As Sryine and Vwyx started cleaning up after the suddenly concluded lunch rush, Riyxia’s spectre stepped out to go and get a better look at what else was going on outside. Vwyx caught the departure of the spectre and started covering for Riyxia who would be thus otherwise distracted.

“Okay, yeah, I think we have bigger things to worry about all of a sudden.” “Oh, is something going on?” “A lot of ‘something’, many different ‘somethings’. A lot of vicious creatures are on a rampage, causing some serious damage to things near the bridge. And.. a really big one is now heading this way.” Riyxia’s spectre retreated completely as she flung Vwyx out of the way, the wall they were both near suddenly splintering into fragments. Taking the place of the completed wall was a towering beast, around 10 Uyn tall and over twice as long, looking something like a hybrid of a boar and a bear if anyone in Celese were familiar with either. In this case, the creature wasn’t familiar to any of the three girls, all they knew was that it seemed angry and was clearly dangerous. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to especially like the three girls either, turning it’s angry gaze upon them before rushing forward again, crashing through tables in the process.

Vwyx and Riyxia managed to tumble out of the way, but this new rush landed Sryine now trapped in a corner. Sryine was all pale and terrified, realizing that she herself had no way to dodge the creature if it were to charge her too. Vwyx noticed Sryine was in trouble and responded quickly, picking up a large shard of broken table and forming it into a wooden spike. Thrusting into the beast rewarded her with a pained roar and the beasts undivided attention. She quickly ran outside and dodged to the side, the beast charging her once again but now being out of the building. Vwyx then set about trying to constantly dodge the beast, as she tried to consider any other productive actions they might take, the spike having been further fragmented as it was still embedded in the beast.. until it was sent through the wall in its exit during a rushed charge.

Riyxia took up her spectre form and tried to approach the beast safely, considering the beast had no way to harm her in such a state. However, she also discovered that she had no access to her gift from her spectre form either. It did make sense, considering the gift itself came from a person’s blood, and her spectre had none. Since all she could do was then watch in that state, she took the opportunity to look around. Given this advantage, she was able to finally spot a flicker of the reporter dodge from the shadows of the bus stop just before the beast charged through it, tearing up the bench and tossing aside the bus stop sign. Vwyx however was in no position to notice, being too busy dodging. The reporter dashed towards another building and dove into the shadows.

“Sryine, that reporter guy is here, and has probably been here a while. Some kind of shadow walking gift. My spectre is somewhere around where he’s hiding, and I really don’t think he’s safe there. Can you go pull him out somehow, and try and get him somewhere actually safe, while I try and figure out how to help Vwyx?” Riyxia was really over-extending herself at this point, trying to have her spectre help Sryine as her physical self slowly now made it to the broken wall to look around with another set of eyes. Sryine rushed off as instructed, fully aware that she was being blamed for his sudden appearance like this. To help her movement, she threw up another perfect invisibility, as she cautiously approached the also undetectable spectre, which itself retreated on her arrival.

Vwyx was not enjoying being on the defensive, as it left her at a disadvantage. She picked up the fallen metallic bus stop sign and reshaped it into a bladed spear with a fluid motion just as the beast charged at her again. As she lunged aside the beast, she also swept forwards with her new weapon, slashing the back of one of its forelegs. It was a good strike, but her foe was far stronger than she was, weathering the blow with only a bleeding cut in response. Such endurance was bad news for Vwyx, who was running out of breath quickly, not being used to such a style of activity. It was only in the fleeting part of that moment that she was left wondering how she might be doing this well at something she wasn’t actually used to, but she didn’t have any time to ponder such thoughts.

“So you know, hiding in the shadows isn’t safe.” “AHH!!” “Calm down, or you’ll just get its attention.” “Where.. where are you?” “... Asks the invisible man to the invisible woman. You really are a big snoop, you know that, right? Now I need to figure out what we should do with you.” “No!! Please!! Don’t kill me!! I’ll stay quiet, won’t say a word.” “Ah, well, sitting here quietly is just going to get you killed.” “What.. what do I have to do then?” “Step out from the shadows for a moment, so I can get you into some real invisibility. I would recommend you run off from this mess, but I can’t exactly recommend somewhere safe, so that’s not the best idea. Best bet would be to join my elf friend over there and take cover in that area. At least being somewhere we’re actively defending would be safer than a generic hiding spot in the middle of all this rampage.” Sryine wasn’t actually aware that the Reporter was getting mixed signals from her words. He actually thought she was making death threats based upon his just recent fears of her potential underground influence. Following instructions, he stepped out from the shadows, only to find himself vanishing without a trace right afterwards. Accepting that this was exactly as per instructions, he then started to move towards Riyxia carefully.

