Morgann, quite keen on the fact that the mysterious girl was awestruck by the hat's sudden action, tossed the hat into the air. Magnolia, fearful at the fact that a part of its "body" was being carelessly tossed, let its purple, yellow, and white fists shoot out of the hat and grab onto the magician's head before pulling itself back down and landing with a quiet bump. "Any fan of mine," she began, standing up to reveal her looming stature of about 6'1" while slowly crossing her arms, "should know my schedule by heart." Raising one of her light brown eyebrows, she continued on, "If you want to know when my shows are, I suggest you keep your ears open on the streets." After finishing her statement, she took her gleaming purple wand and shoved it listlessly into her jacket, exhaling slowly. The entire suit seemed to tense at the unknown object before calming down and accepting it.

"Now if you'll excuse me," she grunted, turning away from the girl and heading towards the door, "I think I'd like to take my leave before that bus boy comes running back. I am no longer in the mood to hear his cries of agony and disdain." Morgann definitely thinks she is of a higher standard than most, and living-wise, perhaps. Regarding her narcissistic personality and lack of social etiquette, definitely not. What did it matter for a stellar performer like herself? Everyone just wanted to see some magic.

It definitely did matter, though, considering she was a fairly big player in the field of magic and trickery. Her father would definitely be appalled at her mischievous behavior. The thought of her father led to thinking about the past and left Morgann slightly melancholic, recalling every malicious prank she'd played on her classmates and friends. "How the hell did I get from there to some big-shot magician role?" she wondered, snapping her fingers several times in a prompt manner to conjure up her mask as it landed in the palm of her hand. "Oh, right," she replied to her previous question, gently placing it on her face as if she was crowning herself, "I obliterated that entire school. I guess that's where this started." Hands in her pockets, the magician set off to simply wander the streets for an hour, and afterwards, she would head back to the circus.

Forty minutes was a long time to be on the run from anyone, even with four extra skeletal arms that never got tired as support. The girl's feet hurt so abominably that she could feel the beats of her heart pumping blood through them, and her every breath tore through her throat. A while back she had thrown out the idea of taking on Grumm in a fair fight. It wasn't that she couldn't win, no—simply that she had never been very good at tackling her problems head-on. Town bully got her down? Fester with resentment. Envious of older sister? Plant bones among her things to get her ousted as a witch. Infested with the parasite Thanatos, siphoning the emotions of her and those around her in exchange for freakish abilities? Let it happen. It was all that easy.

Breathing, though...breathing came hard now. Belle Osburn stumbled a few more steps and fell into a bench, half sitting and half sprawling. Thanatos had wisely retracted the arms -his 'fingers'- into her back now, hidden beneath her blue hoodie. The bench sat on the edge of a walkway along the edge of New Meridian's resident bay. There were not many people around, but those who saw her recognized the look of someone being hunted, and hurried on their way. Who was doing the hunting mattered not. As she panted, Belle stared at the water, glinting with the day's sun in places, obscured by the long shadows of the city's highrises in others. She wondered how it would feel to allow the water to swallow her up. “A nice swim...” she rasped, thinking of how cool it would feel.

Thoughts like those are unbecoming of a young lady.

Belle buried her face in her hands. She loathed her parasite, and didn't mince her words about him, but he didn't seem to care. Thanatos was a proud and quiet being; he only spoke when he was in danger or to make sure that Belle was doing his will, and even then nobody but his host could hear him. Since he thrived on human emotions, he required her to seek people out near death and be present at their departure, for no event but death could hold more feeling. The hatred, the sorrow, the loss, the insanity, and even the feelings that came afterward were savory to him. Naturally, Belle had seen a lot, but even still, she was hesitant to meet her own end at the hands of some gruesome ghoul. Water would be a much kinder fate.

If you were to drown yourself, I would put you into a coma to sustain yourself. Your dreams would keep me alive until I could escape, but until then it would be very unpleasant for both of us.

A surge of anger and hatred caused Belle to scream into her hands. “Wouldn't being hacked to bits by an axe and thrown in the sewers be more unpleasant!? Tell me how to beat him!”

