Lividiea

  "leadership of any kind can and will be blinded by their desires and biases.

  When this happens there are a few methods to deal with it, my favorite being The Snow Globe Method. Rock their world view until the shit they are in starts raining on their heads as well."

  -- my daughter, 16, who is a lot smarter than i am

  I do my best not to fidget too much as I make my way to the command outpost. Yesterday evening, I sent Katelyn a message asking if she could arrange a meeting with the leadership of the undercity. Luckily for me, Katelyn works fast, so the meeting would take pce this afternoon, close to the northern wall.

  Just like Maniac, I have decided to put on a disguise, but instead of the punk girl style Maniac favoured, I decided to go for something more subdued. Brown hair with freckles, hoping that a more basic look would allow everyone to take me a bit more seriously. To that effect, I even had the mask produce a set of fake gsses.

  I try my best to stay calm as I walk, reminding myself that I have been in a bunch of meetings like this before, and that was when I was used as the scapegoat for some manager that fucked up. So this time, it should go a lot better. No money was lost, and I was actually coming up with a solution to our problem. Sure, it probably was not the solution everyone was looking for, but it was something.

  As I enter the spartan-looking meeting room, I note that I am not the first; both the twins and an older man with a more stoic-looking expression are already there. I give the unknown man a small nod before sitting down next to the twins.

  “Hey, guys, how are you doing?” I say, trying to drown out my own nerves.

  Jojo looks at me in confusion. “Your face changed again.”

  I chuckle, taken by surprise by how forward he was being “Yeah, I guess it did. Do you like it?”

  “It's okay, but which is your real face?” he asked, sounding completely innocent.

  “Honestly, I don’t know.” I truly didn’t know whether the face that was currently carved into my flesh, so to say, was actually just an imitation or the real me.

  Jojo nods. “It is hard for us to tell whose face belongs to whom sometimes as well.” That is not exactly what I meant, but he got the spirit, at least.

  It takes a little bit longer for the rest of the room to fill up. Most of the people here are male, and all look to be somewhat older. Besides Katelyn and myself, there is another woman who has bck hair in a side cut, and looks about as mean as the rest of the men combined. Once everyone is seated, Katelyn stands up, and all eyes are on her.

  “Hello everyone, I know that we are all busy, so I will keep it brief. Today, we meet because of her. This is Maniac,” she gestures at me. “She has been studying the barrier above our heads and has called this meeting to discuss her progress.” She smiles at me before sitting back down.

  I slowly stand up, making sure that all eyes are on me before I speak “Hey, everyone, so I don’t think there is much point in expining how the barrier works exactly. It's big, and it's strong, but it is not impossible to crack; it just will take some specialised power in a certain area.”

  “And where do you suggest we get this power from?” one of the men interrupts me.

  I am momentarily taken off bance but manage to regain my composure quickly. “Power is not the issue; I can easily provide it myself without much issue. The real issue is what happens with all of that resulting power.” I wait just a few seconds for the emphasis, “The entire city will colpse on top of us, meaning that we will either get squished to death or are buried under tons of rubble.”

  “So, instead of breaking the barrier, should we head to one of the sides and start digging our way out?” One of the other men suggests.

  “That won’t really work. Sadly enough, the barrier is not just a pte on top of us but more like a sphere or an obloid that is all around us.”

  The room goes silent after that. until Katelyn speaks up. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “We restore the infrastructure. I don’t think we have the time to put back all the pilrs, but we can construct some in the important areas to make sure that once the city falls, it falls more controlled, leading to less casualties.”

  “Less casualties? Not no casualties?” the woman asks, giving me a questioning look.

  I swallow. “I think that whatever we do, people will die; it is just a question of how much we can reduce the amount of death.”

  “Why? If it is not safe, can’t we just make it safe?” the woman presses in.

  I just shrug “Sure, it would require all the samurai to go out and start killing pnts. Assuming none of us die, we might be able to slowly start pushing the pnts back until they're all dead, if we are lucky. Then we need to rebuild the support structures and disable the shield, all while hoping that whatever fucker turned it on in the first pce does not turn it off.”

