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Delmar's storyline part 85 - Gates of Blacktown

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Delmar told no one about Alphas presence. She followed them steadily at a safe distance. Even though he despised her, he liked the idea of letting the society know about the location of the rebel base. He also liked the idea of having someone who could help him in case the psychics lead him straight into a trap. Sure he wanted nothing to do with the society but at least he knew they wanted to keep him alive.  

"Behold! The beautiful view of Blacktown!" Leon exclaimed formally and pointed out over the field. Delmar looked where he was pointing but there was nothing to see. The field simply ended up with more forest. 
“Your secret base is a forest? That's hardly a town…” Delmar said not very impressed.

“You need to look closer.” Leon explained excitedly. Delmar squinted his eyes. There was nothing to be seen he thought at first, but after a while, he recognized a distortion in the air. Like a mirage contorting the Forest. He could recognize the strange distortion of a light-bending sphere, it was the same kind of disguise that hid Norfolk from the humans. 

“Light benders?” he asked surprised.

“Yes! There are rebels from all the factions. Radiation shifters and in particular light shifters included.”

Even though Leon seemed excited about having light shifters joining the black faction couldn't Delmar help but feeling sorry for them. Putting up the light barriers was one of the most laboriously awful works a shifter could have. There constantly needed to be at least three light shifters there keeping the barrier active and so they had to work in shifts. The light shifters had probably joined the revolution to get away from the laborious work of hiding Norfolk, only to end up hiding Blacktown instead. They had only exchanged one labor for another one. 

As soon as they passed the light barrier the high walls of Blacktown towered before them. The walls were constructed out of a patchwork of all kinds of materials and styles. It seemed to be built out of everything, anything the builders could manipulate. There were golden patches, crystal one, metallic, rocks and some parts were just old human trash. The top of an old confessuss temple poked up over the high wall and black flags waved in the wind on top of the gate. It was breathtaking. Delmar had never seen anything like it. The rebels had built a whole new city in just a matter of months. In front of them lay a big impressive gate, with two almost medieval-inspired guard towers above.
"You're not going to like this." Leon suddenly said to Delmar as he lay a hand on Delmar's shoulder. The gate, the sky, the robot and Leon himself, it all vanished into nothing. Everything turned black.

He heard a noise, buzzing at first. A gray flickering dim overcasting light illuminated a gray shimmering space. He had no idea of where he was, he couldn't even feel his own body. He tried to look down but his feet were nowhere to be found. Delmar started to contemplate which direction even was down. He felt dizzy and confused, almost like someone had thrown a wet blanket over his head. The noise got louder, now he could recognize it as Hope's and Leon's voices. They seemed to be arguing but they sounded like they were underwater. He couldn't make out their words at first. Delmar made another try to locate himself. Piles of junk lay around him. Mountains of junk even. Suddenly a white light appeared beside him. He recognized it as the soul of Newton. It hung in the air in a slumber like state.
"Passports!" Someone yelled. "Line up for inspection!" It almost sounded like he was inside a mindpalace eavesdropping on a conversation.

“Come on Samantha, you know me.” he could hear Leon’s voice echo around him in the big hall. The whole hall did, in fact, remind him of a mind palace, only there were piles of junk loitering the place.

“Same rules for everyone! We don't want the society to find us here. You two! Check the robot.” 

Delmar tried to move, to inspect and to understand where he had ended up. But he had no idea of how to move. He started to suspect he was stuck in the same embryo-like form as Newton seemed to be in. That could explain why it was so hard to think. Leon seemed to speak again.

“I brought these guys back from New Devantos. The capital is a hell right now, so I gave them a ride back.” 

There was a short pause.

“The landwalker is empty.” someone said.

“And the papers are in order. They seem to be clean. Let them pass.”

In a bright flash, Delmar appeared in the real world again. Dizzy he lost his balance and fell down on the ground. 
“What the…?” he gasped and stared at the ground like he had never seen gravel before. 

“Akkaidan!” Hope exclaimed and sat down beside him. “Are you okay?!” she lay a reassuring hand on his back.

“I’m fine… I think?” He said confused. With a flashing sound was Newton suddenly beside him as well, snoring like he hadn’t noticed anything at all. 

“That idiot absorbed you! Going through so much trouble to get you here and then at the gates he risk your lives by absorbing you like you were a set of clothes!” She snarled at Leon who just shrugged unconcernedly.

“There was never any risk. They are healthy shifters and psychics on top of that. It was the easiest way to smuggle them through the gates. They have no passports.”

