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[b][color=#ffffff]Mota-Tavi, Denuvi-VII[/color][/b]

[color=#ffffff]The door to Shirax’s antique store swung open and through it stepped a bearded man in a leather jacket that looked like it had seen better days. His slicked back hair was as black as the night’s sky and the white specks that dotted it like stars only strengthened that impression. Shirax could tell by the urgency of the man’s pace who had entered her store, but the sudden appearance of the Earthling they called Starman’s eyes from beneath a set of green goggles confirmed the Denuvian’s suspicions.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“What’s happening, Jack?”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Jack Knight rested his cosmic rod against the counter with a tired shrug.[/color][color=#fff2cc] “You know how it is, same old, same old.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“Yeah, yeah,” Shirax nodded by way of recognition and then lent towards Knight. “What are you after this time?”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]The Denuvian’s voice had changed almost immediately. Once the pleasantries had been put aside, so too had the old woman’s butter-wouldn’t-melt act. Jack’s body language had shifted too. He could barely contain his excitement as he nosed around the store at Shirax’s wares. They were both collectors – though the old woman got her hands on treasure without ever having to step out from behind her desk. Jack hadn’t quite worked that one out yet.[/color]

[color=#fff2cc]“Word on the street is you’ve got your hands on something special.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“Oh yeah? Well you have to be careful listening to word on the street. Sometimes the streets will lie to you.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Jack frowned hard at Shirax and found her to be completely unmoved by his disapproval. Sensing it wasn’t working, he picked his elbows off the counter, leant back and reached into his leather jacket. From inside he plucked a sickly greenish-purple grub that writhed between his fingers. The Denuvian’s eyes widened at the sight of it.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“Alright, I’ll show you, but you so much as sneeze whilst it’s out of the box and you and I are going to have [i]serious[/i] trouble, understood?”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Jack nodded and threw the grub to Shirax. One of her wrinkled yellow arms reached out for it and she immediately bit into it. It burst open with a pop that sent pink goo all along the old woman’s face. She chewed on it greedly as the high-pitch screech coming from the grub grew quieter by the second.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Once she was done, she wiped the back of her mouth with one of her hands and reached beneath her counter towards a lockbox. As she was about to enter the code, she glared up at Jack and he let out a sigh and turned his back. There followed what sounded like an endless procession of beeps but finally the lockbox opened and from it the elderly Denuvian produced a vial. She held it up to Jack with a proud smile.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Knight’s eyes widened as they locked onto the grainy black substance inside.[/color][color=#fff2cc] “Holy fuck, is that what I think it is? How the hell did you get your hands on Uru?”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“You see the way the filings move around?” Shirax beamed as she titled the vial back and forwards. “That’s how you [i]know [/i]it’s the real thing. It wants to find its way back to Asgard.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]The Denuvian tilted the vial every which way and Jack watched on in an almost trancelike state as he watched the filings react. There was something about the way they moved that was nearly hypnotic. Even if he hadn’t known that they were magical, just from watching them he would have sensed it. Here they were, Jack thought, lightyears away from home. That last syllable seemed to get caught in his throat as he thought it and he found himself muttering it under his breath.[/color]

[color=#fff2cc]“Home.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]With a sudden jerk, Shirax plunged the filings back into the lockbox and slammed it shut. Or at least it had felt like she had slammed it shut. It wasn’t until the second bang that it became clear that the noise had come from another source. Jack shot the scene outside of Shirax’s store a perplexed look. Through the grime of Mota-Tovi’s streets, there appeared a shock of white. It shifted and moved, as the filings had done, but when Jack focused he could see that the white mass was a group of people in pristine white tunics. In their hands were lit torches that emitted blinding fires. Occasionally, they would fire the flames from their torches into the air and they would burst, lighting up the dim sky above them and all around them for a few moments.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]The old woman was busy running a stock check when Jack called her attention to the scene outside.[/color][color=#fff2cc] “What’s going on out there?”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“You been living under a rock or something?” Shirax said with a perplexed smile. “Those freaks are everywhere you look these days. They reckon their “god” is going to save us all. [i]Solaris[/i], they call him. Fat chance. Scientists say we’ve got eighteen months until that thing goes out for good. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get on the first ship out of here.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]The nonchalance of it all shocked Jack so much he almost knocked his staff to the ground. It couldn’t have been more than a year since he’d passed through Denuvi-VII. Sure, it had gotten a little [i]darker [/i]than he remembered it being before, but it had always been a little run-down. That was part of its charm. He was trying to get his head around the revelation when he realised how little time eighteen months was in the grand scheme of things.[/color]

[color=#fff2cc]“What are you still doing here? You’ve got enough treasure under this roof of yours to bribe your way into Hala, you old mountain goat.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Shirax fired Jack a toothy smile. The pink goo along them made it slightly sinister but Jack could sense there was something different to this smile. Junk collectors, antique traders, they were sentimental people by profession, but for the first time since Jack had met her all those years ago, Shirax let the gruff mask she adorned in his company slip for but a moment.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]“Heh, I’m not like you, kid, I was born on this planet. A thousand generations of my family have called this little rock home. It’ll take more than the lights going out to get me to leave it.”[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Jack nodded understandingly and once more thought of his own home, Opal City, and all he had left behind there. He sensed a knot forming in his throat and swallowed hard to force it back down. He stayed for a time to talk to Shirax, showing her some of the trinkets that he had picked up since his last visit, before making his goodbyes. As he left the Denuvian’s store he found himself wondering whether he would ever see the old woman again. He hoped so. Just as he hoped that one day he might see Opal City again.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]With a tug Jack pulled his goggles over his eyes and his trusty cosmic rod lifted him off of the ground. A hundred feet away from him there was a sudden bang followed by a flash of light that caused him to lose his balance slightly and he scowled in the direction of the Solaris creeps in their white tunics. He felt the eyes of one of the worshipers on him and he brandished an angry middle finger in their direction before disappearing off into the horizon.[/color]

[color=#ffffff]Little did Jack Knight know that there was more than [i]one [/i]set of eyes watching him. From a nearby rooftop, a set of binoculars trained on the Earthling as he drew further and further away from Shirax’s store. The binoculars lowered and a set of thin lips twisted into a wicked smile.[/color]