Mithera yelped awake as she heard ribbits, and immediately noticed it was much later in the day.
"Ah poop," she said as she began standing up before noticing the ice cream cone. Glancing around, she picked it up and the note underneath. After staring at it blankly for a few moments she stuffed it in a cranny to hold it and starting licking the ice cream. Taking a breath to realize it was rather chilly out, her floral dress suddenly changed colors from pink-with-white highlights to a dark blue with lighter blue highlights, as well as added a poncho-like piece around her shoulders to cover her arms down to the elbow. The neckline also quickly clambered up to just below Mithera's chin. This transformation caught the attention of a bystander, who Mithera quickly conscripted to read the note for her and tell her where Royse had gone. Fortunately they had seen the other Phoenix Winger leave the ice cream and gave Mithera the general direction that they had gone. The pale shapeshifter thanked them and went to catch up with Royse, making progress on her ice cream the whole time.
In no time Mithera had caught up with Royse, despite the busy streets of Crocus.
"H-hello!" She called nervously once she was within a few feet. Ungracefully, the much taller woman stumbled into step with Royse.
"Uhm. Thanks for the ice cream, though it is a bit chilly for it," she said.. She shifted her ice cream to her left hand before offering her right to Royse.
"I uh, don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Mithera." Royse would undoubtedly notice that Mithera's arms and other visible skin below the neck was covered in short but thick white fur, a recently acquired feature. The shapeshifter was so into the habit of adapting to her environment that she didn't notice she had grown herself fur when she was supposed to be posing as human.
How did you find--- Royse quickly dismissed her question that she was about to ask when she realises Mithera must have asked the passer-bys. Personally, she had wished that she could be hidden under the shadows a bit longer, 'cause she doesn't like to feel indebted to others.
"Its nothing much~ I'm Royse, but I think you would know that by now ~" Royse, shook Mithera's hand, biting on the last bit of her chocolate ice cream cone.
"Oh, so that's your magic~" She looked at Mithera's furry hands and asked rather nonchalantly.
"I'm doing a quest currently, so feel free to tag along if you like, after all, its easier to complete with more numbers ~" Royse continued to the slums after giving an open invitation for Mithera. What she said was only true to a certain extent, although it indeed makes the whole quest easier with more numbers on the overall, it makes the first part of her quest harder to finish for Royse. That part on gathering information and setting up the bait.
Though, it might be better on the overall as long as I get an opportunity, numbers are best needed for part 2...The slums felt like home to Royse, the sight of those tattered housing are ever familiar to a girl like her. She walked to the area where there are more kids around playing, sitting along a tree while blending in the surroundings. Her age and her frugal clothing wouldn't make her stand out that much, as she acted like a big sister watching over the kids. She is aiming for those small fries, she knew nothing about the organisation, and those people are the easiest to capture.
"And speak of the devil..." Royse noticed an unfamiliar person who seemed foreign to the slums closing by.
Mithera smiled as Royse shook her hand, but blushed when she mentioned her magic.
"Oh yeah, I'm a transformation mage. Sorry about the, uhm, hairy hand. It's cold out," Mithera gave the younger girl a weak smile as the fur rapidly disappeared from her body. She nodded when Royse mentioned she was on a quest, continuing to walk besides her.
"What is the quest?" Mithera asked as they stopped to watch the kids. Unlike Royse, who seemed fine here, the shapeshifter stood out. Her clean, light-colored dress, unusual height, and uneasy demeanor made her clearly seem like she didn't belong here. She didn't get an answer before Royse noticed someone strange and commented on it. Mithera glanced at the person, before looking back at Royse and trying to make it look like she hadn't noticed the stranger.
"Uhm, I guess, you lead the way, okay? I'll just be support."Royse ~
The slaver stopped to a halt as soon as he saw Mithera, an unfamiliar person that was clearly not from this slums.
Better fall back this time, seems like those council Knights, but as long as I don't do anything I wouldn't be arrested, they aren't able to tell us apart from the slum kids... Sensing something amiss, the slaver turned back, as he tries to leave the scene quietly.
"That's the slaver, capture him alive."Royse hissed, taking out a bow and sent an arrow towards that slaver's leg. The act of that slaver turning back adruptly had made it more obvious to a former slum girl like Royse. She had initially planned for a surprise unsuspected ambush, but this situation would work somehow, as the slaver has already entered her arrows reach, and firing at someone from their backs is as good as a still target. But, she is eager to know if that slaver is smart enough to have any magical defenses prepared.