“I could’ve talked them through the gates! A third of the district is destroyed, it would not be so weird for us to bring a couple of new recruits along! This place will be flooded with refugees soon enough!”

“We saved a lot of bureaucracy. Trust me it was easier this way.” Leon shrugged again.

“And now they have no passports. You are an idiot! What about the guards inside town? What about random passport checkups?! Just because they’re inside the walls it does not mean they are safe.” Hope was almost shaking with fury walking back and forth. 

“Delmar could just shake their hand and make them forget the encounter ever happened.” Leon explained not worried at all, looking like he thought Hope was overreacting.

“I can’t do that…” Delmar interjected quietly as he got up on feet and carefully covered his distinguishable scar with his white-colored hair. They seemed to be standing in a dark back alley of some sort. One of the walls were made out of pure crystal 

“What?” Leon said surprised and turned to Delmar. “Are you not Cain’s son?” 

“I mean. I can erase a person’s memory, but I can't do it with a handshake. It takes more time… I haven't learned how to do it that quickly. I only started to learn how to do things like that a month ago.” 

Leon frowned skeptically and started counting on his fingers.

“You are… three… no...  Almost four hundred years old? What have you done your whole life?”

“He didn’t have a teacher as Cain did. Someone who knew his abilities. And he never had anyone who encouraged him to keep pushing his limits.” Hope argued. “You can’t expect the same things from Akkaidan as you did from Cain.” 

“My whole life I’ve only thought I could hear thoughts and see memories…” Delmar said a bit ashamed not to have gotten farther on his own. 

“See?” Hope said to Leon who looked rather disappointed. Then he closed his eyes dismissing her arguments. 

“Random passport inspections are not that usual. They'll be fine for the time being. I could fake them some passports in the meanwhile.” he said.

Hope groaned.

“Gods Watching! It would have been so much easier if we only had them made properly at the gates.”

“Then they would have recognized Delmar! He’s topping everyone’s list of wanted shifters. Come on, Delmar, Newton, line up against the wall so I can have your pictures.” 

"My name is Akkaidan." Delmar corrected him.

"Right."

Leon took a picture of both Newton and Delmar in their human forms, but only on Newton as animal. 
“I think I can use an old picture of Frost and manipulate him into looking a bit more like you. You should avoid shifting or the color of your hair might vanish.” Leon said as he inspected the pictures.

“Right.” Delmar answered. Stark had already warned him about shifting. As soon as he shifted his self-image might revert his hair to the dark blue color. 

Leon disappeared and the rest of the group moved out on the streets. Opal excused herself as well and soon there were only three of them left; Delmar, Hope and Newton. Four if you counted Alpha following them on the rooftops. Delmar couldn't help but look around on the buildings in wonder. The town was unlike anything else he had ever seen. A new town was built upon the old one. The old ruined houses were repaired with all kinds of bizarre installments. Many houses looked like someone with unlimited resources but no architecture knowledge had repaired the building. The architecture of the houses was beyond this world. Blacktown was built on an old tourist town and some of the old structures were still standing. Holes in the roof and walls had been patched up with whatever materials the inhabitants could access. Some houses had new annexes and additions to the old architecture. Delmar had seen shifter architecture before, but most of it had been built to look like human architecture. This was something entirely different. Blacktown felt like a beach filled with kids building sandcastles, and every kid built their own type of construction. Some kids used buckets to shape the sand while others formed it with their bare hands. Some kids used seashells on the roof while others used weed. Some kids built fosses on the edge of the water while others built the castles as far away from the water as possible. And just like sandcastles did some shifters build grounded stable buildings while others built big fragile constructions without much thought of stability and which would soon collapse under its own weight. One house they passed by had a big glass tower, towering above the normal roof, another house had an annex built out of round shiny iron bunkers. There was everything you could imagine, marble huts, plastic balconies, crystalline walls.

“I wonder what a new world built by shifters would look like.” Delmar said in wonder. “I mean this world was created in the chaos of a war. It was a battle royale. Everyone tried to out beast each other. The lakes are scars in the land where water was gathered by accident. What if we worked together and made a new world purely out of our own desires? What would it look like? Would we have nature as we know it today or would everything look constructed with a purpose? Would we have lakes or would we have pools made with a purpose?”
“There it's one simple way to find out.” Newton said while walking beside him as a cat. “Let Wilfred have his way.”

“I'm not so curious I would risk everyone's lives.” Delmar smirked. “Besides, Reed would probably melt anything I would try to build with his bare presence.” Delmar waved dismissively with his hands. “If I can't have fun playing master-builder no one should.” he said jokingly. 

