The City

[Kenpachi Zaraki]

The raven-haired stranger strode silently through the empty streets of Coruscant. Night had fallen hours ago, with time slowly stifling the normal cacophony and bustle. Vincent had dwelled in this city for months, though it took him just a few days to shun daytime altogether. He was far from xenophobic; no, he simply preferred silence and solitude over noise and constant bother. The deafening racket of everyday life in the city rubbed the gunslinger the wrong way, he had found that the only way he could hold a thought in his head was to avoid the noise and seek the solace of the night.

During the daylight hours he resided indoors, though he did not sleep. His body did not require rest as normal humans did; years ago he had taken up a similar practice that mimicked sleep to others: meditation. He had taken to mentally ‘checking-out’ and meditating for the duration of a normal sleep cycle, allowing his brain to recover and sharpen while providing him with something closer to a circadian rhythm. Vincent found that this helped him have a better grip on the passage of time, something he had struggled with since his becoming functionally immortal. For the duration of daylight, he would shut himself in the hostel he had rented in a quieter part of the city, emerging after its inhabitants had fallen asleep. The owner of the establishment allowed him to live there rent free, provided that the gunslinger deterred imperial intrusion into his illicit activities, should such an event happen. So far this had amounted to spooking a few of Judge Dredd’s goons on a few occasions. He had avoided any bloodshed for the time being, the retreating owing mostly to his vampire-esque appearance.

Over the past few months that he had spent in Coruscant, walking the night and conversing with some of the more knowledgeable nightwalkers, he had gathered some quantity of information about where he had wound up. The Omniverse: a dimension separated from his own, controlled by some alleged deity named ‘Omni’ that cherry-picked those he deemed worthy. ‘Interesting’ was the adjective repeated by most with whom Vincent spoke. Those of ‘interest’ to Omni were taken from their homes and thrust into this corner of reality, a corner which had its own set of rules governing it. Physics seemed to be a joke in this reality; the burliest, muscle-bound brutes were routinely trounced by little girls. Coins and bills were completely worthless, with the currency instead being an odd substance referred to instead as ‘Omnilium’. Vincent wondered if the nomenclature was all vainly named after the deity, or vice versa.

His red eyes glanced over his surroundings, taking in the information around him. Though the citizens on this particular street lay sleeping during nocturnal hours, the lights bathed everything in a neon glow. Vincent tilted his head back slightly as he walked, taking sight of a large flashing billboard. The date and weather zipped across, along with this evening’s lotto numbers, zodiac (all 42 of them), complete summaries of the week’s most popular holovid program episodes, the latest celebrity gossip (updated 3 minutes ago) and finally, the time: 0230.

Two-Thirty, he mused. Shelke’s birthday. His thoughts wandered back to those he had left behind: to Shelke and Yuffie, to AVALANCHE, the people that had become his family. Vincent was not known to be a warm man, though the thought of those precious people in peril drove a spike through his heart. His warp from Edge to the Omniverse meant that whatever was threatening the planet remained so. Vincent desired one thing, to return home. He turned his glance away from the blinking billboard, picking up his pace purposefully.

Time was ticking by as he strode the streets, in search of answers.