"N-now wait just a minute, can't we discuss this like men?" Loxon asked in a panic as he backed away from the old man walking towards him.

Serena was completely knocked out after taking her own attack to the face, and he was without any way to use his own talent. Whoever this old man was, Loxon regretted ever attacking him! He hadn't said a word, but his slow approach was threatening enough!

Loxon kept backing away as the old man advanced his eyes darting around, hoping to find an avenue of escape. But he never found one.

The old man suddenly jumped forward with a loud shout, startling Loxon. He jumped back in reaction, only to find himself with nothing beneath his feet! An instant later he found himself plummeting down a chute, screaming his head off as he fell!

--------------

General Saigo chuckled as the scream of the falling man faded away. Attack an old man unawares and then try to roach-weasel your way out of it? Not today! He may be old, but the older he got the craftier he became!

Saigo had noticed the open chute next to the wall a while ago and had deftly used the man's cowardice against him, backing him up before the final shout that startled him into falling back into the chute and down to wherever it went.

In the meantime, he still had the woman to worry about. Saigo had used his innate talent to reflect her own magical attack back at her, so he was not sure if she would even wake up after that. It had been a rather powerful attack, and Saigo still could feel the sting it left on his palms.

Saigo was not going to harm the woman while she was unconscious. No, the Asurai clan was a clan of warriors, but they would never attack an opponent that could not defend themselves. That had been a part of the Asurai clan's creed since the founding of the clan in the early days of Frenach.

Their home had been taken from them, their numbers decimated, but while even one member of their clan survived, the values and beliefs that were a part of their legacy would live on. Saigo was one of the few remaining elders now, and their purpose was to teach the young ones the values that the clan had been built on before they passed on into memory.

But before he could return to his duty to the clan, he had to find them first! He had made it to the city, but had been attacked on entry. Now he had no idea where he was, and what to do with the woman.

The area he had entered into appeared to be a maintenance or repair shop. It was all lifeless and still, but he could see he was in a rather advanced machine shop of sorts. It reminded him of the shop that Zoey had built aboard the Stella Tenebris, but this place was messier and far bigger, not to mention the hundreds of dormant mechanical arms hanging from the ceiling.

As he took a look around, Saigo suddenly felt his Eve vibrate on his wrist. He took a look at Eve's holographic interface and his eyes widened when he saw a number of Eve signals suddenly start to appear on the map heading his way. I seemed like his clan had found him before he even had to go looking!

The approaching Eve signals were only a hundred meters away, so Saigo decided to simply wait for them to arrive while he kept an eye on the woman. Soon he could hear them approaching from a hallway that exited from the workshop structure he was in.

The first to enter the room was the big, reptilian silhouette of Ssaul, who carefully looked around before spotting Saigo sitting and waiting near the unconscious woman.

"Saigo! It's you!" Ssaul exclaimed, waiving the others following him into the room.

Saigo chuckled as he greeted his old friend with a customary warrior's forearm clasp.

"It's nice to see you too my friend! I see you have been busy?" Saigo said looking over the others and seeing that they were OK.

"You could say that," replied Ssaul. "You as well, you seem to have had some action yourself. Is she one of the noble's men?"

Saigo glanced at the woman then said, "I don't think so. Her garb is not like the noble's men, more similar to a mercenary, but she and her friend did attack me."

"I see. And what happened to the friend?" Ssaul asked.

"He took a trip down the hole over there," Saigo pointed at the chute he had scared the other man into.

"Not sure who he was or who she is, but once she wakes up, she may be willing to talk. Feel like taking her with us?" Saigo asked.

Ssaul mused over it for a moment, then agreed that they should take the woman, so long as she was properly restrained. following that, they took a moment to rest and make sure everyone was OK before heading out, continuing on through the empty, mechanical city.

There were still other groups of Asurai clans-people out there that they needed to find, and after that, the Stella Tenebris was still missing, not to mention Zoey and Max. They had a lot of ground to cover, but thanks to Eve and her mapping function, they were slowly starting to get some idea of where they were.

Every Eve had a 100-meter mapping range that when connected to the other Eves would coalesce the maps together to form one big map that showed them where everyone in the group had been, allowing them to know what areas they had covered. Every member of the clan that they found was another Eve added to the data, allowing them to gain an even better look at the area.

Saigo and Ssaul both knew that they had to find Zoey somehow. She would know how to find everyone, and perhaps she was already working on it without them even knowing. The city was massive, and even though they had found some of the clan, who knew how far they had been scattered across the city.

But if anyone could find everyone and gather them back together, it was Zoey. So on they went, carefully making their way through the bowels of a mechanical city flying in the sky in search of their friends and family, hoping that they were OK.