Now, the illustrious 'Hand of Death' was silent. No doubt he wanted her to figure out her own earthly problems and build character. The injustice of it all made the water seem all the more appetizing.

A few moments later, he appeared. Grumm lurched onto the scene from between two buildings. He was every inch a horror meant to creep in the shadows, but he didn't seem to have any hesitation when it came to stepping out into the open. His own breath was thick and wet, dripping bile from a brazen mouthplate to sizzle on the marble tiles. Leaning upon his axe at intervals, he approached.

From the bay there came a noise like a wave crashing. Over the edge of the walkway came something very new and unexpected, and she did a flip as she landed on the ground. Her skin was very tan, her wet hair a dark blonde, and her garb decidedly piratical. Interestingly, she also had a mouthpiece, though this one seemed more like something a soldier would wear, rather than a science experiment. She also wore elaborate knee-high boots that appeared to be made of wood.

With no further delay, the woman threw a sidekick Grumm's way, and a blast of water erupted from her boot and smashed into him, sending him tumbling away with a snarl. She quickly turned to Belle, who wore a nonplussed expression. “Sorry for ya, hon,” she declared in a flighty cockney accent. “This poor monster's gonna be after ya fer a while. I'll 'old 'im fer the nonce, you get lost. 'E's got it in fer folks wit parasites.” Though he was having some trouble, Grumm had pulled himself to his feet and was advancing on the ladies once again. “If I die before I can fix 'im one way or another, remember that Caitlin Halte did you right. Now, off you go.”

A clockwork tentacle latched onto Halte's boot and pulled her off her feet. She did not seem unduly bothered by it. “Run!” She advised as she was dragged toward Grumm.

Slow and exhausted, Belle ran.

"No," Ash responds, simply enough "We might dump him in a dumpster and go flower shopping." she continues with a dreamy smile, already hoisting Liam over her shoulder. Ash turns around, and scans the crowd for Gale, until she finds her feral companion standing in front of a tall man in a onyx tuxedo, how strange. Ash begins to walk forward, but pauses when she senses Rorschach's attention shifting from that Jane girl, to a little girl standing at the large man's feet 'What is that?' Ash asks Rorschach, who says nothing. Nervously, Ash tip toes through the crowd, until she's standing behind Gale, looking down at the trio, as disgruntled Ferals and Dagonians press past the trio "Come on Gale, we're going to dump our Egret friends in a dumpster somewhere in the Meridian, then get more flowers!"

After walking around for hours now, Morgann's heels were killing her. It was not a good idea to go out for a stroll in these golden stilettos, but there weren't any other shoes that would quite match the entire outfit, and she always wore at least some part of Magnolia. Not only were all of her weapons in there, but her wallet, her money, and all kinds of goodies. It was easier having all of the necessities conveniently stored within your suit's never-ending "body", and that was exactly how she liked it. In past incidents, those who had attempted to mug Morgann and threaten her through physical contact found their bodies full of either holes for her tommy gun or wound up as a snack for the suit. She had no problem with causing physical harm to thieves or, to be honest, anyone that even looked at her wrong. She simply didn't.

As she waltzed herself closer and closer to the circus, she also became closer to the country's coast. Walking along the bay and adjusting her mask each time the wind moved it even an inch, she noticed a commotion going on a far distance away from her. It was quite a scene to take in form such a long ways away, and to be honest, she wasn't quite keen on what was going on. "What the hell?" she breathed through clenched teeth, shoving her hand into her coat and pulling a pair of opera glasses from within her coat. After fiddling with its burgundy handle for a few moments, she finally had it adjusted so that it would lock in place and took a look. It looked like some sort of ginormous figure holding up another...pedestrian, she was assuming, and to top it off, some other girl was running away. "Now why would she be running away?" the magician wondered while tossing the tool back into the coat, tapping on her chin as she thought of the possibilities. She narrowed her leafy green eyes as she stared out through the mask's white fabric before thinking, "No one runs like that unless they've got something to hide..." Her attention shifted from the fleeing passerby to the woman being held upside down. "But damn, no one gets held up by some big lug like that for no reason, either."

