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"So," she asked the empty room, "Do you have, like, a name? 'The Place or This Place or The Town all seem a little.... I dunno, generic? Something I can refer to you as? Not a True Name, obviously, I wouldn't ask for that from a Genius Loci, that would be rude, but, you know. A.... name or a title?"

Victi honestly had not single clue where she was going with this, but leaning against a filing cabinet, even after switching to the other side, was getting boring. Even after only around fifteern seconds.

"Because honestly? Sure this has been an overall horrifying and painful experience, but it's kinda nostalgic for me! I mean, back in the day it was a forest I was adventuring through, and only two companions, my boyfriend and my familiar, but yeah. Oh, don't yoink either of them or anyone else from my crew, by the way, unless you like orbital kinetic strikes, which I have a feeling you wouldn't. The goddess would be mad and find you eventually. I end up wandering off and going on weird adventures long enough people are probably only ticked off, but we're valuable assets to her. Oh, and if you do kill me, she'll want my soul REAL bad. Debts to a death goddess, ammirite?" she explained. Man, those fumes must have been getting to her. Maybe her rambling and futile cabinet shoving would make it like her? At least as entertaining prey, right? Right? No? Maybe?

Raven doesn't make it to the store.

She catches wind of another smell, something new and kind of familiar to her at the same time, and also much too close to the police station.

More trouble.

She slinks away from Liliath into a narrow alley, toward the scent. The shadows cast on the brick and mortar or cement walls keep her well-hidden as she approached a tall and shinybronze-furred creature. She can't see his face yet, but the two pointed ears and long tail remind Raven of her own, despite them being more lightly colored and shorter-haired.

She's never met a Felixian, but she knows what they are. However, if her personal suspicions about this place are correct, he could actually be anything.

Stalking him, she circles around and sees his feline muzzle and bright eyes. In his hands- or paws -she sees the brightly colored watergun. To any human-ish thing, it'd strike them as the toy it actually is.

But in her head, the bright color reminds her of bugs and nasty things an animal should never try to eat. The weapon screams run away to her more than any sleek black rifle or silver sword (she sees that he has one of those, too) would. She lies on the ground, tail twitching, as she watches him and tries to come up with a course of action that won't end in her getting shot.

No such luck for anyone. Helynah strikes much faster than one would think, and Vincent, reckless with its new form, doesn't think much about how bad it'd be to get stabbed by that pointy pole in her hands.

Helynah strikes up at a steep angle, assuming that is has strong belly scutes under those robes that she can slip the weapon underneath. Instead, the weapon pierces the robes and glance off of whatever armor it hides beneath. Vincent's eyes widen in surprise but momentum keeps it going so it crashes into Helynah. It fumbles to pin her down; she's strong and it's shocked to learn exacly how invulnerable Niskali's armor is, but eventually the monster smacks the trident from her hands and shoves her to the ground.

Vincent cackles while Helynah hits and kicks and swears. It raises its free hand to bring it down on her head. Let's make this quick.

The hissing is slowly fizzling out as the place runs out of- or gets tired of spewing- the toxic fumes. That sound is replaced by an eerie silence as it tries to make sense of Victi's rambling.

...What the hell is this prey going on about? She goes from snarking at it (or was that a genuine compliment?) to trying to bargain, to reminescing about her childhood to...is that a threat? The room creaks and groans something like a frustrated growl. The hissing sound of gas pouring into the room sputters to life briefly to remind her who exactly has the upper hand here.

No. No no no no no! Her hands instinctively fly to cover her ears as she too screams at the monster. She dropped her dagger doing so. NO! So she tries to punch the cenobite, then she ducks and fumbles around for her dagger. Where's Victi? Why isn't the soldier waking? What the HELL is going on outside? A horrible cackle from fills the air around them and sends an icy feeling of dread through her her whole body. She regrets sending Liliath and Raven away; who knows what she just sent them out to.

Luckily for the quadruped feline, she was downwind and her scent was yet undetected. Bronze Nyx was busy slinking around and trying to find any survivors by traversing the area around it, which he slowly concludes to be ineffective. The fact that his fur and clothes isn't exactly a complimentary color to hide himself in the shadows stresses him for he knew the fact that he is rather easy to detect. The felidae lashed his tail, irritation getting the better of him. Where the hell did they go?

