"Thank you, Chief Lono!" Ver said, bowing her head as Lono chuckled and nodded along. Ever since the visions of Wu and Lera's arrival, things had changed profoundly within his tribe, starting with the rescue of his daughter and the building of the aqueducts. However, when Ver asked if she could just stay for a while to avoid her pursuers for a little while, Lono quickly answered her with the Dwellers welcome. "Just...help Wu and Lita with whatever they are doing if you can," Lono said, and Ver nodded before turning away. Lera had already talked through some of her worries with Lono, and the two decided the best course of action is to simply leave Wu and Lera handle Ver, while the rest of the Dwellers stay as far away from the new comer as possible. Unlike Wu and Lera who were now a part of the family, Ver's is merely one taking refuge. "So..." Wu said as Ver walked towards him, "Why were you being chased?" "Wrong place, at the wrong time." Ver said, "The mercenaries and bounty hunters don't really ask for reasons, so if there is a reward, they will do whatever, even if....." "Even if?" Lera asked, walking to join Wu and Ver. "Even if innocent people get hurt." Ver said, putting up a smile, "So, what do you need me to do?" "If you could gather your things and wait out here in ten minutes, I would like to do some measurements." Wu said, looking towards Lera as she nodded slightly, "I wouldn't want the streams doing something outside of my expectations." "You can control the river?" Ver asked curiously. "Well no...but yes." Wu gave her a cryptic smile before he and Lera walked away. "So...I will take the moral victory of cold morning showers here." Lera said, getting the most important matter out of the way, "What's the plan?" "I don't know." Wu said, glancing towards Lera as they returned to their tent, "I am not an idiot, and what you are saying may be right." "But we can't just leave her here." Lera agreed with a sigh, "I swear being bad guys are so much easier." "You are scaring me a little with that statement." Wu chuckled and bumped Lera in the hips as she fell and sat on her mattress, "But that's why I like you being here with me. Guarding my ass." Lera's face turned red, and she threw her pillow at him, "Don't say strange things like that out of the blue! I don't care about your ass!" "I mean I will be safe if you are there for me, right?" Wu said, putting the pillow down as Lera turned away to hide her red face, "being my guardian and all." "Of course!" Lera said, her hand over her bumping heart, "Of course I will keep an eye on her...so, what's the deal with going to the river?" "Something feels a little off about the water levels, genuinely." Wu said, "Not just with the one stream I was at this morning. The rulers also show readings that don't really make much hydrodynamical sense." Lera rolled her eyes when the H-word came out, and she exited the tent first with her Book of Casts as Wu joined quickly after, his trusty old black backpack strapped in. His earthly clothing and shoes had already been switched around after the mud and water completely wrecked them in the first few days, and he left it right by the statue of his before dressing like a normal Dweller with the rough fabric and sandals. Those clothes and shoes actually felt incredibly liberating and loose to move in, and Wu had known the benefits of wearing more minimalist shoes from one of his health-obsessed teammates back at Oxford. Noting down the water levels, Wu, Lera, and Ver then started walking. With Ver to his left and Lera to his right, now he has an illusion of popularity. "So, Ver, what sort of Wave user are you?" Wu asked, and Ver replied, pointing to the dark lines on her face. "A Manifester." She said, "I can show you some of what I can do later in private, if you want~" "Well, then it might actually be helpful." Wu snapped his fingers, "We will be checking a lot of different places today." Heading to the first of the many branches of the dug-up streams which fed into the reservoir, the trio then back-traced it until reaching the point where the water was first redirected away from its natural flow. Everything seemed normal from this point onward, so they simply cut across the woods towards the next branch. As they were walking, Ver has been checking out Wu from time to time. In a strange way, he moves similarly to Wolfy where it appeared that he is full of openings for attack, but whenever Ver moves closer to him, Lera also responds silently by changing her position, shadowing over him as he continued doing whatever he's doing. There is no doubt that the two have been working together for at least a little while, or Lera is just that overly protective. She will be a troublesome opponent. Ver thought, but if push comes to shove, Ver knows she can still very easily overpower her. Knowing that, she can't help but thank the gods for her luck. Normally, she would have just attacked right away and killed the two of them on the spot. However, she realized that if she just brought back their bodies to the Guild, all of those bounty hunters that were fruitless in their efforts of the search will work together to ambush her before she can even make it back and claim the bounty as their very own since the condition of the reward is "Proof of Death". Therefore, Ver has silently shifted her attention to the waiting game. She will first get to know the strengths and weaknesses of not only Wu and Lera but also the rest of the Wave Users in the Dweller's camp. When the time is right and when all of the groups have returned back to the Guild to regroup and update, she will alert Skylar Jay of her location. Then, they will surely attack, and when all eyes are on the battle, she will be the one to kill Wu with everyone watching. As long as there are more than a dozen eyes that saw her