Confederation of Corrupt DictatorsBoard

He'd always anticipated that things would never get better. But the reality that they would get so much worse was beyond what he could stomach.

Downtown San Ludres, 23 March, 2024
"Stand down! Or we will fire!", a police commissioner shouted through a megaphone in the direction of an enraged crowd of demonstrators blocking a 4-way intersection. Lines of armored men aimed rifles loaded with rubber bullets at the protestors. But it was clear that a couple dozen riot police could not contain the anger that had been spurring for ages embodied by the swelling protests.

Officer Arciniega would find himself and a few other squads called in to assist the crowd control efforts. Where his superiors saw pests to be dispersed, Arciniega saw human beings who had lives turning to crap. If there were anyone who deserved the agonizing sting of a rubber bullet, it was the faceless personnel loyal to the wreck that called itself a government.

"Damn that hack Montilla for resigning.", Arciniega muttered under his breath as the armored car escorting his squad approached the rally. He hated cowards who refused to take responsibility, with every bone in his body.

An officer sitting next to him - the good-for-nothing, sleazy, perverted Eduardo Mendez who was drunk half the time and high the other half - peered out the car window and couldn't help but laugh at the ragged demonstrators. "'It's been a while since I -hic- got to arrest someone."

"Did you not handle those Antonio cartel guys in the San Imelda neighborhood the other day? Oh wait, you bought from them.", Arciniega snapped. The only thing preventing him from beating the lives out of his colleagues was the fact he knew insubordination would make his family a target of law enforcement on top of whichever crooks writhed in the streets.

Before tensions could break between the two cops, a BANG could be heard in the crowd. Some upset person in the crowd must have thrown a rock at the police prompting a heavy response, or maybe an officer was just bored. Whatever the case, chaos ensued. As Arciniega and the other reinforcements unloaded from their vehicles, the protest-turned-riot was an anarchic mess of batons, rubber bullets, molotovs, and tear gas. A police car was on fire, and over a dozen demonstrators were lying wounded. One of the wounded who was hit in the head with a tear gas canister seemed to not be breathing.

Much less violent than expected.

The commissioner noticed the reinforcements, "Alright boys, you know what to do. Don't forget to look out for anyone who appears to be a journalist or reporter, they're rioters as far as I'm concerned."

As the other officers dispersed to aid the stationed personnel in tackling whoever they could to the ground and hauling them into any police van that hasn't been hit with a molotov, Arciniega couldn't help but dissociate with the surrounding world. The angry shouts, fearful screams, crackling of flames, cracking of bones - it all eclipsed into a uniform background ringing like that of tinnitus. Jacobo noticed among the chaotic crowd, teenagers. 15, 16, 17 year old kids who could have been in school preparing for their future. But the schools were underfunded at best. Ruined in firefights between gangs at worst. What future was there to prepare for? These kids were destitute, angry, fearful. And it was them, rather than the gangsters, who felt the brunt of the police crackdowns.

Snapping back after an explosion erupted mere meters from him, Arciniega opted to do what he could to better live with himself as a father. He dashed to a laying teenage protestor, blood and bruises decorating his head.

"Stay with me!", the overwhelmed officer shouted, while cleaning the teenager's face with his handkerchief, "I won't arrest you. But if you can get up, I will make sure you get to safety."

The protestor's hazy vision cleared upon noticing the badge on Arciniega's chest, "Safety? Is that another euphemism for jail. I've been arrested 4 times already, I know your tricks and schemes. Get your bloodstained, drug filled hands off me and let me get arrested in a more honest manner."

Arciniega just stared. He knew the kid was right to think such. Anyone else from the squads he came from would have taken him to the "safety" behind bars. In a world where he didn't selfishly join the police for safety, he would have been among these demonstrators. And so, without uttering another word, Arciniega complied with the wounded teen's demands. But he couldn't stop loathing himself for it. From the corner of his eye, he saw the scumbag officer Mendez taunting another wounded protestor of similar age with a bottle of water - drinking it whole and tossing the injured individual the plastic trash.

Things died down relatively quickly, the commissioner narrating the casualties after it appeared all the demonstrators fled or had been apprehended, "3 rioters dead, 62 injured, 106 arrested. 16 personnel injured, 4 cars damaged or destroyed. Relatively clean job, hopefully there aren't any reporters hiding in the bushes eavesdropping. Eh whatever, the gang war is what gets the headlines. Lets pack it up and return to the station."

Just then, another car had parked adjacent to the rest of the police vehicles, and a man with a very clearly exasperated demeanor rushed to the officers.

