The Curse of Day/Part2H

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2nd Day, 11:50 AM
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In a small restaurant somewhere in Westopolis, a purple echidna sat at a table, checking the time. She had booked the restaurant for noon, which was the time at which she had asked a certain five Mobians to meet her. However, she had shown up as soon as the restaurant opened to make sure that if anyone showed up early, she would be there to greet them.
Padparadscha and Lee walked into the restaurant from the direction of the bus stop. The orange-pink tortoise was panting slightly from the exertion, and paused just inside the doorway to check the antique analog clock which hung on one of the walls of the restaurant. It read 11:51. She glanced around, and upon spotting the purple echidna, began to make her slow way to the table where the mysterious reporter sat. “Hi?” she said, timidly, “I’m Rasha, and this is Lee.” She gestured vaguely in Lee’s direction. “Why did you want us to come here?”
Lee grabbed a chair and set it facing away from Taru-na, but sat backwards to face the table she was at. After a few moments a holo-screen appeared out of his still-covered left arm, he seemed to be designing something. His fingers stopped moving when Skylor walked in and lee's jaw dropped. "You're Skylor the Blazewolf! you fought the Mettalix swarm with my parents!" She cocked her head slightly "What?" Then much to the confusion of everyone else, Lee began to explain who exactly he was.
"That's very nice," said the echidna, cutting off Lee before he could speak, "but we're here for a very specific reason and I need to get this information to you as soon as possible..." She paused and checked her tablet. "Wait, not everyone's here...and it's not the appointment time...oh well..." She looked up. "Sorry for cutting you off, I guess we have some time to talk. First things first, though. I'm Taru-Na, and I'm a reporter here in Westopolis. I'm here to give you some vital information on the plans of a megalomaniac so that you can stop him. I'll stop talking now; is there anything you want to say before I continue?"
"A megalomaniac‽" Padparadscha gaped at Taru-Na. "And you want me – us – to do what‽"
"Uh...yeah, a megalomaniac," said Taru-Na, taken aback momentarily by Padparadscha's alarm. She then resumed her normal speed as she said, "Somebody's trying to take over the world, and...what I want you to do—all of you—not you," she said, waving away the waiter, "what I want all of you who are NOT building staff to do is simply to find some items which the potential world ruler needs to control the world before he finds them." She paused to allow someone else to speak.
Skylor found herself a seat, listening and occasionally glancing at lee curiously. lLe countinued fiddling with his holo-screen, seeming distracted but paying attention "Here we go again......" He said under his breath
Muttering something about “megalomaniacal world rulers” under her breath, Padparadscha pulled a pencil out of her back pocket and started absentmindedly sketching hats on the back of one of the restaurant’s paper takeout menus.
Taru-Na looked around at her distracted and confused audience for a couple of seconds, then said, "Alright, let me skip to the important and time-sensitive bit of the plan. I know the whereabouts of all of the items that I mentioned before, and one of them is right here, in this city." Taru-Na looked down at her tablet for a moment, then said, "This would-be world ruler seems to be heading for this one last, meaning that he's probably going to take some time to get to it...if he's not lying, which he probably is. The point is," Taru-Na looked up from her tablet, facing her meeting's attendees, "I need you all to search this city until you find this item. I don't know how long it'll take, but I need you to get it as soon as possible."
"Ti no." Lee said in an alternative dialect, then walked, albeit quietly, towards the door.
Padparadscha had been studying her companions, and she'd come to the conclusion that all of them were acting as if the talk of stopping megalomaniacs and searching cities for mysterious items were completely normal. Herself, she was startled, she was scared – but waxing in her was a curiosity about what would happen next. This was the kind of thing that would probably make its way into the evening news, the participants lionized. She didn't want to be just the tortoise who provided a mundane contrast for the heroes with her naïveté. Sighing, Padparadscha decided that she could never forgive herself for walking away from this chance to be part of something so exciting and important, many though were the sensible protests which clamored in her head. Besides, she thought, she could provide the others with a voice of reason, or at least make sure that the future heroes received proper medical attention when their escapades inevitably saw them injured. "Lee, wait!" she said, before he reached the door. Turning to Taru-Na, she quickly asked, "Do you have any idea of what we're looking for? Also, can tell us up front why you brought this to us, instead of, say, the local law enforcement officers? It will probably save us a lot of trouble further down the line."