"Hold on tight," she murmured to her hat, whose multiple hands held onto her light brown hair from the inside. "From now on, I wear some sort of flats when I go out," she growled, dashing as fast as she could in these heels that she could towards the situation. Skidding to an abrupt halt, she stared up at what seemed to be a man who was a few inches shorter than her. She looked at his black cloak that covered him to the axe in one of his hands, grimacing. "What drab attire," she thought in a disgusted tone, clearing her throat loudly. "Excuse me," she announced loudly, tapping her shoe's tip against the ground. "What are you doing to this woman?"



Turning his attention from Pharona to Ash, Brandy nodded and relinquished Gale's body back into its rightful owner's control, her entire body shuddering visibly from the abrupt transition. "Just going to toss him into a dumpster?" she whispered to her roommate, scuttling back up her tall form to rest on her shoulder. "Are you sure that this is the right thing?" she asked, before shaking her head, "No, you're right. The bosses wouldn't like us throwing this trash at their feet." Curling up on the Gigan's shoulder, she yawned and stretched her small wings before uttering a small, "Let's go."

Upset that some random stranger had dared to break the normal order and intrude upon his doings, Grumm whirled around. The clockwork arm flashed by, easily forty pounds of solid metal thrown in a vigorous slap that could have dislocated Morgann's jaw had it connected. Fortunately, the savage blow fell short, and when he saw that it had, Grumm spewed forth a spray of bile that created a miniature miasma between the monster and the magician. While he didn't speak, punctuating his attack with an angry sputtering noise instead, the message was clear: back off.

Grumm then turned away, with no reason to believe that a simple civilian would persist in the suicidal act of provoking an undead armed with a Living Weapon. A flick of the mechanical tentacle whose maw was holding Halte aloft flung the former pirate in the ghoul's direction. With practiced efficiency not completely offset by the sorry state of his body, Grumm brought his axe up in a cruel diagonal arc meant to cleave the incoming Halte in two. At the last moment, however, Halte brought her boots around so that they were facing Grumm, and from their soles twin blasts of water gushed forth. They splashed against Grumm's face, disorienting the creature and slowing down Halte's fall enough to avoid the headsman's weapon completely. Immediately after, Halte landed with both feet planting on Grumm's face, causing him to grumble in protest. Before he could grab her, however, Halte kicked off, flipping through the air to land twenty feet away in a spray of mist.

The next second, Grumm leaped into the air, hissing like a sick cat. More noxious bile spewed from his face as he sailed toward his target. Halte steadied herself before raising a leg and slamming her boot into the ground, causing a jet of water to erupt from the marble beneath Grumm as he landed a yard away from her. Beneath her mouthpiece, Halte smiled grimly, only to cry out in pain as her foe dealt her a crushing hydraulic punch. She staggered away and collapsed to the ground, holding her stomach as if her guts had been liquified, her vehement curses lost in a wave of furious static from her mouthpiece. Though sopping wet and even more flustered than normal, Grumm had executed his Rot Wrecker without more than a split-second's delay. Only a few seconds had passed, but it already seemed that the duel had been decided.

Pharona smiled brightly as Brandy took the coat, even though Angus could see the hesitation when he took it, the large man always wanted to help people even if they did not really want it. Angus kept his gaze upon the downed Egret solider, feeling like these people did not really have to put so much pain upon the Egret and so much ridicule. However, Pharona on the other hand was having quite the time of her little life as she had managed to meet up with several parasites, but one of them had even offered for the two to come with them on their adventure! This made her feel all warm inside and quickly asked permission for Angus to see if they could actually go with the two. "Angus! Brandy just asked us to come with them! Can we please go with them! I want to just continue this amazing day!"

"Well, even if I said no. I bet you would ignore me anyone and follow them," mumbled Angus within his own head which only hurt Pharona as she did actually respect and care for him... Most of the time.

"Hey, I think your opinion still matters, and if you don't want to go, we don't have to. I think I have had enough exposure to Brandy to have this day as pretty successful." Angus smiled slightly at the thought of leaving these strange people and going back to their daily lives, but he could not abandon this victim to these parasites and he must follow them to see if they don't merciless murder him or something similar in that manner.

