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Claimed!

The intro story for Ashen-

Crimson Cloud

The sun was red.

A beautiful evening sky bathed the world in a gentle, blood-tinted light, casting a menacing aura through the twisting depths of the vast cybercity of Mementos. It accented the neon signs advertising the hundreds of small businesses, creating an even harsher glow than was usual in the world’s capital. It was undeniable, there was an air of wrongness to the crimson light, and yet no one seemed to pay much attention to the phenomenon. The humans were occupied with whatever business they had to attend to, and the many automatons scattered throughout the metropolis were not programmed for such an event as this. An air of indifference contrasted the impending doom illustrated in the sky, and for a time, it seemed like nothing would happen regarding the sinister sun.

But something did happen. It started when the local weatherbot frantically halted it’s interview with Mars colony Corvus to report a severe sandstorm approaching the area. This sparked some confusion. Sandstorms were only ever a problem in the desert-like Outlands, hundreds of miles away from any civilization! How could one possibly travel so far, and through so many barriers and regulators? 

Inevitably, the answer came. It was sudden; no one had time to prepare, or any idea what to prepare for. Reporters were still trying to decide if the weatherbot’s forecast had been a malfunction or not when hundreds of strange, tiny red particles began to descend from the sky. They seemed harmless, at first, like bloodied flower petals drifting into the darkened heart of Mementos, but then more fell, and it seemed more like a heavy, harsh snow. More fell, then even more. Yet more still fell, and after that, more and more, until the population of the Earth’s grand capital was swept away in a sea of crimson as a hurricane of red particles tore through the planet, obscuring everything in a red haze.

The human’s sounds of fear were blocked out by a violent buzzing sound, which washed over the audio receptors of the automatons. This, combined with the sea of crimson obscuring their vision, made the robotic beings completely unaware of the tragedy unfolding before them. Red particles rampaged through the streets, washing over buildings and even passing through them. Nothing was outside it’s reach. Nothing would stop it from achieving its objective. Nothing could get in it’s way.

The Crimson Cloud lingered for an agonizing seven hours; seven hours of pure, violent, crimson cacophony. Then, little by little, particle by particle, the buzzing started to fade, and the storm of red began to depart, revealing the Cloud’s effect on the planet. When the red curtain lifted, few signs of life remained in Mementos. Hundreds of robotic beings drifted about aimlessly, each with differing, dwindling purposes. There may have been many of them, but scattered across so much space, it felt empty; wrong, even, like they weren’t meant to inhabit so much space alone.

Aside from the robots, a scattering of mice, rats and other small creatures still scurried through the alleyways, searching for edible scraps of whatever they could find, but their existence was largely inconsequential. Some small dogs still lived in shelters and houses, but they were few, and it was likely they would die out in a few decades if they didn’t learn how to survive. Most notably, all traces of the human species had vanished; even their vehicles and possessions had disappeared. Nothing was left. No creature had been spared, and with the lack of capable, living beings anywhere on Earth, the world was doomed to fade away in the memory processors of the numerous, soulless machines who were left to inhabit it.

Motion; not mechanized. Slow, uncertain, careful steps. Deafening silence. More steps; faster now, more certain. There were sounds of something scuffling against glass. Movement; mechanized. A door opened. A series of cheerful beeping sounds greeted the living creature. In an abandoned animal shelter, a single house cat crouched, hard at work to free the rest of its kind from their cages, aided by a light blue weatherbot with a newfound purpose.