[Sunnivale]

"Shirasagi-chan. What do you think our future is going to be like?"

"Eh?"

Yumiko remembered this conversation she had with Akemi. It was a week before, the incident with Loki that got her sent to Li. He was worried about something, that was obvious due to the facial expressions he was making. Yumiko didn't know back then it was because Loki himself was pressuring Akemi to lead Yumiko to her death.

Yumiko had gotten off to a bad start with Akemi, but they had managed to patch things up. Still though, this question came out of the blue, and this wasn't the first time Akemi looked worried. Not even Kenichi, his best friend knew why he was like this.

"Our futures?" But that question though, it caused Yumiko to stop and ponders. She, wasn't really sure.

She hoped though, that in her future, all of her friends will still be with her, no matter what happens.

"Well, whatever careers we pick in the future. I hope we'll still be able to hang out together and stuff like that." It caused Akemi to blush by Yumiko's response. They were also getting near Yumiko's house itself. Akemi remained quiet up until they got by the front gate of the house.



"Well, this is my stop. I'll see you tomorrow---Yumiko." He grabbed her hand and referred to her by her first name, causing her to turn back towards Akemi, his hand was warm, but slightly shaking.

"I, uh, I agree. Whatever happens, let's stay together with our friends. In the future." That was a strange response, but Yumiko wasn't going to question it. She just gave a soft smile to Akemi, which seemed to have cause him to let go of Yumiko's hand and allow her to go into her house.

---

Yumiko remembered that conversation just now as she was getting ready for school in this illusion town. She feels as though it's going to be strange seeing as how something might go wrong.

And she was worried that she might see her again. That mysterious girl that she keeps seeing that's causing people in this town to panic, she did her tie ready to face anything beyond the front door.

Her main objective was to get out of this town and that fog she stumbled into, she was probably still in it.

"Shirasagi-chan, I see you're awake." Yumiko turned as she tried to get herself out of the house. Her father, Sabuo, was sitting by the table, eating his breakfast being served, by his wife, and Yumiko's mother, Masuyo Sawada. Who noticed the look on Yumiko's face, that of her being uncomfortable.

"What's wrong? Were those eggs making your nose weird?" Masuyo knew that some people might not like the eggs that she was cooking up this morning. But Yumiko quickly shook her head, not wanting to insult her mother.

"Oh, no, it's not that mom. I'm actually meeting a friend just before school, over an upcoming test. You can save some for me when I get home today as I would probably need it after a long day." Yumiko lied, knowing that she wasn't going to be home, she opened the door.

"Ah, alright, well..." But before Yumiko left, Masuyo said one thing, that made Yumiko feel bad.

"I love you." After a brief pause, Yumiko replied.

"I love you too." Before closing the door behind her and making her way to Jusho High. She was glad at least, to be out of her old home.

As she headed down the road however, she soon came across something odd. It was a small toy pink rabbit in red overalls, but before Yumiko could get a closer look, It fell into a gutter that it was leaning behind suddenly, it must of fell by itself. Although Yumiko suspected that foul play was afoot and crossed the road to walk down Jusho on a different path.

She briefly looked at the vacant lot, where she saw some kids skipping rope, over and over again, without looking at all tired.

---

Meanwhile, at Neo Acadia, a strange thing has occurred in the city, mainly, a giant fog in the middle of the city has appeared today suddenly and what's weirder, any infected that goes near it, quickly melt into puddles via contact. It's like, whatever's in the fog is killing them, yet uninfected like Yumiko can go in it just fine.

There was no Toad Officer around, only a sign that pointed directly towards the giant fog. It wasn't hard to miss regardless if the sign was there or not.

In fact, the sign itself looks like it was about to fall off any---
And it did, just now, landing on the ground, but it was still pointing in direction of the fog.

MISSION START!

[Maverick Hunter Zero]

Axl would walk into the area in question, it was clear that He wouldn't need much persuasion to know what he should do next, but simply put, he would stand outside the location of the fog itself and promptly pull out his holoprojector viewscreen and focus on how to get it fired up, since the only WiFi hotspot was the Life Sphere currently...

"I guess I'll just have to wait for the others and see how things pan out." Axl said to himself as he waited for the others to show up.