"No, we can go with these people. I just need to keep a watchful eye upon the solider, and I hope that you will understand if they try to further hurt this man. I will have to intervene." Pharona thought about the proposition and nodded to it, she knew that these people were good and wouldn't murder someone. Even if they have different beliefs than them. The little parasite girl used the massive arm to tap the shoulder of the the curled up Gale and started to say something, "I think we would be delighted to join you and the merry entourage of strangers! Also, if you were wondering, my name is Pharona!"

She simply smiled as Morgann left the building. It's all going well. With luck she could just infiltrate the circus or whatever and make off with whatever she had. Old school burglary on some circus hicks none of the authorities would really care about.

"Miss, your food has arrived." A waiter covered with bandages came and placed several platters of food on her table.

"THANK YOU KIND MEAT MAN!"

Juno froze at Marionette's voice, wondering if the waiter would freak out and sic the cuffers on her. To her surprise, he just nodded and gave a strained smile before leaving. Guess after what happened with the magician, he simply decided to stay low and do whatever it takes to not meet another piranha.

Shrugging, she started on her meal, shoveling food into her mouth as fast as she could. Tomorrow would be a great day.

"Gross," Morgann grimaced, hesitant to even breathe after the spray of bile had dissipated. What if it smelled bad? Would it even matter? She was around elephants and Goddess knows what at the circus, so perhaps she shouldn't be such a girl about the possibility of an undesirable scent. After a few moments, she inhaled slowly before letting the cool breath escape her lips once more, relieved that the bile left no scent. She pulled her wand out of her coat, readying herself for the chance that the creature might attack.

Realizing she wasn't going to get an answer nor was the tall figure going to pursue her, Morgann watched helplessly as the woman was attacked before shoving her wand back into her suit, dashing over, and holding her arms out, staring directly up at the attacker. "I'm not going to move until I receive some sort of explanation," she explained slowly through her clenched pearly whites, "as to why you are attacking this woman." She swung one of her gloved hands around to hold up over her face, partially to get his attention and partially to not stare at his face. "As far as you know, I am an innocent bystander who merely works at the circus," she went on, narrowing her eyes through the mask's white film, "so I could damn well put you out of business if you laid a hand on me. You think I'm bluffing, you can take it up with my boss after you crush my face or completely dislocate my jawbone."



Gale listened from her tall roommate's shoulder to the conversation that the parasite was having with her host. From what she remembers, Brandy had told her at some point that the parasite was named Pharona and the host Angus, but she wasn't quite sure. During the period that Brandy maintained control, memories and conversations seemed to blur together to her, and she didn't particularly care to recall, to be honest. Her parasite had truly heard and experienced plenty that she was not eager to remember, and she was just fine with that. After hearing the parasite confirm her thoughts, she nodded sleepily and flicked her ears before closing her eyes again. "Pharona's voice is so chipper though," she thought sadly, "I actually like hearing it. Too bad I can't see what she or anyone else look like."

"Oh wait," she murmured, sitting up and reaching into one of her boots to grab her bandana. As she delicately wrapped it around her head, she began to address Angus's worries. "We will not harm the two soldiers," she spoke in a somber tone, proceeding to pull a couple of black rubber bands out of her shoe and pulling her spiky, unruly locks into two pigtails. "The mafia does not care for such petty crimes that we have committed, such as the one here today," she explained, moving closer so that she could curl up in the crook of Ash's neck, "they only care for the critical hits that we are ordered to take out. Believe me when I say that Ash has already intervened, so I do not think you will have to do so." Gale tucked her knees up against her chest and curled up in the gigantic jacket that Angus had given her, enjoying the warmth and protection from the wind that it provided. Goddess, it was getting chilly. "If you're so cold all the time, why don't you wear an actual coat instead of this stupid down vest?!" Brandy roared from within the depths of her mind, and though she winced, she did not say anything about how loud his static voice was. "Brandy," she began silently, her thin eyebrows furrowing together, "shut your mouth."

Brandy remained silent for a few moments before responding, "Gale, your mouth is my mouth, remember?" Groaning quietly, she clawed at the sides of her head before deciding it wasn't worth arguing over.

