L:   After a more than six-hour long road trip that involved multiple stops at secret border checkpoints and bases, Iremacht arrived at the edge of Mandara. He had been debating on whether or not to call Mandara ahead of time and request to meet up. What if Mandara refused? It would put the country on high alert if Iremacht attempted to snoop around himself. He contacted his agents based in Mandara to begin preparations for an independent investigation if he did have to take matters into his own hands.

For now, Iremacht rested at one of his many underground bunkers. He had a phone in his hand, one that could not be traced, and tapped his finger on the armrest of his chair as he thought of what to say and who would pick up.

He dialed a number and called the main line to the Mandarian estate.

------------

"Prudoria. Prudoria. Wake up, man."

TU shook Prudoria's sleeping form, hoping he wasn't in a comma or something. He'd wanted to give their guest as much rest as possible and forgot to wake him up earlier. It was dark outside but not quite too late for dinner.

"You hungry? We're making food right now." Well, the staff was making food; TU couldn't cook for shit.

M:   Prudoria groaned as he woke up, slightly frustrated that he was being dragged out of the best sleep of his life.

"I don't wanna get up," he whined, sounding like a kid who didn't want to go to school, "the bed is too comfy, besides, I told you that slop stuff tastes terrible I'd rather starve than eat that shit."

Prudoria probably had real food maybe once or twice, and even then, it was just bread and an orange, and that was to test if he could eat real food, so the entity didn't know what TU was talking about.

-----

It was quiet in the Mandarian estate, most of the residents were either at work or in their own country for the time being, except for two people. Zalia had become the designated babysitter for Adira ever since Poldara brought her home, she enjoyed being around the child so she didn't mind, she knew her most trusted assassin could run their gang while she was away.

Zalia was making dinner for Adira when the phone rang in the kitchen; she preferred to cook her own food just like her father. Thinking it was Poldara calling to check on his daughter, she picked it up without looking at the caller ID.

"Hello cousin, Adira is doing fine, she's having her milk right now and I'm almost done with dinner, are you going to be here before or after Mandara and Dad come home, you know I prefer to be out of here before they arrive so I don't have to deal with them whining about my clan."

L:   Iremacht blinked. A woman's voice? Cousin? It sounded like she was taking care of Adira, so it must've been someone trusted. A human? No, Mandara and DAD? And what's this about a clan?

Who could be her cousin, Iremacht thought, quickly bringing up the political family tree he had memorized in his head. Someone close to Adira. That would be Poldara, then. Poldara's cousin ... that would be Johann and ... ah.

"Apologies, I'm actually looking for Poldara," Iremacht said politely. "I'm an officer from Germany and I had a message for him. Do you know when he'd be back?"

--------------

"Slop??" TU made an offended gasp. "I'll have you know that our cook makes the best barbeque ribs in all of Germany." He paused. "You must've rarely eaten real food, huh? Fine, I'll let your food insult slide this time. Come downstairs and we'll give you your first taste of LIVING."

He practically dragged Prudoria halfway off the bed. "Come. On. I'm hungry just thinking about it."

M:   Prudoria yelped at being dragged off the bed, fruitlessly grabbing a pillow to keep from falling off, "ok ok, I'm up, I'm up."

After a minute of reorienting himself, Prudoria followed TU as they headed to the dining room, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"I think I had real food at least once," he said to TU's previous comment, "the humans wanted to test if I could handle real food since I've been living off of slop and drugs my whole life, it was just a piece of bread and a fruit, I did throw up afterward but I think it was just because the orange had too much acid for me to handle. So where do the ribs come from, I have yet to know what type of creatures there are in the outside world."

----- 

Zalia paused when the person on the line spoke, she definitely didn't expect that, no one from Germany ever called their landline, the only three Germans that regularly called had her father's and Uncle's cellphone numbers.

Then she realized she recognized the voice, with the plants she has in all the world organizations, including the criminal ones, she knew instantly who she was talking to.

"Depends, what would a criminal entity want to tell a special one, dear Iremacht," she said coldly, switching from casual to business in an instant.

L:   Well, darn, she'd recognized his voice. Iremacht leaned back in his chair with a sigh, disappointed his little ruse had failed. He tapped his armrest some more.

"Zalia," Iremacht said plainly. "I have nothing to tell to you in particular. I meant what I said. I'm looking for Poldara. But if it piques your interest, I wanted to talk to him about something that may concern Adira. Call this number when he returns."