---

Axl
(/HP:/) 180/180(/||||||||||||||||||/)
(/Shield:/) 65/65
Status: Ready!
Buffs: N/A
Debuffs: N/A
Cooldowns: N/A

[Doctor Ciel]

A teenage girl on a pink motorbike in matching pink clothes rides up! She comes to a stop near the fallen sign and stops for a moment, using one leg as a kickstand to keep the bike up and looking down at the sign in mild confusion. ...This was just an arrow. What--

“ . . . Well, it's a good thing we have this sign to make sure we don't get lost. ”

Ciel 160/160 HP 50/50 Shield

[DLN-002-02 Roll Light]

A smaller, robotic girl was clinging to Ciel's waist on the back of the motorbike, holding on until they got there. She stares at the fallen sign with Ciel for a moment, before addressing her after her comment. “...It's not 'cute' to pretend to be stupid, you know.” Roll-Roll dryly remarks.

“ ...Roll, there's nothing less cute than being overly self-aware and critical of others. Now... please behave. We're on a mission. ”

“Hmph! Yes, 'Mom'.” Roll-Roll haughtily replied, smiling as she observed the hints of hurt on Ciel's face in response to the sarcasm in her remark.

DCN-002 (DLN-002-02) Roll-Roll 170/170 HP 60/60 Shield

[Fairy Leviathan]

There was a bit of a chuckle along with the ominous step of reploid heels. Or well, not so ominous now since Leviathan was on Ciel's side for the time being. She glanced to the sign before looking to the fog. Well, where they had to go was obvious because the fog was definitely new since the last time she was here... Didn't seem infectious at a glance either...

"Getting comfortable bringing your kids to work, doc?" Leviathan notes rather light-heartedly before looking to the fog. She continued forward to investigate. While she'd be glad to idly chat she was on a job.

[Sunnivale]

Once the group have arrived to the fog, they were free to enter at anytime, however nearby, there was a Starvia monster watching them, It was looking like that it was going to attack them in any second.

Which it soon did by jumping over them!

Infected Starvia Spider
HP: 10000%
Items: None
Status: None

It looked strong and quick with how it jumped over the group and towards the fog, where it quickly touched it.

Upon it doing so, something shot out of the fog and towards the Spider, and in an instant, it light up on fire. The spider ran away from the group towards a nearby building...

Infected Starvia Spider
HP: 0%
Items: None
Status: Burnt

Well upon it fell over and sunk into the ground, having died from the fire attack, to prove just how dangerous it was for anything infected with starvia to go near the fog. It was like, someone saw it was going near the fog and killed it before it could get close to the fog.

Should the group go near or enter the fog, nothing appears to happen, like whatever shot that fire attack knew that the group were less dangerous then the Starvia spider just now and allowed them entry into the Fog.

Was it because the entity within the fog was nice? Or did it have other motives involving the group. What was stranger, was what was inside the fog.

(Music - Chiyokotto CITY TIME)

Which... Turned out to be an entire, normal looking city that was definitely impossible to fit inside that tall fog.

The sun was bright and giving off heat, compared to the dark and cold city of Neo Acadia. The fog would lead the group to a neighbourhood in the city, which didn't look like a modern neighbourhood, it looked like it was from some year in the past, like 1983. A few kids were busy playing around, as their nearby school closed for the day due to an incident involving the fans in the school breaking down and thus, preventing everyone from the school to focus on work due to the heat.

"Miyashita-chan, I'm going to catch you!" One girl shouted to another.

"No way, I'm good at tag. I'm the best at Minami Takara-chan!" The other girl shouted. The two laughed and ran further down the road they were in and at a nearby vacant lot.

There was also a store that looked like it had just opened for the day nearby. Maybe the search for Yumiko can start there by asking around at the store?

There was also the Vacant Lot where the two girls had headed too which was just at the end of the street.

---

(Music - Digital Tragedy)

Yumiko couldn't believe her eyes when she saw... it.

Jusho High, it was in front of her, along with numerous students standing outside as they were waiting for class to start. "No... Way." The school looked fine, compared to the last time that she was there, where it was on fire.

She smiled, and walked right into the school, and up the stairs where the door to her classroom was, she reached for the door to slide it open, hearing the sound of numerous people talking from inside the classroom.

But she stopped herself, and hesitated. "No." What this town did, it couldn't of really... Copied her school right?

Yumiko finally got the nerve to slide open the door and looked in, where upon her heart skipped a beat at who she saw inside of the classroom.

"Heh, I knew it." She touched her head.

[Maverick Hunter Zero]

Axl would look at the three who were in the vicinity with him, and nodded politely. "Looks like we're all set, I guess we should get started." Axl said as he turned to look at the fog... Which was a distinct level of eerie that never bodes well for a Reploid such as him.

