More updating fun. Now the action starts to pick up just a tad. Whoopee. *sets off a firework*
Same old disclaimer: Toright, Seit, Skeleios, and Areatia (and, breifly mentioned, Zexios) are mine; the the mp3/music player is based off of the Sansa Fuse, which is made/owned by SanDisk; the headphones (head-speakers) in here are too general to say which company they technically belong to; the rest belongs to Naughty Dog.
"Do you still have the one music thing you found earlier, Skel?" Areatia inquired as the two young Metal Heads made their way towards the old, large tree.
"Yeah, it's right here," Skeleios replied, holding up the small device in his right claw. "I'm surprised the old hag didn't notice us carrying these things. Imagine how long we'd be banned from sneaking, er, going into the city!"
"I know! Hopefully, these things will help us blend in a little more when we go back, if we go back. The last time we went there, I remember seeing quite a few of the teenage humans using these things. I felt so…different," Areatia said as she tied the wire of her head-speakers to her staff.
"We're always different from the humans, Areatia. Always have been, always will be. There's nothing we can do about it. On a different subject, I'm surprised the two of us haven't learned how to at least read the human's language yet with the amount of time we've spent in that city!"
"Don't get your hopes up too high for accomplishing that anytime soon, Skel. I think it would be a little easier if we actually learned how to speak their language first; I'm pretty sure it would allow us understand what they've written. Otherwise, their written words would mean nothing to us unless they were translated into our language."
"We don't exactly need to learn how to speak their language, just understand what they're saying. From what I can tell, though, their language is way more complicated than ours. From what I've heard from those of us who can speak their language, there can be so many words for one thing, and some humans either prefer to use or only understand one term over another, which can make communication harder. Learning to understand the Lurkers' language is one thing, but the humans' language? That's going to take us a while. We're lucky we understand the humans' term for us, only because of the times we've been caught in the city by one of those pale apes."
"Speaking of humans, we've got a couple of young ones at two o'clock; both are teenage boys, I think."
Areatia was right. Just barely hiding behind one of the wide, ancient stone platforms were two teenage human boys: one with short, black hair wearing dark clothing, the other somewhat shorter with shoulder-length brown hair and somewhat lighter clothing.
"Damn, not more of these onlookers!" Skeleios exclaimed. "Should we bother with chasing them out tonight?"
"Only if they see us while we're lighting our torches. We can't let all of the humans know that we're so close to the city, Zexios said so; only their ruler and his closest connections are allowed to know," Areatia responded.
Skeleios nodded and grabbed a nearby pair of rocks to use as a spark to light the torches on his side of the cliff-valley. He quietly moved along the right side of the cliff-valley and lit the first few torches, hopefully without the humans noticing. He tried to keep the noise of his two rocks clacking together as low as he possibly could while trying to quickly create a spark.
As he went to light the third torch on his path, he suddenly heard one of the humans say something to the other. He stood completely still, waiting to hear if they were going to do anything. He slowly turned his head in the direction of the voices and could barely see the two humans slowly stand up and turn on their Eco-powered, handheld torches. They slowly moved their torches along his path in either direction, the light illuminating the grass and rocks as it bobbed up and down slowly. The humans spoke to each other as they searched the cliffs, possibly asking each other what they had just seen or heard.
The lights started quickly moving closer and closer towards him, forcing him to think fast. Should he quickly climb down the small cliff he stood on to attempt to avoid detection, or lay as flat as he could against the ground and hope the lights did not shine upon him? He decided to attempt to do a combination of both and hope for the best.
He laid down on the ground and commando-crawled as fast as his long, muscular arms could take him. Holding two rocks in one hand and two portable music players with head-speakers in the other made it harder for him to attain his top speed, but at the moment, his current speed would have to do. Once he made it to the edge of the cliff, he swung the lower half of his body over the edge and started climbing down as quietly as he could.
Just as he was about to crawl behind one of the pillars and out of the humans' sight, a light was shown upon him and he immediately froze.
---
"Dude, don't tell me that's what I think it is!" Toright cried as the Metal Head turned to face them. The light from his flashlight made the Metal Head look much more menacing than it did in the pictures the boys had seen of them in school books and on propaganda posters around the city.
