Dueling life in a futuristic world

It was a day like any other in Cy City. The sun was shining; the birds were singing, the mechanical whine of the tube network reverberating, but the streets were empty.

An alarm was all that remained of the usual hustle and bustle of the city.

[“BWUYEEEEEEE ALERT! BWEEEET ALERT! CRITICAL ALERT! AN OUTSIDE THREAT WARNING HAS BEEN RAISED! CITIZENS! MOVE TO YOUR DESIGNATED SHELTERS!”]

This alarm repeated, even if seemingly no one needed to hear it. The truth was most had already evacuated the city, not to the shelters mind you, but to the maglev’s, running full speed to the next safe spot in another allied city where they had contacts that could shelter them for how long this war would last.

But this alarm didn’t go unheard for very long.

Out of the blue, a monumental astral dragon with dark blue armour and red highlights rose from the varied skyline of Cy City. It skimmed the many skyscrapers, which were much smaller than the ones largest city in the union but still rose to a minimum of 300 meters.

This dragon flapped its wings faster, rising higher and higher, before nose diving, picking up speed at a gradual rate, racing towards the ancient city walls that had held the attacks of invaders for centuries. The wall stood as a token of resistance for however long it had survived.

“What a dismal symbol of oppression.” Spat a boy from the top of the dragon, nearly hidden by the massive solid vision monster. He had spiked red hair and a large bang covering his left eye and most of his small pale face, with a triangular duel gazer covering the other half. The boy pointed a finger at the ancient gate and ordered. “Galaxy eyes, photon stream!”

The photonic dragon stopped short of the gate and drew a breath, but right as the beast was ready to turn the marble wall to rubble,

*BOOM!*

An explosion on its left wing knocked it off balance, and the blast that was supposed to destroy the wall went wide, hitting a nearby building a third up its side.

“ARNGH!!” The boy struggled to hold on to his mount while it tried to correct for the damage the explosion caused to the beast’s wing.

The dragon finally stabilized, its wing missing a chuck, but that quickly got fixed by some simple presses on the boy’s duel disk, who now stood on top of the dragon and called out. “Who dares hinder my op?”

Hearing no response, he again turned to his disk, which, after some fiddling with an app, showed an air-to-air radar interface.

[Activating air radar] Two metallic orbs materialized to each side of the dragon, spinning too fast for the eye to notice. The interface produced three contacts beyond visual range.

He clicked his tongue. “Tch. Looks like sis didn’t finish on time. Lame. Well, if you want something done right.”

He didn’t wrap up that saying before telling the dragon to go after those three contacts.

 

---

 

About 65Km from the gate.

The skies looked clear, with a heavy but expected cloud cover. This was the home of the Cy City Diet, but the conversation taking place inside this historical building had nothing serene about it.

Within the walls of this historic building, various representatives from city districts, home-grown corporations and even military generals debated about the situation outside.

A woman clad in a decorated military uniform rose from her mahogany desk with a name tag labeled ‘CCDFAB,’ or ‘Cy City Defense Force, Armored Branch,’ and yelled. “We have to evacuate the diet! This is the message the Armored branch has repeated for 3 days now! So answer me this: Why do we still meet at this perfect propaganda target of a building?”

“Calm yourself, woman.” A man in a blue suit calmly stated. “We might be besieged, but Cy City would be defeated the second the diet deserted its citizens.” He stood up like the general had. “We of Cy City council must stay strong and face our foes honorably.” The name tag on his desk read ‘ATRA LLC.’

“What would you know about hon—”

“General, must I remind you of the rules of the house?” A grey-haired woman on the central bench with a name tag reading ‘Queen Trouta,’ cut off. “I will not tolerate personal attacks against members of this diet. Now sit down, both of you.”

“Yes, your majesty.” The general echoed after taking a seat.

But the Atra LLC representative remained standing.

Queen Trouta turned to him and asked. “Whats the matter? Does ATRA LLC have something to add before we continue today’s session?”

…

“No, your majesty.” The representative said, also sitting back down.

The Queens table separated the diet into two stands, one for the military and security services, and the other for the civil sector. But seeing it today would leave a different impression as one side was half full, and the other contained but one person, the CCDFAB general.

Queen Trouta nodded. “We will now vote on the CCDFAB’s proposal to evacuate. All in favor?”

“This was not on today’s legd—” Various representatives from the civil sector tried to protest.

“Silence!” The Queen cut off again, then repeated. “All in favor?”

 

---

 

Unfortunately, this would be the last vote held in the Cy City diet.

The ground shock ten blocks away from the diet, flame, rubble and shrapnel flooding the air and an enormous pressure wave emanated from the center, deafening anyone kilometers away from the crater.

For all the warning given by Central Command, no one really believed artillery would target the building. The people inside it were just too important as propaganda prisoners, they speculated. But that was the same reasoning that let to the death of Queen Trouta and diet members, including her own daughter, General of the CCDFAB, Princess Lilian.

These last moments were recorded and archived, just like every diet session, but tragically, it was also broadcast to the world. A symbol of hope for Cy City residents, a hope that was now turned to ash like their leaders.