And spider, which completely ignored the group and made a beeline towards the fog in a bid to get within it, only to be roasted by way of flame. "I think whoever put up this fog doesn't want monsters like that entering..." Axl would say as he shrugged and would promptly holster his viewscreen so he could get a better idea of what he should be up against by simply getting close enough so that he could enter the fog. "We won't get much done sitting on our butts and worrying about it, best to take the initiative and do what we can; and by that I mean we need to go through and see what happens when we do." Axl added, and he would walk through the fog...

...and appear in what would be a normal city, which would be an oddity for the New-Gen copy-roid.

---

Axl
HP: 180/180
Shield: 65/65
Status: showing his courage!

[Doctor Ciel]

“ ...Yes, we're trying something--Y'AH!! ”

Ciel felt her heart skip a few beats as a creature she'd somehow missed nearly got the drop on them. Lightly clutching at her chest, Ciel waited a few moments to sort of calm down before she addressed what had just happened... by hurrying along on their way. She really didn't want to find out this spider had babies and they were about to become lunch. That just... sounded like the worst, frankly. ...Wait, could infected creatures reproduce?! It wasn't something she'd ever explicitly looked into, but the realization that she had no evidence to the contrary and the accompanying implications sent a shudder down Ciel's spine. That was an idea even more cursed than the swarm of baby starvia infected spiders coming after them. She could only hope she was wrong.

As they moved to investigate the fog, Ciel did a double take at the city within.

“ ...Huh? That's... implausible. ............Alright, I'm going to elevate the danger class of this area to 3 for exhibiting mirage-like activity. The only reason it's not 4 is because nothing inside this place has attacked us, but we should still proceed with that possibility in mind. ”

Ciel didn't like the looks of this one bit. It was always a coin-flip on whether the mirage tried to destroy or traumatize them or not. Ciel cautiously checked herself over. She had... a plasma pistol and two biometals. She was as prepared as she'd ever be, it seemed. After she mentally reassured herself, she moved to approach the kids playing around, in turn following them to the vacant lot. Here came the second hard part of mirages. Not knowing whether any given part of them was real.

Ciel 160/160 HP 50/50 Shield

[DLN-002-02 Roll Light]

Roll-Roll shot a light glare at Leviathan in response to being called a kid! ...Just because it was true didn't mean you had to say it! She was half-tempted to object to the idea that Ciel was actually her mother, but her the other part of her heart was pretty aggressive about her accepting that. So she exercised a very modest amount of restraint and settled for a dirty look instead. She moved to follow Ciel regardless, reluctantly obeying an order to stay close. When they entered the fog, she kind of tuned out for a bit. ...Huh? This didn't feel like the mirage. She'd grown up in the mirage and was intimately familiar with how it worked. There was a sort of unseen darkness to it that she could feel wherever she went due to her ability to sense the emotions of anyone in an area. She could even sense those kids' emotions, assuming theirs were real. “...”

DCN-002 (DLN-002-02) Roll Light DCN-002 (DLN-002-02) Roll-Roll 170/170 HP 60/60 Shield

[Fairy Leviathan]

"Oh, no hesitance to walk blindly into the fog killing our enemies, hm? I like your guts. Still you are right. No point wasting our time pondering," Leviathan responded to Axl casually as she went forward, observing the death of the Starvia spiders... She did not really think too much of it, looking back with a small smirk to Roll. The reasoning for it being silent but there was a small hint of enjoyment and emotions that could imply she got the reaction she wanted.

"... It is rather suspect isn't it? To think there was a completely normal city hidden inside Neo Arcadia under the veil of fog... Going to take some work to find who we're looking for than expected in this case," She pondered the implications for a moment before looking to the girls going towards the vacant lot before glancing back to the store. Well, while she liked doing intel work on her own she did not want something to happen to Ciel investigating some girls while she was out flirting with shop keeps so she decided to follow after the scientist and the kids.

Fairy Leviathan HP: 150 Shield HP: 50

[Sunnivale]

(OST - Hane (Fall, Fall!)

"♫ Kagome, Kagome! ♫"

"Stop singing that. I'm getting sick of hearing that song."

As the group started to head to the Vacant Lot, they would see the two girls again playing tag around some steel beams that were hanging around in the Vacant Lot. They were enjoying themselves right before one of them, a girl in a pink dress, who stopped running around the Lot upon seeing Ciel, Roll and Fairy's arrival.

"Huh..." The girl let out.

She looked at the three, and how, unusual they were in a city like this.

No, they were unusual, and they don't belong in a place like this.

This is her and her friend's town, not theirs...

The girl in the pink dress clenched her fists the more that she saw the trio.

(Sound Effect - Wind)

As she did this, the group would notice the Vacant Lot briefly changing to another location for just a split second, it was hard to see what it was during that brief few seconds.

