_CHAPTER 5 - INTERVIEW 1_

I think it's about time we got a peek somewhere a bit more... context-filled, don't you?

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If Mikhaila never eats beans again, she’ll consider it a lifelong victory.

It’s not that she doesn’t like beans. As far as the alternatives go, it’s not bad. Good protein, decent flavor (if usually a bit slimy), good carbs; you can do a lot worse than beans in a pickle.

Fuck, what she wouldn’t do for a dill pickle.

It’s more to do with how damn often she finds them on her plate.  Say what you will about old-world sayings, but “familiarity breeds contempt” still holds strong however many centuries since it got coined. She takes another bite anyways, leaning back in her lawn chair and staring out over the city skyline.

Half the buildings in town are in a similar situation, covered in swarms of people like they’re infested, everyone in a festive mood as the smell of cooking meat and char grills fills the air. There’s laughter, more than a few rooftops playing music, and plenty of beer to go around.

Her rooftop doesn’t have much to it. A half-dozen lawn chairs, all of them pointing the same way everyone else is; due south towards the border wall. 

There’s two of them, really, but everyone calls the outer wall the “border” and the inner wall… something less friendly. Off to the left, visible as they all point themselves towards the exterior fortification, Mikhaila can see the shining city on the hill that is New Chicago, its beautiful bright towers and glowing laser emplacements lighting up the night as gently strobing alarms flutter like a heartbeat behind the glowing dome of energy that crackles lightly in the air around it. Compared to the border wall, which relies mostly on the fact its a good five hundred feet tall concrete barrier covered in massive fuckoff guns, the inner wall looks like some science fiction bullshit, glass, plastic and wiring setting up a laser-grid made out like a faraday cage and surrounding it in panels of lightning and dull glowing light.

She wonders, as she sometimes does, what it would be like to visit sometime. Not to live in, fuck that, she’ll die before she leaves her mom down here, but to maybe just pop in and say hi and maybe tag some buildings. Up there with the tectonic-defense platform, and the vertical farms, and the Paragons.

She eats another forkful of beans and grumbles a bit.

“Aw come on, chica, none of that,” comes a voice from behind her. “Chillax, girl. We got front row seats!”

“And last row cooking,” she mumbles.

Sammy laughs as she says it, tumbling into the chair beside her and draping himself over it like a coat. He’s the lankiest, weirdest-looking kid she’s ever seen, with limbs longer than his torso and a hell of a nose, but he’s good people, and when you don’t move around much, you can be friends with a lot worse than good people. He flashes her a grin, leaning so far back over the arm of the chair that he’s looking at her upside down.

“Since when you don’t like fresh beans, chica? We got other shit too, you know! Hell, my mom’s got some jasmine rice that’s to fucking die for, bro.”

“Flavor packs and dry rice ain’t doin it for me today, Sammy.”

He fake-scowls, wagging a finger at her. “Don’t you be bad mouthing my mama’s cooking, hermana. One of these days I’ll tell her you said that, and no more casserole leftovers for you.”

She rolls her eyes, but she does laugh a bit. “Yeah, whatever. How is she these days, anyways?”

Sammy quiets a bit, before shrugging and sitting a bit more upright. “Eh. You know. Same old, same old. She’s better in the mornings usually, but… gets hard to get her to sleep sometimes.”

“...Well, you can always crash at my place sometime.”

“And deal with your sweaty ass sock stank? Nooo, thank you.”

“Fuck you,” she laughs, elbowing him as he dodges poorly.

“Oh hey, you two finally having that talk?” a new voice asks. “It’s about time. Sexual tension between you gremlins is no joke for real.”

“Ugh, no,” Sammy waves off. “Please. Mikhaila here ain’t got enough meat on her bones to handle me.”

“Yeah, and she ain’t got a third leg neither. Definitely not his type.”

The two new voices take up their own seats, one of them cracking open a beer and the other holding no less than six different brands of chips. John sips quietly, tattooed and absolutely massive for his age of 17, the oldest of the bunch and looking like it with a buzz cut and a scarred lower lip- but an easy smile and a fashion sense like a pastel technicolor fever dream means he’s only ever intimidating when he wants to be. Jemma, sitting across him and clutching her many treats, is nearly his exact opposite, short, way too skinny for her own good, and equipped with the most viciously untamable mop of red hair any of them have ever seen, magically born with a white girl afro that can static-shock a generator.

“Just us today?” Mikhaila asks.

“Seems like,” John replies. “Lil bro chickened out. My moms have him all panicked and shit, so they’re sheltering early.”

“Same here,” Jemma says. “And Emma is too much of a baby to come up and watch. Says she gets panicky.”

