Lawlight #1: Lawbreaker
Pyeskul was a police officer. Law enforcement was a dangerous job. His job naturally made him the enemy of most people in the city. Of course, he was only so avoided while wearing his uniform. The reason for the wariness of the people was because everyone broke the law in some small way. They thought that he would come and make them pay the consequences of their crime. They were right. There were punishments for their laws. The role of the enforcer is to mete out these punishments, except in cases in which the crime was big enough to require trial or the identity of the criminal wasn’t known for sure.
Usually Pyeskul can just give out a ticket, fining the criminal for their misdemeanor of speeding or staying up after curfew. However, there were rare instances in which he had to deal with felonies and people who make a living or career out of crime. These usually were the more dangerous of his jobs. These were more dangerous than a hundred speeding or parking tickets.
Pyeskul felt that it was his duty to crackdown on those that made a career out of illegal activities. He figured that they only thought it was reasonable to perform these illegal activities regularly because there wasn’t enough threat of law enforcement forcing them to pay the consequences of their crime.
It was one of those days. It was nearly sunrise and he was called to deal with gang violence. Street gangs were amongst the most dangerous tasks he could be called to deal with. That and armed robbery or murder sprees were the most scary and dangerous things he could be asked to do. He hadn’t been in many life or death situations, but he knew what to do. Well, he thought he knew what too do. All surety and planning went out the window when grouped up with other police officers to deal with the gangs.
He couldn’t just tell them to disband their gang, but people would die if they tried to arrest the whole gang. Arresting only part of the gang would turn them hostile and leave enough members to go on causing destruction than if he had not intervened at all.
However, he knew he had to do something. If the police just let these gangs do as they pleased, then they were abandoning the civilians to the jurisdiction and rule of lawless thugs.
The sun was beginning to rise from the horizon, he thought he could see a shape of pinpricks of light in the mimicry of the Sun. A circle with lines spreading out of it like sun rays. The group of police began to move into the building where the gang had taken some people captive. There were a few corpses scattering the floors. A quick pulse check told him that they were dead. After checking the whole ground floor of this skyscraper, they found that the gang was not there. They must have gone to a different floor when they heard the police coming. The elevators were shut down. They would have to take the stairs.
The police were split into groups and assigned floors to check. Pyeskul didn’t remember what number his floors were, only that they were the top five floors. He didn’t remember who his partners were. Maybe he wasn’t assigned any partners. He didn’t remember because the only thing he could remember was how painful it was to run up multiple flights of stairs. Since he couldn’t remember the number of his floor, he decided he would check the top floor first and work his way down four or five floors, one by one.
He finally reached the top floor, breathing heavily. There was no ceiling. The floor was open to the sky. This also happened to be where the gang was holding up. Of course they would take the floor furthest from the ground. They had taken down the elevator, so it only made sense to take the floor that would take the longest to reach by stairs.
Pyeskul was struggling to remember what he was supposed to do when he found the gang. He was supposed to tell the rest of the group, right? How would he do that? Would he just run down there? No, he had a radio he could use.
The sun was still rising, and he could still see that strange shape made of pinpricks of light by the sun and in the shape of the sun. The gangs circled up around what must have been their leader. Pyeskul took out his radio to tell the rest of the group that the gang was on the top floor. The radio was in his hand when it exploded. A gunshot rang in the air. Smoke rose from the barrel of one of the gang members' handguns.
Pyeskul couldn’t deal with this situation alone, he had to go down and get reinforcements. He had to… they had hostages. Some gang members had tied a few men and women to metal fold up chairs and were pushing them towards the edge. Part of Pyeskul wondered why they were going through the effort of pushing them off the top of a skyscraper instead of just shooting them. They obviously had guns and they obviously weren’t afraid to use them.
If Pyeskul had been thinking straight, he probably would have guessed that these hostages were placed precariously close to the edge to prevent the police from engaging, as any hostile moves from the police would trigger the gang to push the civilians off the building. Unfortunately for the hostages, Pyeskul was not thinking straight.
Pyeskul rushes towards the gang. They started shooting at him, but they were apparently a little startled because they all missed his head and he was only hit in the arms and chest. His chest was protected by a bullet-proof vest and his arms weren’t vital.