It isn't wise turn your backs against your prey ~Mithera blinked.
Slaver? Regardless of her confusion however, she lurched forward like a puppet on a string at Royse's command. After the arrow struck the slaver Mithera would tackle him. Though, if the man was big enough, Mithera wouldn't be able to knock him over with her skinny body. She wasn't really all that good at fighting in her human form. If she were a wolf or something, it'd be easy to take this guy down, but the best Mithera could do was wrap her arms around his neck and pull with all her weight. However, the element of surprise made it easy to bring him down. Once he was on the grown, however, Mithera just looked at Royse for further instruction. The slaver didn't seem to have any magic defensive or anything, and he seemed too surprised to cast anything before he was on the ground and had his arms pinned down-if he was able to cast at all. Mithera thought about it, and figured that he probably had some memory charm magic if he did this thing regularly.
"Uh, what now?" The pale woman asked, her shallow blue eyes watching Royse. She wasn't sure how long this slaver was going to stay down without a fight, and she really hoped her new companion had a plan.
"Just restrain him, I will tie him up." Royse took out a rope, and began wrapping up the slaver from the arms to the legs. She was still alert and cynical to the whole thing, because the whole process of capturing a slaver seemed way too easy to complete, even for a small fry. But, that's likely due to having higher numbers. From how it looks from the outside, the unprofessionality of tying up some stranger older than both of them in the broad daylight makes it look more like a kids' squabble than actual kidnapping. Adding to that fact that this is the slums, the process has gone smoothly without question nor inteference.
Royse dragged the slaver down the back alley, until she found one of the abandoned shacks. That shabby shack was the usual of worn-out chairs and table. Dusting away the chair, she did her usual of searching the slaver's belongings before making a couple more knots between him and the chair.
"Whew---" Royse sat on the table, stretching out her elbows after finishing the menial labours. Her 'part 1' is mostly complete, all that is left is for Mithera to be out of the picture, to ensure the smooth gathering of information from that slaver.
"Apologies for our crude invitation Mister~ We have received words of missing childrens from the slums, having being 'escorted' to a faraway place for slavery. Reports and Evidences have shown clearly that you're one of those dealers, so we would prefer to have your utmost corporation, Sir."Royse crossed her legs but broke the eye contact after ending her formal sarcastic undertone. Her eyes rolled towards Mithera, showing a gentle smile like she always did.
"I'm thirsty, go buy me a drink~ I'll do a bit of questioning in the meantime ~ Oh, and I prefer lemonade~" Royse casually flipped a coin toward Mithera.
"And here is the quest paper if you're interested, didn't mentioned much about it back then, 'cause there might be rats around ~" She also handled the quest paper that she took down back at Phoenix Wing Guild.
Mithera nodded when Royse told her to just keep the slaver restrained, and did so. Once he was all tied up, Mithera helped carry/drag him to wherever Royse was leading. The shapeshifter was content to just follow the other girl's lead, especially since she seemed real confident, which Mithera certainly wasn't. She was glad, at least, that the slaver seemed totally confused. Probably would keep him of thinking up a good plan for at least a little while. He did try to scream at one point, which lead to Mithera ripping a petal off of her dress and stuffing it in his mouth. Royse wouldn't have had the time to comment on the damage to the dress- whether or not she had intended to- before the pale shapeshifter had produced a new one.
When they had arrived at their destination and tied up the slaver, Mithera yet again turned to Royse for the next set of instructions. She looked rather confused, and a little insulted, when Royse told her to just go and get a drink. Though what really offended Mithera was the manner in which it was asked. She had no issue going and getting drinks for them, but a please or a thank you or at least asking it instead of telling. Shrugging it off, Mithera caught the coin. Though when the piece of paper with the quest on it was offered the woman didn't take it.
"I can't read. You'll just have to tell me later when we get a moment alone," she said without much hesitation, her otherwise cheery tone coming in just a little bit flat.
"I'll be back in a jiffy with some drinks though!" She gave Royse a half-hearted smile before leaving the building. She was bound to be back in no time though, and if Royse wanted to get the info out of the man before the mostly-bubbly shapeshifter got back she would have to work fast.
