For a moment, time seemed to freeze as Fortune felt as if he was watching the scene before him as if he was a different person, witnessing events while two different realities presented to him that were offering him two different paths upon which he could tread. The first saw him standing upright, his chest plate coated in the spiky metal that was the sign of the arrow making contact with it but clearly perfectly fine. The other saw he kneeling on the ground, fighting the urge to clutch at his arm as the liquid metal washed over it like a crawling tide with what appeared to be nothing but pure agony radiating off of his body. The only difference that he could see between the two... was where some of the splinters from the crossbow bolt had flown. Both paths were valid and could exist independently of each other...

With grim resolve, Fortune made his decision before the frozen moment of time finally came to an end.

.........................................................................

The impact of the bolt against his armor was thankfully little more then a glancing hit then striking him dead center; The design of his armor and the angle that the bolt itself had hit had helped deflect it away. The shattering of the tip however rang clearly through the air as Fortune allowed a moment of panic to seize him as the shards went flying while fate and luck battled over the course of the future. The awful keening, shearing sound of metal being rent filled the air as some of the shards started to spread its dangerously magical payload across his breastplate but failed to properly breach it.

The good fortune ended there. As several shards splattered against his left hand, Fortune tried to reach over and unbuckle it and pull it free before the metal had the chance to properly spread... but was forced to pull his right hand away or risk it being covered as well since the metal had simply engulfed his gauntlet to quickly to have even had a chance to undo the buckles, let along pull it free. He quickly lost the ability to move his fingers or even flex his hand as the metal locked it into position... and then his vision turned white as it seeped through and made contact with his skin, all other senses over ridden as pure agony hammered its painful nails into his brain as Fortune discovered the hard way what it felt like to have molten metal poured over your hand and lower arm.

As he fell to his knees his mouth was opened in a soundless scream, the sheer pain more then enough to choke whatever cry he might have filled the air with. He didn't know how anyone else would respond to his pain as it was too much for him, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he collapsed forwards as the blissful blackness of unconsciousness claimed him.

..................................................................................

Fortune blinked as he watched the splintered shards of the head of the crossbow bolt miss his left gauntlet by inches, landing harmlessly against the ground. For a moment he couldn't help but shiver, his right hand grasping and running over his left as a phantom pain the likes of which he had never felt before (even when his body was being ravaged by plague) caused him to twitch his left hand out of reflex. He didn't know why... but he suspected that he had just narrowly avoided a very nasty fate and he had to thank the... Damsel for it. Witch didn't seem to suit her anyway.

Glancing over to the girl that he had just risked his life to save, he quickly noticed two things; The first was that some of the splinters had still managed to find their target, but it was only a limited number and the issue of the spikes that the metal seemed to create when it had coated something enough was taken care of by the woman (he didn't know her name) pulling her shirt away from her skin enough that the spikes didn't make contact with her. The second was that she was really cute...

Shaking his head as he fought down the sudden blush that threatened to burn his cheeks, he softly and nervously asked "A-are you alright?" before remembering the situation that they were in. Sheer rage overcame Fortune as he turned to glare at the two 'knights' that had made an attempt on the Damsel's life, a growl escaping his throat as he demanded with surprising conviction "STAND DOWN NOW BEFORE YOU DISGRACE YOURSELVES AND YOUR MASTER FURTHER WITH YOUR DISGRACEFUL, COWARDLY AND THUGGISH BEHAVIOR FURTHER!"

Taking a deep breath, he quickly followed up at a somewhat more softer yell "These 'extra's' are with me. If you dare try to attack them again, I will end your disgraces on all bretonnian knighthood myself. Is that understood?!"

From but a few feet away the knight would find a sudden gout of pure, blinding pain hitting her visor. Were she to swing unseeing at Donny, she'd find that he was no longer occupying the space he had been in. Ghost-like, conservative, his presence was suddenly behind her, his illegally strong stun gun thrusting into the small of her back and boasting a kick badder than an apartment wall socket.

@Doc Doctor
The stun gun snapped and crackled menacingly for all of half a second before it emitted a distinctive popping noise, sparked excitably, and then died in his hand. Hiecro had thrown down her pavise - which fell over only to slowly pinwheel end-over-end as it drifted off through the air - and was busy wiping down her visor with her freed hand without much success, shouting threats and promises of eunuchdom all the while, appearing completely oblivious to Donny's attempted electrocution. She swiped blindly at the air with her crossbow's bayonet ineffectually, overbalancing herself in the process and falling flat on her rear beside Donny with a loud clacking noise - almost like plastic, but the armor seemed to be metallic. At least, it seemed until Donny got a closer inspection and saw flecks in the polished finish of the armor and determined that it was merely painted to look like metal. In truth it seemed to have been made from some kind of ceramic or plastic.