“Okay, you’re a jerk. Let’s try something else.” Vwyx was getting upset with her opponent and its overbearing endurance. She repeated the same dodge manuver, but this time applied her gift during the swing. The pole reshaped itself during the swing into leg bindings, snapping close and tight around both legs, pulling them abruptly. She also applied her gift heavily in constant repairs, fighting against the warping force of the beast’s native strength as it tried to break its bindings in that instant. Vwyx’s gift however managed to win over in this contest of an instant, the beast collapsing on its face as it lost its balance. Vwyx however was also pressing her limits, falling to her knees as her stamina quickly left her. Riyxia rushed over to help, eager to tend to any wounds.

Just as Riyxia approached, the beast stood up on its hind legs, now towering over 30 Uyn in height. It was fighting to free its forelegs from its bindings, when it spotted someone else approaching. As Riyxia arrived, the beast slammed downwards with its bound forelegs, smashing Riyxia hard into the ground with its slashing claws to bear. The beast broke both of her legs in the motion, and slashed deep gouges into her Ersatz right arm. The immense pain caused her body to faint, which thus also released her spectre. The reporter was terrified, having actually not been that far away, but still safely invisible. From his vantage point, he could clearly see how serious her injuries were, and how the deep flesh wounds of her arm exposed stuff no elven arm should contain.

Sryine was furious herself, her one friend having taken everything just to get this far, and the other now seriously injured. She dropped her current illusion, resulting in the reporter scurrying backwards in utter terror. In its place, she created the illusion of a nightmare from her stories, a dragon-like monster that covered the span of the entire street, about as tall as the surrounding buildings. The illusionary nightmare slammed down on the beast with its own illusionary claws, crushing it with illusionary force. Sryine was out of breath, this over-dramatic display consuming her stamina at a dangerous rate. Vwyx herself tried to recover herself, but realized that the situation was desperate. Riyxia was bleeding critically, her body would need repairs desperately or her life could be in danger. However, their opponent was not done yet, and the illusion was starting to become faded with Sryine barely holding on. This was really bad.

A loud sound reverberated through the air of a firearm being fired. “Nuiqhyx, target has been tranqued. Get it snared up and ready for transport, we don’t have enough equipment to really hurt it, best we can do is throw it over the edge of the river valley and leave it trapped down below before it wakes up.” Dhyinze put his firearm away as the giant illusion faded away completely, the beast already unconscious. Nuiqhyx showed up soon after, tossing some kind of subtle instrument under the beast, which surged up and around it like an inverted net. Setting another instrument in place, the beast was elevated onto a cart, which Dhyinze started hauling towards an open area of the edge over the river. Spilling the whole thing over, the beast tumbled into the depth below, and eventually crashed into the river with a splash. Soon after contact, it awoke again, only to realize that it wasn’t where it wanted to be. The beast scampered off, looking for a way to retreat.

“Does she need any medical aid? I’m sure we would be able to get her all patched up back at Irongate.” “No, no, it’s fine. Her wounds have mostly healed already, she just needs to wake up. Actually, maybe we all might need a good nap.” Nuiqhyx was surprised to find even Vwyx had then suddenly collapsed, having spent too much stamina. Sryine had also lost consciousness at some point unnoticed, notably the same point her illusion had given in as well. Nuiqhyx went to inspect Riyxia’s injuries, though they appeared to have really been healed. Both Sryine and Vwyx appeared likewise unharmed, but none of them were conscious at this point. Dhyinze meanwhile had completed his task and had returned to help out his partner.

“Seriously, this is why you need to keep some focus on your cell. Maybe we could have had people better prepared if you had actually answered your cell.” “If a call could have changed anything, you could have called her, couldn’t you?” “Involving a Regular in hunter stuff…” “... Regular? I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can call your three friends here Regular, can we? That was a Tiazen, probably pack leader by its sheer size. Without anything for proper equipment, the three girls managed to contain it as well as they had, and without any injuries they couldn’t take care of by themselves. You, I guess you stuck around the whole time, so you saw everything. What secrets do you know these girls are hiding?” Dhyinze turned to the reporter Nuiqhyx and started to question, also curious. Admittedly, the nightmarish terror Sryine had summoned had left him worried they might need to call for some serious backup, before realizing it wasn’t actually real. The bindings he had found on the beast's arms, still holding strong by the time he had discarded the beast bound by it, such a thing looked somehow instrumental-like in origin.. and yet nothing like he’d seen before. The wounds suffered by the beast weren’t something it would be bothered by, but were still far more than a Regular should be capable of. None of them had any lasting injuries themselves was a remarkable feat, being effectively less injured than the beast by some measure of happenings.

