Chapter 13: 12: Impending Threat

                Lulu couldn’t sleep… no matter what she tried, no matter what position she lay in, there would be no rest for her tonight. Rolling over onto her back with a disgruntled huff of annoyance, she twisted her head to observe Lyssa’s sleeping form. Except Lyssa wasn’t sleeping, nor was she in her futon at all for that matter. Sitting up Lulu quizzically glanced around. The bathroom light wasn’t on and neither were there lights outside the bedroom. “Lyssa?” She called out but received no response. Yawning, Lulu rolled over onto her stomach and pushed herself into a kneeling position before standing.

                Entering the dark kitchen, Lulu took a cup from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. While chugging the water she noted Lyssa’s absence from the kitchen as well. “Lyssa?” She called again, placing the empty cup into the sink. Shrugging when again no response came, Lyssa trudged back to the bedroom.

                Allowing her body to flop face first into the futon, Lulu breathed a sigh into the fabric. Could there be a reason she was unable to attain slumber? Relaxing her entire body into the futon, Lulu emptied her mind. She wanted sleep, Lyssa wasn’t here, and something was keeping her awake… And that something had an exceptionally sinister presence. Head popping up, Lulu blinked, realization washing over her features. Grumpily lifting herself from futon once again, the blue haired demon girl dragged herself over to the chair and sat. Touching one of the laptop’s many keys, its blackened screen lit up and Lulu brought the cursor over to one of the desktop apps and opened it.

                She wasn’t officially with the Enforcers but Zavis had given Lulu minimal access to their system’s monitoring program. The app loaded and a minimally detailed three dimensional display of the city where they all resided began rendering. Clicking and moving the cursor in a fashion that allowed her to rotate the virtual map, she pulled it around to view the city’s underside. “Culprit.” she grumped, noting the bright red blip slowly moving around aimlessly. According to the readings, the potential threat remained at an acceptable distance. Lulu held no fondness for the types of creatures that caused these blips as they often prevented her from gaining restful sleep. Looking back over at the empty futons, Lulu sighed. She couldn’t ignore the red blip on the monitor nor could she bring herself to ignore Lyssa’s absence under the circumstances.

                Clicking into another program brought up a chat window where Lulu entered a code into the command line and then tapped the enter key. A graphic of two phones shaking with an arrow moving from one to the other played for several seconds before the receiver picked up. “Lulu? It’s awfully late for you to be calling, what’s up?” A gray colored face with strikingly goat-like features appeared in place of the previously animated graphics.

                “There’s a blip.” Lulu stated bluntly.

                “Ah… can’t sleep because of that again? Don’t worry, we’ve been monitoring it since earlier this afternoon. So far whatever it is doesn’t appear to have an interest in trying to aggress the city’s barrier.”

                “Lyssa isn’t here, Lulu wants to come over.” Staring at the screen with a stern expression plastered over her face, Lulu insisted. “Please teleport.”

                “That’s probably not necessary. I know you lose a lot of sleep when these kinds of events happen but I don’t think it justifies breaking protocol…”

                “Please teleport Lulu.” Lulu demanded, an agitated look crossed her face as she raised her voice and scowled at the goat.

                Releasing an exasperated sigh the goat on the other end conceded.  “Alright, but you can’t tell Zavis I let you over here. If he finds out about this it’ll be my job that’s on the line, not yours.”

                Lulu nodded, accepting the goat beastkin’s conditions.

               

*             *             *

 

                The magical light generated by the teleportation platform gradually faded. Lulu waited a moment longer for the brilliantly intense white light to be less than blinding before allowing herself to open her eyes. “Lulu was sure Zavis said he would fix this… Why does it still do the annoying light thing?” Irritated, Lulu took her bare foot and gave the arched metal construct atop the platform a solid kick. The physical contact against the machine caused it to release a resonating sound throughout the room.

                “P-please don’t damage the equipment!” The goatman protested, rushing over to investigate the results of Lulu’s brutish behavior towards the teleporter. Finding no physical damage he let out a sigh of relief.

                “It should stop being shiny if it wants to keep Lulu from kicking it.” A self-satisfied Lulu stepped off the platform. Leaving the goatman to grumble over Lulu’s treatment towards the equipment, she assuredly walked out of the room.

