“Woot! Alright!”

“Thirty units, just as our source promised, Stake.”

Umbri leaned over the thieves, tuning out their chittering. They’d pulled out a tray from the safe. A dozen glowing vials laid inside, pearlescent, occasionally shimmering with a flash of colour and never once the same shade. Shanks picked one up between his finger and thumb and shook it. Umbri stared, fixated, as the colours and glow were shaken away into a thick clear fluid and a pill bobbed into her view.

“What is that?” She breathed, momentarily forgetting her position. Shanks raised a brow at her.

Stake slouched forward to take a closer look, his arms still folded over his chest. "That, Sugar, is GIFT - the Undercity's hottest, most dangerous, most expensive drug." The bobbing pill reflected upon his yellow eyes. "And it's not just any drug. I've seen folks shoot fireballs, sprout wings, or lift an entire dump truck - with their mind… all because of GIFT."

Stake straightened himself, his arms folded behind his back. "Like anything in life, that kind of power comes with a price. One vial lasts for an hour, but the high?" He turned to her with a whisper. "It'll stay with you forever. Most drugs only make you feel powerful. This one shows you what it's like to be a God."

"What… what are you doing with those things?" Temujin interrogated them, squirming and shifting against his binds on Umbri's back, desperate to take a look. "GIFT is a blight on the streets! We need to destroy it all! And blow this train to kingdom come, just to make sure there's nothing left!"

“Save it, Robocop,” Shanks grunted and gave Umbri the universal look of ‘control your dog’. Umbri just couldn’t take her eyes off the pill.

“So this is what…? That means those Rogues and… the Templars up there are…”

“Pfft! No, this isn’t the be-all way of getting powers. You can still take a dive in radioactive sludge. You know, the natural way.” Stabby laughed.

“Or, as is common around here… by chopping off your limbs and chromming up the stumps,” Stake added, looking straight at Temujin. The ninja was not amused. “What about you, ‘Stake’? How’d you get those eyes?” He asked, his question pointed with a hiss.

The wrinkles of a smirk returned to his eyes. “That’s a story I only share over a date,” he remarked, casting a glance to Umbri. A glance that he swiftly directed to the business at hand. “Anyway, GIFT is hard to come by these days. I’d even say impossible. Which makes this haul…” He narrowed his eyes. “...An anomaly. And a profitable one, at that.”

The drug was snatched from Umbri’s sight by the closing of a fist, then the safe shut with a hiss. “Alright, product confirmed. Let’s make way.”

Umbri backed up as the others made their preparations, leaning on a crate to take a breather. This was hard on her body and harder on her head. There wasn’t too much of this ‘superpower’ stuff back home, just heavy Chrome addicts and maybe a few low level psychics. Most of what she saw of this world was Templars on TV, or the damage done to the thresher corpses shipped in. Northbridge was a little world with little problems. Little, lower class problems, to be exact. The big ticket heroes were needed topside to fight wars for the wealthy or were drawn to the maw of the Graves to punch big lizards. The Ms. Nuclear Breath and Mr. Lightning Hands of the world weren’t here to save little girls from big debts.

“You're pretty heated about GIFT if you'd blow up the train you'd kill these guys for stealing from. Or you're also a hypocrite." Umbri said on a sarcastic sigh, slouching into her puffy jacket. “What’s wrong? It feels… I don’t know. GIFT being spread around down here feels like the biggest middle finger you could throw at the upper city you hate so much.”

Temujin did not immediately reply, considering her words in his silence. "The dregs around here would sooner use GIFT against each other before they'd even think of going against the upper city. The Undercity is enough of a shithole without souped-up junkies leveling the place every night."

Umbri shrugged, content to let idle thoughts lie. She rolled her eyes away, and caught a flicker. A split second of dim in her right top peripherals. Maybe it was that, or the sudden prickle in the back of her head that had drawn her eye to it, but she lifted herself off the crate and wandered away.

“Hey, hey!... What are you staring at?” Temujin asked in a hushed tone. There was only quiet in his sensors.

A low shhh blew through her lips. She scanned up the walls of the carriage, over all the cargo. What was the tickle in her brain trying to tell her? There wasn’t space here for anything to be hiding.

Then a shadow dropped at the end of the carriage and surged over her, blacking out the entire carriage.

Thummmm.

The sound of powering down.

Stake looked up from his relaxed posture, with eyes that squinted within the dark. “Hmm… that wasn’t part of the plan.”

“What the hell was that?!”

“Shit! Did the rail lose power?!”

Umbri half stepped into the only light in the carriage. A dim spotlight cast by the hole the thieves sawed open. She looked up at the ground blurring past them. “Doesn’t look so,” she murmured.

Four crunches followed by sizzles pierced the dark, along with four glowsticks of red, yellow, purple and blue. The thieves held them before their faces, goggles reflecting the colours and masking their worry. Wet sounds started to bubble up around them.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“HE knows it’s here, he has to…” their voices were harder to mask the fear in.

“‘He’? He who?!” Temujin squirmed in his binds, and cast a frustrated grunt against the futile results. “Stake! STAKE! Who are you fucking with?!” He asked, with a quake in his voice… but he already knew the answer.

The gurgles morphed into wet slaps. A familiar, unfortunate snuffling sort of noise echoed around them, and a dozen pairs of pink eyes opened up in the shadows. Umbri’s stomach dropped. Oh my God, they’re…

“Rat… protects…” a voice wheezed. Several more echoed the sentiment all around her. It was undoubtedly Rat. If Rat’s voicebox had gone under a steamroller. Something was wrong with this… these… Rats.

“... for… KIRAN.”

Oh.

Every religious flyer caught in a gutter flashed before Umbri’s eyes. Shrines made of bones in Northbridge’s back alleys. The pathetic mewls of a cat whose mutation had its organs outgrowing its skin. Secretive gestures exchanged outside of tattoo parlors. The image of their God hung on skin across the main street. A hole that went down, down, down.

She turned. Her red eye caught a streak of light and looked Stake dead.

“Are we stealing from the Mother of Monsters?”

Jemma was… intrigued by this whole situation. Her singing had stopped around the same time as Jade’s, mostly due to the surprise of someone immediately translating a song she thought was interesting.
The sensation of Leah trying to wrestle her out of the room was forgotten by a sudden burst of ‘hug it’.

So the bear shape darted forward, ignoring the words being whispered by almost everyone, and gently rammed its armored skull against Jade’s chest.
Shards of bone and strands of fur began flying around the room, disintegrating rapidly once removed from the still living body. The bear bellowed lowly, rumbling a comforting purr not too unlike a rather large engine.
Ink pulsed, and a snake-like neck and head sprouted from the hind-legs of the bear, turning to focus on Wolf and … Violet? Was that the name? Yeah it was.

An echo of Wolf’s voice in her thoughts repeated the name for Jemma. The snake head turned, tilting somewhat as it focused on Vi… There was a burst of soft chuckling, before a voice echoed forth,
“You should get someone to replace or look at your joint braces. Oh! Or, or, you could probably find somethin’ in section 7 of the graves. ‘S the last place I saw some higher tech scrap!” Jemma chirped, ignoring the social norms of… not… commenting on someone’s cyberware without prompting.

The bear leaned up, swiping a bloodless, mostly bone, tongue…? Over Jade’s cheek. “I can imagine! Does she often get ‘take out’?” Questioned the whispering bear-snake thing.
The question was answered for her when ‘Vi’ had started to bid her goodbyes. ‘I could call—‘ being cut off by a firm ‘No’? Made sense. Often, then, most likely, maybe, probably.
Silver one… Silver Templar? The Blonde Ally? … No! It had to be the other one, made out of crimson and [STRESS-FEAR-STRENGTH]. It couldn’t be the one of [BLADE-null-FOCUS]. That would be… difficult! Jemma liked that one! In-so-much as the foggy memories allowed her to like it. … Oh!
“Speaking of which! Hey! Wolf! Hey! Hey hey hey hey—”

The woman cut her off with a glare, to which both heads of Jemma’s current shape began laughing and smiling about. “So can I, like… Leave? Or whatever? You didn’t necessarily make it super clear so…?” She trailed off, shrugging and bobbing the snake head about.

---

Meanwhile, far and above the conversation hidden from the sun, a man slams his forehead into the workstation he sits at. A frustrated scream rips from his mouth, before he sits back up.

---

Felix was having… a morning. That’s how he would describe it. He had clearly stayed up well past his ‘bedtime’ as Ion occasionally put it. Dark bags sat under his eyes, and he had kept the luminosity of his hard-light limbs at a ‘distant candle in a storm’ low.
In the corner of his HUD, was an image that Ion had sent him. The time stamp had it at 6:38 AM.
It was him, or at least, a heavily doctored image of him.
He didn’t even own a tank top like that! … He thought. Maybe. Who knows. He rarely slept at his apartment anymore, so, eh.

The biggest issue was having his face fully associated with his ‘hero’ identity. Felix hadn’t even gone out on a field mission, yet. Still had two days to go to be cleared for active duty. Above board. Legally. If Eva’s not looking. And if it definitely doesn’t involve ARES in any way, shape, or form. Yup.
Back on topic.

While the image kept his genuine look, it frustrated him that it was edited in such a way to make him seem so, well, suspicious? Mischievous? Gremlin-esque? Troublemaking? A definite Loki-archetype.
Oh well, too late, and going through multiple different reverse image searches proved that it was a solely localized image, so, yay.
A rapid, incredibly irate, message was sent and read, and responded to. With a smiley emoji.
Fucking…

Felix heaved a sigh and stood, snatching up the still prototype A.R.I. Module from its workstation stand. A burst of information scattered itself over his HUD, artifacted and distorted. Another failed start-up sequence. The tinker growled, setting it back down again and picking up his micro-tools. He was getting frustrated with the damn thing, and Sovereign wasn’t really able to help. Something about ‘organic processing being hard to extrapolate in conjunction with inorganic processing.’
“In simple terms?” He had questioned, only to be met with, ‘Computer does a fast think better than a human does a pattern-recognition think.’
Jackass.

