Liao quickly arrived in a city that looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. It was a city of gray stone.. with paths of smooth gray rock between towering giant buildings. Smoke was visible coming from some of these buildings, the larger one's with several smoke stacks.
A sign nearby welcomed him with a "Welcome to Sixton."
Dracos
Liao 'slowed' his pace up to a light jog, and looked around, bewildered. The stone houses of the city seemed odd, compared to his own home. Slowing a bit further, until he was only standing still on a street corner, Liao considered his options.
He was supposed to find a single person in all of this?
That was a very good question. Especially with the simple description given by the elders that could apply to...almost anyone. So he stood for a moment with a bag on his shoulders. Maybe exploring this weird city would turn something up?
Dracos
Unleashing a sigh, Liao trudges towards the heart of the city, keeping an eye out for ... something.
He noticed something odd pretty soon.
The streets, they were quiet. Nary a sound was made as he walked around.
No people either. At least, none that he could see.
Dracos
Liao frowned, and looked around. If only he knew where to go in this city ... if only something stood out.
Sighing, he trudged towards what he guessed to be the heart of the city. The center of the city should have people in it, at least.
He spotted a big building with 'City Hall' written on it. No one outside though.
Dracos
"A hall for the city," Liao murmurs to himself. "I bet the city's people are in its hall!"
Liao jogs to the doorway of the building.
The door was locked. How annoying. But he could hear some life inside.
Dracos
Looking around, and shivering at the emptiness of the big city, Liao knocked on the door.
"Huh? Who is it?" A slightly frightened voice asked.
Dracos
"It is Liao, from Desert Village," Liao replies as cheerfully as he can manage. "I'm looking for someone." He pauses, assembling what information he has on who he is looking for in his mind: "Have you seen them?"
The door unlocked, a police officer looking out. "Huh? Hey...you're normal."
Dracos
"Thank you," Liao says, smiling. "I'm looking for someone who has one of these," he continues, showing the man the star briefly. "Have you seen anyone who has one?"
"huh...you're a strange kid. Come on in where's it's safe. I've never seen something like that before." The older man gestured inside.
Dracos
"Okay!" Liao stepped into the city's hall, and looked around.
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
Liao frowns. "Is this a special occasion, or is something wrong?" he asks the man in uniform quietly.
"Huh? You didn't see 'em boy?" The officer asked.
Dracos
"I saw no one," Liao replies, shrugging. "The streets were empty."
"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
"Zombies?" Liao asks, frowning. "Does that happen a lot?"
"Where you from boy? I've never seen anything like it in all my days."
Dracos
"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.
Heading around the building, he found rather few kids around. None that seemed to have stars showing.
Dracos
Liao asks the other children, "Did any of you happen to get a star recently?"
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
"Oh," Liao says, frowning at the star. "What about one like this?" he asks, showing his own star to the other kids.
The kids ooh'ed and aaah'ed...
Then shook there heads. "Nope, Mister. I ain't seen anything like that before."
Dracos
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.
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
"It's me, Phil!" the boy shouted. "Lemme in, everyone's acting really weird out here!"
Liao shrugged, and opened the door.
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
"Are there zombies in the city?" Liao asks curiously, suspecting the boy might have better information than the officer.
"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?"
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?"
The officer blocks up the door again once they are both inside.
Dracos
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!"
"Robots?" Liao asks. "What are those?" Liao pauses, and pulls out his star once more. "Did you see anything that looked like this?"
"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.
Looking through his bag, he finds a similiar symbol. Slightly different color and formation, but obviously of the same type.
Dracos
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?"
"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?"
"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."
"Why don't we try getting rid of the robots?" Liao asks. "Are they afraid of water like cats are?"
Phil thinks for a minute. "They COULD be, I guess. They should use electronics, and those always mess up a lot when you get them wet. But there's not really any water anywhere near where they're building all the ships. I guess I could make something like an ultimate water gun or something, but I'd still run out of water eventually."
"Well, we should only need to get rid of a few of them before they run away, right?" Liao asks.
"Uh... no, we'd probably have to get all of them. They probably won't run away at all, ever." Phil frowns a bit. "I thought you didn't know what robots were?"
"One animal is much the same as any other," Liao says dismissively. "Are they poisonous? We had scorpions near my home."
"They're not animals, they're machines. They usually do what they're told until they're told to stop, and I don't know how to tell them to stop." Phil explains. "They'd probably stop working if they got wet, but I don't really know what they'd do if they saw us."
