A sandstorm?!(invite only)

Clover town itself is a relatively peaceful town, it has had it's ups and downs due to the blue Pegasus guild being located in the town, but for the most part it was a good place to live in. Except today did not reflect that.

In the streets as people were walking around enjoying the day and eating outside at the tables outside the restaurants, and then it could be heard. It started out faint, like a approaching storm? But then it got closer, and it would have been realized that their was a sandstorm tearing through the streets. The sandstorm itself was very odd, as not only it moved remarkably fast but it was spherical in shape too, and could be seen to have an beginning and end. People tried to move out of the way and some were caught in the sandstorm and, they would have sworn that something was in the sandstorm, but then it moved too quickly to be sure. To those the sandstorm briefly enveloped, it would leave hot, gritty sand in every place it could have been and left sand in the food of people who were eating outside if the sandstorm passed by them.

However, to ember this was fun! She had rode on dusty all the way since the desert for the goal of finding a symbol resembling the one she had carried on her from the desert. However she just came out of a particularly cold mountain pass so she had a sandstorm to keep her warm and to completely hide her from outside view. But she liked it going on around her so much that she decided to keep it going for the rest of the way. She was surprised though that she started to encounter people, but took it as a sign that she was in a town and knew that the next town she passed into could be the one with the origin of the symbol in it.

So she rode around looking for symbols to match the one she had with her, enjoying the ride. But to an outside viewpoint the sandstorm seemed to have driven through the town without purpose, doing loops or going in random patterns. However it was becoming harder for ember riding on dusty in the middle of the sandstorm to maneuver around the obstacles in the street, so eventually someone or something was going to have a close call with her, or even get hit.

Natalia sat at her usual Cafe with her usual order of cold tea and a cupcake, she would never order a cup of hot tea considering her susceptibility to the heat. She took the first bite out of her cupcake when she picked up a particularly odd detection with the use of the light snow falling about Clover, something that melting the snow quite quickly in a rather large area and that area seemed to be moving in a rather random pattern. She stood up to go investigate as the mass seemed to be making a move in her direction. Stepping out onto the street she caught witness of something that was far more out of the ordinary than snow during the summer in Clover, it was a Sandstorm, she didn't even know Clover had that much sand to fuel it. No this was something beyond clovers capacity, such a thing would never move at random. As if out of reflex Natalia spread her arms as a mass of snow started to churn around her creating a rather large area of nearly the same size as the sandstorm yet clearly of greater power, and as the circle of spinning snow formed and prepared to collide with the sandstorm Natalia formed her shield of snow wings to protect herself from anything she would not expect, this was hot meeting cold after all.

Had the two masses of hot and cold been of the same level of power who knows what might of happened, the sandstorm would be completely overpowered by Natalia's snowstorm simply due to the level of power. The street would be covered with a thick sludge left by the melted snow and the sand mixed together. Natalia managed to save her cupcake from utter doom but that was besides the matter as something came to impact Natalia's shield of wings that protected her from surprises, and it sounded rather hard and far from that of sand. As the snow and sand cleared either flying away or becoming sludge on the sidewalk Natalia took a peek out of her little cocoon to see whatever it was that hit her. "Um... hello?" She squeaked as she noted that there was another person there with some sort of machine.

Ember had enjoyed her drive through clover town, she could have seen clearly through her sandstorm and liked what she saw. Unfortunately she did not find the symbol she wanted to find and decided to try to exit the town to look for it. Then the white out hit her hard. "What the?!" ember managed to get out before the blizzard seeped into her sandstorm. She struggled to see her way in the blizzard and was freezing, if not for dusty being so hot she would have froze on the spot. Then she saw what looked like to be a giant snow mound, and she couldn't react fast enough to avoid it. She tried her best to hit it so it wouldn't hurt to much for her or dusty by making the speeder collide longways with it, but the hit was still hard and she was thrown from the speeder violently into the wet, luke-warm sand. By that time the blizzard and sandstorm cleared up, leaving luke warm sludge everywhere in the area with a few spots of snow around. Ember groaned as she slowly got up, landing in the sludge did save her from getting scraped for the most part but she still landed in sludge, and she did not like the feeling of it on her as she shook it off.

