R4 Illegally Occupied Zone

Almost 50 square kilometers in size. Host to over 200,000 squatters. Officially known as the Illegally Occupied Zone, but its inhabitants call it whatever the hell they want. It is the official stance of the Japanese government that this patch of the country is flooded with poisonous gases after a botched mining operation, and inhospitable to human life, but the truth is much simpler: the Zone is impossible to control. There is absolutely no police or military presence in the city, and the administration can't field enough troops to reassert authority anymore. The citizens are in majority illiterate, without identifying documents, and frequently unnamed. It is a brutish, nasty place, where the only law is that the strong eat the weak. The only way to survive past childhood is to shape your body into a superhuman physical specimen, without access to outside help, or sanitary environments, or proper nutrients.

It was Hale's kinda place.

There was a reason why they were going here, but Hale kinda zoned out at that part of Dazai's exposition. He only cared about the parts about scary strong guys that ate people. That part was very well established. Actually, there was a big discussion about how they weren't going to be stronger than anybody else out here, and that they had to exercise caution when they were walking around, especially with Chuuya so debilitated after his fight with Karna--yadda yadda yadda.

[...]

Hale looked up at the tall buildings. Most of them were half-collapsed, or covered in vegetation, or both. If it weren't for a few creature comforts, some clotheslines strung between the structures, you'd never think that people had lived there. The streets themselves were even worse. It smelled like an abattoir. Cars lay abandoned in the street as if the Rapture had come and taken the drivers away. There were some people, but they all looked at least a little feral, and most of them toted some kind of extremely illegal firepower. The only ones that didn't had muscles so bulging that they probably didn't need a gun.