"Maybe on the other side.." A gentle tone murmured, answering the question he mentally asked. Tightening his grip on the base of the perfume-gun, he decided to wait a bit more just in case.

Well, this place did in fact seem rather godless. The creature now likely realized that conventional weapons were now minor irritations at worst, and could likely strike with near impunity. Niskali surged forward and grabbed at the beast's hand in a grip meant to snap fingers backwards as hard as possible. Granted, the gauntlet would somewhat protect against this, he would not be able to force the beast to make a fist backwards or anything of that sort, but it would keep it from jamming any fingers into eyesockets for a few moments. With his other hand, he works to drive his blade under the mask the monster now sports. Yes, because it was a weakness, but more because he did not want it be be blasphemously sporting the visage of the goddess

Hmm... his body language doesn't exactly suggest "psychotic predator." In fact, he seems lost, confused, and generally stressed. Like nearly everyone else.

He's probably jumpy, too. If she startled him, she'd either have a good laugh or end up injured or dead. To someone like Raven, those risks are a lot harder to weigh against the sole benefit than they should be.

Not moving, she speaks quietly. She's lying down, her tail twitching back and forth, her wide eyes looking up at him imploringly. Those eyes do hold a tiny glint of mischief, but mostly she looks desperately hopeful. They need more friends.

"Hello."

Something clicks in her brain. Victi mentioned that one of the new survivors is a two-legged cat-guy with a sword. He struck out on his own when something she or the others'd said upset him.

"Looking for trouble, out here alone?"

Asserting dominance? Someone was insecure.

"I'm just trying to make sure you don't make a mistake, pal," She chuckled and coughed, "Killing me? Like, I won't be happy about it, but what happens happens, right? I've killed enough people to get how this works. Heck, sometimes I play games like this, too! Me as the predator in that case, though. It's great! If you usually do some kind of soul trap or whatever, though, make sure you give mine to the nice observer-dependant Wyrm without too much fuss. Negotiation's fine, but.... you know, don't make it easier for her to just have a fleet stop by. You'll know her when you.... sense her or whatever. Silver and white, not really euclidian, black horns that kinda make a reverse eclipse shape, tends to do that finger tapping thing where you do all of them one by one but quickly, and then longer breaks between those sets?" Her vision was a little blurry now, and she was VERY high off the asphyxiation. Wow that felt weird. Was she stalling? She wasn't sure.

"Wait, can you even talk? Like.... do you have those fridge magnets with syllables on them or whatever that you could use?" Her speech was getting a little incoherant. Screw it. She felt around for a handle, and pulled open a drawer. If she was going down, she'd read something while doing it. This was a good idea which totally made sense and was smart to do.

One of his ears flicked, angled towards the ruins of a building. The anthromorph knew that he heard something— a scream that sent a chill to his spine. Would he scream too? Would that end his life or the vision he hopefully believes to be? It seems that the place is a wrecked warzone, or perhaps they all have been already brutally murdered, with that helpless expression of death as the last. Bronze surpressed a shudder, placing the colorful toy gun on the gritty cement as he leaned on the wall, glaring eyes trained forward.

Until he heard a foreign voice from behind.

Jumping back in surprise, the Caracal barely controlled himself to not scream. Bronze staggered as he landed, his paw immediately at the hilt of his sword before facing the stranger. Mind clouded with dangers and bloody deaths, he quickly slid his thrusting sword from its scabbard, his weapon pointed at the alleyway. Wait. Where is— wait, what? Heart still pounding, his hardened glare landed on the smaller cat, confused, wary, and definitely hostile. "You... you speak." Bronze steeled his arm, these words is all that he could blubber.

"So do you," she says flatly, just like her body language when he spun around to face her with a steely blade. She lay like this for two reasons; niether one has anything to do with fear of getting stabbed or shot by a tall cat-faced guy.

First, she wants to appear as harmless as possible. Again, not out of fear but out of the need to convince him to lower his guard.

Second, now is a good time to admit that she is a afraid, not of Bronze but of whatever drew that scream of terror from her master. The shrill cry sends a chill down her spine and makes her hair bristle. Let's do this fast.

