The world ended 300 years ago, why is it still ending?
The Hourglass foundation is a large-scale institute/council started by the strongest individuals left after the first Disaster Point. Many people had already known the end was coming, the elite fleeing to the stars and the truly desperate shrouding themselves beneath the Earth. On that day a construct descended from the heavens, it's hands turning with no reason or pattern, it's face strewn with symbols far unlike the traditional digits of humanity. The Doomsday clock had arrived, and it's voice rang out like funeral bells across the earth.
"You did not complete what was expected of you. Disaster Point 'Nuclear War' has been unleashed."
That simple statement shook the Earth, and the night sky was stained a hellish orange as it was sullied by the plague of humanity's most despicable invention.
Needless to say, that wasn't the last time the Doomsday Clock appeared, and so the very next day the foundation was born, with the sole goal of preserving humanity as long as it could.
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Around 300 years later
Her official name was Mechanically Armed Synthetic Human (M.A.S.H) version 0.5
-She hated that name, all it did was remind her of how she wasn't enough, how she could never be the perfect weapon she was intended to be. How she was only half as good as the finished product. As a creation of The Hourglass Foundation she rarely left the headquarters that lay at the center of Atrium City, she was a quiet young woman who had been taught to see targets and potential threats where others would see acquaintances.
She was jolted awake in bed at precisely 7:30 AM, the natural "alarm" in her head forcing her to get up and ready for work when she'd much rather stay under the warm sheets until midnight. Scraping herself out of bed she pulls on her uniform, a sleek armored bodysuit, followed by her over-sized coat and silk black gloves. Exiting her private barracks she walks past a few rooms where her coworkers at the Backline Agents Unit worked and rested. None of them knew each other particularly well, they all simply agreed to keep their heads down and do what was expected of them. She passed a young man in military gear gently heating a pastry by breathing flames on it, a young woman in riot armour with claws painstakingly polishing them, and a tall man in a full suit, sunglasses, and a muted navy headband lying on one of the benches, loudly snoring next to what seemed to just be a wooden pole. She approached the large metal kiosk and scanned her card to clock in, before walking across the white-tiled floor of the reception to receive her daily duties.
"Yo Desk Lady, what do I have to do today?"
The tired looking middle-aged woman sighed, pulling off the advanced headset she uses to track and monitor all sorts of data revolving around the Backline Agents, their duties, and any and all activity they have gotten up to. She was overworked to the bone and didn't even bother wearing the uniform anymore, mostly clocking into work, doing a shift and leaving all without getting out of her pajamas.
"Gee Point-5 it's almost like you've been on east gate duty in mornings every day since you arrived in this dump. Maybe, just maybe you have gate duty again today. Also you know my damn name! you've been working here for like 5 years."
Point-5's usually stoic expression turns into a slight smirk as she rolls her eyes at the operator.
"Whatever Sara, I'll head down to the gate now, just don't be such a grouch this early in the morning."
She began walking away towards the sturdy steel doors that led to the outside layer, and the gates she was supposed to guard.
Sara stuck her head out of the reception and called after Point-5
"Oh yeah there's apparently some of those preacher freaks doing a sermon or something around your gate, those robed weirdos have been caught climbing the walls recently so just give em a little knock down or try to relocate them safely if you catch any!"
Point-5 sighed, why did those clock-loving spiritualist morons have to make her shift harder, couldn't they wait until noon?
"ughhh fine, I really do hate those guys."
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Nobody likes gate duty.
Four something hours of waiting for something to happen and staring at the city beyond headquarters' walls and the wasteland beyond the city's walls. All while occasionally yelling at the cultist freaks who worship the Doomsday Clock despite it's very existence being a debated topic and the fact that even if it were real it would be the very thing destroying us, not exactly an idol worthy of praise.
Backline Agents usually tailed behind the more strong and qualified Frontline Agents on missions, cleaning up their mess and finishing any dirty work. Every once in a while they got to tail a member of the fabled "Pantheon", the great upper council of the Hourglass Foundation who hold unimaginable strength.
So i'm sure you can imagine how comparatively dull playing a glorified guard dog is.