Taru-Na responded, "You're looking for something referred to as a Sol Emerald, which means that it probably looks like a rectangular prism with its corners cut off. Since it's from an alternate timeline, however, it may look slightly different. Also, my notes here say that it was observed to be blue when first sighted a day and a half ago, but, again, it may not look like that any more."
"Umm... I'm kind a self-appointed guardian of the sol emeralds, i can't track them or anything but they're my responsibility. and I've help save a world before" Skylor's voice trailed off "Although i didn't have to find anything, just fight a planet of robots and kaiju........" Lee returned from his journey to the door (In which he had headbutted the wall) and sat down where he was before.
"Well then," said Taru-Na, turning to Skylor, "you should probably know what the Sol Emeralds look like, which will be a great asset to the team. As to why I brought this to you," she said, turning to face Padparadscha, "I did contact the local law enforcement officers, but they're already busy with weird supernatural occurrences. Examples include a ravine popping up in the middle of a road, to be replaced one hour later with a giant castle, which has then disappeared by the next time the police visit the scene. I strongly believe this to be connected to the location of the Sol Emerald in this city...I think that someone incredibly powerful is protecting it in unconventional ways. At any rate, the fact that the police are so busy forced me to turn to somebody else, and since I didn't want to reveal this to the public to avoid attracting additional adversaries, I decided to grab some competent-looking strangers...which is you three," she said, looking around at her assembled group.
Padparadscha decided to be flattered at the implication that she looked competent, and let her incredulousness at the phenomena Taru-Na had described pass without commenting. “So, we’re looking for something we may or may not recognize, which is under the extraordinarily complex, unreasonable, and mutating protections of some unknown person known to be extremely powerful, who, presumably, doesn’t want us to take it. Right? Okay, let’s go get it.” Her voice grew slightly hysterical. “But I’ll be fascinated to see how you plan to protect it from this megalomaniacal world ruler even better than it already is, because, frankly, I can’t think of a way.”
Lee grinned slightly, the more Rasha talked, the more she reminded him of someone he knew. He suddenly took a more serious face, straightening his thoughts.
"Good point," said Taru-Na, looking thoughtful. "That may make retrieving this Emerald unnecessary...or then again, it might make it really important..." Taru-Na looked down at her tablet for a few seconds before looking back up. "Okay, I've changed my request. If you can find some peaceable way of doing so, decide amongst yourselves which of these two things you want to do: try to find out the motives of the person, people, thing, or things protecting the Sol Emerald here; or try to find the next closest Emerald, which I know nothing about other than that it's over in the Chemical Plant and that it's yellow." Taru-Na paused for a moment, then said, "Just try to pick something for all of you to do as a team, because splitting up is almost always for the worst."
Padparadscha looked somewhat taken aback that Taru-Na had actually taken her concerns seriously. "I'll go along with whichever option the rest of you want;" she murmured, feeling sheepish about her outburst (vindicated though it had been), "after all, I'm pretty sure all of you have more experience with this sort of thing than I do."
Skylor was pondering what Taru-Na had said, not fully hearing Rasha's statement "I'd rather look around here than go to a chemical zone; if something happens there, I won't be able to do anything without... Causing an explosion?...."
"Hmm...that might be a problem..." Taru-Na's fingers flicked across her tablet for a moment. "Exactly what supernatural powers do you have that might cause chemicals to spontaneously combust? Knowing the answer is...kind of important for the rest of the plan."
She hesitated, then stuck her hand out into the middle of the table. It burst into blue flame after a moment. "It's not real fire, but it would cause... You know." Skylor clenched her hand into a fist, suffocating the "fire".
"Good to know," said Taru-Na. "Okay, before anyone else comes up with more ways that certain locations won't work, let me give you a full list of places you might be going so you can figure out what's wrong with them." Taru-Na looked at her tablet. "Locations: Westopolis, Marble Ruins (it's full of fire and grass and, of course, marble), Starlight City (just a perfectly normal city), Wing Fortress (what it sounds like), IceCap Mountain (also self-explanatory), Chemical Plant (that's self-explanatory as well...wow, these zone names are actually pretty good!) and Mystic Cave (full of crushing vines)." Taru-Na looked up from her tablet. "If anyone has any updated concerns now that I've given you the full location list, fire ahead."
Lee spoke audibly to Taru-na for the first time "I think we're all good here."
"Good to know," said Taru-Na. "So, where are you all going to go first?"
