The Beginning of Something

It doesn't rain in the slums, not really. When the sky lets rain fall, it's collected on the plates above and made clean and fresh for the people up there. Some of it escapes and runs along metal beams and grooves until it falls in sheets between the plates themselves - a wall of water. During a rainstorm most of the people in the slums collect, hands outstretched. Water washes away the grime and grit that most of them can't afford to get rid of, but water tastes acrid and sour from the rust and grit collected from the upper plates. It's better than nothing though and much better than slosh of Mako shooting out of a faulty reactor.

Green eyes watch from the safety of a roof top as neighbors and unknown faces scurry to the heavy down pour filtering in between the metallic sections that dictate their lives. His shitty apartment in the slums isn't much, but he has water. More than he can say for those poor fuckers down there.

A drip of water hits his cheek and bothers the red inked tattoo that's still a little too raw. Reno looks up and watches tiny streams of rain run along the metal skeleton of the upper plate. Drops of it splash down at uneven intervals. He thinks that even if it rained for days the slums would still smell like old Mako, sweat, and death.

Nothing will clean this place.