Chapter 2: Rude Awakening

It was a normal day for the citizens of Azeas, people were going about their daily lives, with children were playing around inventing various games to chase away their boredom while adults were busy looking over them and doing their own jobs throughout the city; which included overlooking certain areas from towers made atop the city walls that reached hundreds of meters above the ground. 

One such tower was built atop the southern quadrant's outer wall, facing the malezo forest to the south. However, the captain of this observatory was currently dozing off in his room not doing what he was supposed to do; — watch over the areas around the forest; when a communicator nearby chimed to life and a gruff voice was heard over the comm.

"Coffee, this is sipsmith. Do your read?. Over."

Of course there was no response for the recipient was currently fast asleep in his chair.

"Coffee, this is sipsmith, if you don't respond in a minute I'll have to report negative to the base and you'll be relieved from your duty." Sipsmith said so in a no-nonsense tone.

However, a minute passed, but nothing seemed to awaken this 'coffee' from his sweet sleep… there was a pause for sometime and the indicator went off for sometime and came online again; then there was sound of sipsmith clearing his throat and a unnaturally loud shouted followed suit, "WAKE THE HELL UP JACK!"

This was super effective as Jack — call-sign "Coffee"; woke up with a start, looked at his communicator in a sleepy haze and responded mechanically, "Sipsmith, read you five-by. Over."

"We're in different channel so talk casually." Sipsmith heaved a sigh, "this is the last time I'm saving your ass, Jack."

"Thanks Tyler, I owe you one as always."Jack replied in a grateful tone,"This isn't gonna happen again."

"Ha!, you always say that you little bastard" Tyler — call-sign, "Sipsmith" said so in a derisive tone, "It's useless to tell you to not do this again; so, try to at least keep your communicator near you... Understand?"

"Will comply, sip."Jack replied seriously.

"Anyways, I'm going to change the channel so be ready."

"Okay, Tyler. Thanks for the save again!"

Jack was glad that Tyler was a cool guy compared to other officers; Otherwise, he would have already been transferred over to the borders of the Callinoux desert… Coffee shivered just thinking about it. He would be roasted alive there.

"Coffee this is Sipsmith. Seismic activity detected south at delta tower serial no. 4533. Over." Sipsmith messaged again in a different channel after some delay.

"Stay vigilant and report every hour, do you copy?, over." The second part came after sometime.

Coffee frowned, and responded after a pause, "I copy report every hour. Do we know the cause for it? Over."

"Not for now, Coffee. You should check from your place. Over." 

"Will do, Sip. Over."

"Good, report back every hour. Over and out." Then the indicator in the comm went off with a click.

'Seismic activity, huh…?' Jack thought to himself suspiciously. He thought that this was another false alarm of a monster outbreak.

Jack peered towards the distant forest but it was as usual...a massive rain forest with trees reaching in length of kilometers with massive birds sometimes looming over the forest...They were not completely harmless, and one of the reasons coffee and his team were stationed here in this observatory that doubled as a artillery tower.

"Yep, nothing wrong with the forest..." Jack muttered self-reproachfully; he needed to inform the others up in the observatory so they could something other than their eyes to peer at the forest.

Jack fiddled with his communicator and brought up the id of Blaze.

'thump' 'thump' 'thump'

Jack had nearly contacted Blaze when he heard the distant sound of something moving within the forest; and it was definitely huge for it to produce such loud sound.

"I should probably go there myself..." Coffee thought to himself and headed towards out from his room which took a quadrant of the tower, and went down the hallway to reach the center of the tower and took the elevator to the top of the tower where the observatory was. The elevator hummed to life and reached the top floor in an instant; he came out of it and found himself in the main hall where some fellows were making merry. But he ignored them for now and went near an ivory entrance that had had with curved edges and a feet above the ground.

