Recudor: Lost in Quarantine

Lox sighs a bit at his lack of any real discovery, he couldn't help but feel as though he had screwed the whole thing up, maybe if he had been quicker with certain actions, or more efficient. He shrugged it off after a moment and turned to Air as she came back in, explaining her versatilities by showing off her sword to him. Lox smiled a bit and nodded to her. "That's good, not that I'm an expert in combat by any stretch of the imagination, but there was a quote from a book I read when I was younger that I feel is general enough to apply to any situation. 'The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view'. A man by the name of A.T. Kinson...unfortunately I lost some of his finer works in the... Nevermind. Not important." Lox's overall mood seemed to be sinking fairly fast, feeling as he had failed the people left in this little hub they had been running around in, and almost bringing up some emotional wounds from his past that were still healing a bit, he stepped past Air and out into the mini town.

"Well...I guess now we resume the search for Doc. Any ideas where to go from here?" Lox continued examining their surroundings, looking for where they should wander off to next, neither of them had any idea where they were, or where the doc was. Though it seemed if they had any chance of catching back up they'd have to finally start moving on, Lox felt a bit guilty about keeping her so long but he still believed he made the right choice; and that's something to hang his metaphorical hat on.

Airgetlam listens to Lox as he starts to ramble. An interesting quote, she kept pondering on what it exactly meant. She guessed it might have had to do with being set in your ways would lead to your untimely demise or similar. She had never heard of that A.T. Kinson fellow though. She'll have to look him up the next time she peruses a bookstore. She takes out the notebook she keeps with her and starts writing in it, inscribing the man's name into the sheets. She looks back at Lox, scratching her head. She looks both ways up and down the street, but of course she doesn't have a compass, another thing she should look into, and she doesn't have... the radar, why didn't she think of asking for that before if she knew she was going to be tracking Doc? She probably would have found years ago, metaphorically speaking. Sharpe must still have it. If Doc has it... that would be a real inconvenience to all involved parties.

"Uh, I think we should just head the way we were originally heading instead of changing direction, so we'll at least end up on one end of the city at least. Hopefully the northern side. Come along, I don't want to stick around this morbid place any longer." She says and begins walking down the road, Lox in tow.

Lox observes Air as she scribbles in her notebook after his quote, he chuckles under his breath a bit before remarking. "It's nice to see someone enjoying my obscure quotes, as opposed to watching it fly over their head." At that moment Lox smirked a bit and began to recall some of his family suppers, his father, mother, and brother all sitting around the table and eating. In a vain attempt he used to bring up quotes in a similar fashion, only to see his mother and brother's indifference. His brother always already knew the quote and his mother never really cared, his father though, his father would put on the most transparent smile and nod along pretending to understand. The memory made Lox chuckle under his breath once more before snapping back into reality. After hearing Air's plan to return to where they were originally going he began to think for a moment.

"Do you think if we returned even further, to the last place the three of us were, you'd be able to track the doc's trail? It'd be a bit of a risk with the soldiers and creatures around , but I imagine they've been fighting amongst each other enough to give us enough of a chance to locate a trail and follow it."

Airgetlam brushed one of her locks away from the side of her face and looked round to meet Lox's face.

"While you do have a point there, I'm not exactly sure that that's the wisest way to proceed. While yes, he could have left some kind of trail, I'm exactly sure where that particular intersection is. We could retrace our steps, but do you really remember what the path looked like? What the buildings looked like? I'm honestly not sure myself, and in our haste we could have taken all kinds of twists and turns that we don't remember because at that time, our primary concern was just getting out of there."

She looks forward again, sweeping her vision, taking into consideration the placement of buildings and various positions of things like street lights, trash, boxes, textures, etcetera. She looks back to Lox again.

"I'm sorry, I tend to basically speak an essay about what I think, rather than small little sentences. I think we should just keep going until we find a safe place, like a bordering district. That sound ok, sweetie?" She says, and a thought crosses her mind. Why doesn't she just do what she did the last time in central, finding a decently-tall building and get a lay of the area?

"Um, Lox, I want you to keep a lookout for a tall building or something. My mind kinda blanked about that in the midst of adrenaline and action, we should have gotten to a higher altitude instead of simply wandering around!" she nervously asks of him. She keeps an eye out for the same as they keep walking, looking in back of her in case they actually missed a tall building.

