Nemo looked down at first, seeming somewhat apologetic. "I'm sorry Raiya..." He said, before clarifying on what he was sorry for. "I ran out of explosives, I just couldn't fit it into the performance. It was a really great spell though." He finished. "You shouldn't move marionettes with your hands Raiya, it's just improper form." Nemo continued. "Also that doesn't sound like me at all... but I appreciate the creativity." He added with a quieter tone that before. It was left up into the air if he was joking or not, given his own voice impressions of the rest of characters in his play.

Before Nemo could speak any further on the matter, Felix started to explain his predicament. "It's not like I've ever given up on a task once I've already started it, but I presume that whole leaving for free courtesy doesn't extend to me, does it?" Nemo asked with a slight grin. "Do you have any idea how to release yourself from the curse, or are Raiya and I going to likely remain the muscle for the remainder of this campaign against the four largest magical organizations in the world?"

"Also, I'd like to announce that I really like the word clandestine. It's got a nice ring to it, ya know? Honestly, it isn't used nearly enough."

Travelling through the dark tunnel felt like an eternity, even though it only lasted for roughly half a minute. She closed her eyes as she lays close to her kiteshield, bracing for impact. She didn't bother looking at what was in front of her, however she could tell when she got closer to the end of the ride when her surroundings started to grow brighter.

Zuri crashes into the water with quite an impact, slowly drifting deeper and deeper towards the bottom. As she returns to her senses, she opens her eyes and propels herself back to the surface with small magical platforms on the bottom of her feet. Zuri resurfaces and starts to cough from the water that went through her nose.

She rubs her eyes and starts to scout for her teammates. Zuri spots a boat of some sort so she starts swimming over to it. Soon later, Felix emerges from the skies and hovers above the surface of the water. She was relived that this mission has finally come to an end. She hops onto the boat and walks through the portal that was graciously opened by Felix.

Soon after stepping through, Zuri was welcomed by the warmth of a spell that dried everyone off. The sense of relief was soon overshadowed by the serious tone when Felix started to explain his situation. When he was done, tears started to run down Zuri's eyes and she doesn't even notice at first. She thought she had it rough with the curse that was placed on her, but at least she still has more freedom. Zuri felt bad for Felix. She wants to help him. No matter what. She wipes off her tears and smiles.

"I.. I'll see this to the very end, and nothing will change my mind." Zuri finishes with a gentle sniff.

Just as Felix had asked how their mission went, Travis had opened his mouth to speak but instead of hearing his own voice, he heard Nemo volunteering to do the debriefing. The Untalent was initially surprised that Nemo would decide to give Felix the full run down on what had transpired in the past several hours. Travis wouldn't have thought his Talent counterpart would even go for such a seemingly mundane task of recollecting past events; that was until he learned Nemo had apparently came well prepared for this. A deadpanned expression quickly filled Travis' face just as he witnessed Nemo producing a title card gleefully written by various sharpie pens, Really?, he thought.

The moment seemed to dive into the realm of ridiculousness as Nemo revealed a small stage illustrating their initial landing, showcasing several puppets each resembling of the mission's participants. He's really going through this isn't he? Travis covered his face with his right hand, feeling briefly dumbfounded and embarrassed to continue watching from this point on. Eventually his hand dragged downward and ended up covering his mouth, allowing him to reluctantly witness the most unnecessary puppet show that seemingly ever existed. As he expected, Nemo began summarizing their experiences in the most oversimplified and vague method he can think of. Travis continued silently watch Nemo carry out his act the best he could though found himself questioning several scenes that were either poorly elaborated on or seemed inaccurately fabricated.

The awkwardness of the play suddenly and abruptly stopped momentarily as Nemo visual described Zoey's apparent demise by brutally slamming her puppet doppelganger into the table the performance took place on, smashing the tiny figure in the process and fragmenting it across the room. While he figured this was typical of Nemo's behavior, the act however pained the Untalent whom surmised that Zoey had died while protecting him from Siedon's attack, based on the display and through what he experienced. Travis looked away and tried his best to conceal his emotions from manifesting during Nemo's 'debrief'; once more he had lost another potential friend during one of these dangerous missions. Eventually, he was mostly successful in swallowing down his dismay and sorrow, only to being himself back into the fold where Nemo was reenacting their plight against Fathers Galvadon and Stockton. It wasn't long until the simulated conflict ended with the showcasing of Travis' unfortunate retrieval of the Paragon; an event he himself still felt quite livid of. To his surprise, Nemo didn't monopolize on that astounding scene with any antics he had previously covered before and quickly got to the point of them falling into the collapsing ocean where they were retrieved by Felix himself, thus concluding his play.

"I think I'll volunteer for now on with filling in the blanks for Felix," Travis sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose as he still fathomed of what he had just witnessed.

Apparently Raiya had similar contemptible words for the white-haired Talent but not the ones Travis had in mind. Instead, Raiya criticized him for either taking glory of kill that war rightfully hers; twice in fact with the case of killing Lori and being denied her revenge against Rutger. Travis frowned and rolled his eyes, already knowing where her criticism was leading to. He did his best to try and ignore it and stayed out in the event Nemo jumped in. Apparently however, he didn’t bite on and instead apologized. Travis mentally concluded he may never truly understand the ways in which Nemo’s mind worked.

It was finally Felix whom re-brought up the more important fact was that one of their number, Zoey, had been filled in battle; a fact Nemo and Raiya had both failed to properly emphasize on. Felix continued to build upon this new case he made and began to express his backgrounds in a way Travis had not anticipated. As he listened to Felix, he learned that their leader had decided to essentially withdraw his blood oath on the Holy Grail itself; an object in legend Travis himself wasn’t quite sure was actually legitimate or not. More or less, Felix had utilized a spell, similar to the one Travis had created and severed his connection with the artifact. However, the motion apparently triggered a failsafe of sorts; a curse that was now bound to him and threatened to devour his mana well and ultimately his life. He finally concluded that in suspending the curse, he had fabricated a rune that would keep in check but only within its vicinity, namely within the grounds of the mansion they resided in.

It quickly all made sense to Travis as to why Felix, with as much favorable power and skill he possessed, could not participate in any of their recent missions. Travis held back another urge, this time frustration, directed towards Felix for not detailing this fact that could have given everyone the context and understanding of what they were really fighting and dying for. Despite his rising contempt, Travis figured this was something Felix was likely all too aware of and likely was experiencing the guilt the problem had created too.

Travis thought hard about how he would respond next. Given the missions and the end goal of the ultimate objective, he knew that this quest was dangerous. The problem though was exactly how dangerous as they now had a couple of people that have died taking on a righteous task they were not familiar with nor hardly wanting of it. In retrospect, he didn’t need to be here; he could be back in Guatemala in an abandoned warehouse continuing his runic research while only worrying of either being found out or being chanced by two not-so-friendly factions that would want him dead for many reasons. While his original hideout was arguably less dangerous, that wasn’t anything much to it. Much of the research he had recently conducted likely could not had been duplicated or discovered where he previously resided.

