[IC] (Dead) The Gifted World

[EchoicChamber]

Dawn wasn't entirely sure what she was eating.

It was some sort of stew, that was for sure, although the broth had turned to jelly, and the chunks of vegetable were nearly mush. The can itself had been no help- label so faded by the sun that the only thing she could make out was the faint outline of a bowl and the words "chunky" and "mood". Whatever it was, however, it was rich, and it was filling. And that was enough. She had considered heating it up over a fire, but it was still day out, and there was no point in risking smoke when the offered warmth would be redundant.

As far as life in the ash went, this week was going quite well. The cottage, as ruined and decayed as it was, was a good place to settle. Her supplies were well stock, and it had been days since her last brush-by with another denizen of the wasteland.

Prodding at the congealed mess within the can, Dawn ate, and enjoyed the peace she had found.

[Dyece]

Myalyn sat up against the wall of a half finished building, or was it half demolished. The structure was so shabby it was hard to tell. The building had sat, an eye sore for some time, and she wondered why? Living in a society of Libertarians wasn't all sunshine and rainbows for someone like Myalyn. She always told herself weird lies, and then, fully believing them, made her own life miserable. Her spirit tended to carry on to those around her. It didn't actually matter that much where she lived, she was simply placed there, and there she stayed.

Running her hand across the ground to see the amount of dust she could collect, she spend more than two hours. She seemed to have uncanny habits like this every day, as if she was trying to accomplish some useless purpouse. When asked for her reason, she would stand up, nod, and walk a distance away. After getting a ways she would turn around and say quietly, "my Variance". Sometimes she looked in pain, other times, she smiled slightly, but afterwards, she never stayed to be questioned further

[Kidd]

Against its outer wall, Dawn would hear a thud against the cottage. On the outside, Vivian pulled her knife from another woman's chest--one much taller than herself--and sat down to catch her breath. She stared up at the cloudless sky, squinting against the brightness, as the woman's body slid to the ground. "Whew," she sighed with heavy breaths. She let her knife drop to the ground beside her before leaning forward to check the body. A Liberty courier, and Vivian assumed she had been high ranking based on 1) the well crafted armor and 2) how well she put up a fight. "But I'm better," she muttered proudly to herself before pulling out a sealed envelope. She narrowed her eyes at it and turned it over: the name wasn't important but it was addressed to one of Liberty's strongholds. "Perfect."

Vivian slipped the envelope under her jacket before grabbing her knife again. Looking around, she cleaned it off on the woman's clothes before standing to her full height of--.. a mere 5'1". After slipping the knife away, Vivian stretched, her nose wrinkling suddenly. Then she sniffed. Was that food? She stepped back from the body to look up at the cottage and then around one more time before approaching the front entrance.

[Kuro]

Sylwia

Sylwia wandered the outskirts of a ruined town. From the damaged infrastructure to the ruined buildings, the town looked like something you'd see in a movie. Still, Sylwia thought the destruction to be... serene, to say the least. Whatever calamity had befell on the town was now Sylwia's canvas as she scoured the devastated landscape for supplies, through her main quest was for juice boxes. It was a suffering lifestyle if Sylwia ran out of juice boxes, and her crankiness always showed when she didn't have any. With hope, perhaps today's adventure would prove lucky for her search.

"Aha!" Sylwia exclaimed as she ripped a ravaged section of wood free from the inside of what was once a supermarket. The wood was pale, almost faded, but the scratched word juice could clearly be made out. Of course, like many ruined supermarkets, the merchandise was moldy and rotting, or simply no longer there. The latter was definitely true in Sylwia's case, as she stared at the ancient cooler with a frown of disappointment. "Just my luck..." She muttered as Sylwia stared at an empty cooler, desolate of any juice boxes. Perhaps one of the various factions had looted them, or maybe a survivor looking for a drink. Whatever the case may be, Sylwia wasn't happy.

[EchoicChamber]

Moments after scraping the last bits of gravy from the bottom of the can, a sharp, foreign jolt of pain shot through Dawn's skull. It was little more than a headache, really, and went nearly as swiftly as it came, leaving behind a sense of alarm that was hers alone. Having lived in the Ash for so long, and having possessed her ability all her life, it didn't take long for her to put together that she wasn't alone anymore...and that her newfound guest wasn't exactly pacifistic. She shouldn't have let her guard down. Cursing at herself, she stuffed the empty can deep into her bag, swung it over her shoulder, and was squeezing herself out of a broken section of window when the sound of footsteps clicked their way into the cottage. There was a fairly large gap for Dawn to slip through, but a few wayward shards of glass managed to bite through her clothes on her way out.

