(Wednesday, 13th of Dawnstar Moon, 2021)
Eve's research did indeed take a while, in fact it took so long that it was night time by the time she finished. Since it was dark, it would have been a pain if she did any more investigating because she can't see anything. A thick fog rolled in, making it even more difficult to see right now. Lucky for Eve and the rest of the team, she could see the light coming from Billy's House. The four of them decided to make their way to the house so they could report the findings. Eve's robot turned back to normal, minus a few fingers to better follow Eve. Making their way down the dirt road path towards Billy's house, they arrived at his house in a matter of minutes. Eve knocked on the catfish man's door, and after a minute or so, he opened the door.
"Oh howdy, did you guys make any kind of progress with the cattle investigation?" Billy seemed concerned with his cattle. "I wanna make sure this whole pandemic stops as soon as possible."
"Well I have discovered that this isn't the cause of a virus, it's a bacteria." Eve answered rather quickly while holding up a beaker made from one of the robot's fingers. "If possible, can we come inside to discuss matters further? It's rather cold out here."
"Oh sure thing, come on in!" Billy invited the four Guardians in Training inside and guided them to a dining room table, where the four of them sat down, while Billy sat at the head of the table. "So how bad is it?"
"Well we know it's not a virus because viruses are usually super precise and only target a certain kind of cell, but this bacteria attacks all living matter that makes skin to skin contact with it. Amazingly, it doesn't affect anthropomorphic races."
"Please use small words." Damini requested her spectacled friend, who tried finding the words for this.
"Basically, it doesn't affect races like beastmen, dwarves, humans, elves, and other civilized races." Eve informed everyone as she showed off the clear vial. "However, you'll need to keep this substance far away from any other kind of livestock. The only way for this virus to spread is through physical contact, even if a single virus were to touch one of your livestock, that cow is as good as dead."
"Alright, so is there anything y'all can do about the cattle with the infection?" Billy asked while pointing at the hay barn with all the infected cattle, to which Eve shook her head. "Figures, I guess I had my hopes up a little too high."
"It's okay, you care for your livestock and/or profits, so wanting to know if you can cure some of them is understandable." Eve tilted her glasses upwards. "I'm afraid that's all I have to offer you for tonight, Mr.Catfish. We'll try to find more information tomorrow, and hopefully a way to dispose of the disease without exposing anyone else to it."
"Thank you guys, say, Ma made some grilled beef if y'all want some." Billy pointed at the nearby stove. "There's a spare room on the top floor, third door to your left. I think there's an inflatable mattress in the basement, I'll go get it, but you guys will have to partner up together even with the mattress."
"It's okay, we humbly thank you for your hospitality." Mifu thanked the catfish man as the man walked down the hall. "Eve, I'm assuming you did not tell Mr.Catfish everything about the virus."
"You are correct, Mifu." Eve handed Mifu the beaker while Damini and Jack helped themselves to some of the leftover beef dinner that Billy told them about. "This virus appears to have an internal shell of something I am not aware of. This DNA sequence is unnatural, because there aren't any adenine, thymine, guanine, or cytosine Nucleotides."
"Huh?" Jack didn't understand a word this girl just said, so he was just focusing on getting himself some beef and some garlic bread that was just lying out.
"Don't worry if you can't understand her, I can't either half the time." Damini pat Jack's head while she took a bite of garlic bread. "Still, my guess is that she's saying this virus may be an alien or some shit."
"That is not even close to what I'm saying." Eve rolled her eyes at the dark skinned woman. "Well, maybe not too far off. What this foreign substance implies is that this virus is from an unknown source."
"So...does that mean we need we have to murder something or not?" Jack asked the scientist, who merely looked at him. "Sorry, I'm kind of lost right now."
"Right now, we need to identify the source of this virus and stop it from spreading to more cows, and to do that, we need to watch the cattle." Eve began thinking to herself. "Maybe I can get my robotic ally here into camera mode to record everything for the night, but it would be a better idea for us to do a kind of stakeout to watch the cattle in case another infection takes place."
"If the spare room we're borrowing has a window, we'll look out of it all night, or only one of us has to look through it, and we can just take shifts." Mifu proposed the two options, and the group thought about them.