Then she realized about dusty, who was on the ground still. "DUSTY NO!" she yelled in horror and ran over to her sand speeder, she started to unlatch the latches that kept the hull door to the engine closed. By the time natalia would have peeked out to see the person ember would have had her back to her and opened the hull. The end result would have been a hot blast of black smoke bursting out hitting ember first, then some of it would have blasted into the opening natalia had made to see ember. Because of this ember did not hear natalia's question and instead focused on clearing the smoke. "Oh crap, no worries dusty your going to be fine!" she said reassuringly, maybe more to reassure herself as she reached into a side compartment and pulled out an extremely weathered and dusty duct tape. She dusted it off and began to duct tape together what she could in the engine, which looked ready to fall apart if it wasn't for the duct tape in it already. Still with a great effort she was able to repair the engine enough before she closed the latch and turned dusty on. Dusty rose above the ground weakly, but it was in good enough shape for ember to walk with to find some spare parts to fix it.

She then looked behind her at what she collided with and saw it was a great big mound of snow, a recent discovery of hers from going through the mountains. Then she noticed a small opening in it, as if it was hollow, and something looked to be inside. "Hey someone in there? Come on out!" she asked, although the tone was borderline into demanding and asking nicely.

Natalia stared as the strange girl frantically cried over her contraption... thing whatever it was. It seemed to like to fly, something that Natalia wasn't too interested in considering she was afraid of being lifted by anything that doesn't make contact with the ground. Then came the smoke, it was thick and black and hot and choking to the point that Natalia was forced to open up the back of her defensive shell just to let the air out while hacking her head off. Whatever that infernal machine was she was already not fan of it beyond the fact that it floats. "The heck was that." Natalia managed to get out as she attempted to stop hacking and coughing. It was in this moment that the girl finally made note of her existence, and she was demanding that Natalia come out of her little hidey hole. Natalia was still stuck trying to air out her hole that it would be better just to open it up completely than suffocate which she promptly did and with several cracks the shell opened up as it spread out into six angel like wings made of ice and snow, it was also in this moment that one of the wings shatter making it look funny and lopsided with only five wings left. "Hmm you hit it pretty hard, you sure you were going the speed limit?" Natalia asked quietly inspecting her broken wing.

The cocoon of snow unraveled and revealed the white haired woman with icy blue eyes and a oddly shaped tattoo under her right eye. Then she asked of all things if ember was going the speed limit, it was odd to her since ember thought she was going an appropriate speed. However the more pressing matter was this woman's intervention had nearly resulted in the destruction of her beloved speeder, and that was not a good thing. "And your going to ignore the fact that you were the cause of the accident? Because I was fine going through the town before you hit me with your snow storm. Why did you do that in the first place?" ember asked with one hand on dusty, she was a little annoyed that the woman's actions nearly costed the speeder, but could have forgiven her if she had a very good reason to why she made the snowstorm. She cleared the sludge that was around her bandaged feet and shivered when it hit some hidden snow while she waited for a reply. Then her gaze caught the cupcake the woman held and hunger bit at ember, it reminded her of how she hasn't ate at least for a day.

Natalia blinked as she was accused of causing the accident. "I didn't know you were inside the sand, I can't sense what's inside when my snow melts before it gets in. And you were the only speeding through heavily packed streets getting everyone's stuff sandy." She explained as she lifted her cupcake to her lips and took a bite. "Anyways, why are you here?" She asked with an attempt to sound chipper and lighten the conversation which was met with a failed attempt sounding more miserable than happy. She seemed to always be this way, very few people knew why and those who knew the whole story had either been killed or moved on long ago. Natalia seemed more like an empty shell of sadness rather than a person, even her level of magic power couldn't make her feel any better. Speaking of magic power it seemingly started to fluctuate cause Natalia  to start coughing again causing her defensive wings to break apart and forcing her to her knees as blood spewed out of her mouth, and at the same time a thick coat of frost covered the entire street and crawled up the walls of the nearby buildings in a seamless instant. She still hadn't managed to rid herself of magic sickness even with all the training she had done with the former guild master months ago, and it certainly didn't seem to get better.

"You can sense what is in the...snow?" ember asked when the woman said it, the word snow still being a new word. Was this woman like the sand feelers in her tribe? But then she asked about what was ember doing here. Ember could detect the misery easily in her voice, then turned and looked around. What caused the woman to be so miserable? The sludge? Or the fact that she only had five wings? Confused, ember was going to reply, but then the spike in magic hit her. At the same time, the woman fell on her knees and started to cough blood. Ember was going to go to her, then the layer  of frost hit ember and everything else around her. Ember fell to her knees too as the frost was numbing her quickly. Cold, too cold ember thought to herself as she focused on warming herself up by surrounding herself with hot sand slowly. While most of it was making the snow into sludge, ember would have generated enough hot sand eventually to move toward the woman and try to see what is wrong with her, but as of now it was a pitiable sight to see the two woman both on their knees facing each other.

