Rave's silence seems to be more potent than the previous ones, even though he's not reaching out with his mind to pry at the unprotected ones around him. He takes another sip of his whiskey and resumes spinning it. When he does reply, it's not with words, but with a memory, from a time before Valerian Mengsk sat on the throne on Korhal. He was teaching a pair of new Spectres, helping them come to terms with their boosted psionic powers through physical combat. The result was a broken arm for the young man with strawberry blonde air and the audio for the memory begins partially through the conversation.

"-ot the first time this arm's been broken, teacher. I'm sure it probably won't be the last in a rebellion against that ass hole Mengsk. Besides, breaking the bone only makes it stronger, right?" Rave, as the memory is given a bird's eye view, shakes his head as he helps the young man to the medical bay aboard the Hyperion, taking care to avoid aggravating the injury.

"I'm sure that's what you've heard and been told. It's not what those who break bones constantly will agree with. We'll see how your arm is in a couple of months." A sort of fast forward seems to happen after that short bit and the same young man is in the middle of a sparring match when he winces in pain from a glancing blow from his partner, a short young brunette girl. Rave grimaces and calls for a halt as he approaches. "It's cracked, isn't it?"

Looking defeated, the red-headed boy nods. "It's been over a year since the break healed. Why does it keep cracking?" The answer was self explanatory as the memory left Akagalcia's mind. When she met Rave's gaze, he was as stoic as before.

"Don't let old idioms and turns of phrase fool you, Akagalcia. You WILL mend, but I'm willing to bet your skill with your abilities will never be the same again. So, with that said, I'm still interested in checking out this other place if you don't mind."

@Zarkun

"Don't let old idioms and turns of phrase fool you, Akagalcia. You WILL mend, but I'm willing to bet your skill with your abilities will never be the same again. So, with that said, I'm still interested in checking out this other place if you don't mind."

Akagalcia closed her eyes, obviously fighting for some sense of calm. She folded her hands underneath her chin, ponderous. "I need a guide, wherever we go. I can not read. I did not know what reading was before I became here. I do not understand why it is. It is everywhere." She cracked open an eye. "Doors have already returned to me. Passing is the pain there. Opening them is simply tiring."

Rave frowns at the mention of the doors and raises an eyebrow inquisitively when she mentions opening the doors making her tired. "You do realize they have motion sensors, right? Or a button next to them you push? If it's making you tired, then you're doing something wrong." Calling for the reciept, the Spectre pays for their food and then orders another whiskey as he finishes the first one, the alcohol far from effecting him just yet. If he was honest, this stuff was weaker than he was used to, otherwise he would already be feeling it.

While waiting, he notices a group of thuggish teens over in a corner, watching him and Akagalcia closely as they whispered among themselves, but he gave no indication that he had noticed. "And so the opportunity presents itself. Don't look now, but we're being observed."

"...we're being observed."

Akagalcia grinned, hoisting her mug. "People? Is one of them copper-haired? I blacked his eye. He is fun." She then took the time to very deliberately finish the stout in her mug, and then take up the pitcher in both hands and chug the rest of that as well. "I will not look, but do you think they will follow us if we leave?" She stands, swaying a little, but keeping balance with one hand on the back of her chair. The dance floor a couple dozen paces behind her was getting raucous again. TBV had invited another instrumentalist from back stage and TBV's guitarists had backed off to allow the guest performer to work with the drummer and lead vocalist.



Akagalcia turned to toward a particular part of the bar, then looked back to the main entrance they'd come through. Sway here, twist there. She was certainly some kind of tipsy, though Rave couldn't be sure just how much. "They let people out the back. I've fought in their alley before. It is dangerous without armor of some sort. We will have an advantage. The front street will be more fun. Which way?"

Rave grinned as he reached down and unhooked his helmet from his waist, placing the credits on the table shortly after the check arrived for their drinks. "They made the mistake of being obvious, so the flow of the upcoming fight is already out of their hands. We'll head out the front, pretend we don't notice them. I'll disappear from sight after we're around a corner. From there, I say we play a game of cat and mouse with them just so this isn't over too quickly." Placing his helmet on his head, the Spectre stands and heads for the door, watching Akagalcia in case she really had drunk too much to walk and maintain her balance.

