Full-body pain, that is what the young lord of pride woke up to. Every part of him ached something fierce, and he thought. Everything his carapace and his bones hurt. Even they hurt; everything was just sore.
Staring at the roof of the tent for a moment, Aero cursed. He continued to swear even as some came into the tent. They had something for his muscles, thanking them then cursing them when they tried to offer him help. 'My lord, why did you reject their help? Your pride or lack of trust?'
'Lack of trust,' Aero thought back as he carefully sniffed the cream. Detecting nothing suspicious, he started applying it. 'Just because they're not trying to capture us doesn't mean we can trust them. Unfortunately, they're workers; if their leader changes their mind about helping us. They are likely to turn on us." The helper didn't have a flaw in his logic; just cause they were allied now didn't mean that would stay that way. Instead, they waited for their lord to ringhs applying the cream and resting until it acted.
"Okay, I can move like this," stretching out, he felt how tense his muscles currently were. "This is just bad." he wasn't in any state to fight. He could barely complete his stretches without straining himself. they ewen't even the most complex or demanding stretches." This was a serious problem."
If they tried something, he couldn't reliably defend himself. If their opponents came, he wouldn't be able to reliably defend himself either. Sitting there and resting, he realized there was only one plan he could follow at the moment, and surprisingly he found himself willing to go by it. Heavily relied on someone else.
Sighing, he waited on the ground, looking at the light of the sun. he watched it until midday. At that point, his muscle aches had calmed down. He was also tired of the exercises he was doing with the helper, so he decided it was time to seek out his team.
He found the one who didn't run to the volcano sitting at a table with someone who was clearly high-ranking, who Aero ignored, and checked in on his teammate before even turning to look at her. It's good to see you up and about. I am Zivit."
"Hello, Zivit." he turned to idit. "What were you all talking about?" she hummed. "Well, the next course of action we can take with this legal matter. The cleanest way to deal with it would be to go to a court and deal with it from there." Aero groaned; he had been to court. "Dull but effective. How would we go about that?" he doubted they could just walk into any courthouse and get this matter dropped.
"Well, due to who is involved, we'll have to head to the capital and start producing there. The shortest could take a few weeks, maybe a month and a half." Aero almost smacked his head onto the table. "Well, now we have to send some letters over."
He got some paper and started drafting a letter to his mother, starting out with the fact that he was once again in some legal trouble before going into that trouble. Then he wrote a more refined letter to the leader, telling her they were in some rather intense legal trouble caused by someone not directly involved in the incident. causing them trouble.
What she would do with this information other than curse him out, he didn't know, but if this situation evolved any more in a bad direction. she'd proably want to and should know. 'i dobut it would but covering my bases.' they were able to finish there letter by the end of the day and then barrow some of zivit's underlings to head off to get them devilered." which left them with the chance to rest more, something areo realized he needed from the way he crashed when returning to the tent.
Following that nap, Aero really didn't have anything urgent to do. The scientist was asleep. There was no update about his sales. 'Not here it is,' the helper stated. Aero sat up. 'Really?' The helper supplied more information. 'The countless star research guild brought half your product. This will be a problem in the future, not as much as the drug cult that brought some.'
"cult, what a cult?" Aero didn't get an answer for a long moment. 'Did I surprise you?' The helper didn't say anything for a long moment.' I will contact. ' Aero blinked before stating that there was no way she could come here. Only two flowers later, she showed up, "So a cult is a type of organization. Most of the time, it's formed around a religion. The people in that cult tend to form a fanatical organization without much reason or passion, isolating their members to control them."
When you add supernatural abilities on top of that, they can be major problems. Explaining those who summon hostile entities into the realm. causing so much damage and blood," Tova sighed, rubbing her forehead. " Well, now Aero was worried! "I'm gonna have to get someone to look into it, shouldn't I?" She nodded in agreement; that would be a good option.
"If nothing else, you'd have certain information about what the cult is going to do with your energy."
nodding, "How much will cults be in general to my career as the lord of pride?" Tova stopped, smiling, patting him on the shoulder before quickly leaving. "Oh, that is so concerning." Lying down, he closed his eyes again. "Ugh, that is going to be such a horrid pain." Lying there for a moment, he rolled onto his stomach before doing some stretches. "So, any suggestions for who I should hire to look into the cult?"
The helper was silent for a few moments, 'there is a list. Let's narrow it down, shall we,' they asked a series of questions, narrowing down the kind of person Aero wanted to work for him. One of the first things was someone who had decent battle experience and mystical and energy knowledge to understand whatever the cult was doing, or had the connections with the right people to answer the questions for him.
The second priority was someone okay with Aero being unable to pay them the immediate full amount. Then other smaller things; in the end, it led to four options. Looking over their profiles, he completed them with one to send, "so this is what some lines can look like." They were completely different from the people of his world.
One had antlers and green hair; another was more reptilian. The third was a blob, just a blob of something that he didn't know about. "And finally someone made stone." Tapping his hand giant the ground, he considered his options carefully. "I think I'll go with the reptilian. Her skills are the best according to the 400,000 reviews. Plus, the starting price is the best for my situation."