Despite the dangers, he had owed it to Felix to giving him the opportunity for expanding his horizons tremendously, whether the ex-Arch Magi had passively intended it or not. However, that same notion was a can of worms that had opened for awhile; did he truly owe Felix anything? Considering recent events, he would have quick, maybe too quick to say no. When he truly poured thought into it, his actual answer was fuzzy at best and too many things to weigh to a finally conclusion. But what he knew for certain were his obligations he himself had vocally made and he intended on keeping them.

"...honestly, I - we, still have research to conduct with the Paragons," Travis reluctantly began, already beginning to sense regret forming in the back of his conscious, "and I did say that I would find a way to undo the effects of my spell and help Zuri regain her memories and abilities...so, yeah. I'm staying."

Raiya widened her eyes as she heard the explanation from Felix. It all started to make sense to her now, why he couldn't side with her when she was excommunicated, why he had never even attempted to make contact with her after she left, and why Felix waited until a few weeks ago to leave the arcanocracy and attempt to recruit her and mend bridges. The holy grail, the threat of execution for even attempting to disclose of the ritual. Felix had been bound and gagged by the ritual he was forced to perform to become an arch-mage. A lot of emotions were welling up inside Raiya, brimming forth and spilling over until her mouth began to move on its own, ""Felix, I didn-..." Raiya caught herself before she laid bare too much of what she was feeling. She did not know if she was quite ready to forgive Felix. But one thing was for sure, her anger was stoked even more towards the arcanocracy for stealing everything from her.

Raiya rolled her eyes at the half-hearted apology from Nemo. Not even sparing a moment of thought to reply with anything but, "Tch- whatever..." Her thoughts were too disrupted by the new revelations regarding Felix that she was still processing everything. She continued to remain silent as an emotionally charged Zuri began to spill tears over the disclosure of Felix's predicament and her pledge to remain until the mission was complete. Raiya also remained silent during Travis's pledge, his voice displaying the honesty he could not display himself. It was apparent how hesitant Travis was to pledge his life to this mission, but Raiya figured there was something more that Travis was getting out of this adventure than just some warm fuzzies for helping humanity. Finally Raiya broke the silence with, "I don't know if I believe you about everything you just said. But I have known you since I was a child, and your aura has always been a constant calming white. One thing I noticed when he first came to me was that his aura, while still calming, had a feeling of instability to it. It felt as if Felix was charging a massive spell constantly. I just figured he had kept a few portals open as escape routes. But it does make sense. Regardless of what I want, I am honor-bound to remain here until the deed is finished or I have been released from my contract with Nemo. So, I am staying until we finish this, or we die. Which, honestly at this point, it is looking pretty certain that it might just be the latter" Raiya said in a calm tone. It was clear that Raiya still had a lot of processing to do on the matter, but she felt secure with her answer for the time being.

---

As Nemo spoke Felix sat forward, placing his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together, and resting his chin on his clasped hands. "I might have used the term curse a little imperfectly there. I'm not quite sure if it actually is a true curse by definition. I've ran many biocrystal diagnostics on my mana-well. There was no apparent curse attached to me. A curse is like a parasite that feeds on your mana-well, while producing many horrid effects with your own mana that the curse has fed off of. The afforementioned horrid effects are by definition what people think of when they use the term, 'curse.' But there is no parasitic spells attached to me. By all accounts, I am as healthy as the day I became an arch-mage," Felix explained, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands on his stomach. "What is afflicting me seems to be less of a magical nature and more of a physical nature. Like a disease, an illness. That is wherein the problem lies. I honestly cannot figure out what has been afflicting me. Although, I do have some working theories. It is quite unnatural to permanently remove a portion of one's mana-well. In fact, most of the time it is quite fatal. My first hypothesis is that the reason why I am going through what I am calling: retrograde mana-well atrophy, is because I removed a portion of my mana-well. My second hypothesis is that, in order to cure myself, I must regain the portion of my mana-well I cut loose. Although, that does pose a problem, because the portion of my mana-well I severed would have been stored within the paragon of the grail that I bound myself to. While it might be possible to access it if we possessed it, the grail is deep in the heart of the vatican. It is most certainly the last paragon I would wish for you to retrieve. With that said, there may be a few working cures we could attempt in the mean time." Felix paused as if deep in thought, then shaking his head briefly, he continued, "I've tried been down many thaumaturgical paths, attempting to find a solution to my problem outside of reclaiming my mana-well from the holy grail, but my research has bore no fruits as of yet. However, I am not giving up, and-" Felix waved his right hand at Travis, "If you'll assist me in coming up with a solution to my dilemma, I am sure we will figure it out in no time."

Felix was taken aback by the crying Zuri, Felix did not really know how to react as he had just met the newest addition to the team a few weeks ago. Felix began to awkwardly smile and scratch the back of his own head with his right hand while slowly waving his left hand in a gesture of assuagement. "Don't cry, Zuri. I didn't mean to make you sad. I just felt you all deserved to know what you were in for." Felix tilted his head down and clasped his hands together in an apologetic manner, taking a somber tone, "I would like to say I am very sorry for not telling you all the truth about me. It was my hubris that led to the grizzly deaths of our members. I have to bear that responsibility alone. And if this is to continue, I need my conscience clear. So thank you guys, for looking past my faults and instead, believing in the mission itself." Felix finished

Travis continued to listen on to Felix's elaboration concerning his more apparent condition inflicted by his meddling retraction from the Holy Grail. While the Arch-Magi had some possible clues, they were more or less uncertainties without any grounding evidence nor appraise. What was known for sure however was that the affliction started by aborting a segment of his mana-well to free himself from a binding oath fabricated by the catholic arcanocracy. With the case in mind, it seemed likely that reversing the process was the only way to null this mana-driven anomaly. But what in entailed was quite literally acquiring the Holy Grail; a task Travis quickly predicted and probably agreed upon as insane if not suicidal.

But before heading down that road, assuming everyone is still kicking up to that point, treating the problem seems like the only best and more productive solution currently available, "While even I can't begin to imagine what is eating you, it'll definitely be a challenge worth tackling. Heck, may even help out with our research with the Paragons too," said Travis, sound more confident than he was minutes before.

After Zuri wiped off all her tears, she noticed Felix apologizing for making her sad. "No no, you don't have to apologize! I should be thanking you and everyone else for helping me." Travis saying that he'll also be staying to help with removing this curse from her was also very reassuring. "Thanks Travis, it means a lot to me." She says, feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Felix felt like he was beginning to understand Travis as a person. Someone who was focused solely on the betterment of his craft, throwing all caution to the wind in order to increase his skill. While Felix had hoped Travis would eventually find more reason to stay and help the team, Felix could not blame Travis. In many ways, Travis reminded Felix of himself when he was younger; starving for knowledge, and jumping at the chance to prove himself.

Felix grinned, "Well, in the paraphrased words of Saint Marher, 'time and tide wait for no man!'" Felix said indicating that he was ready to start their research at that very moment.



