The screen opened in front of Elsie’s eyes as her call to the Big Boss, Wild Fang, connected. The screen showed the boss’ face, though it was still and was really just a picture rather than a video.

“Evening.”

“Silverlock. I caught the alert. What’s going on?”

“False alarm, I guess. Thought it was Scourge Cultists, or Body Purists, but it turns out they were just new to the city. Took the cheapest accoms they could find and wound up in our turf.” Elsie said.

“...what aren’t you saying?”

Elsie sighed, “One of them, Heron Muryh, took W’s 4x punch to the face.”

“Dead?”

“No. Undamaged. Barely even moved.”

“...rusty nails,” Wild Fang swore.

“What do you think it was?”

“Could be anything. Enhanced fleshwork, foreign Magi, Body Enhancers, or Mystics.”

“They looked strong. Even had a tamed wolf beast.”

“Magi, then. But…those guys don’t have strong bodies.”

“A mixed group.”

“Obvious, but what are they doing here? Could be anything. That man, Muryh…”

“He was taking orders from someone else.” Elsie swallowed, then hesitated. Wild Fang, cunning leader of the Fang Eyed, was also known for his appetites. Thankfully he wasn’t a lecherous fool. He pursued but didn’t push the boundaries. Then again, that’s what paid happiness is for. Either through PRs, possession records, or through real-life joy toys. Well, it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t find out from the others in her square. “There were four women in the group, and one other man, though the last one is clearly inhuman. One of the women was the one who gave Heron the order to fight, though another woman stopped it.”

“I see. What do they look like?”

Elsie sighed quietly and sent him the pictures through.

“Oh. I think…”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Elsie said sharply.

“Yeah. I agree that they don’t look like they belong here. Keep an eye on them.”

“That was the plan anyway.”

__________

“This is much worse than I expected,” Yuriko said ruefully as they entered the apartment. They didn’t need a key, and the door just unlocked when Gwendith brought her Autowatch close.

Splish.

The floor was covered in puddles and there was water seeping out of the bathroom. The room, as she guessed, was five paces wide, and about six deep. The bedroom was towards the back, partitioned from the rest of the apartment with a wall. That door was open and Yuriko’s perception easily reached it. The walls and floor, like the rest of the building, were particularly opaque. It cost her nearly ten paces of reach to penetrate an inch into the material, and it gave a rather unpleasant tingle while she did so. She had no idea how thick the walls, ceiling, and floor were, and the tingles grew worse the deeper she penetrated, so she didn’t bother scouting that way. She could push her Anima along the corridors, and the doors didn’t hamper her perception the same way the rest of the building did.

Right next to the main door was the bathroom, and she could hear the constant dripping of a leaky faucet. That left a simple ‘L’ shape for the rest of the space. Unfortunately, the place was completely bare, and for ten thousand ACs a 30-day cycle, it was overpriced! Hmmm, then again, that was about two or so golds per week, right? Ya, that was too high, especially for a mess like this. And the seven of them would not fit in this place at once no matter how they tried. It was a good thing Yuriko hunted enough Elemental cores for those gold coins, huh? Ah, they took the neighbouring apartments too, so thirty thousand ACs, and probably ninety thousand ACs a Season. They had a bit over nine million ACs to their name, so it wasn’t as if they’d run dry anytime soon. Perhaps if they took apartments higher up in the building?

“The cheapest one in the next zone, Blue Zone which is on the 300th floor, costs a million ACs per cycle,” Gwendith said drily. “Every other apartment in the Green Zone is about two or three times more expensive than this one, and they vanished from the listing even before I could tap on them. I think we can make do here. After we clean things up a bit, and buy new furniture.”

“There isn’t even a bed,” Yuriko complained. Well, they did have their tents and bedrolls, so it wasn’t that bad, really. But the puddles and the drip had to go.

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“I’ll check the other rooms,” Heron said. “Who’s staying where?”

“We’ll figure it out later,” Gwendith said. “I’ll key in our watches to allow us access to all three.” While she did that, her Anima extended and touched the puddles on the floor. A moment later, licks of flame appeared above them, while the water turned to ice. She did the same for the bathroom, then used her Ennoia to control the ice and moulded all of it into a sphere. She also froze the water in the faucet to plug it up. “Yuri, do you mind checking what’s clogging the drain?”

“Alright,” Yuriko agreed easily. Ryoko and Saki were already in apartment 1021 and were tidying up. That apartment also had puddles on the floors and the bathroom was flooded.

Her Anima perception squeezed into the drain and she flinched at the ick stuck on the pipes. There was water there too, otherwise, she would have just used her Radiant energy to scour it off.