"Oh," Liao says, re-evaluating his plan of attack. "Machines? I've never really learned how to fight against them."
Phil stopped for a minute, still thinking. "I don't know fighting very much, but I do know machines.... hmm. There's got to be something somewhere that tells the robots what to do. If we can find that - probably some kind of central computer or something - and stop that, we can probably stop all the robots at once. But first we'd have to figure out where it is."
"Well, finding a computer to stop some machines is good, I guess, but I wouldn't even begin to know where to search." Liao shrugs. "The elders say that for woodworking you go to a carver, and for food you go to a cook. Oh, I just remembered I forgot to say goodbye to my mom." Liao mulls this over for a moment. "I'll just go home before dinner, then. Anyway, who do you go to for computers?"
The officer gestured. "Hey kids, why don't you head towards the offices where it's more comfortable."
Dracos
Phil nodded absently, his mind working as he walked on towards the offices. "I bet I could stop the computer if I could get to it, but how would I get to it?" he mused. "And are the robots what are making everyone act like zombies?"
"What does a computer look like?" Liao asks, falling into step behind Phil.
"They can look like a lot of different things, but the kind that would control a bunch of robots like that would probably look like a big metal box with lights on it, or a bunch of metal boxes. It's probably somewhere up in the mountains, though."
"Small metal houses in the mountains," Liao muses. "Okay. So we have to stop it to stop the robots?"
"That's my best guess, yeah," Phil replied. Something that had been bothering him for a few minutes finally made its way to the front of his mind, now.
"Who are you, anyway?"
"I'm Liao, from Desert Town," Liao replies cheerfully. "Who are you?"
"I'm Phil," the dark-haired boy replies. "Nice to meet you, I think. Or it'd be nicer if the town wasn't full of zombies."
Shaking his head, he gave the boy a puzzled look. "Desert Town? Where's that? There's no deserts anywhere near Sixton."
"I walked a long way," Liao says, gesturing vaguely. "But I think we need to worry about the zombies, right now. We'll need to get rid of them and the robots, and the computer, in order to make this place go back to normal, I guess?"
"Yeah..." Phil replied, frowning a bit. "I just hope stopping those robots will stop everyone from being a zombie, too."
Shaking his head, he looks at the other boy. "So what do you think? Should we go now? It's a long ways up into the mountains, and it's already nighttime."
"We could go," Liao said. "I think we'd make it very quickly, but.... Do we have a plan?"
"Well, sort of," Phil says, scratching his head. "I thought the first thing was to find the main computer that's controlling all the robots and stop it. Then if that doesn't stop the zombies, try to figure out what's making everyone act so weird. But if you've got a better idea, fire away."
"'Wisdom is not always found from within'," Liao says. "But, I was asking if there was anyone we could talk to about robots and computers first. Maybe someone who knows something about what's going on."
"I don't think anyone else DOES know about the robots," Phil replied, shaking his head. "I mean I'd never heard about anything like it until I went to look, and I wouldn't have even looked if I hadn't seen something metal come down in the mountains during the meteor shower last night. We could probably ask around, but I doubt anyone else will know anything either."
Liao nods thoughtfully. "Well, it's late. Why don't we go, peek around, and see what information we can gather. Then we can come back here and plan better," he suggests.
"Sounds okay to me," Phil nodded. "And hey - thanks."
"No problem!" Liao says cheerfully. "Now which way do we need to go?"
"Well, I'm not sure who else is here," Phil says. "Are there other people here besides the police?"
"I don't know," Liao admits. "I just got here. But I figured we should go since we both have stars. The ones with the stars are supposed to keep the world from getting dark. That's what I learned."
"If you say so," Phil replies somewhat dubiously, looking down at the star emblem still in his hand. "Anyway, where'd that policeman go?" The boy heads out of the office, looking around for anyone else.
Laio follows Phil, trying to work out in his mind how to take Phil with him if he teleports.
Maybe if Phil walked behind him he could come too?
Phil saw a few adults around. The police officer was guarding the door. He seemed to be the authority around here really.
But that wasn't so important.
Why?
Because Freddy the soda man was here.
And he had his cart.
Dracos
Phil broke into a grin at the sight of his friend. "Freddy!" Quickly dashing over to the cart, he gave the soda man a concerned look. "Are you okay? What happened, anyway?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. How about you kid? It's been weird. I was in my shop and all of a sudden folks started complaining about the music and all... and then acting weird, grabbing folks and such. I barely got out of there and saw the police gathering folks over here. So I'm hiding out here until everything calms down."
