Dirty Street lived up to its name. Putrid water flooded the road, and garbage littered the ground.
Yet, the place was exceptionally bustling, lit by cracked, multicolored neon signs. People whose skin was pale from years without sunlight under the Vile Canopy were cast in a rainbow glow through the dense smog.
On the street, a gambling ring was in full swing.
"Place your bets! We're slicing the belly open!" roared the one-eyed dealer, his voice whistling through rotted, yellow teeth.
Before him sat a grimy table where a woman lay with a grotesquely swollen belly. Her eyes were unfocused, and she spasmed sporadically from intense pain.
The Great Rift and the toxic fumes of the Vile Canopy frequently produced patients like her. An accumulation of toxins caused the frail to develop massive tumors, swelling their bellies as if they were heavily pregnant.
There were two ways to cure it. The first was surgery at a proper hospital, which carried a decent success rate. The second was buying a dose of Glimmer—a highly effective medicinal serum with practically zero side effects.
As for the price... Hah. If they had the cash for surgery or Glimmer, why hadn't they just bought a few of the cheaper antidotes six months or a year ago?
Because they didn't want to, obviously!
Thus, the gambling ring was born.
A simple laparotomy to extract the tumor.
The stakes were her life.
If the patient survived for ten minutes, she would win a full course of anti-infection drugs and five antidotes.
As the dealer hollered, a crowd gathered around.
"Two hundred! This bitch's hands are already turning purple. She's dead for sure!"
"Five hundred! I bet she dies too!"
"One hundred! Let's do a good deed today, heh. I'm betting she lives."
"One thousand! She lives!" a man bellowed, instantly drawing everyone's gaze.
That was no small sum...
The man stepped forward and grasped the sick woman's hand, his eyes bloodshot. "Honey... you have to hold on..."
The crowd burst into raucous laughter, jeering at him. "Now that's a calculated investment!"
Once enough bets were placed, the dealer waved his hand, signaling the crowd to step back. A one-legged man with a cybernetic eye hobbled out, wearing a filthy white lab coat.
Immediately, someone in the crowd shouted, "Fuck, that's a dirty trick! How many people has Old Hank killed already? If I knew he was the one cutting, I never would've bet!"
"Piss off, no taking back bets."
The faces of both the man and his ailing wife turned deathly pale.
Old Hank blew his nose and wiped his hand carelessly on his coat. He pulled out a scalpel, tracing a couple of casual lines over her bulging stomach.
"Watch closely, everyone!"
With a loud shout from the dealer, the scalpel sliced the belly open.
The spray of blood and the woman's agonized shriek drew wild cheers from the onlookers. A moment later, a massive, purple lump of flesh was yanked from her stomach.
Roughly tossing a handful of blood-clotting powder onto the wound, Old Hank stepped back and lit a cigarette.
The dealer then pulled out a battered electronic monitor, casually slapping the sensor pads onto the woman's chest. Her heartbeat spiked across the screen, and a ten-minute countdown began ticking away at the top.
The crowd grew even more frenzied. Nobody cared about the gory mess on the table, nor did anyone spare a glance for the woman trembling with her eyes squeezed shut.
Shoving aside the kneeling, praying husband, the gamblers locked their eyes on the monitor's pulsing line and began to chant.
"Die! Die! Die!"
"Die! Die! Die!"
Amid the roaring chaos, it was impossible to tell who was shedding tears and who was bleeding.
Suddenly, the deafening crowd fell silent as a massive shadow plunged half the block into darkness.
They looked up, only to be met with the pitch-black underside of a massive hull.
Someone ran down the street to get a better angle and hurried back.
"Looks like one of the Academy's Airships! I can see writing on the side."
"What does it say?"
"'Thank you to the Academy for its grand charitable contributions to Paradise City...' What kind of bullshit is that? The Academy would love nothing more than to bulldoze Dirty Street!"
"Who knows. What's an Airship doing here anyway? Don't tell me the high-and-mighty lords of the Academy came down to place a group bet?"
The crowd burst into laughter, the entire street instantly filling with a merry atmosphere.
Meanwhile, high in the sky, several small aircraft emblazoned with the words "Inspection Bureau" hovered directly in front of the Airship.
On the lead aircraft, a woman in an Inspection Bureau uniform held a megaphone and broadcast a warning.
"Unauthorized large aircraft are forbidden from entering Paradise City airspace! Please exit the city limits immediately, obtain the proper clearance, and dock along the designated routes!"
A lazy voice drifted from the Airship's forward loudspeakers. "Are you blind? This is an Academy Airship."
The woman furrowed her brow. That voice...
She glared fiercely. "Who exactly are you? This is not an Academy docking zone!"
"Then go take it up with the Academy. Besides, we're here doing charity work, Sister Captain."
Sister Captain... Ran Xinzhu's temple twitched.
It was that bastard, just as she thought...
She immediately roared into the megaphone, "Sean! What the hell are you doing?! I have every reason to suspect you've stolen Academy property!"
Sean strolled up to the cockpit's front window and smiled, waving at Ran Xinzhu through the glass. He keyed the intercom. "I have a witness right here, Ran Xinzhu. Falsely accusing an Elite citizen—is this how the Inspection Bureau operates these days?"
"Then bring out your witness!" Ran Xinzhu refused to back down an inch.
"Well, what a coincidence."
