Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Rhodes Island Branch Office - Early afternoon

The lunch rush due to activity at the neighboring orphanage was dying down as Rhodes Island personnel went back to their business. A young, local, Rebbah male, Baltasar El-Kabti, entered the office, looking worried and agitated. He had been working part-time for the Branch office for a while now, taking care of the children at the orphanage. He was an orphan himself, and infected, but he had grown up before the branch office had been established. Still, it was clear he cared for the children and admired what Rhodes Island was doing to help the unfortunate in the city.

"E-excuse me, but has anyone seen Nur?" he asked in a thick Sargonian accent, wasting no time as he wandered the office, looking for anywhere that the child he was looking for could be hiding. "I didn't see him at lunch today." Nur was one of the infected orphans that Baltasar looked after; a quiet, Liberi boy who often had his head in the clouds.

Selim, AKA operator Jericho, a large but older Aegirian gentleman who mostly helped with fixing old appliances, stood up and approached Baltasar, offering a reassuring hand on the young man's shoulder. "Calm down Baltasar, when did you last see him?"

"At breakfast," Baltasar explained, "I know he went on an errand to the market, but I don't think he's returned yet. I went to the market already, but I couldn't find him in the crowd. I was hoping maybe he'd be here."

Selim took a long draw from his cigarette-shaped medical inhalation device before citing protocol, "He must have gone with some of the other kids, did you ask them?" Selim didn't seem too worried; the streets of Hisn-ul-Zahra were pretty safe, Lady Ameera Zainab kept the city clean and prosperous.

"I-I haven't," Baltasar replied, feeling ashamed that his panic had blinded him to this obvious step.

Sensing the boy's plight, Selim looked around the office. Everyone was pretty busy, but there were a few newcomers who didn't have assigned roles yet. To be fair, one of them was just Polka's patient, and the other was just passing through, but they were Rhodes Island operators all the same. "Hey, Ash Girl, Seven, do you two mind helping Baltasar find Nur?"

The first response to Jericho's question was a quiet but drawn-out groan of pain as the blue-white Vouivre sitting on a chair in the corner grit her teeth and opened her eyes. She reached her hand out in front of her, staring for a moment at the black crystal lesion that now sprouted from its back before dropping it back down again and glancing up at the clock that sat on the left wall. 12:43, it said; her next session with Polka wasn't until 1:15. She had half an hour to burn, and it wasn't like she was doing much good sitting here trying to ignore the feeling of the crystals growing from her body.

Rolling her neck as she always had, she sucked in a breath through a tight cage of teeth as a bone-deep ache shot through it. Right. Just another thing that she needed to stop doing as a result of her new...situation.

"Mhmm," she intoned softly, voice a touch husky from held back pain. She shook her head, cleared her throat, focused on the problem at hand instead of the pain of the growths. "Yes," she tried again, this time louder and clearer, as she hauled herself to her feet. She wasn't really that tall from head to toe, but her relatively imposing horns added several inches, and made her look both taller and more threatening than she at all was.

From force of long habit she tapped a finger against the handle of the sword strapped to her back. Perhaps she didn't need it here in Hisn-ul-Zahra; but after the years, she only felt comfortable when it was with her, so she kept it strapped to her even during her sessions with Polka. And as usual these days--the past few weeks--when she tapped the sword...

...Ah, there it was. The frigid wave rippled up her arm, even in the desert heat. Her...her Arts letting her know that they were still there, and did not much appreciate being contained and unused--she shook her head again like trying to clear cobwebs out, then reached up to rub the the temples at the base of her horns. Needed to calm down and talk like a normal person. Half an hour and then she could relax with Polka and relish the (relative) relief from symptoms that followed in the wake of her music.

"Yes, of course I'll help look." The lilt of her Taran voice shook, but held. "It would be bad if--" Her constant low headache pulsed and she flinched, reaching a hand up and pressing it to the side of her head briefly. Her symptoms were bad today. "Nghh, sorry. It would be bad if he went off somewhere and we couldn't find him." Left unsaid was a kind of guarded curiosity. She'd vaguely heard of operator Seven, but she hadn't been with Rhodes Island long enough to meet. Never let it be said that either Ash Girl or Aoife Eóganachta didn't like meeting new people; and this woman certainly looked interesting.

"Hmm, perhaps he just didn't like you?"

Looking up from her book, Elise Montpelier grinned at the boy, self-satisfied smile dancing on her lips. Etiquette ingrained into her since birth mandated that even in a backwater city in the middle of nowhere Elise was the picture-perfect image of nobility, the epitome of grace and elegance...if she kept her mouth shut that is.

"Who knows, us Liberi do need to spread our wings from time to time after all."

