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[img]https://i.imgur.com/r7scdkh.png[/img]	[img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjEwNi43NjY3NjcuVTJ4dllXNWxJRVpoY21sei4w/bachelorette.regular.webp[/img]
[/center][right][b]Interactions: [/b]  Luca [@Fernstone], Adora [@Mixtape Ghost N], Artifact Group 
[code]Elysium Island (Team Artifact)[/code][/right][hr]

Sloane dropped her hand and turned her head to protect herself from the dust cloud as part of the roof buried the skeleton, pulling the collar of her coat over her nose. She turned to see the hand of the skeleton vanish in a flash, leaving behind a pile of rubble and a young boy who was more hole than boy. Sloane would’ve been concerned if it were anyone other than Clancy; for him it might as well have been a skinned knee, the what-should-have-been fatal injury being sealed shut by shadows. Sloane checked herself for injuries while Kashmira was mending Adora, but aside from a few minor scrapes from debris that were wiped away by the healing wave she was fine.

She was shaking the dust from her coat when her eyes were drawn to movement. It was Luca who had approached her, stopping just out of range of the Rot to start picking at Sloane’s flesh. His brown eyes were met with a peculiar wrinkle of Sloane’s brow and a quick aversion of her own eyes that was interrupted by a sharp intake of air, an upturning of the chin, and a narrowing of her eyes as her finger pricked the end of the Brass Needle in an attempt to better hide the artifact. Her unintentional reaction to the pain masqueraded perfectly as prickly dismissal to Luca’s insistence that he was fine. Her eyes softened as Luca smiled behind the surgical mask.

[color=6B8E23]”Let’s go- I’d offer you a hand, but that’ll end badly for us both.”[/color]

[color=silver]“I wouldn’t accept it anyway. I know where those hands have been,”[/color] said Sloane dryly, her head tilting towards the beheaded monster. An attempt at humor or merely a statement of a fact? Who could say.

Sloane followed after the group, taking a moment to float her possessed knife back into her bag and discretely drop the Brass Needle in after it. There was a worrying lack of resistance on the way to the vault, which hopefully meant that the Aggro team’s distraction was working and not that they were slowly being stalked by something waiting for the prime opportunity to strike–presumably, once they alerted the Starving Dog. Sloane looked at the statue then took a few steps to the side to get a better glance at the vault, feeling the eyes of the statue stare at her as she craned her neck. The vault looked bizarrely antiquated in its design, but she should still be able to open it up with a glitch caused by a Hexmark. The problem was the size of the door demanded a larger Hexmark, and a larger Hexmark required more time to draw.

[color=silver]“It’ll take me ninety seconds, two minutes tops to breach the vault,”[/color] said Sloane with a frown, erring on the safe side with her estimate. Even if she could pull off her Hexmark in a minute that simply might be too much time. Ruby had made it sound like the Starving Dog was indestructible, and despite Adora’s bravado a handful of already half-cooked meatshields and some light bondage consisting of chains and vines probably wasn’t going to outperform Greenwood’s attempt at putting down the dog.  It was quite possible that Luca could breach the door faster, but she really didn’t like the idea of him relying on the Rot. 

[color=fd8a6c]”I'm the only one who can give Luca or Sloane an opening,”[/color] said Adora.

[color=silver]“Perhaps if the plan was to just get you killed then that would work,”[/color] said Sloane bitterly. [color=silver]“Our best bet would be to try to immobilize it. Autumn boosts our controllers while Layla and Alizée leash it, Aislin buries it, and Britney fences it off. Clancy, Adora, and Cyrus are ready to intercept it if it breaks free. One Amara stays with Kashmira and guards our healer, while the other comes with Luca and myself and watches our back.”[/color] 

[color=silver]“But if we’re lucky, I could potentially disable it before it even gets a chance to act,”[/color] said Sloane, pulling out the same knife she had used to distract the skeleton. She was unsure whether or not Object of Obsession would even work on a living statue, but if it did it could completely circumnavigate dealing with the Starving Dog. Sloane turned to Autumn. [color=silver]“How many of us can you boost?”[/color]