"Maybe we can negotiate with them, like she gets them for one week and you get them for the-," said the captain, trying to fill the silence.
"William no, there's no negotiating with her, she hasn't negotiated with me in the past so nothing is going to change now" yelled Avvoltoio as they looked at the captain.
"It's weird though, I've never seen Tacchina act like that before" muttered Avvoltoio as they looked away from the captain.
The captain moves his chair closer to Avvoltoio as he says, "Look maybe if she won't listen to you Avvoltoio, she might listen to me, do you know where they would be heading?"
Avvoltoio snickers as they say, "Well you can sure as hell try but it's your funeral, if you want to know where they're heading my guess would be Comedienne, which if you go through the east gate, should be just on the opposite side of this street, you will get there fairly quickly so I would start looking there."
"Avvoltoio... thank you," said the Captain as Avvoltoio mutters "Don't mention it" before the captain races out of the door. The captain rushes down the empty street, filled with adrenaline as he sees Merlo and Pavona but he's too late as by the time he makes it to the east gate, they're already flying, except for Merlo who's more being carried by Oca than flying. The captain takes a minute to catch his breath as he looks out to what looks like an endless dessert before asking ARG-05 "ARGOS w-what do we do, what should I do?"
ARG-05 glitches for a few seconds before replying "Hold on Captain let me scan my records, I may have an image of the two cities, and I may be able to create a path". The captain sits down as ARG-05 looks through his records, finding what he was looking for fairly quickly and continues "Okay so by the looks of it if you run in a straight line at an estimated 10.6 kilometres per hour or 6.5865 miles per hour then you should be able to get there at the same time they arrive”.
The captain stands up and says "Okay" before going into a full sprint. He makes it to Comedienne which looked like a mix of an industrial revolution city and a mediaeval village. Once he's closer to the gate he spots some guardsmen who look like sheep who are standing on two legs but are more colourful along with also spotting Merlo and the rest of their family past the gate. He's about to run straight past the guardsmen but he's stopped by them blocking the path with their spears as they yell "Halt only Osservas and Loculators are allowed in Comedienne".
"I- what?" said the captain, completely taken aback.
"You heard us human, only Atrium Loculatores and Occhi dell'osservatores are allowed in, so scram," said one of the guardsmen, pointing his spear at the captain’s helmet.
"Alright alright I get it, I'm leaving," said the captain before walking around the wall surrounding the town, out of their view before whispering to ARG-05 "We have to get over that wall". Before ARG-05 can respond, the captain tries multiple ways to climb up the wall, but he just can't reach it. He stops, finally running out of ideas to climb over the wall as it was just too smooth and tall to properly grab onto anything. As ARG-05 switches to his side-eye expression, the captain gets an idea to pretend to be a Loculator and sneak in, but he couldn't think of a way to get the materials before he gets another idea. Almost immediately, the captain begins taking off his life support system as ARG-05, who's switched to his confused expression, asking "Captain, what are you doing?"
The captain lifts ARG-05 so he can barely see over the wall before replying with "I have an idea which is to sneak in by looking like one of them, I'd say that we'll need paint and a coat which looks like their wool, can you see that, ARGOS?"
ARG-05 looks over the wall for a moment before switching to his idle expression whilst saying "Yes, I see them Captain", the captain immediately replies, "Good now I can't get over that wall so I'm going to have to throw you, okay, I'll give you a countdown though alright?"
"Alright Captain"
"Okay here we go 1... 2... 3!" said the captain as he hurled ARG-05 over the wall, almost accidentally throwing ARG-05 at the wall in the process. Once, ARG-05 lands on the ground, he immediately gets up with his claws and scuttles across the marketplace, grabbing a coat off a vendor and running to a store nearby, he walks into the store and moves in zig zag pattern whilst avoiding being seen, he grabs the paints he needs and a paintbrush before rushing out and running back over to the wall the Captain is standing by. Once he gets there, he holds the paints, the paintbrush and the coat with one of his hands and stretches it over the wall, just barely reaching over and dropping them, narrowly avoiding the Captain's skull before leaving his hand there so the Captain can help him climb the wall by being a weight of sorts which works as the Captain catches them when ARG-05 begins to fall.
The captain places ARG-05 on an angle so he can see the captain before sitting down near ARG-05 before passing him the paintbrush and paint as he asks ARG-05 "Can you paint my helmet, so it looks similar to their faces?" ARG-05 switches to his smiling expression as he says "Of course Captain" before picking up the paintbrush and beginning to paint. It only takes a few minutes before ARG-05 finishes painting and despite the captain having even worse vision before at least it looked like the guardsmen would buy the ruse. Before heading over, he reequips his life support system and puts the coat over his astronaut suit before realising that he's slightly too tall for the coat and he'll have to knee walk the entire time so that's what he does. As he walks back to the gate, the guardsmen pay no attention to him and let him inside.
