Zachary left the Wall and headed back into the city. He couldn't do much down by the Wall without more preparation, and how one prepares to get past an unbreakable wall was beyond him. [b][i]How about getting more power?[/i][/b] Kaa'is asked, receiving a feeling of disgust from Zachary. He knew that in order to gain power people need to die, and he was not at all comfortable with that. At the same time he also knew that Kaa'is had a point, and he despised his situation because of that.

Zachary started to brainstorm possible methods of escape. He could go either through the gate, break through the Wall or go over the top. The gate would be very heavily guarded, so doing that alone would be near suicide. The Wall itself is virtually indestructible. And to get over the top would need a way to penetrate the aerial barrier. But he explored the possibilities further, going over each of them in detail in his head.

-The Gate. A heavily militarised zone. Getting in would either need the utmost stealth or incredible strength. Considering the likely soldier density, invisibility would be the only way for him to achieve the necessary level of stealth, and an invisibility device is much too complex to assemble in these circumstances. Even with a team of top engineers an effective invisibility cloak has thus far remained fictitious. Besides, if they were smart they would have probably thought about invisible kages. And the Gate would not simply be left open, and opening it would almost certainly attract attention. The alternative to stealth is strength. Zachary has the engineering knowledge to create some very powerful weaponry even from simple parts. [b][i]Yes, do that Zachary. You know how quickly we could be free if you did that.[/i][/b] But he was loathe to think he could kill hundreds of people in a single blow. [b][i]But think, Zachary. It is not just us who would benefit. The entire population of Sovereign could be free- free to feel the weather, free to travel again, free from the oppressive grasp of the military. You would be heralded as a hero![/i][/b] But at what cost? The deaths of hundreds of people? The military are people too. [b][i]Barely. You know their atrocities.[/i][/b] Who is not to say they won't kill us once we get outside anyway? They clearly have military on the outside. If they have an exterior base as well as an interior base then the Gate will merely be a choke-point and we'll all get massacred. Speaking of which, who is to say the Gate doesn't open only from the outside? Jail cells can't be opened from the inside, so why would this be able to? In that case the Gate would merely be an easier point to break through.

-The Wall. Virtually indestructible, although anything can be broken if you try hard enough. A brute force approach is futile, and such resources would probably be better directed at cracking through the Gate. [b][i]With enough spirit we could possibly disassemble the Wall from the inside, rendering to be nothing more than an ordinary wall.[/i][/b] Maybe, but again at what cost? [b][i]No cost, only gains.[/i][/b] We'd have to [i]murder[/i] people to do that, and I'm not willing to do that. [b][i]We don't actually have to murder people ourselves. We could search for dying people instead and consume their spirit when they die.[/i][/b] That's almost as bad. [b][i]But it isn't as bad.[/i][/b] So far there exists no known technology which can get us through the Wall without breaking it somehow. I don't know how to make any ghosting machines or teleporters. Perhaps we could tunnel under it, but that would involve venturing into the unknown. We don't know whether it's unprotected if we go deep enough of if its foundations seal off the entirety of Sovereign.

-The Aerial Barrier. This is almost as unknown as travelling under the Wall. It is currently too far away to analyse. From what he could see from down here it appears to be some form of kinetic shield. It's so high up that this box is large enough to have its own weather systems. As it is clearly not built from solid kinetic core, it would likely be much weaker than the Wall itself, but its awkward position makes tampering with it more difficult. He would need to get a closer look, and that would mean somehow scaling that height safely. A small shuttle could do it, and he definitely had the ability to make one of those, although that would have the disadvantage of drawing a lot of attention from the entire city, and quite likely the cannons of the military as well. Another more novel approach would be to scale the Wall. Being made of steel he would attach himself to it magnetically using Polarity Cores. At that altitude, without high-altitude training, he would need to have some form of breathing apparatus, but that would be easily obtained. He was liking this idea. Perhaps a set-up similar to a carriage on the old skyways. [b][i]I still say we blow up the military and waltz out of the gate.[/i][/b] For an onikage whose powers revolves around machinery, you have such little appreciation for the elegance engineering. [b][i]I just don't appreciate taking such a round-about way of escaping. The aerial barrier will probably prove to be just as futile to break through without the spirit of a hundred kages.[/i][/b] There's no way to know until we look, now is there?

By the time he had finished this brainstorming Zachary had made it back to his base. Before entering, where he would be able to start designing this carriage which climbed up steel walls, he checked around to ensure that nobody was watching. It had become routine, as he knew that he could not afford to let his base, a cache of technology, become known.