1 Robin

The weather was warm and the wind formed miniature vortexes that caused leaves to float around in the air, constantly rotating about an axis. The air was clean and fresh, a rarity in Below City, where the stench of oppression was common.

The world was an unfriendly place. Robin had heard whispers about how the Earth, this planet, was once ruled by terrans like his people. How they once were at the top of the food chain and controlled and monopolized its resources. Sometimes, he wondered how that kind of bizarre scenario might have played out, and bizarre it was.

Because, Terrans were the dregs of modern society. Thousands of years ago, when the humans on earth thought they were the only form of intelligent life as far as they could see in the Universe, a world shattering event took place. The world suddenly became a battleground for alien galactic societies who suddenly appeared on Earth in billions.

Blood flowed like rivers and societies collapsed. The planet transformed drastically to satisfy the need for a battleground for these Alien combatants. The planet became bigger, monsters began rising, vegetation mutated. The weather changed drastically and the world grew full of anomalies.

The incredible war lasted for a significant three hundred years of constant battling and blood spilling. A military industrial complex developed on Earth to support these aliens and in the process Terrans - as the humans of earth came to be known as, were 'domesticated', enslaved through systematic oppression and poverty, humans like Robin grew up as the dregs of society and ruled over by Aliens and cliques of Terrans who became subservient to them.

Over time, few groups of Terrans who had also been mutated due to changes of the Earth started gaining abilities to become stronger, they formed sects, clans and institutes where they created new methods to become stronger and compete with the ruling class of aliens, methods based on ancient martial arts and fighting tactics humans had abandoned in their pursuit of science were combined with the technology and knowledge that permeated from the Aliens to create paths of cultivation!

For mortals like Robin, these cultivators were as far away from ordinary life as the Alien nobility. Life was difficult, feeding one's family was difficult. It was a world where the law of the jungle loomed, and even though the society is rules based, the true determiner of status is personal strength.

Robin looked out of his apartment window as he pondered about the history of his people. He was slim and on the tall side, with a decent appearance that was tainted by his silver colored hair. He was muscular, but not bulky, however, he showed signs of fatigue, as if the burdens of the world took a heavy toll on him.

Robin, a person without a surname, was an orphan. The situation was not that uncommon among terrans, parents could often not afford to take care of their infant children and abandoned infants were a common occurence. Orphanages essentially mushroomed to capitalize on the availability of cheap 'labour', orphans essentially became low wage slaves for factories run by powerful individuals.

Robin was one of the luckier ones, as he escaped the orphanage he was in at an early 15 years of age, managed to find what would pass as a job, and was able to afford renting out a tiny apartment in the slums. It meant he could not afford to go to school, which the orphanages sponsored, but at least he had his freedom and didn't work for peanuts in a factory.

Robin may not have gone to school, but he was no illiterate. He knew that learning was important if he wanted to escape his situation of abject poverty where he could barely sustain himself, the less he knew about the world the more disadvantaged he would be.

Earlier he would sneak into the few public libraries that still existed to read and learn, however, recently even that had become hard because the libraries would now charge fees that were prohibitive for him.

Robin stopped pondering about random things and headed out of his apartment. The sun had set and the air had turned cold, the locale had turned dreary as Robin felt the familiar numbness that came with the onset of darkness, as shadows slowly moved around in the slums. Robin ignored the feeling as he headed down an alleyway and then knocked onto a secretive door in the darkness.

The door opened and a huge man looked at him, his eyes scanning Robin's figure from head to toe and back to his head, before chuckling with an evil glint in his eye and displaying his set of half rotten teeth.

"If it isn't our little man, haha! Come on in!" He boomed, before pulling Robin inside and slamming the door.

On entering, the atmosphere was completely different. Tons of people were shouting, screaming, bargaining and arguing. Alcohol flowed and mugs clashed, it was a market, a throng, it was chaos.

Robin nodded at a few people, avoided a few others, side stepped a drunk man sprawled on the floor and skipped the fruit and vegetable selling people. As he crossed through the crowd inside this corridor, he made his way to an underground pathway and arrived at a place with even larger crowds cheering at what appeared to be an underground fighting cage. People were assiduously betting on the winner and the loser and tempers flowed.

When a few of the crowds looked at Robin, they cheered. "It's the boy! Haha, are you going to fight today? You are in poor luck kid, there is a big fighter entering the ring today!"

That was Robin's 'job'. He was a fighter, also known as a gladiator, in this underground fighting ring. Known as the perennial underdog and the comeback king, it was his trademark style to make the matches as close as possible.

While he was well built, compared to the monsters in this fighting ring, he seemed puny and was mocked as the little man. However, Robin ignored these gazes. He was simply doing a job, he couldn't care less about what others thought as long as he could earn enough to sustain himself. Listening to the mocking was a part of his job, as was the constancy of the close nature of his matches. He had to please the match setters after all.

Today, was a big match. He had to fight one of the new biggest fighters in the ring who was known to have a mean streak. His bosses had already communicated that he was to lose the match, but he had to make it look as close as possible.