Anyways!
Felix focused on the suspended module, eyebrows furrowing as he adjusted the moorings for the motherboards AGAIN. Figured that soldering them would’ve worked right? No! Fuckin’ microtech. Half of a half of a millimeter off? Guess what suddenly can’t run power as it’s supposed to! Whatever.
He was in minute three, when a sudden idea sparked behind his eyes.

Sai had said his speciality seemed to be prosthetics, and to angle his inventions as if they were all prosthetics…
What… if…
Felix’ face exploded into a grin, as he rapidly began disassembling and then reassembling the ARI module. In the span of ten minutes at most, a pair of what Yue would call: ‘The best damn headphones,’ replaced the wrap-around-headband chassis.

Felix’ grin only widened when, with a bit of prompting on Sovereigns’ part, the boot up sequence started.

[ POWER ON…
SYNCHRONIZATION START…
SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE.
ALLOCATING…
ALLOCATION COMPLETE.
<silence notifications>
NOTIFICATIONS SILENCED.
<display ‘boot sequence’ progress>
PROGRESS: 88% COMPLETE.
PROGRESS: 92% COMPLETE.
PROGRESS: 99% COMPLETE.
PROGRESS: 91% COMPLETE.
<display_>
BOOT SEQUENCE COMPLETE.
welcome to A.R.I. Augmented Reality Interface.
fly with the dawn. ]

Yessss.
He was totally going to test this out. … Buuuuut having a witness for his success would be nicer than just Sovereign.
Hm.
Which building did Dawn say she worked in, again? Eh. He’d just send her a text to warn her ahead of time… And maybe trace the receiving device to wherever it’s physical location within the tower was.
And maybe input those coordinates into ARI.
And maaaaybe… Just… Close his eyes… And…
Go.

Jade made a noise. A rising, wavering wail of insecurity and doubt as Jemma plodded towards her. Jade squished herself against the wall like a nervous rodent, trying (unsuccessfully) to maintain the distance between them, and when that didn't work, scrunching her eyes closed against the inevitability until... *CRACK!* Tufts of fur and splintered bone showered the bed as invisible blades clawed for purchase, scouring the surface of her chitinous armored hide. Wolf barely spared them a glance, apparently much less concerned after Jemma's head grew back the last time.

It would be nice to have someone else around besides Violet that could withstand physical contact with the girl.

"A cybernetics expert?" Chimed Vi in mechanical monotone to Jemma's questions.

"The best," Wolf nodded over the rim of her cup. The metallic chitter rose up in either excitement or agitation before dying back down.

"I'll take it under advisement...," she announced flatly, standing in silence for a long moment like there was more to say before she turned on her heels and walked away down the hall. Her half cloak billowed just enough to reveal the stump of her right arm, which looked as though it had been severed just above the armpit. A small chiropteran drone chittered at them, clawing its way up her rib cage and roosting in the open joint brace. A few others wrapped around her torso shifted as her cloak came back down.

Jade was frozen against the wall, eyes screwed shut against the physical contact and couldn't help but squeak as Jemma's tongue rasped against her skin. A flurry of psionic wind scythed around it, whistling through the segmented plates and searching for flesh. Wolf covered the top of her thermos to protect her coffee from the spray of bone dust. A smile cracked the corners of her lips: Vi had taken a similar shine to the girl.

"Take out? O-Once a month... m-maybe?"

“Speaking of which! Hey! Wolf! Hey! Hey hey hey hey—” Wolf squinted at the... appendage, finding a break in the spray of fur, chitinous dust, and bone fragments to steal a slurp from her thermos. She wasn't sure which end to address, and ultimately settled for the one that was talking. “So can I, like… Leave? Or whatever? You didn’t necessarily make it super clear so…?”

"Leave? Sure. You're free to come and go as you please, just like everyone else. Just respect the airlock: keeping signals and signatures inside The Den helps keep everyone safe," she explained, gesturing down the hall after Vi with her cup. She dug around in one of her pouches and held out a small chip that looked like it had been torn out of a slate phone and kitbashed together with a nano-scale E-Cell.

"Keep this in your...," she was going to say "pocket." "Uh. Keep this... with... you. It'll let you back in whenever you want. In an emergency you can crush it, and we'll come running."

"You should also know," Wolf added, almost as an afterthought. "I haven't told anyone in ShieldTown that you're back, or about... the changes. I can if you want me to."

“HOOKER! There’s a-... in front of- I mean BEHIND YOU!” Temujin yelled. A primal feeling crept up his spine, a feeling that came through his snarl as a very human gasp.

Umbri whipped around, coming face to face with a pair of yellow fangs. A festering, gelatinous substance sopped off the Rat before sloshing back to morph into its body. Its bulging eyes were glazed by cataracts and unnatural, glowing green drool hung from its snout. Its noise quivered and sniffed. Its mouth drew back into a snarl.

"Rat... smell... you!"

“Get down, Sugar!”



Umbri ducked. Rat's head exploded in a shower of green goo and rotting jelly. Smoke danced from the hot-pink tip of a gun barrel. Smoke that flitted past yellow eyes bulging against stretched white skin. More Rats sprouted around them; thin shadows with long-limbs outstretched. Two skittered across the ceiling, slime lolling from their snouts. Stabby raised their shotgun and fired. “Say CHEESE!” They screeched, amidst two thunderous flashes and falling chunks of flesh and goo. The Rats hastened their steps. They charged in from all angles.

Shanks bobbed and weaved, left to right, right to left, up and down. Razor-sharp swipes and bites missed him by inches. His bare fist launched into a Rat’s face. Teeth scattered from its cracked jaw. He spun, his coat tails whipped and reeled back the surrounding Rats. Shanks pursued with both fists flying. His jab flattened one against the wall. His haymaker slammed another with such force to bounce it from floor to ceiling.

Two Rats pounced at Shanks - and missed. The boxer shifted to counter, but stumbled. “?!” One’s claws pinned his coat to the floor. Another leapt to tackle.

Shivs’s laser saw stopped the Rat in mid-air. Glowing, cobalt-blue teeth cut into the creature at a hundred bites per second. Its body dropped in two different directions. Shivs widened her stance, spun the weapon over her head, then swung it into another Rat. Its guts blended into the wall.

A Rat whirled in a flurry behind Stake. He vaulted away, head over tail, until he was upside down, mid-air, with two guns pointed back at it. The barrels flashed pink. Two holes burned between the Rat’s eyes as it collapsed. A horde of Rats charged Stake when he landed. He whipped to face them, spun his revolvers around his index fingers, and glared.

A drum of synthetic hiss. Three flashes of pink. Stake rolled through the air, rows of Rats dying before him. He landed, rose, then twirled, his arms outstretched, his guns blasting faster than the Rats could see. Goo and gunk spilled from the tops of their heads, and they fell - all at the same time. One Rat rose from the heap, limping, frothing, clawing at his side. Stake folded his elbow - Clank! - and parried with his gun’s blade. The creature recoiled, Stake turned, and gutted it.

Umbri and her backpack were in big, bad trouble. She swung manically towards every squeak and scamper in the dark, almost toppling over every time. “Okay, now two o’clock- No, that’s four! TWO- Do you even understand- DUCK!” "Look chromehead, I have no idea what you’re saying so if you’re going to shout in my ear make SENSE -” Her ire came to a violent halt as a Rat lunged her and she spun, jamming the haft of the axe into its mouth. Her feet slid across the ground as it charged and slammed her back (and Temujin’s front) into the cargo. Its talons slashed her down the face and Umbri screamed, not in pain.

“Ah! Okay, okay-” Temujin exhaled. “Hit it in the nose, these mammals’ olfactory senses are sensitive-”

Umbri’s leg swung up between Rat’s knees. It shrieked and recoiled, and she followed up with a headbutt to the snout. She unstuck her bangs from her bloody forehead and huffed. “What, did you Google that?”

“...No, I hang out with a bunch of nerds.”

Two pumps of a shotgun finished it off. Stabby skipped through the chaos, on the verge of hysterics. “Man, it’s been forever since a job went so bad! Not since I was a blonde, hey, Shivs? We should fuck up more.” They shot a Rat in the face and whooped as they jumped up to splash in the rat jelly.

Their boots crunched down. Goo flung up, thick, merging, reforming. Umbri didn’t finish the inhale to gather a scream. Jelly latched onto their clothes like sinew on a bone buried in flesh, and two twisted arms spread around them, and a gaping mouth over their head.

CRUNCH.

“Huh?” Stabby said, blood dripping down from the teeth buried into their skull. The moment seemed frozen in everyone’s shock and horror. Suddenly a pack was upon them, teeth and claws tearing them to the ground.

“THEY REGENERATE!” Shivs shrieked.

“...That’s new,” Stake replied as Shivs and Shanks barreled past him in retreat. “What? The Rats?! What the hell is going on?” Temujin barked. His sensors were beeping like crazy. "New plan!" Stake spoke up, casually blasting a lunging Rat. His revolver's cylinder rotated into place. "Let's leg it before we catch the plague."

A hint of violent intent washed over the room for the most minute period of time and Raudd, who had managed to get himself caught in the line of sight of it's source, prepared to dodge an invisible and intangible threat on reflex. Though given that it was intangible and probably would break the sound barrier, that would likely be both unnecessary and impossible at the same time fueling a bout of laughter from his side at the silliness of the situation.

However that laughter was short lived as Yue spoke about her... Sleeping problems, which were no doubt partly caused by allowing the original problem to fester without any action to remedy the situation. The siblings shared a glance between each other making no attempt at hiding their discontent about the statement and the underlying causes. "Yeaaah, that's why we try to treat the problems before we have to deal with symptom management." Raudd reacted her statement as Archer made his presence known in the group.

