Movies had always showed the best things about a quest. The fun, excitement, adventure made it envious. Wanderlust was something you would always feel when watching your heroes seeing the world they are in. But I guess that's the only thing the movies tend to show, the fun parts. The rest on the other hand is tedious on its own.
There were a combination of many things we had to settle with. Most had to do with the terrain. The truck didn't have any problems but the van definitely did. We got stuck five times in the mud that we had to push the mud and the truck even got a flat tire.
But the most tedious one was the map reading. Navigating yourself through a city was one thing but doing it with a grassland is another story all together. It was all plain grasslands. There were no landmarks to remember at all. The only thing that was close to one was dried up tree in the middle of nowhere. We passed that thing three times and were nowhere near the destination. It made me appreciate the use of GPS and how far the human species managed to go even without magic. To make up for it we even had a few compasses and some sextants to figure it out.
Yet there goes another problem. It was only recently that the sextants were actually developed. Even if Richard studied the instructions, her barely studied them. For the whole time we were stuck on the hood on the truck, trying to deliberate where to go. But even if we were heading at the right foot, it looks like it started to difficult to get into anything. "Dammit! How the hell are we supposed to find anything with this junk!" Richard ranted as he was about to throw the sextant at the air. Magna then grabbed his arm. "Careful! My team barely managed to make those things work!" He shouted back.
"For the love of...! Read the mood! I want some catharsis!"
"You're not the one who made it, dumbass!"
The both of them were soon grinding each other's heads towards one another. Soon it came to insults. Sakuya then just stares at the both of them. Her face was so indifferent. She had a tired expression, as if she was bored to see this. "Aren't you going to stop them?" Mr. Williams asked.
"Let them drown it out. Besides, things are going exactly as plan." She says, "They're going to fight but eventually this gets solved on its own."
The words then start to ring at the bickering duo. Both of them looked at their superior rather suspiciously. They leaned closer. "What do you mean by, 'gets solved on its own'?" Magna asked.
"One of my visions came and it looks like we're on the right track." Sakuya replied.
"And how would that happen?" Richard asked.
"A floating book with it moving on its own." Sakuya answered nonchalantly.
The two of them looked at her rather awkwardly. They were mentally lost on their leader's aspects. The both of them then looked at her and asked, "Are you stupid or something?"
With that alone, Sakuya's eyebrow twitched. The look at her face was something that could make thunder roar. She was pissed. "HAH?! Is it my fault that I got the freaky clairvoyance?! That's how my visions go!" My boss shouted.
Both of them leaned back as they pissed off their boss. "Sorry boss...it's just that your visions get weird every once in awhile." Magna points out.
"Yeah...like that time she got me having a vision of me screaming because of a bird." Richard said.
"Why? What happened?" Mr. Williams asked.
"I repaired an ice cream machine and a bird ended up shitting on the ice cream I was licking...then I screamed as the bird poo landed on my tongue." Richard replied.
"Give me a break! I was worried about you!" Sakuya moaned.
"Yet I wished you had more important visions. Some of these are useless." Richard replied.
That ticked a nerve out of my guildmaster. Sakuya then develops a pouty face and gazes at Richard. She starts getting a hold of his cheeks and starts to pinch them. "Owowowwow! Stop it! Oppai-hime(princess bigboobs)!" He shouted in Japanese. Sakuya then continues to hold on his cheeks a bit harder.
"Who the hell are you to call me that! Ero-saru(perverted monkey)!" she shouted back.
Richard stated to yell in pain. But then again, it might be something he kinda deserved. Sometimes he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'delicacy'. I sighed as I could see this happen before. I swear, it's almost surprising that they can get along in this era.
But it was because of this I managed to see another memory. It was a vision of a blonde hair girl. The face was still fuzzy but her hair wasn't. It was at Japan at my teens. I was on the staircase making a few ofuda talismans and she sits next to me. "Oi, *bleep*. Let's go around Kyoto. I wanna to ohagi and check out some geishas." She demanded. "We can't. We're still on assignment later tonight." I replied.