Amelie couldn’t do much, but at least neutralize one opponent. If she managed to catch him, she’d search with her legs to see if she could recover the submachine-gun she had put down earlier, not letting go of the man with her eyes. Her eyes would be the one thing keeping him in place, as she glared with shaking hands holding her shirt with spikes on it stretched before her constantly.

@PlatinumSkink
Amelie found the effort of redirecting the man's motion to be much more difficult than anticipated. Her redirection orb was letting her redirect the kinetic energy of his movement just fine, but there was some weird kind of corrective force inherent to his motion. He started to raise his right leg to move, she redirected the energy to keep him still, and then the redirected kinetic energy seemed to be swallowed by the air before reappearing and amplifying the original motion. Thankfully whatever was responsible was operating with diminishing efficacy, and with some extra effort and focus she was able to keep the pavise knight rooted firmly in place.

"What-" The man grunted in frustration, his eyes wide in apprehension despite the snarl on his face as he stumbled in place in his effort to move. "Wha-oh, to Hades, Hiecro cut it out! He can't hurt us anyway-" He continued to struggle - Amelie noted that he seemed particularly invested in raising his pavise off the ground again - but he had turned the brunt of his attention over to where Hiecro and Donny had started their slapstick routine.

"HEY!" he shouted, hoping to get everyone's attention -- which admittedly might have been difficult amidst the continuing battle. "HEY!!!"

He held the arrow an inch away from his own throat.

"Knock it off! Or the next one to die is your biometric pass!" Priority one is to protect human life. "I mean it!" He was almost certain that he really did mean it.

Sheer rage overcame Fortune as he turned to glare at the two 'knights' that had made an attempt on the Damsel's life, a growl escaping his throat as he demanded with surprising conviction "STAND DOWN NOW BEFORE YOU DISGRACE YOURSELVES AND YOUR MASTER FURTHER WITH YOUR DISGRACEFUL, COWARDLY AND THUGGISH BEHAVIOR FURTHER!"

Taking a deep breath, he quickly followed up at a somewhat more softer yell "These 'extra's' are with me. If you dare try to attack them again, I will end your disgraces on all bretonnian knighthood myself. Is that understood?!"

Hiecro continued to swear and futilely wipe at her helmet with her left hand, but ceased swiping at the air with her bayonet - though she kept a firm grip on the compound crossbow nonetheless. The male pavise knight seemed to be more inclined to listen, though his attention was wavering between Fortune and Luca as the apprehension of his expression turned to bemusement.

"Look, we were just trying to protect you. Don't you know there's a hit out on all of you?" He said with some exasperation in his voice, only mildly tinged with anxiety. "I was only told about FIVE passengers, for all we knew those two were sent by Leona or Ceto or the Iris or Apollo knows who else..."

@Bright_Ops
Fortune's perception of time froze again, and a flashing glimpse of that other reality swam through his vision once more.

As he fell to his knees his mouth was opened in a soundless scream, the sheer pain more then enough to choke whatever cry he might have filled the air with. He didn't know how anyone else would respond to his pain as it was too much for him, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he collapsed forwards as the blissful blackness of unconsciousness claimed him.

A dream of the male pavise knight's last words rolled sonorously through the darkness of his rapidly descending cognizance. "Kid, it does not matter if you kill yourself. You were sent here just to suffer. Nobody would care..."

Reality proper - or what passed for it - snapped back into focus. Fortune was abruptly confronted with the accusatory questions of the pavise knight, still awkwardly squirming and struggling in place as he spoke.

"Why the hell did you even bring them? How come the spotters never saw them enter the limo? How the fuck do we know they aren't going to give away our position or undermine the barricade at the university? And WHY THE HELL CAN'T I MOVE?" His tone turned from confused to infuriated as he practically shouted the last inexplicable question.

With the danger—if not the tension—of the situation apparently dying down, Ariett slipped out from under the car's protection to crouch behind Kael's shield, dragging her backpack along with her. She poked her head out the side and looked at Fortune and Amélie; from what she'd seen they'd been struck by the same material that had sealed her shoulder-blade, though they seemed to have kept it largely away from their skin.