"Alright, we're heading out!"
Ash walks forward, step by long step she navigates the twists and turns of Little Innsmouth, passing by sunken boulevards and overly complex compounds of shacks stacked in uneven piles amongst one another. Ferals and Dagonians pass in droves, making the trip a lengthly venture to the train station to Meridian. On the way Ash has to stop several times, so that she can spot a gap in the crowd to set her foot, or for the crowd to just part to make a path for her. "Is Brandy okay there?" Ash asks Gale as they approach the train station "You guys sound like you're having an argument" Ash adds with a worried smile.
Once the small group is there, it's just a matter of waiting in the deeply congested line to the one ticket booth, surrounded by impatient citizens of Little Innsmouth. "Please be patient." the lone Dagonian pleads, handing out tickets as soon as he's handed loose coins, or change, but the people receiving them are blocked by a pair of large men donning all too familiar gas masks. What would be causing such a horrid back up?

Elsewhere

On the fifth train car (out of twenty) sits a tank, two to be exact, both of which are tied down to their respective car, the pair of armored behemoths appear to be factory new, with barely a thin coat of olive paint to cover the red steel underneath. On top of the car in front of the vehicular dreadnoughts sits a lone, bored Egret smoking a cigarette, letting his gray helmet rest beside him. "By the goddess, where are our Parasitic scum?" he asks himself impatiently, putting out the cigarette on his armored thigh. "Captain, we're holding up service here..." one of his eight guards say nervously, watching the pair of soldiers the Honorable Captain had dispatched at the entrance to the station not ten minutes ago struggle against the mounting crowd. The Captain shrugs, his vaguely blue eyes scanning the crowd outside "Let them in, I think there will be at least one rat for us in there. Hopefully that anonymous tip holds true."

Faced with Morgann, the monster hesitated. From beneath the mire of rage and confusion bubbled up a shred of Grumm's human consciousness, which busied itself thinking about the situation. The inside of Grumm's head began to pound; rational thought, already so hard to dredge up, hurt worse than a sledgehammer to the cranium. It was so much easier to let go, to let the mind slip away beneath that murky bog of beastliness. Yet, whenever that human side did arise, it asserted that at the very least it was supposed to persevere. Human nature was supposed to be indomitable—all the stories said so. When bombarded by that pain, however, that strain of holding together focus, justifications came easily. No being could have withstood that agony enough to stay sane.

So naturally, Grumm hesitated only a moment, but it was enough to draw a conclusion. In his experience, no normal human, even armed ones, would dare to so boldly interpose herself between a hunter and its prey. That could only mean that the masked woman that stood before him, arms raised in a gesture of placation, was extraordinary. Her words bounced dimly around inside his skull. All he could really gather was that she thought that attacking her would be a mistake on his part. A snorting, ugly laugh escaped the wreckage that was his mouth, rattling through the metal guard that covered it: ”Hagh. This individual was keeping him from bringing to justice the water-wielding woman with whom he had a personal quarrel. Halte had been seeking him out lately. He had no clue why, but she seemed determined to keep him from capturing and/or killing his targets. Annoyingly enough, it was working, and that made Halte his dire foe. Anyone who attempted to keep him from his revenge was just as guilty. Besides, Morgann had a strange smell on her. The same aroma wafted from each of the parasites he hunted, slightly different for each, but all still identifiable.

Grumm grunted and raised his axe for an overhead chop, bringing it down with enough force to cleave bone if Morgann allowed it to hit her.

Liam was the first of the two Black Egrets to gain consciousness. He turned towards Scott, after rising off the ground, and shook him awake afterwards. "Whu- what happened? Did we win?" Scott said after lifting his head off the ground.

"No. I think we got our asses handed to us," Liam replied.

"Urg, come on man. How could we have lost? They were frickin' kids."

"Well, in our defense, they had parasites. And they outnumbered us."

Scott rose off the ground and brushed the dirt and grime off his uniform. "Hey, wait a minute. You called for backup didn't you? Where is everyone?"

Liam rubbed the back of his head as he thought back to right before he had the snot beaten out of him. "Yeah, I didn't finish the call, but they should have still arrived with the information I was able to give." Liam bent down to pick up some of the pieces of his shattered radio. "Oh," was his only response to his discovery.

"What? What's 'oh'?" Scott asked.