The blonde then goes down a stair and squats in front of me. She gives an immature face. It was her childish charm I guess that she wanted me to notice. "We're not going around Kyoto." I tell her, "I got school the next day so I wanna eliminate this demon as soon as we see it."
Her gaze then then sharpens at me. The blonde then looks at me rather suspiciously but it eventually goes blank. She then goes with a robotic face. "You're so cool head and yet you're stiff. No wonder you're still a virgin." The blond hair girl commented with a monotone tone.
That pissed my off a little. Without warning I slapped a paralysis charm on her head. She fell on her back frozen from head to toe, at the same position. I then painted 'idiot' in katakana, right on the forehead. "You have no tact." She said with a frozen mouth. "Says the yankee with zero delicacy!" I talked back.
"Yet a lot wanna fuck you and you chose to be a wizard."
"Is that so..."
I activated my telekinesis and moved her next to some statues. I then out a blindfold. "What are you going to do with that?" The blonde girl asked. Placed her near a gutter. A drop of water kept on dripping on her forehead little by little. "Wait...what are you doing...Rin?" She mumbled. It soon comes to her slowly. "God damnit *bleep*! I'm soaking!" She exclaimed. But I put a blank face and said in monotone Japanese, "Ara ara, I don't understand English, can you speak in Japanese?"
But soon I hear some rustling at the trees. I activate my magus eye and see a large, muscular figure, ten feet in length. I remove the charm off of the girl's head. Paper charms start floating over my head, forming into bird shikigami. "Get ready, yankee. Looks like our job is about to begin." I told her.
After that the vision stops. But I wished my group would stop arguing. This kept on going on for awhile. They kept on deliberating on which direction to go. But all of a sudden, Kenshin appears. "I can't stand to see this." He says, "Get the map and use the reference spell, Rin." I then used telekinesis to get the map and scan it using my reference spell. But after I finish using the spell, a sudden thought just came in my head. "Wait a minute...why didn't I just do this before? The scribe is the magic equivalent to a GPS. We should have done this awhile ago!" I blurted out loud.
The rest of the group looked at three of my seniors. We were wondering that ourselves. The vision came true after all. My scribe is a floating book with pages that I can move using my mind. But the three of them looked at us rather blank and said, "We forgot." The rest of us went to a facepalm position. In disbelief, a cloud of doubt hovered across the group. But Kenshin then taps me on the shoulder. "We gotta go. We still have to build camp." He told me.
After a talk with the group, it was decided that I would become the navigator of the group. I lead the way while the rest followed. The vehicles definitely made it easier. Turned out it was thirty minutes away from the location. The clay deposits happened to be nearby a river. We definitely saw the marker alright. The marker was a wooden pole knocked down by the wind with four graves. "The graves are empty." Richard says, "The team before weren't able to find the bodies so they just left these here."
"So...what are we supposed to do now?" Rebecca asked.
"First we set up camp. Then we check out the campsite from the previous group." Sakuya said.
"What's the story about it?" I asked.
"Details are sketchy but the remainder of the group ran away in fear because a giant hand tried to grab one of their teammates." Richard replied.
"Why did they run? Couldn't they take it on?" Gram asked.
"Yeah that's the difficult part. Apparently whatever got them managed to put out an entire bonfire in one swoop. Whatever got them was far beyond the power of a couple of rank twos." Magna told us.
Knowing that sudden thought was kinda creepy on its own. But to worry about that now wouldn't help anybody. All we can do now is set up a couple of tents and get ready. Nailing our tents to the ground was a good distraction but it didn't help that we still got to go later. Tyrell however was on the fire again, grilling some meat in the fire. We were all hungry so Gram made some vegetable soup to ease our hunger for awhile. I caught Rebecca staring at the flowing river near our camp. I stood next to Rebecca and kept her company as I handed her some soup. "I don't get it. How is there a river when the continent is floating in the air?" She asked. Gram then stepped in with his mug of soup. "That's the weird part. The continent absorbs water on the western end and pours it back down to Terra at the eastern part." He says, " Even when it was Ventus, it was the same thing."
