“Yeah, yeah, we wanted to put our number one song at the beginning of the next setlist, not the end,” Cassy said, pushing aside her braided hair as she held her phone to her ear. Her and Mari walked down Carrion street, located in the Southern Ribs district of Tresgate. A quiet street which held one of the bigger pavilions, it was a quaint place. Typically traffic would come by during this time of the day, but guests were avoiding this area due to a recent broadcast of a local hunt happening within the vicinity. Nothing big, but the far end of the pavilion was blocked off by local enforcement, and some of the independent hunter groups of the Clan of Venerers have taken up the bounty for the hunt of the killer of a local magnate.

  These kind of things didn’t happen too frequently, but frequently enough that procedures had long been set in place throughout the districts to wall off areas and manage crowds of civilians during an active hunt.

  “And whose fault was that, boss? Don’t you know the amount of overtime I had to put in to mitigate the damage caused by our last single release leak that happened because you didn’t vet our workers?”

  Mari could hear their manager cursing Cassy out through the other side in loud mumbled jargon.

  Ugh, why can’t Lorine and Cassy ever get along, Mari thought. She remembered the days when Cassy would look up to her. Lorine was known as the backbone of some of the greatest musical talent of this generation and had garnered the respect of many of her peers for her immaculate skills in marketing, planning, and talent management.

  And yet somehow she and Cassy ended up bickering like sisters every other day, only to go out drinking by the end of their arguments.

  Mari started thinking about Paris Arlintia, their assistant manager– or Arlin as they liked to call him - and wondered he was doing right now.

  Cassy continued, “Anyways, Madam Lorine. I’ve got an important mission to take care of now. The next performance isn’t for a couple of weeks. I don’t know why you’re in such a rush.”

  Cassy hung up and Mari swore she could still hear something loud coming from the other side of the phone as Cassy put the phone back in her back pocket.

  “Hey, I wasn’t done wi-”

  Cassy began, “Ugh, boss is such a pain.” Her skirt flittered as she walked. She decided to don a yellow palette of dress this time, and even dyed her hair with blond and black streaks, making her stick out like a sore thumb against the muted desaturated tiling of the pavilion’s buildings around the pair.

  “I like how you told her off like we were actually busy or something. We’ve had no success in Ecreville with any leads on the brothers, and now we’re here, basically window shopping,” Mari brought up.

  “Tsk tsk tsk, Mari. How little you know. It is the areas where we expect to find the evidence the least, where secrets are most likely to be held,” Cassy said, waving a finger in the air in an instructive way.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Mari’s expression was deadpan. “That’s literally the stupidest thing I’ve heard you say today. What are you talking about?”

  The pair chuckled at bit at their stupid conversation as they walked under a giant looming shadow which covered a large square in the center of the pavilion. An intricately ornate fountain sat at the center of the square, buildings surrounding it on all sides in a circular arrangement. A few passersby sat at seats and tables scattered around, watching the day pass them by.

  Mari looked up at the sky. A giant ridged skeleton of colossal proportions silhouetted the otherwise blue sky. Appendages the length of an entire block jutted out from the skeleton, each piercing the top of a different building strategically.

  The body of the last known Supreme Enthipid surrounded the the entire district of Tresgate, acting as both a monument, and a reminder. During Neo-Kamakura’s founding, a great war was held between the humans and those monsters. During that time, three Supreme Enthipids – the first Enthipids ever encountered - wreaked havoc across the city, slaughtering entire populations until Alyssa Kamakura and her team of explorers managed to uncover the secret of Johrei through the experimentation of Enthipid corpses.

  All Mari remembered from her history lessons was that Alyssa’s group plus some hand-picked militia numbering in the thousands armed themselves with Johrei weapons for the first time and drove back the Supreme Enthipids, killing one of them while the others escaped. That fallen Enthipid, whose remains covered Tresgate, became the catalyst which spawned the hunter dynamic and the Three Great Clans that we’ve come to know today, in our efforts to protect the city against similar threats in the future.

  Nowadays, hunters have grown out of their origins as front-line soldiers, and have essentially became mercenaries for hire, taking on bounties in a cooperative relationship with the city Auditors to help mitigate crime. It served the dual purpose of maintaining upkeep in the economy, as well as fettering out order when needed, as crime had run rampant during the early years of the city’s founding.

  Expedition teams were still sent out to hunt Enthipids every now and then, but the threat of the Supreme Enthipids had all but faded from public memory, as no sighting had been reported since the founding of the city, and the only threats the city have to deal with these days were the abundance of a new type of Enthipids known as Elites, as well as a notable number of Standard types. These unorganized invasionary forces were hardly the threat the Supreme Enthipids once posed, and as such, the idea of city defense became less a forefront focus, and more a passing fancy. Though Magrest retains its militia focused goals, most hunters of the modern day hunt Enthipids for sport, reaping the rewards of their armor and body parts by exchanging them for Mon, or using it to boost their own equipment and weaponry as hunters.

  The pair walked aimlessly for a bit, before Cassy’s eye stumbled onto a large building with a decorated vertical sign hanging off the building’s edge. It said, “The Pub of Tributes,” which Mari thought was a joke funny to someone, somewhere, though not to her.

  “Hey, Mari,” Cassy started, “Wanna drink?”

  “In the middle of the afternoon?” Mari replied, hands gripped behind her head and elbows up and out in a relaxed posture.

  “I mean, better than us waiting for Mimi to call us back. Honestly, I think she just sent us out here to cover some bases and secretly give us some vacation time. We’re not going to find any information on the Trepidor brothers here, not for lack of trying.”

  Mari agreed, “I guess I’m up for some hunter water.”

  “Good,” Mari replied.

  Just then, the pair noticed the silhouette of a single, large figure standing under the shade of one of the buildings.

  “Slackin’ off?” Abe said. Looks like his little shindig at Vitadale had concluded.

  “You know it,” Cassy replied, and she and Abe fist-bumped, ready to get sloshed.