It was at that moment that another large magic energy spike would be felt and a huge gust of wind would seem to be generated as something approached at very high speeds. A sword suddenly slammed down next to them and a second later a figure caught it and swung round flipping through the air before landing next to Natalia blasting away much of the 'sludge' that had been generated. Somehow in the process he had managed to pull the sword out of the ground and sheath it at his back. The figure was garbed in black clothes reminiscent of a ninja and the sword was almost as tall as he was. It was a zanbato or something of that sort, but appeared like a giant kunai almost, but much straighter.

"Stand back please." he focused and spun round in a quick circle. His sword flashed out sending an arc of powerful magic energy through both of the mage's present. "Ninpou Mizugameza no Namida." The magical energy was one of healing and strength. It would provide some healing over time and provided a boost in physical strength and speed. He had not tried this before on Natalia, but he hoped that it would somehow counteract the effects of her overpowerful magic. In truth, she had enough power in terms of raw magic to rival him, but her body had not yet adapted to control and contain it. On occasions, she lost control and it flared out freezing stuff and crippling her physically.

[color="You ok Natalia? Sensed the flare of your power from the guild and thought you might need a hand"[/color] he said bending down to look at her and help her up to her feet. To those who were at least familiar with the magical world would know that this man was Zack Rose, guild master of the very guild Natalia was part of, that inhabited this town. Blue Pegasus. On top of that he was the second wizard saint and a regular feature of the Sorceror's Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and Annual editions. "Sorry about this buddy." he added looking over at Ember. "Thanks for trying to help her though."

Magic:

Natalia felt the warm sensation of Zack's spell as she near seamlessly recovered from her sick spell, the warmth was nice but it wasn't actual warmth otherwise it would have had adverse effects on Natalia. Accepting Zack's assistance she stood feeling quite a bit dizzy. "I'm sorry, I screwed up again." She said as she stumbled a bit falling over again just to be caught by Zack's body. The guild master was the perfect pass out bag being several times bigger than Natalia. Regaining her bearings a bit she finally took notice of her cupcake now smushed on the ground covered in sludge cause Natalia to reach out and gasp almost on the brink of tears over losing her cupcake.

Ember felt the blast of wind hit her and it blew away the frost and sand surrounding and on her, and followed a giant sword? Then a man appeared to claim the sword, a rather tall and big man. Then she felt a wave of magic past through her that revitalized her from the cold and the other woman. Ember stood up and looked at the man, was he familiar? She might have seen him somewhere before...perhaps in a discarded magazine?

"Yeah, what the heck was that about?" she replied to the man a bit annoyed how she got frozen over. Then the woman, natalia by what the man called her, recovered a little only to fall into him. And then natalia started to cry? Over what? Ember looked to where she was looking down at, the cupcake? she thought to herself. Surely this woman, natalia, was not crying over something as little as a ruined cupcake, even though it was a shame it was ruined it would have been in the least, a stupid reason to cry over.

And then a death rattle could be heard coming from behind ember, which she looked with horror as it came from dusty. "NO!" she yelled and went to the fallen dusty, who was no longer floating. She rushed to it and opened the hatch that covered the engine and saw a lot of the duct taped hoses and wires burst and covered in frost. Apparently the sudden drop in temperature caused the engine to blow since it lacked the proper parts to protect itself from such cold weather, and it already burst once from the blizzard and the impact. She started to go through the engine and realized that duct tape could not fix dusty this time, as the parts were beyond repair. Ember then started to sob softly to herself with tears running down her cheeks. The machine itself had been with her for a majority of her life and it had helped her in situations to where she could not have gotten through them without dusty. However their was no way dusty could have been fixed unless she HAD the replacement parts to do so, and she needed the space to work on it even if she had the parts. "Do...you know somewhere where I can fix dusty?" she asked the two quietly referring to the machine that she was on her knees in front of, already she had stopped sobbing but kept her face away from the man and natalia as she was still a bit red.