Nothing happened in the two minutes, the shack was silent other than words like "I don't know what you're talking about" coming out of that slaver's mouth. A response like that is obviously expected, but that two minutes of silence serves a purpose for Royse to ensure that Mithera is far enough, and time for Royse to prepare on what's coming next.
Hope that you'll be prepared as well..."You enslave kids, so now this is fair business. No hard feelings, just remember that there are repercussions on shady jobs like this even in the Underworld. Personally, you would've been better off arrested by the Council."Royse showed a gleeful smile, as she got off the table and approached the restrained slaver. One of the slaver's fingers went away with one chop from Royse's knife, then she stabbed the slaver's arm, twisting the wound purposefully. Screams from the slaver echoed in agony through the abandoned shack.
"I'll give you 10 more seconds to give me a more constructive answer, starting from now. 10, 9, 5, 0. I'm Sorry, Time's up~" Royse drew the Knife dripping in blood as she proceeded to slice off another finger. Blood oozes out profusely from the left arm of the slaver.
So much noise pollution over here... Royse thought, piercing his arm and leaving it in the fresh wound.
"So, who is your boss, and where is your hideout? We regret to inform that we don't have any racks, so I will be stitching up your wound in a while, starting with your problematic eye~"Royse threaded her needle and started stitching up the slaver's eyelids, 'accidentally' piercing the cornea of that eye on a few occasions. The white thread quickly turned red, and Royse wasn't sure whether the slaver was crying or bleeding. Sewing that eye shut, Royse eagerly finished off with a flowery stitch. She wasn't good at sewing, so she wouldn't want to waste this opportunity on practicing.
With the slaver bleeding from head to toe, Royse's hand was dyed with droplets of the slaver's spilled blood. She didn't feel anything bad about this, since she had been doing this a couple of times and got used to it, also that slaver is a bad guy who is just getting his deserts. The slaver would probably break and spill the beans by now, or she have other ways of further torturing that slaver, she had left the left side untouched for a good reason.
"Oh, and most importantly, how do you contact with your boss? Letter, mouth or lacrima?"Mithera was humming softly when she returned, a paper bag with a logo stamped on it in one hand and a pair of persperating drinks on a tray in the other. Her humming stopped when she saw the man in the chair, and she only sighed slightly before going to the table and setting it down.
"I also grabbed a bite of food with the drinks, since I'm feeling pretty hungry and figure you might be too," she took a sip from one of the two drinks she had.
"I got you lemonade, but if you don't like it you can have my water," she sat on the table and began picking at some of the french fries she had gotten herself as the man metaphorically spilled his guts. Once he had told the two of them everything he knew- which admittedly wasn't much, as he was merely a grunt. He apparently only communicated with his boss indirectly, and only in one direction. Not too helpful, but it gave them another link in the chain they could climb up. Once he was done Mithera looked at Royse.
"By the way, I'm pretty sure Phoenix Wing frowns on leaving people physically disfigured," the shapeshifter said plainly.
"Besides, there are much more effective ways of torturing someone than physical pain. Especially when, as wasn't the case here, the subject realizes their own boss would do much worse to them when they found out they had squeeled," she finished off her drink, giving the man tied to the chair a knowing look.
"So, what are we gonna do with him before we run off to find the fella he gets his orders from?""Thanks! That french fries is appreciated~" Royse wiped her bloodstained hands with a napkin, taking a sip on the lemonade.
"They kidnap childrens and smuggle them to faraway countries and force them to do what they don't want to. So, there's a saying called what comes around goes around, and what I did is pretty justified if you ask me ~" She took a bite on the french fries and talked casually without any sense of guilt, as if she was doing the right thing.
"But, on what you said, its pretty true in a way. My original plan is to question and scrap those slavers, and put those corpses into a nice parcel. I'm empty-handed here with no racks or maidens, and I wouldn't like to waste too much magic on that. And if they refuse to say anything I will just do the usual to cut their tongue & just mutilate them. With a couple of packages mailed to the boss, we would anger him and hopefully he would appear here. If he don't, I won't mind having a slaughterhouse here, and eventually over time we would get more than enough information on the whole organization ~""That's the plan I was originally going to follow, or we could just storm in based on the information that slaver gave to us, but it might be a trap. But for now, I owe you one for the food, so I'll be going with your decision. After all, I'm supposed to trust my guildmates ~ And as for that slaver, your choice, you can dispose him or you can spare him, but I would be happy to see him have his hands chopped away, so he wouldn't be able to capture innocent childrens for the rest of his life ~" Royse ate a burger, talking with ease and a friendly smile, completely disregarding the slaver, now that he have proven his uselessness.
