The stench of burning filled the air and suffused his nostrils. He sighed, leaning against a load bearing wall upon the opposite side of the street. His shoulders still ached, and the tension in his back wouldn't leave him. A blanket had been wrapped around his back. The medic told him it was something meant to comfort him after the incident. A way to better think through what had occurred. It did not help. His mind was still on what had happened. The house had come down on them all. There were several people being treated from the collapse of the building and the fire that happened, but the one who was receiving the most treatment was the one who had been thrown into the wall. She was the one that Marshall cared the most about. His hands still shook as he took a breath of his nicotine branch. He couldn't calm down at all. He could still remember the events that all lead up to this like a sudden onset of a disaster. Unavoidable and unfocused. Broadly sweeping through his body like a wave. He could only think on the what ifs. Not even what had actually happened without thinking, 'If only something had gone differently.'

"Marshall?" He looked away from the broken building over towards his left to find Becken, one of the people who had followed him into this mess. Her arms were strained and bleeding, albeit he couldn't know whether she had done it to herself or perhaps the building had.

"Yeah Becken." His voice let out, hoarse and not ready to be let out. She looked almost sad as she stared into his eyes. It was akin to a dull acceptance of the situation. However, unlike Marshall, Becken had taken a vastly different approach towards the incident.

"It wasn't your fault you know. Mei wasn't in control of her actions. You know that." The words stroke a a chord within him, but quickly his own thoughts tore apart any piece of peace that those words might have brought him. It did matter that it was Becken who had spoken them, but even that hadn't rung through his mind. To him, they had just been mindless noise being repeated ad verbatim by the medics that had come.

"Screw that noise Becken. We should've known something was off from the moment this all started going down. Ghosts speaking directly into your head? Migraines almost every time we took a break? The signs were there, we just weren't paying attention to them." At that, Marshall looked way from the sitting ev towards the angry orc that kept kicking lampposts further down the way. The orc managed to calm himself down enough to march across the street without punching anyone that had come near him when he first woke up. Marshall watched as the orc dug through the rubble before shouting in triumph. The orc had managed to push aside fallen walls and crumbling pieces of ceiling towards a circular indentation, where IT lay. Marshall couldn't ever be sure what it was supposed to be. He had vague recollections of what had happened, of what IT had done, but even then there were wispy. Almost unreal in how it acted, how it was controlled. It was only when the orc began sifting through the grainy substance that Marshall spoke up.

"Grel...could you perhaps stop going through the murderer's ashes or...whatever they are." Grel looked towards Marshall. His tusks glinting in the sun, brow furrowed with confusion and anger. However, it quickly went away. Whatever fuel the orc had managed to conjure up to feel the emotions had gone. Only an emptiness seemed to fill the big Bide. He sighed as he let the ashes fall, before standing up and slowly walking over towards the group.

"Alright Marshall. Still, I can't believe what all this trouble was for." He stared at the impression of the wall, bigger than the body that was still stuck inside it. Once an artistic expression wholly unmarred, now its metal composites bent at angles and dug themselves into the wall. The paint, for the most part, was almost stripped entirely having exposed the metal underneath, some closer to the wall slowly turning more red.

"Yeah. I get at least some of it. It was an automated carriage for Norelic's sake. Even if it was an ungodly shade of pink." Becken stood up from the ground and walked towards the outside of the building's ruins, her wings wrapping around her body. There, in the middle of the street, was the other half of the creation which had caused all this chaos and mayhem in their lives. It was the work of the late tinker, Felur, or at least that was the assumption considering the city-wide puzzle started in her late office.

"She did try to keep it safe. She must've known that our perp was coming for her. She had all the riddles and magical locks that anyone could afford with her job." Marshall gestured to the glowing chains that were in the back of the official government carriage. Grel glowered at Marshall. His attempt at levity wasn't all that successful. It didn't even manage to cheer him up from the situation. The embellishment though, wasn't actually all to off on how they found it to begin with. It all started with a list of names, some items associated them, and a location to bring them all, with the list itself hiding in a false wall sconce. It was a veritable scavenger hunt, layered through all the people that Felur had ever worked with. It was utterly ridiculous, paranoid, and, apparently, necessary for this one man.

