FSE

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Mige sits in the shuttle to the outer ring with Richard. Richard yawns, not really liking how early it was for him to have to get up. But Mige had been quite insistent. Even met him as he left his quarters with an offering of breakfast on the go. He took a bite and munched on it while still half-asleep. Meanwhile Mige was quite awake and just carrying his own food with him.

"Where are we going again?" Richard asks as they get out of the shuttle onto the outer ring of the station, a place Richard hasn't gone back to since he first arrived at the station.

"To an observation lounge. I told you before. Now hurry, hurry, or we're going to miss it."

Richard shrugs but follows along, yawning again and rubbing his eyes somewhat to try and wipe away the sleep. If anything he's more or less just dozing off on his feet as the fox is leading him who knows where, but he has never really had any sense that Mige ever wished him any harm, just that he was being used by the fox to some end. Their destination seems to be a large room with the entire wall on either side of the room filled with one giant window. He also notices that there is a bulkhead on the entrances to the room, so if something did break through the glass or whatever the window is made of it could be easily enough blocked off.

"Awesome, we're not too late," Mige says in a chipper manner as he leads them to a bench in the middle of the rather crowded room.

Richard sits down and looks around, not sure what all he's supposed to be seeing at the moment. He takes another bite of his breakfast and wonders if they were brought here to watch the people or something else.

"Okay, now let me clear all of these people away real quick," Mige says and everyone else in the little observation room seem to quickly fade out of existence. This wakes Richard up really quickly and he quickly looks around the room to try and see what all has happened to them all. "Don't worry," Mige reassures while using some magic to grab his own breakfast and taking a bite out of it, speaking with his mouth full and still speaking perfectly coherently thanks to that Language of Intent spell he always puts them both under, "they're all still here. It's one of the reasons I had us sit down. Far less issue in accidentally bumping into someone else. But I figure you would enjoy the experience far more if it was a bit more private. Would have personally preferred a Scab Observation room but that's far more problematic considering how rare what we're about to see is."

"And what is it that we're going to see?" Richard asks.

"It's a very special kind of sunrise," Mige says in response and points with one paw. "Look over there. It'll start soon enough. And don't worry about the light. The window is tinted so there is absolutely no risk of eye damage from staring directly at the sun."

Richard shrugs, though when he looks in the direction that the fox indicated all he can see is the light of the crescent moon. But as time goes on Mige seems to get more and more excited.

"And what's so special about this particular sunrise?"

"Technically nothing? I mean if you are in a spaceship you can go and see this twice a day if you really felt like. Apparently, it's a really profitable venture for some pilots, though the one for sunset is seen as far more romantic. But what we are about to witness can never be seen on a planet and is so rare for a station that this is the first and quite likely only time it'll ever happen for this station."

"And that is?" Richard presses again.

"It's called an hourglass eclipse. As the sun rises off the edge of the planet it will actually start to become eclipsed by the moon. And at the peak of the eclipse you're actually going to see the sun take on the shape of an hourglass. I know you might not think much of it, but here's the thing. You've been here a month so far and what have you done to just enjoy your time here? Have you yet done anything to truly appreciate the fact that you are in your future and do something you wouldn't be able to before? You need to enjoy life when you have it. If there's one thing I can teach you I would have it be this. No matter how bad things get. No matter how bad or stressful things get, if you cannot find the little things to enjoy and appreciate, then what's the point of living?"

Mige stops talking, not even bothering to look to see if Richard has anything to respond to it, but instead looking at the window as the sun starts to rise up over the edge of the planet.

"So all of this is just an illusion?" Richard asks, looking around at the seemingly empty room.

"Well, everything outside the room is real. All I've done is make it so that we cannot see or hear anyone else that's in the room."

"So then would you be able to zoom in on that eclipse thing?"

"Oh? Yeah, sure, give me a second," Mige says and then Richard can start to see the area around where the eclipse is start to grow larger and larger, taking up more and more of the window. It eventually stops when it gets to the most likely area of the eclipse covers half the size of the window. "That's about as much as I can do without distortions."

Richard nods some thanks and the two eat their breakfast while watching the sun rise out of the planet and immediately into the moon. And though Richard himself doesn't really find anything too much of note about the event, he's at least respectful that it is important to Mige and is more than willing to share the experience with the strange little kitsune, the only one Richard knows that has never shown themselves to be anything other than just a large fox. He rationalizes that he might go and ask Zera one of these times to see if she knows why he does this.

"You should ask your squadron to have you do a scan-sweep," Mige says as the sun does gain that hourglass shape as it sits directly between the two celestial bodies. "They'll know what I'm talking about. Fits the same thing as what we're doing here. I think it'll do you a lot of good."