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                Down two doors and to the right. Pass three more doors and the target room would then be on the left. Stopping in front of the solid metal door, Lulu placed her hand on a touchpad that sat shoulder height to the right of the door. A green light from a biometric scanner lit up, running down the length of Lulu’s fingers and palm. Two yellow lights at the top of the door then switched to green before the door split down the middle and receded into the wall.

                Poking her head inside, Lulu made certain no one was around in the armory before making her entrance official. Rows of various types of armors, bladed weapons, guns, and other more mechanical tech lined the different isles in this room. She’d been here plenty of times before and knew exactly where to go. Passing the rows of neatly organized and sorted equipment, Lulu made a right turn at the last row and then moved left into a smaller room. Tables and shelves lined the walls of the backroom. In this hideaway were items containing magically imbued properties. Glass bottles with ornate metal caps lined an entire shelf. Red, blue, purple, green, yellow, white, and even black liquids were obsessively sorted and stored.

                What Lulu was after though happened to be on a table in the middle of the room. Picking up the device, Lulu examined it. It was a circlet with crisscrossed intertwining silver weavings that twisted on one side, forming into a gold lined socket. The socket itself was embedded with an opaque pink gemstone.

                “Oh good you found it.” Speaking from the threshold of the room, the goatman patted his chest. “Something’s come up so I’ve got to report in. You should take what you need to help with your sleep tonight and make your way home. I trust by now you know how to operate the teleporter on your own?” He asked, waiting just long enough to receive Lulu’s nodded confirmation before heading back through the armory.

 

*             *             *

 

                “What in the hell is happening!?” Zavis demanded with a curse. His crew of observers had been carefully monitoring the threat level of the signal they’d previously detected for several hours now when another signal had suddenly and violently emerged on the radar sweeps. Unlike the first signal that’d been slowly pathing below the city’s lower limits, this second signal had originated from within the city itself. Exploding into existence, the readings were off the charts and the automated systems in place immediately classified the blip as a top priority threat.

                “The newest signal originated from the northeastern quadrant of the city sir. It’s inside the barrier! Directly south of an establishment called… Pok-Nok’s Bathhouse!” One of the monitoring crew reported, keeping his eyes glued to the screen in front of him and trying to make sense of the numbers displaying on his screen.

                “Pok-Nok’s?” Zavis pondered. He’d been there only hours earlier. Had they been hiding something dangerous he likely would’ve noticed it while there.

                “Zavis, Sir! We have movement on the originally monitoring threat! It’s ascending and headed towards the new signal!” Another of the monitoring crew reported their findings and promptly submitted it to the central display for viewership.

                Zavis watched in dismay as the lower reddish dot moved with tremendous speed towards the second, more intense signal. Clearing the underside of the city it proceeded to ascend at an equally alarming rate. “Contact all divisions, have them rendezvous at the stronger signal’s location immediately and be prepared to engage with hostiles.”

                “The new signal! Sir! It’s gone!”

                “What?” Confused, Zavis focused his attention on the central display image and confirmed that the signal inside the city had now somehow vanished. What had it been? Was it a threat or not? Zavis’ mind swam with uncertainty. Nothing with that strong a signal should’ve been capable of appearing inside the city’s barrier to begin with…

                “Sir! The original threat signal has ascended through the barrier!” Worried voices and panic rose up and spread among the observers at this new report.

“No! That shouldn’t be possible!” Zavis didn’t want to believe it but the threat they’d been monitoring had indeed ascended through the protective barrier. Had the internal signal somehow weakened the protective barrier in that area and allowed the other hostile a chance to pass through?  Pulling out a cellphone-like device Zavis pressed a button on it and began to bark orders. “Attention all field agents, initiate mitigation mode and report to sector four B immediately! Incursion is imminent. I repeat. Incursion is imminent at sector four B!

Lulu arrived at the scene of chaos as personnel were announcing the incoming threat and scrambling to different stations around the observatory. Lulu returned to the armory’s back room to collect a red potion. She snatched up a sword along her path back to the teleporter room. Lyssa was missing, and the threat everyone was worried had advanced to Pok-Nok’s Bathhouse! Aside from the arena, Not-Lyssa hadn’t been anywhere else besides the bathhouse. Fearing Lyssa might be involved somehow, Lulu rushed to change the teleporter’s return destination. After the day’s fiasco, Lyssa would absolutely need backup.

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