However, true to his word, as soon as the pair of them were out the door and around the corner from it, the psion was engulfed in a blue lattice work of energy after his visor lowered into place briefly before he vanished from physical sight. His thoughts, however, echoed in Akagalcia's mind as he drew a pair of his punch knives and moved to the corner of a nearby alley way, a thin line of ice guiding her to follow since the shimmer of his cloak was difficult to see even for those experienced in seeing it. "Just follow the ice, and we'll be close. If we get separated, keep your thoughts open so I can find you. Easy enough?"

@Zarkun

"Just follow the ice, and we'll be close. If we get separated, keep your thoughts open so I can find you. Easy enough?"

<Phew! I can follow you by smell, I think. Your sightbend has ozone. Leave the ice for the hunters, though.> Akagalcia was indeed some kind of drunk, but she kept tracing her hands lightly over bar patrons and against tables and chairs as if practicing some strange sensory trick to stay balanced. When they came outside with the door closed behind them she dropped to a low crouch with an audible -pop- from one of her knees, always keeping one of her hands touched to the ground as she very nearly pranced after Rave.

Rave lead them down one lley that opened into a small, empty yard connecting to several more, but Akagalcia stood back up about two thirds of the way. She stayed away from either side of the alley, avoiding anchoring herself so that she visibly swayed with the evening wind and the faint reverberation of shuttles and frigates pulling into one of the docking pylons a few blocks away. They couldn't have been in Nova for more than forty minutes or so, but already air smelled cooler than when they'd gone inside for food. Perhaps, though, Akagalcia thought, that was just local, as though the splash of Rave's cryokinesis were a splash in the pond and putting out waves.

Akagalcia heard the first pair of footsteps after almost ten seconds of staggering farther toward the yard Rave had probably passed into, but didn't turn back. By the time she staggered out of sight of the alleyway, seven figures were trailing behind her, each jogging quickly to where Akagalcia waited, crouched, with a feral grin. <One of them is holding something. You were right to arm. I hope copper-hair is not with them...> She had her kukri in her free hand, still keeping her balancing hand palmed to the ground. She was perfectly still.

Rave didn't respond, but it was clear he was there with her, his presence noticeable to her. When the seven caught up, Akagalcia would be glad to see that their opponent's for the night were lacking the presence of the copper-hair she mentioned, but that almost all of them were carrying a knife of their own, easily concealed by their jackets. The one carrying something was carrying a crudely made great sword, but all carried a leering grin as they walked into the clearing. The one in front noted her kukri and motioned they all stay out of reach, even as the faintest shift of a shimmering figure behind them took up a position behind the large sword bearer. "Ah, look at this; poor girl must have still been too sober to trick into her armored friend's bed. Pity, you're so pretty, not to mention rare. What do you think boys, should we offer her our tender services for the time?" This was met with several excited whoops and hell yeahs as they formed a semi-circle in front of Akagalcia, the leader in the middle.

Rave's face became strained with fury as the memory he'd skimmed off the leader's mind suddenly made sense. That girl had been his victim, not his willing partner. As he sheathed the punch knives and drew his sabertooth knives in their place, he moved towards the leader as he spoke. "I think I'll let Ralph here take first turn with you, since the ladies are usually intimi-Hup!" His speech is cut off as the edge of an invisible knife slit his gut open. It's bearer came back into the visible spectrum in a lattice work of blue energy as he spun around the man and grabbed his head, snapping his neck for good measure. When the Spectre spoke, his voice was heavily filtered and full of a cold rage, giving him quite the terrifying sound.

"Well then ladies, I hope you made peace with your god." There was no immediate response as the remaining six men stared at the armor clad psion in astonishment. They simply couldn't figure out where he'd come from.

