After checking that everything was in order in the gym, Altair vanished from there and reappeared in his house. He went to clean himself and proceeded to the living room to watch TV.
Before turning the TV however, he suddenly thought about the first place he went to after obtaining his teleportation ability, Kyrnac.
"It's been two days since the fire. I wonder how they are doing there, how have things progressed."
He had a feeling that he should check on their situation now, and as a teleporter, he could just arrive there instead of relying on the news.
With this thought, he browsed for places nearby, and after sometime he teleported away.
When he appeared, he glanced a little around himself and for some reason no one was looking in his direction or paying attention to him.
He started walking towards the place that had suffered the explosion, while paying attention to his surroundings.
After some time of walking around aimlessly, he came across a man whom he recognized as the one who was distributing safety gear the day of the explosion.
It was a dark-skinned man, old enough for his short beard to have strands of white and yet appearing not old enough to have his mobility hindered in anyway.
< >
He wore a dark grey, long-sleeved top and a wide-brimmed sun hat with ropes that rested on his shoulders and were looped around his neck, securing the hat on his back.
He had dressed a mat on the floor in a makeshift stall, and was trying to sell some products.
When Altair looked at him, even with the smile on the old man's face, he thought he appeared downcast, so he decided to approach him for a conversation.
When he got close to the old man, he did not know what to say. He was not good at conversations so when he reached in front of the man, he did not really know how to start the conversation.
The man however, seeing Altair just standing there, somewhat hesitant, and since he recognized Altair, decided to initiate the conversation.
Instead of the standard polite smile, the old man showed a warm, calm and friendly smile on his face as he asked. "Did you end up finding the one you were looking for?"
The question attracted Altair's attention, but he looked at the old man with a confused expression.
Seeing the look on Altair's face, the old man turned his head towards the destroyed site in the distance and with his right hand resting on his knee; he pointed his left hand's index towards the wreckage and said.
"The other day, you seemed in a hurry to go into the ruins, I assumed you were looking for someone in there. Was I wrong?"
Altair's body language expressed sudden realization as he replied. "Oh…" *ahem* then he cleared his throat before continuing.
"No. Actually I don't know anyone in the area, I just wanted to help."
The old man, still with his smile on his face, replied.
"I see… that's a nice thing to do."
After a short silence, during which Altair did not know what to say, the old man continued.
"Is there something I can help you with?"
"… Actually, I am not from around here, and after that day, I left the country. I haven't really been able to keep up with the news because of various reasons, so if you don't mind, can you tell me about how things have been going since then."
The old man still had a smile on his face but there was a hint of another expression that added to his face as he listened to Altair. Then he started replying.
"What's there to say, just yesterday I heard there was now about 13 people dead." Then he gestured with his hand in a certain direction.
When Altair turned to look, he saw a group of tents. It was not there the last time he was here.
Seeing that Altair had turned to look, the man continued.
"They use that place as a hospital. At least most people come out there walking. After you left, many more people were found in the ruins after the white men came to rescue with their fancy equipment."
The man then pointed towards another group of tents as he continued talking.
"You see that other place? That is where most people have been living. The white men say we cannot go back 'within the range of the destruction'." He said trying to emulate an accent, as he continued. "We should wait for them to 'confirm the safety of the area' before we can go back in…"
As Altair listened to the man continue his explanation of the situation, he came to understand a little bit of how bad the situation was.
Altair learned from the man's narration that authorities had cordoned off a certain portion of the area where the explosion originated. He could even see the sealed part from where he was.
Further inside the restricted area, even closer to the explosion's origin location, there was an even more secure area with armed personnel guarding the place.
.
Two days after the explosion, strange people came and started driving civilians out of the area.
In the beginning, it was just like when Altair came to the place on the first day. They simply relieved the teams of volunteers that were already on site without issue.
However, after they had removed all civilians around, they started driving people further away from the location, not even letting those who wanted to volunteer.
Altair thought it was normal, so when he asked. "Was that not for your good? That way no one will get hurt accidentally right?"
The old man replied. "We also thought it was normal at first, because when people started waking up, they were rushing in, to look for their friends and families."
He looked at Altair as he said. "That was not safe you know… But why did they not even want people near the place, they even built a barrier to hide something inside there."
This all happened around the second day. Apparently, they discovered something and after someone made a call, several cars came in after a few hours and they began to close off a particular area in the range of the explosion.
They built a tightly closed high fence a big distance around the area that was at the center of the explosion. The fence was not only high but it was opaque as well, preventing anyone from seeing what was going on inside.
The man continued telling Altair what happened in Boubou since the explosion. Altair found these things odd and started musing about them.
Sometime during the old man's narration, without knowing, Altair had sat cross-legged in front of him to the side while listening.
He sat there patiently as the man not only talked about what he saw but also shared his thoughts on his observations.
After talking about the strange behavior of the professionals who came to seal the area, he started talking about the rescued people.
He had a complicated expression on his face as he was on the topic. It was a mix of a happy relieved expression and a sad painful one together.
The expressions changed slightly from time to time as he talked, being more on the happier side when he talked about the increase in the number of rescued people and appearing sadder when he talked about casualties of any kind, even the wounded that survived long enough to be rescued.
Oddly enough, Altair was able to see these changes in expressions but he attributed this to his increase in eyesight and didn't think much of it.
He had a happy smile difficult to describe as he talked about the increase in the number of rescued people as well as how much more people the professionals found with their "fancy equipment" as he called it, compared to when the civilian volunteers were there.
Even now, as he talked, he showed Altair towards the location of the explosion, within the cordoned area that was not sealed, there were people moving around with different equipment trying to locate survivors.
.
Altair saw that at different places within the cordoned area, there was about two people at a table and they focused on the folding tables in front of them, while they would occasionally look towards the wreckage.
Looking further, there were other people moving around in different areas with breaks in their movements, sometimes changing their direction of movement. It was as if they waited for instructions before moving forward or to the side.
These people had in their hands some tools that to Altair, looked like metal detectors, with the scanning part that was like a sponge or plate and the pole part too.
.
Just in the 2 to 3 days the stayed here, they rescued over 178 survivors of the explosion and they took much less time to find people than the civilians.
That was impressive considering that it was a lot more difficult to find people with each new person they found.
And yet, even with all this in mind, he could not help but find the behavior of these professionals odd.
.
...
STATUS
[NAME: AKROATÍS SOFÓS ALTAIR ROHAN]
[LEVEL : 1 ]
[RACE : HUMAN ]
[TITLE(S) : PLAYER▾▻ ]
[CLASS : NONE ]
[HEALTH : 289 ]
[MANA : 256 ]
[STRENGTH : 10 ]
[AGILITY : 10 ]
[VITALITY : 17 ]
[INTELLIGENCE : 17 ]
[SENSE : 10 ]
[POINTS : 3 ]