"Yo, Z! You better haul ass or Armin might actually beat you!"

"Heh. You wish, Decker!"

Even late into the evening, New Pacific City was alive with the hustle and bustle of the day. People scurrying around, finishing their jobs, packing up, going home. It gave off a sense not unlike nostalgia, perhaps the feelings of one lost in the memories of their younger days. But not everyone had these feelings. Some people saw the setting sun and were reminded of tomorrow, and all the adventure that it brings; certainly none more so than the four Cronus brothers, racing each other back home.

Decker and Armin, second and third youngest respectively, were out in front, leading the charge back to their apartment, where they had been living in their whole lives. Decker wore a long-sleeve athletics shirt and shorts, cut off just below the knees. Armin went sleeveless, which accentuated his tan skin and legs, also covered by shorts. Their hair stood out, Decker's being green and Armin's being light purple, thanks to their Overlander heritage (something Decker took immense pride in). Z was right behind them, dressed in his signature royal blue sweater and custom-made cargo pants, a special gift on his fourteenth birthday from his parents. His hair was a perfect shade of blonde, not too light, nor too dark. He was the ringleader of his "gang," being the oldest, and remained the most charismatic. His name was also a heavy topic of debate among associates of the four brothers. Whether Z was his real name or not, he had made sure that secret would be taken to his grave.

And finally, lagging behind everyone else and panting like a basset hound on a hot summer Sunday was Trystan, the youngest. He had been an unexpected surprise, but their old man took any help he could get with his job. He had also been blessed with a mutant gene that gave him five digits as opposed to the standard four (everyone was so proud of him). He wore what would be expected of a twelve-year old in New Pacific: polyester shorts, brand-name sneakers and a T-shirt with a popular energy drink pasted on the front. The poor kid was gasping for breath and sweating a waterfall.

"G-guys…! Wait up!" Trystan bent over, sucked in as much air as he could, and kept running after them, despite the burning sensation in his legs.

They all rushed through back alleys, vaulted over fences and dumpsters, and finally came to an apartment building from around the back. Z, Decker, and Armin were gazing up at the roof for a couple seconds before Decker nudged Z.

"Hey, Z…"

"Yeah, Decker?"

Decker ran forward and jumped to the lowest level of the fire escape hatch, pulling himself up and over the railing before calling down, "Last one to the roof is a dirty little Mobian!"

Z chuckled as he watched Decker keep going up, and Armin looked at him as well. He just shrugged and jumped up to grab the stairway, pulling it to the ground and climbing up. Z grabbed ahold of the lowest platform and was about to follow the others when he heard the desperate, out-of-breath call of his little brother. "Z…! Big bro, wait up!"

Z froze and looked back down at Trystan, who jogged up to where they had been standing a moment before doubling over and downing as much air as possible. "C'mon, kid, everyone's waitin' up top," he said with a noticeable concerned tone.

Trystan looked up at Z. "I...I can't jump that high! Please help me out, big brother! Please…?"

Z remained silent for a moment before he sighed, rolled his eyes, and hopped back down, over the railing. He strode over to Trystan and gingerly picked him up. Trystan latched onto his sibling for a piggyback ride and gripped even tighter as Z jumped up and pulled the stairway down again. They climbed halfway up in silence before Z decided to break it.

"Y'know I won't be able to carry you forever, kiddo."

"I know. That's why I'm taking advantage of it now!"

Z threw his head back a little and laughed. He inherited his mother's sense of humor and not his father's, unlike Decker, thank God. "Still," he continued, "I really gotta start training ya like I trained Decker and Armin. If we start now, you should be able to vault a low fence in five months."

Trystan whined. "Z, if I can't vault a big fence in five months then what's the p-o-o-o-int?"

"Practice, little guy, practice," Z told him. "Besides, you keep saying you wanna run like us, so that means I gotta start trainin' ya like a runner."

"...Okay…" Trystan rested his head on Z's shoulder as he carried him the rest of the way to the roof. When they made it up after a short ladder climb, Decker and Armin were already lounging around near the far ledge. Z quickly let Trystan get off in preparation for when Decker noticed them.

As if on cue, Decker strode up and punched Z's arm, exclaiming, "Hah! Z and Trys are the little vermin again!"

Z just put his hand in his brother's face and lightly pushed him aside with an added, "Can it, Decker." He walked over to Armin and propped himself up against the rooftop AC unit. "And Armin, be careful. I don't wanna go to bed tonight with another 'Impact Crater' incident to worry about."