"I have to agree with Archer on this one. Magic is not some formula you can just copy from a textbook, it's formed by dreams, thoughts, the very things you believe in." Zolya replied to Yue's grumble in an almost over the top mocking tone. Swiftly followed up as her face shifted to a very smug grin. "However that statement can go choke on a horsecock in my opinion. Here catch." Out of her cloak she produced a small rectangular steel medallion it's entire surface carved with intricate patterns and it's details filled with a deep blue glazed paint, which was promptly tossed at Yue.

"Normally you can't just use someone else's magic, my magic is a bit of an exception, as long as I've 'prepped' the array in question anyone with the ability to wield magic can activate it. Now try to activate it, send your mana into the medallion just as if you were going to punch someone with it and just allow it to flow all the way into the medallion." She explains as she demonstrates doing the same with her arm using the index and middle finger as a visual guide of the mana flow.

"Yeah, while you're all doing that I'm gonna make us some breakfast. Anyone against Shakshouka with Latkes? No, good." Raudd interjects leaving next to no time for the others to react before he makes way towards the kitchen clearly not enjoying unintentionally being forced into the middle of a magic lesson.

Zolya on the other hand is too focused on her little magic lesson to give any acknowledgment to her brother other than an "Oh, okay.". As she moved from demonstrating the flow of mana through her own body with aiding Yue in guiding the mana in the right direction without forcing anything. The medallion was an inelegant early design rather than the pages she used these days which were focused on efficient use of mana this medallion was much more suited to deal with aspected mana being brute forced into it at large amounts. As such she wasn't worried about Yue burning through the medallions arcane formula, it was more that she was worried she might force herself and put a burden on her own body to 'make something happen' as she hadn't quite shown the restraint for a more scholarly approach given her earlier statements.

---

---

Castle on the Clouds. Possibly the finest diner in the tower. Dawn sat on an enormous balcony protruding from the side of the tower at a table with a yellow umbrella. A dome of transparent-aluminum encircled the vista, perfectly visually corrected so as not to distort the view. Her table was centered on a circular marble dais connected to a winding path which led back towards the restaurant interior. Surrounding the marble was more transparent-aluminum, giving the illusion of a marble rampart sitting in the sea of clouds below.

Her own, personal Mt. Olympus... Insomuch as a restaurant table could be personal at least.

Dawn's golden eyes gazed out at the dappled orange and gold clouds as the sun was just beginning to crest them. She delicately poured cream into her steaming cup, circling the edges, a little shimmy, and finally slice through the middle. Dawn frowned.

OK, so she was bad at this, and it just looked like a cloud of light brown coffee with too much cream. Hmph! The server had made it look so easy when she'd ordered her first cup. When nobody was looking, she dipped one of her nails into the liquid and with a jolt of mana, the cream separated and formed into a stylized sun surrounded by a laurel wreath.

She snapped a picture with a smirk. #FirstTry.

Why here? Right now? This instant, as she was ignoring an "urgent" text from Ares? Dawn was a "Precognitive." She knew things before they happened... in a sense. It was a fickle thing: not so much visions or even precise instructions just... like a strong gut feeling that something would go her way if she did a certain thing.

It had its limits... She couldn't will it to happen, for one, which was incredibly inconvenient at times. The subject of the premonition had to be directly connected to her in some way, and... leaning in to her epithet "Averter of Evil" generally her premonitions had to do with her safety... or the safety of someone close to her.

Iridescence glimmered across her golden eyes, and she picked up her phone just as it chirped.



"Speak of the Devil," she muttered, sipping her coffee and laying her phone down gently.

Dawn scooted her seat over a few feet to her left, taking a moment to smooth out her blouse and skirt, and straighten her hair before she held her arm out to the side with her fingers splayed wide. Moments later Felix appeared in a shower of candlelight sparks, chest pressed against her hand. She maintained contact just long enough to renew the exclusion seal she'd put on him the day previous, and then gestured to the other seat at her table.

"Sit," she smiled, sipping her coffee and then crossing her legs. A glass of ice water was waiting for him, with a small saucer of lemon wedges and a bottle of pomegranate juice. Judging by the condensation on the glass, it couldn't have been served more than a few minutes previous. "I'm supposed to be in the CEO's office right now," she chirped. Her phone vibrated, as if on queue: another text message from "Corpo Asshole."

"Wanna know why I'm not there? A little bird told me you'd be trying something dumb," she explained without waiting for a response, and then just raised an eyebrow at him over the rim of her cup.

Umbri hobbled after the others, using the cargo to pull herself forward (her crutches had spun somewhere over the horizon during take-off) while Stake covered her retreat. Shivs had climbed onto Shank’s shoulders under the hole entrance, her fingers grasping the edge and ready to pull herself up. Umbri stopped dead, her stomach sinking.

“Wait, don’t!” She yelped. Shivs looked down at the woman desperately trying to save her, and saw a crippled bimbo with no way to escape with the thieves onto the train roof scared to be served up as rat food.

“Sorry Sugar,” she dismissed and hauled herself up. “NO!” Umbri shouted after her. There was a roar as the rush of air took Shivs. They barely heard her shriek as the train left her body, twisting and flailing on its way back to earth, far behind.

Stake tossed a sideways glance towards the hole. "...She wasn't carrying any product, was she?" He asked. Shanks lifted the safe. “Jesus Christ,” Umbri uttered in disgust at the both of them and clutched her stomach.

Stake dashed ahead, his coat a maroon flag flapping behind him. He glided to a stop at the door and swivelled towards its adjacent control panel. "Shanks, cover us," Stake commanded. He holstered his pistols and drew a contraption that was halfway between a taser and a personal device - a slicer.

Stake's bulging eyes narrowed to concentrate. Sparks crackled from the slicer's fangs as he dragged it down the panel, his free palm cranking a dial clockwise, counterclockwise, then further, further.

A click, a hiss, and the train's door bellowed with a metallic rumble, the gates grinding against the metal floor as they parted. To reveal another metal door on a carriage, about a death-defying jump or tightrope walk away, with the ground hurtling past in the sky and the sky plates below them.

"I hear the wind!" Temujin exclaimed, amidst the smash and pop of Shanks's blows. "Can you jump it?"

Stake placed a hand on Umbri's shoulder as he slid himself ahead of her. "You will." He stepped out of the gates… and the wind blew downwards, dragging his clothes towards gravity. Stake ran ahead, unencumbered, across the coupling, and thrust his slicer into the next control panel. The gates flung open. He whipped towards the previous car and beckoned. "Shanks!"

Shanks ditched the Rat he was hauling by the tail into three oncoming enemies and jerked his head towards Stake’s call, picking the safe up. Umbri’s knees were wobbling at the edge of the carriage when the boulder of the man came sprinting at her, knocking her onto his shoulder in the process. Her vision was filled with Rats, hissing and reforming and clambering over one another to reach them - and past the wave, sticking out from under the feasting pile, she saw Stabby’s hand. Ridden with teeth marks, twitching… their nails elongating.

She didn’t have the time to process what she saw before Shanks jumped. The moment his feet left the carriage, everything flipped. Umbri’s sense of gravity lifted and took her stomach on a ride. They were drawn down, headfirst. Then they passed into the other carriage. Down was up again. His boots slammed down on the floor and Umbri was thrown down with the safe. It toppled, bursting open, and Umbri’s double vision settled onto two shimmering vials that rolled free within arms reach.

Shanks turned to the doors, glaring the scrambling Rat horde down as he grabbed either side of the metal doors and slammed them together on taloned fingers. They spasmed like a dying spider, a cacophony of shrieks coming from the other side of the door like they all felt Rat’s pain. Shanks punched the door’s control panel, his fist smashing right through. With an explosion of sparks and a crunch, the doors fully shut and the fingers dropped and rolled over the ground. The shrieks were instantly muffled.

They stayed there catching their breaths for a moment. Umbri’s still-beating heart was heavy and felt unearned. All the horrible death was still flashing in her eyes like light spots. She thought she could hear scratching on the ceiling. Eventually, when the screeching had completely silenced, Shanks picked up the safe and held a hand out to assist Umbri. The two of them turned to join Stake and met with about thirty sets of eyes.

They watched the blood covered party pass through the passenger carriage with various expressions of uncertainty, shock and horror. Shanks ignored them. Umbri tried to follow suit, but accidentally made eye contact with the mother of a toddler on an Ipad and snapped her eyes to the ground, sweating. Stake tilted his head to one side and winked at an indignant woman in a suit. "How you doing?" Up ahead and standing in their way was a ridiculous slab of an unamused man whose muscles were bursting from his station uniform.

“Tickets, please.”

"Ah," Stake stepped towards the officer, placed a hand on his shoulder, and tilted his head the other way. "Have you forgotten, my friend? We're station inspectors." He bowed his head, and the yellow of his eyes shimmered against the crags. "We see you all the time… John."

Temujin muttered under his breath, "Oh, he's doing it again, isn't he?" Umbri’s eyes darted between the ticket inspector and Stake in concern. “Doing what?” she grunted out of the corner of her mouth.

"You're going to let us pass. Just like always," Stake whispered, his voice a velvet-like melody which smoothed out the man's nerves. His eyes lost the light in them. Two beats passed, before he shook himself out of his stupor and laughed in embarrassment.

“Right! Sorry, Luke. Didn’t recognise you out of uniform,” he said and stepped to the side, tipping his hat. “After you.” Umbri gaped at the back of Stake’s head in a disbelief shared with the rest of the passengers. Shanks already pushed ahead like he was used to it.

Stake patted the officer's shoulder twice, then slinked forward. He brushed some dirt off his pauldron, ignoring the eyes around him as he led the way.

"I don't know what it is. The Stoneworks folks will have a fancy term for it. When 'Stake' looks people in the eye, he can bullshit his way out of anything," Temujin whispered.

