[indent]To: nevaseppa@live.com
From: d.aldrich@d.p.investigations.com
Subject: FW: Concerning Richard Dalton

Did you make it to Japan safely? Long flights can be quite tiresome of a journey and undoubtedly more so with your little ones. Hopefully things will go smoothly for your family as well as your husband’s job throughout this trip. 

Concerning your prior email as I’ve said before I was a close friend to Richard for as long as I can remember. We were practically brothers growing up. Things were a little rough between us the last few months we shared with each other due to a few conflicting viewpoints but overall Richard was pretty much the other half of me. It is unfortunate that he passed while the two of us were on bitter terms. Anyways keeping on subject, it was about a year after you left school. Ever since I’ve received your email I’ve been investigating what led to the events leading up to Richard passing away but it is going to take time. I will keep in touch with you and if at any time you have any leads or want to console in me, I am always open to do so. News like this so sudden can be quite painful and I would hate to leave you on such a somber tone after hearing so much about you from him. 

As always a friendly ally,

D. Aldrich
Private Investigator

[/indent]

A somber sigh escaped Devan’s lips after sending the email. After the love-struck girl left her passions that came through college for a poet hater and moved to Finland, he never expected to hear from one of his favorite star pupils. Although he received a few emails or notices of his past life every once in a while, most ended after the death and the construction of the tombstone for Richard Dalton. However being overseas it was understandable that she wouldn’t have known about Richard, or at least the namesake of Richard, passing away. Even though the email he received from Neva was a surprise, he was even more astonished with himself when he replied to the woman’s email three days after receiving her first email. Originally he was going to delete the email she sent after receiving it but for some reason he couldn’t put himself to it. Here was the last shred of his former life that could link Devan to Richard but for some reason he couldn’t put himself up to it. Even though he changed his appearance completely from the time he was Richard to now and his ability to forgo his prior persona was not an issue to him so the idea of her having the ability to know who he used to be didn’t seem like an issue for him. However it was an unneeded risk. A loose thread in a web of lies that seemed not to have any ill effects but was something that had the potential to be something troublesome down the road, especially since Neva married the poet hater.

Sliding his phone back into his pocket as Chase returned from the diner’s restroom, Devan stepped out of the booth and the two headed towards the door. “Shall he head to Manhattan so we can see what all happened?” Chase asked as the two entered the other man’s car. 

“No, it’s too early. Feel free to send Michael in if you’d like so that any surveillance that could possibly be in that area is focused on him. If things start to pick up in the news about it and if something catches my eye I’ll head over there in a bit as an investigator from D.P. Investigations but right now going there brings no interest to me.” Pulling out his phone after a short beep Devan paused to read a text he received. “Yes, now that is what I call interesting. I just received from a source that there are two highly skilled poets just spotted not too far away from here and the most spectacular thing is that the two of them are children. Children Chase!” Devan said with a little enthusiasm at the end of his statement. Although the teens that always seemed to be overeager to join the rebellion were always a handful and the idea of bringing children in as well would bring more complications, passing up the offer of recruiting the two children seemed to be far too good to pass by. Especially if they are as good as the two were described as. 

“What is going on there? How were they spotted?” Chase asked apprehensively. He was always a cautious man, a man far too cautious in his opinion that sucked the excitement out of things far too often. 

“From what I see it appears that there is some sort of crazed poet hater around waving a gun around and is causing quite a ruckus. It even brought the attention of Gilgamesh to the area.” Devan said with a spark of excitement in his eyes. An excitement he knew that he wouldn’t be able to pursue due to the potential dangers that could be involved. “Let’s send a few people over there so we can hear about the progression of whatever is happening there, especially about the children and Gilgamesh.”

“Okay, we'll do that. What about the woman?”

“She means nothing to me. She’s not even on the chessboard but just a speck of dust that happened to land near an important chess piece

[center]~.~.~[/center]

Stopping in her place as the man’s voice cut in, Elysia turned towards him with livid eyes. With gritted teeth and white knuckles, she listened to the man ask her if she feared the children. It look all her force to not act out on her anger and even then it was quite obvious in her facial expression and how she held herself. She couldn’t believe that the man was insulting her by asking if she was afraid of the children but for the sake of not being marked down further on the test than she already lost a few points on, kept her mouth shut knowing that opening her mouth would be troublesome.

However that didn’t last long as her mouth shot open as the man said that the poets were not a threat. The first thing she wondered was if there was someone personally controlling the program to try and instil the idea that poets were not the enemy. The idea of someone tampering with the program for to get this result angered her. Once she was out of the program, she was certain that she would try and find out who caused this to happen but until then the best option seemed to be to follow that the program was wanting her to do and go along with the man. Slamming her mouth shut before she could regret anything that would come out, Elysia listened as the man spoke about his plans for catching the poets. Elysia didn’t pay much attention as the man swung the sword and the aftereffects that followed, thinking nothing more than that the technology on Earth was starting to catch up a little more to what Ryton had achieved. However effects that the man was able to do to his voice startled Elysia, quite certain that Earth’s technology wasn’t advanced enough for people to have vocal enhancements as the man displayed. A bit uncertain if her facts were correct, twitched her thumb over so that her ocular displayed changed over so that she could reach her planet’s database and see if her facts were correct about how advanced their technology was supposed to be. 

However there was nothing to be seen. 

Her thoughts quickly went back to the program as she wondered if she was disconnected from the database while in the simulator this time. However that had never happened to her and as she thought back to the time since she received her enhancement she couldn’t think of a single day nor moment she didn’t have access to the database. What would have caused her to suddenly lose access to the database? Maybe there was a battle brewing outside the simulation while she was in here stuck in the program unaware of the situation at hand. However that didn’t make sense to her. If something was happening, those in charge of the program would have ejected her from the simulation at the first sign of danger. This had to be something else. 

Maybe her enhancement was malfunctioning. Although rare, it wasn’t something that was impossible and that this moment it seemed like the only plausible option on why she couldn’t reach the database. Her connection to the database wasn’t like cellphones on Earth that could lose reception and was too far away to have signal. There was nowhere on Ryton that she could go and lose her link with the database. 

Giving a slight snort in response as the man noted that she was far away from home. Of course in the simulation she wasn’t from home, the program was to represent a place that was supposed to be Earth. Elysia clenched her fist tightly as the man came within punching distance towards her as she resisted the urge to hit him after his prior insult, even more so as he mentioned that the two shared a common goal. Did he think he could just get away with what he said to her and act as if it was nothing? Acting the way he did for nothing more than what appeared to be for publicity was nowhere near a goal of hers. 

“Elysia.” The woman said sharply before walking towards the vehicle. “I assume you are wanting to talk somewhere a little more private.” The woman said stating the obvious rather than asking the man.