Lox and Airgetlam are suddenly distracted as a clanky sound can be heard echoing from further down the underpass. The sound is fairly distant but grows loud enough to be heard quite clearly. Off in the distance on the other end of the underpass a man crawls out of the ground, possibly a manhole, or maybe it's another one of those shadows... It's impossible to tell from so far away. Either way whatever carwled out of that place seemed very confused about its whereabouts.


The doctor emerges and finds himself in the city. Likely recudor. But he isnt exactly sure what part of it he is in.

Doctor Atrium climbs out of the pipe and get on his feet. He then dusts off his coat and looks around. He can't help but worry about Mitsuki. He was with her one moment, then she takes off. He sighs heavily. She knows where they live and in the past she has disappeared and reappeared in a blink of an eye many times. He just wishes she would of told him where she was going. He looks around, he decides that he is in an underpass. He takes a few steps before noticing two people off in the distance. He puts his guard up, the last few random people he has ran into haven't been so friendly. Not wanting to be caught off guard, he gathers life around him and uses it to make make shadow hands grab the peoples feet and it travels up and stops just below their waists. He doesn't want them to move.

"I am sorry about the rather hostel greetings...but I just came from hell and back. I wish not to harm you, just put your weapons down and your hands up!"

When he sees them do as he says, he slowly walks over to them.

"Hmmm...I suppose you have a point, making our way to that exact point might be more of a pain than it's worth, who knows where we could end up." Lox simply laughed and shook his head at her apology. "No need to worry, I don't mind listening to your rambling if you don't mind listening to mine." Lox chuckled a bit and gave her a friendly smile for a moment before his smile sank, in favor of a slightly more quizzical look, accompanied by a light blush on his cheeks, and a raised brow. "S-Sweetie?" He muttered under his breath, a bit confused at the sudden term of endearment. After a moment he brushed it off and nodded at her request to look for a better vantage point. "Y-Yeah that sounds like a pretty good plan, I'll keep an eye out for a nice tall building for us." Lox's narrow green eyes scanned their surroundings for a bit as they began to wander. A small sigh passed his lips as they searched, a million thoughts began to pass through his head as he thought about what he would say once they finally found the doc, but of course he also wondered how long it would take. Would they have to leave the search and try to get out of here before finding him? If they did have to give up on the search would Airgetlam be willing to pick up the search again? Of course as all the thoughts raced through his head he felt something grab at his leg and quickly turned around.

Lox reaches into his bag, pulling the stone in his bag out and looking down at the hand. His hand quickly began to glow with an orange light as the stone began to change. A few runes began to form into the surface of the stone, but after a few moments the stone began to turn back to the way it was before he pulled it out. The original runes stayed in place, but the ones forming into the stone began to disappear. Lox placed the stone back into his bag and smirked a bit, his emerald gaze shifting to Air to examine her reaction for a moment, wondering if she would catch on as well. Lox decided not to fight against the hand, as he knew of only one person who could create them from what he had seen before. He chuckled a bit before looking back to the shadowy figure and giving it a friendly wave. "Hey Doc! We've been wondering where you ran off to!" After a moment Lox's smile began to fade, he slowly began to notice a foul stench in the air, and wiped his sleeve along his eyes, which had began to slightly well up. "Where have you been? You...You smell great!" Lox mustered all the sincerity he could with his comment...which turned out to be none.

"It's quite alright, I'm pretty ok with rambling." she says, suddenly, she gets the faintest tingling, like something not quite corporeal is tugging at her. She looks down and finds shadow enveloping her, and she freezes there, trembling, her crossbow shaking along with her hands. He eyes go wide at the thought that one of those things had finally caught up to her, and her upper body starts to squirm, until she hears a familiar voice and she looks ahead to see who is controlling the hands. To her surprise, Lox seems quite calm and she does as the man says and lowers her crossbow as opposed to dropping it abruptly. She slowly puts her hands above her head, staring on at the figure, not entirely sure if it's really Doc or a machination.

"Doc, I hope that's honestly you..." She says more to herself than to anyone around her. She finds she's still trembling tries to calm herself down, that it's not what she thinks it is.