But, the location that was shown resembled an abandoned playground more then a Vacant Lot, which was covered in fog. The two girls from the Vacant Lot were gone, but near a rusted slide at the playground, was a young teenage girl who appeared to be crying about something. She too vanished when the Vacant Lot quickly returned to normal and the two girls that were at the Lot, returned.

"What's wrong?" The girl with the green dress that the other girl was playing tag with said, upon which. The girl unclenched her fist upon noticing her friend again, the Vacant Lot having gone back to normal.

"I think those people over there are lost." She pointed towards the trio to get her friend's attention. Upon noticing the three, the girls walked up to them, curious as to why they were here. Maybe they wanted to see them about something regarding their school?

They would hate it if school was suddenly back in session today all because the fans there had gotten fixed.

"Are you okay. Are you all lost?" The girl with the green dress said. She noticed that they looked like they could be friends with someone that walks by here every morning.

"We don't often have people like you around, are you students at Jusho High? Like a friend of Shirasagi-chan?" The Girl with the Pink Dress, mentioned Yumiko's last name.

It seems as though they know Yumiko somehow and where she might be if the group asks them more questions about where this Jusho High could be.

And maybe about that Playground that was briefly shown just now.

[Maverick Hunter Zero]

Axl would follow behind the three considering that he was the only boy amongst the group, that and Leviathan pretty much had to agree with Axl that getting this done was a necessary task in their mission.

"Woah... Split second freaky..." Axl mused to himself as he noticed the scenery change for but a split second from vacant lot to foggy abandoned playground and back again, then noticed the two girls that were playing in the area. "Can we help you?" Axl would ask of the two since he was beginning to suspect that the area was hiding something and would flex his fingers as if he were itching to draw out one of those Laser Pistols he carries on him at all times. "Looks like we might be on the right track, since we are looking for Yumiko Shirasagi, as for you two, how about you properly introduce yourselves, I'm Axl, and these three are Ciel, Roll, And Leviathan." Axl added introducing himself and his group to the two.

---

Axl
HP: 180/180
Shield: 65/65
Status: making introductions...

[DLN-002-02 Roll Light]

..? What was that she'd just seen? ...Illusory phantasm, most likely. Probably intended to distract and unsettle her. She'd be better off ignoring it until it demanded her attention, she reasoned. “Well, I don't know about friend. I don't really 'make' friends. We're from Hylia's Grace Academy, a juvenile detention center for the roughest, toughest, and most dangerous delinquents in the entire sphere. We get a bad rap, and it's mostly deserved.” Roll-Roll cooly remarked in a carefree tone, a coy smirk upon her face as she engaged in a little bit of humor.

DCN-002 (DLN-002-02) Roll-Roll 170/170 HP 60/60 Shield

[Doctor Ciel]

One could observe Ciel's expression shift from thoughtful to annoyed as she listened to Roll-Roll speak. Hey, hold on--! ...She delicately placed a hand on Roll-Roll's head as she finished. “...It's a school.” Ciel firmly corrected, not wanting Roll-Roll's sass to mislead strangers. Especially strangers who may or may not turn out to need help from the Life Sphere later. She wasn't sure how safe they were out here. Probably not very, assuming they were real.

“ We're actually searching for Miss Shirasagi-chan ourselves. Do you know where she is? It would be a big help if you could point us to her. ”

Ciel 160/160 HP 50/50 Shield

[Coolshaymin]

... Something was off about the sudden change. The way the girl clenched her hands when she noticed their presence and when the vision returned to 'normal' the moment her friend brought her attention back... Did this place not like their presence?... Nah, if it's that simple it could of just killed them at the gate like the Infected. Still, she supposed their appearances were rather out there with three reploids and a scientist in much more modern clothes... She should really consider buying civilian wear so she had some other form of outfit aside from this armor. Kind of like that Rock kid has. He has a very convienant way of switching outfits from his armor to his normal clothes... She might have to steal that so she can have a more flexible wardrobe. Would play to her tastes and strengths too. Good not to always stand out the way she does...

"..." Way to make a girl feel welcome, huh? Regardless, she wasn't really sure about giving away as much information as the other three were. Giving away so much information when they had none was a bit reckless... Wait, did anyone even in this class attend school? If Roll was somehow convinced to go she wouldn't technically be wrong if Leviathan had to guess. She has become quite the trouble maker. Leviathan could not help but chuckle at that thought. "... Yes, someone was concerned about what she might be getting into. We just want to help her," Leviathan adds after a moment as she held a hand on her side, observing for any more oddities in the pink dressed girls mannerisms.

Fairy Leviathan HP: 150 Shield HP: 50