@Zarkun

The exquisite silence left in the wake of Rave's thrust into the fray was interrupted almost immediately by a blood-curdling scream. It seemed to come from much farther off, but that was because the lungs doing all that work were already on the other side of the Door... a perfectly round three foot hole, just wide enough to swallow the crow-faced man among them. He had managed to grasp at the lip of the hole, or rather the pavement that seemed to just begin again. It was difficult to tell where the pavement ended and the emptiness began--difficult to tell what the crow-faced man had grabbed onto, or where his hand ended and the hole began.

And the Door registered in Rave's mind as well, an... emptiness that felt exactly like the memory Akagalcia had shared with him. He knew that if he focused too hard on that Door with his mind for even a moment, he would feel all the pain that Akagalcia had shared with him, with none of her training to shield him. The realization came with her surface thoughts at the same time. <You can not be this awake. Do not try.>

Akagalcia did not even seem to notice the door, impossibly sprinting over it and driving her kukri into the heart of another man with such force that he heaved bodily almost a foot into the air. He had been frozen in terror. It was like stabbing a sack of grain. She lurched backward, half-stumbling as she wrenched her kukri from the man's chest and fell to a crouch drectly above the Door, steadying herself with her free hand again, and taking the time to wipe the flat of her kukri against one of her cheeks, painting it red.

It had not even been ten seconds between the moment when the Door simply... was underneath crow-face and this one, Akagalcia crouching over the Door with one man dead on his feet and crow-face screaming for dear life.

"Please help!! Jal! Fenti! SOMEBODY!" crow-face screamed from his ledge. But none dared approach. None of them dared to move. Where Rave had only stunned them, Akagalcia now had them mesmerized... paralyzed.

"You are not nice people."

The paralysis continued for another thirty seconds, then the large man with the sword recovered and brought it to bear. "You bastards! Get 'em!" The man's shout seemed to rouse his companions from their stupor and had them all charging the pair. Rave could only grin behind his helmet; the game was on. The first one to reach the Spectre was carrying a balisong knife and he thrust at the psion's chest. Rave sidestepped the stab and backflipped away from the greatsword as it came down towards him from the left, and then he was in the fight again, snapping the balisong user's arm and ramming his own knife up through his jaw and into his brain while it was still in his hand.

Kicking the twitching body away, he spun underneath another swing from the man with the sword and summon a trio of knife shaped icicles, with razor sharp tips, and sent them careening towards him, only for them to stop a good six inches from his skin. This brings a sadistic grin to the man's face. "Got this yesterday after getting off work. Seems like it was a good investment." And then he lunged forwards, making a sweeping horizontal slash as one of his buddies, holding a kukri knife of his own, rushing the Spectre from the side.

The exchange was short before Rave used a psionically boosted kick to send the man sailing into a nearby wall, his head hitting it with a sickening crunch. The swordsman had grabbed another one of the group and said something to him before practically tossing him towards an alley that likely lead to the streets. He can wait, gotta deal with these. Standing, the psion sheathed the two sabertooth knives and reached over his shoulder, drawing the katana he'd carried with him throughout the Second Great War and holding it two handed in front of him as he faced off with the man carrying the giant sword.

@Zarkun

In the half-minute that had passed with everyone staring at Akagalcia and the door beneath her, crow-face had lost his grip, and that was the end of him. Not the stomach-turning cliche one might've expected from a man plunging to his doom in terror. No, apparently losing his grip was what it actually took. The moment the Door had himc completely, crow-face seemed to just... dissolve into light, simply floating as the pressure of The Void consumed him.

Akagalcia could've closed the Door any time afterward but instead just looked between the four remaining thugs with a deathglare. Rave could feel her weariness at surface. Keeping the Door open was a play to give her time to recooperate. Then, the melee broke out in earnest. Akagalcia still waited as Rave dispatched another, and the alpha sent off his runt. The moment every thug that still stood seemed occupied, Akagalcia sprinted into action after the runner, the Door unmade in an instant. A mote of incandescent light appeared beside her head and almost immediately brightened enough to light up the night around them. Rays of dawn disappeared with her into the alley way, then disappeared when they were out of sight almost instantly, accompanied by a sickening set of slushy -thuds-.