“Hey, nothin’ wrong with that!” Sammy tsks at her. “Panicking’s the right call, ain’t it? It’s all us up here acting like the weird ones.”

“Then what do you call all that?” Jemma asks, sweeping an arm out over the dozens of other rooftops full of people.

Sammy shrugs. “Whole world’s crazy! Don’t mean you gotta talk bad about the sane ones.”

John laughs, and Mikhaila sort of shrugs in agreement, to which Jemma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Anybody got the timer up?”

Mikhaila hooks a thumb over at a nearby building, where a massive old projector has been set up with a red digital clock, ticking down bit by bit. Behind it, there are a dozen other buildings up in midtown and even all the way up in hightown with their own, more professional displays, counting down from nine minutes, forty-three seconds.

“Uuuuuuuugh. Whatever. I wanted to pop open my first bag right when the cannons go off, but I guess it’s fine.”

True to her word, she pops it open as loud as she can, getting a spray of chip-fragments to fly out of it- mostly into her face.

Sammy immediately breaks down cackling, but Jemma doesn’t even notice, too busy finagling chips off her nose and into her mouth in a complex act of facial contortion that mostly just leaves chips falling to the ground or into her hair.

“Girl, you have got to learn how to eat like a human person,” John chuckles.

Mikhails eats another forkful of beans from the tin, and mostly just watches the clock.

As Sammy and Jemma start to tease each other and pretend-wrastle for her other chip bags, John leans his chair a bit closer.

“Hey. You doin alright? I know alarm days are always… tough.”

Mikhaila shrugs. “It’s just another alarm. Happens once a month at this point.”

“Sure. But with your uncle…”

“It’s fine. I’m here, and he ain’t.”

John nods, and leaves it at that.

There’s a cheer as the timer hits the five minute mark, and the guns on the wall spool up. The heavy “clunk clunk clunk” of the machines shift, ammo-feeds large enough to be seen from miles away moving artillery rounds as wide as Mikhaila is tall into place. Cannons, gatling guns, modified howitzers and B.A.Ds (Border-Area Devastation guns) all coming to life in a mostly synchronized display of humanity’s might.

“Five more minutes till the bitch is in range!” Jemma whoops, hands high in the air. “Get ready for the FIREWORKS, sucka!”

Mikhaila rolls her eyes. “You know we get breaches like all the time, yeah? Anytime a midsize gets too close they pop the cannons up.”

“Uuuuugh, then why even come out Mikhaila?! Don’t ruin this for me, I wanna see many big gun go boom!”

Mikhaila rolls hers eyes again, though this time she can’t help but laugh. “Alright, alright.”

“Aw, come on! You’re seriously not interested even a little chica?”

She shrugs. “I dunno. The guns are… I mean they’re whatever, they’re just big guns. Nothing all that special. I want to see the real big guys.”

“Ooooooh,” Jemma giggles, “does someone have a super crush?”

Mikhaila flips her off. “Like you don’t still have a poster of Supreme on your wall.”

Her friend shrugs, stuffing her mouth full of crispy confections. “I have no shame on the matter and will accept no criticism. Those abs could grate cheese, and you can’t argue with that.”

“Always been more of a Dynamo man, myself,” John nods. “The shoulder pads, the exosuit, electricity powers, what’s not to love?”

“Nah, I gotta go with Jemma,” Sammy says. “If we’re talking top tier sex appeal, it’s gotta be supreme. I don’t even like super buff guys but somehow on him it just works.”

“Wow, I never said sex appeal! Dynamo’s just badass, ok? She’s like, top five veteran Paragons, she’s got way more kills than Supreme!”

“Yeah, but Supreme gets the big dogs, she picks up the scrappy lil mutts.”

“Hey, you take that-”

The clock hits 0 with a red flaring and the booming of the final alarm, a bassy thrum that echoes through the entire city. Less than a half-second later, to the screaming and cheering and whooping of thousands, the city’s guns open up.

The world thunders and screams. Beyond the wall, beyond the horizon, something roars back, in anger as much as in pain.

A dozen taller structures spaced throughout the city begin to hum, vibrating ever so slightly and in unison. A thousand towers made entirely of foam spikes, and a complementary thousand towers covered top to bottom in massive speakers, both work in tandem to reduce the sound to a volume that won’t deafen the city, or liquify the organs of those that live closest to the walls. 

In tandem, a hundred thousand buildings light up with fireworks, many homemade, and light up the sky in defiance and celebration of being alive. 

“L’chaim!” John roars, standing up out of his seat and shaking his beer at the world, Sammy and Jemma both joining in with a whooping scream.

