Clara M. P. Heany's Story

The morning parades were beginning and all over Aether the excited screams were muffled by music and balloons. Aether Ascension Day as it was called was supposedly a happy day, a day to be celebrated by all no matter or age or class. But this was a false reality told by the rejoicing upper-class so they could excuse themselves for blowing a small fortune on overly frivolous party gifts. In reality the upper-class were the only ones who truly got to celebrate the day, with parades and tea parties in the morning and after noon then at night fireworks and parties. Meanwhile the middle class would toil preparing the party for the upper class before they would return to there own homes at 3am or if there were upper-class bachelors they would spend the evening in a middle-class island blowing money on alcohol and girls. And the lower class well they lucky to get to go home early. As for the surface well it was doubtful they would celebrate the day they got abandoned. And it is on this day amidst the innocence and ignorance that our story truly begins...

'Happy Aether Day! Remember to grab your free balloon at the gate and thank you for flying-' Callie let out a sigh as the automated message repeated for the third time, the jingle of over happy music could have actually made Callie ill. Every year was the same, horribly joyful music, a slew of grinning faces and overly dressed people cramming close together to celebrate the joy and leaving behind millions to die. Though this year was different for Callie, previous years were spent in her hotel room watching the parades on t.v this year she was going to an upper-class island. Not by her own choice mind you. She had received a very sudden call from a previous employer asking her to pick up a job, it was sudden but Callie had been running out of funds so she had accepted of course once she accepted she regretted it. She was going to be in the engine room of a Surface Craft, aptly named for being bulky armored air-ships designed to fly down to the surface and bring back copious amounts of something. In this case it was Crawlers. The disgusting looking creatures were considered a delicacy by the upper-class and of course there weren't enough to feed everyone at her employers party so she was scrambling to send a team down to the surface to collect some crawlers for her creme. Sighing again at her misfortune Callie stood as the airship docked she had plenty of time to get to the next dock and onto the hunk of metal...

Admittedly Callie could see the benefits of this job. She had never seen the surface before and she had heard rumors of the beautiful Fractal Forests. But that did not change the fact that she was currently sitting in the poorly cared for engine room of the Surface Craft staring at what she could see through a small round window. The engine unleashed another hiss and Callie sighed to see that there was yet another leak. She would have to talk to her employer about actually fixing the engine instead of just patching it with duck-tape. Pulling out the duck-tape Callie patched the small hole before grabbing her tool kit, she had a good half hour before the ground party came back with there haul and then no doubt they would head straight back up so that the crawlers could get fried or however they were cooked. While Callie got caught up in her work she barely heard the sound of footsteps on the floor above her. It was only one set so it could not be the ground party return from there hunt... Curious and more then a little paranoid Callie stopped her work and grabbed her screw driver, [which made a surprisingly good weapon] and headed up the ladder to see who the other person was.