AFIRE: fight for the Earth begins✓

5.1 ZURI

The story so far: 

---- Aija is a Volunteer at the Pristine School at Innermost. She works along with Zuri and Ze, who are her friends.

---- Zuri meets Nala in her town and likes her.

---- Ze meets Zuri and Aija for dinner and doesn't return for a long time when he goes to get water. Aija finds that Ze hasn't returned for a long time – she decides to go look for him as she is worried about the kidnappings. When she doesn't find him in her Apartment basement, she goes looking for him in another Apartment. She stumbles upon a boy, Rez, hiding from his kidnappers. She takes him out of the basement into the cold night, where the boy's kidnapper catches up to them. The man puts a blade into Rez's chest after an attempt to flee.

---- Aija witnesses a strange event – light emanating from Rez's body. The man is after her next, but he leaves her alive and goes away.

---- Another man finds her and asks if she is alright. He tells her that he needs to talk to her but not there. He wants to take her somewhere else, Aija, though wary of him agrees. He takes her away.

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****5.1 - Zuri****

When she woke, she found herself all tangled up in the blanket, and as she tried to sit up, she lost her balance and fell to the floor.

Zuri cursed out loud when she hit her elbow on the low coffee table as she fell. It hurt badly.

It took a few moments more for her to truly feel awake, so she lay on the floor covered in the blanket. She gradually opened her eyes to the afternoon sun, yawned, and looked at the time. It was two in the noon.

Her head ached slightly, and she just lay there on the floor, her limbs tangled in the blanket, still sleepy. After she yawned for the fifth time, she called out for her friends. No one answered.

"Ai! Ze!" she called out again.

"Call Aija!" she shouted, not knowing where her Scroll was.

"Calling Aija." came the male voice of her AIVIO Scroll from somewhere across the room, followed by the dialing sound. Aija had set her command voice to a female one. But, Zuri liked the deep male voice option.

Aija didn't answer the call.

"Call Ze!" she commanded next.

When Ze didn't respond too, Zuri sat up, untangling herself from the blanket and searched her home to see if they were asleep somewhere. She found neither of her friends, so she called them both again. But, none of them responded.

"Geo-location: Aija," she told her Scroll.

"Unavailable," it responded in a second.

"Geo-location: Ze,"

"Pristine School Housing, Block H." responded the Scroll.

Zuri wondered why Aija had switched her Geo-location off. Was she with Ze, perhaps? But why would she want to hide it from her?

Zuri huffed as she sat groggily onto her couch. Had those two left without telling her? She sat on the small couch, coming up with possibilities for her friends' absence. Unable to come up with a reasonable explanation, she assumed Aija was with Ze after all. She left Aija a message asking her to call when free.

She then rummaged through the Cool Store and found nothing that she wanted to eat. So Zuri headed out for brunch.

For the nearly past year and a half, if Zuri and Aija both spent the weekend at the School Housing, they would have breakfast at Market. Now, walking alone to Market, Zuri felt glum. She had never been to the Market for breakfast alone. And, she thought again and again about Aija. Where was she? Why hadn't she responded to her calls? Why hadn't she left a message about where she had gone to?