He pushed into the circle of gang members and threw the leader to the ground as he sprinted straight for the hostages. He was too late. The moment he began charging the gang, the hostages were thrown off the edge.
“You idiot!” Pyeskul hears one of the gang members say to the ones that pushed the hostages off the edge, “You threw away our only bargaining chip because of a single police man.”
The ones in charge of the hostages were murmuring an apology and an excuse when Pyeskul reached the edge. He looked down and saw the hostages still falling. Then he saw them hit the ground. They were dead. There was nothing he could do about that.
Pyeskul realized his stupidity at being so close to the edge, and rushed back the way he came, into the center of the circle of gang members. His exit was blocked as the gang didn’t let him get back out of the circle. He was stuck in here, surrounded by hostiles. He remembered he had a gun and tried to take it out, but he heard a multitude of handguns cock and saw the whole gang point their pistols at him.
With nothing else to do, Pyeskul put his hands above his head and turned to face the sunrise. He thought of the coincidence that this gang was arranged in a circle much like the circle of pinpricks he saw by the sun. This thought struck him like a gunshot. No, that was an actual gun shot, he was being shot at all sides by the gang. Bullet-proof vest or not, he was going down. He was dying.
Then the ground began to shake. It was like an earthquake. The gang began shouting in fear and confusion. Then there was a brilliant light that enveloped him and encircled the gang members like walls of fire. Pyeskul felt incredible pain, though he couldn’t tell whether the pain was from the light or his multiple bullet wounds.
He felt something indescribable. It was the feeling of someone who was not dying. He looked down and saw that his bloody clothes peppered with holes. He pressed on the wounds with his hands. It didn’t hurt anymore. What happened to it?
The lights faded. The gang was no longer encircled by light. The gang panicked. They didn’t like what was going on and saw that Pyeskul was still standing despite the many bullets he had taken. After that light and his impossible survival, the gang rushed toward him. Pyeskul heard yells from multiple gang members shouting to throw him off the roof.
As a mob with single minded determination, the group pushed him like an approaching wall. He couldn’t avoid it and soon he was falling. Pyeskul was scared. He had come to deal with gang violence and save hostages. He had done neither. The gang was still going strong and the hostages were dead. He felt hopeless. He felt useless. He couldn’t do anything to save others, and now he couldn’t do anything to save himself. He felt his heart aflame inside his chest. It burned with virility, his sense of duty went from dragging him down to holding him up. He couldn’t give up now! Of course, all of this motivation was fun and all, but none of this changed the fact that he was about five seconds from hitting the ground at such a speed that the hospital won’t have too much of a body to work with.
It occurred to Pyeskul that the gang members broke the law, and in so doing had been able to defeat the police for so long. The police were restrained by the law, the very thing they seeked to protect. Well, Pyeskul was fined and ticketed for misdemeanors. Who cares about the law? He didn’t become a police officer because he wanted to protect the law, he joined the police force to protect the people.
If only he had done more to help people instead of giving them reason to complain and ruining their finances by fining them because they drove recklessly for a late appointment.
In a futile effort of struggle, he strained himself in rebellion against the law that restrained him, that prevented him from protecting those he had sworn to protect. The whole concept was more of a delusion. The law hadn’t caused the hostages to be thrown off the roof, that was his folly for acting recklessly. The law hadn’t stopped the police from taking down gangs, the size of the gangs were the real reason they were hard to take down. But Pyeskul wanted something to blame. He reached out to the side, clenching his hands and gripping with his fingers like a claw.
In a surreal moment in which Pyeskul had a nearly out of body experience, he felt something ethereal in the air around him. Something that was weighing him down. He grabbed it and he pulled. It resisted. It was firm, like a chain connecting him to a weight, dragging him towards the ground. He yanked harder, but it stood firm. Finally, he pressed his palm towards the invisible chain binding him and pushed an energy through the palm of his hand and into the chain, causing the chain to shatter.