"Then what happens if Laputa goes over a continent or a dry desert?" Rebecca asked.
"The rivers would dry out but it doesn't look like that anymore." Gram said.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"Me and Gram were listening on a radio a few days ago at some bar. Apparently the continent stopped rotating around the world and is now stuck at the northern hemisphere of the Pacific." Mr. Williams butted in.
"That does sound a bit odd...but then again that wouldn't be a problem. I guess my uncle wouldn't have to worry about the reverse HAPs anymore." I replied.
"Yet the question is how did this happen?" Mr. Williams put out.
"It has been a mystery on how this place acted since day one it appeared." Gram said.
"I can go with that." Rebecca agreed.
We all drank our soup in unison that time. All we can do is watch the river flow. It was something that shouldn't exist but here we are, looking at it. Soon lunch was ready and we had a few kababs and with some sliced baguette. As weird as times get, I'm at least thankful for Tyrell's cooking. It was enough to stop thinking about the visions I've been having. "Where did you even learn how to cook like this, Tyrell? This stuff is pretty good." Sakuya asked.
"My grandma taught me how to cook when I was still living at her farm back at Ohio." He says, "We would visit her every once in awhile and she would get me to help in the kitchen."
"With food like this, you can put up a restaurant." Richard replied.
"I was going to, actually. I was done with student loan a few months ago and I was going to have enough money to put one up. But now I'm here because of the HAP." Tyrell replied.
"If that's the case, we should have signed you up to a merchant class." Magna said.
"Nah, I'm better off tinkering stuff. I do like to cook but I like making things better." Tyrell replied.
"Yet you're here with the possibility of death." Richard joked.
"It's better than in the walls. People always rant about politics and all I want to do now is just wanna get back to the forge and try to make something." Tyrell answered.
"Tell me about it. To be honest I prefer to be on the books but it's hard to do some good reading at some tavern if UTU keeps on starting fights." Rebecca said.
"What do they even fight about?" I asked.
"Apparently they're getting mad about the taxes and class progression. I can get the taxes but the class progression is kinda necessary. Some skills you need to learn the basics or to be trusted by the guild before studying." Rebecca said.
"How did that effect you?" Tyrell asked.
"Apparently if you don't agree to all the points UTU believe in, they start to lash out and call you a bigot. Or worse." Rebecca replied.
"Oh yeah...come to think of it, most hunters try to avoid going near UTU crowds. We're just doing our job and they end up harassing us for it." Mr. Williams recalled.
"I can't understand them and the things that they do. There's this thing about UTU being against animal cruelty but they break into cattle and poultry farms to release them." Gram said.
"Aren't those animals better off in the walls since they've been domesticated?" Rebecca asked.
"Yet some of those animals are donated to food drives to the homeless when it's time to butcher them. So to leave them outside the walls is equal to killing them either way." Magna said.
"Donating animals for food drives?" I asked.
"Most of the main guilds decided to put a few programs for that. We asked UTU to stop breaking into the farms but they just don't wanna negotiate." Richard added.
"How did the capital go this bad?" Mr. Williams asked.
But the veterans didn't want to answer that. It was there something happened. There was a smell of bloodlust. 'I recognize that look.' Kenshin says in my head, 'That's resentment.' Richard then says this, "Let's just say, some idiots screwed the whole capital over because of one stupid thing."
The four of them looked at the flames. I can see the rage in their eyes. It was hard to believe even if they want to help, they had eyes that can kill even the devil himself. But it was only a flash of memory came. I had a look like this. It was because I saw something horrifying. Only for a short glimpse that I saw someone at the end of that memory, of that school hallway. I didn't know who it was but for sure I thought I saw a devil.