~Chapter 4:An Abandoned City(Or Is It?)~

The black-haired archer was shocked out of a dreamless sleep by the crafter by the name of Annie. She mumbled, "Five more minutes..."

Annie grinned as she excitedly said, "Ain't no one got time for that! Stock up for we're going to the city!"

She left the room, not even watching as Miki as swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her mouth stretched wide in a yawn. After blinking the sleep out of her eyes, she rose off the bed and strode across the room to a chest. She lifted the lid off the chest and withdrew her bow and a stack of arrows. She finally grabbed her cloak so that the early morning chills wouldn't bother her.

She emerged onto the deck, groups of recruits huddled for they had been woken up in that light purple time, right before the sun mist swathed the world. Miki found her two friends, towards the crafting room. When she joined them, they nodded silently and stood. Meanwhile, Sky was striding around the deck, passing time until the sun rose. He slapped a recruit on the back and chuckled, "Man up, man! It's not that cold! The sun will rise and warm you up!"

Said recruit didn't answer but huddled closer in his coat. The commander let a smile crease his face as the miraculous orb of fire rose over the horizon. Many of the recruits rose in response letting the sun's rays wash over them. Sky chuckled at them, "Seeing as you're so keen to move now that's the sun is up, how about we tackle this city?"

There was no denying the recruits' decision as thunderous chorus filled the skies.

Miki slid down the rope, blowing on her hands afterward for they burned. She took a look at where they set down. The city loomed over them but you could barely see with all the trees. She grinned. This was her element. With a mighty sprint, she leaped from the ground to a branch where she watched the recruits land.

She leaped out of the tree, sidestepping and almost landing on one of the sergeants. He looked at her with a toothy smile and quipped, "Oi."

Miki nervously laughed and apologized, "Sorry for almost falling on you!"

The sergeant held out his hand which she took gratefully. He was generally dark-looking with his dark skin and hair, which was hidden beneath a purple bandana. His brilliant purple eyes seemed to pop out at her. When she stood up, she asked, "Sergeant..?

He grinned the toothy smile again as he spoke, "Dimitri!"

Miki nodded and said nonchalantly, "I'm just gonna follow you since I lost my friends."

Dimitri chuckled under her breath and the two continued into the entered the shady courtyard, dominated by water pools. Dimitri wondered out loud, "I've heard of this place but there weren't many mentions of excessive amounts of trees. Weird..."

Miki nodded as he commented, "It doesn't even seem like an active city. Though wouldn't we heard of this?"

Dimitri frowned, "Well the ship communications have been down since a bit before the giant squid fight."

Miki frowned as well. "Wonderful."

She almost shrieked as she felt a hand on her shoulder but didn't when she found it was Darren. He looked worried as he said, "Sky suggested to one of the captains that we spread out a bit and see what we can find. The city seems to be empty!"

Dimitri called, "I just pretty much said that!"

Darren called back, "Well I didn't hear because I wasn't here!"

The dark-haired sergeant shrugged and changed the subject, "Out of curiosity, which captain was it?"

The boy described, "He had tanned skin and brown hair. He had the coolest eyes I've seen. I can't remember though."

Dimitri supplied the captain's name., "Ryan. Ryan Vasquez specifically."

Darren shrugged, "Let's meet him then. He had this whole plan that he based off Sky's suggestion."

The captain sat on the edge of one of the small pools watching the recruits, between half-lidded green-brown eyes flecked with orange, as if thinking. He cleared his throat, in trying to get the recruits' attention, which worked well. They looked up and he began explaining his plan, "I know this city as my father was a guard here before he was slain...by the Desert Demon."

A great murmur rose from the recruits that was qeuited as he continued to speak, "I want you to form groups so we may scout the city, salvaging what we can and looking for anyone. You are dismissed."

Dimitri, now standing by Miki, Darren, and Annie, who had joined them, chuckled. "What's so funny?", Annie asked sweetly.

The dark-haired teen waved his hand nonchalantly until the unique-eyed captain, who had been behind him, asked, "Yeah, sergeant? What is it?"

