Express Weekend Getaway

"So why are you here, again?" asked Anyis sharply. "For that matter, why am I here?"

"Like hell am I letting my little sister get sucked into a Sharoan national crisis by herself..." grunted Mill through a thick muffler as the cold winter winds of Sharo buffeted against him.

"... You know, I think I might actually be pitying you right now, Mill. Most older brothers only have to worry so far as to who his little sister is dating." chuckled Anyis. "Come to think of it... Lilia is 15 now, yeah? Maybe you should start worrying about that, after all."

"Not going to think about that right now..." muttered Mill, though he could've just as well been shouting and not be heard by anyone but his Navi in this windy snowfall. He really had no idea how the plane had landed in this junk. All he could see was his sister right next to him, and Gregor and Viktor in front, but otherwise it was just white. And this was the city area. God forbid he ever have to venture out into the tundra.

"Euthenia, how did you ever end up in Sharo? It, uh... doesn't seem like your kind of environment." questioned Lilia, completely deaf to her brother being embarrassing next to her. Another sharp gust of wind cut through the street they were on, making Lilia bury her face deeper into her coat's high collar.

"Sharo is usually Anyis's favorite spot, but there are way more ghosts than I can pass up on~" answered Euthenia with far more logic than she usually offers. "... That, and this place could really use more flowers~!" And there was the real reason.

"I... see..." sighed Lilia, who had pretty much figured by this point that the whole catalyst for the situation was her Navi's obsession with flowers.

As the two siblings conversed with their Navis, the agents ahead of them suddenly came to a halt in front of a white wall. Viktor dusted some snow off the wall, and presented a card to the scanner underneath, causing the wall to split... well, it was pretty clearly a gate at this point. Damn near everything was white around here, so it was hard to tell. Viktor motioned everyone inside before the gate closed behind them, finally giving the group relief from the snowstorm outside.

The contrast in temperature was quickly, and strongly, felt, causing Mill and Lilia to hurriedly take off their winter gear, while the Sharoan-native agents took a much more leisurely time with it. The receptionist in the lobby watched them all the while, though took no action as it seemed Gregor and Viktor were easily recognized. The former walked up to the receptionist after getting his coat off, said a few things in Sharoan, leaving the receptionist to nod and open the door to the facility. "Come." said Gregor curtly, motioning for the siblings Alidine to follow.

Inside the facility, all the equipment looked fairly pristine, but the vast majority of the terminals, monitors, and consoles were offline, with a select few running on backup power. That said, it was far from quiet, as researches and technicians were running in and out of the room rapidly, presumably due to berserk project built off of Euthenia. One researcher slowed down enough to notice the new entrants, then ran quickly up to Gregor and Viktor, hastily shouting more Sharoan at them. Viktor responded with a mere few words, then looked back over to Lilia. "Miss Alidine, please show this man your PET."

Lilia nodded slowly, then showed her Link PET's screen to the researcher. This evoked a lot of frantic babbling from the researcher, who turned back to the agents and pointed at one of the few active consoles. Both men nodded, then Gregor turned back and said, "You should jack into the console he pointed to. The project should not be far off from there. I assume you will be assisting, Mr. Alidine?"

"Yeah. Anyis should be able to do something to help even if Euthenia is the only one that can deal with the project." nodded Mill. Gregor nodded, then gave way to allow both of them to get to work.

(Anyis, Euthenia Jack In, Sharo Net)
"So... You seriously don't mind that a pair of teenagers from Electopia are taking away one of Sharo's national research projects?" asked Mill for the third time up to this point, if only because it still sounded as ridiculous as the first time.

"It's fine, it's fine. Now that the researchers know they're not exploring something new, they're ready to just throw away the entire project. The least we can do is give Ratatoskr to Euthenia to compensate her for the trouble we've caused." explained Gregor. "Plus, his tree creation ability should be gone once they're finished reformatting him into an SP. Everyone just wants to take the quickest route to purge the trees from our network, and this is it."

"Well, I'm just glad everything worked out." added Lilia innocently. "A free SP out of all this doesn't hurt either..." came after as a not-so-innocent whisper.

"All done." announced Viktor, having returned from the lab with Lilia's PET in hand. "The researchers were... thrilled to see Euthenia, but they were able to say goodbye in the end." He was able to feign a struggle with his secondary language, but really, Viktor and everyone else knew he was just sugarcoating the lab's joy to be officially free of such a ditzy Navi as Euthenia.

"Thanks." said Lilia with a bow before taking her PET and booting it back up. "You feel okay, Euthenia?"

"Good, good~! And Ratatoskr feels good too, don't you~?" answered Euthenia as she got all cuddly with her new SP again.

While the lovefest was occurring inside the PET, Mill found himself looking towards the facility's exit oddly. "Uh... So, which way was it to the airport, again?" he asked, having realized that he nor Lilia had any clue as to the layout of this city.

"... Ah. Yes. The two of us will escort you, if that is fine." responded Gregor after coming to an understanding on the issue. "And again, we thank you greatly for your help."

Both siblings were ready to answer back with a "Sure, any time", but in unison they realized that they totally did not want to come back to Sharo again. So, as a result, Mill and Lilia reluctantly nodded their heads, and were taken back to the international airport and put on their way back home.

(Going Home)