As Doctor Atrium slowly walks over to the two people, he hears one of them shout to him. He then smiles and quickly releases them from the shadow's grip. He then runs over to them smiling ear to ear.

"Air! Lox! I am so glad to see that you two are well!" He says pretty loudly. He then sniffs himself and sighs. "Yeah...sorry about the smell, I was in a sewer...that is where I just came out of, but on the plus side my mission was a success." He looks around, then looks back at them with a slightly worried look. "Have anyone seen Mitsuki? She just disappeared while I was down there..." After a bit he sighs again. "How have you guys been...where have you been? You two been ok?"

Lox looks to Air with a bit of a confused look on his face, he could clearly see the look of concern on her face, which began to draw a look of concern on his own. He had been under the assumption that the doc was the only one to control those shadowy hands, and figured it was a dead giveaway, but she had known him longer, and she did not draw the same conclusion. This had worried Lox a bit, even after the doc had revealed himself to them, and dropped the hands, Lox still wondering to himself. Why was she so concerned? Had she seen this before from a more hostile source? Had the doc himself attacked them before? Either way Lox was considerably less carefree than he was just a few moments ago.

A small sigh passed Lox's lips before he wiped away the concern with a small smile and turned back to the doc. "Sorry we've only seen a few...uh...people... No sign of Mitsuki. Glad to see that you're safe though, We've mostly just been here doing a bit of an investigation. Admittedly it was mostly my doing, I kinda dragged Air along."

Airgetlam simply stands there, letting the fright flow away from her body. She lowers her hands and picks up her crossbow, looking at Lox and then Doc.

"Granted you weren't sure, but that scared the flying shit out of me!"

She walks forward a bit, coughing a bit, then regaining her composure.

"We've - or rather I - started following you, and I saw this guy jump on your boat," she says, gesturing with her thumb toward Lox, "then the whole fight started and we ran off, but got lost. So, we came and found this underpass, and some people. However another of those creatures must've either followed us or moved into the area and a few people were claimed, and a few minutes ago we had just dealt with them. We're in Central also, still lost though."

She confusedly looks back up at Doc.

"Mitsuki? The cat you mean? Wait, why did you take the cat with you in the first place?"

Doctor Atrium's heart turns to ice. He hadn't thought of what he was going to tell the group. After a few moments of thought he looks at Airgetlam.

"Well, at first I didn't want to bring her but she just kept following me and once I got into the central district, it was to far to bring her back. So I protected her while I was moving. She ran off again when I was done my mission." He looks at Lox with a stare that says 'don't say a word', then looks back at Air. "Well, I guess it is time for me to explain where I went and why. The reason why I went into the sewers is because I found someone that could fix Clarent's Soultrap...her necklace. It is going to be pricy but it is going to be fixed and I will give it back to her when I get it back. When Clarent gets her Soultrap back around her neck, she should return to normal."

Lox simply listens as the other two converse for a moment, he had no idea who this 'Clarent' person was, or what they needed to fix their soultrap but he simply gave a small shrug before slinking off into his own mind for a moment. After a while Lox snapped back into reality, only to see the doc giving him an intimidating glare, he chuckled a bit and shook his head. "It's hasn't been that long since our boat ride, don't worry." Lox decided not to capitalize any further so as not to give away any details, he simply hoped the doc would remember their first conversation and left it at that.

After a bit Lox began to stroke his chin a bit as he thought to himself, his eyes seemed to be examining the doc for a while before he finally started to do something. Lox removed his backpack for a moment to retrieve his half full well of ink, and the paintbrush he had swiped from the shop earlier. After he retrieved his items he placed his backpack down, and knelt down next to the doc, he dipped his new brush into the inkwell and began painting some runes by the doc's feet, making the conversation between him and Air undoubtedly more awkward as he drew the same runes the doc had seen him draw earlier on the boat right at his feet.

"Ah, ok," Airgetlam simply says. "Yeah, the cat will probably find her way back, she usually does. Even from a dreary place like this, I wouldn't be surprised."

She raises her eyebrow however at Doc giving a look of sternness. Something she's not in on. She wafts the metaphorical stench of it from her mind, like smoke from incense that's a bit too musky. If it's not something spoken, it's probably something she's either not meant to know, or something that would be better discussed later.