"If no one else has any opinions one way or another," Padparadscha spoke up, after a few moments of silence, "Starlight City sounds like the nicest of the places we'll have to go, so we might begin with that one. How far away is it? Also, what do you know about the Sol Emerald there, and what if any obstacles surround it?"
"The Sol Emerald there is cyan," said Taru-Na, checking her tablet, "and it should be somewhere between 2 and 4 days away with...some unspecified mode of transport. Other than that, I know nothing there about Starlight City (besides what I told you before)." Taru-Na looked up from her tablet. "Sorry, but my information is really bad. Taglumo took terrible notes...which is not surprising, considering that they were in plain sight during his giant speech. Oh right, that's the name of this megalomaniacal would-be world ruler: Taglumo. So anyway, where does everyone else want to go? If no one speaks up, I'll assume Starlight City."
Padparadscha carefully kept her mouth shut, and looked expectantly at the other would-be adventurers who sat around the table.
Skylor spoke up unsure "I suppose..."
The door opened once again, revealing the droopy-quilled Alexia, shivering. "Hello," she said to the group timidly. ""I eavesdropped on a conversation accidentally, and I've come to realize that you all could... use some assistance?" Alexia sighed, closed her eyes, and looked down to the floor. "I'm not the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest... but I don't want to have this world controlled by a man with questionable morals knowing I didn't do anything."
Taru-Na looked over to Alexia. "Hi there, thanks for coming, have a seat," she said. Turning back to the others, she said, "This is—apparently—the fifth member of your team, whose name is..." Taru-Na paused to let Alexia fill in her name.
"H-H-Hello, everyone. My name is Aqua the Hedgehog of the Flora Cats... tribe..." Alexia stopped, realizing how stupid she sounded. "I mean, I-I'm a hedgehog, but my village is full of wildcats. Um...." Aqua, feeling embarrassed, blushed. The temperature around them slowly became ten degrees colder.
"That's fine," said Taru-Na, reaching for the heating panel. "I've seen much more bizarre things. If you'd told me that you were a hedgehog and a cat, that wouldn't have been too strange either."
Alexia squealed once she realized she was making the room cooler. She tried to look into Taru-Na's pupils, but her eyes just averted the echidna's. "S-So... this Taglumo guy... do you all have any sort of method for taking him to the police!"
Lee had been listening to Alexia and Taru-Na's conversation when it dawned on him he was the only boy in the group; He pulled his bandanna over his muzzle while his ears pressed themselves behind his head.
"Not really," said Taru-Na, responding to Alexia. "Just announcing a desire to take over the world probably isn't a crime. Also, of course, for all we know, it's just a prank, or he's going to decide not to go through with it after all, or any number of other things might occur which will prevent him from completing his plan even if we don't try to stop it. However, given the large number of competent, mostly successful megalomaniacs who have surfaced in all corners of the world not that long ago, I think that we should get at least one of these Sol Emeralds, just to make sure that if he's serious about this and nothing stops him, that there's something obstructing his plan for universal domination."
"That's smart. So... if he's bluffing, we have a Sol Emerald, and if he's not, we save the world?" Man, she is a really good planner. I hope I can keep up.... "Sorry if I ask too many questions, but how are we going to get a Sol Emerald?"
"Because we know what general areas the Emeralds are in," said Taru-Na. "Of course, we don't know where in these general areas the Emeralds are, but the areas shouldn't be too hard to search...especially if any of you can track energy signals or use any other kind of super-magic-item-finding abilities. If you don't, you can still try to search the areas, though it might take longer."
"Excuse me," Padparadscha said, hesitantly, "it didn't occur to me until right now, but if this Taglumo guy isn't actually trying to take over the world, will we be arrested for stealing the Sol Emerald? Could that happen anyway? Do they belong to anyone? Even if they're just lying around, surely there's someone who put them there, right? Unless... can they move by themselves? Are they that magical?" The tortoise's eyes went wide at that prospect. Her voice was almost a whisper when she added, "If that's the case, I'm sure we would never be able to get one without it wanting to come with us -- Taglumo wouldn't either, for that matter, unless he's frightfully powerful!"
Taru-Na shrugged. "I really don't know the answers to any of these questions. Taglumo might...we could try to ask him...but then again, if he is trying to take over the world like every other recent supervillain, he won't answer us and we'll have lost some time. At any rate, all I know about the Emeralds is approximately where they are and what colors they are; also that Taglumo knows that too. Other than that, I know nothing about them. Does that answer your questions?"
