VVVVVigil: Valorous Veterans Vanquishing Venal Vermin

[Morty]

[Wenomir's House]

Wenomir looks at Cassandra, feeling conflicted. The way she looked at him... but he doesn't want to push her. This is a precarious situation and she seems as withdrawn as Kr could be... but also prone to emotional reactions.

"So what did you do after... everything blew up? I know you've joined MERC."

[The Academy]

Wenomir is waiting there for Adir, fully dressed and armored, with the Answer at his hip. Anika should be there with him as well.

"Good to see you, Adir. Anika here will be joining our rescue operation. How did your research go?"

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

Wenomir raises his communicator to his face, without reaching for his weapon, and says:

"Attention. We've got a member suffocating in the airship gantry. She needs evacuation to the med bay."

Only then does he address "Awen", his smile vanishing like snow in spring and a cold fury staring out at her instead.

"I would consider not chopping your head right here and now. How's that for a trade?"

He still doesn't reach for his weapon, but Harley might feel a dread certainty in the back of her head that it can end up in his hands before she can blink.

[Arkhosia]

Firing Range

"Yeah, its exactly what it sounds like. I turn into a bear and someone climbs onto me. Then we'll ride into battle. It's really cool, most people won't see it coming, especially not some dumb snakes." Then she suddenly runs off. "But I'll meet you here in a half hour! Remember, lots of neat guns!"

---

If Blanche does indeed return to the firing range after thirty minutes, she'll only discover that the druid is late. About ten minutes late in fact as she eventually comes hurrying towards her carrying a bunch of branches and bark pieces in her arms. "Got the reagents we need!" Where in the world did she get all that...?

Firing Range

Anika will arrive to find that Blanche did indeed do as suggested! There are a pair of pump-action shotguns slung over one shoulder, along with two .22 rifles under her arm and a small satchel full of ammunition. She raises her eyebrow at the assorted tree parts the druid is bringing along with her. "For, uh, cleansing rituals?" she inquires before gesturing to the assortment of firearms she's toting. "I made sure to get one for each of us, by the way."

[5a Violista]

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

The fake Awen does, in fact, feel that dread certainty. She imagines looking up and seeing her own headless body...

She also feels a tingling feeling shoot up her spine. This is exciting. A smile involuntarily appears on her face: It's been a long time since another melee fighter has made her feel this way. "Do you really care that little about Awen?" she asks.

I mean, sure. Losing her head could be bad. Survivable, but still not very fun. The real problem is that, by requesting medical evacuation, Wenomir has, with a single blow, taken out most of her leverage. Trying to salvage the situation, she adds: "If I don't have a head, how could I tell you which magic you shouldn't use? How could I give you the antivenom?"

Unlike Wenomir, Harley actually reaches towards her sword. Her left hand reaches back towards her neck, reaches under the headscarf, and grasps the sword hilt that had earlier, and then pulls the sword out of her back.
...
The sword only cuts partway down the dress she stole from Awen, down to mid-back. Just as well, though: Harley figured this dress might be a little too restrictive for swordfighting. "I stand by my original offer: what you know about what you call Skinwalkers in exchange for what I know about the venom. Tell me what defenses you have against them, and I'll even throw in the cure, free of charge." She honestly doesn't expect him to go revealing defenses to some random infiltrator, so she doesn't get her hopes up.

"Alternatively," she adds, completely expecting (and half-hoping) him to strike at her at any time, "we could continue this conversation in the gantry to leave your medics space for her." Harley gestures down at the woman at her feet. She means, it's much easier to fight with more space than in this hallway, and the fight would probably be much more interesting, without having to always check behind her to see if people would be coming down the hallway, or worrying about accidentally hitting her leverage.


Meanwhile
the real Awen tries to slow down her breathing and make larger breaths, as hard as it is to do so. Maybe if only she could stop hyperventilating, she could use some sort of magic.

[Morty]

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

"Race you there."

With those words, seemingly out of place, Wenomir snaps the axe off his back and, in a single fluid and deadly one-handed motion, swings it towards "Awen's" neck. As he does so, he steps forward briskly and almost casually, in a way that almost doesn't look like's forcing her backwards... which he is. This is not, perhaps, what Harley would have expected of the warrior, but there's a terrible force in those brief movements, like a coiled spring waiting to unwind.

