What lies above us

Chapter Three: Inner Workings

As the reality of, well, reality settled on the three. They sat down in the dirt of the farmland. Their sky was fake, meaning their city was fake.

Dax sighs and holds his head in his hands "Well... at least we know why we never had any weather but rain," he deadpanned.

His friends glance at each other and roll their eyes.

Dax pulls himself to his feet and smiles slightly, "Come on, not going to laugh at ANY of my humour? I'm trying to lighten the tense mood."

Grey stands up shortly after and gently pushes him. "Well, now might not be the best time to be joking around, mate."

Shen pulls herself up using the wall for support. She brushes the excess dirt from the ground off of her already grimy clothing. "Dax it's not that we don't appreciate your attempt..." she smiles apologetically.

Dax waves off the apologies from his two friends and smiles more enthusiastically. "It doesn't matter, let's just keep trudging on and find all of the solutions to our problems, and, while we are at it, why don't we also answer all of life's mysteries?" He again, tried to joke about their situation and failed. Quite miserably at that.

Grey shakes his head and starts to walk towards the main center of Forest Ford.

Shen follows right behind him and smiles slightly at Dax's attempt to lighten the mood.

Dax runs after the two "W-wait! I'll stop! I'll stop!" Dax chases after the two.

A few moments later, The trio found themselves walking throughout the town towards the gate. The large graphical error stretched from one side of the wall, to the main gate on the other side. The three tried their best to avoid the groups of people cleaning up. Once and awhile, a few citizens of Forest Ford stopped them and made them help clean.

One old lady, Patty Brein, stopped them near the end of the main street. "Excuse me youngsters, would you three mind..." she took a wheezing breath, "helping me clean my shop?"

Shen looked about ready to kill the lady on the spot. They had helped at least 6 different people clean the entirety of their establishments.

Little did they know, in a few hours, this wouldn't even matter.

Dax grunted as he lifted one of the heavy bookshelves into place in the store. Papers and book lay scattered everywhere. Patty sat in an old rocking chair behind the counter, doing absolutely nothing

to help the three clean. In her old raggedy voice she stated, "That's a mighty fine job y'all are doin." Patty, in fact, was the oldest person in the town of Forest Ford. She ran the local book store, which held old classics and whatever the creative folks of the town felt like writing. Even then, she had read every one of them, no matter how terrible the books were.

Quite a bit later, the group had finished cleaning. Patty smiled and let the group out of her, now, clean and organized shop. Shen growled slightly, clearly done with doing labor and ready to get actual life saving work done. In all reality, this should be completely understandable.

"I find that lady so... infuriating," Shen growls and clenches her fists.

"Well who doesn't." Dax grumbles under his breath.

Very few guards remained at the front gate of Forestford, the ones who did weren't even really qualified to be called guards, The most they were trained to do is whack people with slightly electrified sticks. Just about anyone could do that. Unfortunately, they were all mostly in a state of panic. Another thing they were was complete idiots, but still close to the perfect group of brutes. Shen was almost hired to work up here, but they decided her strength would be better used in the fields. This was partially due to the fact how she was more intelligent than most of the brutes up at the gate.