"I thought the Baron said that the Metal Heads weren't anywhere within at least five miles of the city! When the hell did this one get here?" Seit exclaimed. He started trembling so hard, he dropped his flashlight. It landed a few feet in front of him and rolled until it hit the Metal Head's feet. He looked into the Metal Head's left hand and noticed that it was carrying a pair of newly-released portable music players with two pairs of headphones to go with them. "Hey, Tor, is that Metal Head carrying what I think it's carrying?"
"Yeah, I think so. You're talking about the rocks, right dude?"
"No, look at the other hand. Those look like the newly released portable music players that just came out last month!"
"Yeah, you're right! How do you think it got them?"
"Who cares, I think we should just get out of here before it decides to throw those rocks at us!"
"I'm right behind you, dude!"
Before another word could be spoken, Seit and Toright turned and ran as if their lives depended on it. Seit didn't care much about losing the flashlight at that moment; he figured that he could buy Toright another one later if he couldn't find the one he dropped sometime later. Behind them, they could hear the Metal Head's footsteps pounding on the forest floor as it chased them around the large tree to the other side so they could leave the way they came in.
Just before they could go through the tunnel out of the area with the tree, they were stopped dead in their tracks by another Metal Head that carried a staff with a bright red light on top of it. The end with the light was aimed directly at them, glowing brightly and illuminating their faces.
Now they were trapped and surrounded on almost all sides. Seit thought that they might never get out of there. What would happen when Toright's parents came home and found that both of them were gone tomorrow morning? Would his and his friend's bodies ever be found if they were killed there?
A deep, masculine voice sounded from a branch above their heads, interrupting Seit's thoughts. It was speaking a language neither he nor Toright could understand, but the Metal Heads apparantly could, because they suddenly looked up in the direction of the sound. This was it: the make-or-break moment! Toright and Seit glanced at each other and grinned, both quickly coming to the same realization that this was when they had to make a run for it.
The two teenagers sprinted around the Metal Head with the staff and made their way through the tunnel towards the exit to the forest before the creatures had any time to react. As they ran, they could hear the Metal Heads chasing after them again. Only now, Dark Eco bombs began to rain down on them, but thankfully, they always landed on the ground just behind them. Above them, another Metal Head was chasing them through the trees with some kind of slingshot that was shooting the Eco at them.
Toright and Seit made it to the floating platform that would take them back to the mountain temple mere seconds before the Metal Heads got to them. As the platform transported them back to the cliff that separated the temple and forest from the city gate, the unarmed Metal Head leapt at the platform. Its hands managed to grasp the bottom of the platform and allowed it to barely hang on.
The platform had just reached the edge of the other cliff when the creature had caught its grip and started pulling itself up. The two teenagers sprinted for their lives again and leapt through the portal to the cliff where the city gate was located with their persuer close behind. The Metal Head became slightly dazed as it tried to figure out exactly how to use the portal, giving Toright and Seit a few extra seconds to get through the gate and onto safe ground.
---
"I'm taking it I just leap through this thing and it'll take me down to where those humans are?" Skeleios asked himself, staring at the ring made of Precursor metal with a glowing blue rift in the middle of it. "It's worth a shot."
Skeleios lept through the blue portal and landed with a thud on the cliff the city gate was located on. He quickly got up and ran through the gate just as it was closing. The two teenagers cowered next to the opening gate on the other side of the room. The black-haired teenager pounded on the door and yelled something out in the humans' language.
Moments later, the gate opened and the two boys ran out and into their flying vehicle at the base of the ramp on the other side of the gate as fast as they could. Skeleios simply walked down the ramp and proceeded to hide behind some of the large plants a few yards from the gate. From stories he's heard about the flying vehicles the humans used, he knew that it would be impossible to catch up to his prey; the vehicles could fly at speeds much faster than even the best Metal Head sprinters he knew of.
The humans he chased had always gotten away from him when they fled towards their city via the orange metal platform. This time, however, was the first time that he had bothered to get a hold of the platform they were escaping on and follow them right into their own city. He had to find a way to blend in, and quickly.