The Rusted Town and Idolish Totem

At first, there wasn’t much to react to in the ruined street that appeared behind Amy’s forced passageway. Everything was dark, to begin with, so they could only see what the drones and droids were shining their lights on. It had half-buried buildings, destroyed pavement, and was blocked at random places by debris, boulders, and whatnot. It was as if a piece of a city was detached from the whole and thrown into this place, which wasn’t that far from what really happened.

All in all, they were in a fifty by twenty crevice in the underground with no more than some fifteen meters of height. Other than the building they used to enter the area, there were three others that seemed accessible.

Two were on the unblocked side of their entrance and a bigger one was on the other side of the street. The bigger one, in special, was in a very decrepit state, with whole sections of its massive floors collapsed or blocked by solid rock.

Exploring these ruins would be the most interesting thing to do in this place, or that was how it looked like until everyone took a better look around. Or to be more precise, when they noticed the small statue built over the pile of rubble blocking the proper entrance to the building they just left.

Not very hard to notice it now since Amy was keeping most lights focused on the weird statue. It was why she rushed here, to begin with, even if, in the end, she still couldn’t say much about what she was seeing.

“So, if no one ever entered this place, then who build this over the fallen buildings? Or are we to believe these fell here due to sheer coincidence?” The unusually serious idol asked for the ones following her and then moved closer to the little altar. “But my real question is, why does this thing look familiar…?”

The debris wasn’t anything special, only a collapsed building from the other side of the street. Meanwhile, the small statue was a little humanoid figure with wings made of stone.

The whole thing was rough in form and even recognizing it as something human-like was a stretch, but everything pointed to such after looking for a while. It also seemed to be wearing a miniskirt and holding a scepter made with a metal stick.

Very poor craftsmanship no matter how she looked at it, but Amy still couldn’t shake off the feeling that she saw something similar before.

“This is a very interesting development, even if a worrying one too.” The professor was the first to answer, although his focus was on speed-drawing a sketch of the statue on his notes and then writing about it. His two students, in contrast, instead rushed ahead and climbed the pile of rocks and steel beams to scout the whole area around the statue.

“Damn, this thing is ugly.”

“I say it has a charm to it…”

“Where?!”

“The kneesocks.”

“What?! Where are you seeing… Ow, I can see them too now. What the hells?!”

“I even think it has a proper… Hmmm… I forgot the name now… That area there, you see?”

“Oh! That thing Amy said when she explained their outfits, right? How was it…? Perfect zone? Incredible area? Something, something, Amy’s kinky?”

“Absolute territory is the name and I am not kinky, you know?” The pink girl complained as she observed the statue with them, moving closer to Lily in the meanwhile to whisper to her. “And Lily, look around, please.”

“Huh? What’s there to… How many?” The other idol whispered back, trying to keep a low profile as she pretended that nothing wrong was happening.

“One or two, but it is weird. Both heat and radio detection seem to not ‘feel’ them very well, so I am unsure of what is the situation…”

Amy was sure that someone was watching them, she even managed to detect some small movement earlier, but she couldn’t get a good read on it. Best case, it was a misread of some kind or, still in a good situation, some stray animal that found its way inside. Even if it was someone from the lower levels that found another entrance or a mercenary sent to loot the place, it would still be fine. The only problem was if they were to find something that was as old as the ruins still moving.

“Should we go for a preemptive strike them? I think I can get whatever is around before they can react.”

“I would prefer not. Who knows what kind of thing this ruin had hidden around, you know? I will send a drone and keep an eye to check if it is not some fake reading first too.”

Still a little apprehensive about this, Lily nodded to her partner’s idea and then moved close to the other members of the expedition to guard them. The only one that noticed her was the lawyer that wasn’t that interested in some random rock, but he only glanced toward the two idols and didn’t say a thing.

Meanwhile, Amy disconnected one of the flying cameras from the live stream and started to move it away from the others. The only thing she detected was a small movement in a section of the huge building close by.

The building itself seemed to be some kind of factory, and one that the voice inside the pink girl’s head couldn’t recognize right away. But more important than that, it was a maze of broken corridors and fallen walls peppered by more open spaces.

And inside such a bad place to look for things, randomly moving around with her drone wasn’t giving many results, as expected. Even her expression was souring at it.

“I think we should move on everyone.” The professor called as he finished his notes on the stone figure and turned to Amy. “This little object is interesting, but it seems we’re boring our host already…”

“What?! No! That is not it, professor, I was just…”

“Don’t worry, missy, I know this kind of research isn’t for everyone… In fact, I’d argue getting this stuck on it was wrong of us.” He explained as Amy put on her smile back in full swing and tried to explain herself. “It’s much more interesting if we go inside the buildings and see what’s hidden instead of taking notes right away, isn’t it? We can always do the research later anyway.”