[Hattish Thing]

[Skybase Entrance]:

After being led by several lookouts to the current entrance into VIGIL, the latest visitor to the organization wanders about somewhat aimlessly, beady little eyes taking in the surroundings with an expression of awe and wonder upon his face. The figure appears to be over nine feet tall, his posture slumped, tiny head facing forward. A scraggly beard seemingly composed of hundreds of lengthy, fibrous yellow spines hangs off of the figure's chin, also growing out of where eyebrows would be on a normal human being. The only article of clothing worn by the figure would be a ratty pair of brown trousers, tied to the figure's wide, trunk-like middle via a thick rope.

Every inch of the figure's body appears to be constructed out of some sort of thick vegetable matter, smaller spines jutting out of the man's extraordinarily thick flesh. Two limbs jutting out of the man's impossible broad shoulders sprout out into three large, spine-covered digits, while the two limbs which appear to act as legs and feet simply end in large stumps.

Unsure of what to do, the figure simply sits down cross-legged on the floor after a moment, patiently tapping his finger-like digits together and humming peacefully.

[Shadowcaller]

Firing Range

"Yeah! You need like... pure wood so I just stripped the trees up here for branches." She gestures in the direction she was coming from. "We gotta be quick though, the ritual must be before like an hour after you removed the branches from the trees." She eyes the weapons Blanche is carrying. "Okay, great! Don't think I can carry them with all these branches though. Did you get holsters or backpacks along with them?"

[The Academy]

"Hold on. Are we the only three joining the operation? I thought there would be like... more people." Anika has her hands on her hips and is dressed up in an actual armor, or at least bits of brown armor that she has strapped over her usual clothes. Did she make those? Buy them? It's a mystery.

She waves. "And hey, Adir. You were at that invasion, right?"

[Murkus]

[The Academy]

"Gotta tell ya buddy, it could have gone better. Near as I can figure, Zenon is just a host for a thing called the Devourer, and there's no killing it. We might be able to kill Zenon, though, if we can separate them for a second. Gonna take some powerful magic... or maybe something that can get inside Zenon's head. There was something about banishing the Devourer, but nothing on the how end of things. Unless you know somebody who specializes in mojo like that, we're out of luck."

"Either way, I brought something that ought to disable him for at least a little," says the stag, looking then at Anika. "Yeah! And so were you. Sort of." Adir grins at Wenomir and Anika both, clearly doing his best not to say something tiresome.

[5a Violista]

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

Harley tries to block the axe with her sword, but is unable to hold the blade against it, probably because she had made her arm muscles smaller than she was used to...or maybe Wenomir just is that strong.

Harley is forced to duck out and dodge the swing. The axe comes dangerously close to her head. "Hey, be careful," she says, backstepping to keep just out of range of Wenomir's axe as he continues his approach.

Fake Awen beats her sword at him as she retreats, in order to help her better gauge how much range he has compared to her. "You wouldn't want to scar this pretty face, right?" To be honest, it probably wouldn't be considered 'pretty': a bit paler and thinner than probably is healthy, with Harley's own signature scarring over the left side, and nearly entirely covered by cloth.

As she retreats down the hallway, she quickly grabs one of the bone-spears from the earlier battle and saves it for later, in her right hand. "Unless..." Harley feints a lunge at Wenomir, but then instead retreats again. After all, the longer she stays in these hallways, the more of a disadvantage she is in. He'd probably overpower her and, with a longer weapon, she can't swing as freely. "...you're into that sort of thing?" As she says this, she starts copying the scars on his face onto the right side of her own face, mirroring his.

Maintaining the same pace as him, she continues retreating towards the Airship Gantry.


Meanwhile

Awen is unable to get out a spell before they leave the hallway.

