Aedis: A Country Falls

Brother

"So Que, when is your nan going to let me start working full time at Lady Margarets? I looove working there, but ya know, three days a week? It's not enough to pay my rent and not die of hunger at the same time."     Hamish was Ques best and only friend and had been working at the butchers for only a few weeks before he managed to pick up near on everything. "I'm a fast learner when something interests me," he would often say.  
"I told you, I'd talk to her didn't I? Gees, where is your patience?" Que replied as they walked at a fast pace down the crouded path of South Street. Bastion was busier that usual on that day.
"Ugh. Yeah, you did say that. But I'm not impatient, my landlord is." Explained Hamish.
"You live in an appartment..."  Que gave a dull and slightly acusive reply.
"AND I'M LIVING OFF OF EASY BAKE NOODLES TO KEEP THAT A REALITY!!!"  Hamish suddenly blurted out in a stream of negative emotions.
"Woaaaah! Where did that come from!?" Que reacted, with one eyebrow raised in a WTF kind of expression.  Hamish was looking like some sort of stress ingulfed misery beast.

"Ughhh... I'm..." Hamish began to slowly deflate from his baloon of anguish. "I'm just stressed man. Promise me you'll atleast talk to your nan? And soon? Easy Bake Noodles are really unhealthy. Unfilling. Undelicious-"  His murmering went on, trailing off into sentences that made little to no sense. Que slapped his hand over his friends shoulder in an attempt to snap him out of his mood.
"I'll talk to her the next chance I get. Okay man?"
"Okay..."

Hamish was a towering giant of six foot six who had long, girly, blonde hair, that hung down to his waist.     His Irish accent went well with the ladies, however, his lack of cleanliness did not. Especially since he was a seventeen year old male, (the age of body odours.) All in all it was easy to say, Hamish always wreaked of something.

"Where are we going anyway?" The giant asked, merely to start convesation.
"You're Easy Bake Noodles are trashy and pathetic. I'm buying us lunch."
Que didn't earn any money from his time working at the butcher, Lady Margarets. His allowance was the allowance to have a bed at night.   However, money was easy for Que. The wealthier people of Bastion walked around knowing they were safe, unlike the valuables that lay in their pockets. 
The past fifty or so metres had already provided Que with thirty seven bronze coins. A memory flashed through the boys mind. The voice of an old russian man.
"Your hands are like silk my friend! Not a thing within reach cannot be yours."

There was a time a few years ago when Que had picked the pocket of the wrong man. He had come very close to death that day. However, to spare his life, the gargantuan man had gotten Que to steal something for him. A small yet very intricate little piece of machinery, from one of the large factories just out side of the city.   The moment he had  unclicked it, the entire factory, for the first time in Ques life, suddenly choked to stop.  A dangerous day that was. But the man did spare his life. And left a piece of advice with the young thief that was Que.
"Keep your hands quick boy. But your eyes, even more so."

Since that day, Que had always used little tricks to keep an eye on people he had pickpocketed. Eyeing their reflections in windows and steel bars. Watching their shadows when the sun was in the right place for it. Forever ready to run, making sure they weren't reaching out to sieze him like that man so long ago.

As the two past through the central square of Bastion city, televisions flashed on in shop windows. Month old news stories could be seen in some.
The streets were lined with flashy billboards saying all kinds of things revolving around the company that governed the country of Aedis.  "The Reign Foundation would like to say, have a wonderful and stress free day."
"We hold you in our hands. Take care in knowing, you are safe. The Reign Foundation."
All kinds of messages like these were spread all across Bastion. Every street corner. Every towering sky scraper. They were committed to sustaining peace of mind among all civilians. That was the Reign Foundations goal. And it worked for the most part. People didn't seem to have any problems other than the natural stress of day to day life. However, the people were not oblivious. Mainly because the Reign Foundation never kept them in the dark, or rather, couldn't. Every civilian, even Que knew the truth of it.  There were bad people somewhere in Aedis. Terrorists of some kind.  The kind of people that wanted something. The kind that had a goal of their own. And through the news everyone had already seen that they would kill to achieve this goal. They called themselves the Zealos.