A City of Stone!

[Dracos]

A knocking was heard at the door as Liao returned there.

The guard gesturing hush as he got near the door.  "Who's there?"

Dracos

[Halbarad]

"It's me, Phil!" the boy shouted. "Lemme in, everyone's acting really weird out here!"

[Brian]

Liao shrugged, and opened the door.

[Dracos]

Liao came face to face with a thin brown-haired young lad, his hair messy.  He was dressed in a pair of carpenter pants and a green shirt, with a large backpack on his back.  A spark of inventiveness in the boy's eyes.

Phil, meanwhile, came face to face with a strange boy he'd never seen before, dressed in a white gi who didn't seem to be from around here.

"Heya kid, come inside." THe officer gestured.

Dracos

[Brian]

"Are there zombies in the city?" Liao asks curiously, suspecting the boy might have better information than the officer.

[Halbarad]

"Yeah! My dad was acting like a zombie, and I saw some other kids that were acting really weird too!" Phil blurted out. "What's going on?"

[Brian]

Liao shrugs, and motions Phil into the room to quiet the nervous officer.  "I'm not sure," he says.  "I just got here.  I've never been in a big city before.  Are they all like this?"

[Dracos]

The officer blocks up the door again once they are both inside.

Dracos

[Halbarad]

Phil begins to babble as the two boys walk inside the city hall. "Robots in the mountains... making spaceships! There was a giant dog... and now everyone's acting like zombies!"

[Brian]

"Robots?" Liao asks.  "What are those?"  Liao pauses, and pulls out his star once more.  "Did you see anything that looked like this?"

[Halbarad]

"Huh? What's that?" Phil took a closer look at the emblem in the other boy's hands. "Wait, I thought I saw something... hang on a minute." Phil takes a minute to rummage through his pack. "Didn't I pick up something like that...?" he mutters to himself.

[Dracos]

Looking through his bag, he finds a similiar symbol.  Slightly different color and formation, but obviously of the same type.

Dracos

[Halbarad]

Phil pulls the star out, showing it to his companion. "Like this? I found it in a junk pile near where they were building all the spaceships."

Taking a moment to work through what he'd heard, he finally answered the other boy's question. "And a robot is... wait, you don't know what a robot is?"

[Brian]

"I'm from Desert Town, we don't have them," Liao says, assuming that robots are unimportant.  "But if you've got that crest...."  Liao frowns, and looks thoughtful.  "I was sent to find you, and someone else who had the same crest.  So, now what do we do?"

[Halbarad]

"Find ME? But why? I mean, I don't have any idea what to DO - the town's gone crazy, there are aliens or something up in the mountains, and I haven't got any idea what to do about it."