She stared down at the white-robed fanatics, these worshipers of the hypothetical construct that may or may not be ending the world was utterly baffling to her. Every so often she had to chuck a brick down and watch it plummet onto an especially eager cultist, who had begun climbing the gate's overgrown steel walls. She took a bite out of the cricket sandwich she brought for lunch, mammal meat is super pricey these days so most people eat this genetically modified bug meat, she can't say she hates it plus the nutritional value is great for something so low price.
A couple hours into this boring slog she begins to hear rumbling from deep inside the headquarters behind her, turning around she sees the central tower is shaking slightly, several loud explosions heard from within. Clutching the edge of her gloves cautiously she simply mutters a small reassurance.
"Prolly just the Experimental Wing messing everything up again."
But the explosions go silent.
She turns away, assuming the sudden silence means that whatever crisis had evidently come up had been subsided, until...
bang.
A cacophony of chaos erupted from behind Point5.
A siren blared and flames crackled, the crimson sparks of the explosion seemed to twirl and dance around her like taunting devils.
she swiftly spun around to her side, seeing the perfectly circular wound that had pierced the fortified outer gate. This testament to the sheer strength of the Hourglass foundation stood at a staggering 220ft, a vast 50m thick and made of the foundation's strongest alloys. Arranged in layers it maximized friction specifically to prevent projectiles from piercing it.
As she stared over the edge of the sudden gap she witnessed the charred, black corpses of the cultists she would have usually assumed to be the culprits of such a feat. Yet there, in the center of the gaping, half-melted chasm stood a figure strewn in black garments. Their void-like cloak ran down to the dusty ground, sweeping everything into it's dark embrace. The only freedom from absolute black one could get from staring at this figure was the golden sash that ran down each shoulder and the single, piercing, hellish, crimson eye that stood directly in the center of that ominous shadow's pointy hood.
"Wait sto-"
With a burst of red and pink lightning the figure launched itself towards the city, almost at the exact height of the now destroyed wall.
As if on reflex Point5 discarded her thin silk gloves, revealing the "gifts" her synthetic nature had come pre-packaged with. Her left hand appeared largely standard aside from her index finger, it was long and almost seemed almost metallic. Where upon a normal human the finger would simply end with a nail, Point5's extended ending in a simple hole, resulting in it having an appearance not unlike a gun's barrel. Her right hand was similarly disfigured, but instead of having a barrel of a finger it was as though her palm had a large hole straight through it. Within this hole lay a revolving container that was connected at each end, it resembling the cylinder of a revolver.
With this hand she tore into her coat's deep right pocket and tossed up her 5 daily allocated standard issue Combustion Bullets into the air before spinning her cylinder and catching each one.
Her left hand pointed up at the soaring figure, who had slowed midair and now looked back at Point 5, a large clock clearly hanging behind the figure, pulled by a large chain.
"fire."
The Combustion Bullet flew from Point5's barrel finger, Piercing the very air as it soared towards the figure who seemed to have been distracted by simply noticing her.
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The tall, relatively young man was shook awake by a familiar face.
"Wake up you idiot!! How did you sleep through half of this wing detonating!!"
Opening his foggy eyes he saw Sara, the pajama-clad receptionist of the west backline barracks.
"Oh hey there..."
He groaned as he stretched
"Did you make me breakfast? Or did a new mission come thr-"
A hard slap met his face
"Not the time Aarron!! Something crazy happened and all of my surveillance drones get fried the second they go near!!"
Arron sits up, leaning back on the wall.
"whatevs, can't you just get little miss triggerfingers to sort it out?"
Sara backs away sighing
"That's the thing Arro, the storage team have reported a Pantheon Level artifact missing, and there just so happens to be a massive newly-opened tunnel from there to here. The only other Senior Agent is already out there, and those two rookies you care about so much."
Aarron visibly tenses up
"Lower Class Agents Shishika and Furne?"
Sara nods in response.
Arron gets to his feet silently grabbing the large wooden staff next to him, others may view it as simply a pole but it's ornate wooden carving and two high quality locks embedded in the top end betray that notion.
"I'll watch, and step in if things go south."
Sara watches the determined man sprint away, his silent footsteps not making so much as an echo.
"I better not get blamed for this, I hear the Storage Team take their debts very seriously."
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