So she just lies there curled up (because it's cold when somebody stole your outer clothes), waiting for whoever, trying to get her need for breathing minimal and under control and thinking back if she has any magic at all that could help...
Well.
If somebody were sleeping nearby, she could try to enter their dreams and hope they have good medical care in their dreams. She could have her hair try to drag her across the floor...but then she'd be harder to find. Same thing with her broom. Are there any corpses nearby? They could do the same thing. Maybe she could tear off her own skin and have it drag her down the hallway, as painful as that sounds. If enough spiders show up, they can carry her, right? Her shadow's not strong enough to carry her, so that'd have to drag her, too. She could make a deal with some fairy monster, alternatively, and have it bring her.
Wow, she just realized that she has an awful lot of magic that allows her to be dragged across the floor. Awen wonders what that says about her.

Maybe she could create a pact with whoever comes by next, that would heal her enough to walk for a minute...but then after that, they'd have two people in the same situation. She could make it stop hurting for now...but that doesn't fix the breathing problem. She could even make it feel good instead of hurting, but that doesn't sound like a good idea at the moment. She has one that'd work...but only if she had used it before being poisoned.

...
Nothing sounds like a good idea at the moment. Guess she just has to wait.

[Arkhosia]

Firing Range

"Well, they all have slings on them, so they shouldn't be too hard to hang over the shoulder or across the back. Also have a spare bandoleer I can lend you, for ammo and such." Blanche answers, gesturing to the two shotguns as best she can with her hands occupied. She chooses not to question Anika's logic of removing the ritual components before they dealt with the snakes; what's done is done, after all.

[Recaiden]

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

Meanwhile

Awen is unable to get out a spell before they leave the hallway.

So she just lies there curled up (because it's cold when somebody stole your outer clothes), waiting for whoever, trying to get her need for breathing minimal and under control and thinking back if she has any magic at all that could help...
Well.
If somebody were sleeping nearby, she could try to enter their dreams and hope they have good medical care in their dreams. She could have her hair try to drag her across the floor...but then she'd be harder to find. Same thing with her broom. Are there any corpses nearby? They could do the same thing. Maybe she could tear off her own skin and have it drag her down the hallway, as painful as that sounds. If enough spiders show up, they can carry her, right? Her shadow's not strong enough to carry her, so that'd have to drag her, too. She could make a deal with some fairy monster, alternatively, and have it bring her.
Wow, she just realized that she has an awful lot of magic that allows her to be dragged across the floor. Awen wonders what that says about her.

Maybe she could create a pact with whoever comes by next, that would heal her enough to walk for a minute...but then after that, they'd have two people in the same situation. She could make it stop hurting for now...but that doesn't fix the breathing problem. She could even make it feel good instead of hurting, but that doesn't sound like a good idea at the moment. She has one that'd work...but only if she had used it before being poisoned.

...
Nothing sounds like a good idea at the moment. Guess she just has to wait.

Help arrives for Awen!

An indistinct silver vine zooms down the hallway, bouncing off the walls before resolving into a blue-haired girl with a dagger at her side.
Hmm. Wenomir technically called for her to be taken to the medical bay, but she can probably help Awen right here. Okay, she could definitely help Awen right here, but it might be dangerous and wasteful of energy. No guarantee there aren't other enemies around here.
!!!
Where's the fox? Is it okay?

"Awen! Don't talk, just try to remember clearly for me - What happened to you?"
Outwardly, Arlem crouches down to slide Awen onto a stretcher. Where did a stretcher come from? Must be magic?
Inwardly, Arlem tries to look into Awen's thoughts and memories to see if she knows what injured her.

[Morty]

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

Wenomir raises his axe to block Harley's feinted attack, but realises the ruse quickly. Still, it does buy her a few seconds before he comes after her again. He doesn't move with the eye-watering speed that he is perhaps known by, however. He keeps an almost leisurely pace, interrupted by flashes of force and motion.

"It's not your face, is it? How about you show me who you really are? It wouldn't do to die in someone else's skin."

He speaks in an almost pleasant and conversational manner, before stepping forward and sweeping his axe in a criss-crossing pattern, attacking Harley from above and below, the lines of attack intersecting around her sternum.

[The Academy]

"A frontal attack on AMEN isn't going to go well, no matter how many people we bring," Wenomir tells Anika with a shrug. He decides not to speak too much about the invasion right now. "They're a miserable shell of who they were, but their base is still formidable. We need to get in and out quickly, before they notice what hit them, and crush anything we run into. What you say about Zenon and this... 'Devourer' thing doesn't sound promising, but it is something. What do you have that might disable him?"