Felix stretched his arms out above his head as he yawned, his yawn echoing off of the white walls of the underground laboratory. What was it at this point? It had to be around 50 hours since Felix last got any decent amount of sleep. They spent months attempting to figure out a process to restore Felix permanently, to no avail. However, in the process, they did inadvertently find a way to reestablish the ley-lines of the paragons within the first month of their research. While the spell they came up with could fix the dud paragons they had in their possession, it did absolutely nothing to help Felix with his personal predicament. However, what was keeping Travis and Felix up so late recently is that they had been testing various runic formulae attempting to condense the large runic circle that surrounded the manor that kept Felix in stasis. The idea was actually Travis’. A few days ago the duo were at their wits’ end when suddenly in a split moment, as if lightning struck, Travis suggested they use a mobile version of something like what Felix had set up around the manor.

Many hurdles stood in their way, though. The first being that the rune Felix used was hardly space efficient, it took up about twenty percent of the radius of effect the circle had, which was about 200 square feet. The second being that the rune itself ran off of the latent mana energy that flowed from the gigantic geographical ley-line. The reason Felix had chosen the location he did for constructing his manor was solely because of the natural flow of mana that he could tap into for the rune. So not only was the current rune not space efficient, but it also was not mana efficient either. Fortunately for Felix, one of Travis’ specialties was condensing runic formulae and making spells more efficient. Even with Travis’ help, though, their project was a daunting one.

The duo set out at first by making a rough conceptual sketch. They outlined how the system would theoretically work. They knew that in order for it to be mobile, it would need an energy source, they also knew that in order to prevent a feedback loop, they could not use Felix as a source of this energy, directly or indirectly through a mana crystal. Which left them first with the task of creating a rechargeable mana crystal that naturally fed off of the latent ley line energy at their headquarters. This was truly the easiest part of the project, inscribing a runic program upon a mana-crystal was a fairly common magical practice. What they did not expect, however, was to be roadblocked by so many problems in the actual runic formula of the spell itself. Felix leaned back in his office chair, as he used his mana to turn the air in front of him into a chalk board. He swished his index finger around, jotting down a specific line in the formula that they had come at a halt on.

“The greek, “στάση” for stasis is probably the most efficient foundational incantation, but the linking stasis to the directive of my mana-well is not so easy. I used many various redundancies in the incantation around the grounds of the house. Even if it wasn’t the most efficient method, it is the most surefire method to ensure the rune will accomplish the desired effect. Also, redundancies strengthen a spell, making it more powerful than normal. The problem, is that we don’t always have room for redundancies. So, efficiency-wise we have to be extremely careful with our wording. Our runes must be extremely precise.” Felix thought out loud as he drew out a few rough ideas. Eventually he grew frustrated and waved his arm at the floating mana, dissipating it into a blue smoke-like vapor that faded away. “Please tell me you are having better luck than me,” Felix pleaded.

Before Travis could answer, a loud whirring sound accompanied by a deep blue flash of light interrupted them. The new wooden door in the back of the lab opened, as Raiya stepped out of the steaming room. After Travis and Felix restored the paragon of Fantasia to normal, they both figured out how to prevent the paragon from pulling an entire area into its illusory world. By constructing a different room near the lab and inscribing that room with a set of domain-border runes, the paragon treated the room as a full bounded space. Only those who entered the room would be pulled into the paragon constructed dimensional-field. They also figured out through trial testing, that the paragon of Fantasia could be used to construct any world that the user desired. Of course, everything inside the world was bound to the paragon itself, which meant that it was impossible to leave the paragon with anything that was constructed inside the world. This made the paragon of fantasia an excellent place to train and hone magical skills, a mage could spend days, even weeks inside the world. The only dangerous side effect being that any undigested food and water would collapse into nothing with the rest of the world. Raiya had been gone for three days this time, and she looked it. Raiya’s clothes were tattered, her hair was disheveled, and she looked fairly dirty (which was impressive considering all Fantasia-constructed dirt disappeared upon world collapse, which meant all of the grime was organic in nature.)

Raiya closed the door to the Fantasia room and she dropped the bright blue paragon stone into the new and improved paragon suppression box. It was the same wooden box Felix had used before, but with a new runic formula that did not permanently sever the ley-lines of the paragons but temporarily suppressed them within a bounded field. The small chest was sitting at the edge of the worktable Travis and Felix were sitting at, and after Raiya dropped the paragon into one of the slots of the wooden chest, she closed it. “Damn, you eggheads are still going at it, huh? You two look worse than me, and I was almost swallowed by a taiga drake.” Raiya joked. “But seriously, how long have you two been up? I’ve seen Yakuza torture victims who looked better off than you do. And they had their skin flayed off.” Raiya had been becoming a little less hostile and a little more talkative as of late. Felix was not sure if he should take her friendlier disposition as a bad thing or a good thing, but ultimately he decided that it was better for the team if she got along with everyone. Felix let out a long sigh, “five… teen… fifty or so hours. I’m not even really sure. It’s a paradox, I know I need sleep to think about this straight, but I can’t sleep until we figure this out.” Felix reached out and grabbed the mug that was laying on the table in front of him. He took a sip of the now cold coffee, and then let out another long sigh. “Well, I’m going to go take a bath and maybe get drunk, so if you need me, I’ll be upstairs.” Raiya denoted before heading up the staircase.

“Well, Travis, anything of interest?” Felix asked again

---

Once Raiya closed the door to her room, she undressed and drew a bath, pouring half a bottle of green tea-mana infused soap into the water before sinking down into the hot water. A bath was the one exception to Raiya's hatred towards bodies of water. Raiya pulled a bottle of sake from her mana inventory and a tumbler glass. Raiya poured herself a drink, placing the rest of the bottle on a nearby bathroom table next to a book of daily affirmations that had been there before she occupied the room. As Raiya began to relax and sip her drink, she closed her eyes. But before Raiya could slip into unconsciousness the pinging of her manadial could be heard from the other room. Raiya sighed and stood out of the water, the splashing sound of disrupted bathwater accompanying her. She rushed over to the dial grabbing it, before rushing back to the water to avoid too much discomfort from the comparatively cold air verses the warmth of the bath water. She slinked back into the warm water, that now felt even hotter because of her body jumping from hot to cold to hot again. The manadial continued to ping until, frustrated, Raiya slapped the blue managem. Immediately, a mana-constructed hologram appeared of Tsukihi's face. The brunette whose traditionally half shaven hairstyle, now had a even pixie cut.

"Oh, ma'am, Ah did not know you were takin' a bath. Ah can call back iffin it's a bad time." Tsukihi said in her traditional southern accent. "No need, what is it, Tsukihi? Is it about what I asked for earlier?" Raiya asked. "N-no, ma'am. Although, ah did manage to fill your order. one-hundred and fifty of your special .45 ACP tungsten rounds." Tsukihi replied. "Good. Then I'll be there in the morning to pick them up." Raiya stated, and then motioned towards to end the call. "Wait! Ma'am." Tsukihi exclaimed, which stopped Raiya from ending the conference, "Ah said that's not why ah called." Raiya sighed before tipping back the rest of the sake in her glass into her mouth. "Then what could possibly be so important?" Raiya asked facetiously. "Well, ma'am. ah tried contacting you the past few days but I couldn't get through,"

Raiya sighed knowing that her radio silence was due to the interference from the paragon. She couldn't tell Tsukihi that she was in possession of one of the most powerful magical objects in existence for obvious reasons. So she just let Tsukihi continue, "Anyway, a few days ago we got some reports of some of our dealers down at the pier being killed off. We sent a team to investigate. But we are still waiting on our guy in the morgue and the police department to debrief us." Raiya let out a large exasperated and exaggerated sigh, "Jeez. I'm sure it's nothing. Alright? I'll be there in the morning to pick up my rounds. Don't make me wait around when I get there either." Raiya said before motioning to end the call, "But, ma'-" Before Tsukihi could finish her thought, Raiya ended the call. Raiya poured another tumbler of sake and began to relax once more.