Snapping her book shut, Elise suppressed the pang of worry that rose within her. While the good doctor had reassigned her to Hisn-ul-Zahra for yet another...acquisition mission, the lack of leads had meant that she had been relegated to loafing around the branch office. Which wasn't boring per se, the local workers were just so fun to rile up after all. Yet in her quieter moments she had also helped out at the orphanage, her effective immunity to Originium Infection allowing her a greater degree of freedom in assisting with their operations.

It was nice, she supposed, dealing with kids that had a brighter future then her.

N-not that she'll them of course!

Schooling her features as she pulled herself out of her train of thought, eerie red eyes focused on Selim as he made his request. So this would be her first mission since her arrival Hisn-ul-Zahra. Tracking children. The scion of the great line of Montpeliers, nobility for more then a millennium. Reduced to finding orphans lost in the city. This was the price she had paid for her desire. The smallest of inconveniences, to one day manumit herself from a curse of blood. Demeaning for her, sure, but there was nothing she would not do to free herself.

Well, for all she was willing, that didn't mean she'd miss a chance to get under the Iberian's skin.

"Perhaps, perhaps..." Making a spectacle of contemplating the decision, Elise eyed her partner, the Operator Ash Girl. She'd only cursorily heard of the Taran before; apparently some Columbian mercenary that had gotten Infected through some accident? Well no matter, new targets were always fun.

"I have decided," she said. "Be grateful, for I have decided to help! Fear not, Nur will be home by dusk. So swears Seven."

Baltasar's eyes flitted from Ash Girl to Seven, sizing up the two that had been assigned to help him. His eyes narrowed at Seven's remark, but he held his tongue; he had seen her helping out at the orphanage and didn't want any perceived rudeness on his part to push away her aid.

Selim smiled, seemingly unphased by Seven's antics, having had plenty of experience dealing with snarky, but well-meaning, coworkers. But before he sat back down, he suddenly perked up. "Minimalist!"

"Huh?!" The small, black-haired Durin jolted at suddenly being called, the house of cards he had been making crumbling down in the process.

"Go with them," Selim demanded.

"Why?" Minimalist retorted, irked at the setback to his little card project.

"'Wh-why?' All you've done since you got here is complain about the architecture. You're an operator too, aren't you? Go on out there and do something useful! 'Git!" Selim randomly picked up a stapler and brandished it menacingly, though it wasn't clear whether he was going to throw it or do something else with it.

"Fine, FINE!" Minimalist got up out of his seat and followed Ash Girl, Seven, and Baltasar out of the office into the scorching Sargonian sun.

As the group walked over to the orphanage, Baltasar explained, "Nur is pretty absent-minded. Hisn-ul-Zahra isn't the biggest nomadic city, consisting only of a single plate, so even if he's lost, there are only so many places he could be. But it's still fairly new, and there are still a lot of parts under construction which can be...dangerous."

At the orphanage Baltasar checked the chores calendar and found the other two children that had gone with Nur to the market. After a small amount of questioning, the following details came to light: there was a foreign military tent set up in the market with a 'hawker' outside inviting people into the tent to 'win a prize'. Word had spread that the people in the tent simply wanted passersby to 'touch a jar', paid them some dinars, and let them on their way. Hoping to make some quick change, the children had gone in one-by-one and touched the jar. As they left the tent, dinars in hand, the two children suddenly lost track of Nur, and assumed he had gone somewhere to spend his money. Though the children had described the tent as 'foreign', unfortunately the tent was giving out the local currency, and the children either were unfamiliar with or could not recognize any identifying symbols.

"I was just at the market looking for Nur," Baltasar explained, "But I didn't see any suspicious tent. Did they pack up and leave already?" Baltasar wasn't sure if this was even a worthwhile lead to follow. It could just be a coincidence that Nur disappeared after visiting the tent. But besides Rhodes Island, Baltasar generally assumed that the intentions of foreign powers were sinister in nature.

Aoife followed after Baltasar, joints cracking as she did from previous inactivity. She'd been in Hisn-ul-Zahra for about a week now, but she wasn't going outside much. Tara, after all, was a chilly, cloudy, damp place; deep forests, verdant swamps, misty rain. A part of her missed her homeland deeply, but an equal part of her knew that she could never go back; that though it might've been her homeland, it certainly was no longer her home.

Hisn-ul-Zahra, on the other hand...it could not be described as "chilly," or "cloudy," or "damp," by any stretch of the imagination. It was scorching hot, perfectly clear, and dry as a bone. Stepping outside of the branch office was extremely uncomfortable and had her sweating bullets almost immediately.