Trystan giggled when he remembered how hard the "Impact Crater Incident" had hit the local news, no pun intended. He settled down as he walked over to where Armin was lounging and sat down beside him, kicking his feet as they watched the setting sun, and in no time Decker and Z had joined them. Z trussed up Trystan's hair playfully. They sat in silence for awhile until Trystan spoke up.

"Hey, guys…? You really think we're gonna be able to move out someday and get famous? Like mom and dad wanted to do when they were young, like us?"

Decker laughed loudly, like he always did, and immediately stood up and pointed out across the city, into the horizon holding the sinking sun.

"Trys, buddy, they're gonna know our names from here to Yuraisha!"

The smog in the air was thick today.

Seven years…

The dirty, polluted rain was coming down heavy. Heavier than usual.

Seven years and I can't believe I haven't left yet.

He scoffed. The grin he wore was slightly forced. 'Bout time I changed that.

The young man stood up to his full height; the seven years spent in isolation had not been kind to him. His jet-black hair was matted and untrimmed, his skin was pale from the lack of sun that usually shined down from the once-clear sky. He was more gaunt than he had been when he was twelve, due to having to scavenge for food constantly (or whatever looked edible at the time), and of course, puberty couldn't wait to screw his body chemistry up. The glimmer of innocence in his eyes was long extinguished, lost during what his twelve-year-old self called, "The Great Conquering." There was no doubt left. Trystan had changed, and not entirely for the better.

He threw the hood of his sweatshirt off with a flick of his wrist, its blue shades now dulled and worn. A somber reminder of his siblings and the life he lost. The skyline of New Pacific City was drastically different than the one he knew from seven years prior. Every last building had been coated in metal, although now it was rusty, and Trystan was very thankful he hadn't caught tetanus by sheer dumb luck. He had remained in the city limits and underground in the sewers, since the city center was too heavily populated for his tastes. There had been two skyscrapers in the centre, but now they looked more like giant radio spires. They scared the young Trystan too much for him to set foot there, except in rare cases when his curiosity got the best of him. The last time he did that though, he heard an explosion some two-dozen blocks away and every machine in the vicinity went to investigate. He swore he'd never go back again after that scare.

The downtown district had been converted into one giant factory for, what he guessed, were war machines. Sometimes, they churned out humanoid robots with dome-shaped heads, colored such a deep blue, they were practically black. Sometimes they spat out giant tanks. Rarely, they released some sort of robotic abomination that was rolled out, flown off, or otherwise taken away from New Pacific for some ungodly purpose that Trystan really preferred not to think about.

"As long as they ain't knocking on my doors," and he shrugged slightly. He looked over the edge of the building he stood on and jumped down to the adjacent rooftop, which was a couple stories below. He hit the surface and rolled and kept running. He hadn't received much training with Z in freerunning prior to The Great Conquering, but he had enough agility to get himself up to second-floor ledges, which was usually enough for him to climb up to the rooftops. He utilized it a lot, considering that there was nobody left in the city.

Nobody sane, at least.

Trystan kept a moderate pace as he ran back to his old apartment. He used it as a safehouse to store all his belongings, and just about now, he was thinking it was a great time to actually leave. He made it back in no time at all, considering he knew the city limits like the back of his hand. He vaulted from an adjacent building onto the fire escape and ran right up to the roof. He got to the maintenance access door and swung it open (the only reason it hadn't gotten rusty was because Trystan kept using it). "Finally," he sighed as he shuffled down the empty stairwell to his floor.

The building, although sturdy from the outside, was slowly decaying on the inside, cracks in the wall and peeling paint all over. Trystan's floor was the only decent looking one in the place, and he was surprised the whole thing hadn't collapsed yet. "Guess it just gives me a good reason to get the hell out of here," he joked with himself. He still didn't laugh.

He reached his door and turned the knob. After trying to get the door to budge, he thought "Screw it," and kicked it open. The door flew off its hinges and crashed into the floor so hard he heard the floorboards crack and give way. Trystan looked it over, nodded quickly, and retreated to his room. "Yep, I think that's my cue to exit." He opened up his old dresser drawers and began grabbing anything he could think of that might help him, all the while mulling over his choices.