Even Mikhaila, for just a second, lets herself smile and add her voice to the chorus. 

“Damn! You see that! The whole wall lighting up! It must be a big ‘un to be needing all that!” Jemma yells. “Think it’s a Cat. 4? No, gotta be at least a 5! Aaaaah! Blow it uuuuup!”

Mikhaila laughs, enjoying her friend’s antics as she jumps up and down, chip crumbs and unopened bags going everywhere. The whole city whoops and cheers, John and Jemma both roaring up at the guns on the very edge of the wall and getting a bunch of people to cheer them on or join in with yells of their own.

It’s Alarm Day. Fifth one in four months. Everyone in the city knows, intrinsically, that there’s nothing as dreadful or wonderful as the sound of the city wailing its million-gun salute out into the world.

It means there be monsters, and it means they haven’t killed you yet.

“Alright!” John laughs, jumping off the ledge back onto the roof. “I almost forgot! Here-”

He reaches behind his chair, where he dropped off the case of beers he brought, and pops out three more from the packaging, handing one to each of them. Mikhaila hesitates, and he gives her a sheepish smile, but before he can pull it back she takes it. There’s an unspoken communication between them, but she just nods and sets her lips in a line, and he shakes his head and laughs.

“Alright. Pop em open! We got a first time drinker and an Alarm Day to celebrate, ya bunch of losers!”

“Whooo!” Sammy cheers. “On three, toast! To low-city losers!”

“One!”

“Two!”

“Three!”

“LOW CITY LOSERS!” they roar, and clank their drinks together, and all take a swig.

Mikhaila practically coughs it down her throat, spitting it back up and wiping her lips. “Oh my god! What is wrong with you people! That shit’s terrible!”

John laughs, just as Jemma cackles, though Sammy falls back into his chair and pats her on the back. “All good, hermana! You get used to it!”

“Yeah! This is New Chicago! If you can get used to the guns, you can get used to anything!” Jemma cheers, taking another chug (though Mikhaila can’t help but notice she doesn’t seem to enjoy it much either).

“Amen, losers,” John says, crashing back into his chair hard enough she’s sure she hears it creak. “And god bless the whole damn shithole we call home, eh?”

A second roar comes over the wall, the city’s mufflers not quite enough to block out the fact that it sounds closer.

All four of them go quiet. The whole city goes quiet, save for the pounding of the guns… and a slight trembling in the ground.

And then, a few seconds later, a new alarm comes up. This one is a bright, strobing yellow, rather than the dull red from before.

The speaker-towers crackle, the counter-noise they’re putting out dimming and letting more of the cacophony through even as they transmit a familiar automated voice through the city.

“Warning: Category Five Kaiju Detected. Please Hold For Paragon Deployment.”

There’s a second cheer, louder than the first one, but pitched a little differently. There’s celebration, a joy that burns bright at the second line of defense’s arrival- but no one misses the fact that the first line of defense is officially classified as ineffective.

The ground trembles again as something draws closer.

The guns continue to thunder non-stop, the audio towers blocking out as much as they can, but even they cannot stop the hopeful, anxious, desperate cheering that comes up as the Paragons deploy.

In a flash of golden light, all sound stops.

In the seconds after, as it fades, Mikhaila can track an afterimage on her retinas of a bright trail of energy flying from one of the tallest towers in the upper city straight out from the city. She hears the guns click, going to standby, and hears a single roar, louder than all the others- and suddenly choked off, as if strangled out of existence.

And then there is an even grander quake, large enough to almost shake them off the edge of the building, loud enough that Mikhaila is sure there will be broken glass and fallen ceramics from across the city- but then it is entirely quiet.

And then, in a blaze of glorious gold and blue light, a man flies back over the wall.

Cameras across the city zoom in on him, and the alarm projections and screens across the city instead highlight an adonis in the sky. A single stylized S stands bright on his chest in gold on a background of perfect white, juxtaposed with long, flowing black locks that go past his shoulders. Middle-eastern complexion shines bright as his smile, beloved by millions, dazzles the cameras yet again, pearly whites cutting through a rich but well-trimmed beard.

The city goes absolutely mad as millions of people all across scream for their greatest hero, and another vanquished man.

“SEE!” Jemma screams, pointing wildly at the bright light above and at every other screen she can see. “SEE! I TOLD YOU! THOSE ABS CANNOT FAIL!”

And Mikhaila applauds, and cheers, and if it’s just a bit quieter than everyone else, well.

It’s Alarm Day. It’s no worry she’s left feeling a little uneasy as she stares up at the strongest man in nearly all the known world, wondering how many more times the guns will fail.