"Still didn't stop us from interfering with it, did it Marshall? Just had to do what the ghosts were saying. Had to follow their exact instructions to solve their 'murder'." Grel's words pierced them all. He had meant it only as a self-derogatory statement, but that was essentially the consequence for all of them. His eyes weren't focused on the group as he was talking, but more towards the sandy remains he had found and subsequently dropped earlier. In essence, he had caught the perpetrator, as it used to be the murderer himself, Hank. Marshall walked over towards him, stepping off of the wall, and throwing his lit branch upon the ground before putting a hand upon the orc's shoulder.

"The perp-No. Hank was basically controlling our every movement. The only reason any of us got out alive today was due to sheer luck and quick reflexes on my part. Don't beat yourself up about any of it. If it was anyone else, I'm sure that Hank would've gotten away to perform more acts of mayhem." He was saying words he didn't actually believe now, but he felt like in the future they might become true. Eventually.

Becken walked back towards the vault, which was the only thing standing mostly unharmed from the collapse. She traced a finger alongside the silviron interior while her ears twitched. "You know. I still don't know how likely it was for whatever Hank was using to suddenly turn you into something of a wizard, Marshall. But I gotta say, shouldn't we have received something from the VOG about this? I mean, it's not everyday that our resident consultant gets a class change to a wizard."

Marshall's tail twitched slightly as he fought his emotions leaking to his face. He was not really a wizard. He could not control the flow of mana. Whatever the stuff he had used was, it wasn't mana. Sure, it glowed like mana and acted like it, but once it ran out of power it had returned to whatever it was before it gained that state. At most he gained some new skills relating to that substance, but he'd rather have a Reader help him with that. Plus, it wouldn't do for news to get out that anybody could become a wizard without rupturing their mind. Millions would flock for the chance of power without having to pay any price for it. It also didn't exactly help that the hand that 'regrew' was still shaking from pure effort.

"You know, besides that there is one thing that's bothering me here." Everyone turned to Grel as he stepped towards the odd sandlike remains once again, wiping them with his foot slightly before gesturing towards it.

"Where exactly did he get this stuff?" That was the question, wasn't it. This stuff let you rebuild missing body parts with a thought, and it could be levitated to do whatever things you thought of in the air. You wanted a fireball, it made a fireball. You wanted to just keep chucking metal spears through the air, you could do that too. This was versatile, highly useful, and most likely the best of what was being made today. Something that a thief like Hank couldn't get his hands on easily, if at all.

"Yeah...there hasn't been any reports of theft from any court mages, inner or outer. Unless of course it was something nefarious enough to be off the books. Do you think it was a night market deal?" Marshall considered Becken's words. It was more than likely the case, given that most things unknown and mystical would go through there. Especially if the mage that they were looking for wasn't highborn enough to get the money to continue their experimentation with the benefits of the courts. That would've been the perfect place to sell elicit substance. Maybe get rid of prototypes taking up space. The only problem was the fact that this led to a whole lot of conclusions he wasn't willing to think about.

"If that was sold in the night market, I fear what the actual thing might be." Grell's suggestion seemed to strike a chord of concern in all of them as they looked back at the substance. Sure, they were trying to act like they were fine, or even that they had everything under control. After the fight they had, and the mess of cleanup afterwards, no one could be unconcerned. However, while the others were able to somewhat move past that moment, Marshall's mind was still stuck back towards last night in the middle of the fight.

