NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1587 Movie Talk
--- Hunter ---
It wasn't worth the price. Fundamentally that's what it came down to. The price for leaving Meg behind was too heavy… probably. Hunter knew she'd been screwed over once already in the past hour and she wasn't trying to add to that tally any time soon. Certainly not on the same day. So Meg was coming along.
Hunter wasn't happy about it, and perhaps she could've found a better solution but at the end of the day? Meg was better at this sort of stuff and Hunter had decided to quit while she was… in acceptable territory.
Meg had strapped on a nice-looking belt and twisted the circular cover for the belt buckle vanishing from sight. Just from sight mind you. Hunter could tell exactly where she was by listening for Meg's breathing, or the slight distortion of the air to say nothing about the fact her tongue could smell exactly where she was but for this it would be good enough.
Hunter popped open the hatch leading up into the pantry. It was somewhat on the larger side for a pantry but obviously much smaller then the one they'd just left. The shelves were haphazardly stocked with spices left out in the open and a decent helping of dirt along the ground.
Hunter didn't bother looking long, simply moving up to the door and focusing on the sounds nearby, she could hear some various things but none of them were in the room right next to her. Opening the door Hunter slipped into an industrial sized kitchen broken up into personal sections so that a grand number of chefs could work entirely separately.
Once upon a time this place could feed a whole lot of people, but most of appliances were now dusty and rusted in places.
Hunter moved through the area quickly and into the mess hall, which was just a big room with tables, chairs, and a giant TV at the back of it that was currently off. Hunter sniffed around the room as she made it to the only exit door and could tell this place was still used quite regularly by… Hunter sniffed again. *Hmm… six people regularly but there are traces of at least two more.
Strange considering this is where the food is… but perhaps there are other places to eat and this is just the one connected to the kitchen.*
Hunter used her skill with her translation to relay all that information to Meg before listening at the door for a moment and pushing it open when she determined nobody was nearby. The door opened up into a hallway. On her left she could hear the sound of someone working out. Based on the other noises in that direction there had to be gym equipment but there was only one person there.
Hunter could also hear an ongoing conversation but it was getting partially masked by a tv that was running in the background. Deciding to move towards it, Hunter moved down the corridor until she rounded the corner, making good time and slipping down another corridor before stopping at the door to wherever the two people speaking were. Hunter pushed her aura a touch and slid into the room.
It was a big movie theatre room but the lights were all still on. Instead of an endless amount of seats, there were a large number of tables and chairs. Each table had a chair on either side for the most part and roughly in the middle of the room sat two figures. It was hard to tell how old they were. Their skin was pasty and they were somewhat pudgy.
Not fat certainly, but there was a roundness to them you didn't tend to see in a lot of high magic worlds. Then again, all the tech and lacking things to force exercise probably contributed.
They both had brown hair and scales over their bodies. Hunter could tell by the smell that they were probably descended from dragons. A long, long time ago, but dragon ancestry tended to be 'sticky' for lack of a better word.
It was a man and a woman with different coloured scales. Their scales, unlike those of Bower, seemed to only cover their softest parts. Hanging around the neck and framing the face, covering the hands like gloves, and the rest was covered by clothes. If Hunter cared she could probably work it out, but she didn't because the conversation was more important.
The first one, the woman, she'll call them Cryo was speaking. "… I'm telling you we should wake Corela up! Something like this has never happened before. It's the first time we've had signs that there might be something else again!"
The other one seemed much less enthused. The argument had been going in circles a bit and the second person here wasn't all that interested in compromising. They were the male of the group and Hunter honestly couldn't think a better name to call him in her head so he was Freeze. "And I'm saying that we don't need her. We can make our own choices now!
We don't need to rely on that old bat for all the important decisions. Plus, that pods gotten awfully noisy…"
"That's all the more reason to get her out! She's sacrificed so much for us and we're spitting in her face by keeping her locked away from this!" growled Cryo.
"Look, we had a vote and we voted not to wake her up…" insisted Freeze.
"No, we did not. You and Strek voted not to wake her up, I had Neoms backing me up on it and the rest decided to either not vote, or avoid showing up. We didn't agree on anything really, it's just that there isn't a compromise here, we either wake her up or we don't and we can't put her back in the box by force because she's stronger then us…" interrupted Cryo.
"And isn't that a good enough reason to keep her in there? We can make our own decisions, we're adults! I'm nearly twenty!" said Freeze. Hunter narrowed her eyes. *That… that sounds AWFULLY young. I was under the impression they were much older then that.
Unless… how are they counting the years? I would expect the translation to work with that but it can be a bit wonky with ages sometimes if the year is drastically different.*
"Look, all I'm saying is we have no idea what it is. It just dropped into the pool one day and nearly took Neoms' head off. We don't know what it is, damaging it just makes it reform… which we know because YOU dropped it…
"I said I was sorry for that…"
"Yes yes, really sorry. Well now it's just taking up space in one of the spare rooms because we can't agree on what to do with it either…"
"Studying it could give us all sorts of answers!"
"WITH WHAT LABS BEN!" Hunter mentally updated 'Freezes' name to Ben.
"There's no need to yell Chasen" Hunter mentally updated Cryo's name as well as Ben kept speaking, "Besides, we can just go use the ones above us? They're probably still in working order because of the robots" Continue reading stories on empire
"You mean the killer robots that MURDERED most of the older population?" asked Chasen.
"It wasn't that many people…" started Ben only to be interrupted when Chasen lunged across the table and slapped him with a meaty thwack.
"Don't give me that shit Ben. Sure the population was shrinking for a long time before that but there's barely more than a dozen of us now. Sure we didn't know any of the people that died for obvious fucking reasons but the people that did barely had any kids Ben. We are stuck here, dying, and you want to risk more lives instead of waking Corela up and working something else out," growled Chansen.
"First off, rude," said Ben as he rubbed the side of his face where Chansen had slapped him. "I get it that you're not happy but that was no reason to slap me. Besides we can still have kids if we want to…"
"Not everyone is ok with fucking their sister Ben," retorted Chansen.
"Well presumably if you wanted kids you'd have to choose a guy…" started Ben.
"That's not the POINT Ben. We were warned of the consequences of inbreeding, and even if I DID like guys I would not fuck any of you. We're essentially all related at this point…" said Chansen with a sigh.
"Hey, our parents are ok with it…" started Ben.
Chansen glared him down. "Your parents are half sibling's Ben, they obviously don't see an issue with it because they were in the same position but they're too old to keep having kids and… well I don't think any of us should be trying for them…"
"See Chansen, this is why I never thought of dating you…" Ben tried to say.
Only for Chansen to raise up her hand again, "Ben, I WILL slap you. You never had a chance and you've been making eyes at your sister for nearly a decade. I get it, obviously the incest gene got passed along because at this point, if you're still squicked out about it you'll never have kids so it gets passed on… but you're still a dick,"
"Oh? So you do think I'm hot?" asked Ben. Chansen slapped him. "Fair. Perhaps harsh, but fair," Chansen continued to glare at Ben.