Skylor planted a fist on the table and began to talk. "The emeralds don't necessarily have owners, no one knows where they came from, but they do have guardians. Mobians who will guard the gems with their life from the scum that inhabits the Sol zone. No one knows how they work, so they're kept in a temple away from everyone."
"Do you know if any of the other guardians are here?" asked Taru-Na. "If so, that would answer some of our questions. If not, we're back at square one, but at least we'll have the official guardian seal of approval that we are definitely at square one."
Alexia jumped into the conversation, having a small solution. "I have a friend... he's made of Chaos Energy, and he can sense it anywhere. M-Maybe he can help us try to locate them?" Alexia kicked the floor. "All I have are ice and water powers, but he'd be much more useful than me...."
"I'm sure your powers would be useful," said Taru-Na, "especially if you go to the fire zone, but sensing Chaos Energy would be useful for locating the Emeralds." Taru-Na looked around. "Where exactly is this Chaos Energy-sensing friend of yours?"
"I-I think he's in Trikon City, which is west of Westopolis... But it won't be a problem, I hope. I can call him and pray that he's not busy hanging out with Terra." Alexia reached into the unnoticable pocket of her shirt and whipper out her cell. "Would it be okay... if I called him?"
"That sounds fine," said Taru-Na. "By the way, you've just solved the problem of how I'm going to contact your team, or you, at least."
Skylor picked up the topic of guardians again. "I've only met one other guardian, so no, we're on our own for this one."
Lee engaged in silent conversation with Onyx. "Can you track Sol emeralds?" The entity's voice rang once more. "Umm.. Which ones are those?" Lee groaned quietly. "You're no help."
While Lee complained about the Emeralds, Alexia put her phone to her ear (which she hated doing because it was always uncomfortable). She spoke louder than usual - you could hear her reply to the conversation. "Kennedy, I'm sorry, but I need you. Yes... of course. Could you make it in an hour? Oh.. I'm sure she won't mind. See you later!" Alexia hung up. "My friend Kennedy is coming."
"Thanks for the responses, Aqua, Skylor," Taru-Na said. "Well, I think all that has us covered for the moment. Unless there's something else important that I missed, the next thing on the agenda is probably for you four to decide where you're going to go. Padparadscha already tentatively voted, as did Skylor, so, Lee, Aqua, do you have any votes?"
"I-I vote we spy on this madman before taking action. I f-feel.. while he doesn't have good intentions, he might be a dictator wannabe." Alexia sighed. "Then when my friend comes, we simply take the Emerald and end the mission."
"That would be a good idea," said Taru-Na, "except for one thing: we don't actually know where Taglumo is right now. All I know is that, according to his notes, he should be somewhere between here and Marble Ruins."
"O-Oh... I'm sorry. I don't know just what we should do, then." Aqua heaved a huge sigh. "I suppose we could attempt to scan the area in duos, but... we might get reported for being... n-nuisances." Alexia rested her chin on the table, confused. "We could also wait for him, too - that'd solve the problem of not knowing his intentions."
Taru-Na was silent for a moment, evidently thinking about what Alexia had just said. "Any of those might work," said Taru-Na finally, "but they all have their problems, like any plan based on these terrible notes (honestly, how could he write such terrible notes?). Trying to scan both the area he started in and the area he's theoretically going to would involve splitting up, which is almost always a bad idea. Waiting for him would, according to these notes, involve waiting another 19 days for him to collect six of the Emeralds and come back here to get the last one. Going to a different zone wouldn't have any of these problems, but it would greatly increase the chances that he would get the Emerald he's looking for (if he's serious about this), and it wouldn't give us any more information about his plans. This...is a pretty difficult situation."
"No kidding." A grey Chaos Tiger donning a grey jacket and grey jeans (he was a fan of grey) walked over to the group and pulled out a chair from another table to sit on. He sat on it and crossed his legs, not realizing Alexia was inching closer to him from behind. She hugged him, which caused the Chaos tiger to smile. "Hello, Alexia. Did I come earlier than expected?"
"Much, Ken. Even with your speed, you-" For a few seconds, Alexia just stood there, mouth agape. She snapped out of it and punched Kennedy in the shoulder lightly. "You teleported! That's cheating."
Kennedy chuckled. "I suppose so." He reached out his hand to Taru-Na. "Greetings, Miss Taru-Na."
Taru-Na shook Kennedy's hand. "Hello, Kennedy. Nice to meet you," she said, withdrawing her hand. "Any ideas about the current dilemma?"
