[The Omniverse - The Slums of Zephyr]
The Breath-as-a-Service (BaaS) subscription had brought the Sky-Metropolis to its knees. While the wealthy aristocrats in the upper spires easily paid the 500 Omni-Credits to keep breathing, the impoverished citizens in the lower slums were suffocating.
In a hidden, underground courtyard, a rogue faction of Nature Druids was desperately fighting back.
"Keep channeling!" Elder Druid Silas shouted, his hands glowing with bright green emerald magic.
Surrounding him, twenty druids were using ancient, forbidden botanical magic to rapidly grow massive, hyper-oxygenating World-Trees. The trees were pumping thousands of gallons of pure, unfiltered, free oxygen into the slums. The suffocating peasants wept with joy as the localized vacuums around their heads dissipated.
"We don't need the Tycoon's corporate air!" Silas declared to the cheering crowd. "Nature provides for free! We will grow these trees until they shatter his scrubbers!"
Suddenly, the heavy iron doors of the courtyard were blown off their hinges by a concussive blast of kinetic corporate magic.
Seraphina stepped through the smoke, her violet eyes glinting behind her spectacles. She was flanked by fifty Abyssal Hardware automated repo-skeletons, all carrying glowing clipboards.
Victor Thorne walked in slowly behind them, taking a sip of his black coffee.
"Nature provides, Elder Druid," Victor said smoothly, his voice cutting through the cheering crowd and plunging the courtyard into terrified silence. "But manufacturing a patented chemical compound without a license is a federal crime."
Silas raised his glowing wooden staff. "We are saving lives! You cannot copyright the act of a tree making air!"
"I didn't copyright the act. I patented the specific O2 chemical structure generated within the municipal zoning limits of Zephyr," Victor checked his gold pocket watch. "Your World-Trees are currently generating that exact molecular structure. This makes your trees unlicensed counterfeiting factories."
Victor tapped his gold-nibbed pen against the Tycoon's Ledger.
"Seraphina. Serve the Cease and Desist," Victor ordered coldly.
Seraphina pushed her glasses up her nose and handed a glowing red legal document to the horrified Druid.
"The Abyssal Data legal department is officially citing you for Gross Patent Infringement and Intellectual Property Theft," Seraphina stated. "Furthermore, by pumping unregulated oxygen into a licensed ecosystem, you have disrupted our localized market pricing."
"You're arresting us for planting trees?!" Silas screamed, his magic flaring.
"I don't arrest people. It doesn't generate ROI," Victor smiled a ruthless, calculating smile. "I am fining you. For every cubic liter of unlicensed oxygen your trees have produced, you owe Abyssal Dynamics a back-dated royalty fee of ten Omni-Credits. You currently owe us eighty million credits."
Silas fell to his knees as the repo-skeletons began slapping barcodes onto the sacred World-Trees.
"Since you lack the liquid capital to pay the fines, your assets are seized," Victor adjusted his midnight-blue cuffs. "Uproot the trees and transfer them to the Abyssal Cloud server farm. We will use them as a free, biological cooling system for our data racks. As for the Druids... put them in the call center."