She hoped that the stranger didn't happen to have any sensory Gifts. She wasn't about to take the time to prod their mind to try to find out, either- regardless of whatever group the person happened to be affiliated with, if they were violent, then Dawn would probably be seeing their powers if they saw her. Ash and caution muffled her fall well, and, pressing herself along the side of the cottage, she crept away from the scene. She would start running at the first sign of a pursuit.

A fight was not something to be taken lightly. Especially if this stranger happened to be among the many who could call for backup.

[ScoundrelQueen]

"It's clear, Mitch," said a deep, disembodied voice from behind the shadow of a low border wall. At this cue, two figures materialized into visibility: A small, mousey woman covered so thickly in ash and dust that she looked like an unfortunate sugar cookie, and a man about twice her size in a similar state.

"What was that poem? About dust and death?" Mitch, the woman, asked, rumpling a hand through her sand-caked hair. A cloud of flakes and powder drifted out, fluttering down to the earth like burnt moths.

The night had not been kind to her and her partner, Orion, and the couple still sat huddled where they had taken refuge. Just before sunset, Orion had been seized by the nervous spasms he was so prone to, and the two had to stop before they could find shelter for the night. Mitch was neither able to see, nor strong enough to drag Orion to any kind of real safety, and so the two had hunkered down as best they could: Mitch keeping the long night's work of maintaining their invisibility, and Orion with a belt clasped between his teeth to keep from crying out until he fell asleep from exhaustion.

And then there was the dust storm.

Orion stood, shouldered his pack, and shook out his shirt. "'The world feels dusty when we stop to die,'" he quoted in reply, "'We want the dew then- Honors taste dry." With a gentleness that seemed impractical for a man of such mass, he reached down to touch the underside of Mitch's arm, and helped her to her feet. She had not taken off her own pack during the night, and already had it slung across her back. "But there's no dew, and we're about out of water. If we were on the right track with this place, though, the pipes in here may still run well enough for us to work something out of them.".

Mitch turned her body to face where Orion seemed to be, staring at the great white vastness in front of her. For a moment, it almost looked like there was a line between the earth and the sky; but then her pupils moved with the sunlight and it was lost. She leaned her face against Orion's arm, planted a soft kiss against him, and then nodded. "If that's what you think, Mr. Lazos, then I'm with you."

Then, with the same soft touch, Orion proceeded to guide Mitch around the parameter of the brick wall to where there was a break entrance, and the two entered the dilapidated town in perfect sync.

[Kidd]

Vivian squinted as she looked around the small, ruined cottage, and her golden eyes slowly ran over the shelving, the floor, and what was left of the furniture. I wasn't imagining it. Someone was here, she thought. There wasn't exactly a place to hide in the tiny cottage, so her attention turned on the window where a small tether of cloth stuck to the broken glass. There was no blood, however, and Vivian had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. Someone as small or smaller than her running about the Ash? All by themselves? What sort of power could they possess to allow that?

Whoever it was, they had food. That much was clear. So Vivian stared out the window and would suddenly appear in front of Dawn, facing away from the cottage. Vivian turned her head, looking right and then left. "Hm?" she hummed, confusion in her tone as she wondered just where exactly the other could have when. Vivian turned suddenly to peer back inside, and that's when her eyebrows raised in surprise to see the girl creeping away from Vivian. "Sneaky little rat," she said suddenly, harshly.

[VitoftheVoid]

"What a dump. Who would trade the citadel for this trash heap?"

"This may come as a great surprise to you, Knight, but often wanted fugitives are limited in their choices."

"You can cut the attitude HAL 9000. I'm out here aren't I?"

"Reassuring to know you are at least doing the bare minimum that your job requires you."

"Tough to get much else done when you're done when you're bitching in my ear."

A figure stepped up onto the brow of the hill that overlooked the ruined settlement, and anyone with a bit of sense would take one look at the chess piece insignia embroidered onto her chest and realise that they had a problem.

You didn't tend to see a knight of Erubesco walking around in the wastes unless someone was in a lot of trouble.

And someone, or rather two people, definitely were.