"First things first," Mithera would say through a pair of fries.
"We're not going to kill anyone. I'm sure we can sniff out the boss without resorting to that- Literally if we have to. For now we climb the latter, and go find the communication lines," she said, thinking about an age old fight she and Melina used to have. Melina held the stance of 'if you do to your enemies what they'd do to you, you are no better.' Mithera never entirely agreed, but she had lived in the wild for a long time, where anything you could get away with was okay. She had a feeling, however, that Jamie would side with Melina, so they should at least err on the side of caution.
"The boss can't be too far up the chain. As for our buddy here, leave him tied up and we'll point a few cops down this way in a few hours. Chances are he'll go to jail for at least a decade, which I hear is pretty bad," the shapeshifter suggested as she slid back off the table.
"Or, if we're feeling gutsy," Mithera leaned over to Royse's ear, and whispered so their prisoner wouldn't hear.
"We could go and get ourselves kidnapped, then use our magic to get out of it and get answers.""Sounds good, lets' go with that~" Royse stated, it can be seen from her tone of voice that she was a bit reluctant on that approach. Not because she is scared of being captured, but she felt that a 'light' torture and 10 years of imprisonment is too lenient of a punishment for dishonourable criminals like a slaver. Finishing her food and wrapping up her trash, she stood up to leave that shack.
"I'm not so good at dealing with Council Business, so after reporting him, we should be waiting at another corner of the slums~"Royse went ahead as she pointed the general direction of where they should meet after the proper handling of the 'loose baggage'. She will just be waiting there first, to observe the situation.
It wouldn't be a troublesome job, it being a different location, and I've been living in such places for most of my life ~Mithera would nod as Royse pointed out where they would be going to next.
"I would not worry about the Council, Phoenix Wing and the Council are on friendly terms," she said politely. The shapeshifter then headed back to the last authority figure she remembered seeing, reported the man, and extricated herself expertly from the law enforcement's probing questions. Mithera didn't go so far as to leave a fake name for him to follow up on, but she did make it seem like she was mostly clueless (She had also made Royse at least stay back from the officer to make it all a bit simpler). Once the slaver had been reported she made her way back to where Royse had pointed out, meeting up with the younger woman if she had decided to let Mithera report the man on their own. It was then up to Royse to decide their next step.
Royse reached slum corner after splitting up. She doesn't trust the Council that much, especially on some of her more controversial acts. Not far ahead, she saw another guy with that same eerie brown cloak that she had saw earlier. The slaver was grabbing a kid forcefully, and Royse could see two human-sized bag behind that slaver, which settles quietly like a corpse bag.
They seemed to have a way of knocking them out, and hostages are troublesome... She thought, creating three
Stun Arrows with her
Arrow Creation Magic, drawing her bow as she fired it upon the slaver.
The arrow missed the slaver who had stepped aside amidst the kid's struggle, hitting the kid & stunning him unfortunately. Royse was relieved that the arrow she fired wasn't a lethal one, until she realises that she had attracted the slaver's notice. She drew another one of her stun arrow, holding it there as it pointed towards the slaver.
"Let my brother go, or I will shoot!" She shouted to the slaver who seemed more amused than threatened.
Royse was unnerved upon realising the situation where it turned into a certain stalemate. She couldn't use normal arrows due to 3 hostages behind that slaver. And her style of combat is mostly made for killing purposes, not for rescuing hostages. For someone with eye-to-eye contact with her, she couldn't take the slaver down with just two stun arrows. To get a hit, she will need at least a few dozens, and that will exhaust most of her mana for just one person. And she is not stupid enough to not know that the slaver is not alone.
Time isn't well on my side...Royse wouldn't want to retreat in front of those kids, they are too much of a resemblance to her back as a child.
Its all or nothing here... She made a swift charge at the slaver with her increased speed from her use of her
Wind Magic. Holding a stun arrow, she thrusted it towards his chest.
The stun arrow hit that slaver square in the chest. It was easier than Royse had thought, the slaver didn't do as much as to dodge that attack.