"Sure," Richard shrugs as he just sits and eats and watches the sun finish its shape and start going more towards a more normal eclipse of being just inside the moon. Once the sun has completely left the planet Richard blinks and then suddenly everything is back to normal, which is a little off-putting to suddenly see so many people again.

"Now if you want, we can wait and see the normal eclipse, but that will quite likely be a while yet before that happens. But I don't have any immediate plans right now, so we can either go now and you perhaps snag a nap before you need to report to your job, we can stay here and just watch the full thing or even just walk around the station for a while. I'll leave it all up to you."

"If it's all the same I think I'd prefer getting a bit of a nap before having to go out on patrol."

"Fair enough," Mige says before hopping off the bench and starting to guide him out like with most of the rest of the people.

Away from the station in a ship travelling through the space between the gates, Kinou checks on a mirror to make sure that his disguise is in order. Almost all of the Shadows have been sent out on various transports over the past few week and Kinou is one of them. All are tasked with the same mission to find out who is targeting and funding the attempts at destroying the station. Kinou's own destination is a space station far inside human territories, one of their own major hubs. But because his normal form is that of a mythic, he highly doubts that they would be all that willing to talk to him in his real form. So he's adopted the appearance of a human and was given proper documentation to be able to handle it. The spell to give him this appearance is hidden in a small ring on his tail, so not likely for anyone to accidentally trigger it if they do a search. He even has a device hidden on his voice box to add an extra level of obfuscation. It's a sort of off-shoot of the Language of Intent, but instead of translating everyone from both people into a language of nonsense it translates only his own words into that of another language. Another tool to make his story seem more believable. Now if he were to talk to a translation orb it'll calibrate him to a different location but still allow him to speak and hear just fine. It certainly is a very useful tool in his line of work.

Ideally if he was a lot more cautious he could have taken a lot more circuitous route and avoided the Gates altogether. And some of the Shadows are doing just that. But his destination is in the heart of the Human territories and trying to get there by system hopping would probably take the better part of a year, if not longer. And with the threats already made against the station in just the past month he doesn't think he'd have that long. There's also the fact that as the leader of the Shadows it's against protocol for him to be away from the station for too long. Short excursions are fine, especially for things like this. He's been given one quarter year from the station's time to find out what all he can and then report back and potentially hand off his progress to someone else. It's not his real identity. Someone else would be able to copy his appearance and continue on like nothing changed. All of this combined meant he couldn't afford to not go by Gate. He's never liked Gate travel, too many things that could go wrong that could spell disaster. A malfunction that causes them to miss the exit point and they'll be stranded in this red, oppressive space until they eventually run out of supplies and die. And he doesn't like that lack of control. But as his transport is getting close to the exit of the Gate he takes a few deep breaths and starts to get himself into the right character for his mission. He could change it as needed but it's by far best to be consistent as much as possible.

It's unavoidable that they'd be able to track his movements back to Foznetal, but they shouldn't be able to track it past that. And the documents only have him there for a short while, barely a week before returning to human space. Of course there's no guarantee that he will be able to find him right away. There's a good chance that the person in charge is going to be very cautious. So far they've been thorough and approached people with a very big grudge against either the station itself or someone on the station staff. It'd be far too suspicious if he just immediately started spouting having a major grudge so quickly and loudly. No one that careful would ever believe him. So, he'll have to approach it in a slow and careful manner, trying to see if he can get them to reveal some information. It's also entirely possible that it might take months for any of them to actually find a useable lead. But they are committed to the task and if another attack is sent that'll help focus their attentions. With luck either they'll be able to track him down or cause him to delay long enough that the purpose is accomplished anyway.

But they were all sent to places that did have a high likelihood of finding anything of use. The place that Kinou is being sent to is the one station that they could confirm that the person responsible for all three attacks have at least visited in the past year. And there is likely to be some precautions to try and stop his group. The Shadows have been made public. People know they exist. But who they are is not known. And after three attacks on the station in the span of a month anyone with any sort of sense would know that there would be a response from the station as well. And thus he'll need to be on his toes the entire time. Ultimately, though, Kinou personally doesn't care if they get contacted. He'd much rather find someone that knows, and then collapse around them and move methodically until the person at the top of the pecking order. Far more efficient and effective. And to be perfectly honest with himself, three attacks so quickly would mean they're on some sort of time table. Even him jut causing them to go and go into hiding for a while until the heat goes down would benefit him and give time for the members who will be acting on a much more long-term basis to get in position. The only problem, and the one thing he cannot do is hope to be able to simply fight his way out of any situation.