Neo-Cosmonopolis wasn't just a city; it was a living, breathing beast forged from chrome, neon, and desperation. Its heart pulsed with stolen cosmic ether, powering the impossibly high spires that scraped a perpetually twilight sky. Holographic dragons coiled around advertisements for instant transport capsules. Flying cars, like metallic insects, wove chaotic patterns between the monorails snaking through the upper levels. Far below, in the Undercity's perpetual shadow, the air hung thick with the scent of sizzling synthetic noodles, ozone, and decay.
Tonight, the beast was sick. A Gravity Storm.
It began subtly – a flicker in the colossal holographic lotus crowning the Overmind Tower, a momentary lag in the anti-grav fields holding up the elite Floating Islands. Then the air itself seemed to warp. Neon signs bled colors, their frantic advertisements dissolving into static ghosts. A low, bone-deep hum vibrated through the city's very skeleton. Below, in the Undercity warren known as Pulse Alley, loose debris – a discarded cybernetic arm, a shattered data-screen – began to shiver and lift a few inches off the grime-slicked permacrete.
Jett Kallahan – VYROXX – wasn't having a good day. He'd been tracking a data-smuggler, a weasel of a man dealing in stolen Overmind fragments, when the Yakuza enforcers showed up. Three of them, plasma kusarigamas already crackling in their chrome-plated grips. Their leader, a hulking brute with optic implants glowing a predatory red, sneered. "Hand over the core, street rat. Or join the gutter paste."
Jett flashed a grin that didn't reach his violet-glowing eyes. "Gutter paste? Bit cliché, don't ya think?" His body shifted. Muscles surged beneath his nanofiber suit, his right arm blurring and elongating into the scaled, serpentine limb of a Void Serpent. "How about… volcanic gorilla?" Before the last syllable faded, he exploded forward. Not a run, but a lunge powered by plasma-dragon fury. His serpent-arm lashed out, wrapping around the lead Yakuza's weapon arm with crushing force. The man screamed as bone crunched. Jett pivoted, his left fist already transforming, knuckles swelling and cracking with molten light. "Feel the surge, punk!" His Astral Knuckle Burst connected with the second enforcer's chestplate. The small astral glyph that flared on impact detonated with a whump, sending the man flying backwards through a noodle stall in a shower of sparks and synthetic broth. Steam hissed where hot plasma met spilled liquid.
The third enforcer, quicker, lunged with his kusarigama. The weighted chain whipped towards Jett's head. Jett dropped low, the chain whistling overhead. He blurred sideways – Voluform Flicker Swipe – his serpent-hand reappearing meters away, yanking the enforcer off his feet with a ripple of distorted void energy. Before the man hit the ground, Jett was on him, a plasma-charged knee driving into his ribs. The air crackled.
Above, the Gravity Storm intensified. The humming deepened into a roar. A runaway hover-dolly tumbled from a mid-level walkway, crashing into a power conduit. Blue lightning arced wildly.
Kael Orion – Drift Zero – felt the storm's approach like ice forming in his veins. He'd been perched on a rusted fire escape overlooking a grimy Undercity plaza, sketching the impossible angles of a crumbling Neo Tower silhouetted against the Overmind's pulsing lotus. His Temporal HUD flickered at the edge of his vision, a persistent ghost predicting micro-movements three seconds ahead. He saw the flicker before the scream.
Below, a young woman – human, maybe, or a high-fidelity synth – stumbled into the plaza, clutching a small, shimmering data-crystal. Hot on her heels were two more Yakuza, their faces twisted with cruel intent. One leveled a crude ion blaster.
Kael moved. Not with Jett's explosive fury, but with chilling, preternatural speed. He dropped from the fire escape, his descent slowed by Cryo-Drift, landing silently on a pile of discarded insulation foam. His Zero-Katana, Chrono Fang, slid from its sheath with a whisper of freezing air. Time seemed to thicken around him as he activated his power. The charging blaster moved with agonizing slowness.
"Cut through time itself." Kael blurred forward. His first strike wasn't aimed at the thug, but at the air beside the ion blaster. Chrono Fang Slash. The blade, infused with time-slowing Cryo energy, landed a fraction of a second before Kael's physical swing. The Yakuza grunted, confused, as his weapon arm suddenly went numb and sluggish, frost crackling over the blaster's housing. Kael was already past him, a phantom in the distorting light. He scooped the terrified girl behind him with his free arm, his Temporal HUD highlighting her potential paths to safety. "Stay close," he murmured, his voice calm despite the ice forming on his breath.
The second Yakuza lunged. Kael didn't dodge; he flowed into the attack. Cryo Surge Jab. His fist, channeling Astral ice through his armlet, slammed into the man's solar plexus. The impact wasn't just physical; it was a wave of numbing cold that locked muscles and disrupted nerve signals. The thug gasped, staggering, his movements turning clumsy and slow. Kael spun, Chrono Fang a streak of frozen light, poised to disable.
Liora Han – Flux – wasn't rescuing anyone. She was stealing. Specifically, a high-yield energy core from a Capsule Corp 3000 surveillance drone currently hovering erratically near a choked Undercity artery, its sensors scrambled by the burgeoning Gravity Storm. Her target pulsed with dangerous blue light within its armored casing.
"You look great," Flux muttered, her neon-blue and purple hair shifting hues rapidly as she concentrated. Her ocular implants flared, dissecting the drone's security protocols. "I'll straighten that out." She activated Lightbend Cloak. The air around her shimmered, bending photons, rendering her semi-invisible and intangible for a crucial few seconds. She darted across the open space, a ghost against the flickering neon backdrop, her photon katana humming faintly at her hip.