"Natalia has a rather rare condition, one i've not seen before. She has a magic power supply that could match any of the wizard saints, but her body can't handle the power." Zack tried to explain hoping he was getting this correct because it wasn't exactly the simplest thing to explain.  "So on occasion, if she gets stressed or is subjected to danger, or sometimes just randomnly it flares out and as she's an ice mage...well...yeah things tend to get a bit chilly." That was about the best explanation he could give. Natalia could probably tell more and probably would correct him if he was wrong about any of the details.

As Natalia started to cry over the cupcake Zack hugged her close to him ignoring the cold that she generated. He was trying to be a good guild master and a good guild master would help his guild through their downs and support them on their ups. Sure a cupcake was a bit of an odd thing to cry about, but he wasn't one to judge.  "Don't worry Nat. We'll get you another one later." He looked over at 'Dusty' and paused for a moment. The vehicle appeared in pretty bad shape, but it appeared that it wasn't just the cold and the sand that had caused the damage. No, it appeared that it had been 'repaired' multiple times and was more scrap than real metal.

"Yeah swing by Blue Pegasus' guildhall. My workshop should have the parts you need...i've got quite a few bikes, couple of 'em hover. Don't really need them, but its nice to tinker." he said with a shrug and paused.  "You're welcome to take one of them in replacement if you prefer or we can repair Dusty. Use whatever parts you need and as long as you need." With that he swept Natalia off her feet and began to carry her back to the guild hall. He didn't run this time because otherwise Dusty's owner wouldn't be able to keep up. He paused and then whistled causing a green orb to fly out of his pocket and expand to a full size human figure with insectoid wings made of light.  "Devon mind going ahead to the guild and getting some of the Pegasi out here to pick up Dusty." The fairy-like creature nodded and flew off in the direction of the guild hall. Zack paused again and then beckoned over a nearby shopkeeper . "Mind keeping an eye on it till they get here?"

The shopkeeper bowed. "Of course Master Zack. Anything for the guild master of Blue Pegasus." he said with a smile causing Zack to grin. Being a guild master had its perks.

"Follow me. I'll take you to the guild. I'm Zack Rose by the way."

Natalia stared with a quivering lip at the sight of her cupcake still sitting there covered in sludge, it did make her feel better that Zack offered to get her a new one. It was all sudden as Natalia suddenly found herself swept off her feet into Zack's arms and likewise she started to feel sick. "I think... I want my cupcake now." She mumbled and within seconds simply passed out in the guild masters arms. She wasn't good with being carried nor was she good with heights and the guild master was a tad bit tall for this, it was probably a good thing that she passed out rather than remained conscious otherwise Zack might have to deal with a bit of a mess. Likewise she would be oblivious to the conversation Zack was having with the unknown woman but one might see a resemblance between her and Natalia if they looked close enough.

Really? The cupcake? ember thought to herself, at that point she would have realized that natalia was crying over the cupcake. she sighed at that, it must be nice to be able to cry over little things like a ruined cupcake, even if it was pathetic to. With that she started to pick up dusty since the man named zack said he had a place where she can fix dusty up, and was eager to get dusty working again. Of course, ember may have had forgotten how much dusty weighed(about a ton) and failed at even trying to lift dusty up.

"You do realize the guild master is sending in others to pick up your machine right?" The shop owner repeated what zack said. Ember looked at him, "Yes I heard, but I am capable of taking dusty there myself." She said stubbornly. In truth while she thought of it as nice for zack to offer a place for her to fix up dusty, she still didn't know a lot about the man and did not trust him or his associates with her prized possession. Still it may have to come to that unless she found a way to be able to move a machine about a ton. And she did thought of an idea. She opened up the engine compartment and started to tear parts out that were part of the air-fuel system. With this she was able to have access to the air generator of the system that caused it to float, and with her own sandstorm magic she was able to power the engine and made it so that dusty could float again. The only downside to this is the generation of so much wind in the system would have been scorching hot for whatever was supplying the wind, but ember was not bothered at all by the heat.

Ember gave the shop owner a hah look before moving with dusty and catching up to zack who was carrying natalia, hot sandy wind coming from dusty would have signified her catching up to him. The shop owner sighed and started to sweep up the discarded parts, maybe he would get more business then usual today. "So zack" she started to ask him as she finally caught up, though she could have looked funny as her left arm was in the engine powering dusty's floating, "I suppose you and your guild are a big deal around here?" In truth while she may have had seen zack before she did not know of this guild or any ties to the man. What she did know was that zack and natalia were powerful mages, though she wasn't going to start treating them extra nicer just because of their power.