That, and she seemed to catch a lot of looks whenever she went out. There weren't many Vouivre in the town, she'd found, and those that were certainly didn't look much like her, with her arctic palette. She wrapped her long, scaled blue-black tail around her leg through force of habit, keeping it tucked out of the way save for the forever twitching tip.

The point was, she'd stayed in the branch office, for the most part, so the orphanage was, by and large, unfamiliar. Thus she propped herself on the wall and waited by the door, eyes closed, and listened to the explanation of the children. A strange tent? A strange military tent? Touching a jar and nothing else to win a monetary prize, and the hawker specifically calling children over? She frowned slightly. And then Nur vanishing immediately afterwards, followed by an equally immediate departure of the tent? She didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

Still, she stayed by the door, doing her best to stay out of everyone's hairs. Or, she had stayed, until she heard Baltasar's response, at which point she grimaced, stood, and walked quietly over to stand directly behind him as she spoke for the first time since they'd left the branch office:

"Worth checking out. What hawker would use a military-style tent, and leave in the middle of the day?" She shook her head laconically. "It doesn't make sense and I don't like it."

Overcome with curiosity, Elise made no effort to hide her stare at Minimalist. From what popular rumour had it, the Durin were a decadent ill-mannered people, more intent on drunkenly wasting away their lives away then providing any good for the world. Now, Elise had long learnt to discard any broad generalities; such often were often manufactured by some faction or another of the nobility to further their own agendas after all. Yet his attitude...she would not come to conclusions just yet.

Tearing her gaze off the Durin, Elise instead put her mind on the tent. Few nations held interest in regions so remote as Hisn-ul-Zahra, even the most likely candidate of Columbia had little incentive-

Elise's eyes narrowed as she dredged up conversations from her memory. The demons. While her own battles against the otherworldly things were spent knee-deep in snow, she had heard stories of contingents being deployed far south of Ursus, to the Foehn Hotlands. So far south in fact, that it was just directly south of Sargon. Perhaps it was to do with the Collapsals? Yet that made little sense, even in the far north the capacity in which the Sargonians held the demons at bay were highly respected. There were even rumours that the Facerending Liches originated from Sargon, though there was little evidence to back that claim. More likely was that whoever had set up operations here was seeking the same artefact that Elise was tasked to destroy, which was a problem to say the least.

"Oh? They packed up so quickly?" Tilting her head as she faced Baltasar, then Aoife, Elise's mind raced. This tent was already getting more suspicious, and she hadn't even seen it yet. It would be crucial to move quickly and identify as much as possible then. Plastering a lackadaisical smile on her face, Elise's eyes glided across her fellow Operators. "Clearly they fear us, we must make haste!"

Baltasar, reassured by both Ash Girl and Seven's recommendations, nodded, and asked one of the orphans to lead them to the bazaar to point out the tent's location.

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Bazaar - Early afternoon

At the market, there was definitely a spot, now vacated, between two other stalls: a dried fruits merchant and a textiles merchant. The space was narrow and kept open due to it being a utility access point, meaning that setting up a stall in this in-between spot was illegal, even with a vendor's permit. Baltasar went up to the fruit merchant, a portly middle-aged, male perro, and asked, "Was there a tent in this spot earlier today?"

"Oh, you poor boy, you missed it! At first, I didn't like them setting up shop so close, but they paid me for the trouble, so I let them carry on with whatever they were doing. As it turns out, they were just giving away dinars, which ended up bringing a lot of foot traffic once the word spread, so it actually helped my business!" The man explained jovially, clearly overjoyed at the profits he had made that morning.

"What kind of people were they? Do you know where they went?" Baltasar pushed on.

"Oh, I don't know, foreigners...? They packed up pretty quickly all of a sudden. I didn't stick my nose into it. It seems like a terrible business model, if you ask me," The fruit merchant replied, then shouted across to the neighboring textile merchant, "Hey, Samer! You know where that tent went? You know where they're from?" The perro turned back to Baltasar and whispered, "Samer's a lot nosier than I am."

It was the hottest time of the day, so it was understandable that business would be slow. During such times, merchants usually took a break. Those that stayed at their stalls tended to shoot the breeze like this. "Don't know where they went." Samer the textile merchant replied, "You know they're not supposed to open a stall here, right? Gets in the way of emergency services. I tried to tell them, but they just kept trying to pay me to get me to shut up, the nerve!"

"Did you take the money?"

"Of course I did! As for where they're from, they wouldn't tell me that either. But I can tell you they spoke better Victorian than anyone here, so my guess would be they're Victorians."

The perro turned back to Baltasar, "Well, either way, if they're from out-of-town, they couldn't get into the city without going through customs. Or out of the city, for that matter."

