A City of Stone!

[Brian]

"Okay!"  Liao stepped into the city's hall, and looked around.

[Dracos]

It was a fairly homely and modern looking city hall, with a handful of scared folks barricaded up here as the police officer locked the door behind Liao, heading back to a post near the door.

Dracos

[Brian]

Liao frowns.  "Is this a special occasion, or is something wrong?" he asks the man in uniform quietly.

[Dracos]

"Huh?  You didn't see 'em boy?"  The officer asked.

Dracos

[Brian]

"I saw no one," Liao replies, shrugging.  "The streets were empty."

[Dracos]

"Huh... anyhow, something weird happened a couple hours ago.  Folks just suddenly started acting strange, zombie-like, going after and attacking whoever they saw.  I gathered up the few of us who weren't affected and we've been barricaded up here for the last hour."

Dracos

[Brian]

"Zombies?" Liao asks, frowning.  "Does that happen a lot?"

[Dracos]

"Where you from boy?  I've never seen anything like it in all my days."

Dracos

[Brian]

"Desert Town," Liao says, annoyed at repeating himself.  Looking at the children, he checks quickly if any of them look like they have stars on them.  If they don't, he'll go ask, just in case.

[Dracos]

Heading around the building, he found rather few kids around.  None that seemed to have stars showing.

Dracos

[Brian]

Liao asks the other children, "Did any of you happen to get a star recently?"

[Dracos]

One of the younger kids nodded hapilly and reached into a schoolbag.  "Yup!  Here." He showed a vocabulary paper where he got an A with a nice gold star on it.

Dracos

[Brian]

"Oh," Liao says, frowning at the star.  "What about one like this?" he asks, showing his own star to the other kids.

[Dracos]

The kids ooh'ed and aaah'ed...

Then shook there heads.  "Nope, Mister.  I ain't seen anything like that before."

Dracos

[Brian]

Liao nods.  The answer he is looking for cannot be found here.

He heads to the door, wondering if he'll be able to convince the man there to let him back out.