"Are either of you hurt?" She noticed that the girl was holding her shirt away from her chest, as if it might prick her, so she crept out from behind the shield with a nod of thanks at the boy and approached Amélie, pulling a blanket from her pack. "You can cover yourself with this if you need to get that shirt off. I've also got some spare clothes in here."

Andy walked closer to everyone else. By the sound of it things had finally settled down and some explanation was given. Apparently there was a hit on them, although why anyone would want him dead was something he didn't understand. He saw one of the other passengers come out of hiding, to him she was one of the smarter ones. With the young woman aiding the other girl, who didn't seem in need of his help as far as he could tell, he decided to speak up to everyone.

"Okay," he said, "play-time is over. Donny, Hierco, no more teasing each other, please. And you," he motioned to the ticking boy with the bolt aimed at his neck, "don't do anything foolish, okay?" He looked at the group, including the pavise knights. "Maybe it's time we all talk like civilized people, without any weapons raised at each other and without any more deaths. Everybody agree?"

"Okay," he said, "play-time is over. Donny, Hierco, no more teasing each other, please. And you," he motioned to the ticking boy with the bolt aimed at his neck, "don't do anything foolish, okay?" He looked at the group, including the pavise knights. "Maybe it's time we all talk like civilized people, without any weapons raised at each other and without any more deaths. Everybody agree?"

It was a good thing he said it, because Luca was about to blurt out an unthinking response to the male knight about how he had no idea who any of these people were, nobody knew what the hell was going on and what kind of outfit were they running here anyway... but that might have upset the calm, and he thought better of it once Andy spoke. But he didn't let down his suicide routine just yet.

He looked towards the male pavise knight, since he seemed -- for the moment at least -- the more reasonable of the two. "Who are you and what do you want from me?" He blinked. "I mean, from us." Then Luca's grip on the arrow tightened. Shit. Priority one. "I mean, you need to take us to an infirmary. Now. We have wounded, thanks to you." Luca was referring to a delusion he'd had moments earlier in which two of his fellow passengers were murdered right before his eyes. It didn't particularly matter that those two were, in (current?) reality, more or less fine -- they were on a strange celestial body and a visit to an infirmary should have been standard protocol anyway. Luca was simply in a mood to make demands.

Amelie blinked in confusion at the amount of effort it took to redirect the man’s limbs. What…? She had perfected that magic. … Okay, perhaps not perfected, but she’d mastered her strain well enough to be confident in her results. Why was this taking such effort? … Regardless, she forced her mind into working the magic and held him in place, breathing a bit heavily as she did.

When Fortune asked her if she was alright, she nodded quite quickly. ‘I’m alright…’ She said. A bit shaken, mentally, but physically alright. Then the knight turned to yell at the two people, and Amelie shivered a bit at his tone. But, it seemed to be on her side, so she bit it together and listened. Okay, so she was to be under his protection. … She could get behind that.

The male knight Amelie had captured turned talkative when Luca and Fortune had spoken. They were told about five passengers, and their spotters had not seen her or the archer enter. Amelie figured out why immediately. She had materialized in the limo after Penny sent her here, to a world where she would be executed immediately due to this. She almost had to admire Penny’s precision in choosing such an intricate method of killing her indirectly. She could have just dumped her in the open ocean or something, but guess that wasn’t as fun…

It would be hard answering his questions truthfully. What if this world didn’t have teleporting or similar? Amelie considered her reply… At the same time, if that was why Amelie had been undetected, what did that mean about the archer? Had he also been transported across dimensions or something to get into the limo? That felt awfully coincidental…

The woman with the injured shoulder came out to her while the girl was still considering. While Amelie might look a bit odd, keeping her eyes fixed on the male knight at all times despite being talked to at all times since she had to continue being aware of his every move, she smiled at her pleasantness.

‘I’m unhurt. Spare clothes would be wonderful. Thank you.’ She said, accepting the blanket with a few fingers while the others still held her shirt… Though she wouldn’t use it instantly. Not right now. She still used both her hands to hold her shirt, and she felt way too embarrassed to try to pull it off right now due to the lack of proper clothing underneath, even with a blanket to hide behind. As for the matter at hand…

‘No more death sounds nice.’ She’d comment upon Andy’s suggestion, though didn’t lower her field. She did, though, feel a need to explain one thing that the male knight had asked.