[Recaiden]

[Skybase Entrance]:

After being led by several lookouts to the current entrance into VIGIL, the latest visitor to the organization wanders about somewhat aimlessly, beady little eyes taking in the surroundings with an expression of awe and wonder upon his face. The figure appears to be over nine feet tall, his posture slumped, tiny head facing forward. A scraggly beard seemingly composed of hundreds of lengthy, fibrous yellow spines hangs off of the figure's chin, also growing out of where eyebrows would be on a normal human being. The only article of clothing worn by the figure would be a ratty pair of brown trousers, tied to the figure's wide, trunk-like middle via a thick rope.

Every inch of the figure's body appears to be constructed out of some sort of thick vegetable matter, smaller spines jutting out of the man's extraordinarily thick flesh. Two limbs jutting out of the man's impossible broad shoulders sprout out into three large, spine-covered digits, while the two limbs which appear to act as legs and feet simply end in large stumps.

Unsure of what to do, the figure simply sits down cross-legged on the floor after a moment, patiently tapping his finger-like digits together and humming peacefully.

Someone notices this guy.
There's nothing about giant cactus people in her personnel files.
So.
This.
Is probably a visitor.

Alice canters over and waves a hand in a friendly-enough way.
"Hello. Are you waiting for something?"

[Hattish Thing]

[Skybase Entrance]:

The mysterious plant-person looks up a full minute after Alice speaks towards him, a small smile upon his prickly face. The cactus man begins to roll his neck around atop his shoulders, as if stretching himself awake from some sort of trance-like state, while all the while burbling something in some sort of foreign tongue to himself, the sound of his voice akin to that of a burbling brook.

"Bum be-dum, dum..." He then taps at the patch of floor just to his side.

[Recaiden]

After about ten seconds of waiting, Alice tuned out the plant-guy.
She's looking off into the distance, fingers tap-tapping at nothing.

[Hattish Thing]

Skybase Entrance

Noticing the woman's lack of attention, the hulking cactus-figure rises up from his space upon the floor, stepping slowly towards Alice, moving slowly but deliberately, as if underwater.

"I seek... purpose. Ba dum, dum. You... are."

[5a Violista]

[Evening - Interior]
Near Airship Gantry

Harley seems to have accurately judged the distance for Wenomir's first strike, so it just barely misses her chest. As a result, she twists her right side forward in order to stab at Wenomir's side with the bonespear.

...Unfortunately, Wenomir's upward swing does manage to hit her. The explosive force behind the swing manages to crunch a couple of her ribs, and cut through everything else that was there. Ow, that hurt more than I expected, she thinks, as she loses her grip on the white spear regardless of what happened with her strike.

To keep him from striking again, Harley twists back, so her swordhand is in front again. Her right hand is held nearly straight back, hoping to feel the breeze to tell her when she's leaving the hallways, to where the airships are.

Ow. She winces, taking another step back. She could start the process of pulling together the wound and pulling her bones back in place, but properly welding her bones back together would take a few moments to concentrate.

"I'm actually you, from the future," she says, finishing shifting her face and voice to match his. It's not perfect, but...they're both definitely close enough to be recognizable.

A beat. She uses that beat attack, trying to make it harder for him to follow up an attack.

She laughs a single 'ha' with his voice. "...Don't believe it, huh?"
"You're right, though. A life-or-death battle is the best time to discuss philosophy." She steps back, feeling the air. "What really defines who we are? Is it the masks we wear?" Another retreat. Her voice and face goes back feminine, but keeps his scars. "The scars we have from our past?" She can feel the slight breeze, showing that they're almost out of the hallway. Not just more space to swing her longer weapon, but there's also some supply boxes nearby that she helped unload, that she could potentially use to distract him. "Are we even the same person that we were a year ago?" She makes another beat...again not doing anything with the beat attack.