Baltasar weighed his options, "I could go to the city watch and file a missing child case, but those usually take a while, so I've heard. I'm just really worried and for some reason, I don't want to waste any time. I really want to go to the main gate and see if there are any groups of Victorians trying to leave, but there's always a line and they're not going to let me just walk up to the front and hold up the port. They're also not going to just tell me what foreign groups are moving in and out of the city if it's not my business."

Victorians.

Almost on instinct, Aoife felt her neck tense up.

Victorians.

As yet, she hadn't told any member of Rhodes Island any piece of her past more than they were required to know. She didn't have any kind of Dublinn iconography left on her, nothing that would indicate any kind of allegiance. The only thing to hint at her origin was the unshakeable accent that clung to her every word, something that she could stop no more than breathing. And in Rhodes Island, it seemed that nobody particularly cared. She thought she'd heard someone else talking in a similar accent, but every time, she'd turned and walked the other way. She didn't want to deal with any of it anymore. In all likelihood there was no link to Dublinn; but there could be, and that was enough.

The crystals embedded in her left shoulder twinged, and she winced as she rolled the joint. It never did anything for the pain, but she couldn't help but do it anyway.

That being said...as little as Rhodes Island seemed to care about the few hints of her past that she gave off...Rhodes Island weren't Victorians. She had a bit of a paranoia attached to them ever since she could remember; and the County Hillock incident had only made it so much worse. Being around any number of them now was enough to make her skin start to itch, and certainly enough to stay well and truly silent. Ideally, to never see or interact with them at all.

But this wasn't exactly an ideal situation.

So Aoife turned to Seven, wiping the fringe of her hair away from her face, where it had already begun to take on sweat. "Think being Rhodes Island could give us some pull on customs?" A pause as she inhaled a long breath--"You know better than me."

---

"It is...possible, yes."

Victoria...standing behind her colleagues, Elise quietly noted her colleague's discomfort at the country's mention. Kal'tsit had given her precious little on her fellow operators; she had been sent to Sargon on short notice, without briefings or notice common with such deployments. It was uncharacteristic of the doctor really, but Elise had long given up on divining her motives. The hag was often overly cryptic and long-winded, yet had a tendency to look right through an individual. Every encounter with Kal'tsit was akin to being peeled bare. Elise could already imagine her superior's cold stare from across the desk, as if she was being dissected layer by layer.

She gave a shudder. The less she thought about the doctor, the better.

Tearing her attention back to Ash Girl as she stare at the swordswoman, Elise finally came to a conclusion. There were too many reasons for one to feel dislike Victoria, and as much as she wanted to ask directly she had a feeling it wouldn't go well. On deployments the former Raider often preferred a comprehensive lay of the situation, yet an amenable relation with her coworkers trumped that. Besides, it wasn't like the Montpeliers didn't hold a vendetta against Victoria after all. Ursus might have been the greatest enemy for the Montpeliers themselves, but it was Victoria that had felled Gaul, that had shattered Lingones. There was...some animosity for that, to say the very least.

Blinking as she expelled the irrelevant tangent, Elise refocused on the task at hand. Customs...from what she had gathered Rhodes Island had at least a positive reputation within the city. Certainly, influence within the local bureaucracy was at least possible within other cities. She had even needed to throw the corporation's weight a few times. Within Hisn-ul-Zahra however...

"Or at least, it was possible elsewhere. Unfortunately I know not the company's position within this city to give anything definitive. Balthasar, you should know?" Elise shrugged. "Either way, bribery should get us by. Sargon isn't exactly known for its scrupulous bureaucracy.

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Bazaar - Early afternoon

Baltasar looked from Ash Girl to Seven, his eyes widening when she casually mentioned bribery. "Th-the Lady Ameera keeps everything on the up-and-up," Baltasar stammered while he protested, not just a little offended at Seven's casual criticism of Sargonian ethics.

"Well," Minimalist chimed in, holding one of his drones to his face so the propellers could act as a fan to cool himself off, "Hisn-ul-Zahra's recent prosperity is thanks in no small part to Rhodes Island and Acahualla." Minimalist had returned to Acahualla on occasion as his people, the Durin of Zeruertza, lived there amongst the Archosauria since their evacuation from the underground city several years ago. He had been considered both a 'representative' for his folk and a liaison from Rhodes Island, so he had been roped into trade talks with Hisn-ul-Zahra. "Though Rhodes Island, on paper, only acts as an oripathy pharmacy and clinic, there are clauses in our agreement with the city that allow us to get involved with 'issues of security', especially where infected are concerned, so we could probably make a case with the main gate that we're looking for an infected child, and there may be other nations involved."

Aoife sighed, heavy and long.