Knight Kora Norrevinter had been awoken a few hours before first light by a deployment notice that she was going to be playing fetch. A researcher and one of her subjects had taken off somewhere into the wasteland. Rumour was they were planning to sell state secrets to Liberty. Or ashland factions. Or something.

They were bad guys, that was the long and the short of it, and she was to return them to the citadel. In how many pieces they returned was mostly down to them.

--

Many miles away, in a control room somewhere in the depth of the citadel, ORIN sat across a high-backed office chair, her legs hooked over the arm and a cup of coffee resting in her gloves hands. Several cables trailed up from her shoulders up to gaps in the room's ceiling, leading into the citadel's grid.

Whilst she was a long way removed from the female knight out in the wastes, ORIN saw exactly what was going on. She also saw the names and faces of the fugitives that command had sent a retrieval order for. Orion Lazos and Leila Ingram.

Ingram.

ORIN would be lying if she said that she didn't take some satisfaction from this particular.

"Proceed into the ruins, Knight. Sweep and identify."

[ScoundrelQueen]

To say that Orion and Mitch did not know they were being followed would have been a lie: They had damaged Citadel security, fled the state, and were well acquainted with more classified security information than most Liberty spies could dream of.

More accurately, they were unaware that they were being followed by a very large Norwegian Knight less than a ball field north.

There were more pressing matters at hand, like taking soft steps and checking around the corners for any unfriendly Ashrats. Trying to preserve Mitch's energy, the pair had a system: Orion gave Mitch's arm a squeeze, and they vanished from sight. They moved to check around a blind spot, Orion squeezed twice, and the two resumed their visibility and proceeded forward.

To an observer, it may even look more like a short-range teleport than invisibility.

"Step up, here," Orion said, and his dust-dry throat crackled though the whisper. Mitch followed through what was left of a doorway, and Orion proceeded to explain the scene in a hushed voice. "It looks like what's left of a- a restaurant, maybe? No roof- looks like it may have been caught by a wind manipulator. Or a storm- Maybe the blowback from a bomb. Most of the walls are here. Windows shattered. There's some faucets. Looks like the sink basins got ripped off."

Mitch tugged on Orion's sleeve, and pointed to their left. "I heard a drip, I think. Over there. And it smells... damp? And green."

Orion took a glance about. "Yeah- Yeah. I does. I heard it, too," he said, and pulled Mitch down into a crouch behind a counter.

"What're we doing?"

"You've got your gun, so--"

"Orion, what if someone sees? Don't you treat me like some--"

"Nope. No way. There's some broken shit all around there, and we can't afford you to get cut on it. So just stay down for a second. Gimme your canteen. I think I've got the iodine in my bag."

With a sigh of resignation, Mitch released her hold on Orion's shirt sleeve and did as he had asked. "I don't like it." She shoved the canteen out toward his voice, bumping his leg in the process. She followed the sound of his footsteps- One, two, three, a pause, four, five, a kick of something that may have been glass, six and stop. The faucet squeaked and the pipes moaned too loudly for her liking.

Anyone could have heard.

But the water was running. They had four bottles. It couldn't take that long.

[Magister]

The floor finally gave out. The concrete board had grown weak over time, cracking, and finally caving under the weight it once supported. It's creaks of protest had emptied into a resounding crash, pushing its contents out into the broken street.

An iron lockbox, roughly the shape of a man lay amidst the the cloud of ash that had been stirred during it's decent. Around it was a number of bodies, some of which were adorned with Erubescan uniforms that hadn't been used for quite a few years, proud looking things that bore slashes of royal purple.

The rest were a mismatch of jury-rigged defense items typical of an Ashlander, and pieces from what looked like pre-war special forces armour.

Whatever technology, power, or force of will that held them all in that room had finally broken. The lingering effects of their time in the house dissipated with a small hum, and the bodies dried into mummified corpses in a manner of seconds.

The lockbox itself aged tremendously, rust appeared on its joints like a sudden sickness, and the lock aged to a point where it could be easily broken.

It would take only a small amount of effort to open, but who would care to check inside of a box surrounded by the dried dead? The desperate perhaps, or maybe one who's curiosity stayed despite the harshness of wasteland survival.

Something within stirred.

[VitoftheVoid]

Knight Norrevinter was down the bottom of the hill when the noise caught her attention. Glass, pipes, the noise of feet. It was pretty hard to miss. She advanced towards it briskly, but fairly quietly. Beneath the modified gloves she was wearing, the woman's fingers flexed experimentally and modified cells on her palms began to glow with a low heat.