"Um," Travis hesitated for a moment, not that he was unsure how to respond but more of a split-second reply he could muster before composing himself after burying his eyes into numerous tomes of rune-crafting and spell linguistics for the past several hours.

Like Felix, Travis was stretching himself beyond his physical and mental limitations and it was becoming difficult to fight back the fatigue that continued to plague him. It was perhaps his exhausted dedication and numerous cups of caffeine that kept him going for this long. Solving the personal ley-line/manawell predicament of his Talent counterpart was much more tedious and mind-numbing than he had previously anticipated. While is seemed that they were hardly closer to their objective, Travis nevertheless mused over their other successes involving their research.

Their initial studies within the first month gave them newer insight on how ley-lines worked and how they could be manipulated. This eventually lead to a breakthrough involving Travis' prototype runic spell where they had stumbled upon several of its key components that were responsible in severing the ley-lines on anything it was casted on, provided it held an aura. By reversing these components' programmed purpose and rewriting them, their newly reverse-engineered spell could promote the healing and reconstitution of ley-lines. The results were promising after they had tested it upon the disabled Paragons, Espial and Fantasia, and confirmed the spell could restore them back to their former glory. After the creation of this spell, Travis had on the side began his own project of compiling the results and effects of both his first prototype rune and this one in an effort to craft runic incantation what could undo any curse applied to a given person; namely Zuri in this case. Still, the new process created an issue of having to disable and renew the Paragons over and over again every time they wanted to use them, specifically Fantasia.

While their organization's purpose was to collect the Paragons and prevent them from following into the wrong hands, the Paragon Fantasia proved useful in many different ways they couldn't possibly pass up in utilizing. After diverting their attention to researching their recent bounty, Felix and Travis in due course figured out how they could implement Fantasia's dimensional field within a confined without bringing the entire mansion within its complex illusion. As such, a small room covered in perimeter-restricting runes was made in the back of the lab for the Paragon to create its worlds inside. Raiya had been one of Fantasia's recent users as of the past few days, doing what, Travis was unsure though he assumed it was training of sorts. During his and Felix’s conversation, Raiya had exited the small room and deposited the Paragon into the same receptacle they had used to hold and disable Espial, this time however, it used a newer spell.

After seeing his prototype rune in action several times, Travis proposed several revisions that would improve the rune and allow it to perform its original intended purpose. Through his testing, he identified a number of integrated redundancies within the original rune formula that were the main cause of any targeted ley-lines to be severed. Adjusting these elements took almost a day to complete but the result was exactly as he hoped for. Instead of completely terminating any ley-line connections the spell came in touch with, the new result would isolate and dampen the aura of anything it interfaced with, effectively suppressing the entity in question however only within its influencing circle.

With Raiya departing the lab to leave he and Felix be, Travis resumed his reply, “I would not say I’m having a better time at this than you are. Hell, I’m not even sure if what I have will cut it,”

“So, as we know, the main deal of this plan it to allow you to leave the mansion premises unharmed and without incurring any additional issues, at least for an acceptable duration at least,” he continued, “the problem of course is developing a more mobile runic spell efficient enough to keep your mana-well degradation in check during that time away. Quite honestly, at least with the current and typical methods at hand, the best I can could produce was re-writing the existing rune into a compressed form. However, the smaller rewrite is still too large and can’t be reduced any further without losing potency.”

Travis then casted his light projection and began writing several glyphs into the air, “With that said however, I think I have two responses to this dilemma,”

“One possible solution is to divide the spell into separate sections; micronized runes essentially, each with a defining purpose. I’ve done a few preliminary checks with the theory and it does seem plausible to have some of these runes coded to act as redundant auxiliaries in which, via referencing scripting, coincide with the main body rune responsible for keeping your – what was it called again? ‘Retrograde mana-well atrophy’? Yeah, keeping that in stasis, along with a few other smaller runes to recite its purpose,” Travis explained as he illustrated a central circle with about five other runic glyphs surrounding it and connected with lines of additional scripting.

“My worry though is, well, how awkward this with undoubtedly look. The design is rather specific and frankly may take up most of your body, like a weird tattoo. Of course, I could feasibly inscribe these runes via wearable objects, say like a bracelet for instance. Not sure if you’re into bling though."

Travis then began another set of drawings, this time a notably larger rune however its shape was unusual and didn't seem to match that of other runic frameworks or styles. The choice of works also seemed oddly positioned and seemingly didn't coincide with principle scripting, “My other solution is going to sound unorthodox at best. As mentioned before, the usual manner of how I would condense a spell is simply not enough to scale down the existing rune. That is of course if I change the rules a bit on how runes could be written. Bear with me as I try to explain this as it sounds like jumping down a rabbit hole.”

"Ever heard of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis?" Travis began, "it’s a more of a popular way of saying linguistic relativity. Linguistic relativity, simply put, is the individual cognitive experience of the world through the language used. As you may know, some languages in the real world tend to lack certain aspects of other dialects and often have different ways to approach or describe base norms. For instance, the Pirahã language literally has no numbers or more specifically, no words to describe an exact quantity and instead only composes of approximates quantities like, literally, ‘small amount’ or relatively large amount’. Another example is Mandarin Chinese which utilizes a totally different tone and inflection structure compared to English in which can ultimately alter the meaning of a single word.”

Travis described this but writing several Chinese words, each displaying their own visual tones and inflections and beside them were their English translations, each with a different work or phrase, “Getting to the point, what I am seeking to do is to rewrite the existing rune using a different inflection structures in order to reduce its complexity and therefore its size, but retain effectiveness too. It’s a longshot though I don’t suppose it couldn’t hurt to try. However it may involve a ton of testing before, or if, a conceivable working miniature rune can be produced."

Travis then backed up and allowed to Felix to absorbed his proposed ideas. When he reached for his mug, he found that it was hollow and without its caffeinated substance, "Huh, I think I should make another pot..."