"Um, nothing. Just, uh, I might not have had the radio on," Liam replied.

"What!?"

Liam held up the piece of the radio that had previously been the 'on and off' switch, only for it to be set in the 'off' position. "Exactly what I said, man."

"Are you kidding me? You're saying, that had we run into an even more dangerous opponent, we would never had received support, because you forgot to turn the radio on?" Scott than slapped the back of Liam's head. "Idiot."

"Hey, I was trying to save batteries. So, uh, what do we do now?" Liam asked, rubbing the back of his head again now that Scott had made the pain return to that part of his body.

"No one back at base knows this happened. Let's keep it that way. I'd rather be chewed out for arriving at base late for duty, than be absolutely ridiculed for being beaten by kids," Scott replied.

"Alright. Let's head back now than. I want to get this over with as soon as possible."

Jane nodded with interest as Ash responded to her question. So the operation was pretty informal, just dumping unconcious bodies off at a dumpster. Jane also took interest in the fact that they would be grabbing flowers after that. So, one of the two sisters was into botany, it seemed. Jane thought it a bit unfit for two mobsters to be into pretty posies, but she wouldn't judge them too harshly. Before Jane could question which one of them enjoyed flowers, or if they both did equally, Ash hoisted BE#2 over her shoulder and looked, presumably for Gale. Jane stayed silent and followed behind, quickly forgetting about the question she was going to pose to the both of them.

Jane simply watched as the team grouped back up to go into New Meridian. It seemed the group had 2 new additions, the little girl Pharona and her father(?). They expressed concerns for the Egrets' health, and Gale said some interesting things in retort. It wasn't that the mafia was informal, simply that they didn't care about such small crimes. That was... odd. Did they really hold that much clout? It seemed time would tell, as long as Jane lived to see the tale unfold.

And with a reassuring cheerful shout from Ash, they were off. Jane didn't bother finding her pair of gloves. She was already part of this mob of odd and unruly characters, dragging a body, why bother hiding her parasite? Besides, she said she'd allow him some breath on the walk home. Might as well give him some extra time, right? He was the reason she could fight again, she should definitely treat him right. Once they reached the station, she was surprised there was such a clog up. After a highly focused search, she noticed what seemed to be a gas mask. Were those damn Egrets here too? Hm... she did remember one of the idiots calling for back up. It was a possibility that these were the people called.

With an impatient huff, Jane turned to Ash and Gale. "Ugh. Do you see who's up front? Those freaking Egrets, again! It's like it's their job is to annoy the populace." Jane complained, angrily glaring at the two soldiers. She cracked her knuckles menacingly. "We should take care of them. You guys that kind of immunity, right? We can-" Jane wrapped finger quotes around this part, "Get rid of", now putting her hands back down, "Temporarily. We got rid of those other two guys, right? Or is that kind of a limited use privilege?" Jane asked. "I mean, I'm gonna get noticed anyways, might as well start the fight now." "Will you not get into a fight for one second...?" Franky chided, a little to soft to be heard over the crowd.

"Stop restraining me Dontores!" Nuul shouted as he struggled underneath Dontore's weight, "We must pursue those people!"

"No we don't." He replied in a flat tone, "And I want my food."

They were making quite the scene, being in the middle of the cafe and all. He was lying on his left side, pinning it to the ground with the right side of his body, and he also had a table on top of him to keep Nuul down.

"It'll be done soon." He said.

"And they will be gone soon!" Nuul argued.

"Do I look like I care?" He replied.

"Come now Dontores! They're the most interesting people I've ever seen in centuries!" Nuul pleaded,

"We're not going without my food." Dontores said, "I paid money for that, you know."

"Why are you so difficult!" Nuul seethed, "And you agreed so readily to giving me half your body!"

"I only do what I want." He said, "And back then I wanted power."

Nuul fell silent, conceding the point.

"Right now I want food, and I'm still your master," He said flatly, "You cannot deny me."

"Hmph. Fine." Nuul said, ceasing his struggles. Dontores still stayed under the table, however, as he knew Nuul would probably take the first chance he got to run away with his body. Still, it was slightly uncomfortable.