Dracos
Phil shakes his head. "You'd never believe it, Freddy. I went up into the mountains and saw a bunch of robots building what LOOKED like UFOs! I just wonder if that's what's making everyone act so weird - my dad was like a zombie when I got back home."
"Woah. Robots? Huh. It's getting to be a regular sci-fi movie down here. I hope the feds get here soon." The lanky soda guy responded.
Dracos
Not wanting to distract Phil, but curious anyway, Liao quietly asks him, "Is a 'Fed' like an elder?"
Phil blinks. "What's an elder? Anyway, the Feds are like the really big police - they'd be able to take care of all of this, I bet. If they know what's going on."
"Yeah. You two should stay out of the way until they arrive." Freddy suggested.
Dracos
Liao makes a thoughtful noise, and nods, but is wondering if all the Feds have stars like he and Phil. Are they up to the challenge? "Well, what is our plan then, Phil?" he asks.
Phil pulls up short at that - how is he supposed to know? "Um... I don't know. Hey Freddy, do you know if anyone's actually CALLED the Feds yet?"
"Well, Mayor Ghirdari was supposed to. He's in his office."
Dracos
Liao looks to Phil for guidance, not really familiar with the art of summoning the Feds.
"I'd better go tell him what I found then, so he can tell them. You coming, Liao?" Phil looks over at his new companion.
Liao nods. "Lead the way," he says, gesturing to Phil.
dum, du dum, duu duum...dududududud....
They walked over to the Mayor's office.
The door was unlocked.
Entering they found... No one was here? How strange.
Dracos
Liao looked around the room for a bit, wondering if there was another door, before looking to Phil inquisitively.
Phil looked around for a minute, clearly puzzled. "Mayor Ghirdari? Are you here?" he called out uncertainly, also taking a moment to look around the office.
No one answered. Checking around, he found the closet was unlocked.
Dracos
Seeing as the Mayor seemed to be out for the moment - and the fact that he was either naturally curious or a nosy little punk, depending on your choice of phrasing - Phil decided to take a look inside the closet, to see what kind of mayor-ish things would be within.
Inside he found... Some books, some photos, a lot of filing cabinents...and what appeared to be a secret passage.
Dracos
Phil blinked. Twice. "Uhh.. Liao, do you see this? Why would the mayor have a secret passage in his closet?"
"It's a secret?" Liao asks. "Oh. Well. Maybe he wanted to get to the bathroom, and couldn't look dignified if he had to run there?"
"Ummm... I don't think that's it," Phil replied. "Grownups don't run to the bathroom very often, at least not that I've seen."
The boy pushed his way into the closet, trying to get an idea of where the passage leads.
"Of course you haven't seen them," Liao says patiently. "That's why their passageways are secret. Let's see where it leads."
It probably lead downstairs, towards the underground, if the stairs were any indication.
Dracos
"Might as well, since the mayor's not here. Maybe he's down here somewhere," Phil suggests, heading down the stairs.
Heading downstairs, they found an underground passageway, leading north. It was pretty dark down here though, so they'd probably want a flashlight.
Dracos
Noting the encroaching darkness, Phil withdraws his trusty electric flowerpot from his backpack, using it to illumine the way ahead.
ILLUMINATION!
Phil can now see the way forward down the tunnel, it's long and curvy. Who knows where it ends?
Dracos
Phil kept the pace, checking every few minutes to make sure that his companion was keeping up with him okay. It would really suck to get stuck down here in the dark.
Liao follows pensively, reminded of the last time he was in a dark room.
"Okay," he says. "I guess this might not be a bathroom."
Heading along, they traveled forth into the tunnel.
It was a long time. Might've even been hours. Eventually, they found the end of it.
Another door.
Leading...to another stairwell.
This time headed up!
Dracos
"Actually," Liao says, breaking the silence, and eyeing the stairwell. "I kind of hope they do have a bathroom around here. I kind of need to go...."
Freddy's soda is beginning to make its presence felt, Phil nodding in agreement. "Hopefully we can find one here, wherever here is."
Well, climbing up, they find themselves inside some building. It's pretty dark but shining the light around reveals it to be some empty garage.
Dracos
"Huh," Liao says. "This is a funny place. What's it for?" He turns to look at Phil curiously.
Phil looks around, just as puzzled. "It... looks like a really big garage, but there's nothing here. Are we at the factory or what?" The young boy looks around for any kind of identifying markings or landmarks to give a clue as to where this is.
