Night had fallen on Franklin City. The city was relatively new. Construction on the new capitol had started in Pennsylvania in 2145, and new sections were always being built. No one knew where the government got the money to pay for any of it, but it always seemed shiny and new.
A cat licked at a puddle in the street outside an establishment with a neon sign that read "Mar's Bar." The cat had become a favorite of the bartender, so every once in awhile he came outside to feed it scraps when a customer mentioned it was out there. It was a skinny grey thing with no home but the dumpsters.
Inside Mar's Bar, neons were glowing all around. Gangs all around the city knew Mar's Bar to be a neutral place. The Strobes were there, lines of white-blue lights streaming down their faces like rain. The Fools let a non-glowing tattoo of a fool tarot card fade in on their wrist long enough to show to each other before they sat down at a table, and then it was gone. And the Black Perfectionists sat in their own dark corner where the lights had been intentionally smashed out so they could dwell in shadow. The Gothic Artists, they had been called, they dressed in black and their skin was pale with a very faint luminescence that never seemed to be noticeable when the MPF was around.
The cat bolted inside and ran behind the bar. Mar glanced at it as he polished a mug, and then the door swung open. The bar went quiet as a crew of MPF soldiers strolled casually into the bar. Dressed in all-black combat suits with helmets fitted with several lenses for different uses, they had become a symbol of fear for American citizens. Nothing about them seemed human. Each suit had at least six lenses that rotated to the eyes at different times, depending on what they needed to look at, and not a single skin flake or hair follicle was allowed to be seen. In their arms were various assault rifles and handguns.
Except on their commander. Stepping slowly into the room, James Carter surveyed the rabble, who had turned off all their neons the instant the cat ran in. His left arm had been severed and replaced with a slightly longer limb with a clawed hand. Attached to the top of this arm was a grappling hook launcher. His left eye had been gouged out by a serial killer in a hostage situation, and was now replaced with a glowing red robotic augment. This device had several applications in itself. For example, it was currently processing the faces of everyone in the bar and running them through MPF records. Aside from that, his black overcoat and dark hair made him seem about as approachable as plutonium dynamite.
He stepped up to the bar and sat down. "What do you serve here, son?"
Mar was no fool. Not that he would have needed to be. Everyone knew not to mess with Lt. Carter. He was the defining epitome of police brutality. Killing suspects without the blink of an eye, torturing accomplices for information, you'd think he'd invented and perfected the arts of cruelty. James Carter was raised by a father who had been in the Sweeper Assault Corps, which was the new name for the Marines. His father, Effeld Carter, had been the commanding officer at the demolition of Bombay in 2187, where he was also killed in action. That was what they knew. What they didn't know was that James had served in the CIA as an assassin for two years before joining the MPF as a lieutenant. In any case, Mar shrugged and glanced down at the mug he was cleaning.
"We got cola, tea, serum, juices-"
"What about liquor, Mr. Rotessen?" Carter muttered. The small team of about fourteen soldiers he had brought in approached a table of Strobes. One of the MPF grabbed a drink out of a Strobe's hands. The man got up to protest, but another soldier beat him down in the face with the butt of an assault rifle while the first soldier rotated to a lens that would analyze the drink. Satisfied that there was no alcohol in it, he tossed it over his shoulder and swept the rest off the table. The soldier pushed the Strobes out of their seats and took the table.