"Look, I'd love to screw with you but there's not enough time to do both that and make sure everyone gets out of here alive. We could really use another pointy thing on our side, so are you in?" A little to straight-forward for her tastes, and probably not the most convincing plea, but she flashes him a smile and hopes he'll agree to put that sword to use...not on her.

The drawer contains mostly files and stacks of papers bound with large paperclips. In its hayday, this might have been how they kept track of where they stored whatever came into the room. Today, the room falls silent, confused and not sure if it should laugh at her ramblings or not. She's clearly losing focus, growing delerious as the ambient fire burns through whatever oxygen she has left to breath, leaving nothing but gas to fill her lungs.

It staggers back, taking enough weight off of Helynah for her to squirm out of its grip and make a dash for her trident. It grabs Niskali's blade-wielding hand, knowing exactly what he's aiming to do. "Don't you dare!" Niskali has the same weakness it has now, so with unnatural flexibility, it sprouts long claws from its right foot. The shapeshifter's body bends in a few ways it really shouldn't be able to as it tries to tear the mask off of the Warpriest's face. It hopes either that it can rip the mask away or that the threat of getting the mask ripped away will force Niskali to back up.

"Oh thank the Goddess," she breathes as Niskali comes to her rescue. She wastes no time wriggling out of the demon's grip and running for weapon. A glance back tells her that the dragon is trying to get the mask off or stab underneath it. He knows his own armor better than anyone, so she trusts that is an excellent idea and waits to see how their personal confrontation goes. She makes a mental note that direct stabbing will not work as long as Vincent holds that form, so her normal tactics are null. Time to think a little smarter.

Niskali feels the creatures leg move beneath him and, on a hunch, tilts his head back and clamps his strong jaws around the clawed ankle. Some billion-years-past ancestral instinct kicks in, a rush hitting him as his teeth try to tear into his foe, his head turning to yank on it, rip out tendons, and exert his raw might on the beast. He was civilized, a trained fighter, but sometimes you just meet an enemy where survival comes before elegance. Also, whatever creature the shifter's leg came from tasted fantastic.

Victi giggles, seeing the paperclips, "I could try making a tension wrench with these, thank you, evil place!"

Wait.

That's actually a good idea.

In her moment of lucidity, Victi exhales sharply and holds her breath. Her lungs scream for her to inhale almost immediately, but she ignores them. Oxygen is needed to react with carbohydrates to release energy by converting them to the very stable oxygen and water. this allows, at various points, the re-combination of Adenosine diphosphate, ADP, and a phosphate group to create Adenosine triphosphate, ATP. ATP would then be broken down to form ADP again, and release energy for cellular function.

The body needs energy, not oxygen. Hell, she knew that! She used that trick all the time while swimming, and it's how a firefur could handle smoke so well. She could give herself maybe a minute or two. Just because their bodies COULD run just on stored energy didn't mean it was good for them.

That, and this place did seem to be slowly draining mana out of her body. Not quickly, and less when she had less, it felt like, but those earlier zappies had burned a lot. She was very low.

She got to work, grabbing two paperclips, straightening them, making a short hook with one and bending the other in a tight U shape. It.... was hopefully stiff enough.

She fought the urge to breathe to keep focus. The pain in her still-raw hands would have to distract her. Gods this sucked. Death was the other option, though, so she did her best to puch through.

She tried to feel how many pins were in the lock.... five? maybe six? Great. That was.... actually a lot, to be honest. At least it was only a 2-d lock, though.

It turned.... counter-clockwise. Okay. Good. The wrench would probably work. First pin..... moved easily. Not that one. Second...... a little sticky. She pushed on it, but it didn't stick. Crud. Okay, 3? Nope.... Four? no, but almost as tight as two. Five? ...... YES! The pin was set. She tried 2. Good, pin 2, binding pin 2. Four was probably next.... yes it was. 5,2,4. She made sure to remember that sequence in case she had to reset. She hadn't poked 6 yet.... nope. 3? Perfect..... she worked to stay calm, avoiding putting too much pressure on it. Didn't want it to freeze and reset on her. 6 again? no. 1? there we go.... and now..... *click*. 40 seconds later, and she was out. Also, thankfully it still opened out into the hall. She twisted the lock, turned the knob, ow, and shoulder-checked the door open. It wasn't exactly better seeming outside, though.