Iremacht hung up. He wasn't about to reveal any information to Zalia, a criminal that he was somewhat familiar with. He had tabs on her and her gang, and they hadn't caused him too much of a headache. Yet.

---------

"It comes from a pig," TU explained. "Which is a - uh -" He mimed a round thing. "It's a plump pink creature. Very tasty. Makes 'oink oink' sounds."

Schwitzy was smelling some of the finished dishes at the dining table when they arrived. There was quite a lot of food, as TU had a big appetite after a mission.

"Mmm, wonderful job," Schwitzy complimented the chef. He was about the only being in the entire mansion who got her approval. She spotted the boys at the doorway and pursed her lips. "Took you long enough. Sit. Let's eat."

M:   Zalia raised a brow as Iremacht hung up, piquing her interest was an understatement at this point.

"Anata wa sore o subete te ni iremashita ka?" (Did you get all of that?) she spoke into her radio on the collar of her greatcoat, something she had for security purposes.

"Hai, okusama, kaiwa ga nagarete rokuon sa remashita," (Yes ma'am, the conversation came through and was recorded) a voice on the other end confirmed.

"Good, make sure to tap into the Mandarian phone lines, I want to know what this is about," Zalia ordered, "and make sure Yoshi reports from Iremacht's estate, I have a feeling that we might be paying him a surprise visit pretty soon."

-----

Prudoria made his usual whimper noise when he saw Schwitzy, he made sure to stay close to TU and sit so the insurgent was between him and his cousin.

"Wow, that's a lot of stuff," he whistled in amazement, he was about to grab a rib with his bare hands when he paused and shrunk back, "um, maybe I should wait for you guys to go first, I don't want to do anything disrespectful without realizing it."

L:   Iremacht waited for another hour or two. It was rather late in the night. He read up on some Mandarian news while he waited for the phone to ring. If no one contacted him by midnight, he would assume the worst of Zalia and have his security primed around his estate to prevent any ins and outs without his say-so.

He ran a hand across his face. Had he revealed too much? And how much did Zalia know?

-----------

TU immediately dug into the various meats. A server gave him his daily salad bowl, doused in a thick savory sauce. Schwitzy went for the vegetable dishes with elegant motions of her fork and cut some ribs for herself with equally elegant slices of her knife.

"Better grab something before that pig eats it all," she said to Prudoria.

TU winked at Prudoria. "Now, now, cousin, you're not going to fool this man. I have just educated him on what a pig is. And it most definitely doesn't look like me, so you can't trick him with that."

M:   Prudoria snickered at that, "I don't know, you may not be pink but you're starting to look a little plump as I'm watching you, maybe you should slow down before you burst."

Once he felt he had studied enough, he felt ok to start taking some food, with utensils this time. It still took him a while to figure out how to hold his fork and cut with his knife at the same time, he eventually cut his steak down into bite-sized chunks and tried one.

One would not believe how wide one's eyes can get when they've tasted actual food for the first time in their life, let alone a well-seasoned steak. When he got over his initial shock, Prudoria really started tucking into his food, almost eating as fast as TU, though he slowed down a little when he realized that.

-----

Poldara sat in his home office, staring at his phone on the receiver like it was a frightening monster. He and Iremacht have talked before, they haven't lost much contact since the two grew up, heck, they met up once a month for lunch to catch up and remember the good times, but he was nervous about this time.

What could Iremacht possibly want to tell him about his daughter, even though they met up often he hadn't mentioned Adira much to the German, it was a safety precaution since he didn't 100% trust Iremacht.

He knew that if he hesitated longer that it would anger Iremacht, so he slowly picked up the phone and dialed the number Zalia gave him.

"Hello Iremacht," he greeted, he hasn't used Machty's nickname in a long time since he figured he wouldn't like it, "Zalia told me you wanted to talk to me about Adira, before you say anything, I want to know how much you know about her, I've kept quiet about her for a reason so I'm worried about what you have to tell me."

L:   "Poldara," Iremacht greeted. "I was beginning to think Zalia was planning some trouble, but you've finally called. This isn't about Adira, per se, I only told Zalia that to make sure she contacted you. It's more about the people involved with the facility Adira came from." Iremacht chuckled softly. "I have no interest in harming your daughter, Poldara."

He, too, had stopped using nicknames for him. It was much more business-y now that they'd grown up, especially in opposite spheres of the legal system - although Iremacht quite enjoyed their monthly chats. "I just want to know how much you know about the people who are trying to create countryhumans to kill us all and what you're doing about it."