"Only if they're weak minded," Stake replied. The ticket inspector smiled and waved blankly. "And I don't use it on women." He glanced back at Umbri with his chin lifted and his eyes wrinkled with a smile. "Takes the fun out of it."

Umbri scoffed weakly on an exhale, glancing away. She felt safe enough now. “I do pretty good at that myself,” she said as she followed and bit her lip, “But I don’t think it’s my eyes.” Stake's gaze flicked down.

A loud, retching groan came behind her. "Kill me." Umbri burst with a laugh, a genuine smile gracing her for a rare moment. Temujin froze up. Were his damages catching up to him? Did his receptors malfunction? He wanted to see if he had imagined that sound. But he couldn't, and a quiet sigh was all he could muster in return.

Stake pressed a button to slide the next passenger carriage open and they were met with another round of shocked gasps. Stake took charge, spread his arms and washed the crowd’s uneasiness with his smoothing presence. They were actually getting away with it, in front of everyone. Too easy. Umbri’s smile faltered as she stepped through to follow, tracking the scratching on the roof.

BANG.

A shriek erupted from the other carriage. There was a noticeable lurch as the passengers scattered to one side of the train away from one of the windows. Clinging to the side of the carriage and almost peeling off from the force of the train, dangled a Rat. Its talons clawed down the glass and its teeth gnashed against it, failing to dig in and make a crack. More bodies slapped against the windows. More shouts and screams popped off around the train. "...Fuck," Temujin uttered, unable to do anything but stare.

"Go. Just go, they can't get in here," Shanks ushered Umbri along. She was dragged with the fleeing party, stumbling over her disbelief. A violent crash rattled the glass right next to her, and she stared, dumbfounded, at the Rat tapping on the window. A Rat wearing red goggles and twitching with giggles.

Suddenly the whole train screamed at once, melting into the screech of brakes as the train came to a violent stop. Umbri, Stake and Shanks toppled forwards and others were thrown out of their seats. The mother of the toddler had pulled the emergency brake.

Rats piled on thick with no wind to push against them, zeroing in on the thieves’ carriage. They blocked out the outside light. The carriage rocked and groaned from the weight of them. The red goggled Rat disappeared into the crowd. They were trapped here, immobile. But they can’t get in here, Umbri tried to convince her guts which screamed otherwise. There was a scratching beneath her feet. Then a whir.

A spinning blue laser sprang from the train’s floor in a burst of sparks.

"Hello, this is your engine driver speaking, pinged from the train’s PA system over Umbri’s shrieking as she kicked away from the laser saw, carving through the floor towards her on a mission to bisect her vertically. Please remain seated while we investigate the disturbance. The railway guard is on their way. I repeat, please remain seated - what is that? What the FUCK is that?? Rat? What - NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! GET- k̵̠̜̽k̶̦̄k̵̙̬̹͛̋̚k̵̖̪̭͐̐̆c̴̼͎̑̒͝c̸̪̬̽̾c̷͓̪͐̏͠c̷̫̾̐͘c̷̙̺̻͒͆͝ḩ̷̃h̵̬͌̇ḧ̵̜́̋ STOP ķ̶͖̞͋c̶̖̳̝̿̒̉c̴̨̯͔̑c̷͖̦̚͝h̵̞̜̑͋̀h̵̬͊́ḫ̴̠̗̍͘h̴̖͖͂͘ͅ AHHHHHHHH" Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

It’s like a bomb goes off, as roughly two hundred people collectively realise they’re about to die.

Fucking. Chaos.

"Shit! FUCK! What's going on now?!" Temujin screamed, a cacophony of chaos assailing him from all corners of the train. "And why doesn't anybody ever answer me?!" The ninja's shrieks drowned amidst the squeal of the laser saw, drawing closer and closer towards a cornered Umbri. She couldn’t even scream anymore as her back hit the chairs and blue bloomed across her eyes. Untimely as it was, her final thought was going to be recalling the fact that chainsaws were invented to cut pelvic bone during childbirth.

The saw powered down, right before she could hear the crack of bone and feel the agony of being split from the groin. The blue laser slipped back through the crack. Umbri held onto her breath. Talons curled their way around the crack, sprouting all the way down the line.

Screeching filled the carriage as their claws peeled metal back, tearing a wound through the floor of the train that they burst from like maggots. The civilians had already started to flee down to the front of the train to the other passenger carriages, but some were trapped on the other side of the ravine - people like the stunned ticket inspector, blinking out of his charmed state.

“T-...tickets please -” the officer tried to stop a Rat, before two gnarly teeth sunk right through the jugular. Umbri caught the carnage, but she had her own problems. Like the red-goggled Rat crawling out of the ground towards her.

Green drool flung from its quivering maw. Umbri’s hand tugged at the strap keeping Temujin on her back. Her fingers found the latch and he slumped off her, freeing up her movement as Stabby-Rat launched itself at her. She pulled the axe in front of her, trying to keep the hilt in the way of its snapping teeth. The wood splintered between Rat’s relentless bites. Temujin looked up, the angle of his mask seeming frozen by horror. In a split second, Rat’s eyes snapped to her bloody fingers wrapped around the hilt. Its paw snatched her wrist and it went for the bite. "NO!" Temujin belted out without thinking. Umbri swung her entire body with Rat’s trajectory, driving her fist - and something - at its head.

Glass shattered. The thresher fang punctured through the red goggles and popped the creature’s left eye. She straddled the animal and yanked out the fang, feeling the way it grinded against the socket on the exit. Red glass and blood scattered through the air. She grabbed the seats, pulled herself up, and hoisted the axe. Stabby-Rat cradled its wound, and Umbri thought, move your arms so I can kill you quicker - a cruel or a kind thought, she couldn’t tell, only that it was spurred by an ache in her - and brought the axe down.

She threw her head over her shoulder to watch the other rising Rats. There were new ones, one wearing the tattered remains of a station uniform.

“Zombies,” she croaked. Her face was darkened by all the blood that painted it, blending with the shadows of her bangs. It washed away almost all the glitter now. A long leg stepped over Temujin’s torso. “Zombie rules. Get the head.”

Flashes of pink illuminated the car in intermittent bursts. Vapours trailed from Stake's gunblades as he spun and slashed, jumped and shot - thrice -, then flattened another Rat with an axe-kick upon landing. He stood back to back with Shanks, each man guarding the other's rear. "You got it, Sugar!" Stake announced, one gun held low, and the other angled across his shoulder. His gaze rolled over the room, meeting the red-eyed snarls of a seemingly unending horde.

Blam-Blam-Blam-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM!

Stake swung and turned and ducked, his arms flailing and blasting twelve different Rats across three seconds. Heads popped and ichor gushed. Bodies toppled over in quick succession. Two lucky Rats slipped through the barrage, wounded and slavering, their claws outstretched.

"Shanks! Switch!" Stake somersaulted over his ally, blasting a skulking Rat through the eye in the midst of his jump.

"GAH! Get off me! GET OFF!"

The ticket keeper Rat latched onto Temujin's chassis and dragged him. It bit, chewed, and called for a horde of smaller Rats to aid it, its claws screeching across his chest like nails on chalkboard. Umbri swung the axe like a golf club against the side of its head and sent it sprawling.

Stake looked to the back of the train car, towards the faces huddled together and eyes wide with fear. The crew had put up a valiant effort to hold off the endless wall of squealing, slobbering Rat-zombies… but that wasn’t enough. Too many innocents had already been lost.

"Shanks!" Stake called out. "Go on and get the safe out of here." He lowered his voice just above a whisper. "I'll cover our retreat." Umbri blinked. "Hey Sugar." Stake was instantly beside her. "I need a favour.” His hand entwined with hers and gently, effortlessly, drew it to his face. His other hand slipped beneath his mask. There was a click, a whir, and a hiss.

The mask dropped.

Umbri’s arm tensed and jerked back on reflex. A long, sunken face. A bat-like nose. And the fangs, extending from curved, cat-like lips. Fangs that gleamed as he parted his lips above her wrist.

There was a prick, a sharp twinge of pain, and then… a rush, coursing through both of their veins. The colour drained from Umbri’s face, and her balance left with it. Stake leaned forward to catch her. The crags darkened around his eyes, sinking them further into shadows. “Thank you,” he uttered through a ragged breath. There was a gust of wind, her body barreled through a blurred world, before… everything stopped, in a square, off-white room, the door slowly shutting in front of her.

Thunk!

A black and red shape bounced and clattered inside. Temujin’s torso scraped across the ground, skidding to a stop beside Umbri. “Ow!”

Outside, dozens upon dozens of red eyes lit up, filling up the shadows like a galaxy of bloody stars. Stake stood before them. He twirled his revolvers around his index fingers, brought them to his side, then sheathed them behind his back. “Don’t fear the devil, my friends,” Stake announced, projecting his voice to the innocents crowded behind him. He pulled one glove off, then the other. “He’s not coming for you today.”

Darkness radiated from Stake’s chest, darkness that swirled and spread in the form of dozens, a hundred, hundreds of bats. The bats scattered around the car, becoming one with the shadows. Their flapping wings and shrieking calls overtook the squeals and squelches of the Rats as Stake approached, his step never rose faster than a stroll. The bats glided and scraped, scratched and bit, bled them dry and plucked out their eyes. As the last glint of light was darkened by the swarm, the passengers saw Stake hold his arms outstretched, claws emerging from vein-throbbing, spider-like fingers.

Meanwhile, Umbri rubbed at the thick puncture marks on her left wrist, shocked that they’d already stopped bleeding and only tingled. She held it against her chest and stared at the shadows flickering under the door. As the screaming started she lunged up and locked it.

The woman slid down the door, out of breath and reconciling with the zombies and vampire that shared the train with them. What next, a werewolf? Did all these creatures really exist in this world!? She swallowed, trying to block out the squeals of Rats outside.

“I hate Rats,” she rasped.

Temujin stared at her as he laid still, face-down on the bathroom floor. Once again, he was grateful he couldn't smell. "Repulsive creatures. My acquaintances are far too comfortable around them for my liking."

