The Heart of Serenity

Prologue

Date: August 19, 3062
Location: Outskirts of the City
Subject: Fleeing Rebel
Orders: Capture Alive at Any Cost

   The streets were quiet in the nighttime air; the desert winds whipping up a dust storm on the outskirts of a town guarded by a large wall. The watchtowers scattered every twenty yards were alight, and multiple searchlights scanned over the desert terrain in an attempt to find the person who had managed to get outside the walls. Several passes over the decrepit sign that used to state "Welcome to Las Vegas" in flashing letters and colors, which was no longer functional, proved to no avail to find the one who was responsible for the sudden alert in the main Tower. It was clear to see the numerous lights and television screens from near the apex of the structure, even with the thick storm that was blaring through the City.

   The flash of something that was clearly armor running through a few of the crevasses left behind by the rivers that were now dried up caught the attention of the guards, and the sirens wailed as several jade-clad beings rushed out. It was clear to see that they were mechanical, the arms of each soon transformed into a cannon-like device. Thankfully, they had heat seeking technology - recently installed, due to a previous and startlingly similar incident - that was able to track their target, even in the darkest of nights and in the worst of storms.

   What they weren't prepared for, however, was for the man to suddenly come to a halt further into the crevasse, to then turn towards them and brandish the two pipes down at his sides in a ready position to fight back. This caused them to slow down to a stop, their cannons raised towards him as the red-lined visors stared him down. He was cornered - there was nowhere else for him to go.

   Or so they thought.

   The moment that they stopped moving, the man turned quickly and jumped off of the cliff's edge, the three left completely perplexed for a split second before they raced forward to see what had happened to him. Though when they got there, they were even more so than before as it seemed like he just vanished into thin air. Not even their new technology could help them find a trace of him. How were they going to explain this to their Leader? That one of the largest Rebel forces in the City had just disappeared?

   They turned away, the decision made that they could communicate this with their Head before anyone actually looked any further into this case. After all, he would most likely die out here anyways from the heat, so it wasn't an actual emergency as far as they were concerned right now.

   Three-hundred feet down the cliff face, the man had grabbed onto an overhang after he slid down the face of the cliff. He couldn't see too far past the storm to see if they were still there, but the faint red light he'd seen seemed to retreat from the distance, and he relaxed a bit as he pulled himself up onto the overhang. He'd anticipated his escape to be difficult, but he hadn't prepared for a dust storm, nor for the Machines to actually be this dead set on chasing him off of a cliff - quite literally, for that matter.

   Once he'd caught his breath he stood up, a quick look down to see that there was still a ways to go to get to the bottom of the ravine. The only way to go was down, since there was no way he was going to damage his pipes just to try and climb back up the rocks in an attempt to find another way around the ravine. He placed them into their holsters at his sides before he took a hesitant step towards one side of the platform; now came the challenge to find a way down and judge if there was anything in his way.

   It took him a solid minute to finally decide that the coast was clear, a breath taken before he stepped off and immediately curled up a bit to help his descent down the cliff face, though he did keep one foot slightly ahead of the other to help him steer. This was always the hard part - getting down a rocky cliff side without any damage to yourself or your armor.