None found inside. There was a door though. Maybe it was unlocked.
Dracos
Giving a small shrug, Phil tried the door. Nothing else seemed to be standing out here, anyway.
The door opened out...leading onto a small dirt road.
Following it lead to..hey, he'd been here before. This was the gas station on the edge of town. They had the best little ice cream cones here.
Dracos
"Wow, this is way out on the edge of town," Phil said, looking around in surprise. "Why would the mayor have a tunnel to come all the way out here?"
Phil stepped out of the doorway, looking around to see if anyone was there.
Well, the lights were on in the gas station.
Dracos
"We might as well go in," Liao says, frowning. "I hope they have a bathroom."
Heading in they find some college kid manning the desk.
Taking a look at them, he quickly guesses. "The bathroom is in the back, kids."
Dracos
Liao doesn't say anything, and just heads to the back. Bathroom! Urgently needed!
Moments later, the two of them are back in reasonable comfort, standing in a gas station, miles outside of town. It is pretty late by now really, the two are kind of tired.
Dracos
Laio briefly considers his options, and then says, "Well. If the elder was in that room, and the passage led here, he's probably somewhere close by. Or at least a clue might be. Should we look for something, or head back and explain what we found?"
Phil thought for a minute. "We might as well look around here first. What do we really have to explain? Yeah, it's weird that there's a tunnel from the mayor's closet all the way out here, but WHY did he have it?"
"Well, it did lead to a bathroom," Liao observes, shrugging. "But, um ... well, let's start looking around." Liao suits actions to words, peering about in the darkness for something that stands out.
"The bathroom in the city hall is a LOT closer," Phil comments wryly, mimicing his companion's search.
Looking around, they saw a small road, leading past the gas station. If they crossed it, they found some woods, looked pretty creepy at this hour really. Heck, there were some on the other side here as well as they were really getting away from the city with this.
Dracos
"Well ... now what?" Liao asks, frowning.
"Find someplace to sleep," Phil replied, stifling a cavernous yawn. It had been a long hike today - twice - plus all the excitement back in town. "I'd rather not go crawling through the woods in the middle of the night - no telling WHAT we could run into out there in the dark."
Hmm...Not a lot of places out here. They could camp out. Try walking back, but that'd be reaaaally tiring. They could camp the building they came out of. Or maybe ask the guy at the gas station for a ride back?
Dracos
"Let's just go back to the town hall," Liao decides. "They might be looking for us there anyway. Follow me, I know a shortcut."
Liao looks around and decides that the road is a good place to run along to teleport.
Liao started ahead on the road, one step, then another, then another...
Before they knew it, they were back in town, standing near the ice cream shop.
Dracos
Phil is rather wide-eyed as the town hall comes into sight.
"How did you DO that?"
"Well, you put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing that until you get to where you're going," Liao explains, yawning a bit. "I'm tired," he says, suddenly changing the subject. "We should get some sleep, and go back to the gas station once we wake up to look around."
Phil pushes on into the town hall, producing a tiny bundle from his pack - a bundle with a tiny button on the top of it. "Here," he says, handing it to Liao. "Find us a good open space, then press that button."
They didn't have much trouble getting a room to themselves, the building was quite large compared to the amount of 'survivors'
Dracos
Shrugging, Liao set the bottle down, and then pressed the button expectantly.
A small house popped up in the room with some miniture convienences. Just sized right.
Dracos
Go in, go to sleep, and let's continue MOVING >_<
Phil spends the night in relative comfort, awakening sometime after dawn - the sunlight coming in through the windows is most disturbing to a good night's rest. Rousing his companion, he heads for the secret passageway back out to the gas station - while Liao's trick is handy, he's not exactly sure where the gas station is now.
It was about eleven by the time they got there.
Wasn't much more to see by daylight, except for the fact it was clear the building they'd come out of before was really kind of a hole in the wall type place. You could hardly see it from the main road in daytime.
Dracos
"Well," Liao murmured. "Where from here? The road goes two ways ... one which we've already been down, and one we haven't. But is that the entirety of it?"
"There could be any number of ways to go OTHER than the road, but how would we tell which way to go?" Phil begins to look around for any sign of a trail away from the road.
Nope, no real trail into the woods anywhere. No signs of footprints around save their own. Maybe there's some clues in the building though?
Dracos
Phil takes a quick glance inside the run-down looking gas station. Wasn't there someone here last night?