Then again, he still hasn't answered any of her questions beyond what she deduced at the beginning. Sure, she learned what she had initially sought, but she'd still consider it a failure to leave without finding out more. "Instead of the antivenom, would you prefer to know my identity in exchange?" Another beat - but this time, she follows it up with a lunge, aiming at his arm with her sword.


Interior Hallway

Awen, as instructed, does not talk! She nods, instead, to show that she's going to do as said.

She thinks back and tries to make her memories as clear as possible: She and her fox were walking through the hall when the fox noticed a suspicious man. While her fox ran off to go alert someone, she tried to stop him. She was sooooo close...then he stabbed her and it quickly became harder and harder to move and breathe - she's not entirely sure why - the guy stole most of her outerwear, including her headscarf (Oh, yeah. There's black snakes hidden in her hair, making a mess of it. Did I forget to mention that?) then she lost all her senses for who-knows-how-long. Eventually...everything came back and there was Wenomir and herself standing above her, they both left...and now we're here.

Also, the stretcher feels nice.

[Zefir]

The gun is clean and well-maintained. Healthy, as it were. But like Alice said, it doesn't get used much. The radio is about to need new batteries and the oven's hinges are rusting. The computers are all in tip-top shape.

"I wouldn't expect it to stand up to a tank missile! That's for much bigger machines to try. ... But what was this material?" Alice asks, amazed. She really doesn't know a ton about different materials. Just enough to tell them apart for finding replacement parts.

[Training Grounds - Somewhere Around] -> [Alice House] (I guess)

Mia tells Alice to get a new battery for the radio, but other then that doesn't mention much. Are the drones also active and can she 'talk' to them as well?

"The material used was called 'Thorium' by it's inventor." Mia says. "A material harder then anything you can imagine. In our tests we barly found anything to match it with. It could reven resist high temperature for some time. Grabbing into lava for example. It sounds all nice but there is a downside. The prosess of building that material is dangerous. When he first found it he nearly died." Mia looks down sadly and is quiet for a bit like just thinking what happened.
"In the end he didn't wanted to make more. We could just make some replacements for him, an arm. Then he left."

[Recaiden]

[Skybase Entrance]

A moment later, Alice apparently finishes what she was doing and waves her hands to sweep something away. Distracting thoughts?
"Are purposeful? Yes, I am."

"Did you want to help?" Her eyes flick behind her giant glasses, looking the cactus skeptically up and down.

[Evening - Interior Hallway]

"So it looks like you've been poisoned. We can fix that."
Arlem stretches out her arms and lifts the whole stretcher up at once, smooth as you like, and starts whisking Awen off towards the clinic.
Just hang in there, Awen. And don't worry little snakes.
No clue what exactly the stab did, though. It's not like she was just bitten by one of her hair-snakes. Was she? No, no, Awen would have thought of that. At the clinic, she snaps instructions to any medical staff VIGIL might have ready there and hurries about getting a ventilator set up for Awen.
Most important thing is to keep breathing.

[Lower Village - Alice's House]

The drones aren't active, no. Alice hasn't finished building them.
At Mia's warning, she goes to the kitchen and gets a new battery.

"That sounds like a pretty amazing material. I can't really picture it, honestly. Anything that strong and heat-proof, it's basically magic, right?"
"I think my main problem has been them running out of power."

[Purple Eagle]

Vigil Clinic ((I type the title anew each time, since it gives me a moment to remember the surroundings. And I don't use square brackets.))

Makuro's vitals are all within human normal, slightly more pressure in the blood than usual but that's probably to counteract the extremely long limbs, and the hearbeat is likewise quite powerful. There's some unusual antibodies in her system, showing she was vaccinated as a child- but not against the standard array of diseases that are usually vaccinated against on Earth; it's part of her heritage as coming from an alternate universe that split a long time ago- diseases have adapted into different forms and are vaccinated slightly differently. The needle doesn't leave an injury; they don't, usually, since it's all adapted and chosen to be as harmless as possible. It can ache a bit, but Makuro doesn't notice; her body heals fast, her bones releasing a pulse of energy that promotes faster healing in her body in response to the pain.