She reached the drone just as its stabilizers hiccupped violently in the worsening gravity flux. It listed sideways. Flux's hands moved with practiced speed, a small interface jack extending from her wrist cuff. Data streamed across her vision. Data-Jutsu Interface. She bypassed the primary firewall, then the secondary encryption. The drone's access panel hissed open. Inside, the energy core glowed, hot and potent. She reached in.
Kairo Vantress – Stormveil – felt the storm's energy like static dancing on his skin. He moved through the upper levels of the Undercity's labyrinthine structure, a shadow within the chaos. His Nano Cloak Drape, a living jacket of magnetic fabric and data-chips, bent light and electric fields around him, making him a flicker at the edge of vision. Below, he saw the flashes of Jett's plasma bursts, the unnatural slow-motion ripple of Kael's Cryo-Drift. His mind, a tactical processor honed in the Neo-Dojo and the Undercity's harsh logic, mapped angles, power sources, escape routes.
He paused on a gantry overlooking the plaza where Kael shielded the android girl. His dark eyes, electric-blue irises faintly lit, scanned the converging Yakuza reinforcements. His Data Hive Core implant buzzed faintly; he could deploy his micro-electric swarm, his Hive Sting, to harass them, buy Kael time. He raised a hand, tribal glow tattoos along his jawline flaring briefly.
A sudden, clumsy weight slammed into his back. "Gotcha, shiny!" a voice crowed.
Kairo didn't flinch. He pulsed. A short, blinding burst of raw electricity (Pulse Warp) surged through his body and cloak. There was a startled yelp, a sizzle, and the sound of something small and metallic hitting the gantry floor hard.
Kairo turned, his cloak settling like settling static. At his feet, sputtering and twitching, lay Astro-Beetle – Kai-7. The kid's sleek black and neon-blue armor sparked erratically, smoke curling from a shoulder joint. One of his mandible-like helmet extensions was bent.
"Ow! Zappy! Not cool, cloak-guy!" Kai-7 groaned, pushing himself up on wobbly jet-boots. "Just wanted to see if that thing was as frictionless as it looks!" He rubbed his chest plate where the shock had hit hardest.
Kairo regarded him with calm detachment. "Bad timing, beetle." He gestured downwards with his chin. The Gravity Storm was peaking. The low hum had become a physical pressure. Debris not bolted down now floated several feet in the air. Neon signs shattered, raining glass that hung suspended for a moment before plummeting. Below, Jett roared as a Yakuza enforcer, caught in a sudden localized zero-G pocket, flailed helplessly before Jett's plasma gorilla fist slammed him into a wall with sickening force. Kael shielded the android girl as a chunk of permacrete the size of a man, torn free by the storm, hurtled towards them in terrifying slow-motion. Flux, core in hand, ducked as the Capsule Corp drone, destabilized by her hack and the storm, spun out of control and slammed into a mag-lev rail support with a shriek of tearing metal.
Then came the Shear.
It wasn't sound, but pure, violent physics. A rogue gravity wave, amplified by the storm and the drone's exploding power core, ripped through the plaza like an invisible blade. It passed through the two Yakuza reinforcements charging Kael.
They didn't scream. One moment they were there, weapons raised. The next, their bodies were unmade. Limbs separated at the joints with grotesque, bloodless precision, torsos split diagonally as if by a giant's cleaver. Cybernetics sparked and fizzed. Chunks of flesh and chrome hung suspended in the distorted air for a horrifying heartbeat before gravity reasserted itself, and the pieces rained down onto the permacrete with wet, heavy thuds. The android girl whimpered, burying her face against Kael. Jett froze mid-punch, his molten fist dripping, eyes wide at the sudden carnage. Flux stared, the stolen core momentarily forgotten in her hand, her face pale beneath her shifting hair. Even Kai-7, still sparking on the gantry, gasped.
Kairo didn't look at the gore. His enhanced perception, unlocked by his Astral Gates, tracked the source of the amplified wave – the point of the drone's impact. His gaze, however, snapped upwards. Through the chaotic lattice of walkways and flickering neon, high above in the Floating Islands, a section of sky seemed to... writhe. Not clouds. Something darker. A tear in the fabric of the city's light, pulsing with unnatural energy.
A ghostly, distorted voice, not physical sound but data-noise forced into perception, echoed in the minds of Kairo, Jett, Kael, Flux, and Kai-7 simultaneously – a whisper cutting through the storm's roar and the ringing silence after the Shear:
"The fractured hourglass turns... The Exiled Star returns... Neo-Cosmonopolis, prepare to kneel..."
The voice faded. The writhing darkness high above pulsed once, violently, and vanished. But the message, the sheer wrongness of it, hung heavier than the smell of ozone and blood.
Below, in the plaza of suspended debris and scattered body parts, five sets of eyes – Jett's violet fury, Kael's icy calm, Flux's shocked neon gaze, Kai-7's wide blue visor, and Kairo's electric-blue assessment – met across the chaotic space. Not allies. Not even acquaintances. Just strays, battered by the same unnatural storm, witnesses to the same impossible horror, united only by the chilling echo in their skulls and the neon-lit carnage at their feet. The beast of Neo-Cosmonopolis had roared, and something far darker had roared back.
The Gravity Storm wasn't just weather. It was a herald.
Chapter 1 End.