"Kochirakoso yoroshiku," Kennedy replied (meaning "Nice to meet you, too") before scratching his chin at her question. "I say that we split up. If anything Aqua has told me us true, than this Taglumo character isn't a threat. Who I think is dangerous? His potential business partner." He turned to Aqua. "Have you seen Mac since you two separated?"
Alexia shook her head. Kennedy groaned. "Yes, I feared this. Mac is a dangerous opponent who should not be looked over. If he's with Taglumo..." Kennedy stared into space for a few seconds. "Then it is best for me to travel alone."
"...No," said Taru-Na. "Splitting up may be bad, but having someone travel alone is universally worse. Also, we haven't figured out what the rest of the group will do..." She looked at her attendees (minus Kennedy) in a way that seemed to ask for their opinions.
Lee spoke up for the first time since Alexia showed up. "I'm kinda useless right now, I mean my armor's busted and my normal power doesn't come in handy much." Although his voice was slightly muffled by his bandanna
Skylor replied to Taru-na's question. "If we're going to do pairs of two: first of all, there's five of us, but I'd say pair one strong with one weak?"
Kennedy faced Lee. "You need energy, correct?" He lifted his palm, and out came Chaos Energy in the form of fire. It radiated power. "Though I'm not the best with mechanics, I could possibly give this amount to you directly easily."
Lee pushed Kennedy's hand away. "Me and chaos energy don't get along very well, and it's not energy; something's wrong with the actual suit." He seemed to look behind him. "Shut up, I'm not giving you energy."
Kennedy nodded. "I understand. Some people may have harsh and undesired reactions to this type of power. Some have a lust for it and can become monsters due to it." The fire of energy went out and Kennedy placed his left hand on his hip, trying to get into Lee's head and why he was talking behind himself.
Skylor picked the two subject again. "I can put a hurt on someone if I need to, but it looks like we have three weaks. Hows that gonna work?" She looked to Rasha, Alexia and Lee.
"If anything, Alexia is a medium. She acts like a weakling but fights maturely. She is a cryokinetic and a hydrokinetic, has a photographic memory, and a slight sense of precognition. Saying that she's weak is just her trying to hide." Kennedy sighed when he remembered Lee. "I don't know about the boy, but if he changes his mind,might could strengthen him."
Skylor replied. "My issue still stands, there's five of us."
"We don't actually know yet if having an even number of people is necessary," Taru-Na cut in, "or rather, I don't, because you five haven't let me in on the plan yet. What precisely are you thinking of doing? If you let me know, I might be able to help figure out how your team can divide up efficiently."
Padparadscha had been staring off into space for a while, mentally designing a warm hat for Alexia, but she had been listening to the conversation too. She pulled herself out of her thoughts at the question. "I don't think we should split up at all," she said, with surprising vehemence. "You can class each of us as 'weak' or 'strong' if you like, but even the people with the most versatile skill sets or the most raw power will find situations they can't handle, the same way people like me who have limited powers will find situations they are uniquely equipped to handle. For example, I could probably move Taglumo's mind into one of my stuffed animals, if it came to that, and render him relatively harmless without anybody getting hurt, even though I probably couldn't find him by myself, or get to wherever he is. That's why having a team is so important, and I expect it's why Taru-Na got all of us to come here -- right, Taru-Na?"
"Well..." Taru-Na thought for a moment. "That is a good reason. It's not the only reason why I got all of you to come here, but it's probably the best reason, and it's also a good reason for all of you to stick together instead of splitting up into groups. That said, if we can ever work out a plan for what you're going to do, it may turn out that the plan that makes most sense involves splitting up, regardless of the fact that splitting up causes problems. Which bring us back to our prime question: What are all of you going to do? I think some of you already have plans of your own, but you'll need to work out something among yourselves, because we've gone past the point where I can help you. And just make sure that you all agree on the plans, because having the team dissolve into its individual members will be worse than anything that you might come up with between the five of you."
"Oh, I must have misheard you, I thought you said something about splitting into twos." Skylor said, scratching her head shamefully.
Lee spoke. "I'm willing to go with whatever you guys, and girls, have planned. But I do need to fix my armor eventually, so I can catch a guy and go home."
