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It hears the threatening buzzing and spots the two bulbous shapes drifting toward them with surprising speed. Really? Why now?

Now, with the precious cargo on its back, is a very bad time.

Vincent changes tactics, skidding to a halt and diving into the alleys below. It abandons the wings and takes a wild, long detour through the labyrinth-like streets, all to lose Tsi'ka's mindless drones.

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Meanwhile, the town is happy to guide the Draconic priest to the blue house. Through its shattered window, he will find, either to his horror or relief, that a giant insect and not the Living Gunship herself lies dead with a crushed skull in its livingroom.

[The Bursters are fast in the air, but not agile enough to keep their speed in narrow passages, and not smart enough to keep a view from above. Vincent, between shapeshifting and a better ability to navigate the streets, loses them in a few minutes. It doesn't help that they become distracted, returning to the smell of their mother's corpse]

She hissed and opened her mouth, showing her bloodied teeth to... whatever was after them. She still clutched onto the shoulders of the shapeshifter. She was sure to keep her feet away from the ground. Though it was not much, she still felt pain, and it’d probably feel like a few stings at her sensitive skin. The cenobite quickly had wrapped herself around him.

This house.... busted window, right room.... smell of recent death, and... something.... sterile? Seemed right. He kicked open the door, glaive in its condensed shape, optimal for close quarters. He crept through the building and.... Was that a Tsk-t A female, at that.... and her egg-sac was ruptured. He crept up beside the body. The head was..... gone. Was that what the creature was gloating about earlier? He wasn't seeing any other corpses.... a lot of organ meat in her claws, though. She put up one hell of a fight.

He moved back to examine the egg-sac. Two ruptures. Bursters, probably, since there was no sign of cutting, and if she's been growing a gendered there would only be one opening.

A buzzing. He moved back, away from the creature as the swollen-bellied arthropods came back through the window, landing near their dead mother. They... stared at him for a little while. He watched back. After they waggled their antennae at the dead Tsk-t for a few tense minutes, they simply turned around and jumped out the window, buzzing away. Once he was sure they were gone, he dug his blade into the corpse. There was something he needed to do...

“My friends are really kind , they also give good advice .” Liliath said smiling “Lisa is kind and my best friend , Raven is also my best friend and is a cat , Victi gives good advice , never ever trust Seo she is weird.”

Bronze came close to listen, glancing outside once more. Is he becoming paranoid? The kept the question hanging since he doesn't have the answer to that yet.

"Ah, well, we always have that black sheep in a family." The feline replied with a chuckle, but his thoughts says otherwise. Aside from the many-tailed vulpine, the child mentioned another feline which Bronze immediately took an interest on. From all these odd things and his surroundings, he craved for normalcy. Even just a tiny sliver of it.

"By cat, she means small quadruped that would have some difficulty sitting on your head, by the way, and probably talks mostly by being Lisa's familiar, just in case you were expecting something.... taller," Victi chimes in, gesturing vaguely with that last bit.

May as well get this part of the conversation out of the way before he had to do it while being snarked at by the feline in question. Sure, it would have been hilarious, but misunderstandings didn't seem productive right now. Last time one of those happened, she got blinded! And this Bronze guy had a sword. Seemed bad.

Misunderstanding 'small' as in smaller than him a teensy bit, Bronze went on to ask more questions. "...Quadruped? Like— on all-fours? That's... this cat of yours doesn't stand up?" His voice carried a tone of bewilderment, his brows furrowed in contemplation, a paw residing on his chin. He's trying to visualize a small cat on all fours, and back in his world, it is only when someone really want to escape extreme danger, because being in all-fours can give you some sort of humility.

"Are they feral?" He asked again, not even waiting for an answer to the first three.

Perhaps misunderstanding the term "feral," Helynah replies, "I'm sure the cat is quite tame, seeing it's serving as a familiar." She completes her answer with an eye roll and a short huff.

She glances out the building's transparent front wall, growing a little eager to leave. She'd like to meet these others. Lisa may be a witch; witches commonly keep familiars. They're also proficient healers who often hide powerful magic up their sleeves. She wants someone like that on her side.

Furthermore, she has a bad feeling that hatched the moment she had found the dead beast and is now growing stronger as the day grows brighter. A deep discomfort stirs in her gut. She suspects something bad is coming their way, and her gut instincts are rarely wrong.

Due to his lack of understanding on how humans work, he was rather shocked and offended. "Wait— Tamed!?" Bronze thinks that they keep some of them as slaves, and was on all-fours because it is the one thing that humiliates a mammalian. Her matter-of-factly attitude about the matter didn't help either.

Bronze took a few cautious steps back from the three of them. Is this it? From this illusion, will he be enslaved? Will that be the end of this nightmare? Everything is a flurry of unexplainable event after unexplainable event. He cannot keep tabs to what's real or what's not.