deliver the final blow, then there will be no question of who's most worthy of the Token, as those bounty hunters would honor the code so long as there weren't any agreements beforehand. Plus, if she really pushed herself with the use of her Whirlpool Purple which has a maximum range of two hundred meters with each teleportation, she can also make it back to the Guild quicker than most Bounty Hunters can, even if they have Chariots. The risks of fatigue is still great, but at least the distance all of them need to travel is the same, seeing that all the interested bounty hunters will be here in the woods. So the moral of her plan is that there is really no rush. Plus, she's genuinely intrigued by the boy in front of her. Lera seemed to have completely gotten used to his antics, but Ver still couldn't understand why she cannot sense anything from him, nor understand some of the phrases he throws out. She tried asking him how he uses the Wave, and Wu just gave her a cryptic smile and replied with "Outlier". This is such a cop-out answer, but Ver can do nothing about it. "Huh. What's going on here..." Wu said when the trio of them reached a stream that was completely dried up. It's not supposed to happen, particularly given what's happening at the other streams. They continued tracing back upstream, and the bedrocks in the strean were completely exposed all the way up, and it is as if a stream had never been here for years. "I have no idea..." Lera was with Wu when he personally surveyed the streams after the initial scout team returned, and she couldn't make of what's going on here either. "I can give it a sense," Ver said, reaching a finger forward as the Kraken's tendril reached out into the air. She had initially tried to use this as an excuse to scout Wu in more detail, but to her surprise, her Wave sensing abilities were overloaded almost immediately as she stepped over the rocks. Turning her attention downwards, she spotted lots of tiny sparkles in the ground, and those tiny sparkles appeared to be... "Is this a salt deposit of some sort?" Wu squatted down as Ver pointed them out, and he picked one of the tiny pieces up. It looked like some sort of a salt granule mixed with glass, but why is it here? The water always tasted completely normal, and salt deposits are often a result of natural drying and concentration over time, not this sort of rapid drying that leads to things going all crazy here. "It has a lot of Wave down there..." Ver said, looking to Lera, "Can you feel it?" Lera nodded, her face enveloped in caution. "Can you try running a bit of Wave through it?" Wu asked, and Lera looked towards Wu before her fingers glowed slightly, and a tiny jolt of Wave was injected into the granule. Like a machine being turned on after a long slumber, the granule started vibrating in his hands before it glowed brightly and became incredibly hot. It burnt his fingers as he whipped his hands, tossing it away. Before Wu can say anything, an explosion went off from right underneath their feet. "BUBBLE BUBBLE!" Lera shouted immediately, covering herself and Wu immediately before the blast wave sent the bubble containing the two flying back into the woods. "Whirlpool Purple!" Ver commanded, and a massive circle vertical whirlpool was projected in front of her, absorbing the frontal blast of the explosion. However, the very first blast was only the start of the chain explosion, and as the massive release of Wave energy from each of the granules propagated downstream and continued spreading, Lera was physically shielding Wu even within the bubble while Ver jumped back to the other side. "SHIT!" Ver cursed as the chaos developed in front of her. Continues booms and bangs echoed through the forest, and it would have alerted everyone in a one-mile radius of what's going on here. This surprising development had left her with no choice as any bounty hunters that's remotely nearby would have become curious about what has happened. However, the chaos also gives her the perfect chance as Lera's too busy trying to keep Wu alive. Pulling out her Communication Cast from the hidden pocket, she activated it with a shot of the Wave from the Kraken. "Skylar Jay. This is Ver. I have found the Summoned one. Converge on my location." Returning the Communications Cast as the explosions slowly died down, Ver then jumped towards Wu and Lera as the guardian dispelled the shield. "HOLY SHIT!" Wu shouted, squeezing Lera's arms as thanks before getting up, "I hate chemical engineering." "What...what was that?" Lera asked, and Ver's equally as confused. "That feels like some sort of Condensed Wave energy was released all in an instant." Wu said, moving forward and preparing to step into the river again when Lera literally picked him up by the collar and forcibly dragged him away like his mom when he tried to play at the playground some more, "You all have access to the Wave naturally, but you have no idea the impact of portable, easily accessible, and useable Wave Power on the world." "No idea." Ver shrugged, and Lera, for once, agreed with the other girl. "Huh..." Wu sighed before standing up and giving up on throwing his life away, "Anyhow, that will have to wait. Let's just put a tab on it and come back later." "Yeah, we need to get out of here." Lera agreed, "Everybody on the Eastern Continent would have heard this." "Someone or something is responsible doing this to the streams." Wu said, his hands scratching his chin, "I am sure of it." Then, he turned towards Ver, "Are you unhurt? I am sorry for that nonsense. I...I still need to learn how chemistry works around here." Ver's eyes widened in surprise, and she walked towards Wu with a bright smile on her face. Her footsteps feeling lighter than before. "No~I am fine. Thanks for asking~" Ver said, "In fact, I am more fine than ever."