Whay she was hearing could be anything. From a stray raccoon to twenty slavers looking for new merchandise. It paid to be ready.

As she peered round the doorway to see, Kora was almost disappointed to catch sight of one of her shopping list struggling to fill up a water bottle.

"Not really making this hard for me. Bit a of a let down." the woman muttered under her breath, only to prompt a retort from ORIN.

"Just get on with it."

From there the knight stepped in at her full height and shouted through the gap.

"Stop right there and get your hands where I can see them. You are wanted by the authority of the kingdom of Erubesco for the crimes of desertion, sabotage and military espionage and are ordered to return for trial."

With the formal declaration out of the way, Kora smirked.

"Don't put up a fight and I won't have any reason to punch somebody. Any questions?"

[ScoundrelQueen]

Orion's blood ran cold, hot, and then felt as if it had drained from his body entirely. Mitch was out of reach. He turned around to face the voice, set the bottle down on a ledge, and brought his hands up above his head.

"I'm putting my hands up," he said, though not exactly to the Knight whose form now took up most of the doorway, "I have my hands up, and I'm going to come forward for arrest. Dr. Ingram is back at our camp. She's waiting on me."

He took a step forward, and his boot knocked against a shard of rubble on the ground. Mitch, pressed between the cabinets, seized the moment to cock her gun.

One sound did not cover the other, and there was a split second where Orion forgot to breath. And then Mitch breathed just a bit too loudly.

Orion lunged at the Knight; two-hundred-thirty pounds of living cells shifting into a far heavier mass of steel alloy in midair, branching out from a pendant around his neck and spreading to swallow up his entire form in just under a second. He shattered the floor where he landed.

Mitch popped up, invisible and only shaking some, to fire off three rounds toward where she knew the door to be.

[LorelleQuips]

Two brothers stood at the crest of a hill at an edge of town, if the crumbling heaps of debris counted as a town. But it was just the kind of place to draw scavengers and hideaways. Ashrat fish in the proverbial barrel. A wanderer's playground like that was bound to draw in predators. Cats like rats and fish.

"What have we got?" asked Spire, the elder of the two, as he surveyed the broken, ash-dusted buildings with keen gray eyes.

The brothers, despite any and all prior use of cat metaphor, had an essence more canine than feline about them, the attractive, dark haired Spire showing something vaguely wolfish in his cool, dispassionate smile. The younger Schippers brother, Toby, might identify more closely with a golden retriever. His big eyes and the permanent furrow of concern in his forehead looked inherently trustworthy, and sky blue argyle sweatervests don't make very intimidating battle armor, whether you wear shoulder holsters over them or not.

"There's a group on the other side of the ruins," said Toby. They were only just in his sensory range, but he screwed his eyes shut to concentrate. "Invisibility...c--contact transmutation, something with body energy and heat..."

"Invisibility could be irritating," observed Spire, whose counter-Curse wouldn't work too well, or, well, at all, if he couldn't see the target.

"Yeah," said Toby. "There are some other stragglers. T--T--Teleporter... and then another one, um...oh." He shook his head. "Mind manipulator. He or--or she could know our intentions and make us k--kill each other before we even got close. So unless you want me to, you know, snipe from the top of the hill..." But he knew Spire never never did.

Spire made a noncommittal sound in his throat.

They spoke of picking victims with the casual air one might use to debate which brand of shoes to buy.

"Regenerator?" tried Toby. "Alone, at the moment." Though there were others in the ruins.

Spire smiled. "And could probably use some degenerating."

"I think we'll have an issue with making this one stay d--dead when you look away. Um. We'd probably have to cut the body up into pieces and put them in separate containers to prevent regeneration," said Toby, frowning. "For sure the head." He didn't look forward to the idea of that kind of mutilation even a little bit.

Spire, on the other hand, shrugged, his interest vaguely piqued. Tucking his hands in the pockets of his slim gray coat, he ran his thumb along the edge of a serrated blade that could probably handle the bone sawing he envisioned would happen in the near future. He wasn't usually one for going all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on people, appreciating rather the elegant simplicity of a sliced throat or a couple of slow-killing puncture wounds, but it wasn't like he minded the indulgence of a mess now and again. "Well, sounds like if we dont kill this bastard, nobody will."

"Thought you'd say that," said Toby with meek reluctance, and he started down the hill, focused on the aura of the regenerator.