"I'll try to make sure that that works in somewhere," said Taru-Na. "But for right now, we need to figure out a plan. I think we have two main plans that have been suggested: sticking together as a team and going to (probably) Starlight City; or splitting up, having one group search here and having the other group go over to Marble Ruins. I personally don't have any preferences on this matter, so if anyone has any votes on this or any other plans that I didn't notice, now's a good time to speak up."
"I-I vote on the side of staying in our group," Alexia added quickly. "It would be a lot safer to the lot of us, I think." 
Kennedy shook his head. "I vote on the side of splitting up. I can sense Emeralds, and if all of you were with me, there's a chance I'd get the signatures all jumbled up."
"Let me get this straight.. you can track chaos energy sources?" Lee asked, then finished the thought in his head "Then why can't he 'see' Onyx?"
Skylor, rude as usual, ignored Lee. "I'm with Kennedy on this one, I work better with less people around."
Padparadscha was still stuck on what Kennedy had said about "signatures". "Are you saying that you sense the same kind of thing in all of us that you sense in the Emeralds?" she asked. "How does that work? And how are you not constantly being confused by your own 'signature'? Do you learn to tune it out eventually? If you do, could you learn to tune out ours if we stick together? Because I agree with Aqua; even if we're individually weaker when we act as a team -- and I think that would only be true for some of us, anyway -- together, we'd most certainly be stronger than any of us are individually."
"Wait," said Taru-Na. "Kennedy, before you answer that question about energy signatures, I have something to say about our decision-making process." Taru-Na turned to look at everyone in the room as a group. "It looks like we have a tie: two votes for teaming up, two votes for splitting up. So I think this is where I step in as the group organizer and break the tie." Taru-Na paused for breath, then continued, "I vote for everyone sticking together, as a team, for reasons enunciated by Alexia, Padparadscha, and myself. This breaks the tie, so, Kennedy, Skylor, if you two don't mind too much working with everyone else here for the moment, I'd say that you should all go to your next destination together. I'm assuming that that's Starlight City, since that seemed to be the planned destination for the one-team plan?"
Kennedy crossed his arms and nodded gently. "Though I do not exactly agree, I am not so dense that I won't comply to these terms. This was all in complete fairness - thus, I will not whine, but I shall follow." Kennedy sighed. "Starlight City... that is a place that I have yet to visit. I assume you have a map to it or some form of transportation?"
"Actually," said Taru-Na, "I have a map to it and some form of transportation. Well, not exactly a personal form of transportation...but it's in a place that's fairly accessible by public transportation, so you could take an airplane, or a train, or something like that, and get there in a day or so. Unless, of course, you could use your teleportation abilities to teleport everyone there?"
Kennedy put his hand up, his palm instantly igniting with Chaos Energy in the shape of a burning fireplace. "That could work. However, it most likely will not, considering I don't know its coordinates, I don't have energy to lock on to, and if I'm separated from the group, you will all be stuck there."
"Let's go with the public transportation route, then," said Taru-Na, "since I don't know its coordinates, either. I'll book a train for all of you to Starlight City..." Taru-Na tapped and swiped on her tablet a few times, causing a piece of paper to shoot out of the side. "Done. This map should take you to the train, which will depart in about an hour, leaving a considerable amount of time to finish the discussion, contact any employers, and get to the train before it leaves." Taru-Na passed the piece of paper to Padparadscha. "I think I can count on you to get everyone to the train safely. All right, any last questions before we wrap up this discussion?"
Padparadscha's eyes were wide with astonishment as she took the proffered map, and her mouth hung open for a minute as she tried and failed to come up with a suitable reply to Taru-Na's causal declaration of trust. Finally, she settled for letting it go unremarked upon, and asked, "When I have to go somewhere and I can't take public transportation most of the way, I usually ride my kickbike. I caught the bus here, but do you think I should go back to my house and get it to take with us to Starlight City? Actually, do you think they'd let me bring it on the train, either way?"
Taru-Na checked her tablet. "Yes, I think so," she said, looking up from her tablet at Padparadscha. "Probably a good idea to go get it. So, does anyone else have any questions?"
Silence.
"O...kay," said Taru-Na, "I guess we're good to go. I have another place that I have to be quite soon, so like I said, I'll leave it to you guys to get where you need to go. Here's my phone number," Taru-Na passed a piece of paper to Alexia—the only person who she had observed had a phone—and continued, "so if you need to call me for any mission support, feel free to do so. Bye!"
Taru-Na waved and exited the restaurant, leaving the restaurant's other occupants to follow suit.
Category:The Curse of Day