Dimitri's purple eyes stretched wide. Despite his lower rank, Ryan was great more talented and had only declined going higher in the ranks because he didn't want to miss out on any of the action in battles.

The sergeant quickly answered, "Just laughing at how thrilled these kids will be when I tell them I'm gonna lead them through the city, not laughing at how you talk!"

Ryan smiled, "That sounds good. Sergeants don't work with recruits a lot. Also I KNOW you laugh at how I talk. Is it my fault that I like to express my intelligence when I talk!"

Dimitri rolled his amethyst eyes and murmured, "Let's go this way.", and walked off down the street.

The street was quiet and cool, flanked by buildings, draped with vines. The houses were empty and it left an eerie feeling. Dimitri ran his hand along one of the buildings, Darren watching him for Annie and Miki had gone plundering. Dimitri commented, "This is weird."

A voice startled them and the two boys looked up to see Ryan and two recruits looking down on them. Ryan explained his findings, "By the rate of the growth of the trees and how empty the city is Mistral could have very well been like this for years. But we haven't heard anything about this. Even with the communications being down, Deadlox or TrueMU would have sent one of their own our way to tell us. They knew we were heading there. To add to this, this soot is fairly fresh. I'll give it a week at most. Someone set the city on fire but that doesn't explain the trees. You would have to have colossal amounts of bonemeal for this. "

Miki and Annie returned, announced by Miki's exclaim of, "We found stuff!"

Dimitri asked, "Like what?"

Annie set down her pack for she had most of the goods. She murmured, "A lot of apples, some other food items, iron, and butter ingots!"

In this time Miki had climbed up the building so she could find out who the two recruits were. It was nice to know who you worked with. One was a boy with feral-looking eyes the color of butter and brown hair. He wore a black hoodie over his regular Sky Army uniform, the hoodie being back with butter-colored lining. At his waist was two butter daggers and slung on his back was a bow and arrows. His companion was a girl with black hair streaked with the color of night, dark blue. Her attire was dark-colored; it consisted of a dark grey shirt, a dark blue hoodie and black jeans. Finally her eyes were a mellow brown but Miki swore she could see glowing purple dance within them. The girl asked, "Please don't stare at me."

Miki stuttered, "I'm sorry! Can I have your name?"

The girl unconsciously swept her hair back as she answered, "My name is Night. The boy is Flame."

The boy nodded at this while grinning widely, "That's my name!"

Miki smiled warmly while supplying her own name, "I'm Miki."

Flame grinned as he exclaimed, "Sky gave us all your name last night at the ceremony! Though that's how it is. Sky tells us the name of the new recruit when they're recruited and then we forget them the next week. Like the brown-haired kid down there with the kerchief."

Darren yelled up at them, while adjusting his pine green kerchief, "I'm Darren! Flame, we just talked yesterday night!"

The response was an amused, "I know."

While Darren facepalmed and Miki giggled, Annie had finished showing Dimitri her and her companions findings. Annie called to them, "Dimitri said we should go back since he thinks we have scoured a lot of the city. Except up above."

She looked upwards as she said this, to the scanning wooden walkways above the city. Dimitri supplied, "We'll probably won't check up there seeing as it's in a state of destruction. We wouldn't want any one falling off. Wouldn't you agree, Ryan?"

Ryan solemnly nodded as he said, "Yeah, even our most adept parkourers wouldn't be able to traverse that ragged landscape.".

He turned to his two charges and said, "Night, Flame, let's head back. I assume you and your company are coming too?" and he directed the last comment at Miki.

Miki grinned, "I hope so! I'm starving!"

Dimitri agreed, "Yeah. We've been out for a bit and almost no one got breakfast in the excitement of coming into the city that they assumed to be more grand.."

Some recruit had thought enough to climb back up to the Butterfly and grab food for the recruits. This had brought about an impromptu picnic in the courtyard of Mistral City. Water burbled from the waterfalls and a lone wind swept throughout the city, bringing an eerie sound. This didn't deter the younger recruits from chattering and gossiping, telling of what they found and what they thought happened to the once proud city. Night and Flame had joined the trio of Miki, Darren and Annie, the five of them munching on what someone had brought from the ship which was mostly sushi, butter apples, and milk. Night had spoken up and asked Miki, "So what brought you to the Army, Miki?"

