06-08-2018, 02:23 AM
Bernie King, the Takanomiya Group’s Treasurer, was stood on the pavement with a small cadre of confidants when the truck turned in off the road and rolled past him. He was waving goodbye to an expensive black car as it was being driven away down the road. Alejandro didn’t stop to speak to him—they could all catch up later, after the Rabbit's injuries had been taken care of—and at the vehicle's approach, a large section the steps at the foot of the pillar drew back into the building, to leave a wide gateway for it to pass through.
Once inside they parked, and were quickly approached by a couple of the gang’s optimistically assigned medical personnel, who had no actual knowledge of their field whatsoever and had been granted their positions solely based upon: a) whether they actually wanted the job, and b) how good they looked in a nurse’s uniform.
That policy would perhaps end up being changed later, if they ever actually managed to recruit anyone with proper medical know-how, but for the time being the gang—being comprised of the absolute most downtrodden of masses that Northside had to offer—was lacking in anyone really well educated at all.
Nevertheless, their hearts were in the right place, so Hijiri allowed the pair—a ruggedly-handsome man who had left his shirt unbuttoned, to better show off his chiseled abs, and a young woman with no bra and an extremely low-cut dress that showed off more of her chest than it covered—to bundle him onto a stretcher, despite the fact that his legs were working perfectly, and so this was completely unnecessary, and carry him off.
Just like the ‘ground’ level above it, this basement area had four large, cuboid pillars of veined, white granite stretching from floor to ceiling. When they approached one, a flat slab of stone on the surface they faced sunk down into the floor, revealing the steel walls of an elevator within.
They took the lift up to the building’s medical level, then hurried him out, through a hallway with spotless, white walls, floor and ceiling. The air up here was much cleaner and fresher than on the streets of Tier Five, now far beneath them… but it was an artificial freshness, with a hint of the sharp, alkaline scent of chemical solvents.
They brought him to a room overflowing with stainless steel and white plastic machinery, all of it with a sleek, futuristic aesthetic. Putting him down clumsily—practically dropping him, in fact—on a shelf-like protrusion built into one of the multitude of devices, the pair caused their leader to wince as their ineptitude resulted in his broken shoulder striking the hard plastic.
At the push of a button, the surface withdrew into a short tunnel with a soft hiss, then there came a loud beep when one of the nurses pressed the ‘start’ symbol. The highly advanced and easily operated machines that filled this floor were the reason he could afford to run a hospital in the Pillar itself, despite his largely uneducated minions; with infallible machine intelligences to do all the heavy lifting—metaphorically speaking, at least—all that was required of the human medical staff was to tap a few clearly labelled buttons when needed.
A beam of light played across his body as an advanced scanner of some kind sought to identify and categorise his injuries. A moment after it vanished, a panel in the roof of the machine slid open to allow a white, plastic, syringe-tipped appendage to lower down. Bending at joints located where a human’s elbow and wrist would be, the device pricked his throat with the tip of its needle, before pumping some chemical or other into his bloodstream.
A pleasant numbness began to spread slowly outwards from the point of the injection, and as the limb withdrew and the ledge on which he lay drew back even further in towards the centre of the mechanical medic, his eyelids grew heavy, then closed. The last thing he heard before sinking down into a deep and dreamless sleep was the soft vsh noise of more panels opening and several additional appendages descending to begin his treatment.
Once inside they parked, and were quickly approached by a couple of the gang’s optimistically assigned medical personnel, who had no actual knowledge of their field whatsoever and had been granted their positions solely based upon: a) whether they actually wanted the job, and b) how good they looked in a nurse’s uniform.
That policy would perhaps end up being changed later, if they ever actually managed to recruit anyone with proper medical know-how, but for the time being the gang—being comprised of the absolute most downtrodden of masses that Northside had to offer—was lacking in anyone really well educated at all.
Nevertheless, their hearts were in the right place, so Hijiri allowed the pair—a ruggedly-handsome man who had left his shirt unbuttoned, to better show off his chiseled abs, and a young woman with no bra and an extremely low-cut dress that showed off more of her chest than it covered—to bundle him onto a stretcher, despite the fact that his legs were working perfectly, and so this was completely unnecessary, and carry him off.
Just like the ‘ground’ level above it, this basement area had four large, cuboid pillars of veined, white granite stretching from floor to ceiling. When they approached one, a flat slab of stone on the surface they faced sunk down into the floor, revealing the steel walls of an elevator within.
They took the lift up to the building’s medical level, then hurried him out, through a hallway with spotless, white walls, floor and ceiling. The air up here was much cleaner and fresher than on the streets of Tier Five, now far beneath them… but it was an artificial freshness, with a hint of the sharp, alkaline scent of chemical solvents.
They brought him to a room overflowing with stainless steel and white plastic machinery, all of it with a sleek, futuristic aesthetic. Putting him down clumsily—practically dropping him, in fact—on a shelf-like protrusion built into one of the multitude of devices, the pair caused their leader to wince as their ineptitude resulted in his broken shoulder striking the hard plastic.
At the push of a button, the surface withdrew into a short tunnel with a soft hiss, then there came a loud beep when one of the nurses pressed the ‘start’ symbol. The highly advanced and easily operated machines that filled this floor were the reason he could afford to run a hospital in the Pillar itself, despite his largely uneducated minions; with infallible machine intelligences to do all the heavy lifting—metaphorically speaking, at least—all that was required of the human medical staff was to tap a few clearly labelled buttons when needed.
A beam of light played across his body as an advanced scanner of some kind sought to identify and categorise his injuries. A moment after it vanished, a panel in the roof of the machine slid open to allow a white, plastic, syringe-tipped appendage to lower down. Bending at joints located where a human’s elbow and wrist would be, the device pricked his throat with the tip of its needle, before pumping some chemical or other into his bloodstream.
A pleasant numbness began to spread slowly outwards from the point of the injection, and as the limb withdrew and the ledge on which he lay drew back even further in towards the centre of the mechanical medic, his eyelids grew heavy, then closed. The last thing he heard before sinking down into a deep and dreamless sleep was the soft vsh noise of more panels opening and several additional appendages descending to begin his treatment.
![[Image: Hijiri_Name_Sig.png]](https://image.ibb.co/k1H7Hd/Hijiri_Name_Sig.png)