Daybreak - Dragon Embarks! [Hayate, Dragon]

[Hayate_Amatsukami]

Quickly and without a moment's warning Hayate stood chest to chest with Erik, staring up to him with an angry glare, ready to sock him right in the jaw. “And what if those two never report back to the others!” His voice was that of a viper as he hissed in dissatisfaction. “What do you think they will do when two lookouts go missing, lollygag around?” He was angry, but couldn’t deny their total effectiveness as a team so far. The Shinobi took a step back, exhaling a stale soot filled breath, before turning towards the direction of the descending corridor. “If you want any hope of seeing your friend again drop the whole upset older brother act and think like his life depends on it!” In his heart Hayate only wished to teach the scholar a lesson he had learned the hard way long ago.

The two of them spoke less than a sentence to each other as the moved vigilantly further into the maze of tunnels. Surprisingly this once abandoned shaft had quickly turned into a spalling network that Hayate could only assume stretched under the entire city. Every once in a while the two of them would encounter a few souls here and there mining and transporting the raw ores back and forth. They all wore the insignia of the Foundation, which seemed to be branded on everything not bolted down, and were more or less using it as a front for their more shady actions. A previous assumption now confined to be fact.

Before long the boys found themselves at the end of a long narrow passage that opened up into another larger storage room. By now Hayate and Erik has made it to what they thought should be the fifth level of the mine, but in all honesty by now the only thing they knew for sure was that getting back to the surface would just as hard as anything. In the center of the room was a moderately sized ballast fixed over a large pit with a winch attached to the center. A pulley system of sorts for moving cargo between levels, a strange site to see so far underground. Hayate motioned to Erik to follow closely as the two moved between cover getting closer to the pulley.

“Do you suppose we could use this!” Hayate asked tapping his titanium fingers on the thick ballets. “I bet it could hold us?” Erik took a moment to look over the device before the two of them froze at the sound of approaching footsteps and echoing voices. Coming from the same direction as they entered from were a handful of armed men unlike the Foundation workers from earlier. The shinobi gritted his teeth as he clung low to the floor using a crate as cover, hoping that Erik has found someplace to hide. From the looks of them these guys must have been some hired help to guard the thieves treasure trove, and boy did they all look like they could do it too.

Finally after a moment of stressful silence the group had moved on and the boys both stood from their binding spots. They looked at each other with relief knowing that if they were spotted an all out brawl would have broken out. While Erik may have heard rumor of Hayate’s ability in such confined spaces like this network of tunnels he wouldn’t be able to channel his magic freely. A fact not lost to the boy soldier as he anticipates a tough time ahead.

“Now then, how about getting this device working?”

[Dragon]

Erik examined the pulley system for a moment guessing that it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out. It seemed to work off of weights using the person's body weight to pull the cart down while a counter weight kept them from speeding down and would pull the cart back up after the people had gotten out. On second thought, it probably wasn’t even designed for people, instead of being used to transport large amounts of product to different floors. There must be another way up and down but this was their best bet for now. “Hmm I think if we got in it’d take us down for sure. It doesn’t seem to require anything special to get going, let's get in.”

As the two eased their combined weight into the cart its wheels began to creek, slowly picking up speed until Erik sat his full weight onto the cart, causing it to rapidly pick up in pace. “Uh oh”. Within a few moments they were speeding down into the darker floors below. With a raised voice Erik irked out “I just realised I didn’t think of how to make this thing stop.” As the cart went lower through the tunnel he took notice of indentations in wooden posts signifying the floor that the tunnel had led to. They were nearing their destination, and now they had to figure out how to slow the cart down.

“Hayate, reckon you could use that titanium arm to grab onto the rope above us? If you create some drag the cart should begin to slow. I’ll see if I can make some friction on the tracks.” Erik thought for a moment, thinking what he could conjure up to help slow the cart down, he was still practicing a lot of his magical abilities so he wasn’t able to make anything too extravagant yet. “Yes.. I think this should do.” Erik muttered as his rubbed his hands together before mumbling some words. Magical runes appeared between his palms before he spread them apart, causing a block of pine tar soap to appear between them. The great thing about this kind of soap was that it was made from a naturally sticky substance that was also highly flammable. Erik reached the block of soap over to the wheels of the cart that had no become quite hot from the drag and pressed the block of soap against it. The temperature of the soap increased until parts of it began to melt into the wheels, allowing the pine tree resin to coat itself around the wheels and create friction due to its sticky nature.

Erik did this for both the back wheels before applying it to the front as well. The fiction on the tracks as well as the drag created by Hayate holding onto the rope with his titanium hand allowed the cart to slow down enough to a point they could safely abandon the cart without injury. “Our stop is just up ahead. We’ll jump out on the count of three. One, two, three!” With a forward roll out onto the dirt beside them and an audible thud, they were now safely at their destination.

Before them was a stone pathway leading to an iron door. It seemed the entire tunnel network on this floor had been turned into a safe-house for their goods. Erik dusted himself off before turning to his companion "What do you think Hayate. It might get messy from here if there's a whole bunch of them waiting inside. Better yet is we might not have a clear way out." Erik kept his voice low as to not attract any unwanted attention."