"Hm." He said, shifting himself to a more comfortable position, "This'll do I suppose."

Morgann's nose wrinkled at the ugly laughter only to find that her opponent was bringing his axe down to attack her. She tried to move her arm out of the way only to be a few seconds too late, the sharp blade nicking her arm and slicing open Magnolia just a tiny bit. The suit let out an immediate screech and almost ejected Morgann out of it as it frantically began to heal the spot in which it had been sliced. The magician waited a few seconds for the suit to calm down as she held its soft fabric against her, trying to put an end to its fit. Once the suit had shown signs of being just fine, she exhaled heavily and looked up at the creature. "No use in hiding this shit now," she growled, pulling a tommy gun out of her suit and pointing it up at him, "Damn thing is so lucky it can regenerate. I can't do jack but bleed out for a bit."

Tilting her head upwards, she questioned, "So you're going to ahead with it, eh?" She buttoned her suit's jacket before taking a few steps back, continuing, "Not even going to give me a reason, huh?" She stood still for a second and tapped the small barrel of the gun against the side of her face, "Well, for all I know, you can't even understand what I'm saying," she muttered, giving her statement a brief nod. "Yes, yes, seems reasonable." She held the tommy gun up as she did earlier, narrowing her eyes just a tad. "Then I suppose we can fight over it, yeah."



"Brandy and I are arguing, yes," Gale replied dully, ignoring the parasite's frantic shouting inside of her mind. "Hush up now," she responded silently, closing her eyes and yawning quietly. The parasite remained silent afterwards and Gale faced forward as the strange-looking trio of her, Jane, and Ash stood in the line. "Men with gas masks?" she thought in a suspicious tone, wrapping her ebony wings around her shoulders, "Why on earth are they here?" She crouched now and balanced on the tips of her toes to raise herself above the noise of everything else, but her effort was futile due to the volume of the crowd.

She stared down at Jane and sighed in a slightly irritated manner. The sigh was not aimed at her friend, but at the men who she supposed were Renoir's forces. "As much as I'd love to tear through them," she responded softly, turning her attention to rest directly on Jane, "I drew too much attention to all of us." Her bat ears twitched as she listened to the staggeringly loud conversations of the people around her. She continued on, "If these people learn who we are exactly, we could have our heads on plates. The Medicis definitely wouldn't be happy." She now began to stand on her own on top of Ash's shoulder, clenching her teeth. "I just want to get this over with now, it's not even mildly amusing anymore," she whispered icily, flapping her ebony wings as a sign of how impatient she was becoming.

"Well." Ash starts, already back pedaling down the stairs "I have an idea, remember that hole in the train yard fence we would always climb through when we were younger, Gale? We could sneak into the caboose through there." Ash explains. She motions down the street with faux casualty, which has now devolved from a neatly brick layed street, into a winding gravel road inhabited by dying tufts of grass. The path is flanked on both sides by skyward facing sheets of rusted scrap metal lined with lead pipes, the neatly lined rows routinely gushing some kind of liquid at their hastily bolted seams. The right most wall of the gravel trail actually sits embedded in the bottom of a steep incline that leads up to a chain link fence; which glistens in the distant sun. Fourty-five meters down the trail, a gaping hole is visible in a section of fence that appears much more rustic than its newly replaced companions down the line. "That, or we could try and ferry downstream, but I'm not a big fan of riding boats." Ash adds as her final suggestion. "What do you guys think?"

Within the confines of the train station, the Egret Officer from earlier stands on a cement platform which extends eight cars down the already long line of navy blue train cars. Under the shade of an impromptu tent that sits on the fringe of the train platform the Egret lights another cigarette, carrying a rifle in one hand "I want at least one soldier in every civilian car, and three on my tanks. I don't expect us to come home empty handed." he says lowly, holding an ornate radio receiver to his mouth.

Though well acquainted with the idea that death held no sway over him, Grumm had been on the business end of enough high-end gun barrels to recognize -and even respect, is a primitive way- their stopping power. As such, when Morgann leveled her tommygun at the ghoul's head, he flinched and instinctively moved his clockwork arm to cover up his face. When the magician spat words instead of bullets, however, Grumm's hesitation rapidly waned.