Yes, there was! He gave them the keys to the bathroom.
But the place seems empty today, with a closed sign on the door.
Dracos
Phil takes a moment to check the door, then heads for the road out of town, shaking his head. "I just hope this gets Dad back to normal."
Doesn't seem to be anything on the road really.
Dracos
"Do you think maybe there was something in that bathroom we missed?" Liao speculates.
A brief recollection of the bathroom deems that this is highly unlikely.
Dracos
"Or," Liao says, looking at Phil curiously. "In that shop?"
"I dunno," Phil replies, frowning a bit. "The door's locked now, although this place should definitely be open now - it's almost noon, all the other stores I know of are open by then."
The boy walks around the building, looking for any other entrances. Or exits.
There was the back door, but that too was locked. Seems like the owner didn't even open up today.
Dracos
Finding nothing of interest at the gas station, Phil heads over to check out the building the two emerged from the tunnel into. Adjusting the straps of his backpack - that thing was getting heavier by the minute - he pushed open the door to the building, looking to see what was inside.
Nothing really of notice along the walls. The floor was bare except for huh...some oil around the floor, all near one spot. Not a lot of it, more of like the little puddles some machines leave.
Dracos
Setting his pack down - this seems like as good a time and place as any to get rid of some of that junk he'd picked up - Phil takes a closer look at the spots on the floor, trying to see what kind of oil it is. Was a car parked here or something?
Eww, god that stunk. Yup though, smelled like car oil. This place could've been used as a garage, but would've had to been recently, in the last few days, since otherwise it would've dried.
Dracos
Wrinkling his nose, Phil heads over to his pack, opening it to spill out the contents across the ground - junk and gadgets alike. Moving his own inventions aside, he began to look over the stuff he'd picked up, to see if there was anything of use right now - it was getting too heavy to haul all of it around.
Let's see, lots of fancy transmitter circuitry here, it looked like. Some tubes and piping, a bit bent, but servicable. A few small batteries that had looked nifty. And then there was that crest he picked up that Liao had been so interested in. Hum, a couple of bent and damaged satellite dishes too. Also a nifty magnetic coil. Those are always cool.
Dracos
"Lots of transmitting stuff here," Phil mutters, organizing the scraps into piles by use. Grabbing some of the pipes, the magnetic coil, and the batteries, he sets the rest against one wall, to come back for it later. His pack settled - and considerably lighter, now - he heads over to take a closer look at the area around the oilstains - maybe there are some kind of tire tracks or something he can follow.
He did not see some by the oil stains BUT he did notice some of the grass near the front of the doors bent in as if something heavy had rolled over it in a distinctly carlike fashion.
Dracos
The dark-haired boy motions to Liao. "This way - there are tire tracks or something, headed this way."
"I'm not familiar with these tracks," Liao admits, watching Phil's handiwork. "And ... what are all those metal bits?"
"Parts I picked up when I was at the place where I saw all the UFOs," Phil replies, following the tracks outside. "I can use them to make things, sometimes."
"Oh. Where is that place from here?" Phil asks.
"Hmm..." Phil takes a moment to get his bearings, finally pointing out the direction once he's sure where the area was.
Liao looks for anything meaningful in the direction Phil is pointing.
There's trees. And more trees.
And somewhere in the distance he can sort of make out MOUNTAINS.
But...yeah, uh, not much else visible from here on the roadside.
Dracos
"Well, if that's where the trouble is, maybe we should go look there, instead of chasing after the Elder. Because if there's one thing that I learned from home, it's that an Elder who doesn't want to be found is really ... really hard to find," Liao suggests.
"I... never mind," Phil says a bit grumpily. "Let's just go."
And with that, he sets off towards the mountains.
"Let's try and speed things up," Liao suggests, attempting to use his teleport technique to skip across the distance towards the mountain.
Now, teleportation is an odd thing. Usually, it's good to have a solid idea on where you are going when you try it. It helps. On other hands, certain things can, and do, interfere with it.
So when they stopped, spotting the 'Welcome to Cinqville" sign. They really shouldn't have been surprised.
Phil blinks... that was STILL kind of weird to get used to. Taking a moment to get his bearings, his eyes pop once he realizes where they are.
"CINQVILLE?" he splutters. "That's.... miles and miles away from Sixton!"
"Is it?" Liao asks, somewhat surprised. Turning around, he examines his surroundings. "Well, I guess I don't know my way around here so well, then.... Oh well. I think I can remember the way back to the city's hall, or that gas station."