After taking a thoughtful bite of her apple she relied, "An agent of Israphel destroyed my home I believe. And all about the Sapling Swirl I put on my cloak when I was younger, I suspect. So I journeyed away to see if I could find something exciting!"

Flame cut in, "And you did! Nothing is more exciting than the Sky Army!Me myself am looking for Israphel for he killed my mother."

There was a long silence that Night broke by saying, "I'd like to say something about my history or lack of. I don't remember much except trying to fight off a creeper horde and the beautiful Butterfly scooping me up into safety."

Flame commented on this, "Creepers are nasty little buggers. Though I think some could be converted. We came across a house of a creeper whose name was Mr. Astley."

Annie laughed, "As in..never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down Astley?"

Flame answered with his perpetual grin, "I assume he was named after the singer but you never know! Maybe he wanted to settle down. Though he may have been a wild creeper for we almost fell through the floor because someone patched up the floor poorly."

The five grinned until Sky's distinctive yell came tearing across the city. The recruits turned to see just what had made their commander slip into the language they called Angrish. The commander finally drew his sword, that shined enchanted purple on his attacker who was wielding a stick?

The attacker of the commander could only be described as a hippie, the kind that flourished back in 1.3.2. His attire was mainly nature-colored complete with the leaf stuck in his hair. He swung at Sky again, this time yelling, "What are you doing, man? Driving a giant gold airship into my forest! Man!"

Sky leapt away from the crazed man, holding up his sword in truce. He backed away and stood upon the edge of one of the pools and addressed the recruits,"We see we're not wanted. Let's go, Recruits!"

They did nothing but stared in disbelief at their commander's words and to add to this, he began to walk away. Night whispered, "That's out of character."

Her statement became irrelevant when Sky whirled around into a run, brandishing his sword and screaming, "Sneak attack!"

This technique however didn't work for the hippie simply put his hand in front of him where Sky ran into it and continued to run in place, as if he believed he'd eventually get into striking range. The elder man pulled an apple out of his pocket and proceeded to look up to the sky, as if checking the time. He looked upon the recruits and asked, "Are you going to do something, man?"

A girl strode from the group grinning as her pink-purple hair drifted in the wind. She blinked her two-colored eyes and glanced at Sky who gave a piteous cry of, "Help me, Dawn. You're my only hope."

She grinned back at him, "Did you learn your lesson?"

He whimpered, "I don't know what I learned but yes."

Dawn turned around and yelled, "Let him go."

The hippie let Sky go who sprinted to the group of recruits hoping to be able to command them and regain some of his dignity. He exclaimed, "This city obviously holds nothing for us so back to the Butterfly!"

The recruits marched back to the ship, grinning as they went. Sky followed them so he could ask the hippie this: "What's your name? I really don't want to call you Hippie Guy."

The hippie grinned, "I'm Swampy. Swampy Bogbeard! SWAMPY AWAY!" and at this drifted into the trees, aloft.

Sky stood still, mouth agape for a second until he asked, "Someone please tell me I'm not the only one who saw that."

Dawn shook her head and murmured, "Let's get back to the ship."

Sky nodded, "Yeah. Nothing some butter can't fix."

Sorry I couldn't release this last weekend as I hoped but by the sheer size of this chapter you see why I couldn't get it finished! I was able to add more OCs than I expected in this chapter. Probably because half of the OCs submitted were members of the Sky Army. I already have a loose plan for where the other OCS will appear so don't freak out if they don't appear in the story right away! Also the OCs in this chapter will stay as recurring characters as well as the others! Also I will be closing OC submissions just for the fact by the sheer amount I've got so far! I'll probably open them up again later though!

Dimitri belongs to dimitri black, Ryan Vasquez belongs to d9m5, Flame belongs to Dante T. the Vampire King, and Night belongs to Osprey2012.