Miss Dragonfang's party returned to the Pegasus the next morning after spending the night at the haunted house which made them the last party to co back after their respective incursions.
Most mbers of the company thought they ran into trouble and Nika was starting to get worried, only to beco angry when he saw them enter the ship eating cotton candy and wearing T shirts that read 'I spent the night at the haunted house and all I got was this lousy T-shirt'.
"What the f..." Nika lost her composure for a second and had to remind herself that she needed to be an example for the rest of the company.
"We finished our mission, ma'am. No cryptids were involved, it was just an attraction on an amusing park and the post was only a marketing strategy." Miss Dragonfang inford with her cheeks covered in the sticky substance she was eating.
"And you found that before or after buying all that stuff?"
"Before, but we still needed to make sure. It was our mission after all." Miss Dragonfang explained in her army voice after hurriedly wiping her face.
"About that, we put all the charges on the company card." Bella added with a smirk while eyeing Uriel to study his reaction. After squeezing Miss Dragonfang of everything she knew about Uriel she expected him to beco angry, but nothing happened.
"That's fine." Uriel said in a yawn, then scratched the back of his head.
"Well then, it's ti for you to write your incursion reports. Luna could use the information you gathered even if you didn't encounter any cryptid and they'll allow to assess your performance."
Now that the last group had returned safely, there was no longer any need to remain on standby and everyone who participated on any incursion had to start working on their reports. It was a standard practice in any company, but given the special circumstances of theirs most of the mbers didn't have a clue on how to write a report. This especially applied to the Armstrong n.
They were a close knit group of hunters even before the company was founded, though they never did any active hunting and only provided support for defense. Besides, they were hired as miners, but now that their circumstances had changed they had to step in on more than one occasion.
This didn't co as a surprise to Nika who already expected so of the less experienced hunters to have issues writing their reports, what she didn't expect was finding Uriel and Luna sitting in front of blank pages with equally blank expressions on their faces.
"What's going on here? Did you guys forget how to write a report?" Nika tilted her head, fully expecting Uriel to rebuke and when he failed to do she was left in awe.
"I... uhm... didn't encounter any cryptids." Contrary to her inexpressive face, Luna was actually distraught. "I thought it would be a changeling, but..."
"Didn't you hear what Nika said? You still need to write a report." dusa said in a soft, yet nagging tone.
"You're only saying that because you can't write." Luna's reply made dusa chuckle.
"I'll do it anyway, just get in front of a keyboard." dusa said full of confidence that vanished once her report turned out to be just an unintelligible mix of random letters no one could decipher.
"I think I'll stick to Luna's report, you two went together after all." Nika said then started reading.
'We arrived at the POI long after our scheduled ti due to dusa's inability to sense moving cars and her insistence to walk on her own. We were invited in by a man before we even introduced ourselves, probably because of his male reproductive instincts.' Luna's report was filled with evidence that backed this theory and Nika had to skip what was left of the page.
In summary, the man didn't take his eyes from dusa the entire ti they were there. Then Nika continued reading in silence. 'Apart from the aforentioned, there was nothing of interest about that individual and we had to wait for the person who made the post.
It was a teenage girl that claid her mother had been swapped by a cryptid, but after a thorough interrogation of everyone involved, it beca evident that she was just trapped in an abusive relationship and we fixed the situation.'
"Luna, you gave too much pointless information, but when it ca to the important part you simply skipped it. How did you fix the situation?"
"I removed the problematic factor of the equation, with my fists..." dusa explained, proud of herself for beating a man that wasn't even a hunter an inch from death.
"And how did it solve anything?" By that point, Nika couldn't make sense of anything.
"The man was abusive towards the teen's mother and it caused a shift in her character. By taking the man out of their lives..."
"No, what you did was unnecessary. You may have fixed things for a short period, but you don't know how that can impact their lives. Maybe they relied economically on him or maybe he'll co back for revenge."
"I don't know about revenge, but we handed the woman so money to get back on her feet." dusa explained.
"So, you're telling you not only didn't get anything out of that incursion, but you also spent money?" Nika lifted an eyebrow, then turned to Uriel who didn't react. "Okay, what's up with you? Let see your report, this is still empty!" Nika voiced out.
"Uh... I... I don't rember what happened." Uriel scratched the back of his head again
"Did you at least get to the location? What happened?"
"I was supposed to investigate a cursed mirror and I think I made it there, but then my mory becos fuzzy. There was this weird guy, he was like high or sothing. I don't know." Uriel raked up his brain, but found no answers and only slight flashes of what happened crossed his mind though nothing was out of the ordinary.
"Did you see the mirror?" Nika's insistence seed to put a heavy strain on Uriel's mind.
"I... huh... I think I did?"
"Are you asking or telling ?"
"Stop, you're hurting him!" Bella rushed in to embrace Uriel from behind making sure to press her voluptuous chest against him after sensing his flux energy was starting to dwindle. Much to her surprise and enjoynt, he didn't fight back or react negatively to her advance and instead closed his eyes to enjoy her warmth. "He's cold, really cold."
"Hmm... this is interesting." Luna muttered showing her excitent only through the unsettling glint in her eyes.
"Do you know what did this to him?"
"No, that is what makes it interesting. There's plenty of lore about mirrors, but what Uriel is experiencing has never been ntioned in anything I've seen or heard of. If we go by his words, the owner of the mirror was suffering the sa symptoms which ans that we will most likely find a cryptid there."
"or a hunter with a trait, or an artifact, or witchcraft..." Bella started list other possibilities and as soon as witchcraft was ntioned Nika started crossing herself.
"Why are you doing that? I'm a witch, get over it." Bella glared at Nika.
"It's easy to forget when you're not wearing a pointy hat."
"What did you say?" Luna asked.
"The pointy hat?" Nika tilted her head for the umpteenth ti that day.
"No, I ant her." Luna disliked Bella and refused to call her by her na, but also didn't insult her since it wasn't her place to decide who Uriel decided to associate with.
"There's a lot of things that could have this effect on people and since the source of this investigation is a mirror, I think it's safe to assu it's an artifact." Bella shrugged.
Luna turned to see Uriel, only this ti she didn't expect him to react. He was like a husk of his forr self and she now knew that pressuring him into saying anything else would only result in causing him more pain.
"The only way we can be certain is if we go check by ourselves, but we'll need to bring Uriel along." Luna declared.
"He's in no condition to go out, let alone fight."
"We can't wait because Uriel's condition may worsen, but I also need to keep checking him up. Also, the owner of the mirror knows him and perhaps he'll rember sothing." Luna explained her reasoning leaving no place to refute.
"I'll go too." Bella volunteered herself.
" too." dusa said, a bit disgruntled that Bella beat her to it.
"Then I'll be the last mber. Luna is a dic, dusa an engineer, Bella's trait allows her to provide ranged support and I'm a combatant. With this team composition we won't have any issues protecting Uriel." Nika said with her usual mischievous smile.
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