When Khelfin woke up that morning, he could immediatly feel the dark mood that had taken Vale since the fall of Beacon. "What did I expect? Birds and butterflies?" he asked himself out loud. He stretched his arms and got out of bed. While nearly dragging himself to the shower, he tried to think of a plan of action. Salem's orders had been clear: Remain in Vale as her eyes and ears. While the hot water of the shower ran over his back and cleaned his wounds, reality began to sink in. Salem was never going to release his mother. She would keep using her as leverage to make Khelfin obey her, time after time. Was there any way to break the cycle? Roman was dead, Cinder had been forced to retreat. Besides Khelfin, Salem didn't have anyone in Vale, as far as he knew. Well, besides the Grimm.

Khelfin got out of the shower and got dressed. Once outside, he got confronted with the giant frozen Grimm, a constant reminder of what happened. "Man, compared with this, Vacuo seems like a theme park." he sighed sarcastically. He walked up to people that were trying to do some damage controle by searching for wounded, rebuilding stuff or plainly fighting off Grimm. Time to blend in again. He played with his dagger in his hand, twisting it around with an obvious ease, while scouting for a group of Huntsmen. As he spotted some, he wondered if he could pretend to be bad at combat, just to see the Grimm enjoy their snack. Whoa, Salem's influence was really getting to him. He shook off those thoughts and joined the Huntsmen in battle. As he slit a Grimm's throat, he realized how weak some of them were. Then again, the problem was mostly their numbers.

In any case, he couldn't stand out too much and risk exposal. After all, he hadn't lost to team JNPR on purpose for nothing. He had to put away his personal pride and take a beating from them for the greater picture. He'd have to do the same again now with the Grimm if he wanted to keep a low profile. When one of the Grimm came running for him, he pretended to not see it and as it slashed at him, Khelfin fell to his knees in faked pain. "Aahhh!" he shouted loud enough for nearby Huntsmen to hear, while in reality barely feeling anything. He had taken worse shots in Vacuo.

@KhKj

From within the shadow cast by Khelfin's kneeling frame, a length of fabric suddenly lashed out, cracking the Grimm's mask with a single, powerful strike to the face. It violently recoiled, shrieking in pain, bone white splintering from its face as it staggered back ... and then, punctuated by a rush of air, the orange scarf returned in a cloud of black, slamming the monster's head back down against the cold, hard concrete with a terrible, snapping sound.

It was done.

Like a fishing line being reeled back, the scarf retreated once more into the patch of darkness right underneath Khelfin. A second later, a woman's face emerged, floating atop the shadowed concrete. Her brown eyes blinked twice behind her shades, but once they caught sight of the Hunter above her (and more apparently, his exposed chest), her mouth curled upwards in a big grin.

"What's cookin', good-lookin'?"

One of Huntresses had engaged in combat, seemingly saving Khelfin. He had to supress a grin when he realized his plan worked. Keeping a plain and neutral facial expression, he looked straight at her. "Thank you. I thought I wouldnt make it out alive." he lied without even blinking once.

Khelfin knew he would need people to trust him and what better way to achieve that by bonding. "The name is Khelfin. I'm not originally from around here but I guess we all have a responsibility to help Vale, right? Who do I have the pleasure to be saved by?"

@KhKj

The shadows around the woman suddenly trembled as her head once more disappeared beneath the pool of darkness. Then, a jet-black foam frothed forth from the concrete that Khelfin's body was impeding the the sun's omnipresent rays from reaching, leaping clear of his frame and immediately melting into a crouching human form upon striking the no-longer-obscured light. And the woman, having only been seen prior as a head in a sea, was now pointed away from Khelfin, the green of her jacket-clad back directed towards the other Hunter rather than the pale of her face.

She rose to her feet and turned around, one hand casually brushing away wavy black locks away from her sunglasses. Her smile, despite being partially obscured by her scarf, had not dimmed in the slightest, and in fact seemed to brighten in response to her rescuee's question.

"Medeinė," she replied cheerily. "But you were fiiiine. I bet you could've killed that Grimm without breaking a sweat."

In her eyes, Khelfin did not appear severely wounded in the slightest, nor did he show any indication of having depleted the energies of his aura barrier. Neither of those facts particularly mattered to her, however. She was just here to do a good deed and help out a fellow Hunter who was not actually too in dire need.

Also, eyecandy.

"But do you want to team up?" Medeinė asked, casually whipping her scarf forth once more to eviscerate an unfortunate lower-order Grimm that had carelessly decided to approach. Its head was split apart into halves before she even finished her sentences. "We can divvy up that responsibility of ours. The more the merrier, as they say."