A Pearl Before Swine Pt. 01 Ch. 00-03

Hello, PenOfAtlantis here. This is my first attempt at writing a fiction story of any kind. "A Pearl Before Swine" is intended to be a longer, novel-esque style of story. The sexual escapades will ramp up a bit later on, but Part 1 only has a single scene. I am more focused on a character/story driven narrative, and the sex will be thrown in when I feel like writing it.

There are three main viewpoint characters (maybe more later when I feel like writing a chapter from their perspective), but the style is still mostly third person narrator. Once more chapters come out, you might be able to identify which viewpoint character each chapter will be due to the three different styles of chapter titles. The three leads are:

Pearl: A young vigilante hunting a dark organization while discovering her powers.

Evan Ray: An ordinary boy about to be caught up in a massive conspiracy.

Angler 3/Simon Woodson: A rising member of a organization with a sinister secret plan.

The setting is a futuristic near-utopia so affluent, that the city is a maze of aquariums and sculptures. A place where superheros "Powered", are mostly decommissioned. While there is some future tech, the setting is still fairly ordinary. The superpowers will ramp up later on.

This is my first story, so I appreciate any and all feedback. (Believe me I won't take it personal even if you try to make it personal). This is all just great fun.

Table of Contents

Covered in Part 1:

Prologue: Moonlit Jellies on a Restful Night

Chapter 1: A Ray of Sunshine

Chapter 2: It Stirs

Chapter 3: A Day of Confusion (R-rated)

coming up in Part 2...

Chapter 4: Tracks Revealed on a Peaceful Evening (R)

Chapter 5: It Beckons

Chapter 6: A Search for Meaning

Prologue: Moonlit Jellies on a Restful Night

The moonlight glanced off the marbled walkways and shimmering rooftops. The only sounds were the quiet and constant dripping and garbling of the magnificent waterways. No lights disturbed the night except the warbling reflections and refractions from the ripples and waves. There is peace in water, she mused as she observed the maze of boat paths, aquariums, and fountain structures that surrounded the city. In the daylight it would be busy with colors and activity, but in the cover of night, only the clean geometry stood out against the horizon.

The stony precipice at her feet, weathered and worn, was one of only a few indications that there was ever anything but the beautiful architecture of this city upon the land. The mossy cobble tower stood as a monument to darker times, darker than this night. As a historic structure, it was allowed to stand above the height regulations of this sector, although it was by no means the tallest building in sight.

No, she thought to herself in a grizzled tone, there are those whose power defies the law of the common man. The central nine sectors of the city reached to the sky with the innermost square having no height regulation whatsoever. The pinnacles there broke past the clouds, and as with all things in the city, carried massive displays of aquatic infrastructure with them. The centerpiece of it all was a massive water column miles tall and multiple blocks thick which simulated the depths of the ocean.

It was in these industrial sectors that affluence had led them astray. It was a space of closed doors, of secrets, of power, and of swine. The city still grew, and its people still prospered, but in the depths, she knew a darkness grew.

She stood at last, sloughing off her inner monologue along with her Neptune-Bag. If one was there that night, or indeed any night, they would have seen a girl disappear beneath the shade of the belltower and reappear ... as something else. Onto the tallest stone gargoyle strode something more than a girl, more than flesh, more than all the money in the depths, and certainly more than all who thought they could raise the shroud of darkness without opposition or complaint. Off of that precipice strode a hero.

Her slim form dressed in the opalescent colors of her namesake belied her hidden strength. The moonlight rippled off the subtle curves with brilliant yet muted shades of the rainbow. In the shimmering reflections from the octopus fountain, her form melted into a mirage. Even a city drunk on opulence harbors pockets of malfeasance, and from the murky depths, a Pearl.

A small Aurelia aurita or "moon jelly" floated by in an agricultural aqueduct. It almost seemed to dance.

Chapter 1: A Ray of Sunshine

Sunlight abruptly broke the serenity of the night. The windows, programed to open at exactly half past seven, illuminated the entire room in blinding rays. In response to Evan turning to shield his eyes from the glare, his water bed emptied, dropping him to the floor.