‘… I was transported into the limo by powerful one-way magic that was not my own.’ So much was not a lie. ‘I was sent to accompany Sir Fortune and the others on their journey in case of obstacles.’ … And that was complete falsehood, as far as Amelie knew. Penny likely had just sent her to a place where she knew the police would shoot her down. ‘The decision was made in a hurry, I was sent in last second, directly into the limo…’ That sounded implausible, even to Amelie. Yet, it was all she had and it had already left her mouth. She shut up after that, hoping that she hadn’t killed herself, somehow.

_{‘I am Amelie, the “Lost Child”. Magician.’} She whispered to those close enough to hear her, in case they could use her name to back up her story or something. Those closest right now would be at the very least Fortune and Ariett, possibly a few more, but she’d keep her voice down enough that the knights would not hear her. Hopefully.

She was still holding the male knight in place. Hopefully they’d follow Andy and Luca’s commands. If they responded positively, then Amelie’d slowly stop using her powers on the male knight’s movements to allow him to actually do what he promised. And here’s a reminder that the Redirection Orb is not invisible, it’s fairly visible due to just slightly distorted light in the area of the orb, though it could still be clearly seen through. It was just currently surrounding the knight, pretty obvious something was being done there.

@Terminal

Kael peered up over the shield gingerly, his weight balanced to make for easy movement. He still wasn't convinced that the danger had passed...he'd thought that when the other car arrived, and later when the shield-bearing knights did, and just look what happened there. First, he quietly spoke in the direction of the idiot with the arrow to his own throat. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather get some answers before I trust these peoples' infirmary...and would you please put the weird arrow down?" Then, as the others started talking about talking like civilized people and not fighting, he calls out to the rest of the assembly, "I won't try to kill anyone if you people don't, I just want a fair chance at learning what the hell is going on, and I'd be happy to answer questions in turn...BEFORE I get into any more strange carriages with strange friends, strange enemies, strange unknowns, and incomprehensibly strange things being said!"

@Terminal

Donny backed away to a safe distance, before trotting behind the corner of a building. As he went, he called over his shoulder.

"Awll this essitement has loosen'd mah bladdah. Be back in fahve, frahnds."

"Maybe it's time we all talk like civilized people, without any weapons raised at each other and without any more deaths. Everybody agree?"

@WiseDragonGirl
"Sir, we are not exactly in a state to disagree." The male pavise knight deadpanned. He had largely stopped squirming in place and had adopted a tall, stolid stance - tightly gripping his pavise shield, but having relaxed his right arm. It was still raised, but held in place for the moment by Amelie's redirection orb.

"Who are you and what do you want from me?" He blinked. "I mean, from us." Then Luca's grip on the arrow tightened. Shit. Priority one. "I mean, you need to take us to an infirmary. Now. We have wounded, thanks to you.

@mdk
"There's nothing to tell here beyond what I've already said." The male pavise knight said somewhat gruffly. His demeanor was calm, if his expression was somewhat irritated. "We're just supposed to get you to NNSE statim. We owe a few favors and I don't want to get caught up in all of your shit. We have some solvent and can handle any plating you've got, but you lot aren't going to any hospital or clinic. They'd just kill you in your rooms there. Safest place for you all right now is with Platter Aesch."

‘The decision was made in a hurry, I was sent in last second, directly into the limo…’

@PlatinumSkink
"Bullshit." Hiecro harshly spat the word from where she was sitting on the ground, having finally unclasped the lower hooks for her visor and lifted it up. "But you know what, I don't even fucking care anymore. You trash are all too hot and too much trouble. I don't even care if you actually turn out to be Proxies. We're taking you all to NNSE and then booking it. I just want to be rid of Aesch and out of this fucking town." The bayonet for her crossbow retracted, and she pressed its guard into the ground for leverage as she began to get to her feet, limbs trembling somewhat.

"I'm forming a slug, and you're all coming with us. If you don't like it you can suck on ionized golems after getting fried by the lights. If they haven't all been rigged to aggro on you by now, they will be soon."

Donny backed away to a safe distance, before trotting behind the corner of a building. As he went, he called over his shoulder.

"Awll this essitement has loosen'd mah bladdah. Be back in fahve, frahnds."

@Doc Doctor
"No you fucking don't!" Hiecro shouted after Donny, hastening to rise but only stumbling in the process and falling back down to all fours. "I'm wise to your fucking game you ginger piece of shit! Geeetuuuhaaahhh buuuhaaakuuu huuuuuuuuuuuuuuur-"

As Donny turned the corner, Hiecro's words lengthened and started to drop in intonation, as if being slowed down and played back by an extremely poor answering machine. Looking back, even her motion had slowed down - she was barely moving at all anymore. The same was true of the male pavise knight and the remaining passengers, whose movements had all become infinitesimal and minute. Looking straight up, a bird that had been flying overhead was stopped mid-flight.