"Why? Why did I not leave sooner?" He sighed. He already knew. "Too scared? Oh, sure. I mean, it's nothing major, I just saw some airship obliterate an entire city block one day and I got torn apart from my family. No big deal...God, I thought I'd just have to wait it out and they'd come and find me. Curse you, twelve-year-old me. You were a dumb bitch and I'm glad I don't have't associate with you anymore!"

It didn't take long to pack. Well, "pack" was a loose term. Trystan was more or less just running around his shoddy room trying to remember where he'd put his three key items for survival: his PECK, ZPECR, and car keys. Technically speaking, though, they were all Z's; Hand-me-downs from long before their father's time, the PECK and ZPECR were acronyms for "Plasma-enchanced combat knife," and "Zero-point energy combat revolver," respectively.

The PECK was a normal-looking combat knife, except it had been developed sixty-some years ago using true Overlander plasma tech. The front edge was gone, but pressure sensors would trigger burning plasma to come out and complete the blade, much like the swords Overlanders used in their wars. It could cut through metal like butter. The ZPECR, on the other hand, was more intricate. It utilized hard-light bullets that could change their properties depending on the parameters that were activated with a switch on the handle. There was a setting for "stun," "rapid-fire," and even the option for nanites to morph themselves into a silencer. Trystan had used its lethal settings only twice. The first time he used it, he shot a humanoid robot that looked more like a normal person, and not one of the ones that came out of a factory. He thought it was bleeding oil. The second time he shot one, it fell over and began to short circuit. He noticed it was clutching the area he shot it, as if it could feel pain. Trystan had no idea if they could actually feel anything or not, but he decided to only use the stun setting from then on.

The car keys, however, weren't car keys. It was a cylinder on a keychain, and it looked like a magic wand of sorts, but smaller; easily portable. There was a small spring lever on it that, when pulled, opened the top of the cylinder. Z explained to him years ago that the cylinder used hard-light tech to create billions of little nanites that were specifically designed to facilitate transport. When the hatch was opened, they all swarmed out to turn into a maglev bike that could switch between a moderately fast "glide" mode and an extreme "speed-bike" mode. Trystan had used it dozens of times before, but considering the city streets were narrow and short, he'd rarely used the speed-bike setting.

He was about to set off before he remembered something he'd kept hidden away in his dad's safe, behind a picture of his family. Back when they had all been together, of course. He made his way into his parents' old room and threw the safe open after he quickly entered the combination for the lock (it was second nature to him by now). Inside was a small blanket, the only thing he could find that would keep it clean. He retrieved the blanket and unwrapped it to make sure it was still there. Sure enough, the old family heirloom was still in its place, safely nestled in its silk embrace.

Trystan smiled. It was shaped like a diamond but colored like an amethyst. When he asked his dad about it, he said it had been passed down to them since before recorded history, an old treasure of some noble Overlander house in days long passed. The gemstone had been Trystan's closest and only friend during his first couple years in isolation in New Pacific. He talked to it when he wasn't out scrounging (he was young, what could he say?), and it always responded by flickering violet light. It scared him a little at first, since he had never seen the gem do it before, hell, he had never seen it out in an open space for longer than two minutes before, but he eventually got used to it. He remembered when he was trying to adjust to living alone in his squalid apartment, without his parents, without Z, Decker, even Armin. He cried himself to sleep most nights for the few months after The Great Conquering, but sometimes, the gem would glow softly, like a night light. It calmed him down. Purple was always his favorite color.

He rewrapped the old family heirloom and stuffed it into a knapsack, along with a week's supply of clothes and canned food. He'd been able to stockpile the stuff for years, rooting through dumpsters, looting old stores, sometimes finding a can or two in the sewers. New Pacific was certainly big enough to find a lot of food and water; in the past few months, though, he'd been running short, considering he'd practically wiped the city limits clean and there was no way he'd willingly get within ten feet of the factory district again. He slung the bag over his shoulder and headed back outside, all the way back up to the roof. He looked up at the dark sky, and off into the distance, where the buildings slowly got smaller and became more sparse, until there was just flat land as far as the eye could see.

He quickly placed his hand over his collar to see if he still had his last keepsake he needed to feel satisfied. Years of wearing it had dulled his senses and made it hard to tell if it was still on or not. He felt the bump under his shirt that belonged to his silver locket. He opened it up when he felt alone to look at the smiling faces of his parents and brothers all conserved in a timeless photo.

He breathed in deeply, trying to cherish the last memories of home he had...sour as they had turned.

"Alright…" He pulled out his keys. "Let's do this shit."