City Comptroller's Office en route to Sith Temple
What calamity. The madness spread without invitation. It needn’t one. The uptight workers snapped like rubber bands, degenerating into frothing madness hungry for the unemployment lines as if though they had been camping out for this moment for their entire lives. On later inspection, social media would confirm this by way of Leftist commenting, retweets of Fake News clippings, and Likes to politically-charged, social-oriented documentaries. They stampeded like maniacs down the halls, pursued by blue-collar security guards with rage in their eyes, shouting “I’m getting tired of this crap!,” but with more cursewords, unwilling to indulge in, or even humor the notion of, the extreme stress illnesses caused by the compounding of First World Issues and White People Problems. What began as pheromones and Guttermagick blackened like an oil spill through the tide of emotional contagion.
Nobody could be bothered to ask Benedict who he was or what he was doing here as he moved casually through the hallways, smoking indoors without so much a care in the world. After all, someone had started a much bigger fire on the top floor.
As he slipped out the front door, he heard some loony shout, “WHAT THE HELL DOES A COMPTROLLER DO ANYWAY?!,” and he laughed; the citymagus had no idea himself, but he could sense that there was magick in that somewhere.
Balancing at the edge of the platform, he flicked his still-smoldering cigarette down at the dividing partition between the Upper and Lower cities, the passing wind stripping free the still-smoldering ash and unfolding from it a pair of wings. He waited for a moment, watching as the burning grey matter lilted down like a little infernal moth into the gloomy darkness below. Then, without looking up, he lifted his hand from his pocket to hail a cab, only to find it was already waiting, the passenger window descended as the driver sought the citymagus’ recognition.
“I knew it. I suddenly had this feeling like I’d left the caffmaker on, and then I was like, ‘Wait a karking second – I don’t even own a caffmaker. That sonofabitch….’”
Ladies and Gentlemen --Demarcus Voidstrider.
“’—oughtta go see what he wants,’” the cabbie said with a grin, punctuating with an unlocking of automatic speeder doors.
“Cheeky bastard.” A slash of yellowed-white illustrated a reciprocated grin against the blackened handprint over Benedict’s mouth. He climbed into the backseat of the cab. Demarcus watched over his shoulder as the guttermage slammed the door shut and settled into the middle seat. “Sith Temple.”
“What the hell’s all over your face?,” he asked, shifting into drive. “You high again?” The cabbie shook his head and pulled away from the curb, turning to face the skyways.
For those of you not cool enough to be in the know, Demarcus Voidstrider is a full-time cabbie, part-time henchman that Benedict recruited to his Urban Protection racket during the Jedi’s most recent effort to reclaim Alderaan. The two men attempted to prevent the vongforming of Aldera City, though whether or not they were actually successful still fails to be determined >_>. Regardless of Aldera’s ultimate fate, the adventure sparked a lust for life within Demarcus that he had long thought dead, so he packed up his family and moved off to Coruscant. These days, he acts as Benedict’s muscle and gunarm for more Noir-styled adventures.
“Shakes my goddamn head. Get into my cab high as kark, crap all over your mouth and hands, and you probably don’t even have money to pay me.”
Benedict lunged forward, reaching into the folds of his trenchcoat. While in the confines of his head he’d often laud his parasitism as an artform, he hated to be called out on it in the material world.
“I don’t, yeah! I got cash right –“
“Oh, no, you don’t,” the cabbie stifled a condescending chortle, looking to the Beggar in the rearview. “Don’t you dare hand me one more bag of those motherkarkin’ coins -- I’m not going to spend another night counting all that poodoo out. You just sit back there on your freeloadin' ass, shut the kark up, and try not to drool on my seats, you junkie nerf herder.”
Benedict crossed his arms and averted his eyes, his body language closing to illustrate his flash of pissed-offed-ness. In the end, however, he laughed at it off.
“You’re a good mate, Demarcus.”
“Yeah, well, one of us s’gotta be.”
Benedict’s eyebrow arched, noticing some small marker graffiti in the bottom right-hand corner of Demarcus’ glass separation window. For a “Good Time, Call,” it said, with a number attached. Wielding his red sharpie and guided by the stinging sensation in his brain, he scribbled over top the channel number.
“Best not be writing on my karking cab...”
9s for 6s, 3s for 8s, 2s for 5s…
Upon exchanging a rude-but-friendly goodbye, Demarcus abandoned Benedict on the path before the Sith Temple and drove off, disappearing into a backdrop of never-ceasing lights. There, the Guttermage stood in contemplation, the scene too familiar for him to be marveled, but still willing to take notice all the same.
Bright lights, teeming life. All around and everywhere. Coruscant, in all its urban beauty. But as he looked up, he found the sky so awash with pollution and incandescence that even the stars had forsaken them, leaving the population to die under this miserable, piss-coloured heating lamp.
“As above, so below,” he muttered, cupping his hands over his lighter to spark a new cigarette.
Benedict slipped his hands into his pockets and casually strolled toward the Sith Temple.
| [member="Darth Janus"] |