Thats it...? Even Royse was caught by surprise on what happened in front of her. She glanced around, and right behind her was two slavers with fully casted magical blasts. Before she could even react to this ambush, the blasts have already knocked her out, sending bruises throughout her body. Royse fell flat on the ground as she lost consciousness.
"Quite a promising mage here, she will fetch a great price at Caelum. Let's call it a day, we've struck gold this time."The stun on the slaver has worn off after a few seconds, as the other two slavers packed Royse into one of those large bag. Mithera would have arrived by then. The slavers started packing up their products and headed for the railroad car. Turns out that a 'planned' kidnap ended up being a real one.
Mithera was getting back to their meeting place just as the slavers were putting Royse in a bag, and she ducked into an alley immediately to watch them from around the building corner. The slavers were almost all gone when the shapeshifter finally came up with a plan. She produced the two lacrima Jarvis had given her when she was last back at the guild, and swallowed them both whole, wincing as she had to make some on-the-spot accommodations for them. Once the pair of objects were safely out of reach, Mithera came out from around the corner and walked directly up to one of the slavers.
"H-hey!" She said, her nervousness apparent.
"I-I saw what you did, and you better let those people go!" One of the kidnappers chuckled, the others that had heard the commotion just looked at her like she was stupid.
"And what if we don't?" Asked one boredly. A few hand motions passed around the group, and they began to carefully surround the white-haired woman. Mithera pretended not to notice.
"I-I-I'll go and get the authorities! They'll finally do something about you w-with a witness!" She began to back up like she was preparing to run, but one of the men grabbed her shoulder roughly, holding her in place.
"H-hey...""Right. That'll happen. Now what's a girl like you- who is clearly not from around here- doing in this part of town?" The same kidnapper asked, Mithera figured he was probably the leader of this group in some sense. She didn't answer, and instead struggled against the man holding her. Once the man was sure that she wasn't going to answer his question, he gave the motion for one of them to knock her out, which was complied with immediately. They added the white-haired woman to their other baggage for the day without much ceremony.
After gathering the slaves, the slavers moved to an abandoned factory near a frieght station. An order to load the 'cargo' is issued by the leader, and the train is scheduled to depart by the end of this hour. The goods are stashed at one corner of the abandoned factory. Because the slavers know that Royse is a bit harder to control as a mage, she wasn't among the 'common goods', but instead she is at the other end of the abandoned factory, which is a bit more guarded as compared to the rest.
Royse regained consciousness, finding that her hands are shackled to the wall.
The room reeks of blood.. Royse looked around, the kind of room that she has seen over couple of times, bloodstains & rotting severed limbs here and there. In front of her was the same slaver that she tried to stun before. Although she is tempted to get herself right now, her magic hasn't fully recovered yet. As cautious as Royse is, she would only fight if she is at full power.
Just 10 minutes...The slaver felt that Royse had something to do with one of the missing men out there.
A short questioning will do, I can't reduce the value too muchMithera woke up among the other kidnapped individuals, meaning they either didn't recognize the phoenix wing mark on her stomach or didn't find it. Even the most confident of criminal organizations would know better than to underestimate a mage with unknown abilities. She groaned slightly as she stood up from the ground, and gave a polite smile to the people who were looking at her before she began counting both kidnapping victims and guards. She was not confident in her final numbers however, as they were already loading people onto the train. It still came to more than she could handle, even with the element of surprise. Unless she used said surprise to free Royse, that might work. She looked to the people around her, and spoke in soft but commanding tones.
"Okay, so I'm a mage from Phoenix Wing here to free you," she made a motion to stop someone who was about to speak up before they did.
"I need all you to stay quiet and hide me from sight for like, five minutes, okay?" She made eye contact with each one looking at her.
"How are we supposed to hide you from sight?" One asked.
"Just keep your bodies between me and the guard," Mithera would then sit on the floor.
"Also, be forwarned, I'm a transformation mage." The kidnapping victims nodded, and turned their backs to her before forming a loose wall of bodies between her and the guards. Minutes passed, and finally the two men loading people onto the train moved up and pulled one of the people standing between them and Mithera, only to suddenly find a person-sized wolf tackling him. He started shouting as the Mithera-Wolf bit into his arm hard, before bouncing off of him and bounding away. The alarm spread slower than Mithera moved, and she had managed to find where Royse was after only six or seven minutes of searching and knocking down guards. One had barely managed to get a spell off, scoring a deep gauge across Mithera's side, but it had nearly completely closed by the time the shapeshifter was pouncing on the guard questioning Royse, biting the forearm he was defending himself with viciously. After a bit of tug of war with the man over his arm, and his fainting after seeing the damage the large wolf had already done to him, Mithera retrieved the keys to Royse's constraints with her mouth and went to give it to the wizardess so that she could free herself and they could finish clearing this place out.