"Blistering kraken!" he sputtered as the emptied tank of water withdrew into the ceiling. Within seconds, the water had drained into the floor while an aromatic mist dried everything to a warm and fuzzy paradise.

"You do realize this happens every morning right?" a woman said in a playful tone from the other side of his door.

Evan sighed before rising to his feet and shedding his NeptuneTech issued respiraskin. "Yes mom." The thin transparent membrane of a suit that allowed underwater respiration was quickly thrown into the cleaning duct. As with nearly everything in the city, the duct was full of flowing water that quickly whisked the suit away.

After putting on his school clothes, he hopped in the waterfall to go eat breakfast downstairs. Diana was waiting for him with a warm caviar-spinach porridge. He remarked on the fact that she looked so much like him with silky blonde hair, thin bony face, easy soft smile, and lithe build. This was remarkable only because his parents died in the last Power War ten years ago along with her husband and newborn. NeptuneTech security forces had found her covered in blood with a broken leg dragging his eight year old unconscious body over a mile from the rubble. Hours later, she was still in a state of delirium, and the doctors had been unable to remove her grip from him even as they set the bone.

"You ready for graduation next week?" she said looking up from the paperwork strewn across the table.

"You do realize this happens every morning right?" he responded, mimicking her tone from a minute prior.

"You know I only ask because I care so much sunshine." Her papers were quickly cleared away for breakfast.

"I know mom" Evan grumbled before breaking down and grinning back at her. "Discovered any more forgotten relics of the past this week?" In a digital age, most documents had been converted into the digital archives, but the machines still struggled with varieties of handwritten scripts. Society had mostly disregarded the rest of the paper trail as beneath them, but Diana and her team dug into the scribbled depths to rediscover important pieces of information in many fields, earning herself many raises in the process.

"Henry worked out an old manuscript from an old Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan detailing some abstract mathematical process, and he thinks it could be novel enough to write another paper about. You should convince Marcus that it would be worth his time to get his name on another publication. It would look nice on a resume, and Henry does need the extra help."

"You know Marcus find that stuff eternally boring mom." Evan helped his best friend get a job with Diana's team, but Marcus had complained to no end that it was getting old. "He's got that internship at Neptune that he thinks can be turned into a job, and its not like a translation publication is high on their radar."

She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, "hey it shows dedication and professionalism, and there is a lot of technical work that goes into it that STEM companies like NeptuneTech are definitely aware of". Somehow her eyebrows were raised higher as she glanced back at Evan. "Speaking of which, any updates about your job prospects you want to share with me?"

He swallowed a bite of porridge before he spoke. "Leena and I might go to the convention in Sector 7 for the graduating classes next week. There are a lot of companies hiring there." Diana caught the hesitation but decided not to push it. Evan made a mental note to broach the subject to Leena before the next time his mom talked to her.

"Well I have to go sunshine. I've got to negotiate a trade of documents with Suros Energies. You would think they would be happy with the services we provide for free, but they just have to be paranoid about supposed classified technical information." The inflection on "supposed" made it clear what she thought of the quality of documents she was likely to get. "Don't get a job with them sunshine. Or do and feed me the real juicy stuff" she winked back at him as she exited the apartment.

Back in his room, Evan checked his messages. It mostly consisted of Leena bugging Marcus to go out with her and Evan for a night after graduation and Marcus using his work as an excuse not to. He messaged Marcus back that NeptuneTech has plenty of experience with young students and would happily give him time off. While packing his Neptune-Bag, one message caught his eye. It was from an unknown number, and the preview only had the word URGENT.

............................................

URGENT: This is a message for Evan Ray. If this is intercepted by my adversaries, go feed a bigger fish. I cannot use key words for fear of this message being flagged, so I hope it isn't too vague. I would have preferred to deliver it in person, but I have no alternatives left.

Your mother is swimming towards deeper waters. I tried to swim in her wake but swam too fast. I found shipwrecks carrying dangerous cargo, and those seeking to use it. The shoal of fish has been disturbed, and they are swimming to safer waters where I will be unable to find the treasure. I must swim in their wake. In their haste, they left scraps for me to pick through. I found a loose worm with your name on it. Things are more connected than they seem. I must leave you with a trail that hopefully you and only you can trace.

