The person Aya happens to stop and ask is a passing cop, who had just been chatting with some of the construction workers on this site. It's easy to figure from that question that Aya is either from very far out of town or a new Hero. Either way, it's not easy news to deliver.

"Oh, uh. Well, we've had some problems with the Empire. They've attacked us 'n our allied cities. Ain't been easy, but we've managed to drive 'em off so far. Things've been going pretty well on the clean up efforts, but we still gotta ways to go."