Felix listened to Travis's proposal, and was quite pleasantly surprised when he brought up the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. There was something to be said about environmental development, and language was indeed a part of the environment. Of course, this was not the first time Felix had heard about this hypothesis, it was the basic foundation of high runic formula crafting. The more languages a mage understood, the more powerful he was at crafting runes, that is essentially what it amounted to. Felix snapped his fingers, "Travis, I must say that you are a genius. Each language has a structure of rules specific to its composure. Because of this fact, certain languages are more efficient than others. In terms of written language, this is especially true. What you said gave me an idea, though it isn't exactly along the same lines as your idea. I am not dismissing your idea, mind you. But just entertain me for a moment. Because of my past as a member of the Church, I am most proficient in Latin and Greek. I also know some hebrew and aramaic. The problem with Latin and Greek in written form is that it is not exactly space efficient. They both have the same problem that English does. Each character in the written language corresponds to a certain short sound, and the composure of both is of consonants and vowels. Very efficient. Ancient hebrew, however was only composed of consonants, leaving it up to the writer's elaboration, or in most cases, the reader's interpretations to discern a meaning of a text. It made it much more efficient but also much more contextual. Precision is everything in ancient hebrew spell crafting. One small clerical error could prove fatal. It was not until later that these simple letterings were enhanced through the addition of small dots and lines underneath and above the already established characters to denote vowel pronunciation and hard and soft consonants, it gave their language its much needed context. Of course, since the already established letters were denoted with small dots and dashes for context, the efficiency of the language is still very much so intact."

Felix stopped his diatribe, and took a moment to collect his thoughts. He felt like he was rambling, and knew it was because of the fatigue he was experiencing. Felix was glad that Travis offered to make more coffee. The coffee pot was next to the miniature refrigerator which was sitting on a wall-mounted counter top next to the large laboratory sinks at the west side of the room. They were currently sitting on the east side of the room. The minifrige had all manner of coffee creamers with different flavors. Felix liked his with Italian sweet creme flavored creamer.

Felix walked over to the new pot of coffee with his empty cup in hand and began to carefully concoct his coffee how he liked it: 3/4's of the cup with black coffee and the rest with Italian sweet creme creamer. He sat back down and took a long gulp of the hot liquid, tears forming in his eyes from the almost dangerous temperature of the new coffee. He slammed his cup down and let out a sigh of relief, "Come to me caffeine, you sweet but cruel mistress." Felix said aloud as he stretched his arms out. "As I was saying. hebrew is pretty efficient when it comes ot runic creation. Unfortunately, i am not very proficient in the usage of hebrew, and I think there is a better way still. I am not that proficient in any asian languages, the only one I understand roughly is Japanese. While I do understand the writing structure of Japanese better than I understand actually speaking the language, I know enough to understand that if used properly, analytic logograms such as Japanese kanji or Chinese hanzi tend to be very efficient and precise, especially in rune crafting. Perhaps we could look at a few of these languages and craft a rune using one of these more efficient languages." Felix finished expositing his idea, taking a large swig of his coffee once more. The effect of the caffeine was certainly taking effect. The warm feeling of an increased heart rate gave Felix a second wind, although it was more like a sixth wind at this point.

---

Raiya drained her bath, and got dressed. Her mind couldn't put down the call she just had. She continued to turn it over and over in her head until it began to frustrate her. Eventually Raiya decided to pay a visit to her old penthouse early. She took her time to construct a long distance transportation portal, with a variation of a well-known kanji rune spell 輸 the kanji for transport. After a portal opened up, she stepped through to the warm light of her old penthouse where Tsukihi was now commanding Raiya's gang in her stead. The penthouse seemed fairly empty, and, because the portal dropped her right at the massive fully stocked bar, Raiya decided to take a moment to craft herself a long island iced tea. Raiya took a shot of each component as she mixed, drinking a shot of triple-sec, white rum, gin and tequila, before actually mixing the ingredients together in a separate cup. She sat down at the bar after concocting her cocktail, and began to feel the effects of all the alcohol she just downed. It had been a while since she had drank that much, so the effects of the large amount of liquor she imbibed took hold much quickly than anticipated.

Raiya set her head down on the bar and let the effect of the depressant take hold. Her face felt flushed and her hands and feet felt warm. She was enjoying her drunken state a little too much when Tsukihi snuck up behind Raiya and placed her hand on her shoulder which startled Raiya to the point where she almost fell off of her stool. "Ma'am..." Tsukihi said in a concerned voice, "Ah thought you were coming in the morning." She added. "I was... I'm just... I couldn't ignore what you said. So I came to see if you heard anything else." Tsukihi sat down at the stool directly right of Raiya. "Affirmative, ma'am but you ain't gunna like it." Tsukihi pulled out the inlaid mana crystal from her dial and placed the flat end on the bar-top. She tapped the blue half-sphere a few times before a holographic video scene began to play before them scaled down to 1/16th of the original size of the event. "We have this new technology that allows us to take latent mana-waves of an area where recent events have taken place and reconstruct a rough simulation of what happened based on the echoing mana-waves. This is what happened." The dealers were standing around a barrel-fire like usual, the whole scene was in a pale blue tint, and the smaller details of the people were absent. Their faces were blank slates, but the rough shape of the clothing that they wore could be seen. The dealers that were around the barrel-fire all wore hoodies instead of their gang-jackets. The police would not mess with them regardless, but making the dealers look like the regular homeless population helped keep things more inconspicuous. The seen progressed until a large figure, about 6' from what Raiya could tell, entered the scene. He was wearing what looked like a suit, his hair was slicked back, though Raiya could not tell the color. He walked swiftly up to the dealers surrounding the barrel, and in an instant, with his bare fists, proceeded to kill and or wound all three of the dealers. The first one took a hard punch to the face, and then was instantly picked up and dumped into the barrel of fire. The second two received punches to the neck, crumpling in unconscious piles. The figure then leaned down to pick up the three paper bags of narcotics that the dealers had by their feet. He eventually walked out of scene.

"Wait, so this can show us where he is right now then, right?
Let's go teach this punk not to fuck with the Crux gang." Raiya said angrily. "Sorry ma'am, but the technology takes two hours to render a scene like the one you saw, and it can only be used to capture a 15 foot square area. This is only meant to show us what happened not tell us where the guy went." Tsukihi explained. Damnit! So we have no leads at all?
What about our guys in the police department, or at the morgue? These dealers were all mages how could they be taken out by a punch like that?" Raiya's frustration was only exasperated by her drunken state. "Our guys at the police department do not know anything who did this. He seems to be new around. The morgue only confirmed what we already knew, our guys were taken down by brute force and nothing else. That guy, whoever he is, he's strong. But we did find something interesting, residual magic waves from a spell on each of the bodies. It appears that this guy was enhancing his punches with magic." Tsukihi explained.

Raiya downed the last of her drink and slammed the glass down on the bar. "So is there no good news at all then?" Raiya asked in a pleading tone. "Well, we have increased security detail on all of our dealers. And we have placed surveillance around every drop and pickup point. If he attempts this again, we will catch him." Tsukihi replied. She then snapped her fingers, a brief flare of red flames signifying the conjuring from Tsukihi's mana inventory, after the flames dissipated, Three boxes of specialty made .45 ACP rounds each containing 50 rounds sat in the place where the flames once were. "Go back to whatever duty you have obliged yourself to, and take these. Don't worry yourself over this, ma'am, we've got this under control." Raiya waved her hand over the rounds, depositing them into her mana inventory with a flair of pink electricity. She then turned around and stepped off the stool. Raiya placed her hand on Tsukihi's left shoulder. "You're a good friend,
and a good substitute leader. Thanks for being patient with me." Raiya spoke softly before leaving through the portal she still had open.

