Dreams of Absolution

[Madotsuki]

Taking her bike to the gate, Madotsuki mused, had not been the best idea. While it had made her arrival quicker (not by much, though), the endeavor had left her worn out long before she arrived. That must've been quite an amusing sight for the Stormtroopers standing guard at the entrance-- an out-of-breath teenage girl riding a red bicycle with a knife tucked into the basket. The Stormtroopers glanced at each other, then at her weapon. She was a kid, but so were many other Primes.

They stepped aside and allowed her passage. With a nod, Madotsuki continued on to the other side. As soon as she was out of sight, one of the Stormtroopers pulled out a communication device and began talking into it.

"A new Prime just came by here. Do you want to investigate further?"


"Of course we do. More troopers will be following them shortly."
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If her eyes hadn't adjusted from the brightness of the Nexus, her eyes would've been blinded by the sheer amounts of color that Coruscant brought to her sight. How long had it been since she had last seen something this vibrant and unobscured by fog? Not counting her dreams, of course. Despite the fact that the city looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, the entire situation felt oddly... normal. Normality was a feeling that she had long forgot.

With renewed energy, she raced into the heart of the city. Flying cars hovered far above, and metal buildings loomed so high that Madotsuki could barely see the sky. If there was one thing that didn't impress her, it would be the massive crowds. She loathed crowds, a fact she had briefly forgotten as she entered Coruscant. Not only could she barely hear herself think due to the constant bustling, she managed to get herself lost. ...Could you get lost if you didn't have any destination in the first place? Apparently you could.

Another thing that left the dreamer unnerved was the massive amount of surveillance that seemed to be everywhere at once. At each corner she crossed, several cameras came into view, half of which were trained on her. Several Stormtroopers like the ones at the gateway patrolled the streets, and every time she glanced in their general direction, she caught a glimpse of them watching her before they turned away.

Desperate for some privacy, she discovered an alleyway with fewer cameras and ducked into it, unaware of the group of Stormtroopers trailing behind.

[Madotsuki]

This alleyway was surprisingly large-- Madotsuki found no problem riding through it, since there was at least a foot's worth of space to either side of her. Once she was halfway down the alley, she dismounted the bike and absorbed it back into Omnilium. Knife in hand, and diary floating on her back (only now did she realize where the diary was, although she showed no reaction),  she continued on.

However, she didn't make it three steps before she felt something clamp down on her shoulder.

"Madam, come with us."

She yanked her shoulder away and spun around, razor-red eyes wide with panic as she stared up at the trio of Stormtroopers in front of her. Her eyes flickered to the ones on the side, who had their hands on their holsters. Were they willing to shoot her? She splayed her arms out in a questioning gesture, trying not to glance behind her.

"One of the higher-ups wants to talk with you." The Stormtrooper in front answered, glaring down at the dreamer through his mask. Madotsuki took a step back, keeping an eye on the group as they withdrew their laserguns. If several of the cameras had been trained on her, then they must've found her interesting.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way." And that was when she decided that complying with these guys wasn't in her best interests. If they were going to drag her wherever this "higher-up" was, she wasn't going to come peacefully.

Now that she was planning an escape route, she noticed an odd, tingling sensation in her body. It surged and pulsed, like a heartbeat, and was most intense at the tip of her knife and the entirety of her diary. On instinct, she swung the knife in front of her. A purplish crescent appeared in front of her and shot towards the Troopers. They aimed their guns at the dreamer, but couldn't fire before the crescent collided with them and knocked them back a little.

As her confidence grew, she rapidly shot crescents at the trio until they were knocked over. Not bothering to look back, she melded into the crowd.

[Madotsuki]

Madotsuki paid no heed to the crowd as she plowed through them, knocking several people aside and getting cussed out for her efforts. The Stormtroopers, on the other hand, commanded such a presence that the passersby willingly parted for them, although the dreamer could tell from the look on their faces that few of them were happy with the arrangement. The longer she stayed here, the more she found this city to be a very hostile place.

Even though she wanted to return to that pseudo-Nexus and try another portal, there just wasn't any way she could make it back there with guards on her tail, even if she knew where she was relative to it. Maybe angering the guards had been a bad idea. She just needed to hide and lay low for a while until this blew over.

Except there was nowhere to hide! Cameras were everywhere! She had ducked into the crowd expecting them to help her blend in, not part for the Stormtroopers. What if she claimed that they were harassing her? ...No, if this group of people seemed so spineless that they'd part for them, no questions asked, then they'd probably believe anything the Troopers said. Pathetic, but what did she expect? A riot rallying at her side?

The only solution was to not get caught. She didn't have any ideas at the moment, but she could improvise.

Coming up was a busy intersection, with chrome hovercars beeping at each other to get going. People always had some place to be, it seemed. Refusing to slow down, she vaulted over a car and landed on the roof of another, grasping on for dear life with her knife clenched in her mouth by her teeth. Mass honking ensued as her little stunt distracted another driver to the point that they rammed into another vehicle, billowing smoke everywhere.

Wind whipped the dreamer's pigtails as she and the unaware driver she was currently hitchhiking rocketed down the street and turned a corner. Only when the cacophony of horns ceased did she dare to look back. Thankfully, there were no Stormtroopers, although the people that were there were giving her odd looks. A teenage girl hitching a ride on the top of a car was quite the strange sight, after all.

[Madotsuki]

Now that she didn't have the Stormtroopers breathing down her neck, she could think about what she was going to do next. She wouldn't have too long to muse about, though; those Troopers were probably just tending to the victims of the car wreck from earlier. Once the situation had been handled, they'd get back to tracking her. Normally, she wouldn't have worried, but her escape had been in broad daylight-- the citizens would direct the guards towards her. Even if they somehow couldn't see her, she still had to deal with the cameras.

Clearly some sort of control-freak ruled the place. As far as she was aware, normal cities didn't have security cameras around EVERY SINGLE CORNER. Maybe the guy running this place should get his nose out of his computer monitor and see what it's like to patrol the streets, away from the safety of his screens and underlings. It would do him good, and it might help the city to relax a little.

Her thoughts were interrupted when the hovercraft she had been riding screeched to a halt in front of a building, tossing her onto the pavement. She struggled to get up, the pain in her back flaring as she got up to her feet. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed a man in a business suit and a white fedora rush out the vehicle and enter into the building, oblivious to the fact that he had thrown her to the ground or even that she had been riding with him in the first place.

Or maybe he was just too busy to care? So busy, in fact, that he left behind the keys to his hovercar. Madotsuki crept over to the car and glanced inside. The vehicle smelled faintly of coffee, and a mug rested on the dashboard. Papers were strewn all over the place, and the keys were inserted into the ignition. She reached her hand out to turn the key and start the vehicle, but she hesitated. She wanted to lay low, right? Stealing a car was the complete opposite of that. The man would probably be around any minute to actually lock his car correctly. She was in enough trouble as is, and she didn't know how to drive, anyway. Slowly, she backed away from the car and continued in the direction she had been originally traveling in.

A few blocks down, she turned to look down an alleyway when she noticed something suspicious: there was a camera stand on the wall, but the camera itself lay on the floor, broken. A part of the floor appeared to sink in slightly, off to the side and behind a trashcan. Curious, she knelt down next to it, glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then hooked her nails into the small crevice and pulled at it until it swung open. She glanced down the hole and grinned; this had to be a secret passage! Even though she couldn't see very far into the tunnel, she hopped in as the trapdoor closed behind her.