As much as she hated this—and she did hate it—it was...well, it was an occupational hazard now. She was an operator at Rhodes Island; did she really think that she'd be able to avoid talking to Victorians at all, even when working on a diverse landship like Rhodes? It wasn't as though she knew everyone on the ship, after all. as far as she knew, she interacted with tens of Victorians every day. Idiot, She admonished herself, get it together. You're making a fool of yourself. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to go if Rhodes Island fell through, after all. If this level of oripathy went untreated, she be dead before the end of the week, the month if she was really lucky.

So she did her best to take a long, calming breath, only to this time be rudely interrupted by a sudden stabbing pain from her chest that drew a sharp gasp from her and lingered for several seconds afterwards, setting her teeth grinding against each other. Her words grew grating, and maybe a bit harsher than she would have liked: "Then we're wasting time here."

By the time she bit the last word through to a close, she'd already turned and was heading towards customs, trying to breathe as little and as lightly as she could, using all of her self control to stop from doubling over as the knifelike sensation slowly, slowly began to abate and her jaws gradually unlocked themselves. She knew that it hadn't been long, but she still found herself wondering just how long it had been, and how long it would be until she could go back to Polka. It was too hot out, everything hurt, and she needed to talk to Victorians. Even though it was barely lunchtime, she was ready for this day to be over.

She had a sinking feeling it wouldn't be over any time soon.

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Main Gate - Early afternoon

The group headed towards the north edge of the city plate and took one of the many service elevators down to the lowest level of the city where the main gate was. As soon as the elevator doors opened, they were greeted by a cacophonous crowd being cordoned off and asked by security personnel to return to the top of the plate in an orderly manner. From murmurs and the sound of argumentation, it was clear that there had been an incident at the gate, and a disgruntled trade caravan destined for Acahualla was being delayed as a result. The group pushed their way to the edge of the blockade for more information. Though the guard was reluctant to divulge too much information, he was aware of Rhodes Island's relationship with the city and shared that there had been an explosion at the gate following a firefight. Minimalist pushed on, asking for more information, such as whether the explosive had been an originium detonator and if there were any injured. This line of questioning allowed doubt to creep into the guard's mind and, fearing that his comrades might become infected, he decided to let the Rhodes Island group through the barricade to help with originium containment and treatment of the injured.

As the group approached the gate, bullet holes and scorch marks could be seen in the surrounding architecture. There were a few guards and customs officials being patched up, but nobody seemed seriously hurt and it didn't appear that any of the weapons used in the fight had been 'dirty'. Off to one side, what appeared to be a young Cautus boy and a severe-looking perro woman in a military uniform had been detained and were being shoved into a police car. A dark-furred feline saw the Rhodes Island group and walked over.

"Who let you through the blockade?" she asked, clearly peeved that one of her underlings wasn't doing his job right.

"You're letting them get away!" the Cautus yelled in a noticeable Victorian accent before the security officer handling him pushed his head down and into the car. The dark feline looked over at him and shook her head in annoyance.

Aoife couldn't help it: when she heard the Victorian accent, she had to force herself to not freeze and lock up. She knew full well that it didn't reflect very well on her, stationed as she was now; but it was what it was as very unpleasant memories tried to force their way back to the forefront of her mind. The life of a Dublinn guerilla. Thirteen years old, watching people she knew brought back screaming, or not brought back at all. She knew that Dublinn wasn't good. That it clearly didn't care. County Hillock had taught her that much. But still...all those years couldn't just be ignored.

So there was a noticeable hiccup in her movement as she walked up to the feline, pulling out her identification badge and holding it up for inspection, and a stammer in her speech noticeable even through her accent that she smoothed out as best she could: "Rho—Rhodes Island. We're looking for an infected child, a—and have reason to believe he might have been taken out of the city by a group of Victorians." It was a bit more difficult to keep the antipathy out of her voice than she'd anticipated, but she did her level best, and thought she did about as well as could be expected.

"Speaking of," she continued immediately, trying to ignore her burgeoning headache as she inclined her head at the Cautus being bundled into the car, "what's the story with that?" Then, louder, "Letting who get away?"

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Main Gate - Early afternoon

The dark feline's stern demeanor softened when she recognized the Rhodes Island logo. Upon hearing Aoife's explanation, her ears perked up and she turned to one of the officers at the car. "Bring him over... but keep the other one restrained." Turning back to the Rhodes Island group, the feline introduced herself, "I am Sentinel Aisha Hafiz, Hisn-ul-Zahra's chief of police. We won't abide kidnappers."

The officer Aisha had called out to roughly pushed the cautus closer. "When you were being arrested, you mentioned something about a boy; was he infected?" Aisha asked.

"He was, but if you're looking for him, you've got the wrong people!" The boy struggled vainly against his captor as his eyes darted from Aisha to Aoife, Minimalist, and Baltasar, curiously analyzing the group.

