AD7 stared at the waiter in disbelief.\u00a0 “It blew up?” she asked.\u00a0 His words were clear as day.\u00a0 There was no chance that she misheard him.\u00a0 Still, AD7 had to ask just to be certain she wasn’t hallucinating.\u00a0 Things don’t just blow up spontaneously.\u00a0 And if something, anything were to blow up, why the best restaurant she had ever visited?<\/p>\n
“Well it was blown up,” the waiter said correcting himself, “before the Mech War started heating up.\u00a0 Madam Ge rebuilt it here.\u00a0 She wanted to keep the restaurant local but the old lot was too small for her vision.\u00a0 Still, she cleaned and preserved the lot to honor her uncle who died in the explosion.”\u00a0 At that the waiter paused awkwardly, remembering his job “Is there anything else you’ll be needing sir.”<\/p>\n
Oyintsa thought about his surroundings and remembered that the young Crisho probably had other tables to work, “No, thanks.”\u00a0 At this, the waiter left rushing off to help the next table.<\/p>\n
“That explains the empty lot,” Royal encouraged AD7, “Seems like you’re perfectly sane.”<\/p>\n
Yeah right.\u00a0 I\u2019m sane and completely out of touch.<\/em>\u00a0 AD7 was usually in good spirits even in these odd times.\u00a0 However, this recent embarrassment proved that there was a great deal that she had to catch up on.<\/p>\n For all she knew, she had caused the war and was sitting with her enemies.\u00a0 She didn’t even understand the today’s fashion.\u00a0 She had a whole half century of history to learn before she could live something of a normal life.<\/p>\n Even in her day, the handhelds were very useful.\u00a0 Perhaps these days they were even more advanced.\u00a0 She turns to Royal and asks, “Is there something I could read that tells me about recent history?”\u00a0 After a little bit of thought, Royal activates her handheld and hands it to AD7.\u00a0 While they were discussing its new features, Oyintsa’s handheld starts ringing.<\/p>\n Instead of answering it immediately, Oyintsa set it in the center of the table.\u00a0 This way, all of their faces could be seen by the caller.\u00a0 Pressing a button, he received the call and a small image of a worried Tirzah appeared.<\/p>\n The image of Tirzah showed her talking into her hand.\u00a0 She was concerned but not to a stressful degree.\u00a0 “Where’d you guys go?”<\/p>\n AD7 and Royal both heard the question but were a bit preoccupied to respond.\u00a0 Oyintsa on the other hand responded immediately, “AD7 lead us to a smashing restaurant.\u00a0 You have to come see.”<\/p>\n “Love to,” Tirzah said, almost cheering, “but we’re done here.\u00a0 Get something for the rest of us though, eh?\u00a0 I’ll hit you back.”\u00a0 She was in one of her rare good moods.\u00a0 Cyd must have finally joined them.\u00a0 “Meet you at the ship.”<\/p>\n “See you,” Oyintsa said as he ended the connection.\u00a0 At the next opportunity, he gets the attention of another waiter, “I’d like to add quadruple\u00a0to our order.”<\/p>\n AD7 was occupied trying to understand Royal’s handheld.\u00a0 Still, the large amount of sandwich orders got her attention.\u00a0 Sure Royal was hungry.\u00a0 It was impossible for her to be that hungry, “Why so many?”<\/p>\n “There’s twelve of us,” Royal said.<\/p>\n “The rest are in the ship,” Oyintsa said finishing her thought, “Got an extra in case someone<\/em>,” he emphasized looking at Royal, “was still hungry.”<\/p>\n Royal was looking the other way but she knew she was being teased. \u00a0As a response she looked at Oyintsa and\u00a0stuck out her tongue.<\/p>\n As they waited, AD7 read more of the city\u2019s history from a page on Royals handheld.\u00a0 Most of the details were left out.\u00a0 AD7 read between the lines thinking of Eighty-Seven’s responses to each event: the small conflict’s escalation; the steady transformation of the Mech Wall into a fortress; the peace agreement between Bosstown and Rubin’s Trail; the continued aggression from the Mech Fortress with its superior technology and fire power; the calling of Champions to aid Rubin’s Trail’s fight against the Mech Armies; the slow and steady defeat of the Mech Fortress; and ‘AD7’s’ imprisonment at Rubin’s Trail Science Facilities.<\/p>\n Each progression was horrifying for AD7.\u00a0 Things went from bad to worse to utter disaster; each step breaking AD7\u2019s heart.\u00a0 She had no idea that things would turn this way.\u00a0 But Eighty-Seven always followed her instructions perfectly.\u00a0 She wanted something.\u00a0 Something she could never have.\u00a0 Argh… what was it?!<\/em> \u00a0AD7 instinctively kept her calm face while reading but the puzzle was driving her crazy.<\/p>\n They were always together, so very close together.\u00a0 Rubin’s Trail would have easily mistaken Eighty-Seven for her.\u00a0 Now, Eighty-Seven must be scared out of her analytical mind.\u00a0 There has to be a way to get to Rubin’s Trail and free her.<\/p>\n #1<\/a> \u2013 Awakening #18<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Awakening #20<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AD7 stared at the waiter in disbelief.\u00a0 “It blew up?” she asked.\u00a0 His words were clear as day.\u00a0 There was no chance that she misheard him.\u00a0 Still, AD7 had to ask just to be certain she wasn’t hallucinating.\u00a0 Things don’t just blow up spontaneously.\u00a0 And if something, anything were to blow up, why the best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,79,13,3,94,85,41,10,11,170],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ad7","tag-ad7-person","tag-bosstown","tag-champions-of-battle","tag-eight-seven","tag-ges-noodles-and-subs","tag-mech-war","tag-oyintsa-yuan","tag-royal-qiu","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":487,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonsofsword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}