With a clear view of the street ahead of him, other disturbances become apparent. The surrounding area was emptied of pedestrians and loiterers as before, but everything seemed much more cramped. Only the space immediately around Donny himself seemed to be in order - beyond a few feet, the wall of the adjacent building scrunched up and shrank to only a foot in width, and he could abruptly see a short distance around the corner - at a flat ninety-degree angle. The street itself had similarly shortened, and the next intersection down (previously more than twenty meters away) was suddenly only a game of hopskotch away from him - as was that intersection's traffic sphere.

As with everything else, it too appeared to be affected by the strange time dilation. It was evident, given that it was crackling fiercely with curiously slow-moving, streaming ribbons of arcing light - and that it had just fired a bolt of lightning at him.

A bolt of lightning moving at a snail's pace. Looking closely, he could see the branching, tenuous, blinding phantoms of light course through the air, piercing through space in countless fractal spines - all scattered haphazardly outward from the surface of the sphere, but all pointedly converging in his direction.

There was a side alley within spitting distance, across the street, and from within Donny both heard and felt the only source of motion seemingly unaffected by the time dilation. The relative proportions of the alley were remarkably preserved considered how contorted the rest of the world had become - it was dark, cast in a fair amount of shade from the morning sun. The wooden buildings to either of the alley's sides had significantly run-down side panels therein, all rotten and with peeling or else entirely absent caulking - and there was a closed, square-shaped sewer hatch planted dead center in the middle of the narrow, grimy path. Further yet, the remainder of the alley was crunched back into the contorted space otherwise surrounding him, and turned a corner - which Donny could yet again somehow see right around perfectly - which led to a dead-end with a heavy-set wooden door with dark iron fittings set atop a short two-step staircase.

He could audibly hear an active, angry, seething noise. Like a marching stream of army ants devouring everything in their path in the jungle - emanating from seemingly every corner of the small patch of undistorted space within the alley. If he focused hard enough, he might even have heard what resembled semi-coherent words, and laughter.

"-Get back here!" Hiecro shouted after Donny as he turned the corner and vanished from sight. "Godsdamnit." She hissed, slamming on the ground with her free hand and starting to get back up once more.

And here’s a reminder that the Redirection Orb is not invisible, it’s fairly visible due to just slightly distorted light in the area of the orb, though it could still be clearly seen through. It was just currently surrounding the knight, pretty obvious something was being done there.

@PlatinumSkink
Overheard, a bird that had been in flight appeared to have frozen in midair - though it was innocuous and unlikely to be noticed unless any of the passengers looked straight up. And here's a reminder that there are a countless number of ways to describe transient or otherwise ephemeral effects and phenomenon, some of which may be delivered in a fashion that is extremely immersion breaking and likely to have supplanted a more artful explanation. It was just that there were other various nuanced effects in the surrounding environs that were pretty obvious and immediately apparent to the passengers, but which the narrator was disinclined to explain in the moment by taking advantage of precedent established by another poster.

Abruptly, Amelie's redirection orb vanished, and she felt her own innate affinity with her spatial magics go haywire - her senses pinwheeling like a compass trying to find true north in a lodestone mine. As if distinctions such as direction and distance had suddenly lost all meaning and were illusory, and that the whole of the world was rushing in to collapse upon her all at once and as though the land was rising up to meet the sky with all the horizon about to be swallowed whole by finely honed ivory talons.

Fortune blinked a little as he ceased zoning out inside of his head and refocused on the world around him and the... wrongness of it. He didn't quite place his finger one exactly why it felt wronger then normal, but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up straight because of it.

One thing was clear through; they weren't going to get anymore answers here. Deciding to ignore the murderous manic that had more or less murdered everyone that had even gotten close to their little party wondering off for relive himself, Fortune decided to try and take over the conversation and get the ball rolling as he simply requested "Whomever I decided to accompany me is not important right now. Let's just take our leave and move on. Waiting here has simply resulted in the situation getting worse and I want answers."

He didn't physically react to Amelie whispering her name to him, but he made sure to remember it as he walked over to where he had discarded his shield after it had been struck by the strange liquid metal bolt. While it might not have been in the greatest of conditions, it was better then nothing. His equipment reclaimed, he started to walk towards the two 'knights' under the idea that they would be leading the way from here.