They found a metal box where the Cursed should have been, surrounded by shriveled corpses. Toby could detect ability-related residue wafting from the area. This was a quizzical little scene.

Toby held onto his old but reliable Glock.

"Gift box? You shouldn't have," Spire remarked to no one in particular, taking a knee and proceeding to break the rusty padlock with a nearby brick.

[Magister]

The sound of the rusted padlock being dashed to pieces under Spire's piece of mortar pulled Montana from what only could be called a deep meditative state. His consciousness surfaced from the trenches of his unconscious mind, and all at once, he was fully aware.

Montana didn't dwell on the circumstances of his imprisonment for a moment. Not a thought for the Bard, the Knight Commander, or their ill fated alliance. He had mused enough before the lingering stasis set in.

Dwelling on the past would have kept him in the box for longer.

He placed his palm on the rusted metal, and with a small amount of force, he pushed the door open, and outwards, breaching the veil between he, and the choked sun that hung over the Ashland clouds. Montana sat upright immediately, without the assistance of his hands or elbows. His face turned upward toward the sky, and for a few clicks, he just sat there, not saying anything at all.

"You have my thanks." Their intentions at the moment were irrelevant to his gratitude. They did what would have taken the elements months to accomplish.

The boy in the Argyle drew his attention first. His hand was obscured, but obviously nestled on the hilt of some weapon. The position of his arm, and demeanor were clear indicators. He looked well fed. Groomed. A hand on a weapon was a courtesy among ashlanders. It was the reproachful way he held himself that caught the shadow of Montana's interest.

The second one, he who destroyed the lock, was different. He seemed eager.

Montana turned to look at him finally. He had the eyes of a predatory animal. They held the cool confidence of a belief system that held no doubts that the prey would be vanquished.

His own coal blacks were different. He held the look of a great and ancient wurm. One that had watched it's treasure be taken over the decades by clever thieves it no longer cared to stop.

The man stood, ending an inch or two below Spire's height. Slowly, he started to brush himself free of debris.

"With whom have I had the pleasure of thanking?"

[LorelleQuips]

The man, surprisingly spry for one who could not have been comfortable crammed inside that container, looked young, but from what Toby knew from the Gift, he could have been around for millennia...and his eyes were unsettling. Glossy circles of ink.

"Well. You're quite welcome," said Spire. He had retreated a pace as the lid swung open, but he stepped back up to the lockbox to give it a clank with the side of his dusty hiking boot. "Nice place. How long have you been taking up residence in there?" he asked with a dry but affable smile.

"Spire..." said Toby wearily, impatiently. He couldn't shoot the man to any effect until Spire made the regeneration short-circuit. But Spire hushed him, the picture of ease.

"Oh, come on, kid. Don't tell me you're not curious," said Spire. Anyway, the regenerator didn't appear to be posing any immediate threat. "I'm Spire. This is Toby," said the older brother. On the extremely unlikely chance the man would know them by their first names, they'd just kill him, which was the plan anyway. Spire pulled one hand out of his pocket, where it had been settled on the smooth handle of a blade, to offer a hand shake. It would be a good, personable handshake, should the stranger choose to take it, nothing menacing or threatening about it. A good-faith gesture. A we-outnumber-you,-and-are-clearly-armed,-but-here-is-a-friendly-and-vulnerable-offer-to-show-we-mean-no-harm sort of gesture. With a dash of we-did-rescue-you-after-all. By all appearances, Spire was relaxed (but very intentionally not too relaxed--he had to adjust for the suspicion that always hung in the air of the Wastelands, of course. He manufactured fake emotions with the precision of a well-trained stage actor. "You got a name, or just...what I'm sure is a really interesting story?"

[Magister]

Toby's anxious voice carried a tone of sincerity that seemed to be the prevailing theme of who this young man was. Montana noted that he seemed very honest emotionally. Not to say that he outright believed the closer boy operated dishonestly, but more that the other wore his heart on his sleeve.

"It's an interesting circumstance to meet you both, Spire, and Toby." He nodded to each of them individually, making an equal amount of eye-contact as well. The man stooped down, and retrieved his wide brimmed hat from the innards of the box. When he returned to his full height, he met Spire's handshake. His hand was the mouth, attached to the arm which served as the body to the adder. Like any snake, it moved smooth before it struck.

"In regards to my time of rest spent within the confines of that metal, I have no true way of knowing. Nor have I cared to recall the year for quite some time."

