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Akasha
Kuroe (II)

Kuroe (II)

Akasha

After a long night’s sleep, I woke up without the sound of my alarm blaring in my face. Confused, I turned over in my bed and grabbed it, only to find I had slept in… for three hours… I guess this is fine. I don’t have work, but I am meeting with Gaia in only one hour now.

With not too much time to waste, I took a quick shower, changed into casual clothes, and I started making my way toward the quadrant II main dining hall.

The dining hall is a platform situated up the quadrant’s open area, with a fantastic open view of the rest of the commercial district. From here to the other side of the open space stretched about 2 miles, all connected by walkways with treads and scattered floating buildings, making the open area akin to a spider web.

Right now, it’s a little before the lunch rush, so picking out Gaia in the small crowd was pretty easy. Her shoulder-length hair, the color of empty space, and aquamarine eyes helped as well. After a quick hug we sat down at a table for two right next to the rail bordering the ledge and ordered some snacks to share.

Gaia is easily the person I trust the most in all of Kuroe, and I’ve forced her to listen to my ramblings of how I feel trapped on Kuroe, and time after time she never fails to listen to me. If I can talk to anyone about Figma’s death, it’s Gaia.

“I’m sure you haven’t heard yet,” I glance around us to make sure no one’s eavesdropping. “Figma passed away about a week ago. I dropped off a package at their house today, and Connie told me.”

“...” Gaia was speechless. Figma had lived for over 2500 years, someone living for that long passing away was a huge deal, especially if it’s someone as important as Figma. “I… don’t know how to respond to that.” she finally says, her eyes gazing across the quadrant.

“I didn’t either. All I could say was sorry, and I kind of just ran away. I still don’t really know how to react to it, I’ve known her all my life, and my mother all of her life, and her mother as well I believe.”

After a moment of thought, Gaia closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and looks at me again with a smile.

“She meant a lot to many people. When do you think Connie and the rest of them will share it? Not for years?” she asks.

“I didn’t ask, but I had the same idea, probably 5 years at least.” I say as our food arrives at our table. I only ordered a few pastries, but Gaia seemed to have ordered an entire meal. “Did you not have lunch or something?”

“No.” She says flatly, digging into her meal. She probably didn’t eat anything this morning either. I’ve been trying to get Gaia to fix this unhealthy style of living, but she never listens. Odds are, since she had the day off today, she didn’t even sleep last night. At least she ordered an actual meal, and not just snacks or sweets.

I sighed and took a glance across the main area. I like to pick one person from the crowd and follow them for a while. Since I know quite a lot of people, I like to guess where they’re going. It's a game I play with myself pretty often. After some time trying to pick someone out, I noticed a rather tall man in a lab coat that seemed rather rushed.

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I was pretty sure I knew him. He’s Creed, one of the scientists working in the generator. I talked to him a few times before, but I never got to know him that well. As my eyes followed Creed, I noticed another man following closely behind him, like he was following Creed. It looked like Creed was guiding him toward a location, that location seemed to be the generator. I didn’t recognize the person following Creed, but didn’t pay it too much mind, since I don’t know too many people from the generator in the first place. But this man was not wearing a lab coat, or even a formal suit that I’ve seen some of the generator workers wear. What he was wearing was a black jumpsuit with many green metal bits attached, and on his breast was an emblem of a serpent coiled around the head of a wolf. He looked vastly different from anyone else in the crowd, let alone all of Kuroe, so he was drawing many eyes to himself from the surrounding people.

The man in the jumpsuit was most likely a member of the generator team, probably just testing some contraption away from the generator. I was obviously suspicious, this was something I had never seen before, but I tried to pay it no mind. The things the scientists in the generator do is beyond my comprehension, all that quantum math stuff makes no sense to me.

After looking at Creed and the other man until they left my vision, entering a hallway that eventually led to the generator, I turned my focus back to Gaia, who just finished her meal, the plate wiped clean, not a speck of anything left.

“Pretty good?”

“Mmhn.” Gaia said, her mouth still full. After swallowing and wiping her mouth, she continued, “You saw that guy in the weird suit with the scientist?”

“Yea, I know the scientist, Creed, I’ve seen him during work a few times, but that other guy I didn’t recognize.” I reply, a little surprised Gaia noticed them too, but I was probably so focused on them she watched them too.

“Me neither, the suit that guy was wearing was really weird too. I kind of want to see what’s up with him.” Gaia said.

“Well, it's a bit late for that, they already entered the generator, we civilians aren’t allowed anywhere near there. It’s probably some kind of boring experiment they’re doing anyway.” I respond. Getting close to the generator will get us arrested, and we’ll have to serve quite some time locked up. That will definitely cause some commotion, since crimes in general rarely happen anymore.

“Did you see what that guy was wearing though? It looked so weird.”

“Yea, never seen that outfit before. That emblem I didn’t recognize either…” I mutter.

“What emblem?” Gaia asked

“The emblem on his chest. If you didn’t spend so much time on your computer playing games, like I’m sure you did last night,” I said, causing Gaia to grimace, “Your eyesight would be better. Anyway, it looked like two animals, I think it was a snake coiled around the head of some dog.”

“What the hell are those?” Gaia said.

“Eeh, just some history things.” Gaia isn’t into history as much as I am, of course she doesn’t know what a snake or dog is.

“Regardless, that guy was suspicious. I… have a really bad feeling about all this. There’s something wrong with this.” Gaia said.

“Hey, are you okay?” I ask. Gaia didn’t seem right. She normally didn’t act that way, all serious and sick looking. She was normally pretty quiet and kept to herself. “Maybe we should head home, you need to get some rest after staying up all night.”

“No, I’m gonna follow them.” Gaia said, getting up and leaving without paying for her food.

“Ah! W-wait!” I yell, grabbing some money frantically and slamming it on the table before grabbing both mine and Gaia’s bags.

Gaia was already almost out of the main area by the time I was done grabbing everything. After a moment of hesitation, I just drop the bags and run as fast as I can to catch up.