Of all the things Breve expected on her walk home from school, it was not the experience of watching a blonde lady with pointy ears zoom down from the very cosmos above to land face-first on the dirt in front of her.

“Um,” Breve wheezes, because what the fuck else do you say to a sight like this. “Are you okay?”

“No,” the strange woman spits, and she drags herself off the ground with all the dignity of a waddling penguin. For someone who had quite literally fallen out of the sky, she’s remarkably intact, and pulls herself upright without breaking a sweat. “I was planning to land on my feet.”

When she straightens her back, Breve realizes that this woman is also surprisingly tall— a whole head taller than Breve herself. She’s dressed in some sort of fancy white-blue coat which has been utterly ruined by her tumble in the dirt, with a red gauntlet on her left arm that seems almost... stained in blood? No way, right?

Before Breve can make sense of anything else, the woman suddenly extends her right hand out to her. “Nice to meet you. Name’s Tiffney,” she says, and Breve only manages a blank stare.

Soon, the woman quirks her eyebrow in a way that universally communicates the thought that Breve might be stupid. “Are those cat-ears of yours working?”

Cat-ears? Breve’s white caten-ears, thank you very much, twitch in defiance of the racist remark. And, because she is utterly spineless, she doesn’t say a thing about it, instead slowly realizing what Tiffney wants.

“Uh... are...” Breve clicks her tongue, trying to find her voice. “Are you offering to shake my hand?”

“Yes,” she says flatly, and instead of waiting for Breve to accept it, she just reaches out to grab Breve’s right arm before shaking her limp wrist. Breve yelps. “Come on, isn’t this greeting customary for your planetary setting?”

“My— my what?” The caten stammers as Tiffney’s fair, long fingers wrap around her own sepia-toned hand. She blinks rapidly, blue eyes darting up and down Tiffney’s lithe figure with utter confusion, before a question finally manages to leave her lips. “Wait, how did you even survive?”

“Huh?” Tiffney, who still hasn’t let go, pulls Breve’s palm up to trace the lines on her hand. It’s a gentle touch, almost creepily so, and Breve’s words die in her throat as she tries to pull her arm away from the woman who she’s only met one minute ago. “Oh, right, dropping from space and everything. Yeah, I don’t take fall damage. Racial stat for woodland elves from my planet.”

Breve opens her mouth to ask Tiffney what the hell a ‘racial stat’ even means, before Tiffney flicks her left arm. Some of the plating in her gauntlet shifts, making way for a large and very sharp-looking syringe. “Anyway, hold still for one second. This won’t hurt much.”

Oh, fuck no.

“What— no!” Breve immediately realizes what’s about to happen when Tiffney’s grip tightens, and though Breve’s never been the physically strong type, some sort of primal fear drives her to fight back anyway. “No, no, no!”

“Fucking hell, you’ll be fine,” the blonde woman reassures in the least enthusiastic way possible. She doesn’t even blink as Breve kicks her in the leg or tries to bite her fingers, instead opting to jam the syringe right into Breve’s palm. It—

It actually doesn’t hurt at all. Breve winces, if only out of instinct, before realizing she doesn’t feel any pain. Her palm is numbed almost instantly, and a tiny drop of blood is drawn out into the syringe before the entire contraption retracts back into Tiffney’s gauntlet. “Alright, let’s see if Dechambul was right about you, Breve.”

“How— how did you know my name?” And with that, Breve immediately begins to struggle again, because the circumstances are just too fucking weird and is this a nightmare? Can she wake up now? “Let me go!”

“Oh, my squadmate’s been stalking your family for a week,” Tiffney answers nonchalantly, and that prompts Breve to begin screaming. “Hey, shut up! Fuck, this is why I make Peach do all the recruitment... oh, damn.”

Tiffney’s eyes practically bulge out of her sockets as a strange display flickers above her gauntlet. It’s nothing like anything Breve’s ever seen before, but she does recognize the number clearly projected in front of them both: a big, fat A. “Resurrection magic! Now, that’s a lucky find.” Now, the elf has gone from seeming almost tired to nearly ecstatic, a smirk crawling across her face as she further tightens her grip on Breve’s poor arm. “Guess I shouldn’t doubt Dechambul when he says a scrawny brat like you is descended from the old gods of your planet.”