A customs official arrived with a clipboard and handed it to Aisha, who flipped through it, reading parts out loud, "Let's see, Irvine, Warren. Country: Victoria... Reason of Visit: Cultural... Exchange...? Affiliation: Victorian Archeological Guild. Profession: Professor of...Sargonology?! You're looters!" Aisha almost threw the clipboard to the ground in rage. "Plundering ruins not enough for you, now you're stealing children!"

"We're not looters, and we didn't kidnap him! A group of mercenaries did; we tried to stop them!" Warren explained in exasperation.

"Who were they, then? What do they want with a kid? Ransom? He's an...orphan..." Aisha looked back at the group to confirm her assumption before continuing, "He doesn't have any parents."

Warren seemed tight-lipped, unwilling to reveal some secret. "Who are these people?" He gestured with his head at the Rhodes Island group.

"Rhodes Island Pharmaceutical Company," Aisha explained, "They run the infected orphanage and help us with other infected-related issues."

"Pharmaceutical Company?" Warren laughed, "That's a paramilitary organization you've allowed into your 'pristine' city! ...But... this might be an opportunity. Oi!" Warren addressed the Rhodes Island group, "You want to save the kid right? Let's work togeth...!"

The officer restraining Warren throttled him for his cheeky behavior. "You're going to have to do better than that!" Aisha warned, "Who are these mercenaries? What do they want with the boy? What's your involvement in all this?"

"You wouldn't believe me even if I told you!" Warren scoffed, "This whole thing is much bigger than your quaint little village is prepared for. All this ancient bounty buried in the sand beneath your feet! Potential...wasted! Pearls before burdenbeasts! You should just get out of the way and let us put it all to good use!"

At this outburst, Aisha reaches for the officer's baton and strikes Warren over the head, rendering him unconscious. "I'm sorry you had to see that, but I'm sure we'll get more out of him when he's cooled off and secure in a cell. I'll let Rhodes Island know when he's come to."

With that, the officers started wrapping up their operation and opening the blockade. Warren was dragged back to the car where his perro accomplice awaited him.

There was a cruel catharsis about watching the newly-named 'Aisha' bash the Cautus over the head, and Aoife found herself trapped somewhere between a grimace, and a smile that bared a few too many teeth to be innocent. A piece of her truly empathized with the Sargonians; the predatory grasping of Victorian hands was something a native of Tara knew all too well, after all, and she'd enjoyed watching that baton smack more than she'd let on.

The moment passed, and she realized that the direction her thoughts had plunged was unbecoming of anybody, let alone a Rhodes Island operator. Yes, Victorians had burned her family home to the ground and killed her family. But that wasn't an excuse. She needed to be better.

...Ah. Aisha was staring at her. Possibly because she was staring at Aisha. She had the grace to look embarrassed as she averted her eyes, then coughed self-consciously. Which she then regretted immediately, as she felt a bolt of pain to her chest, tasted something odd, and realized that her embarrassed cough had in fact just turned into her coughing up a small amount of blood.

Well. Talk about embarrassing. Her eyes remained averted, head inclined in respect, as she murmured with a soft, flat voice, "Do so. I would like to talk to him more. When you contact us," She lifted her head again, regaining eye contact for just long enough to finish the thought as she pressed her hand to her chest by way of introduction, "Ash Girl."

She might've spoken more, and she rather wanted to push harder. But this was a woman, she thought, who would only make their life more difficult if they tried to bypass her. Best to let her handle this for the moment.

And besides, by this point she was quite thoroughly ready to be done with talking.

And so she glanced at Minimalist and Balthasar, then stepped back behind them, giving one more nod to Aisha. Not fair that only she got to talk, after all.

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Rhodes Island Oripathy Clinic - Late afternoon

Baltasar was distraught that Aisha had knocked out their only lead, but Minimalist was able to calm him down, admitting that he himself was here to search for a missing friend, but that it would be reckless to charge out into the desert unprepared. With that, the group returned to the Rhodes Island clinic. Baltasar went back to help out with the orphanage but requested to be contacted when Aisha invited them to confront the Victorians.

"Did you find him?" Selim asked, but the look on everyone's faces told him all he needed to know.

Operator Polka had returned to the office by now and proceeded to treat Aoife with a mix of some soft music she played from her accordion and the use of some sonic equipment she borrowed from Selim. She could influence originium crystals with her musical arts, and could stabilize the volatile substance, slowing or preventing their further growth, but unable to reverse it. In this manner, she could stave off the impending progression of Aoife's oripathy, though she hoped one day that she would be able to cure it altogether.