----------

"Pigs," Schwitzy muttered. "All pigs."

When they were done with dinner, Schwitzy cleared the table of dishes while TU wiped it down. Though they had servants, they tried to do simple house chores as often as they had time for. Schwitzy did it because she hated being incompetent and TU was just in a good mood because he'd been fed.

"Alright, you animals," Schwitzy said. "I'm going to my office and then hitting the gym. So don't disturb me or you will become my punching bag."

"Wouldn't dream of it," TU laughed nervously. "Come on, Prudoria. Let's go to our library and teach you about the world. We'll go over some picture books to get you all up to date. You're going to be a changed man when Iremacht gets back."

M:   Prudoria tried to help clean up as best he could, mostly helping carry the dishes into the kitchen. When TU asked him to come to the library he shrugged.

"Sure, I don't have anything better to do, except maybe figure out how to use the bath but that can wait. I actually have this one thing that I've always wanted to know more about; lions, the humans used a book about lions to teach me how to read and I've been fascinated about them since."

-----

Poldara let out a quiet breath of relief when Iremacht didn't want to talk about Adira, though he did find it weird that he wanted to talk about Adira's creators.

"Well, I was there when we found Adira," he started, unsure how much he should tell the entity, "over the past three years we've been studying Mr. Norman's work and trying to locate any other bases and facilities he may have controlled. We managed to find and shut down two other smaller facilities that seemed to just be storage and archive areas, though the records we've obtained mentioned numerous facilities all over the world, as Norman was clearly being thorough in his research."

He paused as he flipped through a few files on his desk, "actually, Zalia has been helping out a lot, she has grown very attached to Adira so she has been doing what she can to help her, not for free of course but her family discounts are nothing to sneeze at. Before I called you she told me that her men had found another facility just four hours ago, it was near the Poland-Mandara border and looked like something destroyed it. There were a few bodies but they were so mutilated that we can't tell what killed them, we can't figure out what they were doing there because everything was ripped to shreds."

Poldara then chuckled before adding, "I'm telling you, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a damn T-rex roaming around the woods right now, that's how bad the damage was."

L:   "That does sound quite disturbing," Iremacht said smoothly. He decided not to mention that there was a facility in Russia, in case Poldara decided to confront Russia about it and make it harder for Iremacht to steal from them later on. "I would have said that I'm surprised you're working with a criminal like Zalia to take down these facilities. But that is also why I'm here. I know you kept all the information you found from Adira's facility. I'm asking if you could share it with me, so I can help take them down on an international scale. I have much broader reach as a full-time entity."

---------------

"Oh good, you can read!" TU said in relief. "I thought I needed to teach you, and I was not looking forward to that. We've got a wildlife section in the library since Schwitzy loves animals so much."

The library was located in the shared section of the mansion. It spanned three floors, with a spiral staircase on one side to connect them all. Rows and rows of carefully organized books lined each floor and opened into a circular area with sofas and tables to read at. Several movable ladders hung on the shelves, ready for use.

"This, my friend, is a library," TU said, spreading his arms to indicate the thousands of books. "Now, I don't actually know where shit is, so we have a trusty librarian for every floor." He approached a desk and asked the human there for the wildlife section.

"Third row, keep going down," TU relayed to Prudoria. "Let's see if you can spot the word 'lion' in this maze."

M:   Prudoria nodded though looked like he wasn't paying attention, he was just awestruck at how many books one room could hold. He walked over to the wildlife section and immediately picked out a book about lions, though a misplaced book about mythical creatures also caught his eye so he took that one too.

He headed right back to the seating area to wait for TU to bring more books and engrossed himself in African wild cats and wondrous beasts of imagination.

———

Poldara hesitated, biting his lip at Iremacht's offer, "full-time CRIMINAL entity, Iremacht. My father is already on my ass for accepting Zalia's help, and Uncle's still pissed about you guys stealing his experimental weapons, he would go ape shit if he found out you were helping. For that matter, I don't even know why you would want to help, I get that these people are out for countryhuman blood, but knowing you, you wouldn't get involved unless there was something to gain."

The line went quiet as Poldara thought about the situation, he then said, "24 hours, give me 24 hours to think about it, I'll call you back when I've made my decision."

 With that, Poldara hung up, rubbing his face as he wondered what he got himself into.