They walked up a long stair towards the temple where Wilfred's own quarters lay and arrived at a grand temple square. 
“Speaking of master builders…” Newton said as he saw the giant golden jackal statue standing in the middle of the square looking down at them. The statute of Wilfred looked brand new but whoever had built it made sure to make it match the old confessus architecture and style of the temple. 

“A golden statue of himself? I never thought he was that haughty.” Delmar said disbelievingly. 

“It’s a gift from the rebels. Wilfred didn't order anyone to make it for him.” Hope explained. Delmar started to circle it and inspect it. It was quite impressively made and About Five meters tall.

“So what do the rebels say about him?” he asked casually. 

"The rebels? They love Wilfred. They think he is fair, just and powerful. They think he is their savior. Or well… some think so at least. The rebels are really just a big mess of different ideologies. Some of them are here for a better future and some are here to just stir some trouble." Hope answered. As she talked Delmar disappeared behind the statue, she followed him around. On the other side of the statue the long stairs continued up to the main temple. Black banners waved in the wind all the way from the bottom of the stairs to the top. Delmar stood looking up the steps. "Two things they do agree on, however, is that Wilfred is the only one strong enough to stand up against the council and that he is on the people's side." Hope explained. This made Delmar laugh scornfully. 

"Nobody that strong truly cares about the little people!" 

"Wilfred is like a saint to many of these people. I even heard some call him a messiah. Not many of black town's inhabitants have actually seen him though. He does not do many public appearances. Instead, he keeps just the right amount of mystique surrounding himself to make the legends about him go wild. That is also his biggest issue, Wilfred is on everyone's side. He promised everyone that they will get what they want out of this rebellion. But he cannot satisfy them all in the long run. Sooner or later he will start to fail his promises and then he will start to lose the rebels' trust."

"Have you seen that? In a vision?" Delmar asked without taking his eyes off the temple at the top of the stairs. 

"Yes. But it might be too late. They might already have overthrown the council when that happens." 

"Will they overthrow the council?" 

"I don't know… I've seen so many possible outcomes it's impossible to say..."

"The energy shifters can't die." Newton said as he joined them at the bottom of the stairs. "It doesn't matter how many times Wilfred will kill them. They will always come back. At some point, they would overthrow him again. There's a simple reason to why our hierarchy never changes. It can't. The current rulers will never disappear. If Wilfred manages to overrun the council then the council will probably run the next revolution against Wilfred."

"It's not fair." Delmar said a bit melancholy. "The energy shifters are way too powerful…"

"Immortality is never fair." Newton answered flatly. "They are practically gods. It's no wonder why the gods started to see us as a threat at the end of the war at the beginning of time. The only way to kill them permanently would be to destroy all living beings on urth so their souls wouldn't be able to possess a new body."

"What better way to destroy the council than to destroy the whole planet in a black hole? It could prove that the shadow creature is, In fact, a God?" Delmar contemplated. "And maybe Wilfred is their champion to actually kill us once and for all?" 

"But then he would actually kill all life on Urth. Didn't the gods want to protect the animal life?" Newton asked.

"Wilfred says he hates the gods, more than anything." Hope added. 

"And yet he lives in a temple and wants to create a new world where he can live as one. All of this is like a big divine comedy…" Delmar scoffed with spite. He sat down on the stone brick floor and stared up at the gates of the main temple.  "I wonder what he would do if he knew that he is inhabited by a god?"

"I don't think he would listen if you told him that…" Hope said.
"So how could we make him listen?" Delmar asked, then he looked up at Hope standing beside him. "Will we find him if we go into the temple? Is he home? Can you see that?"
"My visions do not work like that. I cannot tell on demand when one of the variables is too far away. I cannot tell Wilfred’s intentions right now. One thing I do know, however, is that the guards will have us arrested if we trespass in Wilfred’s quarters."

"Ah. So we don't know if he's home, and we don't know if we can easily find a way to spy on him. I would very much like to take another look into his head." Delmar then sat quiet a short while, staring up at the temple. 

"Newton? I want you to leave your body, fly up into the temple and find Wilfred for me. Without your body, no one except I can see you. You could scout the ground, see if he's home and see if there's a place we can spy on him from."

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First of, I'm sorry for my bad english. It sucks I know... T_T

Using the blackshifters' own tactics against them! :D


This text contains:
Opal
Alpha
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Well time to impatiently wait for the next part.