"What's your favourite food by the way?"
Night came and went and now Ares and Sandy were lying next to one another at the break of dawn and relaxing with their arms and hands in just-barely appropriate positions. Ares' hand was draped over Sandy's shapely and soft rear, and her own hands were placed up against his chest, but that was all for now and they simply enjoyed this for what it was. As for Ares' question just now, he kept tabs on two things regarding food and his wives. One, their specialties that he devised and two; their personal favourites. Bellona was popping candy, for the former, and hamburgers (she also had a soft spot for milkshakes and boba tea), for the latter. Enyo was mint honeycomb and.... Well, actually, it was hard to pick a consistent favourite with her. 'Anything cooked by Ares' was technically correct, and her own response on the matter would be mint honeycomb if pressed for one, but if he had to pick anything reasonable on her behalf then she seemed to really enjoy the toasted pitas she'd been making herself lately. Her favourite bounced around from day to day and week to week, again aside from the honeycomb as she was pretty adamant about that, but Ares figured she'd home in on something eventually... Something that wasn't mint honeycomb! Ares counted the specialty and the favourite as two different options so he wasn't accepting that answer no matter how many times she repeated it! Anyway, now there was also Sandy who's special dish was bundevara so now he wanted to now her usual day-to-day preference so he could make that for her one day too.
"Hm... I can answer that but I'm not sure if there's any point. There's still so many different cuisines I want to try and picking a favourite before I do kinda feels like I'm making a choice I might not end up agreeing with in the long run. I guess I can at least say what it is now even if I change my mind later right? In that case.... I really like pies. Savoury, I mean. Also preferably those with gravy in them... Mmm. Yeah, those are great. Soft pies, crispy pies, open pies... Maybe with some mash too. Simply divine. I could eat that every day and never get tired of it but it's somewhat of a rarity here in Xasca, unfortunately. I remember having it once when I was abroad and that sort of set me off on the pie hype train. Ever since then I've been hassling some chefs back at the fellahin base to make it for me at least once a month but it never comes out quite as well as the one I remember all those years ago. Pie is a very foreign concept to Xascans, and the chefs have never even heard of such a thing let alone seen it, so their reproductions were kinda unimpressive. Still, I ask for it for the nostalgia. I figure if I taste the inferior product enough I can imagine the taste from back then and that makes up for it somewhat. I'm sure my mind will change but for now I pick pie! Also ale! Ginger ale with pie is mouth wateringly good and just thinking about it makes me want some!"
"Mhm" Ares nodded softly and made a mental note of this incredibly important detail! He would be sure to cook something right up her alley when next he was able to. He, regrettably, did not have the ingredients necessary to make it right now and couldn't really procure them either. The Xascan markets had a lot of ingredients and drinks but he didn't recall seeing anything even close to ginger ale. He could make Sandy a pie, that part was relatively easy if he dug around for a bit, but if it wasn't the whole shebang then was it even really worth it? Ares wasn't overly picky when it came to eating food, he mostly cared about the quality and not the ingredients, but he was picky when it came to serving it! Only the best of the best and so, as long as Sandy didn't ask him for it before then, he would have her wait until they returned to Red Sun for him to make it properly without missing anything. Plus he could get some advice from Shu, the expert pâtissier who blew even the minds of the Vraizon clan matriarchs, and really make the dish pop. Forget the poxy pie Sandy remembered in her brain, Ares would blow that out the water and worm his own food into her memories as something truly irreplaceable! That was his pride as a chef and Sandy's lover-to-be.
Ares and Sandy spent another two days relaxing, during which Aejaz showed up to check on them. They'd been gone a lot longer than they had any reason to be and he was curious enough to pay them a visit. He did stumble around in the desert for a while but Ares had mentioned in passing the rough location he would be at and Aejaz eventually wound up knocking on the door to the Elliot all the same. He wasn't afraid they'd die or anything, they had measures to prevent such an outcome, but he was shocked to learn how close things got with the brood mother and the war aura backlash. He understood now why they were taking so long and left to head back to the Oasis palace with some slight regret. Ares hadn't been bossing him around as of late but now that he'd shown up on his doorstep Ares gave him 'homework' training to do in his spare time. Aejaz had been groovy back at the palace, laying down on a deck chair underneath the shade of a palm tree and sipping sweetness incarnate out of a straw resting in a coconut... And now it was all ruined! His worry over his brother's safety had turned into him jeopardising his vacation! He was a fool to care and slapped his own head in frustration at least twenty times during his return trip. He dared not risk the ire of an older brother so Aejaz would diligently abandon his prior slovenliness and do as was told but he definitely wasn't happy about it! Sure Ares was injured but he was just laying about as well, in the arms of a beautiful partner to no less! Hypocrite! Aejaz thought as such but he also really didn't want to be Ares after what happened to him so there was no jealousy... .Though he did miss Allie and Trixie. Aejaz also didn't envy having to go take on an entire base of scavengers, although he could very easily do it himself as a sneaky assassin, so he kept quiet and just accepted that slave driver Ares was back in business and harsh training was on the menu once more.