Zack raised an eyebrow as he saw that 'dusty' was coming with him being supported by its owner using some form of sand magic. So, she was the other reason for the sludge more directly than he had thought. Interesting. Sand and ice. An odd combination. Yet what was odder was that they also seemed to look somewhat alike. It was quite intriguing really. Almost like they were related, but their magics seemed so different. Then again if snow was frozen water that was almost liquid wasn't sand basically an almost liquid form of earth? So perhaps they weren't so different after all. They seemed to have some similarities that way. Approaching a pseudo liquid from a different element. He honestly wouldn't be surprised to meet an air or fire mage just to round off the quartet. However, it was the next question that truly caught him off guard. He almost dropped Natalia as it was asked. This girl hadn't heard of Blue Pegasus? Or knew of him?

"Blue Pegasus is one of the largest legal guilds and we have quite a bit of history. Most call us the guild of heroes." Zack replied proudly, but with a note of modest as well. "As for me i'm one of the gods of ishval, one of the top four wizard saints. Shuhei, the former guild master and another member of the guild, is the number one god of ishval. So yeah...to some we are a pretty big deal."

They arrived at the guild just in time to see a few members being lead out by Devon. "Hey Devon, guys. No need to go get the bike. It was brought here by its owner's magic. Sorry for bugging ya." he said and then paused. "But if one of you could go get a bunch of cupcakes from that bakery in town Natalia likes...that'd be great." One of the men nodded and headed off into town whilst the others headed off back into the guild. "Devon, mind go making a bed up for Natalia whilst we walk up?" She flew off without a word heading towards Zack's workshop.

Zack meanwhile just headed up through the building leading dusty and its owner towards his workshop. As they walked Zack indicated some of the sites, such as the stairs that lead down to their private hot spring, or the doors that lead to the airship dock. Eventually though they arrived at a large double door, which opened by itself at Zack's approach. Inside were dozens of bikes and magical cars all in various states of repair. Parts lined the walls. There was even a forge and lots of equipment for making, altering and repairing parts and entire vehicles. "Help yourself to parts bud. IF you need a hand let me know." With that he headed over to another door which opened at his approach. In it was a simple bed. It wasn't elaborate or fancy. Just a simple bed for a working man.

((OOC: I was going to make a post but I lost my muse and honestly don't have much to post while unconscious, so do feel free to skip me for a while until I deem Natalia worthy of returning to the thread.))

((All right, feel free to return when you see your moment, and apologies for the wait))

Ember walked with the man hearing his explanation of who he was and this position he held. "Your considered a god? Huh, at least your not a cat." She replied to him, disliking how some people in deserito worshiped cats as gods. She followed zack to the blue pegasues guild, which she thought it was fancy enough but maybe over doing it? She looked around and then saw the Blue Pegasus symbol on the guild and stopped for a moment. She realized that the symbol was the same as the one she carried with her...or rather dusty had in its side compartment. Still she moved forward, and her reaction could have been easily mistaken for wonder or awe at the guild since it was clear she had never heard of it. Her mind though worked as she was trying to put the pieces together about the symbol, this guild, this zack, and her tribe in how they fit together.

Walking into the guild was a trip itself, the guild was very decorated and nice, or overly decorated in her opinion. Still though she kept a wary eye, careful not to show and was easily disguised since she had not been in the guild. That and the tile floor was cold, she had to watch where she stepped so she did not have to go through the unpleasant feeling of being cold. She kept note of the hot springs and the airship room. I wonder what this airship is...hmmm she thought to herself as the two arrived at the workshop doors.

When the doors opened her eyes widened. Never before had she seen so many speeder bikes in one room, they also looked in very excellent shape. Zack excused himself and left her alone in the workshop. She moved dusty up to a clear spot and looked at all what laid before her. She smiled, during this time she would have had forgotten her suspicion of the guild and her tribe because of what laid before her.

She rubbed her hands and proceeded to work on dusty. She first cleared almost all of the  parts inside of dusty, carefully taking out the more complicated subsystems in it. Then she started to go to the other bikes and take out parts, with them she rebuilt dusty's subsystems next to the old one. She realized a problem though, dusty was not exactly like the other bikes their, and while for the most part the parts matched the old parts a few were too different to fit together. She sighed but gathered them and noticed the forge. She walked over and looked over the equipment laid before her. She had no idea how to forge new parts or modify these, and because of that it made her annoyed since it held up the process of putting dusty back together again.