“I.. I don’t know anything, I swear!” The reporter was terrified. Between being compelled by Hunters and whatever underground organization these three belonged to, he felt he had gotten himself into a really bad situation. The three girls clearly knew how to fight too, he was certain they could kill him without him knowing, especially with that invisibility. They had to be some kind of assassins or something, with such a level of combat prowess, something he had completely failed to properly judge. Then there was that arm, the completely unnatural aspect of it. Were the three girls even really human and elven, or were they something more.. demonic.. or something. The Hunters had always terrified him, but in this moment he decided that it was the three girls that terrified him much more. As such, he decided he would feign ignorance, leaving the Hunters believing he was suffering trauma from the circumstances.

“I think the three girls have their own right to privacy, the only way to figure out anything would be to ask for yourselves. My store is now in ruins, so if you’re going to take them to the Irongate Bridge to recover, I’ll give you a hand. I sorta want to find out what happened from your leaders, people who are supposed to make sure that gate holds, so that things like this doesn’t happen. Hopefully, they will be in a position to offer something in recompense for this disaster.” The storekeeper was miffed, his store in ruins, and his stock almost completely useless. He had also been seemingly forgotten in the midst of all of this, being the only one suffering injuries from splintered wood and being thrown into his own stock in the original impact. The blood dripping from his brow brought all of this to light for the two hunters, who rushed to make sure people were brought to appropriate care.

Riyxia watched the proceedings as a spectre, unable to interact with anything. Her body was out cold, there was nothing she could do to simply willingly wake up. Sryine and Vwyx were in similar situations, but not being Ersatz resulted in unconsciousness not leaving a spectre behind. It seems things had really gotten out of control, as she had feared might happen, even if she couldn’t have predicted all of this. The Hunters would be pressing them with questions, probably as soon as they awoke, and she was the only one with the opportunity to begin planning a suitable reply. Secrets, they had plenty of those, but it was obvious the questions related more to how come they just stood up to such a ferocious beast as well as they had. Melding and Illusions, those were things that could be explained. Vwyx’s martial prowess in combat and Sryine’s nightmarish summoning, those were a bit harder to explain. Both had used their gift to complete such feats, but Vwyx’s talent with a weapon, her artful finesse with it, was still something unexplainable. Riyxia knew that the massive illusion Sryine had called was something from her stories, but this was only the second time Sryine had ever weaponized illusions, and this was on such a grand scale. Just how exactly could they explain such stuff?

One thing that still bothered her was how useless she was in the whole process. She had done some scouting, getting Sryine to the right location to find the reporter, but she had otherwise made a bad call in stepping in to try and help Vwyx from an unsafe vantage, and had been instantly taken out in the process. She couldn’t have used her gift as a spectre, making it hard to get close enough to use her gift on her enemy, but she could have always tried to boost up her friends. If Vwyx was faster and stronger, she might have been able to take out her enemy, and that was something Riyxia could have delivered for her. It would have been the right move, but instead she kinda messed it all up. More than making the right move, she could have even done .. anything. As is, she wouldn’t have to do much to explain her own abilities, she had shown no actual potential, leaving her friends to do all of the hard work. She was still being left in the dust of her friends, and would need to keep working on her own improvement.

While left to her thoughts, she witnessed the four guys proceed with the three girls towards the Irongate Bridge. Nuiqhyx had rushed ahead to deliver a report of the situation on arrival, leaving things rather quiet in turn. The gate itself was already being quickly repaired, with plenty of advanced reinforcements on the other side. She did not like the idea that they were being brought to the dangerous side of this formidable barrier, but at least the fortifications on the other side looked impressive enough. At one point, they had entered a building of some sort, looking itself vastly fortified. She found the three of them had been passed off to some of the local staff’s care at one point, as the guys went somewhere else. With such care, they were brought into a room with beds for them to rest and recover upon.

Riyxia sat upon her own bed spectrally, sitting beside her actual body in it’s unconscious state. As silence took over the room, Riyxia moved to ponder the dilemma that would face them upon awakening. If she had no answers for their complete circumstances, she would at least need a plan of what she should be saying. It would also be wise to try and be the first one to wake up, somehow.. if that was even something she was in control over. She felt obligated to find a way to pitch in for the whole process, even if it was only the aftermath.

Riyxia continued to ponder the situation as her body continued to rest, as all three of them continued to rest. She was not however the only one waiting for the three of them to finally awaken.