He motioned down to the deceased.

"Perhaps Toby would care to make a guess based on the decay of the corpses that lay around us."

Montana stepped out of the box, and innocuously positioned his body to be parallel to Spire's in a way that gave Toby no clear shot of his midsection or head. Not that he feared being pierced by bullet or blade, but to see which Toby would do first, re-position himself, or answer his question. If he answered at all.

[EchoicChamber]

There was the shifting of feet against gravel, a sudden shifting of the stranger's mental presence- a teleporter, then. Dawn's lips pulled themselves into a thin line. Teleporters were never a good sign, whether alone or otherwise. Too many tricks up their sleeve. As the stranger- a woman, she could see that now- turned to face her, Dawn adopted a sort of "deer in the headlights" look. In a passing glance, one might think the girl had frozen in fear. A sitting duck, made easier by her small stature and lack of open weaponry.

Her eyes were glazed, soaped windows, mind fleeing to some distant place.

Which just so happened to be in Vivian's own thoughts.

An odd, fluttering sensation would suddenly begin to pulse within the mercenary's skull, as if a moth had somehow been trapped there. The fluttering only grew with each moment, although it would most likely be overshadowed by a sudden numbness in her limbs.

Dawn was attempting to steal control of her body.

Fists clenched, the girl urged Vivian's body to turn, run, and smack face-first into the brick beside them. Twice, if possible. The hijacking attempt did not last for long, however- only for Dawn herself to spin on her heel and begin sprinting away to the nearest cluster of buildings, weaving from side to side, around the corner of some shambled down apartment. There were others in the city. With any luck, they would serve as a suitable distraction for the woman.

And if not, the ruins were as good a defense as any.

[VitoftheVoid]

As soon as she heard the unmistakable sound of a cocking firearm, Kora's weight swiftly shifted onto her back foot, her trained reflexes compelling her back more than any conscious thought. She sprang back as the man flung himself forward, and then, feet skidding in the dust, dived behind the doorframe moments before bullets splintered off the wood. The shots might've missed her head had she stayed. But that was a big might.

The knight pressed her back against the wall of the building, and lifted her hands up. The metal plating of the adapted gloves flared red as heat started to manifest around them. The air rippled and blurred.

"I just want you to keep in mind:" Kora called back through the entrance, still stood parallel to the frame in order to avoid the hidden gunner.

"That you instigated the fight here.
We could have handled this in a civilized way.
I want you to be completely aware of that when everything that's about to happen, happens."

She sprang across the doorway, trailing one hand across the threshold of the wooden door and by the time she'd cleared it a fire had spread all across the dusty wood, blocking the entrance.

She didn't imagine metal guy was going to be too worried about it, but whoever was shooting at her in there was. With any luck she could split them up and deal with them one at a time. Trying to take out the big guy whilst under fire was not a great idea.

She'd learned the hard way about the kind of setup.

[LorelleQuips]

Toby blinked, startled at being singled out. What kind of game was it to be put, seemingly randomly, on the spot for an answer when anyone's guess would have been as good as his own? "Um," he managed as his tongue jammed itself to the roof of his mouth in an apparent act of defiance. Perhaps Montana had noticed his reluctance to speak. The Cursed really were cruel.

Unlike his tongue, however, Toby's feet moved. Without so much as a conscious thought, he readjusted his footing to keep Spire out of potential line of fire, almost in sync with Montana's shift. Despite his mental scramble to make words go, he stepped on instinct, not suspecting for an instant that Montana was testing his caution.

He glanced only briefly at one of the paper dry corpses.

"Not sure," he mumbled. "It--c------c----------"

Toby's left shoulder rose to his ear as he tried to force the word out, a tic that tended to surface in situations like these: the 'talking to people who weren't Spire' situations.

Spire, who was watching Toby closely, was about to rescue him with a glib conversational redirection, but Toby managed to let spill the next few syllables: "---could have been years--with the weather so d--d--d-- with the weather so not-wet. Hard to know for sure. Unless...I d--don't think those Eru uniforms have been in circulation for a while. So, um." He cleared his throat and managed a weak smile. "My incredibly scientific c--conclusion is, 'a really, really long time.'"

He finished with a faint air of triumph at having played the game and reached the finish, in spite of being held up somewhere at the crossroads of block-stutter and nerves.