She sighed and looked around for zack, which she would have had realized she did not know where he went. She decided to go through the same hallway that zack led her through previously to find him. "Zack?" she said as she poked her head through one of the doors. Which would have been the door to the airship hanger. "So that's a airship." she said to herself as she looked at the giant mechanism with awe, filled with enough curiosity to kill a cat nine times over.

Moments later, a loud noise could have been heard from the airship docks, and if investigated black smoke could have been seen coming from the engine compartment of The Queen Hera.

The first to respond to the crash and smoke was Blue Pegasus' self deemed head of security, the one who always responded first to trouble. Akryn. The tall, one eyed mage rushed into the airship room in nothing but a pair of tight, black shorts, all of his muscles on full display, obviously fresh from a workout. On display as well were his many scars. In one hand he carried his blac sword, the black star cutter, and in the other hand he carried a statue. The statue was ten feet long, shaped after some long dead hero, and appeared to be made of marble, obviously quite heavy. Akryn however acted as if it weighed nothing as he tossed it into the air and caught it with one hand, drawing his arm back as if to launch it like a spear as he quickly surveyed the room, sniffing a bit as he did.

"Allright invader. I am Akryn Motomiji, one of the mages of blue Pegasus. I am also a dragon slayer, and I can smell you. Now then, you have interrupted my work out, and obviously caused damage to one of our ships. Step out here where I can see you or I am going to throw this statue at where your scent is coming from, and I wont be far behind it." The one eyed man warned, calling out into the smoke filled room. In reality, he could not smell a damn thing through all this smoke, and if his opponent called his bluff he would look extremely foolish. But few people in earthland would look at the possibility of having a gigantic statue thrown at you and take the time to call bluffs.

Zack was about to respond when he sensed Akryn's presence near the ship. The guy was head strong and tended to have a few issues with temper, but over all he was one of the better members of the guild and certainly was very dependable. He was probably enough to deal with any issues within the hangar, but Zack wasn't quite sure how he was with mechanisms. Perhaps he should intervene. He stepped out into the room with all the bikes and saw that Dusty had been partially repaired, but that there was no sign of the owner. How odd. Had she gone looking for him? He dashed a wall and a portal seemed to open which he dove through appearing out of another one next to Akryn just in time to hear his threat.

Based on where he was aiming Zack could readily identify roughly where the intruder must be. "Greetings person messing with one of my ships. The name's Zack and whilst I appreciate you taking an interest i'd rather you ask permission first." Zack said loudly his voice booming and his magic power flaring. "I've only just finished tweaking those engines so I really don't agree with you playing with them. So come out and apologise or you are going to get hurt."

The smoke coming from the engine compartment of The Queen Hera would have obstructed any view of anybody coming out, nullifying the person coming out sense of sight as well. "Hey! Do you mind helping me put this back before the whole ship blows up??!!!" a voice cried out from the black smoke, it's owner could not have been seen though her voice may have been familiar to zack. The owner of the voice would have had gone back into the engine room after that. Going into the smoke would have been hot, and going into the engine room would be much more hotter, the black smoke preventing any sight in there and the sheer force of the smoke coming out would have kept normal people out of the engine room all together.

Before the smoke...

Ember herself was able to get onto The Queen Hera due to the aid of her sand twisters. Once on she was so surprised at how big it was, she was drawn though to a door as she, once inside, discovered it was the engine room. Is it able to fly because of all this? she thought to herself as she looked around in the engine room. She then noticed a toolbox set down near what appeared to be some sort of system to manage air flow. She looked curiously at it, it seemed like the same system as the one in dusty but much bigger. She shrugged and decided to finish the job someone did not finish as a thank you for the parts for dusty. She got to work, finishing what was started and found the valve for the air and turned it on, clearly it did not work as planned.

She was blasted back by the black smoke and forced to the entrance room because of the suffocating smoke. She then felt two magic presences, one dwarfed the other and it felt similar to zack's. Their voices were loud but hard to hear in the smoke, so she yelled loud as she could, hoping they could hear it. She then went back into the engine room, making her way to the busted pipe blowing out the black smoke, keeping a miniature sandstorm around her to help slowly make her way to the busted pipe to try and stop it.