Pyeskul grabbed the chain and yanked it upward, he felt himself lurch in the air as his momentum rapidly fell. He hit the ground hard but not as hard as he should have. He looked up to where he fell from to see just how far he had fallen. What caught his eye was not the height of the skyscraper he was pushed off of, but it was the blotch in the sky. It was a dark blotch, but it wasn’t black. It was filled with a dark green and brown. Looking closely, he thought he saw some gray. However, the rip in reality soon closed back up, mostly. A small speck of something incongruous with nature remained.
Pyeskul looked down at his body. He was wearing a bloody police uniform coated in bullet holes, and somehow he wasn’t dead. He didn’t even seem to have any broken bones. Something had happened while he was falling to break his fall. If Pyeskul had to guess, he would say it was probably related to that strange hole that had formed in the sky. Of course, he didn’t guess. Instead, he ran. He ran away. He wasn’t going to deal with gangs right now. He needed to go to the hospital. He had been shot. He may have survived a fall from a skyscraper, but he needed to check his bullet wounds.
Pyeskul’s thought process was cut short when a comet fell from the sky. It crashed into the pavement beside him and resolved into the glowing white silhouette of a human. This brilliant creature spoke eloquently in a deep masculine voice.
“Human, I have reason to believe that you have broken the law,” the bright shining being said with a voice and bearing that commanded authority. Pyeskul continued walking, unable to comprehend this occurrence or do anything other than what he was doing before. He walked by habit rather than conscious thought. The glowing person floated a few feet above the ground, following him.
Finally, Pyeskul caught his wits and his voice. “B-broken the law?” He asked, “I’m a police officer, I protect the law.”
“You protect the civil law, the law of man,” the radiant being said, though no mouth was visible in his blinding visage, “I would not be here if you had merely transgressed the laws of your government. I am here because a greater law has been broken, and I have reason to believe it was you who broke it.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Pyeskul said, “What law do you think I broke? And what makes you think it was I who broke it?”
The being was silent for a few moments, as if he was considering how to explain in terms that a mortal would understand. “Human, the law of gravity has been broken.” He was silent for a moment, to let this concept sink into Pyeskul’s puny mortal mind.
“That’s not possible,” Pyeskul protested. The glowing being nods in understanding? Agreement? It’s hard to discern his feelings since his face is hidden behind the great shining light. The divine entity spoke again, “We thought so as well; but, alas, the law of gravity is broken.”
“No, I mean, It can’t be broken or else we would be flying off into Space,” Pyeskul said. The glowing being nods again, though what he means by that is unclear.
“The law of gravity is broken but only in one place,” the luminesce floating person said, “A couple hundred feet above a street that is littered with corpses tied to metal folding chairs.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Pyeskul said, “What makes you think that I broke the law? I’m just a normal human. I can’t break the laws of nature. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I’m an upstanding citizen.”
“Yes, it is because you are still up and standing that makes me suspect you to be the one who broke the law,” the heavenly being said, “Out of all of the people who fell from that building, only you survived and mostly undamaged.”
“I understand that something strange happened when I fell off that building, but I can’t see how I could possibly be the cause of it,” Pyeskul said.
“Regardless, you are under arrest,’ the glowing person said while reaching for Pyeskul’s wrists, “You will have your trial in our courts of light and truth, but I don’t expect anything other than the death penalty. You have caused irreparable damage to the law of gravity. You seem ignorant to how you have done this, which means you are even more dangerous. We will have to pass judgment quickly before you cause any more damage to the foundation of the universe.”
Pysekul felt scared. He didn’t want to die. He knew that he would die if the strange creature took him away. For a moment, he considered trying to break the law of gravity again. Luckily, his sense of reason kicked in before he could act on his impulses. Destroying gravity would achieve nothing. This glowing person was floating above the ground. Pyeskul could not escape through the sky. If he resisted he would only be killed without trial.
No, he had given up on being hopeless. He would not let the laws of gravity or divine beings restrain him anymore. Unfortunately, he had no idea as to what he could do. That’s when he saw the teenage girl.
“Space-Maker!” Pyeskul heard the girl scream in terror and… hate? Disgust? This girl didn’t seem to like the Space-Makers very much. But the Space-Makers were part of an old tale that everyone knew to be nothing more than a myth. Yet, the supernatural entity in front of him certainly matched the description of Space-Maker.