"There has been a breakout at San Eladio prison.", the man seemed incapable of catching his breath. The news would rob the comfortable breath of everyone who heard it.

The commissioner's face sunk, "San Eladio? THE San Eladio? The largest prison in all of Gran Tesca?"

The envoy nodded.

"So, you are telling me there could be as many as 10,000 of the most violent felons in the country loose?"

The envoy nodded again, before being able to finally catch some oxygen, "There have also been reports of escaped prisoners getting their hands on military-grade weaponry beyond our own equipment. I was sent here from the police precinct since you were too occupied to receive the more urgent news. The 45th battalion on the other side of town was outgunned and decimated in a shooting. We need all the riot personnel we can get to."

Overhearing all of this, Arciniega could not help but feel disdain toward the clear selfish hypocrisy that filled the air. The commander terrified at the notion the cartels now have their most violent members seemed all to content a week ago with paying kickbacks to street gangs. But much as he hated these men, the satisfaction Arciniega had to see them realize the scale of their screw-ups could not remotely account for the much greater fear he held for what would happen to his family. His neighborhood was on "the other side of town". If that land falls to the Antonio cartel...

"What about the rioters? We have a whole crowd of them in custody.", the commissioner inquired.

In a brief moment of defiance, Arciniega interjected, "If they're not armed, let them go."

Just then, an explosion could be heard. A much more precise and devastating blow than any molotov. The crowd of police turned their heads in fear, as the very car the envoy came in was now a charred heap of scrap with whatever may have been the driver's entrails scattered about. Much more terrifying, however, was the source of the burst.

In the distance, a masked man was aiming a rocket-propelled grenade launched at the police. He bore no shirt, revealing his almost entirely tattoo-covered torso. One could see a symbol of skull surrounded by roses decorating his arm. The Antonio cartel had come to take their turf, for the man was not alone.

"Everybody, get the f*** down!". The personnel all instinctively ducked to the ground behind the "safety" of their scattered vehicles. Heavy gunfire rattled the heaps of metal that stood between the gang and the group who enabled them. Attempts to return fire revealed to be futile as it turned out the riot police did not switch out their rubber bullets. The utter fear made most of them too frozen to reach for their more appropriate firearms.

Maybe that was why these cowards served in crowd control, Arciniega thought. They were more comfortable bullying people who couldn't fight back. They left the tasks of arresting actual blights on society to the street patrol officers like himself. It was clear when the crowd control called upon his squads to help them, molotov cocktails were enough to make them shake in their armor.

But whatever rage Arciniega felt, despair would arise as the dominant sentiment in his psyche. Every few moments, the crushing void of despair escalated as another blast was heard. The gangsters were destroying the "barricade" of vehicles one engine at a time. There was no getting out of this. Everyone here was going to die. The cartel will take over all of San Ludres. His wife Amelia... His daughters - Rosa, Nina, Alejandra... Axon knows what will happen to them without him.

Realizing there was nothing that could be done, Arciniega could not help but collapse into laughter, "This is our atonement, isn't it? This is what we get for keeping society sh*t? What even is the point of fighting, shouldn't we be all on the same side."

The other officers could not ignore the final words of their so righteous colleague. Mendez, whose pants were probably soaked in urine, weakly and quietly whimpered, "Same side..."

"When I wake in hell, I will scavenge the fire until I am sure my family is nowhere to be seen.", Arciniega continued.

"We're.. going to hell?", Mendez responded.

"Yes. There, you will get to experience what everyone else already has in this hellhole of a country", Arciniega had enough. Enough of everything. He knew there was no way to escape the impending fate. But maybe it's best to do one right thing before meeting one's end. And so, Arciniega grabbed the head of the drunken officer - who'd always used his power to coerce people to sleep with him - and threw him into the line of fire atop the vehicle barricade. Seeing Mendez' now bullet-ridden body fall back to the ground gave the mildest tinge of satisfaction.

Once more, Arciniega dissociated from the world. The singular remaining car between him and the armed cartel fighters, the sound of surrounding police shredded under machine gun fire, the radiating heat of flames. There was nothing to be calm about: the most likely way he would go was immolation as the car behind him was set ablaze with a successive RPG shot, his family who he joined this rotten agency to protect will have no guardian, the country will plunge into a hell akin to Solmara or Utopia or Talgerria. And yet, these final moments felt like an eternity. An eternity of bliss, to drown out the reality of death and misery.

Jacobo Arciniega's charred body couldn't be recognized by first responders to the aftermath hours later, thus he was listed "missing".