Umbri twisted her head to him, upset. “No, that’s not why I…” She trailed off, then shuffled over to lift him until he was slumped upright with her against the wall. “I hate that they exist, that’s what I mean.”

"Oh." He replied, his voice flat. It didn't stay that way. "Right, the world's better off if they're all dead, right? Just like all us chromeheads?"

“Jesus…” she muttered, wiping a hand through all the blood on her face. “They’re a slave race, Tem. I don’t know why everyone’s okay with it or how they even exist but it has to be something fucked.” She tucked her knee up and looped her arms around it, bringing it in to lean her head on.

“When I was a kid I saw one get hit by a car,” she recounted somberly. “It was half-dead, but kept on dragging itself down the street, just, ‘For Fred, for Fred’ over and over. Until another one came along, smashed his face in with a hubcap and went on to finish the delivery.”

She shrugged.

“We all watched it. I even finished my mac and cheese, so, you wouldn’t think it’d be something that would stick, but,” she paused, thinking back to scooping up the lumpy goo from her bowl and looking across to the brains smearing the asphalt, too hungry to even lose her appetite. She twitched out of it and wiped at her eyes, unable to stop the emotion breaking into her voice.

“So I hope Fred's happy with his fucking magazine subscription.”

Temujin whipped his gaze towards Umbri, in a swift motion that made clear his surprise. "Huh…," he rasped. "That's horrible." He hung his head in thought, the images of her story lingering in his mind. It took a moment before he spoke again. "What is worse, to be born happy in filth and slavery, or to long for freedom… and have it be forever out of reach?"

"I think you know the answer to that better than me."

"...Hm," Temujin scoffed. She could almost hear a smile in it. Perhaps her senses were frayed with whatever cocktail of vampire and thresher venom flooded her nerves. "Maybe… maybe I judged you too quickly," Temujin mused. "You're sharp for a hooker."

Umbri tore her eyes away from blinking at the light. "I should feed you to the Rats," she said. The glossiness in her eyes was replaced by something stern. "Don't say 'for a hooker'."

"Huh?"

“Don’t turn me into an exception because you can’t deal with liking someone like me. I can’t stand it.”

"Is that so?" He thought for a moment. Liking someone like her? Perhaps it was an odd thought, but… "Don't take it personally. I hate most everybody. Thugs and beggars, yuppies and comedians… There's little to like about people if you look hard enough." He looked into her eyes for emphasis, those pitch black sockets seeming to search into her soul. "But you already know that, don't you? All those Chromeheads in Northbridge, burning, killing, razing their way through the ghetto, it's easy to see why this…" With a lift of his chin, he gestured to what remained of his body. "...Unsettles you."

“It shouldn’t.” Umbri answered immediately. It was so honest it felt uncanny. She gave the metallic innards leaking out of him a glance and admitted, “But it… does.” She sighed, looking away to murmur into her knee, “I assumed what was done to you was by choice. I’m sorry.”

Temujin was stunned into silence. He became acutely aware of their surroundings - the muffled squeals and rips just outside their door, the droplets coming from the tap that wouldn't shut entirely, and the white hum of the fluorescent light overhead. Her candour was equally refreshing and uncomfortable. "...I don't suppose you're a hooker out of choice either," he replied, his voice lowered by somberness.

"Sex worker. I'm a sex worker. You're being rude."

"Right," he replied. Two seconds passed in silence, as he deliberated whether to say, or not to say… "Sorry." A begrudging word. But not an insincere one. She raised her brows at him, fully expecting him to combat her on this.

"Mm, well…" The defensiveness ebbed out of her voice as she got the sense that she was being listened to. "This was my choice. I didn’t have many of them, but this is one I made.” She slumped to the side, letting her head rest in the corner and shutting her eyes. “I pretend to be in love with men for money. If you view people like me as dumb whores then I don’t really care about how your opinion of me differs.”

"...Hmpff," Temujin grumbled a reply. There was nothing more to say on the subject. "Let's just make sure you get to Shieldtown, or all this will be for nothing."

Umbri nodded weakly, dozing off to the lullaby of absolute carnage outside. “And we won’t have to look out for each other again...”

This is why I don't have friends.

"Shakshouka?" Yue asked, in a distracted tone, as she tried to pay attention to multiple conversations. She reached up and casually plucked the medallion out of the air with two fingers as though it were moving in slow motion. It uttered a metallic chime, like a tuning fork that had been struck against a table, which made Yue flinch and caused Archer to raise an eyebrow.

"Don't you need eggs for that?" Yue paused, watching tendrils of [Crimson], which had thinned in consistency and color enough for threads of [Silver] to shine through she noticed, rushed into the medallion. "You're not gonna use monster eggs are you?!" The note of panic in her voice overrode her curiosity for a split second. Yue raised an eyebrow as the medallion seemed to grow hot in her hand, and she squinted as the designs and etchings flared to life, and her gaze flicked over to Zolya to try and see what exactly she was doing.

"I don't-"

"Look at that, you're a natural!" Archer interrupted, flicking his finger against her temple. She expected to feel his finger thud against her skin and the accompanying prickle of numbness from a muted pain signal. Instead she was treated to a deep, drum-like thud and a ripple of movement over some... film of [Force] that had materialized over her skin. The medallion flared brighter, and threads of [Crimson-Silver] rushed into it afterwards.

"I... didn't do anything though? That's just what happens when I touch things."

"That's the Sword Song reacting to resonance from an enchanted item," Archer smiled, pushing himself to his feet and taking a moment to smooth out his Final Odyssey pajamas, which were speckled with chibi-anime representations of many of the different iconic classes. "The real trick will be learning how to turn it off," chirped Archer smugly, with far too much amusement in his voice as he trotted towards the kitchen after Raudd. "I'll help!"

Yue blinked, squinting at the medallion as she tried to process what, exactly, he had meant by that. Her gaze snapped up to Zolya, mild horror spreading across her face as she came to the realization that she could, in fact, not "turn it off."

---

To say that Felix was surprised by suddenly arriving in what was, objectively, far too fine dining for him to be welcome, would be... An understatement.
As would be the violent burst of vertigo and nausea. He caught about five words from Dawn before he was turning and desperately searching for a trash can. Upon not seeing one, Dawn was treated to the sight of someone stumbling as far away from her as possible, before upchucking. Basically everything that could have possibly been left in his stomach was rapidly not in his stomach.

It took a minute or two, before Felix gasped for air and groaned. "Oh god. Oh sweet merciless tit chafing god, fuck that. Holy shit. Never again." His voice was hoarse, and Sovereign was flashing all sorts of alerts across his HUD. It was probably for the best that some of his internals were cyberware, because damn. A heart rate sitting at around the 378 BPM mark was... Terrifying! Wow. Yikes.
That wasn't to mention the elevated levels of most of his stress hormones. Yikes!
His hearing slowly faded back in, with Dawn looking at him with a raised eyebrow. Oops.
'A little bird told me you'd be trying something dumb,' came her... Amused? He was gonna go with amused. Her amused voice slowly filtered back in. He waved a glowing hand nonchalantly, snorting once before gagging and dry heaving. "Yeah loo- Hurh- Look. I'm... Like... Eighteen percent stupid by volume. Anyways! Good morning! Ssssorry? At least you're not sitting around with major jackass?" He murmured, rolling his shoulders slowly and with... Some amount of shame!
He slowly made his way over, wincing at the burst of soreness that erupted along his spine and his lungs. Sovereign helpfully notified him that his cyberware was 'overtaxed', to put it lightly. He wouldn't be good to do that again. Not until he got back to work. Which... Was a good idea! Yup! Just not right now. Talking now.

Felix sat careful and slow, wincing again as he hummed noncommittally. He reached for the ice water, utterly nonchalant as he drank half the glass in one go, and then proceeded to mix some of the water into the pomegranate juice.
And then down half the juice in one go, mix the rest of the water in, and sip on that while they talked. He would NOT be taking criticism at the time. As evidenced by the eye contact he held the whole while he went about his 'ritual' as it were.
Which, if you asked him, was amusing because Dawn always seemed to get nervous about him staring her dead on. She was 'the goddess of light' or something like that, so he figured she'd have way more capability to handle a little staring but, well, what could you do.
FOCUS!

"So did your little bird also tell you that I was gonna finally succeed on a long term project today? 'Cause, not gonna lie here, that would've been a real good way to make up the morning beyond also seein' a new friend."

---

Jemma crowed with glee, giving Jade another lick for good luck, before swiping up the proffered device from Wolf. Her form rapidly shifted, ink whirling like a ... Whirlpool. Gone was the bear-snake-thing. In its place was Jemma as she had looked the day before, save that the wings of feather had been replaced by wings of stretched leather and muscle. Her hands and feet were tipped with claws, and though she looked the same, her musculature was startlingly robust. She moved with measured grace and speed, tinged with chaos. "Oh! Yeah please still don't, I wanna surprise them all myself! I'm alive! Y'know? ... I should probably swing by and pick up my last paycheck from Black Iron... Hm! Thanks! Bye! Loveyoulotsmwahmwahmwah-" She chirped by way of goodbye, cackling brightly as Wolf's cyberarm pushed her face away.

Out the doorway and past Vi, slipped the shapeshifting gremlin, footsteps eerily quiet given that she was nearly running in her excitement. A quiet 'Oh thank god, she's leaving...' came from an open doorway. To which she chirped a complicated mix of hisses, birdsong, and whatever noise a mountain lion being shredded by a elk with a chainsaw would make. Leah, presumably, simply screamed her frustration back.
To which, again, Jemma only laughed.
Then she was moving through the airlock, smiling to herself and to those who were coming in and out. She gave some a wave, cackling at their confused expressions, before she was out and in the open air.
Jemma took a long, long breath in, savoring the smell of gun-metal, gun-powder, and steel.
Home. Or at least, part of home.