"YIPEEE--- HOORAYY----" Two large arrows were eating that slaver alive, with sharp-brown jaws that open and closes repeatedly, emitting shrieking cheers & laughters.
Arrow Creation: Eater. Royse right eye is tearing in blood, with clear bite marks on that eye, as if it was nibbled over and over. As the slaver was bitten to his heart literally, the two floating fishes that was beside him disappeared following his death. 6 minutes is a time longer than what Royse had thought, long enough for her to snap.
Royse stood up, with shackles that have been cut apart from her
Wind Magic, prodded herself towards the door. She was silent, her remaining eye narrowed, not seemingly recognising anyone. Walking out, she casted out the same Eater arrows, propelling them with
Wind Magic, as those sinister arrows started screaming towards the other slavers, seeking to eat them alive. Royse has only one thought in her mind:
Kill them. Disregarding any sane thoughts, the foul way of her using her magic shows how desperately she wants them dead.
Mithera panicked when she saw what Royse was doing. She recognized the instinct immediately: Royse was an animal backed into a corner, and now that she had the upper hand that animal was going to make sure she wasn't going to backed into a corner again. That wasn't good, as Royse could accidentally hurt one of the fleeing captives, or worse. The shapeshifter wasn't about to let her self-appointed charge hurt an innocent, though it occured to her that it wasn't good to let her kill the kidnappers as well. Murder was still murder, after all. In a split second decision, that went against half a century of instinct, the white wolf that Mithera had shaped herself into leaped into Royse's back, forcing the much lighter girl to the ground.
Mithera knew that with her size she could've easily cracked or broken one of Royse's ribs; even an arm if they had tried to brace themselves. Mithera didn't spend the time to diagnose whatever damage she might've done and now used the downed girl as a springboard towards one of the men that had been approaching from the side. She surprised the man, and caught his collarbone with her mouth while he was falling back away from her, and bit down hard. The bone snapped in two with little effort, and the crack that punctuated it was followed by an ear-melting screech. Barely giving the blood spurting from the man time to hit her fur, she kicked off of him towards the next one. He was far enough away that Mithera had to take bounding steps to reach him, which was enough time to notice one of Royse's arrows biting into him. Mithera gave herself just enough time to knock away Royse's arrow before breaking his collarbone too, before throwing herself into a run at the next criminal, and so on.
Mithera went on like this through most of the guards, kidnappers, and slavers. Most of them put up more of a fight than the first few, since they knew what was coming for them. When Mithera finally padded back to Royse, panting heavily, her fur was stained as much with her own blood as with that of the criminals she had attacked. Magic Bullet holes, slashes, and burns covered much of Mithera's backs and sides, but were already visibly healing. Despite all the damage dealt to the criminals and to Mithera, however, not one was dead by eachother's hand. And if Mithera had anything to say about that, they would remain that way.
When Mithera finally sat down not far from Royse, she had made sure that her arrows hadn't begun eating anyone else. After knocking down the girl again if she was persistent, or simply sitting there and giving her a stern look for a moment, the wolf-shaped mage coughed up a communication lacrima. Mithera had created a separate not-stomach in her body to store it, but that didn't change the fact that coughing it up was exactly as gross as a hairball. Once it had been delivered to the floor of the warehouse, Mithera finally gave Royse a softer look, and a slight whine in the back of her throat asked if she had injured the girl earlier.
Royse turned back to see the white wolf that was clearly about to pounce on her. Her hands twitched as she was about to cast something, but her instincts that recognised Mithera as an ally held her back. Only for a moment, but that proved crucial enough for Mithera to restrain Royse.
The few Eater Arrows that weren't snapped apart went biting against the floor of the warehouse, with the user being still conscious but having lost the target. Royse clenched her teeth against her bleedy eye and her bruised rib. Ironically, she had been questioned by a similiar way that she used on the slaver at the slums: Her right eye had been eaten alive by conjured fishes for the whole 6 minutes from that slaver that she killed.
