CHIT x CHAT
⟢───── Ashes × Aether ─────⟣
X'Omnera - The Rustline
People here knew each other.
They shouted across balconies, handed food across pods, argued, laughed, and kept moving.
Chatter rolled around them in fragments, voices cutting through machinery hum, neon buzz, and the clatter of metal walkways.
The trio stood out.
Homes weren’t apartments or huts; they were repurposed greenhouse pods, the kind used in X’O’s factory-farm district before they cracked and were tossed out.
Small glass bubble pods, some shattered and re-welded, some fogged permanently from old chemicals, all framed in welded steel ribs like patchwork eggs. Families stacked them where space allowed, on catwalks, on rooftops, under broken rails. Some clusters were two pods tall. The ambitious ones climbed to four.
Every pod glowed a different color depending on what lamp they’d salvaged.
Aqua. Rose. Pale gold.
A neon favela built out of agriculture and whatever the people here could find.
At the center of it all was a warehouse. An old distribution hub with half its roof gone.
The community turned it into a makeshift town center.
Vendors lined the inside with stands salvaged from broken vending machines and circuit crates. A barber ran clippers off a stolen power tap. A food cart sold bone-marrow broth and lab-meat from a pot big enough to hide in. Someone always had a speaker playing tunes that brought a universal rhythm to the whole place.
People exchanged goods others exchanged news.
And overhead?
XPA drones.
Smooth obsidian alloy shells drifting past with soft blue optics.
They didn’t swoop down.
They didn’t speak.
They didn’t shoot.
They just watched. Always watching.
Set, Riven and Talla passed a small market strip; stalls made from old world caravan wagons, the merchants used the pipeline that ran through The Rustline in more ways than one. Here it was racking. Jackets hung in uneven rows, synthetic leather gloves and trousers brushing past patched coats.
A group of teenagers hanging off a railing spotted Set first.
One whistled.
“Yo, jungle king!”
Another pointed. “He thinks this a village scene?”
“He dressed like he lost a bet!”
They weren’t cruel — just Rustline kids doing what Rustline kids did.
Riven laughed immediately.
Talla tried not to and failed.
Set stared forward like he didn’t hear a thing.
He definitely heard every word.
Talla leaned in, whispering through a smile,
“Set… you do look kinda… like a wildling..”
Sets tail waved.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
Riven pointed at the crowd.
"Look big guy, we get it, Pantera pride. But right now you look like you came to raid their village, or at least die trying.”
He slapped Set’s shoulder letting out laughter.
Talla joined this time.
Set exhaled through his nose, defeated.
“…Whatever.”
Talla stopped mid-step, spun, and grabbed Set’s arm.
“Yeah ok. Absolutely not. You look like you’re about to start a revolution.”
Riven didn’t miss a beat.
“Nah he looks like he IS the revolution.”
They dragged him to a vendor. An older man with neon nails and a metal toothpick between his teeth. He scanned Set up and down, then lifted a blackout jacket off the rack.
High collar. Reinforced shoulders.
Circuit lining glowing faintly at the seams.
He tapped the stall-board. 1 YoYo.
Set glared at Riven.
Riven held up the single YoYo Otto gave them, stared at it like it was his last bite of food.
Then he handed it over with ceremony.
“Goodbye, little guy. We barely knew you.”
Set rolled his eyes and pulled the jacket on.
It fit too well.
The kids from earlier saw him again.
“Okay, I take it back, that’s clean!”
“Yeah, jungle king upgraded!”
Set’s ear flicked once.
That was his version of a smile.
He did blend in better — a little.
Talla nodded.
“Now you look like someone who could get shot in an alley for a normal reason.”
Set stared at her.
“…thanks?”
As the trio continued through The Rustline a street vendor talked too loud over boiling broth:
“—swear she opened the kid’s channels again. XPA hit him with a Neutralizer Bolt, fried his flow—”
His friend:
“Bullshit. Nobody reverses neutralization.”
Another voice, behind them: “—no, my cuzzy said she stitched the streams BACK TOGETHER, like literally re-threaded his aether—”
That’s why she’s scary,” the first said. “Woman didn’t even blink. Just touched the guy’s spine and boom — channels back online.”
A pause. Another sip of the bottle.
“Vei don’t do charity. But if she touches you once? You walk out fixed.”
The three froze.
Riven looked at Talla.
Talla looked at Set.
All three whispered at once:
“Vei.”
Then a different rumor from a tech cart:
“—shop’s near The Pulse, right where the block lights glitch. She keeps it dark on purpose—”
No hesitation.
Set, Riven and Talla turned toward where the rumors pointed:
The Pulse District was where pleasure, profit, and the slow erosion of your moral compass braided into one neon heartbeat; a place drowned in electric color and club rhythms that leaked into the streets, where beautiful women offered either warmth or a grave, where gambling dens screamed odds on Crownfall matches, where parties never ended, and rumors carried more charge than any synthetic drug the crowd could inhale. Whatever someone could imagine, The Pulse had a version of it, for a price. That’s where Vei was. And they were going.
⟢───── Ashes × Aether ─────⟣