It had only been a month since Peras overthrew the prince in a violent coup. The air in Sissania was still unclear, no one knew who was in charge, panic was ary. However, everything was made clear when Peras waged war on corporations. His para-military, whom he called the peacekeepers, burst through the doors of numerous factories across the former-principality. The scummy owners who had taken advantage of their employees, exploiting their work ethic for cheap labor and long hours, were chased out of their own factories and shot in the street. The bodies were hung up for days on end. Soon, leaders of the former police force were hung out to dry too, and the landlords followed suit. Peras soon stepped up on the same scaffold the former prince was hung on, and issued a speech.

“I have rid Sissania of the forces that plagued, and corrupted it. Rejoice with the power in your hands…. get paid fairly based on the quality of your work and not by the wage the rich chose for you to stay in power! You are Sissanians, not wage slaves at the will of the elite! Seize your own lives, seize your own production!”

Not long after the speech the bodies of billionaire CEO’s were hung up as well, the most notable among them was the CEO of Sitec notorious for his questionable moral stance on his workers, and his strange behavior around children. He was the outlier, his body was charred by the peacekeepers and thrown out in the mud before being hung.

Peras didn’t stop there however, expanding his influence he had his peacekeeper forces locate and execute any gang members, or cartel goons that had spilled over from neighboring countries. He had effectively safened Sissania 100x over, eliminating anyone who had any ties with the Estredena he considered “A dirty jungle full of monkeys with guns.” Because of his efforts, Sissania was only just behind the ‘blanchichos’ on the other side of the continent in terms of safety. He wasn’t satisfied however, and so his peacekeepers executed anyone suspected of violent crime, making the country even more safe than before, but still not as safe as Estandria. He wanted to step them up in one thing though. He gave numerous speeches, rallying the people of Sissania into conscription. He used the new government’s money to purchase weapons off of Salcaencian, including nuclear warheads which he loved to use as a show of power in numerous military parades in the capital. And with his new military, he even scared the most religious Kajzserlist to convert to his own religion, ridding Sissania of the alcoholic grip a foreign brand even dared to have over it.

Since landlords were gone, the government took control of all housing and sold it to the people, and distributed unused housing among the less fortunate, giving them job opportunities in an effort to improve their lives. Unsurprisingly, he was rather popular among the Sissanians. He embodied something the Prince had failed to show, consideration for the less fortunate. Of course he didn't want his regime to seem bad in the eyes of foreign countries, and so he had an ‘election’ to convince the international community that Sissanians liked this Sissania, although even if they didn't (which most did) there was only one name on the ballot anywayst.. And now, after the election, he had gotten to work forming unions for workers across the country, with the help of his new ‘right hand man’ Pietra who dealt with most of it. However, although Peras was a great leader in various fashions, she had noticed he began to grow rather paranoid, paranoid of foreign forces in Estredena.

Present Day- 28/3/2024:

Peras seemed oddly calm unlike his usual demeanor. Pietra knew why she was called in his office, which made his calm demeanor all the more suspicious, so calm it put her on edge. For she felt she was walking on eggshells and cracking them would make him snap. She sat down in a rolling chair that lay in front of his desk, she remembered the fun she had as a kid spinning around in these, and that calmed her never a little.

“Good morning Ms…” He read off her name tag as he had forgotten her name once again, he wasn’t good with names. “Dominiga.’

“Good morning Mr Peras, I assume I am here about the..well you know,” She said.

“Know what? About the traitorous Estandrians? Salcanceans stepping f-” He calms himself down. “No actually, you are not here for that.”

“Really? I'd think you'd have much to say on the topic.” She questioned.

“I have many words I would love to say, but they'd all be wasted on you,” He snarls, offending Pietra as if she was some sort of dumbass who couldn't understand his ‘perfect utopia’. She understood him quite well, from his paranoid rants to his racist remarks of Solmarans and Estredenans who were not of Sissania, ironic for a communist leader. “No, I want to talk with you about an opportunity, just for you.”

“Opportunity?”

“Yes, opportunity. Well…not oppurtunity more guarantee. You will be sent on an aid mission in Gran Tesca.” Peras’ works were empty, and Pietra knew why. “You and some ‘humanitarian workers' will pass out food to locals.”

“I'm not stepping foot anywhere near those Tescans!” She yelled, knowing what Peras entailed.

“I just said it's a guarantee, not an option woman.” It was only a moment after Peras said these words he had found himself with a red mark stricken across his cheek. He made no move on Pietra, unlike his response to the central bank manager. No, his response was much more calm, simply pressing a button and calling for his ‘peacekeepers’. And soon Pietra was taken away, for like Wárne, she was doomed from the moment she had been appointed in her position.