>>6107982With all the spells at your disposal, making it back to the human city feels so, SO much easier. Shortcut, your increased pocket space, and of course, the extra mana you get from Table. It makes you realize how far you've come, the idea of taking years to learning a half-assed version of the Lighten rune feel so far away from you now, even if it wasn't that long ago. When you see the vague shape of the human city in the distance, you're hit by a weird sense of nostalgia. You pick up the pace and walk faster. Table shares your enthusiasm, but she still stays behind you, just in case some human gets suspicious of her. You can see the hotel on the left side of the walls, it's connected to the city, but from what you heard, it's actually just as hard to go from the hotel to the city as it is to get past the gate. The hotel isn't exactly pretty too look at from the outside, it's a big square chunk of metal with a reinforced door that might be even tougher than the one you had in the vault. There are multiple ways of entering it, you may have an ID, use your fingerprint, or knock and hope for the best, the latter rarely ever works unless you're someone very important. In your case, you still have your old human ID, and your finger is still intact, so you can use both.
The door doesn't open yet though. Even though she's a forgotten, thermals can still detect her presence, and it's those people's job to make sure nothing weird gets through. You explain to them the situation, and that she's with you, but then they ask you why she should be let in the first place, and you have this feeling saying 'she's my girlfriend' won't fly. After more arguing over the intercom, they say they'll discuss it with someone from the anti-magic division. After an hour of silence, they finally let you in, but say you'll need to talk to someone first with Table staying in the waiting room in the meantime.
They lead you to an office where- oh for fuck sake.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" A woman in a heavy mechanical suit says, with only her helmet missing. Claire, your childhood 'friend'. Even after all those years, it's not hard to recognize her. "Don't look at me like that, I'm not here to argue, the opposite, in fact. I'll tell you outright, your laptop? Bugged. Your phone? Bugged also. Your gun? Same thing. Every gene locked tech you have we used to spy on you."
You're not surprised, but that doesn't make this breach of privacy any less bad. Thankfully, you left your laptop, phone and gun in your pocket space most of the time, and you don't think you've mentioned the vault while they were out... you think? You sure hope not, Nina made clear she didn't want you to let humans know about it. "So? I didn't do anything that I wasn't told to do. And if I did, you wouldn't have let me inside, right? Or did you just come here to gloat?"