The portal closed behind her with a sharp electrical sound. She was back in her room at Manor De Felix. These recent revelations and her empty stomach had placed Raiya into a particularly bad mood. Raiya went downstairs to fix herself a simple sandwich, and another stiff drink. Standing at the counter-space she busied herself with putting together a rough dinner.

(For reference it is currently 8:00 PM at Felix's Manor.)

Zuri was relived that she made it back along with most of her teammates. The first week was very relaxing, especially after such an important mission of recovering one of the paragons, not to forget the death of a fellow teammate. Even though she wasn't particularly close with Zoey, Zuri felt a little bit sad that she was killed off. She tried not to think too much about her death, but it soon lead to thinking who might get seriously injured or even die in the next mission.

She heads out of the mansion to practice honing her abilities and experiment a bit. She decided to work on and hopefully improve her defensive abilities so she can be more well-rounded as a magic user so she can contribute more towards the team. Ever since she made the decision that she would work on bettering herself, Zuri spent a few hours everyday casting defensive abilities with a variety of strength, shapes and sizes. When she first started out, it took quite a while before she could throw a shield of some sort up. Over time, she could throw up shields further away from her. However, to avoid spending too much mana, she only keeps them up for a very short period of time as she was only working on executing these abilities and the time required to throw them up.

Zuri eventually learned that Felix and Travis have made good use of the power that the paragon had, allowing any of us to create a world from their own imagination. She finds her way to the place where Felix and Travis usually hang out to do their research. Zuri nods and smiles as a greeting before she hurries and takes the confined paragon and enters the room that was rigged with complex runes that allowed her to take advantage of it's power. She closes the door behind her, the paragon on the palm of her hands as she places it close to her heart, closes her eyes and starts imagining a very simple but peaceful field of grass as far as you can see with a few trees scattered around. She opens her eyes in awe as everything looked so realistic. She begins to fall in love with such power as she terraforms a small lake that runs through the land. Zuri places a few animals such as tigers, rabbits, birds, and elephants scattered around the grassy field and sky and says "This should be good enough."

She throws up a few dummy targets at different ranges to sharpen the accuracy of her offensive abilities, throwing a large unrefined crystal shard that bolted towards the target directly at center mass, piercing right through the target and landing very far away. Zuri wanted to optimize the use of her mana so that she doesn't spend excessive mana on each and every spell she casts. She starts giving it some thought, thinking out loud "Hmm.. I could make the shard smaller.. but then I'd be less effective.. Maybe sharpen the rough corners so it does more damage? But that would only make the cast times slightly longer.." as she continues to put more thought into optimizing this spell. "I could try to create a shard that doesn't last as long since it loses it's purpose after it hits the target." Zuri finishes before she raises her arm again, creating a runic circle and applying these properties onto it before shooting out another one at the furthest target.

The shard strikes against the target dummy and knocks it over. A few seconds later, the shard fades away. Zuri could feel that it used less of her mana, quite substantially in fact. She decides to replicate the same rune, however adjusting it just slightly so it shoots six smaller shards, with the same amount of piercing power. She aims it at the closest target and throws the spell without any hesitation. It acts similarly to a shotgun shell. Zuri felt like there is still lots to do to optimize her most basic spell, but she wanted to jump straight to moving targets. She spawns three men that looked exactly like the ones they the group was killing to recover the paragon a few weeks ago. "That should do it." she says as they start walking in one direction.

Zuri aims her runic circle in the general direction and throws a shard a little ahead of where they will be, compensating for the travel time but not gravity as her shards travel directly towards the target. It strikes against one of the target's arms, taking it off completely. "Ouch." she comments before she thinks about adding lock-on with her projectiles. The two men started running towards her, however they were all unarmed so she didn't feel that worried. She quickly adjusts the runic circle and aims it directly at the two targets so it can lock-on before moving her runic circle a little bit off target to see if her changes actually works. Two projectiles shot out and traveled with a curve, however both projectiles strikes the same target. "Guess I've still got some more work to do." she says as the last target started to get very close. She throws up the runic circle that shoots out a scatter version of the basic attack and aims it directly at center mass. It blows him away, showering the grass with the blood of her enemies before the shards vanished, leaving holes in his chest.

She repeats the same steps using different spells with different targets, ranging from armed targets with guns to magic users, practicing her defensive abilities and adjusting her spells on-the-go as she experimented. It wasn't long before she has spent three whole hours inside this illusionary paragon world. There was an awful lot of dead bodies and blood all over the place, but she felt fine since they were all but real. Zuri spent a bit of time adjusting the lock-on mechanism so it would strike each target at least once. She looks up into the sky, locks onto a handful of birds that were flying in the sky and shot out enough lock-on shards with a few extras in case a few of them missed. It followed each bird like missiles before striking most of them down.

Zuri felt a bit fatigued from all this use of magic since she wasn't used to such long practice sessions. "I guess it's time to take a break.." she says as she takes out the paragon and triggers it so that this world would collapse on itself so that she could exit this room. It takes a few minutes, but it eventually finishes, revealing the room that she was in before constructing the world as she reaches for the door handle and opens it slowly. Zuri takes a peek outside and sees Travis and Felix still at it. She walks up to them and asks "Shouldn't you two get some rest?" as she places the paragon back where she found it.

Nemo moved from the living room to the kitchen, holding a small plate with a ornate coffee cup in it. Among his usual accessories, he wore his pink robe with a pair of heather grey sweatpants, a vintage looking white t-shirt with a large faded yellow smiley face decal on it, and a pair of house slippers and white crew socks.

"Hello there Raiya." Nemo commented, taking a sip of his coffee. "Fixing yourself a bite to eat, I take it?" He added as he swung open a pantry door with a flick of his finger and a basic spell. He reached up and pulled out a box of small German cookies. He grabbed a handful and placed them on his small plate before returning the box.

For the most part Nemo had remained reclusive in his room for the three month break. With no fighting to do he only conversed intermittently with the group. This was especially true for Raiya, who still seemed to be upset with him.

Raiya finished crafting her lettuce, tomato, salami and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread, when Nemo entered the dining area. Raiya let out a huge irritated groan as Nemo tried to spark up some small talk. "Hello there, Nemo, Raiya said in a mimicking manner, "Being annoying and intrusive as usual, I take it?" Raiya was usually able to just ignore Nemo when he talked to her. She, even on occasion, was able to maintain the illusion of polite small talk, but this night was clearly different.

Raiya plopped her sandwich onto a plate, and then fixed herself a quick rum and coke, before finding a spot on a sofa to sit down on in the adjacent living room. There was a large plasma television above the fireplace. The television was essentially useless, since there was no internet or satellite dish due to the covert nature of Felix's house; and being as far out in the Californian redwoods as they were, they had no basic antenna reception either. In order to provide some outside entertainment, every time that Felix left to gather groceries for the house, he also would grab the newest blurays. There was a large rack of movies and t.v. series boxsets. Raiya had been watching something called The Magicians recently. Turning on the t.v. and bluray player resumed the disk on the episode she was last on. Raiya found it odd how the untalents portrayed magi. The characters in this series were all "magicians" but didn't seem to know what aura was or mana even. In fact, magic seemed proportional to the despair the user sunk in, which seemed unique but highly inaccurate. Regardless, the series provided enough entertainment to allow Raiya to mindlessly pass some time while eating and getting drunk.

