Kong, Shing, Gong Hub » Take A Right To The Right Phase Hub » The City of the East
Fieldwork was starting to grow on Mea Scarlet.
Ever since he was forced to temporarily join the Zhujihui's Omega-16 task force, he's willingly gone on more and more missions.
Of course, he still had his duties as an Esteemed Scholar, but he thought that stretching his legs every now and again would do both his mental state and his work output some good.
He was particularly looking forward to this mission. By now, the Zhujihui had — with the help of the Foundation — managed to expand throughout the entirety of the United State of a Mary King. Now, the Zhujihui was beginning to focus on getting a foothold in other countries.
Next up was a trip to the Republic of Proy Bria. All Omega-16 was there to do was scout out a good place to put a Scholarly Tower. While they were there, Scarlet was really hoping to spot some Alludrun and explore their expansive cave systems. Unfortunately, if they did find Alludrun tunnels near the potential build site, they would need to find a completely new place to put the tower.
Scarlet looked out the window as Omega-16's dragon-ship entered the Republic's air space. He watched as they passed by a few forests and a beautiful mountain range on their way to their destination. Scarlet thought the tower would look beautiful overlooking the mountain range, but he knew that the foundation wouldn't have been stable.
Once Omega-16's dragon-ship landed in the republic, Scarlet quickly left and attempted to spot an Alludrun.
When he didn't see any, he sighed and returned to his group.
"Well, so long as nobody else runs off, we should be finished with this area by the end of the day."
The leader of Omega-16, Milk, clapped her hands together. "Just like the last few areas, we're all gonna stick together. If everything goes right, we should be done before dusk."
"Do you have to say that every time we land?" Akarin asked, lightly chuckling.
"Yes, I do. It's imperative that we all stick together. Orchid's the only healer that we've got and she can't be in two places at once." Noticing the now apparent silence from her fellow task force members, she clapped her hands again. "Right. Let's get going then."
Akarin pointed into the distance. "I saw a flat area on the way over here. Let's check that out."
Milk nodded. "Lead the way."
Several long-eared individuals stood around a table. One of them, one who looked somewhat more important than the others, pressed a button on the table, causing an orb to rise out of its center. Seconds later, light shone out of it, projecting an image of Omega-16 over all of the walls in the room.
The important-looking one said nothing, merely staring at Mea Scarlet and his group. After a few seconds, someone else, this time wearing a red hat, spoke up.
"Alright, so, seems like there's just a few people passing by. Nothing to worry about."
The individual of status glanced at the fashionable one before returning his gaze to Omega-16.
"This happens every few years. I'm not sure why you're so worked up about it this time."
The pertinent person sighed and walked toward the betoqued one, stopped next to him, and pointed at Scarlet. "Do you see the logo on that man's arm?"
It was a circle with three arrows pointing towards the center, surrounded by a thin outline. The man had never seen anything like it. "Yes, sir."
"Do you understand, now, why I am so—" the individual of note raised his arms, imitating air quotes, "worked up about it this time?".
The accessorized one gulped. "No, sir."
The high-ranking individual scoffed. "And to think you supposedly graduated top of your class. Did you not pay attention in history? That—" he aggressively pointed at the logo. "Is the logo of the Foundation. The group, need I remind you, that hid our ancestors away from the world and genocided them?"
The victim of his beratement looked at him with blank eyes and blinked twice.
"Ugh, they really need to focus more on pre-Twilight history in schools nowadays. Regardless, even though this can't be the Foundation, the fact that they share the same logo means they must share similar values." He furrowed his brow while looking at Scarlet. "We can under no circumstances let them enter the city. Keep an eye on them—"
The projection of Omega-16 flickered before disappearing entirely.
The important one scoffed. "The old security system worked perfectly fine. Why did we decide to change it?"
The well-dressed individual straightened his back. "Well, we changed it because the old system could only monitor a few places at a time. The new one will prove to be superior, we just have to give it time." He gave an awkward smile as an attempt at reassurance.
The projection flickered back to life before vanishing again.
The noteworthy man gave his own smile, this one much more nefarious in intent. "Well," he began, his smile growing wider as he spoke. "if you like it so much, you can go out there and fix it."
"sudo. map. trace, stability, details=5"
Scarlet intently studied his multitome as he ran his finger over it. Blood rose from the page until it took the shape of the landscape around Scarlet. The blood also took the shape of several flashing circles centered around a handful of spots.
Scarlet frowned. "This place is no good too. Looks like the ground is weak over there." Scarlet pointed as he spoke.
Akarin emerged from the forest and willed her body to become visible. "Yeah, we can't use this forest."
Scarlet looked at her, confused. "Why were you using your shadow-technique?"
"There were a surprising number of predators in that forest. We might need to look into that, actually."
Milk clapped her hands. "Well, if we've determined that this area is unsuitable then it's time to get back in the dragon-ship. Scarlet, where's the next location?"
"Uhhh," Scarlet opened his multitome and prepared to switch to a map of Proy Bria. "It's— wait, hold on." He issued a command to his multitome which zoomed in on a location, rather than zooming out.
"What's wrong?" Milk asked.
Scarlet frowned. "There's a Way. It's about 100 feet that way. I think we should take a look."
Milk shrugged. "Well, checking it out wouldn't hurt." She gestured over her shoulder. "Let's go."
The long-eared individual with a hat sighed as his name tag fell off his shirt. He sighed yet again as he looked at it, making a mental note that he would need to get it fixed. It was supposed to read Ta'dgh, but the g and the h had become difficult to read.
He attached the name back to his shirt before he took a deep breath. He had to leave the safety of the city to maintain the security system.
He was at least partially confident that the divine energy-blocking clothing they had developed would work. Well, they had worked before, that was how they got the system out there in the first place, but there was no guarantee. He had heard horror stories about people who went outside with faulty blockers and didn't make it back. He didn't want to become yet another cautionary tale they tell to new recruits.
He took one last look at a picture of his family before closing his eyes and walking through the Way.
After a few moments, he opened an eye and smiled as he realized he wasn't dying due to heavy radiation exposure. Another few moments later, he turned and started moving towards the security system.
After a brief walk, he reached the camera, a spinning sphere carefully hidden in a nearby tree. Or, at least, that's what it was supposed to look like.
Instead, the State Of The Art™ security system that he spent so long convincing the Council of Three to install was now just sitting there, not doing anything,
"Hmm," Ta'dgh muttered, "That's not good."
He took the bag off of his back and began to rummage through it.
"Ah, here we go." He pulled out a wrench. "Let's see what this'll do." He readied his stance and swung the wrench at the security system. To his surprise, it began spinning again.
"Oh, that worked? Neat." Ta'dgh said before turning to walk away with a slight smile.
He didn't get the chance, however.
"Hey!" a mysterious voice shouted from nearby. Ta'dgh turned towards it and saw several people walking towards him.
He thought back to his training on what to do if he was approached while out in the field.
Unfortunately, he found, he had forgotten it all, so he used Plan B.
Run.
However, he didn't get very far as after a few seconds he tripped on a rock, causing his face to plummet into a nearby, even bigger rock.
they find esterberg
maybe fae find them first?
esterberg is falling apart
there are very weak Ways in and out of the city
fae bring them to underfrogian settlement underground in proy bria
"well technically, it's the 42nd republic"
underfrogians have a lot of divine energy blocking technology
fae are like "Esterberg is slowly falling apart without a baseline city connection"
scarlet decides he wants to try do help them