The Space-Maker turned to see a teenage girl charging towards them. Her face showed a determined hatred pushing through a prominent fear. She was scared of this creature. Pyeskul was scared of the Space-Maker as well, but from what he knew of them from the stories, only the most terrible abominations drew their ire. They would only bother dealing with apocalyptic disasters that threatened the very existence of the world. A teenage girl would be so beneath their concern, that she would be practically invisible.
“Space-Maker! Pay attention, I’m talking to you,” the teenage girl yelled. The Space-Maker ignored her and gripped some of the light emanating from his being to twist it into solid light in the shape of manacles.
“Don’t ignore me, Usurper of Light!” the girl shouted vehemently. The Space-Maker paused, the glowing manacles dropped from his vaguely hand-shaped appendages and dispersed into rays of light that scattered and dissipated.
The Space-Maker faced the teenage girl. The Space-Maker appeared taken aback, shocked, offended, angry, then amused. “You don’t know what you say, child,” The Space-Maker said, “You’ve barely spoken and yet your words already contradict each other. Tell me, where did you hear those titles?” The girl didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she threw her phone at him.
Pyeskul thought that was a dumb choice of action. The teenage girl was antagonizing a Space-Maker, and she wasted her phone in the process. Her phone hit the Space-Maker and clattered to the ground. It did not end up breaking as Pyeskul expected it to. It was almost funny watching a teenage girl pitifully toss her phone at an angelic being in anger.
“Little child, why are you so hateful?” the space Maker asked. This seemed to make the teenage girl even angrier.
“I’m not a little kid!” she yelled, “I’m seventeen!” This revelation surprised Pyeskul. She was awfully short for a teenager. At seventeen, she’s nearly an adult. Why does she look so young? The better question would probably be ‘why is she attacking a Space-Maker?’
The Space-Maker seemed to be simply humoring the teenager’s antics. He changed his attitude when she pulled out knives. “You’re not seriously-” the Space-Maker began to say before the girl slashed her blades across his chest. The Space-maker keeled over, clutching his wounded chest. Pyeskul took this moment as his chance to run.
“Myliss!” the Space-Maker cursed, “What’s wrong with you, child?”
“That’s not my name,” the teenage girl said, sounding offended, “I’m Rebutena and-”
“I’m authorized to eliminate any obstacle to my task of detaining the lawbreaker,” the Space-maker interrupted, “Don’t make yourself an obstacle. Don’t interfere with my mission.” The Space-Maker muttered a few words and light exploded out in front of him. When the light faded, his hand was holding a glowing sword made of light.
Rebutena, the teenage girl, went white in the face. “O-oh, okay. I guess this isn’t a good time,” she stuttered, trembling, “I’ll come back later to protest the Tyranny of Light.”
“Wait, where did you hear these terms?” the Space-Maker asked, but Rebutena had already started running away. She was running in a slightly different direction from Pyeskul. The Space-Maker groaned. He’d lost sight of the lawbreaker. He would have to fly above the city, searching with a bird’s eye view to find him. With this new plan to find the lawbreaker, he launched upward into the air.
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Pyeskul was exhausted. He had been running at a full sprint nonstop for ten minutes. He had reached some neighborhoods. He saw many people pointing and facing something above and behind him in the sky. They were probably pointing at the Space-Maker. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been found yet.
He saw a group of teenagers huddled around a teenage girl, pointing at a tool shed in the backyard of one of the houses and then at what must be the Space-Maker in the sky. The teenage girl looked away from her teenage companions. She looked straight at Pyeskul. Oh no, it was that teenage girl who attacked the Space-Maker.
“Hey, you! Yeah, you’re the one that the Space-Maker wanted,” the teenage girl said loudly, “Come over here. I think I can hide you from them. The group of teenagers around her groaned. Pyeskul stopped running and walked over to the girl and her friends.
“Have you been listening at all, Rebutena?” one of the teenage boys says, “There is no Resistance. We made it up because we didn’t think the Space-Makers were real.”
“Yeah, it was all just a prank,” said another one.
“Well, I’ve got to do something,” the teenage girl, Rebutena, said, “The Space-Makers want him dead, which means I want him alive.”