So, her claim was disputed. She could handle that, if she wasn’t getting killed. She kept her eyes focused on the male knight. Her Distortion Orb flickering the view around him. As per what he was saying, this world was… pretty dangerous. Those lightning orbs were going to kill them soon, too, huh. As expected of a dimension Penny had taken a liking to. Donny moved out of sight, Hiecro complained, and Amelie wasn’t about to comment on that. For that part, she was but a part of the ride right now.

As she had a few comments to make, Amelie opened her mouth to speak. … But she quite suddenly became very preoccupied with something.

Abruptly, Amelie's redirection orb vanished, and she felt her own innate affinity with her spatial magics go haywire - her senses pinwheeling like a compass trying to find true north in a lodestone mine. As if distinctions such as direction and distance had suddenly lost all meaning and were illusory, and that the whole of the world was rushing in to collapse upon her all at once and as though the land was rising up to meet the sky with all the horizon about to be swallowed whole by finely honed ivory talons.

Amelie could but blink in confusion for the brief moment she could still stand when everything turned against her. She winced, and her expression twisted in frowning pain at the experience. With her vision playing tricks on her, Amelie closed her eyes, but her senses of direction was all over the place and she couldn’t stay like this.

She intentionally fell to her knees, knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep herself standing. If otherwise unsupported, Amelie twisted herself to fall onto her back or side… but how did she even know what direction was her side? The priority was to not fall onto the spikes on the inside of her shirt, but how did she even know what direction that was right now? … She simply had to go with her instincts to move her muscles so that she would, trying to use muscle-memory to shift her weight left and pull her left shoulder forward. At least, that’s what she thought she was doing.

She tried to direct her fall to land on her side, but other than that Amelie couldn’t do much other than pray she got more used to this, trying to take control of whatever beast was unleashed on her senses with her own magic. Her fists clutched her shirt even harder along with the blanket if it was given to her. She was still trying to prevent contact between the spikes and her skin, but wasn’t entirely sure how to. For all that was possible, if the ground came up to meet her, then her fall might be shorter than she thought it would be.

This felt so impossible. The feeling of distance and direction just vanishing, logic undone, Amelie had to assume this was something only she was experiencing. Counter-magic? Aimed at her to get rid of the Redirection Orb? Something which blasted her orientation out of the water? If it was, she had to consider that first after she had recovered, so she focused on trying to get a grip of herself. … What were those talons…?

"Whomever I decided to accompany me is not important right now. Let's just take our leave and move on. Waiting here has simply resulted in the situation getting worse and I want answers."

Luca agreed. He took the arrow away from his throat, but held on to it, both for the meager sense of control it offered and for the sake of satisfying his curiosity. The pavise knight had referenced golems -- is that what this was? He'd never seen molecules turned to such a chaotic purpose. Mass reactions in randomized growth patterns, no discernible induction unless... Well. It was wild and disconcerting, especially since so much of the technology among these naturals felt so antique. There was something very wrong with this world -- and that made him question all the strangeness he'd written off earlier. Gravity fluctuations -- but it didn't seem like an artificial well. The delusions, the multiplying corpses -- for the first time, Luca was really thinking about all of the oddness. He decided to get to the bottom of it.

He also decided that weaponized golems were the least of his concerns. If he was going to figure things out, it would be best to start from the beginning. This all started with a name on a plaque, now nestled in his pocket -- Platter Aesch. And after that name, the companions in the limousine, and the red-headed.....

Shit. Where had that psychopath gone off to? He was just..... right there..... Okay that's spooky. Luca imagined Donny smirking in a shadow somewhere, pulling a railgun out of his ass or something and gunning down the whole gathering of strangers with a smug one-liner and like a ridiculously cool drag on a weird-shaped cigarette. "Donny!" he yelled. "Hey, we're, uh..... we're cool, right? Let's, uh, let's get out of here..... without..... murder......"

No sign of him. Luca looked at the rest of his gaggle. "Did anybody see where he went? I think Aesch is expecting both.... I mean, all of us."

Ariett was quick to lunge forward and catch Amélie as she fell. Disoriented and incoherent, she could only assume the girl was suffering from some sort of seizure; for her safety, she supported her with an arm-and-shoulder around her back, and clutched the edge of the condensed spikes sprouting from her shirt—in case Amélie's own grip should falter.

She called out to the knight who'd spoken earlier. "Hey, delusional or not, she could use some help. Could you get over here with some of that solvent you mentioned?"