The old fucking what?

“I— look, you’re right, my teachers did say I have a potential for it,” Breve gasps, desperately trying to latch onto the only thing that makes any sense in this situation. “But my whole family’s had that potential, and none of us ever actually managed to reach it! And the same thing that gives us that potential makes the rest of our healing magic terrible—”

“—and so, in the city of Brigid, which is famous on your planet for having the best healers’ academy in all the world, your entire bloodline has been shunned,” Tiffney finishes off for her, and Breve just stares in stunned silence. “You managed to get into Brigid’s Academy for Gifted Healers due to academics alone, seeking to redeem your lineage. But you’ve been stuck in freshman form for three years because you fail every practical class.”

Breve opens her mouth, as if to retort, and Tiffney doesn’t say anything to let her speak. Instead, both of them fall into an awkward silence.

Tiffney raises an eyebrow, her shit-eating grin only growing at the sight of Breve’s tortured expression. “Can I continue?”

“...Fine,” Breve whimpers, utterly defeated.

“Great!” Tiffney chirps, before rattling on. “You have no friends because no one sticks around with someone who retains for three years in a row, your father wants you to drop out and work on his bakery business like all your siblings, and your mother abandoned the family once you were born, because you were the third child in a row to inherit Bilaser's Touch. When walking home from school, you take the long, non-scenic route through the deep, dark forest because you hate talking to anyone and dread coming face-to-face with your disappointed father back home. Your brother always told you to take a safer path, but nah, you’re just too emo to listen to him. And that’s why I’ve intercepted you here, because no matter how much you scream, no one’s gonna find the body!”

Breve, who is already on the verge of tears, grows paler still. “The body?”

“Metaphorically,” Tiffney shrugs. “I mean, I’m not going to kill you. Well, I was planning to, but not anymore! The results of your blood test are spectacular.”

“Tiffney,” Breve gasps, finally addressing her assailant-stalker-potential-murderer by name. “Can you just… tell me what you want with me?”

“Sure!” Tiffney laughs, and then, she points at the sky. “I want you to join me!”

Breve takes a deep, shuddering breath, forcing herself to hold back the tears. “Fine,” she agrees, because what else do you do when you’re being held against your will in the middle of a lonely forest where, quote unquote, no one’s gonna find the body? “Fine, fine, fine, I’ll join you, in… whatever!”

“Perfect!” Tiffney’s smile only widens. “Consent granted! That checks off the first and only rule in our ethical code of conduct. Now…”

Tiffney finally lets go of Breve, but she does it by flinging her roughly to the ground. As Breve lands on her ass, Tiffney taps her gauntlet, as if inputting something into the strange armguard.

Before Breve can get up and run away, Tiffney opens her arms out wide, as if she’s about to pull Breve into a hug. “Welcome to the Cosmic Bulldozing Team! CBT for short... references to any other acronyms are purely coincidental.”

And then she does hug Breve, practically lunging herself across the girl to do so. Breve, as anyone would, screams at the top of her lungs.

But the shrillness of her screams is nothing compared to the terrifying crack of the ground beneath them. It’s nothing like Breve has ever heard: a loud, painful groan of the earth, as though her planet itself is wailing in despair as Tiffney drags the both of them off the ground. With Tiffney’s arms wrapping tightly around Breve’s waist, she lifts Breve off the ground, and suddenly—

“Teleportation request accepted,” an unfamiliar voice declares. Breve realizes it’s coming from Tiffney’s gauntlet. “Now get up. Fast. This planet’s going to blow in five seconds.”

Those words, just barely audible over the splitting rock under their feet, fill Breve is a whole new type of terror. A terror which even her fear of Tiffney pales in comparison to. She tilts her head up, finally crying, and her sky-blue pupils meet with Tiffney’s own amethyst eyes.

The elf, as expected, is not perturbed in the slightest. “Gotcha. See you there, Peach,” Tiffney says, and a tired grumble rings out from her gauntlet before a strange light begins to surround the both of them. Breve tries to push away, but as expected, she’s no match for Tiffney, who only regards her with an all-too confident smile.

“Buckle in, rookie: you've got some planetary destruction ahead of you.”