[b]Jason![/b]

This scene is fucked. You’ve got a general idea of what interacting with a superhero is supposed to be like; you were a freshie when the aliens showed up, after all. They save you. If they get the shit kicked out of them, they tell you it’s not that bad, worry about yourself. You stuck your neck out for the Great Betrayer, the person who was scheming with the Annunaki the whole time, and you’ve heard the only reason she’s moonlighting now is because they screwed her over back, and, like, that’s not noble, that’s just getting even. And here she is curling up into a ball and your heart’s still going seven million miles an hour.

You’d almost, you know, convinced yourself that you were cool. The sweaty palms you could ignore. The cold feeling of dread you could shove to the side. All you had to do was win the gladiator fight. They might even have mercy on you if you won one fight, or was it three?

“I could have taken it,” you blurt out. It’s seductively easy to blame her for the horror leaking back into you. You could have died! You could have [i]died![/i] “Nice job fucking it up like always. Cool to see you’re still finding new and exciting ways to ruin things for everybody, I guess.”

You toss your sword at the wall and flinch when it bounces back and skitters on the floor.

***

[b]Marianne![/b]

Jerioth flops into your arms like the catch of the day. It’s instinctual and almost effortless to shift and make sure the force of impact ends up distributed across her body, rather than dangerously concentrating anywhere— especially with that useless, gaudy jewelry hanging from her head. Someone should take those. They’d make good souvenirs.

“Grrrrfff, glllrrmph!” She weakly pants out further complaints and dire curses upon you and your whole family, each and every one completely incomprehensible, and the deeper she digs, the more helpless she feels, the more her eyes start to widen and her chest to heave. If she had her voice, it would be as easy as pie for her to order that troll to crush you. As it is, it’s looking at you with those dull, glowing amber eyes.

What’s the plan, Marianne? Was it to cow the cow, to make sure Jerioth [i]understands[/i] what the consequences of saying one word off-script will be? Or was it to go and daringly fetch her little Shalomit, too? Or, perhaps, to offer the troll freedom and a weapon with which to rampage?

***

[b]Mra’al![/b]

The pain breaks your concentration; thoughts come flooding back in as your mane flattens. You’re lying on the floor, and your back throbs, your ribs screech and burn. This little girl, this [i]child[/i] has claws. And what sort of huntress does that make you? You burn with shame, with anger.

Your Inquisitor trusts you! She hand-raised you! She shares her food with you, and this is how you repay her: you play with your food and damage the holy armor she arrays about you.

You roll to your knees, see that you have destroyed the windows of the djinn’s eyes; red-hot wrath fills you. You have failed! You have caused destruction to this most holy device! If you had been faster, this wouldn’t have happened. You surge forwards, a bola in your left hand and your rod in your right—

And then you hear your Inquisitor’s whistle. Keep her here, then. That’s the inflection.

[hider=Mra’al]AFRAID
[X] ANGRY
GUILTY

[list][*]Act with primal, thoughtless perfection
[*]Make a sudden, decisive entrance or exit
[*]Make them feel like prey
[*]Spring a trap[/list][/hider]

***

[b]Set![/b]

It is time to go to the rendezvous point, because ops here are busted. You managed to send the Lynx hurtling into the monitors: unfortunate, but not like you could have done anything else. Now there’s not much more info you can get from here.

Also: because you just heard an Annunaki signal, and she’s gone from trying to catch the mouse to trying to cut you off. If you take your eyes off her for a moment, if you don’t make this a very smooth portaling out, there will be Trouble, and that is a promise. She’s spinning a pair of bolas, and those hurt when they wrap around a limb or two; if they slam into your head, you might even black out.