He flashed a card in the scanner before the door which slid aside and Jack saw a room that was bigger than it was supposed to be — due to some space magic-fucker which he didn't understand — and he saw various displays showing multiple places around the forest, but nobody in the room was paying any attention to them. Instead they were moving from one machine to another — probably not doing anything important.

Jack then directly went towards a female officer sitting in front of a terminal, and looked at what she was doing— didn't understand anything — so he cleared his throat and tapped her on the shoulder.

"What can I do for you Captain?" Blaze said while turning her chair towards him, Blaze said so and answered herself after putting a strand of her fiery red hair to the side, "new orders from the higher-ups?"

"Hah…You guys didn't hear that?",Coffee inquired quizzically after heaving a disappointed sigh.

Blaze then paused for a moment thinking and casually replied, "Yes sir, we did but we thought it wasn't something important as you didn't contact us."

"So you guys won't do anything until I order you to?" Jack said while trying to keep his annoyance in check, "hah… Just bring out the visuals of the area where the sound was heard; I need to know what's going on out there."

"Yes sir, will do it right away." Blaze responded less than enthusiastically.

Blaze started to type furiously, and then a screen went black, displayed new visuals along with a sound of propellers moving; over the sounds produced by birds chirping and the distinct thumping of the ground in the forest. The screen was a just a blur for sometime with the drone moving at great speeds; but it got clearer after sometime and showed trees getting uprooted by something like a large feet that was around two meters in length. The drone flew higher to show a group of bipedal monsters with the sun reflected off their limbs that were covered in bronze colored chitin and a single reddish eye in their head that was directly attached to their shoulders. 

Seeing this; the other people who had barely paid any attention to this screen started to work on their own terminal and all the displays soon showed many different groups of monsters like these moving towards the city.

An analysis came a bit later in a different panel; and blaze this time was all business.

"Sir, we have visuals on a group of humanoid creatures numbered in hundreds moving towards us. Mana density is many time highers than the previous monster outbreaks; some groups are seen carrying weapons with them as well. It's code green for now. ETA 1 hour."

"Any match in our database?" Charlie asked her, "is there any chance these were the stray ones from the previous outbreak?"

"Negative, captain. "

This gave Jack a pause...no match meant these were either a new species altogether or an experiment by some crazy bastard...again... But a monster outbreak didn't happen without some large gap in between; the last outbreak was just a year ago.

'Well, It's not my problem until they reach this tower.' Jack thought to himself with a shrug

Jack glanced at the clock, it was 3:13 AM. 

'one hour huh...Welp; still got time for a quick nap...' He thought to himself. Then the wrathful image of Sipsmith flashed in his mind...

He didn't want to be woken up by a loud shout...again...

So, with nothing to do Jack delegated various task to his 'minions', sent the info towards the hq; and watched the monsters stamping towards the city in all of the displays. 

'Let the guys at the hq deal with them.' He mused while sipping on the synthetic coffee. 

                           * * * * *

A train finally reached the gates with a short delay due to stops at som stations. With the scenery zooming past them the people inside barely noticed the outside surroundings. it was the same for the duo of a young boy and a middle aged man in a tailcoat.

These two were of course Masato and the old man Ozzy who were so lost in

conversation that they didn't notice the passage of time until the announcement

arrived that the train had the reached the gates.

The old man stretch a bit and checked the time on his watch, Masato peered over and saw it was already 4 AM.

"Still halfway to go before I reach home. Still got a lot of traveling to do..."

The old man sighed and said to Masato.

Masato grinned and replied back:

"Yeah, and the 'travel time' may stretch if something unusual happens."

"Like what? the gates closing? haha"

"maybe..." Masato said and when he peered over at the gates he suddenly paused mid-way and shrugged to himself.

The old man frowned and asked:

"What happened?"

Masato pointed towards the gate and said:

"THAT happened..."

Ozzy tilted his head and looked surprised at what he saw...The damn gates were closing rapidly...

"Can you see the future or what?" Ozzy asked weird.

"What if I say yes?" Masato replied with a grin.