"I would like that. My body... Finding weapons designed to be used by someone of my proportions would be tricky, I'd imagine." Not impossible, but she'd also not fully trust a weapon designed for a more normal human. Her bones are reinforced by her power, and she's got a greater range of movement and base strength than would be expected of a human being of her height.

[VIGIL Clinic]

"Different from the human norm, but more similar to that than my version of 'base Nexus human. Perhaps you're not a mutant? The ignorant would consider my kind one." They don't consider that seeing white cornea on humans was just as creepy for her to see at first. Then just as she was starting to get used to them, Natalie shows her they can be beautiful. "With your size, you should be suited to short-to-medium range. What weapon would you fancy? A naginata? Perhaps a scythe, perhaps? Scythes are cool."

Karasu nods once.

They are cool.

[Skybase - Stretching/by the track]

"He said..." Awen thinks back, trying to find a polite way to phrase it.

She gives up, and looks embarrassed thinking about it. "W-well, you know how guys can be," she says, in the end.

The witch gets to answering her other question: "No, I've never heard anybody else speak that language. Not really sure where I learned it, either, but no you probably wouldn't understand him," she says, missing the point of the question.

The fox continues to be pet.

[Skybase - Stretching/by the track]

"Did he say something lewd?" Karasu asks Awen whilst still petting the fox, ensuring he gets a lot of attention. Or, it could be that she's a prude. Or both.

"Maybe it's a mind meld of some sort. An ancient language, perhaps." She says in response to the language comment, letting Awen reveal more of herself.

She finally leaves the fox alone and starts doing some push-ups beside them.

[Shadowcaller]

[The Academy]

"I was totally at Riverside, dude! You couldn't have missed the big rad bear! I was all over the place, mauling demons left and right!" Anika claims with her arms wide-spread as if to show the size of her bear-form.
"But if that's the case, I got the perfect plan!" She leans down a bit so she can get down the Wenomir's eye-level before she starts. "So this is gonna sound crazy, but there are like these... magnetic stones, right? The old druid-guys use them to build shrines with. Carve cool symbols into them and everything, but they have some magical qualities too." Anika raises her index-finger as if she was starting counting. "One, they 'abhor the unnatural', which is old-guy speak for the fact that they attract made-objects, like swords and stuff." She raises another finger of her other hand. "Two, they're really sensitive to magic which is why you can make all sort of enchantments with them. Mostly, they just make them glow, but I got an idea. See, you can attune them to specific people. Uh, soulbond I think they call it." She starts snapping with the both fingers but soon stops as she doesn't seem unable to snap her fingers properly. "So what do you get when you combine these two? Yeah, I was gonna tinker a bit with them and see if i can attune the stone to Ilpholin and BOOM, Ilpholin magnet." She looks between the two, who probably look rather confused at this point.
Rubbing the back of her head awkwardly, the druid continues. "What I mean is, Ilpholin is partly made of objects right? Since she is part golem and all. So the stone which normally would pull all made-objects to them would only pull Ilpholin-objects to them, and becoming much more powerful at the same time since you attune it to one specific object, then you strap the magnet to me and I run inside and..." Anika trails off as her plan likely gets her skeptical looks at this point. "Or maybe I could make it into a Ilpholin detector instead..." She shrugs. "Whatever works for you guys."

Firing Range

Better not question the wisdom of druids!

"Okay, great! Let's go!" She grabs some of the rifles and hang them over her shoulder in her haste before running off towards the skybase.

---

Anika has, somehow, been able to jog all the way to the moon well grove while carrying all the branches (even though there are way less of them now) and the guns. Seems like she's somewhat of an athlete even outside of her animal form.
Quite a bouncey trip, but here they are in the thick of things woods. "Remember Blanche, keep an eye for my stupid sister! She is supposed to be in the base, but you never know if she's going to turn up and nag at us for ruining her stupid snake-ritual." That seems like information she hadn't mentioned previously...

[5a Violista]

[Evening - Near Airship Gantry]

As of the time of writing this post, the most recent action occurred in post 646


[Evening - => Clinic]

That is an important question: can Awen be poisoned by her own hair-snakes? None of them have ever bitten her yet, so...she actually doesn't know.

...Just lying here, unable to do anything but try to breathe, is so frustrating. Awen thought she had gotten past feeling helpless, but here she is in this kind of situation again.