Akagalcia collapsed against the side of the alley, shuddering with pain and gulping down waves of nausea. She had a white-knuckle grip on her kukri, staring up at the night sky and panting. Another gulp. She didn't seem aware of anything around her at that moment. She had a look of triumph on her face, in spite of the tears rolling down her cheeks. "I FOUND IT TWICE!" <I found it twice.>

And then she wretched chunks of supper and soured milk into her lap, sobbing with joy. And pain.

'I'm gonna keep getting my clothes dirty so I can do it again!'

Ayem had seen battlefields less taxing.

Her smile stayed, though. Mostly thanks to rigor mortis.

"There were bots with vegetables in the store we visited," said Ayem. "We didn't use them." Quite an understatement. Maybe they would see some again later on a spaceliner, but there were plenty of problems between now and then. "Excuse me."

Ayem ducked away for a second and pulled out her phone. "Larri, scan economy-class heavy cargo FTL flights departing to anywhere important." That ought to fetch plenty of results. With the embargo lifted, there was a departure backlog.

"Mary, do you know any way to-" No, asking contact details would be a lost cause. Too easy. "Actually, do you remember where you left the people who were with you? Grazia, come with us." An idea was coming to Ayem. And though it was morbid, she'd done worse for the sake of ghosts.

@SIGINT@Patches

Even as Akagalcia's cheerful thoughts reached him, Rave had no time to respond, as he rolled away from another heavy strike from the guy with the great sword before drawing his C-150 and firing three .50 caliber rounds into him. His shield stopped them again, six inches from his body and the Spectre grit his teeth as he deflected another slash into the ground with his katana, rolling away for more space. He didn't have any idea how many hits this shield could take and, if his hunch was correct, he didn't have time, since that runner was probably sent to get help. There was one way he could think of to short it out for sure, but it would be real cold, real fast. "Hope you don't mind a little cold." Within moments of informing Akagalcia what was going on, the area began to grow colder.

The thugs grew confused by the sudden drop in temperature as their breath became more visible with every passing second and a thug with a hunting knife thought himself clever as he called, "He's an ice mage! He's gotta stay focused to cast!" This prompted the remaining two, not counting the shouter, with knives to rush forwards and attack at the same time. The counter was almost imperceptible to anyone unfamiliar with swordsmanship. The katana blade blocked the knife on the right before ramming a fist into his chin, sending him up four feet and back six. The second blade missed it's mark and it's wielder's wrist was caught and broken in one smooth motion, and all this happened as the temperature continued to drop and ice and snow began to appear.

"I'm much more than a mage, and far more deadly. Enjoy the cold embrace of death." Even as the words left Rave's mouth, the three unshielded men found themselves overcome with cold and ice and became statues. Meanwhile, the fourth's shield finally gave out, circuits freezing and overloading. When the energy shimmer faded away, the cold began to warm back up and Rave stood with his katana at the ready, along with a series of ice knives floating around him, tips down. "You still think you can win?"

<Hope you don't mind the cold.>



Akagalcia struggled to her feet, bracing herself against the wall of the alleyway and struggling to lift her head. The nausea hadn't stopped, but she needed to see. She'd lanced her sunmote right at the runner's back without looking, too busy fighting the pain to aim properly. Thankfully the mote had found its mark; an assemblage of cauterized limbs and half of the man's skull were steaming on the pavement as Rave's coldsnap began to stretch down the alleyway. Nothing else was left.

Good. Her work done, Akagalcia paced back toward the alley-yard, sputtering with the pain. At least it had faded enough that she wasn't going to ralph the rest of her meal. Between the sudden cold and the sound of combat ahead of her, Akagalcia felt strangely at ease. No matter how strange this world was, no matter how hard it was to find her power, she could still find pieces of home. She had met someone who was awake. She had met someone who knew the value of companions. She had met someone immediate amongst the sleeping.

I can survive, Akagalcia thought, heaving herself another couple of steps down the wall.