Akryn was glad when Zack showed up, seemingly also ready for a fight. It help to put him at ease a bit. What threw him off though was when a girl, an admittedly cute one, stepped out of the smoke asking for help. But rather than attacking the woman, Akryn instead turned to look at Zack a bit, curious how to respond. On the one hand, yes she was an intruder. And yes, she had just damaged a very big, very expensive, part of blue Pegasus armory. But on the other hand, she seemed more curious and inquisitive than hostile. On top of that, she had set off no alarms when she entered the guild, meaning she had likely entered with another member as a guest. Either way, Akryn hesitated to attack and even put the statue that he had been holding like a spear down onto the ground again. "Uh, I doubt the machine is going to explode miss. We have several safety systems in place in order to prevent that. If the removal of one part was able to cause an explosion from this bad boy, we would all be in trouble considering the kind of explosion it would give off. Now how about you put that piece down and come out here with your hands up."

As soon as the girl revealed himself Zack frowned and let out a sigh. "Ya know, messing around with the Queen Hera's engines wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said you could help yourself to parts to fix Dusty." Zack said shaking his head. "Akryn no need to worry. She just took a permission I gave her a bit more literally than expected. I'll deal with it. Though as you take an interest in machines perhaps you want to join us to fix her air bike after i'm done with the Hera.." With that he blurred forward straight past Ember causing a huge wind to whip up as he passed purely due to the speed of his movement. He stopped just behind her and spoke. "Please return to my workshop. I will fix this and meet you there. Or stay and watch I don't really mind" He cracked his knuckles as he observed the damage or at least tried to due to the smoke. "Ninpou Washi no me." he stated and his eyes began to glow with magic power. It was not perfect as this was more designed to see hidden enemies, but because of the magical nature of the ship's engines it would do for now. It at least allowed him to see the engine.

Fortunately, by his observations by sight and feel the damage wasn't too great. With swift motions he began to take out parts and replace them with spares that were nearby. He was honestly slightly impressed at what Ember had attempted to do. She had tried to finish off something he had left earlier. In fact, she was the reason he had left it. Well, more truthfully it was Natalia. He'd been tweaking it when he'd sensed her and went to assist. What Ember had done was very close to what needed to be done, but she had mixed up two of the valves causing a sort of feedback loop. That was why when it was switched on it almost immediately began to malfunction. What's more it made it almost impossible to turn off until it was fixed. An impressive attempt, but an even more impressive mistake. Still, it was nothing Zack couldn't handle. He'd managed to once take apart one large engine and split into two smaller engines both of which were only 25% less powerful than the original engine thus increasing the ships overall power by 50%. All of this done in midflight without the ship crashing.

"I wonder how Aian is doing." he murmured thinking of the iron dragon slayer who he'd wrestled on that job whilst it flew to its destination. He shrugged and then flicked a switch and instantly the engine roared to life and the smoke began to clear. Suddenly, the sound of the engine changed and he quickly shut it off. There was a thoughtful look on his face as he stared at the engine. Something still wasn't right. Had the damage from the misplaced valve been more than he thought? No, that wasn't it. It was something else. Now that the smoke was cleared it was easier to observe. However, nothing obviously was wrong now, but Zack knew there was. "Until this is fixed the Queen Hera is grounded." he said half to himself as he removed the lacrima core that helped make the entire engine run. Without it the ship wasn't going anywhere. "Something is wrong...and based on the sound the engine was making...it really will blow if switched on."

Ember could not have heard anything in the smoke as it was loud enough to block out all noise from the outside. Then for a moment the engine room was clear due to zack's sudden appearance and  ember heard him speak. Before she was given the chance to reply though the smoke filled back in, eliminating all ability to hear anything else he might have said. Then the smoke began to clear as zack turned the engine on and ember looked at what he did to repair the engine that she missed. She then realized he reorganized the tubes then how she had it, an honest mistake since the airship was not exactly the same as dusty. She then thought back to how zack called himself a god of ishval, and started to see reason behind the claim. Though then again, she guessed if you were not this knowledgeable and powerful then zack would have been a poor excuse for the title god.  However, the engine gave off an awful noise that broke ember's thinking and zack quickly shut the engine off because of it. What he said next was what ember expected, that the queen hera was grounded for now or else it could explode.