Sean casually yanked a trembling Captain into view. The man gulped hard, his mouth accidentally bumping the microphone and sending a piercing squeal of feedback through the speakers.
"S-Sorry! I'm so sorry!"
Sean gently patted the Captain's shoulder. "It's alright. Come on, tell Captain Ran."
"Y-Yes... Captain Ran... the Academy... v-voluntarily gifted this Airship to Mr. Sean... I-I can testify to that."
Ran Xinzhu's beautiful eyes went wide with fury. "Sean, did you kidnap this man?!"
Sean clicked his tongue in displeasure. "Do I look like that kind of person? Never mind, never mind. Let me show you my sincerity."
While the standoff played out in the sky, the gambling ring on the street below was reaching its climax.
What did a disturbance in the sky have to do with Dirty Street? The gamblers cared far more about whether they would see a return on their wagers.
The grimace of pain on the woman's face was beginning to fade, but the crowd's frenzied chanting only grew louder.
"Die! Die! Die!"
On the screen, the jagged line representing her heartbeat was gradually smoothing out.
The pale-faced husband clutched his hair in agony.
"Die! Die! Die!"
Amidst the roaring chants that practically shook the shadows, the woman spasmed violently and let out a weak whimper.
The crowd fell silent for a fraction of a second, craning their necks to stare at the monitor.
Beeeep— A delightful tone rang out as the jagged line finally flattened into a perfectly straight line.
She was dead.
After less than half a second of silence, a tsunami of cheers erupted.
"Hahaha! Good riddance!"
A few gamblers who had bet on her survival began cursing furiously. "Fuck, what a useless piece of trash."
As the winnings were handed out, the cheering intensified. The sheer thrill of blood, flesh, and life on the line made this the most popular form of entertainment on Dirty Street.
By now, the sluggish husband had finally processed what had happened. He stared blankly at the motionless woman on the table, and a suppressed, heart-wrenching sob finally tore through his clenched teeth.
But no one paid him any mind. Suddenly, someone yelled.
"Look up at the sky! Something's falling!"
Everyone snapped their heads upward, watching as countless black specks drifted down, rapidly expanding in size.
Meanwhile, inside the Airship, Sean was laughing maniacally as he yanked open the lower cargo doors of the loot vault.
The corpses of frenzy beasts, rare metals, broken electronic devices, and crates of spare medical serums from the Airship's stores—countless items were strapped to massive parachutes and shoved out into the open air one after another.
Inside the vault, hollow-eyed Academy personnel were mechanically sorting the loot, securing it to parachutes, and tossing the payloads overboard exactly as Sean commanded.
They kept themselves anchored by hooking their legs around the shelving racks so they wouldn't fall out of the open bay doors.
Each of them wore a terrified expression as they bellowed the required lines toward the streets below.
"This is a gift from the Academy!"
"This is a gift from the Academy!"
Aboard her aircraft, Ran Xinzhu watched the scene unfold in utter shock. She stared in disbelief at Sean through the viewport, who was currently laughing so hard he was doubled over.
"What exactly are you trying to do?!"
Sean wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, unable to contain his glee. With mock grandiosity, he threw his arms wide open.
"This is... a gift from the Academy!"
A shower of priceless loot drifted down from the sky, and the people of Dirty Street finally realized what was happening.
"Holy shit, is it actually raining treasure?"
By then, the more quick-witted among them were already scrambling up the sides of buildings, standing on their tiptoes to grab the nearest descending packages.
The parachutes dropped faster and faster, and the scramble began.
Beast carcasses, rare metals, medicine—anything within reach was violently yanked down by dozens of grasping hands.
Some of the bolder rioters climbed to the highest rooftops and leaped directly onto the parachutes, yanking the cords to steer the loot away from the mob.
One guy managed to claim a massive haul all for himself!
More and more people tried to copy the stunt. Screams echoed through the air as those who lost their grip plummeted to the ground.
But despite the bodies falling, Dirty Street had become a sea of celebration.
The parachutes couldn't bear the weight of so many bodies. They swayed violently, spilling their cargo onto the streets below.
A few unlucky bastards were crushed by the falling crates, only to drag their broken legs as they fiercely hugged the very loot that had crippled them, desperately crawling into the shadows.
The sheer madness of the scene was nauseating.
Even the dealer and Old Hank abandoned their table to join the fray. Only one person remained entirely still.
The corpse of his wife was finally free of the gawking crowd.
The husband stared at the dead woman in a mindless daze, weeping and laughing at the same time.
One of her hands stuck out, pointing rigidly toward the sky in a grotesque, stubborn rigor mortis—looking exactly like the thick, disgusting tail of a rat crushed by a car.
As the riotous looting raged on, the man finally staggered to his feet.
He reached out to caress the woman's cooling cheek, wiping away a fresh tear of his own before it could fall.
"We're... we're going home..." He suddenly missed their dilapidated shack.
Just then, a parachute that was being viciously fought over tilted violently, sending a huge pile of cargo sliding off.
A vial of medicine slammed into a half-lit neon light, ricocheted off an illegible billboard, and dropped squarely onto the woman's mangled stomach—landing right in front of the man's eyes.
He picked it up reflexively, staring at the glowing blue liquid swirling inside.
It was the very same vial he had stared at over and over again while hiding timidly around the corner of a pharmacy window.
"Glimmer..." he whispered, murmuring the potion's name.
"Huu... huu... aaaaahhh—" He could no longer hold back his agonizing, heart-rending sobs.