Nemo took a bite out of one of his cookies as Raiya began her response. His somewhat upbeat demeanor rapidly began to sputter out as she spoke. His chewing stopped altogether as she started the second half of her mocking response, leaving him with a blank deadpan expression after he swallowed. It made him look sad in comparison with the mood he just had. His cheek impulsively twitched once when she finished. Nemo remained silent as Raiya left the kitchen. After a brief silence he finally spoke quietly, clearly to himself. "...I'm not annoying."

Nemo took a sip of his coffee and left the kitchen. He briefly observed Raiya in the living room watching her show and took note of her hostility levels towards him being above the norm today. "I'll be in my room if you need me, Raiya." He commented with a less chipper soft tone while rolling his fingers on a backrest of a nearby chair. He then turned and left.

Nemo walked upstairs slowly and entered his room. He popped another cookie in his mouth and then closed the door behind him and locked it. Despite the lack of excitement for him in the last few months, Nemo had clearly kept himself busy. He had totally renovated his room, however since he was the only one to enter his room nobody would have noticed yet. He seemed to have a mish-mash of retro technology and Victorian-era or funky-style furniture in his room mainly.

Nemo set his plate and drink down on a end table and walked over to the window, now dressed in flashy tyrian purple velvet fringe curtains. He pulled a small silver chain, causing a grey blackout cover to slide down, completely blocking any light from entering the room. Now that the room went from dark to pitch black, the only person who could still see in it was Nemo. He pulled the curtains closed to hide the cover and then walked over to his own television set. It was a medium sized metallic-grey and black colored retro set clearly dating back to the 80's, next to it sat a silver-grey VCR. Both were positioned on top of a wooden stand with two small cupboard doors. He opened them, revealing a large VHS movie collection inside. A good 85% of the movies inside were either old western's or horror movies. Nemo removed one from it's resting spot and took the tape out and fed it to the machine.

Nemo turned on the television, which sprung to life rather quickly as if it was glad to still be functioning. It only softly lit up some of the room, keeping the rest dark. He walked over to an ornate Victorian-era loveseat and sat down. The piece had a vintage looking floral pattern, which gave it a sort of grandma style kind of look to it. At his feet there was a expensive looking Persian rug, and at the top of his seat rested a colorful Navajo blanket. He pulled the heavy thing down and covered himself with it as the movie started. The movie he picked was "My Name Is Nobody", an old western. He picked up his small plate again with his coffee cup and cookies and sipped and munched idly as the movie played, careful not to spill or get crumbs anywhere.

Apparently, Travis had struck a homerun with his alternative language application as Felix immediately latched onto the idea. For a moment, he was nearly suspecting Felix to show more doubt toward the concept, instead, Felix displayed intrigue and even further expanded upon his idea. Just has he listened to Felix give his input, Travis did as he offered and began producing a new pot of coffee, this time going with the standard roast as their other more alluring and colorful mixes were nearly exhausted in hopes of producing sooner results.
Just has he poured himself a cup of the latest batch, Felix briefly joined him and made his own cup, downing a portion, before continuing on. During the moment, Travis hadn’t even noticed Zuri arriving into the lab and taking the Fantasia Paragon to the backroom. Re-entering into the discussion, Felix simplified their new goal identified a few languages to consider. Hebrew was the initial one he described being notably efficient in some areas but he instead offered up his interests with the Japanese and Chinese languages, specifically Kanji and Hanzi.

Travis couldn’t help but grin upon learning Felix wasn’t adroit with oriental languages than previously anticipated, “Well, as a matter of fact, I do know quite a bit of both Kanji and Hanzi. It was a curricular subject for many Scholars at the Academia to learn the many languages and how they influence spellcraft...plus is pays to know and speak another language when you're on an expedition.”

After stating his case, Travis produced his manadial and began pulling a number structured shapes and templates from it's interface. The designs he recovered would then be projected into the air where he summoned his light projection spell once more, this time, he wrote a pair of runic sequences in the air, each representing a segment of Felix's stasis rune. However, they visually displayed completely different runic linguistics as Travis translated each segment into the respective written forms of Chinese and Japanese.

“Though I do see that the tricky part regarding any language being incorporated into a rune is understanding how their typography can be integrated as such," Travis advised as he applied the finishing touches to both runes. The resulting rune translated into Hanzi presented a orderly octagonal shape whereas the run written into Kanji gave a more circular appearance with a star-like shape at its center. To make his point clearer, he ensured each translation had an English translation for each noteworthy detail, "though another thing to know is how the scripting and circuits are designed and their correlation with verses and symbols used."

Upon finishing, stepped back and took a swig of his new cup coffee as he allowed Felix to examine his work. It was then Zuri returned from the backroom and queried, though came out as more of an advisement, when they would assume any sort of rest. Travis produced a sarcastic scoff, likely influenced from his conflicted fatigue and remedying caffeine, "how many times have we heard that line, Felix? I'm assuming its an unhealthy number."

Felix's eyes gleamed at Travis's runic rough-draft. "Efficient and aesthetically pleasing." Felix clapped his hands together briefly in a show of excitement. He then flicked his wrist, materializing what looked to be a brown leather vest, with a empty metal inlay socket on the back. "Remember after we programmed a manastone to automatically charge itself in the presence of strong ley-lines? When we were milling around a few ideas before as to what we'd put this mana-battery in, I remembered something. This vest was commonly used by early untalents as a spell source. I recalled that I had one in storage and fetched it yesterday when we took a brief meal break. The vests were also used in the arcanocracy to help train new magi in manalysis. Sensing the mana density of the inlaid stone was a bit of practical test. Most were child-sized but I did find one that fit me well enough without any modifications." Felix finished explaining. Felix materialized the manacrystal battery that they created a few months back, and then tossed the vest to Travis. "So, do you think we can inscribe the runic formula on this? I mean, after we figure out if the rune actually works, of course."

Felix was feeling very upbeat and optimistic. The work the duo had been striving towards was finally coming to a climax. Felix leaned back in his chair and propped his legs up on the table, placing his hands behind his head in a relaxing pose. "Travis," Felix said with a satisfied smile, "I must say, I would not have made it this far without you in the group. None of us would have. I think I am beginning to understand why the vision I had all those months ago made me write down your name. You may not be a talent, but you are certainly talented in a very important way." Felix finished.

After Felix finished his compliments to Travis, Zuri unexpectedly exited the Fantasia room. Felix hadn't even noticed she had entered in the first place, and realized that his perception must have been so focused on the task at hand that he subconsciously ignored what was happening around him. Felix let out a nice chuckle at Travis's rhetorical question, "Yeah. That's the second time in," Felix checked his manadial for the time which read: 9:13 PM, "the last hour that we were scolded. In total it's got to be in the double digits at this point. Don't worry, Zuri, we'll get some sleep soon. Now that my mind is at rest, it should be much easier to catch some shuteye." Felix finished. He could feel the fatigue boring into his forehead, like a screw being slowly threaded through a new plank of wood. "So, Zuri. How has your training been going? Any new developments?" Felix asked.

