*Act 2, Scene 1*

"Why me?" Ryan cried out, still stuck suspended in the branches of what he only assumed was an oak tree.

"Why did Capital City do this to us? Why was my family... why was I spared?" Ryan thrashed at the cords binding him, to no avail.

Ryan opened his eyes and there he saw a snake, creeping across the branches.

"H-hey, little fella, I like snakes. You wouldn't hurt me, right? Wanna hang out with me?"The snake bared its fangs and lunged at Ryan.

"Aah!" Ryan startled, breaking the branch he was hanging on.

Ryan and the snake fell a few feet to the ground. But to Ryan's surprise, the snake was levitating off the ground.

"Magic snake, hm? Well, what snake isn't?"

The snake revealed its form as a witch!

"Ahaha," cackled the reptilian woman on her broom.

The witch drew a little symbol in the air. From the symbol erupted a torrent of flames. Ryan failed to dodge, but was saved by another witch!

An owlkin witch sent forth a whirlwind of frost, eviscerating the serpent blood.

Suddenly, a third, fox-like witch leaped out of the bushes with some form of acid claw attack. The fox witch's attention turns to Ryan, they stare intensely at him with a creepy gaze.

"I gotta get the heck out of here," Ryan spat, loosening himself from the parachute.

Witch after witch arrived behind him to fight to the death, in what Ryan could only assume was a witch fight club?

*Act 2, Scene 2*

After wandering for hours, Ryan found the little girl he saved earlier, crying in the middle of a clearing.

Stolen story; please report.

"This is a trap," something spoke to Ryan.

Ryan didn't ignore the voice this time; he carefully examined the clearing, but failed to find anything out of the ordinary. Ryan approached carefully.

"Darling, where's your brother?" Ryan asked.

The child, still sobbing, managed to say, "We got separated. We were running and running, but I lost him."

"Follow me, we'll find him," Ryan reassured the girl.

Danielle joined Ryan's search, and after half an hour, they found him.

"Shh, it sounds like your brother is in trouble. Stay here," Ryan told Danielle.

Beyond the bushes was a tower, built in the style of a Greenland guard tower, but held together by the unmistakable black concrete from Capital City. Danielle's brother was being accosted by two soldiers.

"Spies," something spoke to Ryan.

"I need a plan," Ryan thought for a minute.

"Excuse me, sirs, thank you for finding my boy! We were hiking, and I was worried he fell into trouble!" Ryan lied through his teeth.

The soldiers, unperturbed, revealed their crossbows.

"I was worried about that," Ryan swiftly pulled Malice from his coat and fired. No bullets shot; instead, the gun jammed, and a red flash of light burst from the chamber, followed by thick smoke.

Ryan grabbed Daniel and made a mad dash back to the woods. He was chased by the soldiers, but he stayed light on his feet.

Ryan looked for a hollow tree and found one felled on the ground."Kids, hide here and wait," he said before drawing the soldiers' attention and running further.

After an intense chase, they spotted Ryan running through a clearing as fast as he could.

"There he is!" The soldiers' pursuit was relentless, but out of nowhere, Soldier 2 was skewered on a jagged spike erupting from the ground.

"What the heck!?" The soldier exclaimed before he himself was polymorphed into a frog in a little puff.

Witches continued battling as Ryan made his way back to the kids.

"Let's get you back home, yeah?" Ryan took the kids to their parents' house, just beyond the forest in the slime ranches.

"Thank goodness, thank you, sir!" The family profusely thanked Ryan.

"I had to do it, ma'am. And now that it's done, I have to do something else. Capital City thinks they can destroy my land then build on its ashes; they're wrong, and I'll prove it," Ryan protested.

"Please stay here at least for the night. We have plenty of room and food."Ryan thought and accepted; he was homeless now after all.

*Act 2, Scene 3*

This morning was different. Ryan woke up happy to the smiling faces of two rascals and two great parents. It felt like he had a family again. But, still haunted by the ghosts of his own, Ryan didn't take long to journey on.

Supplied with food and camp equipment, Ryan left the slime ranch. One thing stood in his mind: destroy Capital City, starting with that spy tower.

Ryan prepared his revolver and kicked down the door to the tower. It took a moment for him to realize that someone already came through here, someone mad. Several corpses were strewn across the tower; blood coated every screen and console.

At the top of the tower was an elite technomancer. Mastery of magic and technology is no easy feat, but taking down the master of those things is nearly impossible.

"What monster could have done this? They didn't even check the bodies." Ryan started looting the corpses for high-grade electronics, optics, and surveillance equipment.

After spending a few hours disabling the watchtower, Ryan dug through the data logs and found something truly ghastly.

Capital City is planning to steal Green Lands' new secret design and use it to take over all of Gaia as we know it.

"Someone needs to stop them!" Ryan shouted.

In an awkward moment, Ryan expected the voice to tell him to take the design for himself, but it didn't. But even that, Ryan thought, worries him.

Ryan looked from the roof of the tower across the coast to Capital City. Despite the distance, he could still make out Castle Lark on the horizon. The massive black stone walls and jagged-tipped roofs never looked more gaudy.

Ryan found something else in the more recent data. A video of the inside of the tower; a man, an elf with multiple swords, rampaging through the tower like it was a game. He looked bloody, but carried a smile as though he felt no pain.

"If I want to take down Capital City, I have to get his help." Ryan said quietly.

No telling where he is now, Ryan started a trek to Metroglade down South. If anyone's going to help him find this man, it'll be a chromed-up tech junky from there. At least that's what he thought.