A while later Earthspirit arrived. Her messenger duties brought her to Hisn-ul-Zahra, and she commented on how the gate security seemed particularly high-strung. Minimalist explained their encounter at the gate and the altercation that had supposedly preceded it. At the mention of a professor of Sargonology, Earthspirit's eyebrows furrowed. Sensing her concern, Minimalist pushed her to explain.

"I would hardly call the field of Sargonology a science as it is as much research as it is fiction, romanticism, and exotification. But it has become a very popular topic in Leithanien, which is troubling. A few years ago, a Sargonian tablet written in several ancient languages was discovered and brought back to Leithanien to be deciphered. The tablet regaled the rise to power and military exploits of a Sargonian dynasty referred to as the 'Sun Kings of Sargon'. Based on nothing but speculation, Leithanien poets and composers have been writing epic and fantastical operas about the 'Sun Kings', fabricating tragedy and drama, but it has captured the imagination and zeitgeist of the country. More concerning, however, is talk among the nobility that the power of the Sun Kings came from some ancient weapon, and if that is what the Victorians are here for, then either they're on a wild fowlbeast chase, or they have evidence to suggest that such a weapon is real."

Ahhhhh, sweet air conditioning...

Aoife's eyes were at half-mast, still basking in the afterglow of Polka's music. The pain had largely retreated and would be reduced for some time yet. She felt so much more like herself; breathing deeply no longer send a knife of pain to her lungs, and she could stretch her arms above her head without feeling like they were tearing or pulling themselves out of their sockets. So she was sitting in the same chair she'd been in before, though much more comfortably, when Earthspirit arrived.

As a person, she wasn't the most open with her emotions, for a number of reasons. So though the fact that they'd been unable to find Nur rankled at her to a surprising degree, her face was still largely expressionless. Perhaps a little bit more solemn than usual. The only one in the clinic that she tended to share her emotions with to more than the sparsest degree was Polka. And would you look at that: Earthspirit wasn't Polka. So the fact that her brows began to furrow in distant confusion and later anger at the entire field of Sargonology was both indicative of the intensity of her emotions and, to those at all acquainted with her, rather surprising. For a few moments, the clinic was washed with silence, and her face grew only stormier, until...

"So, if I am to understand correctly," She spoke suddenly, shattering that tenuous quiet, "the Victorians are here to plunder from the people and culture here, for the sake of finding a weapon that may exist, but might just be a story?" She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, and for the next few words, her voice dripped with scorn. "What a surprise. It makes more sense now why Aisha was so upset with him now, at least." She took a long breath—thankful for her renewed ability to, without causing herself pain—before muttering under her breath: "If she hadn't bashed him then I might've."

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Rhodes Island Oripathy Clinic - Late afternoon

Though Earthspirit often came off as emotionless, this was due to her collected and rational demeanor, and the natural guardedness that one needed to function in Leithanien high society. This does not mean that she was without empathy, and seeing the rise her words had gotten out of Aoife, she quickly tempered her words, "To be fair, everything I've said is merely conjecture. We do not know what their intentions are."

---

Sargon - Hisn-ul-Zahra City Plate - Police Station - Early evening

The office of the Rhodes Island clinic received a call from Aisha who was at the police station, letting them know that 'Dr.' Irving was awake and ready to talk. This time, Jericho, Polka, and Earthspirit came, alongside Ash Girl and Minimalist, though they did not bring Baltasar. Jericho decided that a jail was no place for a child, but that they'd fill him in when they returned.

The team was greeted by officers at the station who escorted them inside until they arrived at a fairly standard looking interrogation room, complete with one-way mirror, a table, and a lamp. Both the Cautus, Dr. Warren Irving, and his bodyguard, the black-and-white female Perro, were there, sitting at the table handcuffed, while Aisha stood beside the table looking down on them. Polka, who preferred not to be too confrontational, opted to go into the observation room, where, surprisingly, the Archosauria Lady Ameera Zainab Nubani waited, hidden and watching.

"He said he wanted to talk to Rhodes Island members specifically. I was going to share any information I received with you anyways, so this makes things easy. Alright, Victorian, what's this all about?" She asked sternly.

Warren looked at his bodyguard for approval, and she nodded. With a sigh, he began, "Have you heard of the Lilium Tablet?"

"Oh no..." Earthspirit muttered to herself, "You're looking for the weapon of the Sun Kings." She pinched the bridge of her nose, as if suffering from a headache, but she was simply overwhelmed by people's stupidity.

"And why shouldn't we? After what the Sarkaz have done, Victoria needs strength!"

"Dr. Irving...now's not the time..." The Perro spoke up, interrupting him in a surprisingly calm and gentle tone.