She followed the pipes, and eventually, it merged into a bigger one with a couple of others joining it. It was there that she found the problem. Someone, probably a lot of someones, had dropped stones and other solid things that she’d rather not take more than a cursory look at, down the drain and it had clogged up the system. “Found it.” She muttered. Now, disintegrate them or pull them out? Easier to let her Radiant energy devour it, but she needed to keep a tight control of the reaction. She wasn’t sure how much heat the pipes could take. She wasn’t even sure what it was made of as it certainly wasn’t metal or stone. Maybe a mixture of both?

Well, she could easily contain the heat produced by a few pebbles and whatnot combusting but she started slowly anyway. She allowed Radiant energy to pool around the offending stone and started burning it to tiny, tiny particles. The water that touched the white-hot stone boiled off and turned to steam, which then whooshed up the pipes and out of the drainage. She felt the bubbles go through her Anima and slowed it enough that it didn’t cause the backed-up water to explode.

Hisss!

It took a few minutes, but soon enough, the drainage was clear and flowing again. By that point, only the faulty faucet, the light fixtures, and the roughness of the paint and flooring were the remaining issues. And the lack of furniture. Either the previous tenant made off with them, or it got stolen out of the unit by the other residents. It was evening already, and it was about time for dinner.

“Are we eating our rations or do you want to look for food?” Yuriko asked as she spread her Anima perception down the long hallways. Her reach was at two hundred and seventy-five paces, but carrying Damien’s memories lowered her effective reach by forty-nine paces. It had been fifty paces before, but after she took full control of her Mien, the burden decreased, and coupled with the fact that she had been slowly assimilating the memories, though creating a memory palace had also increased the burden, it sort of equalised the memories she assimilated and the ones she wanted to keep hold of. So, two hundred and twenty-six paces of reach, multiplied by three when she used her perception as tendrils instead of a sphere, and she had a perceptive reach of more than six hundred paces. If not for the fact that their apartment wasn’t in the centre of the building, she would have full coverage of the floor.

Her perception skittered away from people with automata limbs, though, so she could only touch those who were completely human. She could feel the void in her perception, however, and from the looks of it, everyone on the floor had automata implants. Well, everyone on three-fourths of the floor.

She noticed more than a few people lined up to use a cabinet-like thing on the hallways and leaving with something in their hands afterwards. She was curious, and if that was a food thing, it would be good to save their non-perishable ration bars, though the long journey and laziness had depleted their stock.

“I think Ryoko had gone out to shop?” Gwendith muttered. She was probing the walls of the apartment as well as reading stuff out of her Autotab. “This is a power outlet.” Gwendith pointed at a discoloured rectangle low on the wall. “We plug electronic devices here if we want them to work.” She waggled her Autotab. “This thing needs to be charged every day or it’ll stop working. Same with the visor. The watches don’t need it as much, maybe once every few days.”

“You keep reading then,” Yuriko laughed, “I’ll go look around.” She paused and tugged at her robes. She should change out of them, really, since they were probably the only ones on the floor to wear them. And there was a negative connotation to wearing them, apparently.

Her explorer’s outfit was still packed in her bag, or she could wear one of the sundresses that Ryoko bought for her. Either would work, but wearing the dress somehow felt like she would make a target out of herself, simply because of how innocent it made her look. If she added a few accessories, it might change into something a bit better suited to fit in. Or simply not to stand out in the wrong way. Men and women that she’d seen on their short journey wore flamboyant clothes, and they especially liked to flaunt their automata implants or prosthetics, huh?

She had neither to show off, so she was better or dressing as if she was trying to be discreet. So she chose her explorer’s outfit, though she refrained from wearing the overcoat for now since she was indoors and had no intention of leaving the mega building, at least for now.

She marched out of the apartment and headed directly towards one of those cabinets that were just a couple of intersections away. It was close to a lift lobby, and now that she had a better look, she realised that there was a lift every couple of blocks. Those lobbies had at least a dozen individual lifts and were usually next to a stairwell too.

Her hair was loose down her back, which at this point, reached almost down to her ankles. Cutting it never worked as it grew back within seconds if she had even an iota of Radiant energy remaining within her body. Given that she produced her own, she’d never run out. Besides, even though it should get in the way, her hair never actually did. She tied it off into a braid that doubled over itself, which meant that the tip just brushed the top of her bottom.

She caught quite a few gazes on her way to the lobby, but they weren’t quite as intense as the gazes she’d get back in Bresia or even Imperial territory. Small wonder though since the hallway was filled with viewscreens that showed varied beautiful women in states of undress. Pretty boys too, for that matter.

She arrived at the lobby and found a short line next to the cabinet. It did dispense food, a weird cylindrical thing that was wrapped in some kind of metallic foil. Once she was at the front, she read the display, ‘XXL Burritos: Fills you right up!’ - 2 ACs.

“What’s a burrito?” Yuriko wondered out loud but chose to grab seven of them anyway. Each one was about six inches long and about an inch thick. Fluffers would probably want more. She grabbed another two, then made her way back to apartment 1023.

Tomorrow would be a day she’d explore the place, and hopefully find out why everyone was on edge.