Pyeskul arrived at the group. He almost stumbled when he saw Rebutena’s hands. “What happened to you, little girl?” Pyeskul asks, worried. Rebutena’s hands are bleeding and wrapped in bandages around the palm and back of the hand, leaving the thumb and fingers free to move.
“This just happens when I use my shards,” Rebutena said as she pulled out her knives. They weren’t knives.
“Is that metal? No, it’s glass?” Pyeskul asked. Rebutena shook her head “no.” She smiled sheepishly and said, “I got angry at how short I look in the mirror, so I… broke it.”
“But why are you carrying broken pieces of your mirror with you?” Pyeskul asked. Rebutena looked at him with an expression that indicated that she thought his question to be silly or with an obvious answer.
“I carry the shards of my mirror because it’s right,” Rebutena said as if that made total sense. “Besides,” she said, “How else was I supposed to kill the Space-Makers? I'm not allowed near sharp objects.”
“And for good reason too,” said one of her friends, “You always end up making a mess, a bloody one.” Pyeskul hoped that the bloody mess was not indicative of killing but that it was implying that she accidentally cut herself. It occurred to him that it was strange to hope that Rebutena cut herself, but the alternative interpretation was worse.
“Friends, I need to bring this man to safety,” Rebutena said, changing the subject away from her bloodied hands, “If there is no Resistance, where can we go to evade the Space-Makers?”
“You are not going anywhere with that man,” one of her friends said, “If the Space-Makers want him dead, you are not going to stop them.” Pyeskul also did not want Rebutena to go with him. He worried that she would slow him down and get hurt.
“Friends, I’m going to get killed by those Space-Makers if I can’t escape,” Rebutena said, “How can I get away or hide?” This was more persuasive. Her friends no longer tried to convince her to ignore the Space-Maker, but they still tried to dissuade her from traveling with Pyeskul.
Pyeskul didn’t think the Space-Makers would be hunting Rebutena, but she did attack the Space-Maker. An offense like that might be punishable by death. Pyeskul took out his police badge and showed it to the group of teenagers.
“I’m a police officer,” Pyeskul said, “The Space-Maker said I broke the law, the law of gravity. I guess it must be true because I survived a fall from the top of a skyscraper. I’ll do whatever I can to protect Rebutena from the Space-Makers.”
This seemed to calm the teenagers' worries about Rebutena traveling with a complete stranger. The friends began suggesting ways to get away or hide. Some suggested hiding in a building and hoping that the Space-Makers don’t find them. Some suggested running out into the desert beyond the city, but that didn’t seem like a good idea.
The best idea that they came up with was for them to join a caravan of supply trade as they journey from here to the nearest city. A caravan had left this morning. It was still early in the morning, but they were in the middle of the city right now. They would need to take the subway and then the bus to reach the edge of the city where they could chase after the caravan. That would take most of the day. It’s the plan they chose.
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Rebutena and Pyeskul are on a bus headed toward the edge of the city. They already took the subway, but that was underground. It was relatively safe. Now, they were above ground. The flying Space-Maker might see them. Pyeskul was impressed by the Space-Maker’s dedication to his search. Even after hours of searching, the Space-Maker was still looking for him.
Pyeskul looked out the window of the bus at the sky to see the Space-Maker. He was somewhat startled. There were a lot more Space-Makes flying through the sky now. There were some on the ground, going from door to door, inspecting after his location. Was his breaking the law such a big deal that so many Space-Makers came to find him?
Rebutena and Pyeskul arrived at the supply depot. This building is where caravans of supplies enter and exit the city. It didn’t take long to figure out where the caravan from this morning had gone. The tracks were quite fresh, at least when compared to the other tracks of caravans. They didn’t have any good way to travel besides walking. Rebutena and Pyeskul followed the tracks of the caravan on foot. The caravan would probably go faster than them, but surely the caravan would have to stop for the drivers to sleep? Hopefully, Rebutena and Pyeskul could catch up before they woke up again and left.
Rebutena and Pyeskul left the supply depot halfway between noon and sunset. Now that they were walking out towards the caravan and there was no one else around, Pyeskul finally began to feel more at ease. Pyeskul had wanted to bring a lantern with them because it would get dark before they caught up to the caravan, but Rebutena had despised the idea of bringing a lantern. When Pyeskul pressed for her a reason why she didn’t want to have a lantern, Rebutena was at a loss for words until she came up with the explanation that carrying a light in the darkness would cause them to stand out in the dark desert and draw the Space-Makers to them.