@Terminal

Kael starts to go catch the disoriented mage, but stops when the other beats him to it. Looking back at the knights, with his shield...somewhat lowered, he says, "Alright, we go with you, you keep your helmets off the whole trip, and we get some answers on the way...like who the hell these other people you keep mentioning are, why someone wants to kill us, so on. Does that seem fair?" Trust was not present...but then again, what choice did they have? Might as well try to figure out which enemies needed killing the most, then kill them...

So, hospitals weren't safe. Then where was he supposed to even go with Tafans? Andy held his chin as he thought it through. While he didn't know Platter Aesch, it seemed like the best place to go right now. At least the male knight seemed willing to talk, Hierco seemed to be just done with everything. Andy couldn't blame her. If she would get them a ride to this Aesch he was willing to go there.

What worried him was that girl who fell down suddenly, so he began to walk over to see if he could help her. He briefly turned his attention to the ticking boy as he asked his question and then looked around. Now that he mentioned it, he had heard Donny mentioned something about urinating, but he hadn't seen him leave. So he shook his head to Luca and went to the girls, he was glad to see the other female passenger already took care of her, as much as she could.

"Let's see," he said as he knelt next to girl with spikes on her shirt. He already noted the girl wasn't unconscious and that there weren't any convulsions. "Hey, can you hear me?" he asked her. "My name is Andy, I'm a doctor." He talked to her as he would to any other patient to assess how responsive they were and go from there.

Donny slipped around the corner and out of sight of the lightning and orb, in view of the others, an assumedly safe position, and waited for any signs that time was about to speed up again.

@Doc Doctor
As he turned the corner once more, the passengers and the pavise knights began to speed up - but only up to a point, halting at a fifth of the relative norm when he stopped to observe them once more. Looking back at the lightning and his golf club, the arcing stream of light had completely frozen in the air. As distant as he was from it now - which was still remarkably close due to how space seemed to become further compressed the more distant it was from his relative position - it did not seem like it would be making any appreciable progress anytime soon.

From what he could see, Hiecro was still in the midst of slamming her free hand into the ground, and the passenger knight looked to be heading to pick up the shield he had dropped earlier after it had blocked a hail from the crossbow knight's vector-fire. If he focused on the knight, the proportions of his form became...curiously apparent. Donny could clearly see through and around the slit of his visor. Through and around the individual breaks in each link of his chainmail.

The same was true of the others as well - by angling his focus just so, it appeared he could abuse his newfound ability to look around corners and obstructions to play the role of a voyeur. He also noticed that the closer he got to the passengers and the faster they began to move relative to him, the more his enhanced vision receded and approached what was normal.

This felt so impossible. The feeling of distance and direction just vanishing, logic undone, Amelie had to assume this was something only she was experiencing. Counter-magic? Aimed at her to get rid of the Redirection Orb? Something which blasted her orientation out of the water? If it was, she had to consider that first after she had recovered, so she focused on trying to get a grip of herself. … What were those talons…?

@PlatinumSkink
The talons were terrible chariots of rancor and starlight that raked across the whole of the world and tore it asunder, one of them lightly wafting by like a continental shelf uprooting itself and playfully running a sliver of its form across her pate. It came and went swiftly, its presence only felt in the manner by which the blood vessels in her eyes began to rupture one by one. Foreign iron rained upon the dawn, and she then experienced a moment of extreme calm and tranquility as the world came back into focus.

It became immediately apparent - how obvious it was now! - that her magic had irrevocably changed. She could no longer directly manipulate the kinetic energy and potential of various objects and effects - or rather, she never had. All she could and had ever done was change the relative objective measure of the Four Pillars. It would be more difficult for her to do now that the veil of her childish delusions could no longer preserve her from the true nature of the riven universe, but perhaps she would be able to make better use of her abilities for that lack.

If she could get over her magic having tumultuously recomposed itself by effectively rebounding upon the core of her being of course.

No sign of him. Luca looked at the rest of his gaggle. "Did anybody see where he went? I think Aesch is expecting both.... I mean, all of us."

@mdk
"Well, it's your loss if he has booked or kicked it." The male pavise knight snorted irreverently as he gingerly began to move once more, taking a tentative step and raising his pavise off the ground experimentally - relief flooding across his face as his freedom of motion was restored. "Aesch may have really wanted him, but priority goes to getting who we can to NNSE. I don't fancy your odds without him, but quite frankly that's none of my godsdamned business."

She called out to the knight who'd spoken earlier. "Hey, delusional or not, she could use some help. Could you get over here with some of that solvent you mentioned?"

