Morning 2.2: CH 1 THE FOREST GATE AMBUSH

🏥 MORNING 2.2: SIXTH STREET ESCORT CHAPTER 1: THE FOREST GATE AMBUSH The morning sun rays barely filtered through the thick, overgrown canopy of the forest directly bordering the city limits. Standing quietly before a heavily concealed, high-spec metal security bulkhead embedded deep within the root structures, S-Rank Surgeon Liang Huàn leveled his grip. He adjusted his elegant, newly equipped pirate outfit uniform—featuring structured navy lapels, metallic gold trim stitching, and a rugged tactical sash—while his bone-white deer skull plague doctor mask loomed large, its white horns casting sharp shadows as his cyan eye lenses glowed with intense data streams. Reaching forward, he knocked aggressively against the thick steel plating with the heavy metallic handle of his crystalline cane. Inside the quiet, underground bunker base layout, the sudden, booming echo of the front door knock sent immediate shockwaves through the central monitor room. The five core members of the Stellaron Hunters instantly froze, their internal tracking frequencies scrambling in total confusion. Blade: Someone is tapping our external perimeter matrix. Grab your armaments immediately. Kafka: A guest at this hour? How exceptionally fascinating. Let's see who managed to isolate our coordinates. Silver Wolf: Wait, my terminal filters didn't pick up any incoming spatial anomalies! This shouldn't be mathematically possible! The hunters aggressively reached out their hands to unseal their respective weapons, their battle stances activating in a microsecond. But sitting right on the main operations desk, the black cat Elio with his piercing blue eyes lazily opened his eyes, raising a single feline paw to block their counter-attack. Elio: Do not grab your weapons. Answer the front door panel immediately. I don't even want a single blade drawn in this sanctuary floor. Firefly, you go open the door right now. Firefly: E-Eh?! Why me?! Why do I have to be the one to open the front door?! Blade: Because you were a massive, high-velocity troublemaker during the nighttime hours. So do exactly as your master has commanded. Kafka: Just open the door, little one, and let's find out exactly who it is. Firefly let out a nervous sigh, stepping past the terminal booths and hitting the manual override latch. The massive metal bulkhead slid open with a heavy pneumatic hiss. The exact microsecond the door cleared, Firefly’s body completely froze like a statue. Her eyes violently widened into massive, blank white circles in an extreme, classic Naruto-style expression of pure, unadulterated shock! She stared flat-out at the imposing figure towering over her threshold—the terrifying deer skull mask, the long white antlers, the pirate attire, and those piercing cyan glow eyes looking directly into her processors. Liang Huàn: So... it was you the one flying that weaponized mecha suit at high-velocity during the nighttime hours. Because when I checked the morning networks, there were a couple of headline news reports blowing up about a weird unidentified flying object soaring across the sky lanes. Care to explain your flight metrics? Elio put his feline paw directly onto his own head, letting out a comically exhausted, deadpan cat sigh as he shook his skull on the desk, his blue eyes blinking in frustration. Elio: Firefly... what on Earth have you done? Kafka: Oh dear, you look like a massive amount of trouble now, Firefly. Not only did you fly away without a cloaking field active, but you also got caught flat-out on the local news channels. We are absolutely going to give you an extra household chore punishment loop for your reckless actions today. Firefly: I’m very sorry for what I did! But I really, truly hate Reaper 800! And the absolute reason why is because he used that volatile pink and white potion matrix to transform the Trailblazer into a female target body layout! I couldn't control my mecha thrusters from pure frustration! Silver Wolf: Just calm down and let's talk this out logically. Mister Pirate Plague Doctor, why exactly are you standing inside our base? What are you here for? Liang Huàn: A quite simple question. Are you five planning on going somewhere out into the open populace today? If so, you absolutely need to follow the safety rules of this city. You might want to get proper clothes on immediately, because you are absolutely not going to wear those cosmic combat outfits out there. People on the streets will immediately think you are from a completely different country or a hostile alien planet. You have to wear a different, civilian outfit sourced from Planet Earth. Do that, and then I'll officially act as your guide to show you exactly how the city layout works. Blade’s eyes instantly snapped with an aggressive shonen spark. He stepped forward, his hand gripping his cracked ancient sword hilt as a volatile wave of dark energy began to ripple across his boots. Blade: We are not ordered around by the likes of you, doctor. Where do you think you are going with those demands? Are you planning to use your frozen element against us? We did see exactly how powerful your ice metrics were during our joint combat loops past eight years ago... but I am completely unyielding. Liang Huàn remained completely motionless. He didn't even slide into a defensive boxing guard stance. Instead, he simply tapped his crystalline cane against the concrete floorboards, instantly showing them the hidden properties of his secondary elemental path. The room's temperature violently plummeted past sub-zero thresholds, but instead of standard blue ice, a massive, roaring torrent of golden geometric energy clouds and crystalline shards erupted directly from his cane! The overwhelming weight of the Path of Thiren Imaginary Element slammed over Blade’s coordinates. Before the swordsman could even unsheathe his blade, the golden Imaginary frequency fused perfectly with the freezing Cryo static, locking Blade's entire athletic body completely solid inside a giant, beautiful block of glowing sub-zero gold crystal ice! He stood frozen mid-stride, his mouth comically wide open in shock as a giant cartoon sweat drop rolled down his frozen cheek. Kafka: See, Blade? I told you that you didn't want to mess with him, and now look at you... you are completely frozen in ice with a high-spec Imaginary element. Turning to you, Liang Huàn... what type of path are you currently using to generate a data spread that massive? Liang Huàn: Great question, partner. The clinical answer is that I am currently using the Path of Thiren, personally granted to my jurisdiction by Moon Queen Vesperine. Liang Huàn calmly turned around, his pirate coat swishing dynamically as he stepped back out into the sunlit forest path, leveling his cane over his shoulder. Liang Huàn: So with that data cleared... you all had better get those different civilian clothes on right now. I'll be waiting patiently right outside the gate panels. Don't keep your guide waiting.