"So you found something to help with what ales Clarent, how much will it cost? Gut instinct says more than we have, common sense says most of at least your wallet." She reasons. She looks around, then back to Doc. She sees some movement below her vision cone and darts to see Lox painting something that has to be rune-related on the floor, next to Doc.

"Um, what exactly are you doing, Lox?" She says, blinking a few times.

Doctor Atrium looks down at what Lox is doing and raises an eyebrow. The rune symbol looks familiar but it takes him a few moments to remember where he saw it.

"Isn't that the rune for steam? Why are you making that at me feet? If you want to draw a rune, do the windy thing and blow the stink off of me."

He chuckles a bit then looks back at Airgetlam.

"Don't worry about the money. I have it covered. While you guys have been looking around, did you learn anything new about what is going on?"

Lox continues his drawings as the other two talk, remaining silent as Air inquired as to what he was doing though it was unclear if he didn't hear her, or was ignoring her. After a few moments he backed away from his runes, letting out a sigh and taking a deep breath once he backed away. "A simple blast of wind at best is just a short term solution, the smell is coming from your clothes, so they need a good steam cleaning." After that Lox takes another breath he goes back in, placing his hands on the runes he had drawn, and began to focus his energy into them.

After a little while the runes began to glow, and not long after that they exploded into a cloud of hot steam under the doc's feet. The amount of steam was far less than his previous display, though after a moment it turned into a column of steam shooting up from the ground all around the doc. After a few moments the steam began to clear, revealing a slightly damp doctor missing his hat which had been blasted into the air from the steam. Lox stood back up, and took a step backwards as he watched the hat gently float down, back onto the doc's head. After taking a deep breath to confirm that the stench was at least mostly gone, he smiled and nodded in a proud fashion.

Airgetlam watches the display of the rune magic, and observes Doc's hat slowly drift down onto his head. At this, she gives a small golf-clap to indicate the impression this experience left her with.

"On different note, Doc, where exactly did find this solution to Clarent's problem?" She asks. She thinks upon where he could possibly have gone, but honestly she has no clue. Perhaps there just so happened to be a mage or specialist on the other side of the city. Either way she would enjoy it if he elaborated on his excursion.

Doctor Atrium's eyes widen with shock when he hears what Lox is doing. He quickly tosses off the bag full of papers on out of the way then quickly tosses the syringe filled with vampiric blood on the ground before the steam kicks in. He has a frown on his face when his floats back to his head. He takes his now soaked coat and shirt off and rings them off so they aren't as wet. He then quickly puts his shirt back on to hide his scares on his chest. When he is dressed again he looks at Lox.

"Thanks...I may not stink anymore, but I am soaked to the bone..." He looks at Airgetlam. "Well, RD and I talked about what could be wrong with Clarent and we decided that it was because she wasn't wearing her Soultrap anymore. Well, I couldn't just give it back because Lady Dahaka's soul was inside of it and it was cracked. So After talking to some people I found out that there was a secret place under the town, in this place there was a man that could not only repair Clarent's Soultrap but make another one to put Lady Dahaka into. So Clarent will get her old one back and it will be soul free and fixed and I will get one with Dahaka inside of it."

Lox chuckles a bit at the now wet doc and Air giving a few small claps, once the doc had wrung his clothes out a bit Lox shrugged a bit at his disgruntled comment. "In my defense, the smell was affecting us all, the water is now only affecting you. Besides it's shouldn't be too bad, I shifted some of the transmutation's energy so as to be heavier on the heat, the condensation should have been a bit lighter than average." It took Lox a second to realize he was probably talking gibberish to them, but he simply shrugged and took a step back to enjoy the odor free air. His rambling would make them even in a way anyway, as he had no real idea what they were talking about. He presumed that this Clarent girl was the sick girl Air had mentioned earlier, but aside from that he was bit lost. Nonetheless he nodded along as if he had an idea and simply decided to follow along with whatever their next course of action would be, assuming they would have him along.

...Then again the doc obviously had no intentions of bringing him along with the boat ride earlier, and Lox made that happen. The though put a small cocky smirk on his face. Whatever their future plans, Lox was sure he would find a way to join in the fun.