Pyeskul still wanted a lantern. He didn’t bring one because Rebutena was right, a lantern would reveal them. However, he didn’t like the idea of being unable to see. Back in the city, he had always carried a personal light, or flashlight, or lamp or lantern. It seemed that no one ever left they’re home without a personal light. Rebutena, however, didn’t carry a light. Though, Pyeskul still had some light-making devices on him, like his phone and a flashlight. He refrained from using them because they needed to remain unseen.
After walking in silence for a few hours, it started to grow dark as the sun came near to setting. Rebutena and Pyeskul hadn’t talked much while on the bus or the subway because there was too many people around. Pyeskul decided he should formally introduce himself to Rebutena since they were going to spend a lot of time together, traveling to another city.
“So, um, Rebutena? I’d like to formally introduce myself,” Pyeskul said, “I’m Pyeskul, a police officer. I fell off a skyscraper and apparently broke the law of gravity. Now, the Space-Makers want me dead because I threaten the natural order of the universe or something like that. What’s your beef with the Space-Makers?”
“I don’t like light,” Rebutena said simply, “The Space-Makers are glowing beings that look like they might be made of light. I don’t like light, they’re made of and emit light, so I don’t like them.”
Pyeskul saw that Rebutena had an incredibly simplistic reason for hating the Space-Makers, but it was also an incredibly illogical reason. She might not like light but that doesn’t equate to the murderous rage he saw her direct at the Space-Maker.
“Why don’t you like light?” Pyeskul asked. Rebutena just shrugged and said, “It kills the darkness.” Pyeskul thought that was a pretty strange way of describing the relationship between dark and light. Dark was simply the absence of light. That is like saying that filling a cup with water kills the emptiness in the cup.
“Darkness isn’t alive, Rebutena,” Pyeskul said, “Light can’t kill what isn’t alive.”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Rebutena said. Pyeskul can tell that this is a sore subject in which she feels strongly. Pyeskul decided to change the subject.
“Can you tell me a bit about yourself?” Pyeskul asked.
“What’s there to tell?” Rebutena asked, “I’m seventeen years old. I’m short. I don’t like light. I’m not allowed near sharp objects. My friends pulled a prank on me by telling me that there was a Resistance fighting against the Space-Makers. I stay home most of the day because I’m unemployed. I’m unemployed because I lost another job. They were uncomfortable around me, so they fired me.”
“The sun has just set. It’s getting pretty dark, and we’re out away from the lights of the city,” Pyeskul said, “You must like how dark it is out here without light.”
“I wish we were without light,” Rebutena said, “I was hoping that night would bring pure, untainted darkness outside of the city. This is pretty disappointing.”
“What? There is no light out here,” Pyeskul said, “What are you talking about?” Rebutena turned to face Pyeskul then looked up at the sky. She points to a pinprick straight upward. It looks like the pinpricks of light that Pyeskul saw in the shape of a circle by the sun at sunrise when he was encircled by a gang on the top of a skyscraper.
“That speck of light ruins what would otherwise be perfect darkness,” Rebutena said, pouting. Forward, far away. There was the unsteady orange glow of a fire. They thought the firelight must be the caravan, stopped for the night. A few minutes after they noticed the glow of the fire, they heard gunshots coming from the camp. The gunshots continued inconsistently for about a minute or two before stopping. This left Rebutena and Pyeskul on edge.
As they neared the edge of the camp, they decided to ease in slowly so as to not startle the gun-wielding caravaners. Rebutena and Pyeskul hid behind a rock. They peeked over to see the camp. There were three people sitting on logs around a campfire. There were four covered wagons, and there were four horses with lead keeping them from straying too far from the wagons. One of the four horses lying on the ground, bleeding from gunshot wounds. It was probably dead.
The people sitting around the fire were covered in cloth and leather all over their bodies. There didn’t seem to be even an inch of their body that wasn’t covered by clothes. Under their hats, scarves and handkerchiefs masked their faces.