Her breath shortened as she showed signs of giving way to her strain of her injuries, but she held her consciousness steadily.
"I'm okay," Royse finally spoke, having calmed down by the time Mithera went back.
"That guy was annoying, but whatever." Royse got herself up, getting back to her usual calm & rational way of speaking, taking a quick glimpse of the lacrima with her left eye,
"So, if this quest is done now, we'll be splitting the reward, you get half the share, I get the other ~"Royse let out a slight, but subtle smile of satisfaction.
Mithera sat there thinking for a moment once Royse had finished talking, comprehending what she had said, before using her head to point back behind her towards the general part of the building she thought there were a couple more criminals waiting. She was pretty sure she hadn't gotten quite them all, just enough that she felt relatively safe sitting where she was for a few moments. After a moment of sitting there, doing nothing but panting, Mithera picked up the lacrima in her jaws and began limping over to Royse's cell. Once she was inside the small sectioned off area she put down the lacrima, coughed up her other one, and began the transformation process.
This time it took longer than it did when she had done it earlier, entirely on account of the fact that she was now fairly badly injured. It was almost a full half-hour before Mithera was back into her human shape and standing. She no longer had any external cuts or open wounds, but there were still several large bruises that suggested bad internal injuries. By now Royse had surely mopped up any remaining baddies, and Mithera limped out of where Royse was being tortured. Once the younger mage had noticed her and came over, she spoke, though her voice was a bit strained.
"You can keep the full reward, I get by pretty fine without money to be honest. Also, go and get the Rune Knights, tell them to come here. Once you do that, go and collect the reward and use this to go back to Phoenix Wing," Mithera held out the teleportation lacrima Jamie had given her.
"Just hold it and focus on the Guild Hall and it'll take you right there. Give it back to Jarvis once you do though. I'll talk to the Rune Knights here then walk back." She offered a fragile smile.
"Hey, we did something good today, and made a few people's lives permanently better. Go us."Royse bandaged her eye as Mithera spoke, she had to make herself more presentable to those Knights, and to the public.
Its over, this quest, conditions fufilled enough to claim the reward by then. She doesn't have good experiences with the Knights, because some of her methods doesn't go along with people like that, and also she doesn't trust authorities well. She'd actually hoped that she would get to the root of this, but letting the Knights knowing this would be the best course of action, there is only so much one person can do.
"No problem, check if there's someone with the name of Aiko Hajime here. I'll be going off, I'm still able to fight, its only one eye gone anyways. Even if we've yet to fufill the fine print of the quest paper."Royse headed off for the town square, her tone sounding firm and confident, especially on her last sentence. Reaching the Rune Knight's Fort, she reported the situation, omitting the more brutal parts however. Perhaps due to her crude bandages, the Rune Knights was summoned to the trainyard without much delays. Mere injuries are already good enough evidence for them to take action.
"
So, how was it? Is there anything?"Royse returned back to the scene and asked, the Rune Knights starting to make their arrests on the criminals. She had learnt how to use her 'useless' Arrow magic on something more than mere party gimmicks. And she is prepared to continue & try out her new level of magic control if she had to.
Mithera just shook her head in response to Royse's question, letting a Rune Knight medic attend to her many injuries. Another one directed Royse to a place to sit down so they could attend to her too. From there, the man attending Mithera's injuries insisted she go to the hospital and be treated properly, leaving Royse to follow up on the job on her own. That was fine by the transformation mage, who less said goodbye to Royse and more just caught her eye and gave the younger mage a wave while being helped out of the building. Mithera suspected the arrow-mage would be able to handle herself and get the payment on her own, and didn't hunt her down later.
Mayt had tucked himself away in a corner of the guild hall for the day. He had planned to just spend the day relaxing and people-watching, since Phoenix Wing was always a very lively group. Not only that, but it was fairly usual for any issues that cropped up to solve themselves. Or, at least, he was pretty sure that was the case since the place hadn't burnt down without him- which was most of the time. It was with a sip of his drink and the approach of Damian and Penny that he was pulled from his chair. Adjusting his clothes some as he stood, the mage said little as he was lead to the meeting room. Like Penny, Mayt didn't feel comfortable sitting in this setting, and instead stood behind a chair about equidistant from both the other S-Classes.
"Well, been a while since we all talked at least. I think we've all shared the main room of the guild hall a few times for a couple seconds or so," he joked, trying not to be too serious.