Ink swelled in her eyes, whorling away as the dimly lit area bloomed into practical daylight. Tapetum lucidum, bitch! She cackled madly, staring up at the de-powered sunlamp that hung overhead. There was a moment, staring at that long unused piece of human ingenuity, where a memory pulsed violently in the back of her head.
Murky gray clouds around a harbor, haloing the sun like pillows around a fortune teller's crystal ball. A sensation of deep satisfaction, a hunt completed and cherished. The urge to return home to a terrifying Mother-
The memory skipped. And Jemma blinked twice. "Huh... So... You were scared of that thing too." She whispered to herself, before grinning again and abruptly sprinting forth. People yelped and dived out of her way, one woman swinging reflexively with what appeared to be an arm-integrated machete. The muscles in her legs flexed, stronger than a tiger, before she leapt into the air.

She spread her wings and flew, cackling the whole while. Air whistled in her ears as Shield Town immediately came into view. Her eyes were sensitive enough to make out plenty of details, and considering the ... Less than half a mile she had to travel? Hah.
But going home could wait, she wanted to properly enjoy being free for the first time in three years. Three years... Wow. Time sure was a cloudy soup of non-permanent material!
As her wings powered her over to Shield Town, her astral eyes slowly opened, absorbing the flow and shift of [MANA] around her.
"Three years! Three years. Huh. We were away from our homes for three years. THREE! That's one thousand, ninety five days! Huh. Huh!" Jemma whispered to herself, staring at the settlement now below her. Thoughts rattled around her skull, smooth and mellow like butter at first, before rapidly spiraling. "Three. Fucking. Years! THREE! FUCKING! YEARS! People thought I was DEAD! What the FUCK! AUGH! I can't fucking BELIEVE this BULLSHIT!"

Her voice rose with her emotions, spiraling further and further as ink boiled over her skin. Anger seethed underneath, like worms with teeth, chewing through a corpse on the highway in the summer sun. "I HAD A LIFE! I HAD A HOME! I HAD FRIENDS, AND FAMILY!" Screamed the body, as the rational mind began sinking... Before she yanked back, pulling herself out of the comforting fog that another half of her tried to offer. Instead, the fury only built.
Wrathful, Jemma dissolved into wordless screaming. Shrieking. Roaring. Wailing. Inky tears rolled from her eyes, the pitch fluid otherwise finally coalescing into a new physical shape.

A quardrapedal build, with two long necks, a bull-like body, a pair of bat-like wings and a massive crocodile-esque tail. The tail whipped about, tipped with a wickedly hooked trio of bone-sickles. The wings were massive, easily twice the size of the muscled body, and just as muscular. The legs were more like jointed trunks of bone and muscle. Four, zygodactl digits, tipped with dagger-like claws, slashed at the air. The necks were topped with a pair of draconic heads, which each owned four eyes, arranged in a diamond on the skull. The maws were filled with teeth like needle thin shards of glass, and venom dripped from them all.
She screamed all the while, as two distorted voices cried in unison.

Eventually the anger petered out, and she slowly brought herself to calmness. Shield Town was far below, glaring up at her in indifference as, blithely, the massive sun-lamps above hummed. Her breathing was ragged, giant gasps for air, as [MANA] was pumped into the form. Not fast enough to offset the amount used, but still. A stop-gap.
She didn't want to have to eat again any time soon. Hunting for something [MANA]-rich in this are would mean... People.
Half of her responded apathetically to this, while the other half screamed in horror. Never again. Hopefully. By God please, hopefully.

The shape turned, flying off and away from Shield Town for a moment. Not once did she consider the ruckus she had made, nor the attention it might have grabbed. Instead, She just... Flew. For a while. Thinking.

This life was starting to get to him. Well, maybe it already had been for a while. But the stress from the past few days really put things into perspective. Seeing how quickly the damages from the Scream were already taken care of and basically forgotten nagged at a part of Alex. It was stupid to think one guy could protect so much space. Hell, he wasn’t even present at Shieldtown when shit went down. And they managed just fine without him. Even still, wasn’t he obligated to do everything he can at this point? Great power and great responsibility . . . . Right? So why did he feel so conflicted right now as he finished up his patrols?

When all this started, he just wanted to be another guy. Sure some of his powers meant he was always gonna stand out, but he came down here in the beginning for something new. It was a world almost entirely separate from the brand covered, corporate media hellscape that topside felt like daily. Ironic how being underground was a breath of fresh air.

He trundled along down the street, giving a few nods and waved as he went. The beloved Rogue of Shieldtown kept quiet though. Not really sure what would come out of his mouth right now as he stewed. Was he stewing or brooding? He assumed brooding involved some amount of isolation. Anyways. Dealing with that first Apex saved dozens of lives. Hell it almost ended Alex’s. But he’d thought about that day over and over again enough times to know he wouldn’t have done anything different. Which still left him where he was now. Stuck.

Caught up between obligations that came from answering the call to action and becoming less relevant in his current space. Granted all it took was one of the gangs trying to move in or a super with a considerable amount of power to prove the continued need for Aegis. Once again, Stuck. Alex wanted to punch something.

That was when a familiar roar caught his attention. He whipped around to get a sense of where it came from. Emergency lights up on the settlements wall confirmed it came from the east. ”Scarhide.” The local Apex was bellowing out a challenge. I like most of the walking disasters. Some through whatever means stabilized and didn’t just die off in a blaze of glory. Becoming near permanent fixtures of the Under Cities various territories. Old Scarhide was possible one of the longest lived of the bunch. And the most stubborn. Of course he made his territory right near the most fortified settlement. And the beast was calling Alex out again.

”. . . Well, I guess I did ask for it.” The lack of banging on the walls was a good sign, must be a more mellow day for the Apex. Probably wanted someone to “play” with that wasn’t gonna get torn to shreds with one bat from a pickup truck sized paw. ”Monster wrestling it is. Time to go get mauled.” the amount of enthusiasm he said that with did result in a few mildly concerned states. Alex opted to not explain himself and launched forward into the air. Time to go play with his cat. A gigantic scar covered cat thing that looked suspicious close to a behemoth from a certain famous fantasy RPG franchise.

Can you copyright a monster? He let that thought slip by as another roar rattled nearby windows while he launched pass.

---

---

ID shuffled about the elevator platform on its ten minute descent into the abyss, willing it to move faster. The elevator hung out in space, with the abyss wall behind them and nothing but a rail between them and the endless darkness below. She leaned against the rail, still not quite recovered from the ribbing Nora had given her earlier, if the wisps of steam from the rapidly evaporating moisture in her cloak and boots were any indication. The elevator was near silent, and with naught but the dim glow of the elevator’s control panel, it was nearly pitch as well.

The substructure of the Tower spider-webbed into the darkness as far as she could make out. Networks of conduit and pipe, unsightly bulges and twists that defied the otherwise uniform symmetry of the rest of the tower pressed ever closer to the cliff side as they descended. As she understood, this part of the tower was mainly support facilities. Miles and miles of generators, hydroponics, water and air purification, and tinker-made production foundries of which only a fraction were currently in use.

Theoretically the tower could support a massive population in isolation near perpetually should some world-ending disaster afflict the planet… like that would ever happen. Now the majority of it gathered dust in the Abyss, out of the sight and minds of the people who made it.

ID’s eyes gleamed luminous amber in the darkness as she shifted mana into them; a [Sight] Fortification. The world became monochrome and grainy, but it was better than fumbling around in the pitch darkness.

Triple checking all of her equipment, MG pulled out a combat shotgun and after a few moments of consideration began loading it with the custom buckshot shells she was supplied with. Was the rock salt a needlessly painful addition? No. And it was probably some form of crime to use it. Oh the humanity of it. That probably wasn’t even considering all the other crap that might have gone into them but she didn’t really ask questions. So long as bullets made holes she was happy.

After her force multiplier was sufficiently loaded and a shell racked, Nora took a moment to think before casually stating. " You know, if you're not gonna take a shot at Mr.Muscles maybe I will. If he’s got you acting like this then he’s sure to be a catch . . . Or you know, I could just tell our wonderful boss you have a boyfriend." Nora didn’t even look at ID before closing and locking her helmet with a soft clang.

"WH-!!" ID spluttered, whirling around and spitting syllables for far too long. The control panel screen behind her stuttered and artifacted, and the camera view of the landing chamber flickered with static as an enormous black hound with glowing red eyes strode across the screen, pausing to peer seemingly directly at them. Glitches and artifacts sizzled across the screen and the dog vanished before ID folded her arms in a huff and composed herself.

"Whatever, it’s not like I like him or anything! I said it was purely contractual, and the fact that he’s hot has nothing to do with our working relationship," she quipped, turning back around to check the landing chamber camera. The flush of her cheeks at the edges of her mask was, thankfully, hidden by the gloom… the hot, glowing footprints she left on the elevator floor, however, were not.

MG let out a snort of a laugh. ”So you admit you think he’s hot. Not really helping your case here Hotshot.” she glanced to the floor and clicked her tongue. Maybe now was the time to cut the teasing and get back on track; didn’t want the floor to fall apart like wet clay. Extremely hot wet clay. ID bristled grumpily.

”Getting on topic. I know I’m not usually one to ask questions regarding missions. But the suits don’t tend to send the both of us on simple jobs. She checked her equipment once again. A nervous tick.

A film of frost began to grow out from MG’s feet, creating a hiss of steam as it reached ID but didn’t impede the woman. ” Are we cleared to use excessive force? This shit is already making the hairs on my neck stand up.” The former soldier was not usually one to voice concerns unless something was really bothering her.

"Officially speaking," ID began, slipping back into her mask of controlled composure. She’d learned to trust the Merc’s intuition, and if MG was feeling uneasy then it was time to get serious. The temperature began to normalize.