---

Raiya finished her food, and turned off the t.v.. She returned to the kitchen where she rinsed off her plate and placed it in the dishwasher. She began to walk back upstairs towards her room when her manadial started pinging. Raiya lifted her wrist and tapped the blue spherical gem, accepting the call. The translucent holographic face of Tsukihi materialized in front of her at 1/16th the normal size. "Oh, thank the goddess you answered!" Tsukihi puffed in exasperation. "What is it... Suki? I'm tired and drunk and was about to go pass out." Raiya slurred. "Well, ma'am, with all due respect, sober up because somethin' really bad just happened." Tsukihi said frantically. "Tsukihi. Have I ever told you how much I just really...
really hate the guessing game." Raiya fumbled with her words, "Stop beating around the bush and tell me why you interrupted my evening again.
"Well ma'am, one of our production facilities was hit. And hit hard. No one had checked on for the hourly update. Then we finally sent a team to investigate, and it was carnage. There wasn't a single survivor. The cameras were wiped and we have no idea who did this or how many. But its safe to assume that this is related to what happened earlier at the docks." Tsukihi rapidly explained. Adrenaline shot through Raiya as she grew enraged. "God damnit!" Raiya cursed, "have you notified the Yakuza yet" Raiya asked. "Not yet, ma'am. You know how the Oyabun does not like to be notified of matters such as these. But if we can't solve this soon, we will have to get the higher-ups involved." Tsukihi responded. "Good. Continue to investigate. I need to get some sleep in the meantime. If you find anything about where these guys are, my manadial will be on all night, so tell me right away. I want to teach these bastards a lesson myself." With that, Raiya hung up the call, and went back into her room. She sat down on the edge of her bed, but before she could strip down and pull the covers over her head, there was another pinging on her manadial. She looked at her wrist to see who was calling her. It was from an encrypted manadial ID. Nervously, she tapped the crystal to accept the call.

Zuri looked at Felix with a smile since she made some progress with her training. "It's a little bit tiring but I got to practice my abilities without having to worry about failing since everything inside was all just make believe." She pauses for a bit, "I tried to optimize my spells a bit and practice some new ones I had in mind, it was productive and lots of fun!" Zuri looked tired but satisfied. She checks the time and notices that it's already night time. Zuri lets out a yawn as she stretches and says "I guess it's time for all of us to get some rest.."

While watching his movie, Nemo was stirred from his concentration by the racket going on outside his room. He leaned to the side and grabbed the vintage looking remote control that paired to his television and paused the western. The silence allowed him to better eavesdrop on the conversation. After pulling his blanket to the side Nemo stood up with his coffee cup in hand and walked to the door. He unlocked it and peered outside, taking a sip as he looked around. By this point Raiya had ended the call and entered her room. I guess that explains Miss Grumpy. He thought before closing the door, forgoing locking it and returning back to his movie.

---

After a few moments a voice emitted from Raiya's manadial. "I presume you've already gotten most of the bad news?" The man sounded rather young, probably in his mid thirties. His voice sounded confident and condescending, with a slight accent to it. It was definitely Italian, but he had clearly worked hard to minimize it. "Well... I hate to break it to ya, but that's only the half of it amore mio." He added with a slight chuckle.

Raiya gritted her teeth. "It was you wasn't it? At the pier? You either have a real huge set of balls on ya, or you've got a pretty strong death wish." A part of her knew before she answered that the call was from the man who assaulted all her men at the pier, and now also massacred everyone at her processing plant. "When my men find you, I'm going to kill you personally. Not swiftly with the stroke of my sword, but slowly over the course of a month, your bruised and broken body chained to a metal chair in a room where no magic can be cast. There are things that the Yakuza taught me that will make you beg, plead for death. Make you regret ever being squeezed out of your mother's womb. I hope you are prepared for recompense." Raiya's voice was slowly rising throughout her diatribe, her anger was stoked from an ember to a fire.

"Yeah... that was me, but that second part is odd, because that's exactly what I thought about you when I heard you skipped town and expected to still remain top dog in a city you aren't even present in. Now that my friend, is a bit bold of you. Che palle, Mamushi! Che palle! Frankly I was a bit insulted. I heard the whole incident was a bit embarrassin' too, one guy walks in and makes you bend the knee huh? How do you think that makes me feel? Certainly ain't scared." The voice paused for another brief chuckle.

"I suppose I should introduce myself though. You're probably more familiar with my cousin Vincenzo, leader of the New York branch of the Giarciano gang, second biggest gang in town. But the truth is that ole' Vin just hasn't been tough enough with ya Mamushi. That's why I'm here now, Gianni Giarciano, The Don, capo dei capi." Gianni paused for a couple moments before continuing.

"Giarciano gang been number two for too long, but that's soon to change. Let me tell you how this is gonna go amore mio, you're gonna tell your stand in back there to pack all your shit up, and take a fuckin' hike. 'Cause you're all done in this city Mamushi. Boom, it's over. Your territory, mine. Your operations, mine. See where this is going yet? Hell, if any of your boys want a job I'm fuckin' hirin' here. Otherwise you all can fuck off with your tail tucked and find a new shit-hole to run. Got it?"

Gianni suddenly added on before Raiya could get a response in. "Because let me tell you what's going to happen if you don't. What went down at the pier is just gonna be a little appetizer for what's to come. Me and my boys are gonna run a train on you junkies. Crux gang ain't got the muscle any more, especially when I have all my homeland assets in town with me as well. You're outnumbered, you aren't even here to lead your own gang, I'll squash every last one of you tattooed greaser rats until there ain't one left. And I even hope you show up yourself so I can cave your skull in myself with my bare hands like I did your buddies at the pier. You aren't the first magi I've tangled with."

"I'll give you until midnight, tomorrow, to give me an answer. Otherwise there's gonna be bodies in the street." Gianni finished after a short pause and then hung up.

"I honestly can't see why we couldn't imprint it onto that old thing of leather, assuming the final product isn't cumbersome. Everything seems promising thus far." Travis causally replied after finishing off the contents within his mug in one gulp, his focus still centered at his rough draft.

It was then Travis had taken notice of Felix assuming a comfortable posture with a rather satisfied expression on his face. Someone seemed pleased. As it turned out, his Talent counterpart was compelled to complement him on all of his work and contributions to them team, even going as far as stating his integral he was in getting them this far. Travis felt proud by the recognition though he didn't know how to verbally respond. Renown or prestige were pleasant once received though he found more sentiment with accomplishing the task at hand nd the greater good that came with it. His work and craftsmanship was what he strived for.

Travis produced an embarrassed chuckle but decided not to elaborate more once Zuri came into the conversation and reported on her training. It appeared she was also being the productive the best she could as well, "Splendid work, Zuri."

Upon her second advisory of calling it a day, Travis examined the time on his manadial before turning to face Felix, "I concur with Zuri. Now that we have finally something to work with, I think we would be more productive after getting some actual rest rather than topping off more caffeine shots."