The scream of his partner as she hit the wall and the sudden silence afterwards. The nonchalance of the villain getting the carriage back out of the wall without even disturbing the body. The utter compliance he and the others felt as they were forced to bend under his will. This was not the effect of a specific skill, but the substance that had been flowing through their skin every night. It was sheer chance that Marshall's batch hadn't fully taken him yet. Perhaps something that his special traits helped with, but he couldn't exactly say one way or the other if that was what caused him to have that moment of freedom. So, because of that, he ended up being the only one who could fight the fiend. It was just a throwing match for awhile until parts of his body began to be chipped away. Thankfully, whatever the stuff was, it required continuous concentration to actually use, so once the first hit landed, everyone else was able to shake off the effects and actually fight the titanium titan. However, his elation fell just as swifly as it arose. Parts of his body were beginning to fail. First his tail had been cut off, then his hand and a scrapped knee. It wasn't until he saw the damage that was being done to Hank, that he got the idea to 'heal' those missing pieces. Even now he couldn't help but rub at the places where the substance just...changed into flesh. It felt like it, but for some reason his soul didn't like reaching those places. It especially didn't feel right when he pushed his hand through the course 'regrown' fur.

After that, the ending was basically determined after Hank became impatient. He sent the substance in an arc around him trying to strike through all of them. This had the added effect of two things. The first was that the building's supports were destroyed, causing them to all fall down around them. The second was that he put his all in this attack. Literally becoming whatever this substance was, to kill them all.

However, Marshall was still able to control it, even in this wave attack form. He was able to take it all, curtail the ends enough that they didn't slice through any of his remaining teammates, and scrunch it back into the middle where it now sat. The substance began reforming, and Marshall was scared that it wasn't enough. That Hank was still ready, and willing, to continue the fight. However, that thought was soon dashed and the most horrendous thing he'd seen in this business happened in front of him. It started from the chest, but the substance couldn't make anything right past the legs. It made arms, but they weren't proportioned like a Bast's should've been. They were different sizes from each other, and slowly shifting to get to the same size before wildly fluctuating in pulses. The worst part was when the head finally formed. The head would stay in Marshall's nightmares.

It started wide and squat before becoming tall and elongated and then settling on the original shape of the head. It's mockery of a mouth opened and belt out. 'I-I-W-W-WHAT-AM-I? I-I-I-I-am-the-past. I am happy.' Throughout it all the voice shifted in pitch and volume while the head began losing coherency along with the rest of the body. The thing's misshapen smile as it deformed was still burned into his brain, and the eyes falling out and becoming puddles would stay in his darkest thoughts for months. Marshall could swear it was staring directly at him as they melted on the floor.

"Whatever that thing was, I do not want anyone to face anything else like it. Ever again." Marshall turned to the ork beside him, who was gently collecting the substance. He went to knock it out of his hands, but he held himself back. No matter how much he hated the substance and what it had done, and no matter how much he feared if it got into the wrong hands, it was still evidence. And evidence had to be collected. Always.

"Look, it's nice that you're still in your head, but we need you here now Marshall." He looked towards the ev beside him, her feathers becoming more pronounced as her agitation grew from his dead-eyed stare.

"I know Becken. I know. I just...something tells me this is the first of a long spree of disasters." He replied solemnly. She nodded before kneeling down and patting Grell's back as he heaved. While Marshall had looked away, the orc had accidentally inhaled some of the 'ash' into his mouth. He chuckled a little bit, glad to have some moment of brevity from the tragedy that occurred. However, his mind still couldn't keep itself quiet. He knew that his team of justiciars had encountered something. Something that would etch itself upon their souls. It was just this one time, now, sure. However, if Marshall was right in his thoughts on the direction the wind was blowing, this would not be the last. Marshall shuddered as he thought about how many more situations like this might be coming, that might already be happening. He stared at the bloody wall and at the corpse of his wife being scraped off its side. Then he bowed his head and quieted the world outside his skull. And then, as he started crying, he began to pray. For safety and passage for her soul, for continued good will in the city, and for no lasting consequences of their actions. But most of all, for his steadily rising vengeance.