Depending on the danger and difficulty of the task, she might raise the price, but he could pay it now. The final reason was that if the task was too hard, she would contact others to help her. Yes, this would affect the final price, but it raised the chances of this task being completed in a timely manner.
"Here's our choice then." Sitting up, he lowered himself into a split. "Contact her; let's see if she takes the job. It took a few petals before the connection was made, Aero listing in as the helper explained the job specifics. Waiting for her response. "All right, I'll do it."
"Oh, she accepted easier than I expected." But he wasn't going to complain," but I'dI'd like to introduce a clause to the contract." Aero immediately asked what it was," oh nothing serious; I just want to put it out that one of the comic lords made use of my services. Names have power after all. I'll even lower the final price if you agree to this condition."
She was more than smart for that. Aero smiled, " Alright, I'll agree, but if you do anything too far with my name, I'm revoking your use of it." She agreed, 'he's definitely a person I should continue to work with in the future.' If she wanted that, then she would have to make a great impression.
Sitting up, she began to review the case. 'Well, I know the name at least.' Tapping her nail against the surface of the table, she stood and walked out of the restaurant. 'I believe it's time to study religion a bit more.' She took the streets to ask and learn more about the cult; she couldn't completely trust what was on the universal web. Who knows who wrote that? 'I'll make a call to him, see what he can dig up on the web.' his web literacy and ability to dig on the web were much greater than her own.
not to mention while she was digging she could continue to get some information on the ground and continuing to gather information that way. "it's just another day in the life of the detective Honell!"
"Do they have any books I can borrow?" he wondered as he lay on the ground resting from stretching to loosen his sore muscles. Tapping against the ground, he pulled himself to his feet. "Let's walk," he was bored.
No one stopped him as he walked over camp, but zalts and zaltess, damn it, where they watching? He walked over the camp before turning around and walking to the edge of the cliff. Looking at the ground far below them, he took a deep breath and poured out his energy, transforming it into light, three colors forming. A shade of red, a shade of purple, and a shade of yellow. The purple made up the trunk and branches of the tree. Slowly forming and winding out off the edge of the cliff.
"Not back," he made a few adjustments before starting on the leaves and flowers of the tree. No, no. Not that shape. Huffing, he focused and continued to work on the shape before him. Tilting his head, he continued to work on the tree, slowly crafting it. "What an interesting medium," he said. He didn't turn to face Zivit. "I didn't know you did art."
"Not really," he responded, focusing on getting the leaf to look right. Placing it on the tree, he turned and looked at the number of people gathering. Then he promptly ignored them and contained his training, waving a large tree with dozens of branches. Covering it with leaves. He would have liked to make the move like they were dancing in the breeze. 'But I'd rather not incur a migraine.' So he was left making a still image, admiring it for a few moments before breaking it away to the displeasure of the crowd. Aero turned around and walked back to his tent.
Aware that the people were talking impressed, which fueled a aprt of his pride; his spent energy quickly restored itself. 'Oh, that's not a bad action.' While it had been accidental, he discovered a new action. Most of his energy came from how Aero took pride in himself. As a general rule, he did his best to ignore the opinions and voices of others. But right now, at this moment, he was rethinking it the slightest.
'Using people's positive reaction to boost or restore my pride energy isn't a bad idea, but if I let them get into my head.' He couldn't let that happen; it might do serious damage to his pride. 'Can't let that happen,' but right now he took the boost in energy regeneration to craft many chains for the beast.
It cursed him out and tried to crush him with its tail, but he managed to bind it all the same and leave the prison alive. 'Okay,' he was hungry. Sitting up, he went to get something to eat. Thankfully, it only took a few moments to find the right place and have a fruity meal, sitting in the light of the ending day. It was nice and cool, but it didn't distract from the simple fact.
He was bored; he could practice his heat and light manipulation, but he didn't want the attention. He was still too sore for any real physical training, so that left him with something mental, but he just wasn't in the mood for it. 'I guess that leaves me to relax,' he hadn't done that much recently. Thinking it over, he decided to look through the library of stories the helper had collected for him.
Finding a sweet little story about friendship, a pair of children from two different social classes. Stumbling upon each other, the simple meeting had eventually turned into a deep and lifelong friendship, something they both could count on during the hardships of life." Bad romance, education, death in the family, and the simple hardships of growing up.
Even on death's bed, the two were still friends, not just reminiscing about times past but also aiming for final adventure together. "Maybe we'll meet again in the fields of the afterlife. Maybe we'll be friends again in the next life. But either way, I know this for certain. You are the greatest friends I could have; life, death, fate, or the divine could not break or craft something at the bound between us, and I'm glad I found it with you."
"You are such a sap, but know this. Even if the universe burns up at this moment, I'm glad I'm by your side. Because I want to see if the heat death could possibly burn what connects us." They laughed at inside jokes for the rest of the night. When the sun rose, neither of them was in his world anymore."
"Wow," Aero wasn't crying, but damn it, that was quite the story. It warmed and touched his heart, lighting sparks of desire for such a deep connection. It made him horribly homesick for his mother. But what could he do other than reread the story, coming more and more of it to memory. try to distract himself from the deep-seated want, "hey, when did it get dark?"
Sitting up, he groaned as his stiff muscles protested after several hours of stillness. Okay, sat down for too long." This better not cramp."