When she appeared out of the alley again, the fight was already over, save for the man that had been leading the pack. "You still think you can win?" Rave asked, his poised figure menacing with ice knives and the stillness of winter. Akagalcia didn't give the leader time to respond, throwing her kukri in a neat arc so that it sank roughly into the man's skull, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. She didn't move to retrieve her weapon, still struggling against the receding pain to catch an even breath and stop the world spinning around her.

"We do not win," she choked, pausing to spit a chunk of food from her mouth that hadn't quite made it onto her thighs earlier. "We live." She breathed in and out, staring at Rave... just... staring and drinking the past two minutes in...

As the last man fell, his companion's knife buried in the back of his skull, the sound of sirens begins to echo through the alleys as the local law enforcement began to arrive, the sounds of armored feet coming towards them obvious. Rave wasted no time, retrieving his companion's knife and then moving to her before sweeping her up and moving away from the open area. "In retrospect, perhaps I should have said don't let them scream for help before we started." He dodged down alleyways, pulling directions to the nearest empty cargo container from the minds of animals and dockworkers alike, though the animal directions were disorienting some times due to the difference of vantage point.

After five minutes, he managed to find it and hide them inside it, using his telekinesis to open and close the large door. Setting her down, he opened his mind once more, listening for the thoughts of law enforcement officers who were likely on their tail for the killings of rapists and muggers. "You're going to need a new outfit, and not just because of the barf."

@Zarkun

Akagalcia allowed herself to be carried without complaint, though the jostling as Rave hurried down alleyways brought another wave of nausea. She managed to hold down the rest of her supper, but only just. She kept her eyes closed, just trusting Rave's movements. This close, she couldn't hide any of her surface echoes, so she didn't try. <Strange that you should hold winter so tightly...> Warmth. Gratitude. Indistinct waves of contentment pulsed from her mind without stopping. They didn't obstruct Rave's borrowing, merely flowed around it, focal when he was not otherwise focused, like rain. <You boast and posture like summer sun. It is majestic.>

Silence, but for Rave's footfalls and the movement of sleepless Little Athredan, was all that remained until Rave had them tucked away inside the cargo container. They were in one of the brick, mortar and sheet metal warehouses. The air was stale and smelled like iron and carbon gases. Her nose was on fire, her senses still magnified from grasping The Void. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, snapping a palmcup's full of embers into her hand for light.

"You're going to need a new outfit, and not just because of the barf."

"I could clean the uppings... but you are talking about my furs being furs." Akagalcia held out her hand to Rave, the embers glowing more brightly. "Pull the cold around my hand. We'll start a frostwell so I can wash my face... and what did they mean, calling you mage? Is that what you meant when you called my power magic? What is that word for?"

Rave did as she asked, manipulating the air around her hand to do as she suggested and creating her frostwell. While she washed, Rave removed his AGR-77 and took up a position near the door, his mind and ears listening as he answer her question. "It is. On the ride here, I read the mind of a person from the planet Ecetopia, where magic is practically an everyday commodity. I was already familiar with the term 'mage' before leaving home, but they were all fictional characters, and the 'real' mages I'd met were simply psionics like myself who didn't know what they were. But what I saw of mages in this person's memories..." Rave fell silent as he fought to find the right way to describe it all. The sight had been strange even for him, and he had fought ravenous, vicious creatures hell-bent on assimilating the entirety of the Koprulu Sector.

After a minute, he finally shrugged, tensing right after as a pair of feet ran by the door and then faded into the distance. "It's far more than any psionic I've ever met could ever do, even the Protoss."

@Zarkun

When Rave funneled his will into Akagalcia's, he felt an... instinct. No, it was a suggestion, an intuition. <Here.> And suddenly Rave knew what she meant. It was a pattern for manipulating his cryokinetics and her pyrokinetic into a knot. It was like tying shoelaces once Akagalcia'd shared the idea with him. She'd called it a frostwell, but no... it was more like a fountain somehow. He'd ...they... had spun a water spout that streamed gently from her palm. It was a simple marvel, fresh water pouring from the still glowing embers... and it defied very basic things he knew about chemistry and states of matter. But Rave's flight response was still kicking, and he returned his attention to standing guard at the cargo shell doors while she washed the blood from her face and knife carefully. Even now he could faintly feel the pattern Akagalcia had helped spin. She kept contorting it to increase the water pressure... but how she was doing it still didn't make sense on a chemical level.