In the bunkers deep below the city, they showed the broadcast on every publicly available screen. A decision that now tragically backfired, leading to many in the deep underground bunkers, now trapped and with little hope of returning home, to commit the unthinkable.

Yet many still held out, hoping all of this pain would end someday. Only time would tell if they were right for some of them, but for the majority, there was another threat ready to pry their souls right into the afterlife…

“Are you sure this is ethical?” Asked a girl not taller than a sixth grader. She looked at her duel disk intensely. “This doesn’t seem necessary…”

Around her were numerous water pumps and pipes, the central junction of the extensive Cy City water system.

A deep, distorted voice talked over the humming of the pumps. “The bunkers have filtration devices. Besides, now that we control the city's main computing cluster, they’re our citizens too. We’ll treat them as much. No need to hide like moles.”

The little girl with short light green hair shrugged. “Ok, then.” And placed a card on her gray duel blade. The air shifted in response, being pushed aside for the outline of the massive monster, then the center formed, dark cyan scales covering an elongated body of snake, with a human bust forming above the long tail and two snakes serving as arms.

“Vennominaga! Take this and infuse it in the water.” The little girl held out two thick cylinders with labels reading ‘Polonium-210,’ and ‘TBS Dimethylmercury.’

The monster looked at the two cylinders intensely, before grabbing both with its snake arms and drinking them. Various orifices of the beast turned black and a dense mist surrounded it.

But the mist was oddly absent around the little girl, a thin transparent sphere surrounding her and keeping out the deadly mist and emission.

The mist might’ve looked worrying, but in reality, it was harmless. The poisons were encapsulated in microscopic nanobots, programed with a time delay and an activation algorithm which would only release the payload after various factors had been met. Designed to activate only inside the bodies of enemy personnel, the mix of these two agents would cause a certain but slow death, even with advanced technology to combat against it.

Dimethyl mercury would rot the brain away, leading to almost instant paralysis and death in a few weeks, practically diminishing the usefulness of any medical professional in a snap. Meanwhile, Polonium-210, due to its radioactivity, was 250000x more toxic than cyanide and could even scramble DNA once ingested, making any misguided regenerative enhancement treatment attempt result in extensive cancer.

While individually, both poisons could be dealt with using advanced medical nanobots and chromosome reconstruction, the combination of the two was untreatable.

The snake lamia pried one of the flow indicator windows on a pump, leading to water shooting everywhere. But it didn’t mind. As it lowered its head down into the stream and let out a deep purple liquid, but that was just a solid vision effect that would disappear not only a few meters away, the real poison was clear, tasteless and odorless.

Done with its work, it grabbed the circular view port and held it down over the hole. Its eyes lit up, a seal of stone forming around the port. In reality, it was melding the metal and bonding it with the lip. The stone was just another visual effect meant to entertain audiences.

The green-haired girl took the card off her blade, holding it up to her face with a wide grin. “Well done, my little lamia. You can rest now.” She pressed a button on her disk and reported. “Agent orange reporting. Mission complete, requesting retasking.”

“Well done. Move to extract south-east of OP area, out.”

She furrowed her brow, her grin turning into a slim frown. “No additional mission? I’m in the middle of the city.”

“No, we’re moving up to the next phase. Continue to extraction point.”

“...Copy.” She reluctantly accepted.

 

---

 

15 of September 35 MT would be a day every citizen of the three central continent alliances would remember forever. Some more than others, but for decades, even centuries, some would call it the end of times, while the majority would say it was the start of a golden age. The exact moment they realized they couldn’t stay on this blue pearl forever.

But that was in the future. Right now, calls were being made, conferences scheduled, and public appearances canceled. The world’s central surveillance and military apparatus were booting up to full throttle for the first time in multiple decades. A storm had arrived, one which many foresaw but wouldn’t dare expect.

The official announcements by each city’s central governments were brief. In the Union, most news sources played rounds of a popular dueling tournament instead of the critical announcement, while on GlobalNet most sources covering the topic also published more than usual, burying the critical announcement between countless useless articles.

Cy City was ablaze, not with flames, but with life. Invaders roamed the city streets, armored vehicles following behind, under the cover of massive force fields emitting from special projector tanks, a duelist in each one in case of opposition, ready for a challenge.

In the skies, spaceships, dragons, magicians and even prehistoric reptiles darted between buildings. The purpose of which similar to the ground force.

But there was a critical piece missing, a factor that had delayed this invasion for too long, or just enough in the view of Lothenean Union’s top brass. Cy City was costal, yet the docks remained empty, free of Union or Protectorate ships.

Cy City’s fleet was legendary and the focus of many refittings, the latest of which included solid vision. While the airforce and ground force capitulated before the fight even started, the navy marched on, meeting the protectorate’s brunt at sea. It was the force of a single city against a whole alliance. But because of it, the protectorate couldn’t claim a full victory, and the soldiers remained wary of news about the situation. Keenly aware that a single enemy ship returning to port would mean all day and night artillery barrages and precision strikes.

For now, everything was going according to plan and no resistance could be found. How long that would last? Nobody knew.