The theatre was, without a doubt, the finest in the city. The building was paneled in only the finest hardwoods, and great painted silk banners hung lazily down the sides, hiding the finely-tuned speakers that had been carefully embedded into the beautiful wood inlays. The chairs themselves were plushly upholstered in fine velvet dyed a regal scarlet, their frames coated in a shiny mixture of platinum-iridium. The stage itself had billowing satin curtains of an even deeper scarlet, and the stage was lit by a bank of the finest monofilament lights, the likes of which were impossible to find in the city proper.
On the stage itself, actors pranced and whirled in a new style of ballet, the colored lights making their images subdued and almost surreal. The audience, a great mass of mobility decked in their customary finery, clapped and cried as the tragic, expressive performance began to move itself steadily towards a climax.
In a grandly proportioned balcony, reserved only for the richest of the rich, sat a peculiar blond man in a neatly pressed black suit. His face could almost be called ruggedly handsome, with a smallish nose and intense green eyes. He watched the figures below with an impassive stare, as if concentrating on something of pristine importance a few feet beyond the back of the stage.
As the colorful scene on the stage drew to a close, the man in the balcony suddenly jerked upright in his chair. Never shifting his gaze from where it rested on the center of the stage, he reached up and pulled the synthetically fletched metal shaft from where it had lodged in his throat. Then, without making even the slightest whimper, he tipped off the balcony and sprawled headfirst into the stunned crowd.
A few seconds later, figures clad in dark robes and facemasks rose from the vacant balconies, the squat black tubes of their weapons menacing in their hands. As the panicked crowd tried to rush for the exits, the impassive gunmen raised their weapons, sighting into the crowd. The weapons puffed steam as they fired, the super-compressed gases from the firing system dispersing into the atmosphere. One by one, the members of the crowd fell, dark shafts tearing through their rich robes to tear into the unprotected flesh below.
There was a sudden clatter of boots at one of the exits, and a squad of the local police force burst in, appearing massive in their blue uniforms festooned with armored plating. At the sight of the police, the attackers shifted their fire, their bolts glancing harmlessly off of the policemen. In return, the police raised their sleekly crafted rifles from their shoulders, aiming the wire-festooned weapons skillfully at the attackers. The policemen’s weapon’s fired rapidly, their receivers slamming pressure waves into the air with sonic cracklings. The focused compression waves ripped through the air like bullets, crushing the black-clad assailants against the balcony walls as if from the blow of a giant mailed fist. As the attackers struggled to rise, another squad of policemen climbed up into the balcony, firing at point-blank range. The bolts of force flung the bodies like ragdolls, the attackers’ weapons spinning away into the theatre below. In a matter of seconds, the attackers lay in a moaning heap, gasping desperately for breath and coughing up blood from ruptured organs. The policemen ignored their plight, callously gathering up the weapons from the newly scuffed floor.