"It is. On the ride here, I read the mind of a person from the planet Ecetopia, where magic is practically an everyday commodity. I was already fam..." Akagalcia scrubbed away, trying to grasp what Rave was talking about. It made sense, having words for the wakeful. It was obvious enough that she should have guessed, now that she was thinking on the matter. "...far more than any psionic I've ever met could ever do, even the Protoss."

"Magic is... like sums, then, but with what one sees when one is awake?" She closed the hand holding the frostwell into a fist, and Rave felt the bonds holding the pattern together snuff out, traces of awareness he hadn't even felt gone from him returning. Whatever she'd taught him, it seemed to be a form of projection for both of them. Akagalcia continued, scooting herself until her back was against the cargo shell wall. She still shivered every so often from the pain. "But then you can do more, can you not? I know I can. I have The Door, and I will have more still. It is only a matter of acclimation." She leaned back against the metal wall and began scraping away the mess on her leggings with the spine of her blade, waiting for Rave's response.

"Huh? You mean all the adults that were watching me...?" Mary asked inquisitively, her eyes gazing into the far-off distance as she tried to remember — and when that quickly failed, looked up the records in her neural implant, in which the location had thankfully been taken note of. "Uhm...it was outside of the walls, like on the outskirts...umm...near Canal Sector Twelve." She spoke the words aloud as though she were reading them from something, even though there was no such source in her hands. The girl was fidgeting a bit, swinging her arms left and right. "There was a lot of fighting going on, but then a dam opened up and everyone scattered, and..."

"...Umm...am I in trouble?" The little girl asked sheepishly, her fidgeting being replaced with quiet, but telegraphed worry. "I know I'm not supposed to go around on my own, but I wanted to keep looking for her, so, and, um..." Mary frowned, holding her hands behind her back. "...I thought it would be fine if it was just for a little bit, honest..."

Chuckling, the Spectre shrugs, still keeping an eye and mind out for trouble. "I'm sure I could push my limits, but the effort would leave me drained and weakened, two things that are dangerous to be in combat, even against back alley thugs like them. One of the most important things about getting stronger or regaining your strength, is to remember that you have limits, and that while you should push them, never do so in a way that leaves you weakened and in a state your enemy can easily exploit."

This time, the sound of four pairs of armored boots running past reaches both their ears and Rave tenses once more, jumping back and leveling his rifle with the doorway. "We need to get out of here. I don't think we need to leave the planet yet, but we definitely can't stay in this district. You been anywhere else?"

@Zarkun

"I'm sure I could push my limits, but the effort would leave me drained and weakened," Akagalcia listened patiently. Rave's caution was well warranted in this place. Why had she pulled so hard on her power? Had she been cautious and more subtle she could've bested each of them with Rave in turn. "...state your enemy can easily exploit."

"I know, I know," Akagalcia stared glumly where the last of her vomit clung to her leathers, barely visible in the dark. "...I just wanted to prove I wasn't talking about bone. You carry metaphors too far. You do not listen." She fell silent, giving up on the explanation for now. Rave could sense some regret radiating from her surface thoughts. Regret, and obvious frustration with her difficulty communicating.

Then the footsteps. Akagalcia sniffed as they came near, Rave springing back and training his rifle at the door. She rose, weary, but recovered enough from her throes to stand up without support. She had her kukri in one hand and a hunk of loose asphalt she'd packed in her leathers in the other. <We need to get out of here. I don't think we need to leave the planet yet, but we definitely can't stay in this district. You been anywhere else?>

<...if we can climb a tall building, I can Door us to any point I can see. I haven't been farther than five miles or so from Nova Tavern. Little Athredan is usually safe. The hunters were not local.> Rave could feel waves of heat radiating from Akagalcia, a dull red glow filling the cargo shell. She was cooking the asphalt in her hand.