By: Daiyu Tang.
Trigger Warning: This article contains details of violence, sexual abuse and extreme brutality including forced removal of a child. You have been warned. The Observer will not shy from exposing foulness in our City but reader discretion is advised. ((OOC Trigger Warning as well – images))
My rotten Hathian; you live in a fever of brutality which has often known no reasonable bounds. You are a town painted crimson red, layered thick with bloody grudges. Your revenge ends in unmarked graves, in broken bones and smaller dreams. You take cruelty as strength and flaunt your excess in the face of those of us who stand against your fetid will. Corruption seeps from your institutions and the law bends while the powerful smirk. You grind down the green and gentle, scorching the earth with drugs, blood and hate. Hathian, you make brutality de jure, with kindness the aberration. My city, you’ve traded your soul for the next horror, the next body, the next bed or the next backroom deal.
Now My Soul is Soaked – Shattered Inside
I make no apologies for adapting lyrics for that title. I’ve given this city my fight, my time, my breath and after today, you, Hathian; you’ve taken all I had left. I’m meant to be impartial. I’m meant to see that the cycle that begets violence has little start and no end and yet, Hathian, I am here hoping for an ending. I am here choosing a side because without a side I am vanishing quickly, heart and soul. Aren’t we all?
Yet it’s not enough to be neutral. It’s not enough to say there’s good, bad and indifferent. We have to say ‘No‘. We have to say ‘it’s not right’ when our words fail to make it stop. When we can’t change things through wishes and prayers then we look to someone to deal with it.
Do we look to the Hathian Police Department? No. It’s not their fight. Do we look to a vigilante in the shadows? No. It’s not personal to them; it’s not family. We look to family. The Reject Family. We hold our collective breathes and look to street justice. We look to war. We look to violence like Hathian has not seen between gangs for a while. And do you know what I hope many of you say? I hope you say the Yuugen will lose. The shadow of their oppression hangs everywhere. The yoke of their ‘games’ weighs on our potential.
A Thinking Man Said
I’ve interviewed a number of Rejects. They’ve done awful things. Jarrah’s skinned head? That was the Rejects. But they’ve explained things in ways. You should read this if you have not. This Reject was a thinking man. He said things that stayed with me. He talked about Rejects protecting their family, their block, their turf.
Contrast this with the Yuugen. Contrast that with those sick people who hurt and torture and murder for games, for sociopathic tendencies. They don’t hide it. They don’t protect a block. They don’t try and get some kids through school. No, they blow up hospitals, they torture those you care about. They attack the University. We all have skin in this game. If you want a future, you don’t side with the nihilists. You don’t side with someone who’d hold no loyalty.
“But lemme come punch you and beat you and all dis shit.. And kill yo family members.. and shoot chu and chain you and cage you… and do all sorts of shit that makes yah either almost die or wanna die. Den tell you Ima sorry. Fuck outta here. Would you care? Would it make some sudden flash of change come ovah you? Fuck no. Vengance an bloods da only way. Its da system. Da nature.“
Rejects
Depravity Revealed
I’m angry Hathian. I’m furious. I want you to be as well. Delinda had chance to be a mother again. Now there’s no chance for her kid to have a mother.
“Eamon, Bryce, Alura… I love you. Get some fucking revenge. Reject strong. Take care of my boys.”
They murdered her. Cut her baby out. They raped her.
An Anonymous Hero
An individual who came to me with a desire to expose crime did more than most could to be brave. More than I at any rate. They joined and then stayed with the Yuugen to expose them and, like a hero they saved the unborn child after this awful event. This hero has, I hope, shown us the truth and for that truth and for not losing his morals by now he is hundreds of miles away. Safe.
This hero leaves us with this ‘gift’ of knowledge. He leaves us knowing that the next week will be hard. But that it has been made hard, not by Delinda, not by the Observer, not by the Hathian Police, not by the Hoppers, Haven, Salopri or others. No, it’s the Yuugen again. Again and again. Again and again. Laveau. Columtreal. Hathian.
So do you know who isn’t hundreds of miles away? Naruhito Shirokawa, Tori Yamato, a white male named Ollie and two other associates.
She pleaded for her child. She pleaded that she hadn’t messed with the Yuugen for over a year and still her life was ended. Brutally.
Our City.
My beautiful Hathian; you create a myth of a place where strength is used when our laws fail. You are a town painted crimson red, layered thick with bloody revenge for honour, for pride, for street justice. You tell yourselves that when institutions bend and justice falters, you will not. That when corruption seeps and the powerful smirk, the streets will answer. That there are lines, even here and that those who cross them do not sleep easily beneath your skyline. Prove it, my Hathian. If you are the city that claims to understand consequence, then let consequence come. If you pride yourself on balance when the scales tip too far, then rebalance them. Wield the weight of your bloody history with clarity, purpose… not chaos. The Yuugen have crossed not a line, but every line. They have mistaken spectacle for power and cruelty for authority. They are testing the Rejects. They are testing the HPD. They are testing you. City and citizen alike. My city, there is one more trade to make; fear for reckoning. And my citizens, do not confuse fairness with mercy.