"We’re here to find out why the facility stopped communicating with Ichabod. Officially speaking, there shouldn’t be any reason to use force… However, facilities don’t typically just go dark without explanation. Also, I strongly suspect that the psychic wave emission that caused so many problems yesterday originated here: it came from this direction, and Muriel is the only facility here," she explained, checking the monitor again.

"So… Officially, this is an investigation… but my ‘educated guess’ is that we’ll run into trouble. I don’t know what to expect so yeah, ‘excessive force’ is authorized. If it’s not immediately dangerous I’d like to try and get a read on the facility before we sterilize it," she noted. Get a read was code for doing some spooky Esper shit.

Oh hell. It was gonna be more of that weird shit, MG just knew it. It wasn’t like she asked or really cared much about what Menagerie was up to: she was just a hired gun for them. A well paid and supplied hired gun, but still. There had been a few times when she had to capture, kill, or stalk something she really didn’t want to. Made some of the beasts down here seem tame on occasion.

The air around MG continued to stay cold as the descent almost finished, her powers took a second to “warm up” and it was better to get that ready now. ”Are we expected to recover anything, no secondary objectives? If it’s any of the weird crap I can’t guarantee I’m not gonna try and scuttle this place on our way out . . . Gods there better be another way out besides this lift or I’m gonna complain your ear off.” She thought she felt the lift lurch for a second suddenly. MG braced and looked to ID to see if that hadn’t just been her.

"I was told to ‘investigate the circumstances’ so… no explicit secondary objective. Not yet, anyway," she said evenly, though she couldn’t ignore the gnawing pit of dread in her stomach. Someone should have contacted them for identification after the elevator had hit the half-way point. The fact that she used an override code to activate the elevator should have whipped the whole facility into a frenzy of how do you do, ma’am’s.

"Oh, I’m sure the facility is full of all kinds of weird, spooky shit," ID chirped, far too cheerily. Her turn to tease. "And unless you have a personal teleporter squirreled away in that rig of yours this is, indeed, the only way out," she informed with a smile.

MG grumbled and affixed a bayonet to her shotgun that was definitely illegal.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

“Oh my God!” “Eeek!” “What is it doing?!”

Umbri dreamed of mac and cheese.

It was so salty it stung the eyes. There were hard bits in it, and it was served with a generous scoop of… some kind of ground meat, definitely not kosher, and it was heaven. A heaven that all the coins in the gutter afforded her. She was on up high now, dangling her leg down from a drain pipe.

Thunk. THUNK.

The Rat finally finished killing its comrade. Blood ran into the sewers and reflected the cheery smile of an Ares Corp spokesperson being projected above the street. Come join the neighbourhood! We’re more than colleagues at Ares Tech, we’re neighbours… and family. The Rat scampered away after performing his obituaries, scattering an alarmed crowd of so many faces she so clearly remembered, and Umbri looked over her heaped spoon at the gore below and felt nothing. Her spoon swiftly took up her vision again, only pausing when she noticed a bug leg sticking out of the cheese.

“...”

Crunch.

"I don't suppose you're a hooker out of choice either."

“WAAAAAAAAAGH!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!”

She sunk into a nightmare. A small, dark, stinking room, littered in the relics - diapers, milk pouches, dirty plates - of a chaotic night, or two, a week, or she didn’t know, when did Mum leave? When did Mum leave her with this monster?

“Please,” she whispered, her voice almost gone and eyes burning red from a long strain of nights of no rest. She held up formula beside blue lips. “Please, please. I don’t know. I don’t know when she’ll be home. Please, I have school.”

Screaming. Just… screaming. It’s all the monster did all day when it wasn’t asleep for a fitful few minutes. Screaming, and no eating. Umbri was going delirious. Did this thing know it was going to starve? The only thing in this house was food for the baby and it wouldn’t EAT IT!

Umbri turned the formula to her lips with a shaking hand and sucked it, just a little to wet them. The guilt and hate she felt all at once racked her. The baby’s shriek went higher, like she was protesting Umbri’s thievery, but - but then why wouldn’t it- why wouldn’t it just eat-

“WAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!!!!”

The crying. The smell. The hunger. The fear. The exhaustion. It all converged until she just screamed.

“I HATE YOU!” She roared. Her voice cracked with youth. “I HATE YOU TOO!!!”

She screamed, incomprehensibly, taking revenge for all of the pain it put her through while Mum was away, then crumpled, hitting her head until she could think right - She’s not coming back. She’s not coming back. Survive. Survive. Survive. Mac and cheese. A dead Rat on the road. YOU SURVIVED BEFORE.

She grabbed her baby sister and pulled a parka over the both of them, making a charge for the door.

“Don’t do it,” Umbri’s words couldn’t reach her child self as she slammed the door on her, leaving her alone in her hell. A shrill ringing came to her ears.

"What's going on?!" The noise was quiet at first, but it grew louder, higher. "Sugar!" It bled into her other senses and drowned her sight in blurs. Muffled shouts and calls slipped between the discord, but Umbri could only hear the shadow of their words.

She was on the floor, her arm tucked at her back at an unnatural angle, her legs straight and spasming out, her head jerking back and eyes rolled to their whites. A pressure clung to her jaw. The fog faded from her eyes. The shadow she heard now loomed over her; a mass of black that slowly cleared up.

"Easy now."

That gaunt face. Pale and purple, like lavenders drained by winter. Vivid yellow pin pricks stared at her from the shadow of his hood. She was looking towards the ceiling, but something silky kept her head from the cold, hard floor.

"Is she alright? What happened?!" A different voice called out, high and trembling with rage that seemed second nature. The voice that had dogged her steps since midnight.

The crags unfurrowed around Stake's gaze as he saw the light return to her eyes. He had taken off his coat, revealing the long sleeves of his black banded shirt, and his spider-like hands. They caressed her face with curling, gentle strokes.

"Her time is running out."

---

---

Dawn watched the whole ordeal with an amused expression, up until the point Felix started violently expelling the contents of his stomach onto the transparent-aluminum flooring. What was once an optically pristine illusion of transparency: an invisible barrier between them and the sea of clouds below spattered with wet chunks and bile. Was that waffles... and honey? This boy...

Dawn wrinkled her nose.

"Ugh. My immersion is ruined," she droned haughtily, though a smirk tugged the corners of her lips. "It's a good thing I'm not with 'Major Jackass' or you'd be vomiting on his designer carpets, and I don't think that would be a good time for either of us," she said, spearing him with a serious glint in her golden eyes over the rim of her coffee.

"So did your little bird also tell you that I was gonna finally succeed on a long term project today? 'Cause, not gonna lie here, that would've been a real good way to make up the morning beyond also seein' a new friend."

Dawn flinched a little: the term 'friend' seemed to hit her with a fair amount of force. Her gaze drifted away for a bit. Was she being friend-zoned already? Did healthy relationships start with friends? Is that how this was supposed to work? ...Or was it fling, feelings, awkward avoidance, messy breakup? Hopefully this wasn't already turning into one of those legendary misunderstandings that would live on to haunt her future incarnations in history and mythology courses. That's the thing about patterns... Her eyes snapped back to Felix.

Right. He was expecting a response.

"That's not how it works," she answered, breaking the long, awkward silence. "More like... I got the notion that I could avoid some trouble if I showed up to work late, and that you might be thirsty when we met," she smiled.

"Also, until I figure out a more permanent solution, I'm going to have to refresh the... thing... that... shields you... from me," she trailed off, her cheeks flushing as she avoided eye contact with him and suddenly finding the ripples of her coffee extremely interesting.

"Uh. Manually. Through physical contact. Sorry, I didn't really ask this time I just...," she bit the inside of her lips. Why was this so fucking hard? "Didn't want you to feel bad... Uh. Worse when you got here," she amended, her eyes flicking to the spray of vomit floating in space above the sea of clouds.

"Gallus gallus domesticus..." Raudd replied to Yue's paniced voice with a glance that put an maliciously evil smile on full display for her to see. Before allowing that smile to fade into something much more mellow as his second sentence flowed out of his mouth."Otherwise known as the common chicken. I am aware of your 'dietary restrictions' and it would be poor sport to make something everyone else can enjoy, while you don't even have your MRE's with you to fall back on." Raudd said said before rounding the corner out of their sight. Where he had a little shiver running across his back from the combined thought of chalky MRE potato mash and the entropic screaming coming from the little magic class going on in the living room.

Zolya in the meantime was watching with a mixture of excitement and intrigue as Yue managed to activate the medallion practically without instruction on how to use it or even how to consciously manipulate the flow of mana. However most of all what caught her eye was the threads of [silver] that peeked through the [crimson], eliciting an almost impulsive "Hmmm." and even a slight smile as Zolya could see that at long last the road to her recovery seemed to have had it's first few footprints made on them.

Before she could recompose herself enough to start explaining what Yue just instinctively had done to the very confused Yue Archer beat her with a rather simple and practical explanation in the form of displaying the effects of the medallion. Followed with his explanation that the phenomenon in front of them was the Sword song he'd been talking about reacting to resonance from an enchanted item. "So this is that Sword song you've been raving about. Well the medallion does seem to be enjoying the ample supply of mana, but I can't say it appears any different from the average user... No, that metallic chime. That wasn't a normal sound."

Raudd didn't quite know whether to be mildly annoyed or mildly pleased by Archers invitation to 'help' in the kitchen, especially knowing him leaving Yue there would probably make the realization a little bit worse for her. That being said he wouldn't turn down the offer if it meant pawning of the grating work to some other fool, even if said fool was probably going to use magic to accomplish it. "Well if you want to help how about you peel and grate some potatoes and onions for the latkes, while I fix up the sauce for the shakshouka? Oh, and no grated fingies please, I don't know if reincarnated Greek god fingers counts as 'monster meat', but I don't care to find out." He asked his kitchen assistent leaving him little time to complain before turning his attention to the bunch of peppers, onions, gralic, tomatoes, and a pickled lemon he intended for the sauce.

