Thread: The Lady and the Wolf - Penitency x Praxis

The year is 2077 the world we once knew it had changed. Overpopulation, automation, artificial intelligence, wealth... everything changed the economic landscape no matter if you were in the United States or China. No single culture escaped the grasp of an ever shifting universe. Technology is endless... and yet, living conditions were getting worse and the rich were only getting more powerful. A majority of the population lived in crowded, dirty hub centers . The wealthy lived in the clouds, above the smog and the pollution of the inner cities. Some of them overlooked the downtrodden from the peaks of their skyscrapers mixed into the claustrophobic architecture. Others decided to live in floating islands high in the sky... either way, they were not breaking bread with the common folk beneath them, at least by choice. They controlled the tech... they fostered innovation. With so many people came a change in the way the law was dispensed. Local Police Departments often called upon individuals known as Templars - legal assassins sent to do the dirty work of deleting murderers and psychopaths from the world. Each was given a handler assigned to them by the local PD as insurance. They had to keep these so-called Templars in check, right? In the past, one of them had flown off the handle, killing more than his assigned target, and ever since it's been law. Of course, they were the front lines preventing riots and taming the wild hearts, too. Those whom wanted to make a difference were crushed they had to be in such a volatile world. Who would accept such living conditions? Who wanted to be in the slums all their lives? Artificially being held down by 'the man' upstairs. When a Templar came marching through a neighborhood, everyone locked their doors and hid for their lives. There was no more 'proven innocence' or trials for those suspected of murder. A Templar was dispatched, and that was the end of it. Such innovation, some blamed, lead to the overcrowding. People lived longer lives, despite not seeing an improvement of its quality. The poor remained poor, but just for much longer... there was a pill for anything, yet sometimes locked behind a paywall. Many cities in between the much more crowded hubs became scenes of civil war. Rebels rose up, and the wealthy or the law came running. At times, the clashes brought nothing but ruin. Some refused to surrender fighting, and the city became nothing but a wasteland. Unchecked construction and code was also a problem, thus spiraling a once sprawling city into a desert of sand because of a radiation leak, or some other serious issue. These near uninhabitable places became refuge for outcasts and criminals alike when they needed a safe house away from crowded hubs. Ethan Gray hated being this far out, yet the thrill of murder always acted as conciliation for the hassle. There was nothing but mildly radioactive dunes of sand, or heaps of garbage the hub centers dumped, among the troublemakers who were hiding from something in the Blight... Scavengers were some of the worst company to be among... and yet, they were everywhere, coughing their lungs out as they passed between scrap piles or abandoned vehicles. They tossed Ethan odd looks as he pushed aside the sheet covering the front door of a shack, but they knew better than to say anything. Everyone who witnessed the six foot, four inch tall brute knew what had happened inside of the structure he exited. The fact that he wore a toxin filtering face mask and goggles hinted he wasn't from the locale. A shemagh of tan color wrapped around his neck, just below the mask, to help shield from the air pollution of dirt and debris. Carefully sliding his Heavy Industries P87 handgun into the holster strapped to his thigh, the man proceeded to walk among the downtrodden as he made his way back to the hovercraft that had landed not far away. Motioning to the drone hovering over head with his hand's command, it too made for the same route until finally docking atop of the cruiser. Heavy, booted footsteps loudly thumped across the hovercraft as he walked along it's edge until he reached the exterior door and jammed his fist on it. Open up! His deep, raspy voice spilled out into her ear com beneath all of his clothing and devices, slightly muted. She could see it was clearly him on the camera Ethan's long and black trench coat with synthetic brown fur lining the neck. A black undershirt was fitted to his robust chest and ripped core beneath it, followed by the pair of dirty blue jeans that hung low over his v-cut hips and tree-trunk sized thighs. Looking up to the camera above the hovercraft's door, he sarcastically noted, Open the fucking door. How about that?