She then departed from the engine room without a word, due to the fact she realized she over-stepped her boundaries even though it was for, what she thought, a nice gesture. Upon leaving the engine room she jumped off the ship onto the hanger's ground, which by then would have been clear on how she got on the ship in the first place as she broke her fall with a sand twister. She herself was grimy and covered in soot, black stains of smoke was in her hair, skin, and on her clothes, though she appeared not bothered by it at all. Even when she looked at herself she just sighed and figured she would be able to clean the mess on her up later. When she looked forward again though she was met with the sight of a shirtless one-eyed man, who was next to a statue that was not in the hanger before, it looked familiar to one she saw as she walked into the guild hall. Her curiosity peaked, she walked up to the man and looked up at him, "And what were you going to do with a statue in here?" she asked him, not at all set back by his height nor his lack of a shirt.

Natalia felt like her stomach had just recovered from being sucker punched, it was nice that people liked to take care of her though there was always the underlying issue of her not handling being picked up too well. She laid on a bed which she did not know whom it belonged too but had a pretty good idea that it was probably Zack's considering her earlier situation. She sat up a looked around the room for the exit failing to recognize the strange magical blue glow that had enveloped her for a moment before quickly vanishing. As she took a step out of the exit she heard some commotion coming from ship docks. Taking another step as to head in that direction so took notice of some piece of cloth poking out of dusty's open engine compartment and as the curiosity took the better of her as she walked over to pick it up. The cloth was somewhat crisped probably thanks to how it was stored it what she presumed to be a hot engine but the detail was still quite apparent. What she saw before her was some sort of crude flag with the Blue Pegasus guild mark on it. She held it there for a moment, what could this strange person have to do with Blue Pegasus, she didn't recognize them as a member of the guild nor did she know of anyone who was a traveling member of the guild either. "This seems off." The usual voice of the spirit inside Natalia's head said to her which caused Irina to tilt her head. "You suppose we should know her?" Natalia replied aloud making it seem like she was talking to herself.

Akryn looked down at the short, soot covered girl and smiled to her before reaching over and grasping the statue with one hand, lifting it up with ease to rest it on his shoulder. "Well, if you had been a hostile I would have thrown it at you for one thing. Then, depending on whether it survived the throw or not, it would have either ended up back in the entrance hall or it would have ended up in the dump." He said before driving his sword into the stone floor and offering the young lady his now free hand for a handshake. "Name is Akryn, Akryn Motomiji. I am the local swordsmanship champion, and badass." Akryn said before looking towards Zack with a wink. "Beyond that, I also work as the sort of security around the place. Unidentified people show up, usually I show up to meet em. Who are you, short stuff?"

"Local tavern brawler and blowhard is more like it." Zack said as he emerged from the engine room holding the lacrima in his gloved hand. Though unlike the young girl his clothes were 100% clean. His body on the other hand was as soot stained, if not more so, then her own. "Akryn even before she got here someone has been tampering with the Queen Hera." Zack said tossing the crystalline lacrima from hand to hand almost casually despite it being the apparent power source of one of their largest ships. " The lacrima had been replaced with this rather excellent copy. It looks identical and possesses the same magical aura, even seems about the same level of power, but in fact its got a second magical aura that blends in with the first...it will power the ship successfully about four times, but on the fifth it will send a charge of magical energy through the ship that will cause the engine to malfunction and explode."

He threw the lacrima into the air and watched as it caught the light. A symbol that was instantly recognisable to Zack became visible. A look of instnese anger came to his eyes and he threw a punch towards it. "Ninpou Juoken." a huge lion head of celestial energy erupted from his fist and hit the lacrima engulfing it in a large explosion. Fortunately, the power of the spell was enough to consume the power of the lacrima. He stared at the fragments of crystal as they fell from the sky the anger still clearly upon his face.

"That is one step too far Shangdi...attacking me is one thing...involving my guild is another." he said to himself with a definite edge to each word. He took a deep breath and looked at Akryn and the young girl.

"Akryn all airships are grounded until they've been throughly inspected. The ones responsible would not just set one trap." he said and then his gaze turned entirely onto the young girl. He did not say anything for a moment, but seemed to just observe her "As for you, you are forever welcome at this guild unless your actions in the future merit otherwise. Without your curiosity that ship would likely have crashed killing all aboard and any who got caught in the explosion. Many lives are in your debt."