No sooner had she finished speaking than Grumm, understanding more intimately her defiant tone rather than her diction, snarled out his own challenge. All together, the tentacles pistoned from his belly and into the ground. Their brief but furious downward trip sent them into the walkway at high speed, and when the construction didn't give, the force propelled Grumm into the air. Ragged cloak fluttering in the bayside breeze and axe poised above his head, the ghoul began to fall, bringing down his weapon like a guillotine.

Fortunately for the magician, the steps Grumm had taken to move out of immediate firing range also put him in a precarious position. Throughout all of his many fights, the least-occupied position Grumm typically forsook was airborne, and it was a telling flaw. Halfway through his descend, the ghoul's momentum caught up with him, and he began to spin sideways. While his course remained firmly fixed on Morgann, the blade of his axe now swung almost horizontally, so all that she would feasibly be dealing with would be him landing on her—though that, certainly, wasn't a tempting option in itself.

Several meters away, Caitlin Halte pushed herself to her feet. Her hat lay, somewhat crushed and very waterlogged, on the ground beside her, but for now she disregarded it. “Aim for his heart,” she called, “The x-shaped scar on his chest!”

Morgann stared up at her new opponent and then raised an eyebrow out of pure confusion as he suddenly took to the air, growing a tad more panicked as he began to descend awkwardly upon her. Though his aim was becoming a bit inaccurate as he fell, she was still sure that being crushed by a giant was not a pleasant feeling, and she certainly did not want to die that way. She tightened her grip on the tommy gun and pointed it up at him, poising her index finger over the black triggered, and began to consider her options. "If I miss while his position keeps changing, he'll flatten me like a flapjack," she thought frantically, gritting her teeth, "but if I just sit here and do nothing, then I'll die either way. What if bullets don't even affect him?" She adjusted the brim of her royal purple hat as she stared up at him with her wide green eyes, unsure of what exactly she needed to do.

Her train of thought was broken at the girl's voice who had previously been fighting him. Aim for the...scar? "Scar," Morgann said to herself, staring up and realizing where exactly said scar was located. "The heart!" she hissed, tensing slightly. "It's over his heart, really? Wait...why is there a scar there?" Was it just a coincidence that a scar happened to be right there? Why would it be right there, was this guy even truly alive? Realizing her time to make a choice was growing short, she gripped the gun in both hands and tightly shut one eye, her attention directed exactly to the area that the girl mentioned. Raising the tommy gun up with both of her hands, she pulled the trigger and watched as the rounds came in short, swift blips. "I'll take my chances," she whispered to herself, aiming the gun so that the bullets either hit him or the scar. "I just don't fancy dying by having every bone in my body broken."



The bat feral slid down Ash's arm as if it was a mere slide to her and landed on the ground, flapping her weak wings. "Would you even fit on said ferry?" Gale questioned, turning her head to face Ash. She pulled her thumb to her mouth and began to chew on the nail, wincing slightly as her sharp fangs nearly pierced her skin. "The problem is," she began in a soft tone, tilting her head to one side, "if the soldiers see us. They might think it's awfully suspicious that civilians are just crawling through a fence for no reason." She took her thumb away from her teeth's range to resist biting at it and sighed quietly, torn between their choices. "Fighting is not an option now," she stated, flicking her ears as she struggled to focus her senses on the voices of her friends. "There's so much noise," she thought, running one of her small hands through her unruly hair, frustrated that it had become so unkempt. "When we get home, I swear, I'm going to fix this mess of a pompadour." She kept her head low, her shoulders hunching back slightly. "If we ever get home."

She turned back to look at Ash, Jenny, and Angus with little Pharona, nodding her head confidently and placing her fists on her hips. "Through the hole we go," she declared in that light voice of hers, stamping her feet to get a bit of her excitement out. If they were going to appear at least normal, she couldn't be so jittery. Weren't these guys trained to know when someone's lying or whatever? She hoped they weren't seriously that bright. She scuttled back up her roommate's body to sit on top of her head and curled up in the snowy white hair, staring off at the hole in the fence. "If we can get out of here," she began slowly, letting her heavy eyelids close over her eyes, "I'll let you buy all the flowers you want."