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As he's walking through the marketplace, he notices a Loculator in one of the alleyways, staring at him causing the captain to stop in his tracks and stare back. For some reason which he couldn't explain he thought that this Loculator, in particular, looked awfully similar to someone he used to know, but he couldn't think of who exactly. Nevertheless, the Captain continued walking in search of where Merlo and their family went. Whilst he's looking around, he hears the sound of a bird squawking and rushes over to it, leading him to a large medieval-esque castle with a large moat surrounding it and the gate closed.
"Well... shit," said the captain, in a slightly annoyed tone.
"CAPTAIN" yelled ARG-05 as he switched to his angry expression.
"What?" said the captain, slightly confused.
"LANGUAGE"
The Captain sighs deeply before saying "Yeah you're right, I'm sorry but there's no way we would be able to get in with just us but I just- I just don't know who would help us break in, Avvoltoio would be no use and-" The Captain pauses for a moment as he hears people talking which is getting louder and louder before he quickly hides behind a couple of boxes and ARG-05 switches back to his idle expression as the Captain overhears their conversation.
"Okay so here's your job for today, you are to go to Cabretta and escort the queen of Viators here, understand?" said one of the Loculators.
"But won't the Viators... attack me?" said the other Loculator.
"No, they'll be expecting you, now go”.
The other Loculator nods and starts walking towards the gate. The captain whispers to ARG-05 "Of course, why didn't I think of that, Bengino will probably help us, and Serafina would probably help us too, let's follow this guy" The Captain begins walking through the streets, ensuring that the Loculator doesn't spot him before they're far away from the town which is when the captain sprints over and he yells "Wait!". He stops running when the Loculator slowly turns around, so they don't realise that the captain is a human. "C-can I help you?" the Loculator asked, confused. The captain immediately replied with the best lie he could think of at the time, hoping that the Loculator wouldn't see through it as he said, "Look my boss told me to tell you that I'm going in your place, and they got the wrong guy". The Loculator looked at him for a second before saying in a cheerful tone "Well why didn't you say so as you were running here, thank goodness, I didn't want to do that, thank you for letting me know, cya!"
The Loculator high-fives the captain before walking away, the captain looked over to where the Loculator was, seeing Cabretta, "at least they won't attack me on sight" the captain joked as he began walking over to the main gate. As they get closer to the gate, ARG-05 who realises that they will probably recognise both of their voices makes the captain stop as he says, "Hey Captain, they'll probably recognise both of our voices, how about I do all of the talking and change the tone of my voice, so they won't suspect anything". The captain nods in agreement as he says, "Good idea ARGOS".
Once they approach the main gate, they're immediately let inside and escorted to the main building; however, instead of going inside, the captain stops and quietly mutters to ARG-05 "We should probably get away from them now, come up with an excuse". ARG-05 nods and says to the Viator escorting him "Hé escorteur, j'ai besoin d'utiliser la salle de bain, puis-je rapidement passer à celle publique? (Hey escorteur, I need to use the bathroom, can I quickly go over to that public one?)". The Viator sighs as he says "vraiment? tout de suite? (Really? right now?)" to which ARG-05 motions to the captain to nod which does, causing the Viator to reply with "Bon alors prends ton temps (Okay then, take your time)"
The captain walks towards the bathroom and darts out of view of the Viator before beginning to look around the city for Bengino. They first check the marketplaces, but they cannot find anyone with a metallic arm or one missing arm, but they don't give up hope as they search restaurants, parks, public baths, theatres and more. Eventually, they've almost looked everywhere with a few people who looked like him accidentally being mistaken for Bengino along the way. Beginning to lose hope, he begins to walk around the garden surrounding the main circular building in the centre of Cabretta whilst avoiding the Viator who was escorting him.
They sit on a small bench overlooking the garden before he hears the voice of someone who sounds like Bengino, causing him to immediately stand up and look around the circular edge, seeing Bengino talking to someone from one of the windows. The captain gets closer and can now clearly hear their conversation as Bengino says "Oh Serafina, mon amour, je pourrais te regarder dans les yeux pour toujours, je t'aime (oh Serafina, my love, I could stare into your eyes forever, I love you)"
Serafina chuckles and replies "Je pourrais te dire la même chose Bengino, je t'aimerai pour toujours (I could say the same thing to you Bengino, I'll love you forever)".
Without thinking, the captain rushes over to them and yells out "Hey Bengino" which causes both Bengino and Serafina to turn to look at him. Bengino runs up to the captain and hugs him almost crushing him as he loudly exclaims "eh bien si ce ne sont pas mes deux amis préférés, Capitaine et ARGOS, où étiez-vous tous les deux? (Well, if it isn't my two favourite friends, Captain, and ARGOS, where have you two been?)"
"Ce n'est pas ce à quoi ça ressemble, d’accord? (It-it's not what it looks like okay?)" Serafina loudly whispered as she looked out the window motioning to Bengino to let go of the captain which he did.
"c'est bon, nous ne sommes pas des représentants du gouvernement après tout, donc nous n'allons pas vous arrêter mais... nous avons besoin d'une faveur (it's fine we're not government officials after all so we aren’t going to stop you but... we need a favour)" said ARG-05 in his normal tone and the captain takes off his coat.