Airgetlam maintains a generally pleasant aura about her, and nods along to what the two are saying. So he found someone who could repair the trap, someone who can also seal away the spirit of Dahaka. She guesses it appeases all parties at least, a win-win scenario.

"Where exactly is this place, Doc? Is it in the northern district? And how exactly were these kinds of people? I hope not underworld-types, mobsters and lowlifes. You're too honourable and good to associate with those scum." She says. She does have a quite a few more questions for the good doctor now, but that will have to wait until they leave central.

"Um, also, do you by any chance have a feeling which direction is south? Maybe the direction opposite of the one we took." She says.

Doctor Atrium frowns at what Airgetlam says.

"Please be careful about what you say about 'underworld-types', I grew up and trained under those people. The people I met, they live underground, hint why I came out of the manhole. They were nice enough to help me eventhough I came out of no where and asked for a lot." He tell by the look on Air's face that she has more questions but he gets an idea and turns to Lox. "Can you make a magnet rune? If you can make one, then I magnetize one of my scalpels! If we do that, then we can put the magnetize scalpel on something that floats on water, then it will point north!"

With a happy on his face, he turns to Air.

"So what else do you want to ask me?"

Lox frowned a bit, the question the doc had posed to him had caused him to retreat into his own mind and begin looing back into his previous knowledge of runes. He had some idea of how to make a magnetic rune, at least a very vague one, though it would involve electricity and that could always be a risk. The slightest slip up and someone could end up getting fried, not to mention the average scalpel would provide close to no real estate for any real rune drawing, plus would a paint based rune fuel a compass long enough to get them anywhere without someone constantly dumping their energy into it to keep it running? Lox sighed a bit and continued pondering, to the point of seemingly ignoring the other two. After a few moments he removed his backpack so as to remove the engraved stone he had stashed away before throwing his backpack back onto his shoulders.

Lox stood silently, eyeing the stone for quite some time before finally breaking his silence with a tone in his voice that would come across a bit cold as he began to slowly form a plan. "You can go ahead and keep the scalpel doc, I can't imagine being able to draw on such a little space." After a moment he knelt down, placing the stone on the floor and placing his palm over it. Lox once again began to focus his energies into the stone and before long the stone began to melt into the ground, only to bring up a bigger, disc shaped stone. The stone was about twice the size of a normal compass, and even had raised sides so as to allow for some water containment. All that was left was the magnetized arrow to create, and it wasn't long before Lox was removing the half empty inkwell from his backpack in preparation for the rune experimentation.

Airgetlam took a step back.

"Sorry, I guess I don't really consider you and your kin to be underworld, underworld to me is scum, thieves, swindlers, people without an art or virtue to their name. Your family had virtue I'd say."

She looks around at what's nearby, looking for maybe a cup they can use but she doesn't really spy anything. She overhears Lox remark on how the scalpel wouldn't really do the job, and she takes one of her iron bolts out, showing it to them both.

"Do you think this could work? It's completely iron, and I don't think you need any protraction to have magnetism, you just need some cork and maybe a paperclip or something over water." She asks. She may not know so much about protraction, but she does know things here-and-there.

Doctor Atrium shrugs and starts to look around the area for a bit so he can get his bearings. He then opens up the small bag and pulls out the papers he got from underground. As he reads, he ignores what is going on around him.

The doc begins to read the papers, but before he can even get anywhere with them all of them hear a faint rustling noise. Static of some sorts, accompanied by a soft vibrating humming.

"...be where Doc and Air are. Why'd they go ......anything they should have .....even if the quarantine....be unsafe."

There is a crackling noise emitting from one of Air's pockets, followed by an uncomfortable sudden wave of dizzyness on Airgetlam's end. It's not so bad that she'd loose footing, but she can feel a headache brewing. She instinctively reaches into the pocket and pulls out a crudely fashioned wand, jack had made to be a shield against magic or some other. Again the soft chime rings, grabbing everyones attention once more as the voices come through more clearly.

"I'd rather just wait for them... ...seem to stop or start frantically moving around, I won't hesitate ...stay put since if you just leave too we'll end up orbiting again."

After that a sharp tone cuts through the air. It's painful, but over just as quick as it happened. One of the two yellow crystals cracks but doesn't fall apart, although its colour drains significantly.