After some time of conversing with the old man and learning of what happened in the place from his own perspective, Altair finally separated from him.
The discussion left him with a few things to think about. Among these and king among them, was the odd behavior of the agents that came after the explosion.
As a person who lived a relatively sheltered life, he could not really make out what was normal and what was not in this situation.
Although Altair had never been to a disaster site before and therefore would not know what was typical or normal in such situations, he still thought the behavior of the agents was strange.
After all there was a thing known as common sense.
‘I can understand that they cordoned off a certain area that can be dangerous to civilians who carelessly rush in, but what about the closed-up area further inside?’
‘What exactly is the need for all this secrecy?’ He wondered.
The sealed area near to the origin of the explosion, particularly did not make much sense.
There was certainly something they were very intent on hiding, whoever they were.
‘Maybe they are just expecting another explosion and so decided to take precautionary measures by starting to send people away…’ Altair wondered.
‘But if I go with that reasoning, would it not be easier and safer to just tell the people that they found signs that gave them reason to expect another explosion?’
‘Right, who would believe that. I’m no expert myself but, I think expecting an explosion from a fuel depot that has already exploded is like expecting a grenade to go off twice. No one would believe that even if it were true…’
After thinking of the matter for a while, Altair briefly considered going to the place to check on what was happening there.
It should be easy enough, he only had to teleport in close proximity to the place and have a look before leaving.
However, he only thought about it briefly before discarding the thought.
‘Although I am now able to teleport, I can’t just assume I am so special that no one else has a strange power or like me suddenly obtained a system out of nowhere…’
Although Altair was very happy and even proud of his newfound ability to teleport, and even more so the ability to teleport anywhere he can see or has the image of, he was way too cautious to take the risk of going into the place just to discover that there was something there that would hinder his teleportation and therefore trap him in the place.
For this reason, he only contemplated this for a moment before discarding the thought.
As he was walking around, Altair heard more about the evolution of the situation in the place. Most of the things were what he already knew of from listening to Monsieur Jean, the old man whom he had a chat with.
From time to time, he still heard a few things the old man did not tell him. Among these things was the fact that most of the things people distributed on that day were just that, distributed. No one was going to pay them for those things and just like Altair, many people did not return the items after use.
So not only the vests but even the security shoes are gone just like that.
The sachets of water that were passed around, the bread and other things that the people who went in to start the searches consumed were all just shared out of kindness.
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The volunteers were not only those who went into the hot rubbles for the searches, but also those good people who did those acts of selflessness.
Altair’s face slowly scrunched into a slightly pensive and sad expression the more he heard, and the more he thought about it.
However, he was also somewhat happy to know that people, despite their squabbles and daily attitudes still had the ability to put all that aside and come together when the circumstances needed them to do so.
‘There should be something I can do to help in such a situation, but what?’
A plan slowly started forming in his mind as he pondered on this. Altair kept moving and left the area, paying more attention to the situation around him.
Later, when he found it appropriate, he vanished, teleporting away. Just before leaving, he suddenly remembered something.
“What an idiot… I know what I forgot. What will the people I left in Ozz eat while they are stranded by themselves in a location they know nothing about?”
From observing the situation of the people in Kyrnac, he saw the tents set up by the professional organizations were not only for treatment and housing but there were also a few that were for giving out food.
‘I guess it was fortunate that I went there around meal time…’
*phone ringing*
Brought out of his thought by the noise of a ringtone, Altair looked towards his table, where the phone was placed and saw an incoming call, the caller ID displaying as Robert.
*tut*
“Hey Rob.” He said.
The first words he heard were.
\”You finally bothered to pick up your phone!”\
“What happened?” He asked with a little alert in his voice.
\”Nothing but, for someone who didn’t want a vacation, you’re certainly enjoying yourself. I tried calling you a few times in the past few days but the call did not go through.”\
“…don’t worry me like that.”
\”What are you talking about?”\
“The way you started…” Altair began in retort before saying. “forget it.” In a tired tone, and then, “What’s up?”
\”Okay.”\ Rob replied nonchalantly and then started talking. \”I just wanted to check up on you. But when I called you, the call did not go through.”\
\”Come on, tell me. Are you up to some shady stuff on your vacation?”\ He asked in a devious tone, clearly insinuating something.
Altair did not entertain him however, and just asked in reply “You tried calling me several times?”
\”Are you dodging the subject? Heh, I’m very curious of how the rigid you spend your vacation.”\ Rob replied, seemingly having some fun in the conversation.
\”Anyways, when I tried calling, it didn’t go through and after some time, I’d get a notification saying you are available but by the time I freed myself to call back, the call wouldn’t connect again with me getting another notification sometime later informing me of your availability…”\
At this point in the conversation, Altair started pondering. ‘Did he call when I was testing the teleportation and the inventory or when I went to teleport the people from Hzat?’
‘Does the inventory even block network signals? I should check that later.’ As Altair started pondering about these things, he was brought out of his thoughts.
\”Hello, Al are you still there?”\ Rob asked from the other side, sensing Al’s disconnection from the conversation.
“Yes, I’m listening. Sorry, what were you saying?” Altair asked in response.
\” *Sigh*. You always do this. What’s on your mind this time?”\
“Nothing. Did anything happen at work?”
\”Nothing much. Well…”\
The two of them, mostly Robert, proceeded to talk about various topics before having to hang up the call.
.
Soon after hanging up the call, Altair remembered the place where he picked up the people from Hzat. In that place, there were some dangerous locations like shops and supermarkets which had things like bags of rice and other products that buried under rubble caused by explosions.
He knew this because he was hiding in one of those places when he decided to wait for the right time to start teleporting people away.
Without waiting further, he teleported into the place and started collecting these things, storing them in his inventory.
He cautiously crept into the place, sometimes using both his hands and legs to climb and move around, meanwhile he teleported whenever possible.
He slowly gathered as much as he could while he kept searching, and from time to time, when he came across anything too heavy like a concrete block or a collapsed part of a wall, rather than force himself to push them away, he stored them in his inventory to clear a path.
He continued doing this for a long time before finally taking everything he thought could still be useful in this particular supermarket.
‘This should be more than enough to sustain them for a long time.’ Altair thought as he looked around himself.
Luckily, no matter how many things he added into his inventory, it did not seem to have a limit to how much it could take, making the whole task much easier.
Seeing that the place looked very empty, he decided to release back all the rubble he stored in his inventory.
With the limitation of only releasing things within a one-meter radius of himself as the center, it took him some time to let everything out, since he had to move around a few times in the process of doing so.