There's really not much she can do beyond lying here, trying to breathe, trying to keep warm.

. . .

Coincidentally(?), her fox shows up. "Shut up," she manages to say to the fox, in a weak voice, before turning her head away from the it.


[Skybase training grounds - by the track]

The fox is really enjoying all the attention. He becomes a little sad when Karasu stops and does push-ups instead.

Awen nods. "...yes," she confirms. The fox did say something like that.

In response to the language discussion...she shrugs. "I'm divided on whether I want to actually find out or if I should just leave it be," she says. Sure, finding out more about all these random mysteries would definitely make her more powerful...but Awen's read lots of stories about people looking for information and later regretting it.

Awen finishes stretching and, still not feeling in the mood to run, decides to join Karasu in push-ups. She can do a couple, but really slowly and not very well, and with bad form. It's almost like she's never done them before.

[Recaiden]

What are you thinking, fox? Did you do a good job and find help for Awen?
No. And now you come as she's almost dying and say mean things?
We're disappointed in you, fox.

A nurse covers Awen's legs with a blanket.
Arlem's arms resume a normal length, and she draws her dagger, holding it high while putting the other hand on Awen's forehead. Power swells in the knife, flows through her and into the witch.

"Old Serpent in your
rainbow ways beneath the earth,
Cold Talona in your grave,
draw back.
Awen, you have
to get up again."
"You can breathe."
"You are healed."

Well, the toxin ought to be counteracted, anyway. She'll still need a bandage for the stabbing. Maybe stitches.

[Morty]

[Evening - Interior]

Wenomir twists his body out of the way of the spear, so that it only scores a glancing blow across his armor. Still painful, but it appears he decided to take it instead of dodging further and losing momentum.

"You're overthinking it. I'm asking for your name and real face, not introspection," he says, as he pointedly ignores Harley's first beat but doesn't attack himself, instead just keeping that slow pace. "Your identity interests me, but not nearly enough to give highly classified information in exchange." He stops in his tracks. "Besides, I might not kill you. It's in your interest to play a long." He then leaps suddenly, crossing the distance upwards, forwards and downwards before bringing his axe down on Harley with thunderous force. However, should it hit, it won't rend flesh and bone. Instead it will phase through her and inflict numbness and weakness proportional to the wound it'd have inflicted.

[Arkhosia]

Firing Range -> Moon Well Grove

Blanche is fairly surprised to find Anika outpacing her at a couple points; it's not that she hadn't expected the taller elf to be athletic, particularly considering her appearance, it simply caught her off-guard to be lagging behind someone for once. Then again, this is the Nexus. She should probably get used to this by now.

"...Wait, your sister?" She pauses, giving Anika a quizzical look. "As in you ruined it earlier and we're fixing that, or as in we're screwing with something she's trying to do right now?"

[Hattish Thing]

[Skybase Entrance]

The cactus man nods slowly before slamming his oversized, fist-like appendages together with great force, vegetative muscles flexing and bulging beyond belief as he does so. "Yes, bum-bum! Help, will fight the bad, ba-dum, de!" His unusual, somewhat difficult to understand cadence is accentuated here and there by what appears to be some sort of musical hum.

If anything, the cactus creature was enthusiastic.

[Recaiden]

"You're here to join. Great!"
Alice turns towards the training grounds and waves for the cactus to follow her.

"What can you do? It's not enough to just be enthusiastic."
Enthusiastic and strong, though...

[5a Violista]

[Evening - Interior, Gantry]

Because Harley was attacking at the time, she's not in a position to get out of the way quickly enough.
...
On the bright side, now her aching ribcage has gone numb.

She can feel the strength leaving her. Guess she'll have to rely on things other than just power to keep up with him...Harley quickly considers her options. There is something she could do to physically get onto his level, but it's too close to actual magic and so it kind-of disgusts her. She then remembers that she still has those features she used earlier to start that fire...

Harley tilts her face up towards Wenomir's, and then blows that same cloud of powder at his face.