She looks just as much as his ancestors for a thousand... hundred... million years ago! "Wh-what?" The anthropomorph asked in bewilderment, his eyes furrowed in a state of puzzlement. It was all too much- the overload of information and bizarre continuities that shouldn't exist. From his perspective, everything could be real just in a whim of a moment. It's not funny. "Under my conditions, that is." Bronze spoke clearly, his sword arm lowering in a more relaxed state, but his mind is still ready to stab and skewer if she advances. Who knows if the cat is a one of them, and can rip his head away from his shoulders in one pounce? He doesn't know, and he never wanted to. Perhaps he is like this because of the psychological stress of facing the most dangerous unknown.

"One, you must always be fifteen paces away in front of me." The Caracal swayed his rapier in a shooing motion, telling the quadruped to move backward. "Two, I'm not one of you, nor will I ever want to be with one of you. Not until I clarified everything. Three, well, I want a way out of here. If you don't even know how, or has a clue to escape this hell, you're on your own." Bronze stated his conditions, waiting for a reply.

A sharp but slow inhale as she complies with the first condition broadcasts some bad news. "No, no I don't know how to escape. I kind of assumed we'd pick a direction and start walking." As she says it, she's fully aware of how stupid that sounds.

"But hold on a second!" she blurts, worried that he might just pack up and leave her. "If you stick with us, you'll be waaay better off then on your own. We have a doctor, and some really capable fighters, people you'll want on your side.

"Oh, and you'd have me of course," she grins. "Your therapist and comedic relief. I also have pretty sharp claws."

Everyone who says that laughter is the wrong way to react to getting your leg torn into has not met Vincent. Its first response to Niskali's is to hiss indignantly, but as it lets Niskali rip its lower leg off of its body and hobbles away, it starts to chuckle. Quietly, so as not to alert the dragon of its escape. The bulky pentatheic body is had stolen begins to melt away like a hot piece of shedding skin, and then it folds in on itself while Vincent thinks of another form to take.

Meanwhile, the missing leg regrows. Its flesh and bone regenerates quickly, this time unimpeded by paralyzing venom or massive internal bleeding.

It casts a glance to the door into the police station...that bite kind of hurt. It considers fetching the cenobite and calling it a day, but not before trying to sow a little bit of discourse. The foot, as it grows back, is not ugly and clawed, but human.

Helynah grimaces, watching Niskali turning the monster's leg into a bloody pulp. Being on the recieving end of a dragon's rage is admittibly horrible place to be, and she feels a smidge of pity for that shapeshifting devil-thing.

That is until it pops its own leg off like a lizard losing its tail and lets the armored dragon disguise disappear into some sort of digusting fleshy haze.

Is that disgusting lump stabbable?

Tightening her grip, she approaches it quietly. Helynah, in her bright blue robes and with her large, showy weapon is not a woman known for her excellent stealth, but she thinks she might have to try it in order to land an effective hit on the enemy.

After a moment, Niskali realizes that the beast has slipped away. He sighs, disappointed, but not really surprised. It was probably already healing, too, assuming its body was carrying enough energy in whatever form to do so. C1s always had odd hyper-dense energy storage anyway. It would be interesting if he could capture it, send it to someone to study..... not important.

He held onto the leg, maybe he'd cook it later, and got up, returning his weapon to its hidden spot in his robe.

"If you know of any others outside of this building," he said to Helyna, gesturing to the police station, "I would recommend going to check on them. Remain careful and discrete, of course, it is likely already mostly recovered. I will deal with the chaos in here personally."

With that, he walked towards the door of the station, preparing to kick it open as impressively as possible.

Suffice to say, Bronze was not amused. The humanoid scoffed in disbelief. Nobody knows a concrete way nor a path, even a long snaking path to freedom. "Therapist? Oh, I don't think so. Seeing as you're here alone without your.. err, companions, well, I assume that you've been seperated, or one of those monstrous beings I saw with guts decorating the floor." The feline voiced out his suspicions, indicating that he is watching, observing, and trying to comprehend everything with difficulty.

"Anything more you wish to add? Sweeten the deal? Because I can handle myself far better alone." He approaches the smaller cat, but not really showing any signs of aggression.