In the light where you were found, but mightier than steel.

From the nest upon the ground. Ten spins before the crash.

In the dark of Neptune's gaze. The names spell out the seal.

The soft cover through the haze, shall vanish in a flash.

Please take care. Tell your mother to wait for smoother tides. I am sorry. In times of need, the crisis is the key.

....................................................................................................................................................

He just stared at it for a minute bewildered by the sudden turn of events. It wasn't a wrong number or a telemarketer, but the text was so strange that he stared at it until he had to leave for school. Diana already turned off her EuropaComm, but he left her a message for when she got done with her business trip.

Hopping into the automated taxi transit of so called "bullet bikes", he selected Sector 15 and was whisked away. Each sector had its own children's school system, but ages 14-18 were conducted in the educational sectors 15 and 22. Evan laid back and pulled up the mysterious message again.

"Who writes something like this?" he wondered aloud. "And who makes it rhyme?"

Chapter 2: It Stirs

"SIT DOWN!"

Angler 3 winced at the sound of his superior laying into a team of reconnaissance officers. The "Anglers" were an underground alegal group that focused on threat prevention and reconnaissance for a conglomerate of unnamed elites. Who the bosses were and what exactly his team's goals were he could not say. From his experience it typically focused on secure transport of unknown packages and people, typical spy routines to infiltrate rivals and legal organizations, and most of all, protecting the secrecy of all this subterfuge and business by weaving false webs and "dealing" with those who tread on the wrong territory figuratively speaking.

"Do you have any idea what kind of dangers your negligence has caused! How much this will cost us! Did you lazily think that everything would just work? Oh but of course, YOU WERENT THINKING!"

Angler 3 winced again. This reconnaissance team had tripped an alarm while breaking into a low level secure vault containing building plan information for the city's contractors, and failed to prepare a cover story beforehand. It was a small breach, and the government would be unlikely to spend the resources to trace it back properly, but every breach is critical in an operation like this. The screaming was a bit much. The culprits knew exactly what they did wrong, but then again the purpose of this "briefing" was not education, it was intimidation.

"You all get to go back to the recruits. On PROTECTION DUTY again. And if, kraken forbid, I ever hear that you were negligent again, I will RIP YOU INTO LITTLE PIECES MYSELF AND FEED YOU TO THE ABYSS."

And intimidating she was. Angler Leader stood at 6-2 with a rigid frame that emphasized her military-esque professionalism. She was built like an athlete and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty despite her high and mighty persona. However it wasn't anything physical that made her intimidating. What set her apart was her voice.

For the third time, Angler 3 winced as Angler Leader escorted the disgraced officers out of the room with a final beration. There was something irrationally awe inspiring (or fear inducing depending on the situation) about her voice. It carried supreme authority and confidence, and her bite was as bad as her bark.

She returned to the room with a much softer but no less intimidating tone. "The breach must be sealed. Angler 2 take your team and survey Neptune. If they got any indication about this, they might galvanize their forces." As Angler 2 nodded and left the room, she turned and stated "I am assigning you Recon 5. Take them and figure out what the city council and police are doing. They will probably disregard the situation, so DON'T draw their attention. Am. I. Clear."

Angler 3 nodded affirmative. At the door he paused and asked "anything I should be aware of?"

At her desk, Angler Leader glanced up at him. "About what?" she stated measured and cautiously.

"Neptune wouldn't care about construction plans unless sensitive contracts were at stake regarding the future of ... our purpose." He glanced back at her hoping he hadn't crossed a line, but she was just chuckling.

"That's why you were promoted kid." He silently snorted dismissively. She was barely older than he was. "You're smarter than the rest of that rabble. You will know what you need to know. Complete the mission." As she looked back at the holo-docs on her desk he knew he was dismissed.

Smart yes, but Angler 3 knew it was his capacity to follow orders that set him apart. He looked down the hall where other groups were assembling for missions. Angler Leader was abrasive and arrogant. Most of the men here were recruited from top level positions where they had their way. It was challenging for even the most restrained of them to listen to the dismissive tone of their superior and comply with orders barked down upon them.

