TO CUT A TURNING TAIL

47). Hiddenstone?

Everyone is dressed in their robes except for Kaila, they are looking alluring and fresh. However, underneath the robe, they are all wearing white sweaters and pants. Fair enough. The dresses and flipping that Jon and Connell were able to do with their dresses do not seem to be a possibility here. 

And then there's Jon, still in his sweater and pants. He looks at them all dressed up and flamboyant, he jumps down the table, and though paranoid, he asks them "You killed them (the three)?". He has a tone of insolence which he always carries but he has serious emotions added to it and a sad choking voice proves it. "No. It just feels more comfortable being in a natural skin" answers Larriel. Jon agrees with it.

 So, he takes off his suspenders and stretches them with the fists, they punt back to the sweater with a healthy stretch. With some scientific magic, he is back to his original dress, the purple robe which has been left untied, a white deep V cut t-shirt with lapels, and a netted vest under it. His portrait embroiders on the net, just his loose dull face over the eyes visible. And the pajamas. The only thing that is the same even after a wardrobe change is those dope boots.

 "No Jon, don't use teleporters this much. We can't change dresses this often, plus why do you want to give yourself a single second of distraction?" Kaila begs. "Ok," Jon sighs. 

 "Ok, so Lovi, now is the time you'll be sending your confetti all over the place. And Jon being able to make himself invisible. Hoping to send you both out for a survey." Rather than talking, all eight of them are telecommuting. Everyone nods and they start walking away. Jon raises his hands to draw those beautiful sloths in the air which no one is going to realize were even sloths in the first place. 

Lovi does the same, this is the first time she is unlocking her ken. She is probably making a phoenix...... none of her peers can realize it. But the way she moves her hands in order to make two adjoint slopes, that's a beak she is making. Moving her hands slightly backward and upwards, she starts moving them in a similar sense like she is making several tiny beaks. Of course, they aren't beaks, probably the mane. Yes, she then brings out all the fingers and starts moving them in harmony amid rotating the stiff hands. 

"Kamaya, Primus, Acker, and Larriel, you're good at plotting, huh?" all four of them hear Kaila's voice in her abrupt broken Japanese accent. They all look at her and nod with tense yet proud faces. "Connell and Samantha, you have great strength, right?" she asks. They all nod again. "What are you asking for anyway?" sulks Connell out loud. "You have good senses, Connell. I was just asking in general" she savagely states. 

"These people exchange tricks. Like the Zenith Marubi died fighting was sure an animal manipulator but he did not have the sense to manipulate a dead! It is a trick by Cook that Zenith knows as well. That is what they tried!" she accosts. "Even I'm half dead, to be honest", Jon jeers, not releasing the joke is on him. "Ok, let's do this, we'll all go out and survey the surroundings for a few minutes. Hmm?" Kaila asks. "Yeah, that'd be good" affirms Kamaya. Lovi and Primus say something similar.

The group is walking around these typically New York-looking streets, though currently walking at a sober monochromatic dusk blue isolated main road. There are a lot of ice-cream vendors all over the place and all the shops have been shut down. The windows to all the rooms in the buildings closed down. 

Suddenly, all the ice-cream vendors evaporate in this air. From one of the vending machines, a ped emerges. Jon brings out a dagger from his pocket, unlocks his Ken, and then gives the ped a ton of punches till all its battery gets exhausted. The others however continue to move ahead, Kamaya demandsed, "you all go on. I'll stay with him." 

"How far are we from the dessert?" asks Connell. "Not very far. This wasn't supposed to be a civilization" says Kaila. She looks down to the floor, rustling her pant sleeve for a minute, she bleakly says, "I don't know if it's a hologram. Because these were supposed to be places where humans live, I mean there are barely alleyways that look so dense and white. They are vibrant, though there are a few colonies where things look like this. They were made by the people in the non-money world" explains Kaila. "But most of the colonies look like brown shepherd cottages" Lovi remarks gateily. "I see," says Acker with some interest.