Zolya's ramblings were cut short when Yue's face flushed with horror snapped up to her, looking straight at her with an expression that practically screamed 'help I fucked up'. Which initially caused her to send a barrage of spittle flying into the barrier as she tried to stifle her laughter. "Pffff... I mean, yeah. That might be a little tricky since that Sword song of yours decided to interact with the medallion on it's own rather than a concentrated effort on your part. You'll have to learn how to consciously cut off that flow of mana, which is much harder than consciously establishing the connection." Zolya said in a matter of factly manner after which she took a little sniff to confirm that the sauce was already bubbling, as if to say that Yue should better hurry or miss breakfast.

What followed was a slightly too long pause as a cheeky smile widened on Zolya's face. "Well, eventually that is. For now just dropping the medallion on the ground should be more than enough to make that barrier pop like a soap bubble and break the mana supply. It requires a close contact both to maintain the mana supply and maintain the barrier, that's one of the safety features built into the runes, exactly for cases like this where the magic decides to take on a will of it's own." Which is always a risk with experimental arrays. She said with a little hint of teasing in her tone of voice, not that the smile left any doubt about that.

---

---

"There’s supposed to be more than two-hundred staff here at the facility. One-hundred sixty-seven psychically sensitive," ID explained as the elevator slowed, reaching its destination. “Psychically Sensitive” wasn’t technically a lie… since Mana was reactive to both thoughts, and emotions it could technically be considered a psychoactive phenomenon… technically.

A small, empty landing platform with some scattered equipment for moving freight greeted them, along with an enormous reinforced tungsten-steel blast door that was sealed shut. Twenty inches thick, four vacuum insulated, hermetically sealed plates, each weighing somewhere in the tens of thousands of pounds, pressed together both vertically and horizontally. All the emotion drained out of IDs voice as she stepped off the elevator just before it came to a stop, throwing a dull crash echoing out into the darkness behind them.

"The fact that this door is closed does not fill me with confidence. The facility director should be here to greet us," ID whispered, though her voice carried loudly in the void. She studied the facility schemata in silence for a long time in the middle of the landing platform next to an inert forklift.

This whole platform, including the elevator and its tracks retracted into the cliffside, and was EM-shielded and rendered invisible via optical camouflage when it wasn’t in use. The fact that there was equipment out in the open meant something had gone horribly wrong.

ID reached into her pack. She heard MG fidgeting with her gear which generally meant she was ready. There was no way beyond brute force to open the blast door without a command slate, which she pulled from its hiding place in the secret compartment beneath her compressor. ID locked eyes with the lifeless gaze of MG’s sealed helmet.

"I have no idea what to expect when that door opens. It moves funny, looks weird, does anything out of the ordinary, or doesn’t know the proper protocol, you don’t hesitate, you kill it. Does not matter what, or more importantly who it looks like," ID paused. MG knew the drill… ID also knew that when you were dealing with Magic, it never hurt to have a pre-mission refresher that they were stepping into the jaws of the unknown.

"Trust me, not your eyes or ears. Take no chances, KTF," she instructed coldly, tapping the override code into the command slate. A deep thrum echoed throughout The Abyss as seals were undone, and ID slid the command slate back under her compressor.

Kill Them First. Collateral damage was a secondary concern. Other assets could be replaced. The drone of industrial hydraulics began pulling the massive slabs of metal apart. There was another door just like this one on the other side of an enchanted steel iris. ID could already feel the pressure of intense mana through the barrier. It was very likely whatever happened had created a Mana Warp. She grasped the hilt of Ildsjel.

The hiss of pressure normalizing between the irises filled the silence as the heavy blast doors finished their opening sequence. At least there was still power.

*Shunk! The inside iris opened. The outside barrier… its wards and arrays burned brightly. It shuddered, disrupting the plates enough to disrupt the arrays which winked out, leaving artifacts in her vision. ID extended her domain of [Fire/Light], though it was mainly to insulate herself from the Warp she sensed beyond the threshold. A small, high intensity bubble that wouldn’t interfere with MG’s powers so long as she maintained distance. MG wasn’t Mana-Sensitive, so she wouldn’t just immediately get shredded by the astral forces like ID would.

*Shunk!* The outer iris withdrew. ID’s bubble was immediately buffeted by the Warp, and a flurry of… snow(?) spilled out onto the landing platform. No.. it was more like powdered glass, and it was saturated with [Mind] aspected Mana. ID took a step and froze, at the hurried clack of a shotgun being leveled at the back of her head. Nowhere to run but deeper inside…

"Gallus Domesticus...," Yue mouthed the words for a moment before leveling a flat mouthed glare at the kitchen. Chicken. They were chicken eggs. She weathered Zolya's undisguised amusement at her predicament with a sour expression. It was clear she didn't really care for being at the bottom of the skill-cap again, mainly due to the anxiety that this new art would interfere her existing abilities. That... and that it would be another six years before she was a useful and productive member of the Templar again.

"Oh, lots of things that I touch... sing," she explained, addressing Zolya's concern about the unusual noise and trying to brush past the anxiety. "The armor hums, or sometimes growls. The sword Forgemaster gave me makes a sound kind of like a crystal wine glass. The greatsword I fell down here with makes like... a metallic tenor, and my hammer has a bass vibrato. Some of my other gadgets make little songs too but they're usually so quiet that its hard to hear them. What is Sword Song anyway?" She called into the kitchen.

Archer laughed. Yue frowned. He was probably flirting with Raudd. Something about Greek Pantheon fingers being monster meat?

"Archer!!"

"Oh, right," he grinned, twirling a knife in one hand before finishing with the potatoes and rummaging around noisily for a grater. "You learned about Affinity right?"

"Yeah?"

"Sword Song is a kind of extreme affinity for Fortification magic. When affinities go into the extremes, all kinds of weird shit can happen," he explained. Yue grumbled, apparently unsatisfied with his answer.

"Why does it make things-," Yue flipped the medallion into the air, taking a breath and intentionally flooding her body with energy as she caught it. The medallion chimed painfully loud, reverberating off the manor windows for a second. The barrier crackled and sparked as it reformed.

"That's called Mana Acoustic Resonance, its happening all the time all around us, usually at a volume and frequency that's outside the human hearing range," he answered, seemingly unbothered. "You learn about Domains yet?"

"Areas of elevated Aether... uh, Mana. Domains that lean towards a particular element or school are called Aspected Domains."

"I hear the discontent in your voice hon but... you've been a mage for all of a few hours and you're picking this all up very quickly, it's mildly terrifying," he chuckled, over the effort of grating an onion. "Sword Song is an affinity so extreme that you're constantly creating a Fortification Domain. I don't know all particulars (that's a question for your mom) but as I understand it, your Domain magnifies the physical and magical properties of the things it infuses. Acoustic Resonance is a magical property, hence the singing," he answered.

"So... the 'Song' part of Sword Song is what... a happy accident?"

"I mean... kinda? There's more to it that I don't really understand: Mana Acoustic Resonance isn't my area of study. I bet Hestia or Hecate might have some interesting insights into it though," he mused, finishing up with the grating and looking for something else to help with.

"Hmm," Yue grunted, staring at the medallion lost in thought.

Umbri hobbled out of the bathroom with Stake’s help, Temujin home on her back. She dragged her tongue against the roof of her mouth, cringing. The air smelled and tasted like an electrical fire. An afterimage of a dancing woman was burned into her eyes, and she was covered in goosebumps, just like she was on the street back then.

“The train…” she murmured, feeling the vibrations under her feet, “...’s moving again.”

"Yep. Shanks is a miracle worker," Stake replied, then patted her shoulder twice. “Come on.”

She turned her blurry gaze up, towards the direction Stake pulled her in, and the sight instantly sobered her.

It was the aftermath of a hamster eating her young. Viscera splattered all over the windows. Not one dry patch to skip across. The wide eyes of passengers stared at them in shell shock, faces absolutely coated in blood. Some stray limbs were left around. No heads. Umbri followed at the back of the man - or the monster - swaggering his way through the carnage he wrought and lowered her eyes. Glowing green webs spread from under her sleeves to the back of her hands. She tugged her sleeves down further.

“Was it ok?”

“Hmm?” He asked, tossing his gaze at her. “Yes, I suppose,” he answered, keeping his voice low. “Considering the hiccups, we’ve kept the casualties to the minimum, but…” He shrugged. “I’m not one to settle with ‘okay’.” He gestured to their surroundings, but pointed at nothing specific. “‘Okay’s are not what great heists are made of.”

Umbri felt Temujin bristle against her back. The slaughter around him had been burned into his memory banks. “‘Okay’?! Are you daft? This was HORRIBLE!” Stake shook his head and threw a hand to the air. “Hey, we secured the GIFT, I’m keeping it off the street… just as a good Rogue should~”

Temujin’s eyes lit up. “WHY, YOU-! You duplicitous, moonlighting, slippery son of a-!”

“I meant my blood,” Umbri interrupted quietly.

“...Ah,” Stake realised with a tilt of his head. His eyes softened with the wrinkles of his smile. “Well, let’s just say ‘Sugar’ suits you well.” He winked for emphasis. Then turned his attention back ahead. “I wouldn’t worry about any side effects, I haven’t been sick since the 60’s.”

Umbri squinted, trying to do the math.

Stake opened the carriage doors and they were met with artificial sunlight that wasn’t obscured by red sludge. There was a town approaching in the window from the 'skies'. More of a giant fortress. Iron walls, monster bones, brutal, boxy architecture. It was no shock that this was the bulwark between the Graves and Northbridge that kept the monsters out.

“And here we are…,” Stake announced, tugging at his hood to keep it in place. “Shieldtown. Home of the brave, the bold, and the downright reckless. I recommend the kebab in 49th street, it’s to die for.” He turned away and lowered his voice. “Or so I hear.”

It almost brought Umbri to tears as she placed her hand on the glass, watching the settlement approach them.

She made it.