Shaula looks around for a source. It's obvious that the noise is coming from the center of the square where the statue is standing. She looks towards the guards. They look unperturbed by the sound. Actually, to Shaula, they look somewhat prepared for a confrontation now, when before they were just standing around absentmindedly.
"Hey, the fuck were you doing?"
Suddenly, Shaula hears a shout among the crowd. She turns her head to see an angry human speaking to another human. The angry one is…
Wait, isn't that one of the undercover guys?
She had noticed several people in the crowd who were undercover guards attempting to blend in with the crowd.
She can tell who among the crowd is undercover quite easily. The undercovers have a slight smell of metal armor on them and each of them have metal cuffs in the back pockets of their pants. Shaula can tell by the outline alone.
Several of them are also carrying weapons that look much too expensive for them to buy from a nearby store, at least that’s what Shaula would think. She’s not yet an expert on this world’s arms, but they don’t look too far off from the military grade weapons the guards all carry.
She's also noticed that the undercovers try not to blend in with the human supremacists but instead the people protesting against the marchers. She can only guess this is so that any illegal activities they perform will be pinned on the protesters instead of the human supremacists.
Though they may be human, they blend into the protest side well since there are several people among the protesters who are human, not demihuman. Though there is a proud human supremacist tradition within the Federation's humanity, there is also a counter culture filled with abolitionists, some of them quite radical.
Historically, a critical mass of humans had joined the side of abolition which was what greatly forced slavery to end.
Shaula sees the undercover guard picking a fight with a human supremacist, a marcher sympathizer.
"You fucking racist!"
The guard starts pushing around the human supremacist who ironically seems only happy that he’s able to get a rise in someone he believes is a protester, a race traitor. Shaula wants to see how their little fight turns out, it seems to be a “let them fight” kind of situation. However, there are other undercover guards in the crowd who try to cause fights of their own.
This results in arguments breaking out between actual protesters and human supremacists. The crowds in the square slowly start getting more agitated and fight amongst themselves. However, the anger is mostly concentrated in the part of the square where Barden, the old draconid man, waits.
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This gives Shaula a hint as to their undercovers’ target, though she had already guessed who they were after by now.
She walks around the area and starts noticing more people who she can clearly identify to be undercover guards trying to provoke people into throwing a punch. One or two of them have even gotten violent, throwing punches at people. None of them have pulled out their weapons just yet.
She decides that she'd better find Prisca, Cel and Sito as quickly as possible.
She easily finds Prisca. In order to more easily get through the crowd, she had joined back up with Cel and Sito. The two of them notice her walking towards them while Prisca is treating someone else with a slightly annoyed expression. She doesn’t like all the noise the agitated crowd is making, it’s distracting her from her work too much.
"Hey, could you three follow me back to where Barden is?" Shaula asks them. "I think the guards are trying to make a move on him."
"...What? How can you tell?" Sito asks. Prisca keeps applying her magic to the young woman she's treating, but still perks up her ears.
"Have any of you noticed the undercovers in the crowd?" She asks.
"Well… I don't know where all of them are, but they're really terrible actors. You can tell by how they talk that they don't know anything about why demihumans are so upset." Cel speaks with a thin smile. He looks quite tired.
He must have been doing a lot of healing magic himself, maybe running low on mana?
"I've seen a couple myself. It's hard to call them out for it too. They haven't been doing anything… until now anyways." Sito adds, his face annoyed.
"Yeah. You might have already guessed it but they’re the ones starting fights in the crowds, especially near Barden. I think the guards are going to use them as an excuse to try and root out the troublemakers in the area and… you know, arrest some people." Shaula elaborates.
It just might happen that those troublemakers seem to be gathered around a certain draconid man. Then they’ll have to arrest the draconid man. At which point, they can take him to their guards station, interrogate him through whatever methods they see fit and use him to track down his associates, like Prisca, Cel and Sito.
Cel and Sito look around. They've also noticed how the atmosphere has changed suddenly. They can see the statue in the distance. Cel looks at the guards. He can see several of them holding the hilts of their swords. One or two of them already seem to have their pain spray out.
"Shit…" Prisca speaks. "Shit, shit, shit. We can't let Barden be arrested. He'll die… What do we do… What can we…"
She speaks so only Cel and Sito can listen in, but Shaula can hear their conversation clearly. Her nervousness in this situation is erased after she hears Prisca's worries. She sounds like a little child worried about their grandfather; it reminds Shaula that even though she is only a young adult, she has power that she can use to protect her seniors here.
"Shaula, what can we do?" Cel asks.
"Maybe one of you can move quickly to tell him about what's about to happen, he should be willing to listen to you, right?"
"Uh… w-what makes you think that–" Cel tries to stammer out a rebuttal but Shaula interrupts him.
"You guys were trying to hide it but it's obvious you know him. Just do it quickly and quietly. The guards are probably going to come over here within minutes. My fear is… that they'll start using that pain spray again. But even if they don't, they could still start cutting people down to try and arrest him."
Prisca gulps. Cel and Sito share concerned looks.