@Holmishire
The male pavise knight waved errantly at them and began to approach. "Yeah yeah, though honestly lady it looks like you could stand to have the stuff a bit more than this inconvenience here does." He practically glowered at Amelie as he reached to his belt and unclipped what looked like a water canteen from it, handing it off to Ariett. The container was a matte-green in coloration, with a chemical hazard symbol clearly emblazoned in solid, bold black along with a warning in text below.



The canteen felt like it was filled with liquid petroleum. Something vaguely fluid in nature, but viscous and heavy. Uncapping the canteen would only reveal a dark interior, the contents a pitch-black coloration.

"What's up with her eyes? She having a stroke or something?" The male pavise asked with faintly raised eyebrows, through his tone was unaffected. After handing the canteen to Ariett, he had set his pavise shield back onto the ground and begun to tap on an unseen set of controls mounted near the grip. "Be aware, I'm having a slug form up in about fifteen seconds. Interior should be stable and sterilized, for what it's worth."

"Alright, we go with you, you keep your helmets off the whole trip, and we get some answers on the way...like who the hell these other people you keep mentioning are, why someone wants to kill us, so on. Does that seem fair?"

@Cruallassar
"Or how about you shut the fuck up, sit down, and we might let you tag along with the others we are supposed to convey." Hiecro snapped at Kael as she finally got up, closing her visor back down in the process if only to spite him. While it was still largely ruinously stained and covered by Donny's opportune application of pepper-spray, the fierce coloration appeared to be slowing fading and losing its texture. Hiecro's own previous efforts to wipe it away had clearly been for naught, but some other force was slowly but surely scouring the substance from the visor's surface.

"If you pack in that ass you have for a mouth in the meantime I might not task much effort with the consideration of permitting you to live." Hiecro turned her back on him and began to head over to where the male pavise knight, Ariett, Andreas, Amelie, and Fortune were gathering together. "Keep our helmets off," she scoffed. "what a fucking moron."

She seemed largely unconcerned with the fact that Kael had armed himself with her fallen comrade's crossbow and pavise.

… No. This… this wasn’t done by someone else. This wasn’t a counter-magic. This was HER magic. Perhaps it was due to the fabric of this new dimension she had entered, but it dawned on her. The nature of her own magic was different from what she thought. Perhaps it had simply been her inexperience with inventing new magic, but this… as it dawned on her… was so much greater than she had ever imagined.

… Those talons. She had to stop them. They were getting to her eyes, because there was no distance in between them. It occurred to her that no orb of her power was present, yet her magic was still affecting. Indeed, her orb was simply her focusing her power, and she had been manipulating the relative measure of the space in the orb. Then, to get rid of this danger, to lift everything away from pressing at her…

Away.

Amelie was somewhat aware that Ariett had caught her, physically she had just fallen into the woman’s grip and would have fallen over hadn’t she been given this support. She was thankful, but couldn’t utter the words right now. She had come to terms with what she wanted to do. Amelie let go of her shirt with one hand and directed it in front of her eyes. While the world was currently in a state of calm and tranquility right now, the effect was undeniably still affecting her.

She tried to press space away from her. Clearly, space had been pulled in at her, the relative measure decreased from her point of view. The girl determined to reject it, to restore distance relative to herself, how she was experiencing. Attempting to get it back to normal. Since it was only to herself it was happening, she assumed, she’d focus this effect on herself. Press it away. If it didn’t work, she’d attempt to create an orb the way she knew to see if it helped, if anything she knew how to do would have any effect.

Andy shook his head at the question if she was having a stroke, he was certain that was not the case. He checked a few things with his hands, her heart rate being one of them, and he looked at her pupils and the subconjunctival hemorrhage. The fact she had been able to hold her own shirt and now moved her own hand was a clear sign she was conscious. What happened here reminded him most about a bad trip, the subconjunctival hemorrhage probably caused by the stress it caused, but with no evidence of substance abuse he was fairly sure something in this strange world was the cause.

At least transportation would be ready soon, he wanted this girl somewhere inside so he could properly examine her. And properly monitor her as long as she wouldn't snap out of it. Although she seemed calmer now, that certainly was a good sign. At the moment he didn't care much if Donny would be back in time or not.

Ariett muttered something about how he'd better not be screwing with them before applying a few drops of the liquid to the girl's shirt—she wanted to see the effects before risking a high dose with a potentially volatile chemical.

Or golem, whatever it was.

"It hurt like hell when that metal seared into my back," she said, addressing the knight. "If I used it on myself now, wouldn't I just suffer from an open wound?"