"If Billy has coffee and is willing to share, we go for the all together option." Damini sat down beside Eve. "Of course, I need my beauty sleep, so the taking turns option sounds awfully appealing."
"Alright, so how about we just take shifts." Jack sat down next to Mifu and handed her a plate he made for her. "Some sleep is better than no sleep at all."
"Wise decision." Mifu was grateful for the plate of food, which she began eating. "So who will take the first shift?"
"I'll take the first shift." Jack volunteered to go first, since he was already up, might as well. "Who wants to go next?"
"I shall volunteer myself to go on the next shift." Mifu raised her hand, willing to go next on the night watch.
"I can go next, I'll even set an alarm to make myself up." Eve offered before scarfing some beef from Damini's plate into her mouth. "Damini, you go last."
"Ah yes, save the best for last, I see how it is." Damini moved her plate away from the scientist girl.
"More like saving the 'most likely to fall asleep on the job' for last." Eve rolled her eyes, and Damini glared at the girl. "Hey, don't hate a girl for being right."
"Alright Fellars, the room is ready, so when y'all finish eating, y'all can head straight to bed, or y'all can shower, your call." Billy informed them before yawning. "I'm headed to bed now y'all, hope y'all sleep well."
"Night."
After the four heroes finished dinner, they decided to go ahead and use the shower quickly to make sure they didn't waste water. After showering, they were all dressed in a spare set of clothes and made their way to the shared bedroom so they could rest. They entered the bedroom to see there was one normal bed, and an inflatable mattress. There were some blankets and pillows in the corner of the room. So Billy wasn't joking when he said they'll have to share.
"So...who's sleeping with who?" Damini suddenly jumped onto the bed and laid down on it. "Whoever wants the bed is gonna have to deal with me, so deal with it!"
"I can sleep on the inflatable mattress." Even though he wasn't going to sleep just yet, Jack was already calling dibs on the ground mattress.
"I'll also sleep on the ground mattress, I personally find them a lot more comfortable compared to Christus style beds." Mifu undid the ribbon in her hair, letting her hair fly down completely. "Eve, you can sleep on the bed."
"Alright, then, oh look, there is a window." Eve looked around the room and pointed at the old window, which was open to reveal the outside world. "Though it only covers one side of the house, so I'll have my robot here record the other side of the house with his camera feature."
"Alright, you guys get some sleep, I'll just pull up a chair and get started." Jack stretched his body before pulling up a small stool from beside the nightstand beside the bed, then he put the stool next to the window.
Jack sat on the small stool next to the window, and rested his elbow against the window sill, then Jack rested his chin on his palm. Jack looked out the window to watch the various cows and cattle lay on the grass within their massive pins, to begin dozing off to sleep. Jack was envious of them for a little bit, being able to sleep without a care in the world or a fear of the disease. Still, his envy was soon washed away when Jack looked up above the corales. The night sky was filled to the brim with stars of various colors; there were red, orange, pink, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple, and even brown colored stars. What's more was that there was a cluster of pale blue cosmic dust that resembled a large star. Now that Jack focused on them, there were some stars that were somehow every color under the rainbow. Jack didn't understand how that worked, but they were very pretty, so Jack decided to go along with it. Jack rolled up his pant's right leg sleeve, to reveal his prosthetic leg. It looked a bit dirty and covered in grass around the sole. Jack took it off him and began searching through his backpack. Pulling out some kind of oil and a white cloth, Jack began cleaning his prosthetic leg with the oil and towel. Jack kind of had his hands on an auto pilot, because Jack was looking out the window the entire time. His eyes were glued to the open window, keeping his eyes on the infected cows. Something was off about this, and Jack didn't know what or how, but Jack could tell something was wrong. Jack was looking all over the place, the cows, the corpses, the hay barn, and even the hills in the distance. How could those cows get infected in the first place? Eve said that the infection spreads through physical touch, but how did the first cow get it? Eve also said that the virus had a strange DNA, meaning that there's not really good odds that the virus is natural. If the virus isn't natural, did someone introduce the virus to the cows and infect them? If so, was it intentional? If it was intentional, why would they kill random cows?
"You look quite deep in thought."
Jack turned his head to the inflatable mattress and noticed that Mifu was lying on her stomach, looking up at him with not even a hint of tiredness in her eyes. Jack wanted to know why Mifu was still awake.