It slows to a stop in an alleyway. The incessant buzzing is gone, and hidden under the shadows of the buildings, Vincent is sure they can't see it anymore.

Trouble is, they've gone a good deal of their way now, though that shouldn't be a problem if the town feels like cooperating this morning.

Of course; we have the same goals.

It lowers itself to the ground so the can easily slide off its back. "Ssseeker, you will have your breakfast in a few minutesss..." It prowls slowly in a circle, head raised to the sky. It sniffs the air a few times, before its head snaps suddenly to their right. A long, sinister grin spreads across its face. "This way! Ssslowly..."

Crawling slowly on all fours, it stalks toward the police station. There are preys in there; it can smell them.

After another long, awkward silence through which Adam continues crying and Lisa can't think of anything else to say. She starts to fall asleep- a little too easily. Her breath slows, her cheating rising and falling in a relaxed rhythm. Raven watches her carefully from her spot on the desk, concerned. This isn't Lisa's normal behavior; the girl tends to suffer from bouts of insomnia, especially during times like this.

Most likely, it's just her injuries driving her get some much-needed rest, but that doesn't stop Raven from worrying.

Some more time goes by. Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty. Now Liliath and Victi has been gone too long.

She should go check on them.

But she really shouldn't leave Lisa alone. That means the only conscious person here would be Adam and that sounds like a horrible idea. And if Lisa wakes up while she's gone, she's in trouble.

So, torn between several worries, Raven sits still, eyes closed. She mostly looks relaxed, but her slowly rising fur and twitching tail betrays her inward panic.

"I wouldn't say tame, she's got attitude, but not feral or hostile," she said with a chuckle, "Speaking of which, since we seem to be short on appropriate staves, I'll go back and check on them. With how short the night was, I get the feeling it isn't just from planetary rotation..... If you feel stocked up for now, come with me. I can handle myself unarmed for now."

"Yes, tamed. Who would keep a wild cat as a-" she turns around; her expression slides from irritated to confused when she meets the shock and horror widening Bronze's eyes. "I'm sorry; what did I say?" There's some sort of misunderstanding here- she can see that much -but what is it?

She looks to Victi, who strikes her as a little more tactful and familiar with their situation. A small grimace crosses her face as a call for help, but the fox seems like she's ready to move on. Helynah supposes she ought to move on as well. With a shrug and a quiet prayer that her prior offense isn't unforgiveable, she nods to say she's ready to go.

“Raven is a pet .” “At least that’s what I think.”

“Pets are animals who you can buy in a store , like cats and dogs.” She explained “They are diffrent then Wilde animals , I like pets more then Wild animals , pets are kinder.”

Slavery is deeply frowned upon the land of Mammalia. From Bronze's understanding, it seems to be a normal occurence to these humans. The feline can understand why the child can say it so lightly but, to be 'tamed' and be a 'pet'? That's very... Bronze cannot express his disgust at the idea.

Bronze didn't feel like following them. He can leave. No one is keeping him to be with them. "You guys.. you guys can go. I'll be behind you. I still have things to check here." The feline lied, dismissing them with a wave of his paw. As soon as they rounded the corner, he'll go the other way. To hell with the monsters. He can probably outrun them.

“Okay , you can also come with me , cause I wanna go back to Raven she and Lisa are probably worried about us.” Liliath then looked to Victi “Should we go now?”

"Oh, no. Familiars are much more than pets," Helynah says with a small smile. She remembers how a friend of hers, a witch who keeps a canine familiar, explained it to her. "They're faithful friends and guides, a priceless companion you will , or at least should, cherish for as long as you live." The philosophy and political issues surrounding familiars is actually much more complicated than that, but her explanation covers the ideal relationship that she sees between Selinah and Cupid.

She raises an eyebrow at Bronze's excuse. "Are you sure?" This place is dangerous, she knows. Exploring alone, even for a few minutes, sounds like begging for trouble. Also- she can see in his shifty gaze and nervous posture- he's not actually planning on catching up. "Be careful out there, Felixian."

The cat-boy seemed like he had.... very complicated stress. Possibly due to a limited viewpoint on the situation. He'd either die or come scurrying back, and honestly, looting that sword off him later seemed like not the worst thing if he did get killed. She figured she'd at least be polite, though. "Good luck, and trust nobody," she advised as she turned away, "There's a shapeshifter out there. Anyone it sees, it can become. You seem fast. Just remember that you can't outrun yourself, and any magic you have to help you is gone here. Have fun with that."

She smirked. Maybe he'd come back, maybe he wouldn't believe her. Either way, his sword would help them out eventually. And with that, she headed back to the police station.

Liliath followed after Victi , “It hurts.” She said soft pointing to her cheek