  That at least seems to get some reaction out of the group, all of them mumbling to themselves. “So you assume that they will turn it off at some point?” One of the men asks.

  I shrug ”I would assume so. Granted, we don’t exactly know why they turned it on, but I assume that whoever did knows that this can’t st forever, so when they wrap up whatever they are doing,” I make a dropping motion with my hand

  “So whatever we do we have to do it fast since we have no time to waste.” Katelyn says, jumping up from her chair and I nod. “I don’t think we need to reinforce all that much. We can build out from the towers on the wall, and our headquarters has a bunker in, it so we can easily house everyone. Jojo, how long would it take to set everything up?”

  I frown; it's not exactly what I wanted, but they got the spirit, at least

  “Less than a week if we can keep the pnts off us and make sure they don't destroy the towers.” the boy answers.

  “Good. Well, let's get to work, and we can be out of this hell hole before the week is over.” Katelyn says as she gets up.

  “Hey, hold up! We should still…” They all ignore me, my voice not coming over the cacophony of noise of that the people make as they are trying to get out of here ”Stop! Please listen!”

  As no one pays any attention to me, I feel my body grow cold. I make my halberd appear in my hand and sm it down on the table, the table buckling under the force. The room goes silents after the loud colpse of the table “Everyone march your butts back in here and sit down, before I give you a spanking.”

  While everyone mutely makes it back to their chair, I unravel my mask from my wrist and put it on. I let out a sigh of relief as my familiar hoodie covers my body.

  “Now I know that all of you chuckle fucks are very excited to get out this rat trap, but I'd rather not have the entire city above us colpse.”

  “Why should we care about the people upstairs? They left us down here to die.” My love asks, sounding rather angry.

  “Then, my love, tell me why should I care for the people down here. What have they ever done for me?”

  It stays quiet for a long while as we look at each other, waiting for the other one to speak. “But they don’t care. They used me and put me here when they were done with me. How can you defend that?” She starts out soft-spoken, but becomes angrier towards the end.

  “And I think that the people that put you in that situation deserve to suffer, but that is not everyone up there. There are children up there that did nothing wrong.” I plead with my girlfriend.

  She snarls, “I don’t care!.We want out of here! We can do a rescue mission once this is all settled, but like you said, we don’t know when the ceiling will fall, so let me protect my people."

  I take a deep breath as I try to centre myself. There is no point in getting angry here, and she is hardly the only one with this feeling. As I look around the room, I notice that most of the people gathered here seem to agree with her. It is hard to fully disagree with her. She never had the best cards, where we had Cierra to at least somewhat protect us; she had no one. As I try to come up with something to say, I feel someone, Evelin come back to the front and let her take over.

  “I see. Well, I can’t force you to help me, so I will leave you to fortify the city.” Everyone seems to calm down after that. “So, I guess I be leaving the city, then.”

  “What? Why?” my love basically shouts at me at full volume.

  “While you all have the right to stay here and protect your own, I still have the right to go out there and try and save as many people as I can.”

  “Melody, please don’t be difficult. What if something happens when you are out there? You don't know when the ceiling is going to fall.”

  I shrug “Won’t be the first time somebody dropped a building on me; I'll be fine.” I activate the teleport protocol and appear back on top of the wall.

  After a brief moment of vertigo, I almost fall over the wall.

  “Fuck, Evelin! Can’t you be more careful?.”

  Evelin, inside our mind, suddenly snaps her attention back to me. “Sorry, what?”

  I pause, wondering what is going on.

  “I am sorry I messed stuff up, and you are now fighting with your girlfriend,” Evelin says in a tiny voice, full of shame.

  “It's not your fault. She has a lot of trouble that some psychologist needs to look at.”

  “You think Lyssa could help her?”

  I start ughing. “I give it even odd that it would just create a different problem.”

  Evelin chuckles. “Come on, don’t be mean; she helps in her own little way.”

  “Anyway, please tell me you were the one to teleport me to the wall.”

  “No, weren’t you the one to do that? You took over when nobody listened to me.” She says, sounding confused.

  “Oh boy! Evelin, please tell me you are alone in there!”