He looked at her and seemed to soften, "Regardless, I understand your skepticism. The weapon may not even be real. But what if it is? Its power would be too great to leave in the hands of these sava..." Aisha's fist clenched audibly. Warren cleared his throat. "Study of the tablet was done jointly between Victoria and Leithanien. The tablet has more information on it than has been revealed to the public, and the Leithaniens have discovered where the weapon is. You may not trust us, but I assure you, Leithanien is not where you want an ancient superweapon to go."

"Sadly, I have to agree," Earthspirit added, "The spire casters are too reckless and unscrupulous when it comes to wielding arts, and many still long for the days of the Witch King."

"Right? Victoria would keep the weapon safe! There is another major concern though. The Tablet is written in three languages. Ancient Sargonian, which is so different from modern Sargonian that only specialists, like myself, can read it, Ancient Minoan, and..."

"Ancient Sarkaz," Earthspirit added with some solemnity.

"Exactly. What if the weapon is Sarkaz in origin? if this is true, then Victoria knows better than any other nation to keep this weapon protected and sealed away so that it can never be used. Unfortunately, the Leithaniens have already begun excavating the site where the weapon's final resting place is purported to be. But they will not be able to activate it. The tablet talks about the line of kings beginning with the first Sun King, Ozman the Third, styled 'Ozman Theos, The Builder'. The weapon only reacts to one of his blood. And that's where your missing child comes in. We...hired a group of mercenaries from the Columbian frontier to help us find anyone who may be descended from the Sun Kings. But as soon as they found him, they betrayed us. To stop them from leaving with the child, we had a confrontation at the gate. It seems Columbia has taken an interest in weapon as well. And that's where you come in. I know what Rhodes Island is capable of. I know you don't want anyone activating the weapon. I know you also want to save the infected child. Right now, the Leithaniens have the weapon, and the Columbians have the child, and I want them to have neither, so in this our goals are aligned. I only have Emma...I mean, Sargeant Huxley to help me," He referred to the perro beside him, "But I understand Ancient Sargonian and this weapon better than anyone and am therefore the most qualified to stop it should it become active. I am proposing a temporary alliance to: one, defeat the Columbians who kidnapped your orphan, and two, to defeat the Leithanien force currently excavating the weapon."

"NO! You don't get to negotiate, Victorian! You're under Hisn-ul-Zahra's jurisdiction yet you have the gall to go over our Lady Ameera's head!" Aisha turned to the Rhodes Islanders with a hint of unease and suspicion, but she kept it under control, "Please vacate the interrogation chamber." She tried to shoo everyone but the Victorians out, and Jericho obliged, leading the team into the hall.

The Lady Ameera waited in the hallway, brow furrowed, arms crossed, deep in thought, Polka stood next to her. She turned to the Rhodes Islanders and greeted them, "Peace be upon you. For those I haven't met before, it is regrettable that we meet under such unusual circumstances. I hope our city has treated you well?"

"Yes, My Lady, Hisn-ul-Zahra has been a beacon of comfort in these harsh climes," Jericho replied.

Aisha walked up to Zainab and whispered something. "Please excuse us, my sentinel wishes to speak with me in private." The two Sargonians enter the observation room and close the door, leaving the Rhodes Islanders in the hall. A few guards are there to keep an eye on them.

"Well, shit..." Jericho pulls out his specialized oripathy medicine atomizer that looks like an e-cig and takes a long, tired drag on it to soothe his throat. After exhaling, he says but one word, "Thoughts?"

The vouivre took a long, LONG breath as the pent-up aggression in her bled off like steam from a pressure cooker. She closed her eyes, rubbing her temples in a vain effort to soothe the headache she knew was coming. Yes, thoughts indeed.

Aoife, the Taran, very much did not like Victorians. They had slaughtered her family, burned her home, and unleashed the distinctly inhumane originium dirty bombs of the County Hillock incident. She honestly wasn't sure how many she'd cared about that had been killed by Victorians, and while she obviously wasn't going to get violent, there was a part of her that was absolutely delighted to see this conceited, condescending Cautus cool his feet in a Sargonian cell for a while.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it—while Aoife the Taran wanted to see Warren Irving humiliated, the Rhodes Island Operator Ash Girl couldn't just sink into cathartic spite. Especially not with Polka there; she didn't want the musician to think of her as a brash or angry person.

And so, a moment that felt slightly too long to be comfortable passed before she spoke again.

"As little as I would trust Victoria with an ancient superweapon," a shudder ran up and down her spine, "I trust Leithanien and Columbia working together with it even less. Especially," she grew quiet again, and her voice more sober, "because if it's in service to activating a weapon, I doubt kidnapping would be the worst thing to happen to Nur."

She gave a sharp nod: "I think he might be our best bet."