As he stepped outside onto the dark and dusty street in the maze of pathways between skyscrapers, he became Simon Woodson again. The city council wouldn't open until morning, and his team was already headed to stake it out. No, Angel 3 was different. He had a deadly combination of ambition and restraint. He was rising fast and only 25 years old.

Simon looked at an image saved on his EuropaComm. It wouldn't be long now.

Chapter 3: A Day of Confusion

"Dr. Flowers" Evan introduced himself with a bow. He received a push that nearly sent him off balance in response.

"I told you if you call me that in public I will ignore you for a week" Marcus told him with a grin.

"Hey, its graduation. What are you going to do? Avoid your best friend for the biggest moment of his life?"

"Don't tempt me fishfood."

Evan remarked on how grown up Marcus seemed now. He kept himself well groomed, and rarely broke out of his professional shell unless he was around Evan and Leena.

"Dr. Flowers" said a third voice behind them.

Marcus spun around and playfully took a swat at her. "If you call me that, I will call you Ali."

"Eww" Leena said scrunching her face, "why do you keep making threats we all know you are incapable of following through with?" She punched him in the side. "And we both know you're way too nice and grown up now to insult me like that."

For the third time that day Evan remarked on someone's looks. Leena was about 5-8 with wavy brunette hair worn long. Her old school parents still made her wear a plaid skirt, but you wouldn't know it from the way she moved around. Bursting with energy, Leena was the epitome of a free spirit. Long striped stockings and sleeves showed her skinny limbs underneath the skirt and school issued overcoat.

In contrast, Marcus stood at 6-3 with short curly brown hair. He was well built and would have easily been a multi-sport athlete if it weren't for his everlasting interest in technology. Evan had it on good authority that Marcus had been dreaming of working for a tech giant like NeptuneTech for years and had dedicated himself to designing the world's next wave.

"Neptune to Evan" a voice knocked him out of his reverie. "If you would stop staring at me for a second, you would know we picked you to attend Dr. Malcomb's lecture today, so take good notes!" Evan groaned, and Leena hit him on the arm giggling "I know the school logo on my chest is really capturing your attention."

"Why are you such a tease" he replied. "Oh, before I forget, did you want to go to the careers convention on Tuesday?"

"Oooooh, a date? With me?" she winked at him.

Evan took a deep breath as he started walking again to hide his blush. "Ever the Neptune cursed tease."

"Actually I have a job interview Tuesday" she said catching back up with him. "I don't think I will be able to make it."

Just then the bell rang, and Evan said good luck before departing Leena and Marcus who were heading to meet with a teacher about some project. Walking into the lecture hall, he found it empty. This was not unusual due to Dr. Malcomb's lectures being renowned for their soporific qualities, but the absence of Dr. Malcomb himself was unusual. Evan walked back outside and scanned for answers.

"Hey Sierra, Clarisse! Any idea what's going on with Dr. Malcomb's lecture today?" he asked the first people he recognized.

Sierra was a quiet girl who competed with Evan and his friends for top marks in their classes, and it was the more boisterous Clarisse who answered. "Looks like that old geezer cant even come to class himself after lecturing us for the whole term about coming to his lectures. That Neptune cursed hypocrite. At least we don't have classes 'till after noon. Hey, want to come with us to Sidney's Grill? They are hosting an interactive musical performance until lunch."

"Umm ... sure. I guess I don't have any other obligations right now" Evan replied more out of politeness than desire to see a musical. Looking at Sierra's disinterested face, he was pretty sure he wasn't the only one being dragged to this.

They got seats at the Grill's open plaza as the musical was being set up. It was going to be a rendition of Aquaman and the Morose Mermaid. The entire set was an elaborate aquarium full of ornate set pieces. As Clarisse was talking, Evan noticed Sierra skimming through the list of attendees at the career convention.

"Hey are you going to the convention on Tuesday?" he asked attempting to contribute to the one sided conversation taking place.

It was Clarisse who responded first. "Depths no, my father got a job in Sector 5, and he managed to talk them into giving me one with him. He works in SeaLime by the way."