walls as if expecting another piece of the walls to fall.
"James, we…w-we can't go down there!" Taggart shouted in a stammer. James glared at his friend.
"You said no more complaining about this mission!" he spat.
"It's not worth the risk, James."
"Oh, yes it is," James insisted with fury.
"Let's just go back to Makurotown, please," Taggart pleaded.
"And do what? Live where? We sold everything we own, you idiot. We don't even have a home there anymore."
"Oh, and who's idea was that? Yours. In fact, this whole trip was your stupid idea."
"If it's so stupid, what're you doing here?" James asked, smacking Taggart with the front of his gun. "Because I don't recall you ever objecting to us selling our stuff or going on this trip. In fact, you seemed pretty turned onto the idea of getting rich at the time. Oh, but after a trip of no dangers at all, you want to throw that all away at the sight of one small hazard."
"That…" Taggart pointed back to the fallen piece of the wall, continued, "…was not small!" James scoffed at Taggart and rolled his eyes.
"Then go back home," James conceded, dismissing Taggart with a wave of his gun. "I'm going to get what I came here for, and then I'll bask in your half of the spoils." Taggart glared at James for a moment before too succumbing to angry exhaustion.
"Fine, jerk," Taggart agreed, stomping off for the tunnel he had entered the interior through. As Taggart approached the tunnel, he realized how much more difficult getting out of the interior through that tunnel was than getting in through it. Nevertheless, he crouched himself down and prepared to squeeze through. James stood looking out into the pit of ruins.
"Yeah, go and run back to Makurotown," James mocked, without looking at Taggart. "See how long you last out alone in the wastes before a Villain grabs you." The mentioning of Villains stopped Taggart, who slowly turned back to James. After seconds of silence, James turned and looked back at Taggart, who frowned and shook off the comment before attempting to squeeze through the tunnel again. As he pushed his gun and box into the tunnel, Taggart thought about James' words with fear. He shuddered at the thought what being alone in the wasteland might mean for him.
"You think…" Taggart began with hesitation. "Villains might be out there?" Taggart waited a moment for a response from James, but when none came he turned to look at his friend. James was standing still on their ledge, looking down into the pit with a lean in his posture. Taggart watched James' subtle movements, asked, "James?"
"Taggart," James said, as if their quarrel earlier had never taken place. "Come here." Taggart stood himself up and put their earlier argument aside. He walked over to where James was standing, and saw that James was looking intently at something in the ruins below. He then extended a finger towards an area near the center of the landscape below their ledge.
"See that?" James asked. Taggart searched the area where James was pointing for anything other than debris and ruin.
"Wait, watch," James insisted, shaking his index finger at the area again. After a few minutes, the two citizens saw something moving down in the ruins below.
"What is that?" Taggart asked with some worry. There was a small black figure moving through the rubble in the distance, barely noticeable from where they stood.
"It's someone, no doubt," James said. "It doesn't look like a Villain. I don't see any weapons."
"So…what do we do?"
"Well, far as I can tell, there are three things that figure down there could be; a Villain, a Hero, or a citizen like us. I don't think it's a Villain, and all Heroes would have run out of Quaza in their cores by now." Taggart looked at James after grasping the implication of his analysis.
"You think that's a fellow citizen down there?" Taggart asked in disbelief.
"I think so."
"Is he mad?" Taggart exclaimed. "What's he doing all the way out here?" James presented Taggart with a smirk.
"Maybe he's looking to get rich quick like us," he offered. "Maybe he's just as crazy as us."
"He's crazier than us," Taggart replied. "He's all alone."
"We don't know that."
"What are you thinking, James?"
"We go down and talk to him."
"What? No! No way. It's too dangerous."
"You had your chance to ditch this quest already," James said with lighthearted vengefulness. "Yet here you remain. I'm looking at this potential citizen down there and seeing another member of our team. He's here in the Assembly Tower for a reason. What if he was a Hero Factory staff member who survived the destruction of the Tower? Can you imagine how helpful it would be to have him as a guide? Or perhaps he's here same as us, looking for something of value. Maybe he's got some friends we can't see from up here. Whatever the case, we've got to go to him."
"What if he's none of those things?" Taggart asked in worry. "What if he's not a citizen?" James lifted his gun and aimed it at Taggart's.
"Then we'll finally appreciate selling our house for these," James said, presenting his gun to Taggart.