"Don't worry about me, I am not tired in the slightest." Mifu seemed to be able to read his mind, or she was just super smart. "You seem to be taking this case seriously. I respect that."
"Doesn't everyone take these things seriously?" Jack asked the dark haired girl as he scrubbed between the metal toes of his prosthetic leg. "I mean, this is a serious issue, and Billy was so nice to let us stay at his house."
"Not everyone who wants to become a Guardian has good intentions." Mifu informed Jack as she guided her index finger's fingernail across the grooves in the wood. "Some just do it for the money, some do it to pick up girls or guys, some do it to gain strength to pick on the weak, and so on. While they all have different dirty intentions, I always notice something similar between all of them."
"What similarity is that?" Jack knew Mifu is observant beyond all belief, but he wondered what similarity she meant.
"They all die sooner than everyone else." Mifu smiled innocently. "With that in mind, why did you become a guardian? Or wish to become one? Assuming you don't quit."
"Honestly, I'm not sure." Jack looked down at his prosthetic leg, noticing how he polished it to the point where he can see his reflection. "I know I applied to Sanctuary a long time ago, around the same time as Alice and the others, but I don't know why. I got amnesia in the same accident I lost my leg in."
"Do you know the details of this accident?" Mifu asked Jack, and for once, yes, he did know the answer to that.
"I heard from Alice that she and I were exploring a set of ruins beneath our hometown." Jack began the story, and Mifu was listening intently. "At some point, there was heavy machinery moving above us, so it caused some rubble to fall into the ruins. Alice was gonna be crushed, so I jumped to push her out of the way, accidentally getting my right leg stuck underneath the boulder. A rock fell on my head, both giving me amnesia and knocking me out."
"Ah, I see, I think I know why you wanted to become a guardian." Mifu smiled a gentle smile this time.
Before Jack could ask the girl why, a bright light suddenly came from the outside. Jack put his right leg back on and looked outside. There was something coming from the haybarn. Last Jack checked, the hay barn was just a roof held up by a bunch of steel beams, there weren't any lights on it. The light was coming from the bottom part of the metal roof. Mifu grabbed her long sword, and Jack grabbed both Stonebreaker and Fire Maiden with both his hands before jumping out the window. Mifu landed gracefully in the grass, and Jack almost stumbled after he landed. Mifu dashed towards the hay barn, and Jack ran beside her, careful not to stab his eyes out with his weapons. Mifu and Jack reached the haybarn where the corpses were to see that the underside of the metal sheet roof was glowing a bright white light, and much to his amazement, the cow carcasses were being sucked up into the light ceiling. Jack looked around them, there was nothing other than the light that was acting like a vacuum to suck up all the dead cow corpses. Jack was about to use Fire Maiden's whip function to attack whoever or whatever was on the other side of the light, but Mifu stopped me before Jack could even press a button on the orange weapon. Mifu extended her long sword in front of him, and Jack turned his attention to the dark haired girl.
"Wait, Jack, attacking that may not be a good idea because we still need to reach it somehow." Mifu examined the ceiling. "We need to wake up the others, figure out what that thing is, and save the cattle. Yet how can we do that...?"
"Mifu, I have a REALLY bad idea." Jack looked at the steel beams supporting the thin metal roof.
"Any idea is a good idea if it works." Mifu nodded towards him, and Jack began running to the left side of the hay barn.
Jack raised Stone Breaker up and slammed the blunt side against the first steel beam, causing it to start slowly bending. Jack struck the next steel beam with all his strength, causing that one to start bending as well. There were three more steel beams, so he crashed the third steel beam in order to make it bend. The fourth beam received the same treatment, so he moved onto the fifth beam, bending it with Stone Breaker. Jack then got the genius idea of tossing Stone Breaker on top of the thin metal roof, so he reeled his arm back and threw the hammer onto the ceiling. All was silent until a loud boom was heard, waking up the cows in the distance. The hammer fell onto the ceiling, causing the steel beams to bend completely. The ceiling fell onto the ground, with the light now facing upwards and the cow corpses now left alone. The light died down from the metal ceiling, revealing some kind of magic circle printed on the bottom half of the sheet ceiling.
"...We should wake up Eve and Damini."
"Agreed."