As for Ares and Sandy, they weren't 100% better but they were both above 90% and ready to party with the scavengers. Ares was at about 91%, and his wounds were mostly just visually disturbing thanks to all the holes on his flesh under his clothes, and Sandy was basically 99% good to go with no major issues. Ares cultivated for a bit, to see if he could work his way back into the seventh stage of sensory enhancement to return to where he belonged, but he wasn't able to reach it as of yet. Probably by the time he was done with tool, and the rest of the scavenger base, would he be capable of going up another stage. Mass destruction of an entire organisation ought to be a sufficient kick up the cultivation rear and get his foundation in gear. Of course Ares would much rather go up a stage before a big fight like this but, then again, did it even really matter? tool's cultivation was abysmal and Ares increasing his own actually did him no favours in a fight against that guy as he'd just wind up hitting himself harder. Everyone else in the scavenger base was easy pickings for people as powerful as Ares and Sandy so the extra stage of cultivation would never really be relevant. Maybe if Ares was traversing the Riddlemyd right now would he care a bit more but, seeing as that wasn't the case, he ordered the Elliot to drive automatically over to the location he was given by the information broker. It was time to dig Digger's grave and put the muscle weasels out of commission for good. The Torchbearer plot in Xasca, by the end of today, would officially be over and rendered dead and buried in these desert sands! No exploding sinkhole countries on Ares' watch, no sir!
The Elliot roved its way over to the location in question and both Sandy and Ares hopped out of it shortly after. They could have driven a bit closer but the chances of being recognised was far higher if they were caught driving around in the Elliot so they walked the rest of the distance while putting on 'disguises'. Ares raised the Zephyr to make a sort of hood like he did last time while Sandy just wore her usual fellahin clothes as they were pretty indistinguishable amongst the clan other than the sheer amount which could be toned down easily. The two of them could get into the base forcefully via Sandy's sand shifting abilities but they figured walking around freely for a while to check the lay of the land down there was better for now.
The duo managed to find the random booth the informant notified Ares about and slid down a dune to head over to it. It was partially run down, with broken glass on all three sides other than the entrance, a dirty glass door with a handle, but other than that it was in a usable state. Messy? Sure. Small? Very. Ugly? Catastrophically. But if somebody wanted to set up a checkpoint in the middle of the desert, in this highly random spot for no apparent reason, then this thing would do wonders! Ares opened up the glass door and stood inside the narrow, vertical, rectangular box, barely able to move without hitting his leg against the desk in front of him. This was where the person checking ID would sit but there was no chair in here. Probably because A; who the hell was actually using this thing out here and, B; anyone who sat on a chair in here might accidentally find the buzzer under the desk and that wasn't ideal. The scavengers must have removed any chairs that were once here because somebody, at some point in time, accidentally stumbled across the buzzer and wasted their time. The reason it took thirty minutes to get a response after hitting the buzzer was because the scavengers were actually surprisingly busy for the most part. Plus a fellahin, specifically, was needed to come check on the person buzzing in, and they were valuable so often sent on more important expeditions elsewhere, which meant that waiting for one to have the spare time was mandatory. Forcing a fellahin to come up here just because some idiot had played around with a buzzer they assumed wasn't even working was silly so the chair had to go. Nowadays, on the off chance anyone found this booth, if they came in they would sit on the desk and not bother the scavengers who would have simply murdered them and taken their stuff. It was a win for both groups!
Ares looked around at the barren desert and, while waiting for the scavenger guard to show up, jokingly asked Sandy if she wanted to play a game of 'I-spy'. To Ares' surprise, however, he received a 'yes' in response and wasn't entirely sure where to go from here because his plans didn't go this far! Worse still, Sandy took the lead and kicked things off with 'T' and Ares couldn't for the life of him work out what she was seeing out here that he wasn't. This whole thing seemed fishy and his suspicions were all confirmed the moment Sandy revealed the answer to be a 'Trampling Oryx' which she chucked straight at Ares for suggesting this dumb game in the first place! Ares defended himself with the war aura flag and things calmed down again after that. Sandy was wiling to let bygones be bygones so long as Ares let her sit on his lap and so he obliged... Although he couldn't help but wonder how much of this happened all because she was looking for an excuse to be intimate. Oh well, worth it! She was a very huggable rhino.
More time passed and eventually a fellahin showed up from underneath the sands and glared fiercely at Ares and Sandy from the gap in their headgear. There were a number of possibilities here regarding this unwarranted attitude but hopefully it was either that A; this person was grumpy for some reason not related to Ares and Sandy, or B; this was just an act put on to dissuade fakes from even trying to get in. Given that he and Sandy were both partially disguised and hiding their faces somewhat it was probably the latter which, in a way, was relieving. At least this way the guard would feel duty bound. If they were just in a bad mood instead they might try to be exploitative and push someone around to make themselves feel better and take their anger out. "Who are you?!" The voice from underneath the pile of baggy clothes was thundering as this person clearly used mana and pressure to spread their words forcefully. Ares couldn't care less about any of this so he remained silent as per the instructions that were given to him while Sandy followed suit. It felt like the glaring had toned down a bit since they passed the first part of the test with flying colours, and that reassured the guard somewhat, but that didn't mean they got to skip the process entirely. "What are you doing here?" Ten seconds later this question was next up on the list but Ares did not falter and refused to be compliant with this mock interrogation. Last but not least, the real question cropped up and this time Ares would have to respond to it properly. "What loot have you scavenged recently on your travels?"