She hopes that'll keep him blinded long enough for her to catch her breath.
Harley backs up, and alters her hand's shape to keep the sword locked in her left hand, even if the weakness starts to reach her hands. "So what you're saying is," she decides, "you've already revealed everything you know, and you're just trying to save face with bluffs and bravado. Last time we met, I didn't take you for such a coward." Sure, Harley, taunt the person threatening to kill you. Smart move.
...I believe the last time they actually met was before Watchtower became VIGIL? That one time that she broke into the tower in order to free some of their prisoners.

With one fluid motion, Harley runs her sword along her tongue, then snaps a finger by it - igniting it for a few brief moments, and then swings it at the cloud of powder. It's been long enough (especially with the outside breeze) that the burst of flame will be nowhere near as large as it was in the hallway, but unless Wenomir did something about it, it would still singe a bit.

...Meanwhile,
Stepping back again, she finds the crate with her back hand. From his axe, her grip has weakened enough that she can't open the crate quick enough, so she settles for Plan B and simply grabs a couple of ropes from the crate.


[Evening - Clinic]

There's actually one last obstacle before the healing: Awen's natural magic resistance.
...
And it doesn't kick in! The venom is completely counteracted!
It wasn't luck that made it fail to prevent the healing, however. Because the venom weakened her, her resistance was less effective and was unable to stand up against the force of the power.

Fortunately, any stabbings she received had somehow missed every single important bit other than a single vein (presumably where the venom was injected) so there's no need to worry about severe blood loss, just patching up the holes.
Maybe Awen's just really lucky.

Now that her breathing muscles are working again, now she says, "Thanks" in a still-weak-but-not-so-bad-now voice.

Meanwhile, the fox curls up on the floor nearby.

[Lord Magtok]

[Training Grounds - Enter the Dragon]

"Point well made," Calm Reed admits, after a moment of thoughtful silence. "It's easy for us Exalted to become haughty, like my brother. Even those of us in the Order. If I had found myself on the receiving end of that weapon somehow, it's likely I would have been blind-sided and easily destroyed."

"Your brother?" Laz asks, before immediately regretting it. That sounds like a story and a half there, and probably not one Calm Reed would have a fun time telling. A haughty brother is one thing. A haughty demigod with dragon's blood (or however Exaltation works, Saint Laz isn't clear on the specifics) is completely different story. Power and hubris are the worst combination.

[Shadowcaller]

Moon Well Grove

"It was her snake ritual that corrupted the moon well just so she could make a stupid snake-baby." She glances at Blanche, suddenly frowning. "Who bit me by the way. I was tripping balls for like an hour before I fell asleep. Should have given that stupid kid a piece of my mind afterwards, but I don't hit kids. That's a rule." A beat. "Nor do I want to but she was, like, really annoying, is my point."

The druid stops and points upwards. Towards a strange structure which seem to have been carved out of a fossilized tree standing in the middle of the grove. "So the well, and all the snakes, are up there at the top of that tree-thing. So the plan is that I place branches in a circle around the well and perform the ritual while you keep the snakes away. Just try not to damage the well itself or throw any explosives into it. That would probably be bad."

[Zefir]

[Lower Village - Alice's House]

The drones aren't active, no. Alice hasn't finished building them.
At Mia's warning, she goes to the kitchen and gets a new battery.

"That sounds like a pretty amazing material. I can't really picture it, honestly. Anything that strong and heat-proof, it's basically magic, right?"
"I think my main problem has been them running out of power."

[Lower Village - Alice's House]

"It wasn't magical." Mia replies. "As far as we saw, it was a chemical construction, but we couldn't repeat it. An unknown factor altered some of the used materials in a way so they mix up."

Mia starts to invastigae the drones futher. a machine that isn't finished can also live. Imagine a finished one is an adult human while those in work are children who grow. Thought this talk helps less since the 'childs' don't understand there purpose until finished.

"Power is allways an imprtant factor. In my world we have to keep the power level up to maintain our defence. We invented a lot of smaller devices who can alter energy like light, wind or movement, but our greatest resource are power cores. Stones with near infinit amount of energy since they seem to recharge themself. MDM got one of those adn they are extremly rare. If you have to guess, how long would those drones need to work before you are able to reach a recharge point?"