Spire's hands had returned to his pockets, back to the handles of the knives in the lining. If Montana intended to probe Toby like a lab specimen rather than share with the class how he'd ended up a Jack in the Box, Spire would grow bored quickly. Bored, and annoyed. Montana was only worth keeping around as long as he was more interesting alive than bleeding. But one other thing had sparked his attention.

"It's one thing to forget your age and another not to be interested in what decade it is. Sounds like you've been around for a while," Spire chuckled.

Long enough to have seen the factions founded? Long enough to have seen the human war? Long enough to remember before the Cursed overran the earth?

"I'm guessing you've seen a lot."

Toby, too, would have been fascinated by this possibility, had he not suddenly noted a spike in his internal radar. His gaze became glazed for a moment as he focused on the shift. That not quite a feeling, not quite a sound, not quite a thought pinging of his ability told him the psychic he had wanted to avoid was on the move, and headed in their general direction.

"Hey, um, we might have company soon," he mumbled. He didnt like to speculate what might happen if the mind manipulator got close enough to prod around in their heads.

[Framing A Moose]

To say that the weather was nice would be an exaggeration. In the Ash, there was no such thing as nice weather. The sky was always gray, and the air was always thick. Nothing ever fell from the clouds, and if it did, it would most likely be poison. But one thing that could be said about the current weather was that it was calm. It was as though the sandstorm that swept through the crumbling ruins had cleared it of the normal winds that tended to rage against the people passing through.

However, atop one building were a pair that did not concern themselves with the weather; one was a person of an unknown gender in garb that seemed to cover as much skin as possible, and the other a sand-colored horse. Most people who knew anything about criminals of the modern day would recognize the person as the infamous Eddie Nine Lives, whether they'd seen her or not. As far as felons go, she was a household name.

In her hands, the woman held a pair of binoculars, concentrating on a scene that was playing out a few blocks ahead of her. She watched as a woman adorned in a set of Libertian armor was stabbed by another woman who, from what Eddie had seen, was able to teleport. She watched as the woman pulled an envelope out of the woman's inner pocket, but left the rest of the body untouched, not even bothering to take the rather expensive armor.

"Bingo..." she mumbled in her southern drawl. She rose to her feet, not taking her eyes off the woman, and put the binoculars in one of the makeshift saddlebags that adorned her equine companion, before mounting it. But before they could start the race to the target, Eddie saw something out the corner of her eye: a horse's head. Not the one belonging to the animal beneath her, but a more simplistic one...almost like a chess piece. From the turn of her head, Eddie knew that the horse, Gwen, saw it too. They both knew it could only mean one thing: a Knight. Eddie looked closer and found that the Knight appeared to be talking to someone. Eddie turned her head back to the original target, then down at Gwen, who was doing her best to look back up. There was a short unspoken conversation between the two, before darker brown words appeared upon the animal's fur.

Probably just a merc anyway. Besides, she got the letter. That's all that matters. So go after the Knight. She's bound to have information. I'll keep watch in case you need back up...which I know you wont. Eddie responded with only a nod before climbing down a cable that hung from the roof. As she made her way across the street, her mind was racing already processing the facts she knew about her target.

The ginger Knight had been unarmed, save for a pair of gloves, meaning that she must rely her gift, which must be offensive. Secondly, for someone of her rank to be out here, there must be someone pretty dangerous on the loose, which Eddie assumed was who she was talking to, due to her defensive stance. Third, the fight was going to be taking place in a restaurant. You can never really be sure when it comes to ruins, but the likelihood of possible environmental weaponry was high. And last of all, as Eddie neared the restaurant, she caught sight of the Knight's target through a large, shattered window: a large metal man. For the time being, Eddie decided it would be best not to make any effort to attack the man. In the Ash, an enemy of an enemy is not always a friend, but in a fight, they can be a useful ally.

Just as Eddie jumped through the large window, she saw the ginger dive out the door on the other side of the building, leaving a conflagrative trail in her wake, which began to devour the wooden wall of the building. In no more than a second, the gunslinger's revolver was out and aimed at a pipe running along the remnants of the ceiling, signifying what was once a sprinkler system. with a pull of a trigger, the room filled with the sound of a gunshot, and water began spraying down on Eddie, the man, and the fire, causing the last item to dampen down and die before it got out of control. She then turned her attention to her temporary ally.

"Hey, Tinman, do us both a solid and lure her into my line of sight." she commanded, her gun already pointed at the door.

@VitoftheVoid@ScoundrelQueen