Ares was prepared for this long in advance and so he took out some miscellaneous crap he stole, ironically, from the scavengers. Aejaz pick-pocketed from the group Ares killed on the way to the Riddlemyd a while back so he had more than enough bloodied gear to be allowed in. He also mixed in some gear from the experts he murdered in the Anubis room just in case the scavenger gear was recognisable in anyway. This way Ares wouldn't be blamed for their deaths but instead be seen as the guy who avenged their deaths and took their stuff back from whoever was responsible as well as their gear too off their dead body. A mere coincidence he had the dead scavenger's stuff is all this was! Not that it really mattered at the end of the day. Ares would get his gear back in due time once he was done obliterating everyone in this place. The gear, and various other resources and treasures lying around in this base, would all belong to Heaven's Path. These next few hours were going to spell the doom of the scavengers at large and maybe even be enough to wipe them out cleanly from top to bottom. Sure there were other scavengers here and there but if this massive pillar of theirs were to crumble absolutely they would need to go into hiding for uncountable years just to recover even slightly. At that point, it was questionable whether it was even worth persisting in scavenging as it would be better to become an independent bandit or highwayman somewhere else.
That was all a problem for these scavengers to figure out, however, as they're fate had just been sealed by the guard's acceptance of the typical bribe. Or, well, it was sealed anyway, as Ares could force his way in any day of the week, but now they were doubly screwed if not triply. To make matters even worse, when the guard offered to take Ares down he refused and nodded at Sandy. This was a simple gesture but it eliminated all potential concerns the guard had because why would anyone who could enter their base freely go through the lengths to use the official channels if they were looking to cause trouble? This duo showed up in the correct spot, took the correct measure to summon a guard, answered the questions correctly, and gave a correct and bloody bribe when they could have entered on their own anyway without acting like imposters? highly unlikely! This misunderstanding meant the guard thought none of this, the raised hoods and hidden facial features, was suspicious enough to report these two to the higher ups and now they would be able to roam around unbothered. A lot of scavengers were confidential about their personal lives and details so this wasn't even the first set of scavengers the guard had seen who were reluctant to show their faces. This was just another day like any other.
As it turned out, bringing Sandy along really was for the best after all as she was the root of this beneficial misunderstanding!... Though Ares could tell by her general demeanour and stiff stance that she wasn't too happy about this. She knew there were some fellahin working for the scavengers but seeing her people stoop so low directly in front of her... It hurt a bit. She was a competent leader and yet some of these people had become scavengers during her period of rule. It was insulting, actually. She wanted to know what exactly caused this but asking would risk breaking cover so she just swallowed her indignation and complaints and swore not to show them any mercy even if they were her own people at one point in time. This was a choice they made and they had to live with the consequences whether they liked it or not. Making their deaths swift was the final act of mercy she would show them as the ex-leader of the clan. They could regret their actions in the afterlife as far as she was concerned, treachery of this level was unacceptable.
The guard sunk underneath the sand and Sandy followed along while holding onto Ares tightly. It was nice being able to openly hug him instead of pretending to keep her distance like last time so she took full advantage of the situation even though it only lasted a short while. It took no more than about ten seconds to reach a small cave, barely as big as a room in a house, that was blocked off on all sides except for one with a big metal door. The guard walked over to it and placed his palm on a slab of metal that scanned his hand and the door opened, revealing the entrance to the base which was a large open square with metal walls. From here the guard wordlessly walked away down wone of the branching paths to go do whatever he was doing prior and left Ares and Sandy to their own devices. They were 'scavengers' and ought to know their way around the place after their orientation. Orientation usually happened in batches so there was no way these two were brand new recruits, from the perspective of the guard, and the last thing they needed was a tour guide. This was a bit awaked for Ares and Sandy, because the base was surprisingly quite the sprawling place and a tour guide would actually be really nice right about now, but they would figure it out eventually on their own. The key was to just look like they belonged and act like they knew precisely what they were doing. Confidently walking in the wrong direction was better than timidly asking for help! Thankfully there seemed to be other scavengers milling about in the large open entrance. It seemed like it was perfectly normal for this lot to just hang out here and treat the base as a safe zone from the city guards and fellahin who occasionally hunted them down. Loitering and aimlessly strolling about wouldn't raise too many eyebrows so long as Ares and Sandy weren't spotted walking in suspicious circles multiple times over by the same person. long story short, they were in and good to go with their search. They weren't looking for anything specific, other than the weasel farm as that needed to be destroyed first and foremost, but Ares did still want to check the place out for goods he could donate to his sect. The scangers had no right to complain, this was their entire shtick! Robbing people blind and hoarding goods? Ares would reply in kind for it was looting time!