“Before we go, can we take this statue home?” Shiro asked as she climbed down the rubble and set herself right by Lily’s left side.

“Yes, it looks nice after looking at it for a while. And we… I don’t know… Do some research?” Kuro added as she got on the right side of the purple idol. “This much would be a good excuse, right?”

“You can’t go saying we should steal an artifact, girls…” Their teacher held his temples as the only answer to the stupid question from the twins. The internet was stuck in a little bit of a discussion on why they should or shouldn’t move the thing outside though.

“Aham!” The only still focused member of the group, excluding Benjamin, called the other attention. “Ignoring if Amy’s bored or not, we should move on already. I didn’t see that much food on your baggage, so we’re on a timer either way…”

“Huh? Right, right… Sorry about this, missy.”

“We’re sorry too…” The two sisters and the idol idling around said in unison, although one of these three was playing along for no real reason. She even stepped away when her partner gave her the eye.

“No need to apologize. What about going to that bigger building over there for now?” Lily continued while turning to the ruins of the big building. “It looks like a better chance to have something interesting.”

“Looks good to me.” Henrique continued with his eyes turned to the huge decrepit building. “Should we do anything special? To prop up you missies show, I mean.”

“Anything special? What do you think, Amy?”

If Amy wasn’t wrong, this huge building should be some old governmental or maybe military facility. It had many different blocks from what she could see, a multitude of corridors, and who knows how many rooms. And that was without even considering the possibility of broken walls and blocked paths.

The place seemed like both a treasure chest of archeological data and a dark deathtrap. Both options already considered the possibility of someone being around here too.

“How good are you four at seeing in the dark? I am unsure of how good keeping the robots as lights will do when we enter a more cramped space, you know? It can be very dangerous…”

“We both have infrared, don’t we, Shiro? I don’t remember how to turn the thing on though.” The black-haired sister closed her eyes and started to wobble around weirdly. “I can’t find the options anywhere…”

“That’s because we don’t have them. Did we get that one with multiple sensitivity levels, remember? The one that was two or three times cheaper…” The other sister answered back with her pupils changing sizes at will as if to show this detail.

“Oh, right… I forgot that. So, yeah, we can see with some light, but not none…”

“Got it.” Lily nodded at the new information and then turned to the remaining two members of the group. “And you two?”

“Well, ladies… I use glasses for a reason.” The burly professor held the glasses on his face, changing the lenses color each time his hand moved. “My eyes aren’t exactly the most modded, but this beauty here has all thirteen modes from a standard issue mercenary equipment.”

“Lawyer?”

“I’m a lawyer, Ms., and not one of those who have a proper office inside some safe megacorp…” Benjamin answered with a self-deriding smirk. “I’m equipped with everything a police officer would need to survive.”

Lawyers were as signs of law as police officers, so when someone went crazy or they had to deal with some rogue mercenary, they could go in danger. They also had to visit locations where security wasn’t assured, like the lower levels and the small settlements on the wastelands. That was, the lower-ranked lawyers had to. Persecuting the cases given by them right as the cops arrested someone this far from the city was one of their biggest jobs even.

Not exactly the best or safest career choice, but it paid quite well.

“Well then, some of us aren’t that well-equipped, but it should be enough,” Lily concluded as she organized all the information on her head and tried to make an assessment of how safe continuing would be. “Don’t spread too far though. And let us have Amy lead the way… She’s weirdly useful for these kinds of things.”

“Leave it to me!” The proud pink idol punched her puffed chest. “I do not like the ‘weirdly’ bit, but I am very much a terrific scout. Follow me and no giant boulder will trample over us.”

Once more, Amy’s weird words were making everyone else puzzled to the point of being unable to react, but it didn’t affect her. The moment she finished her phrasing, there were drones already on the way to the bigger building and their master was right behind. She wasn’t even waiting for everyone else to start following.

In reality, she wanted to go a little ahead of everyone else for safety reasons. If anything were to attack them, even though Amy was sure their contractors weren’t as defenseless as they looked, she surely could survive more.

Unless someone was hiding a high-powered cannon or some lasers inside there, most things wouldn’t even scratch her mini-dress. And although she didn’t know the exact details, her partner understood this fact well enough to give a follow-up right after.

“Follow us, everyone. Amy’s not much of waiting…”

So, with nods from the other members and leading the four civilians between her and the mass of frills leading them, Lily also started to move forward.