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"Holy SHIT!" Vincent, screeching with the voice of a woman, stumbles and trips on its malformed foot. The fall saves it from the initial attack it's all it can do to rise up to its elbows and scramble on its back away from the bugs. Vincent's eyes go wide, not with fear but shocked disbelief. For not the first time in its long, miserable life, it had underestimated an enemy. Sometimes it recovers gracefully, but these pests have been a pain in its rear for a little too long.

Vincent snarls and flips over, crouching like a wild animal. Sharp claws belonging to a certain Pentatheic emerge from its fingertips. Two goals form in its head.

One: those nasties will not have the pleasure of ripping themselves apart.

Two: whatever happens, it's going to hurt. Vincent glares at Bronze and promises to spread that misery while it has the chance.

Raven and Lisa have been on guard for a few minutes now, Raven suspicious of Bronze's disappearance from the start and Lisa slowly dragging herself out of grief to focus on their surroundings. The girl stands and moves to tug on Niskali's robe when a familiar voice screams from around the corner.

She freezes. Her ears prick toward the hellish sound. Oh no... She slips her dagger from its sheath, but can't quite make her legs move. Raven stares in the same direction, mouthing a name but likewise unwilling to move or (surprisingly) speak.

The bursters catch temselves in the air on their wings as Vincent dodges and recovers, letting out genuinely unholy sounding screes of challenge.

The one closest to the building the had lept off of kicks out against the wall with its large grasshopper like hind legs, 'jumping' off of it, able to leap much faster than fly. It keeps its hunting pose as it hurtles toward its hated.

It was so excited to die for mother.

The other drops to the ground, charging right underneath its leaping sibling, body undulating to make full use of all eight legs as it runs.

It was so excited to kill for mother.

They both were.

Hearing the scream, Niskali whips around, Glaive readied to charge... but then he hears the other scream. Or, well, screech.

"If we move, we move carefully! I hear the Tsk-tak'clk's spawn! (he says the harsh word perfectly) We don't engage, or their deaths could mean ours!" He snaps, "That acid would kill any of us!"

"I feel like I've heard of that kind of curse," Helynah muses. Curses are strange things in Zeagni. Stories talk about them, but the kinds that affect people directly are either rare or totally mythical. They are almost always tied to a specific item or someone who's long since died. It has something to do with how difficult it is to tamper with a living person as compared to an inanimate object...not that she well understands the connection yet. Hopefully, she'll get to know magic theory someday. Gotta escape this hellhole first.

Remembering where they are, she realizes they're getting distracted. Helynah clears her throat, "We should get out of this room." She's starting to wonder why she'd even led them in here. Had to prove to myself it really happened, I suppose. "I'll sort through the papers. We can figure a few theories together."

"Bloodline curse, allegedly, so maybe," she replies, "And yeah, I'm more than happy to help logic things out."

The feline quickly recovered as soon as the shapeshifter scampered to find its footing. He has no time to pull his rapier out or even pick the toy gun up— it might attack as soon as he did something. Bronze saw the eyes that has befallen him and replied with his own glare. "I was actually planning to lure you out, y'know? Have a date and eat some cake, if it exists here." Reply, you madman. I have to stall. I have to think.

Bronze is crouched down with his right paw touching the ground and his other paw at his back. This shapeshifter could attack him and completely ignore the overgrown insects, like a determined brat who would do anything to accomplish its first goal.

Vincent holds Bronze's hard amber gaze and sneers, but it doesn't feel like firing back a clever retort, not that it has any time to do so. The insects move quickly, one of them bouncing off the wall and springing at a neck-breaking speed. Both of them screech with murderous glee, clawed hands outstretched to grab and pin it. Vincent would be impressed if it weren't the target.

Vincent ducks and rolls out of neuters' way, but not toward Bronze. Instead, it makes a break for the "employees only" back door. From there it can easily cut through the building and fly out the window. The moment it reaches the door, it doesn't stop to mess with the handle. Rather, it bashes the door off its rusted hinges before the toned body it'd stolen turns grey and coiled and serpentine.

Remembering Seo, it cries, "Run, girl, run!" It's voice cracks with urgency and false concern which it quickly breaks with enraged laughter. "Hell'sss loose and it's coming for both of us!" Anything to get her to flee outside with it. If it only it had the time to grab her by the hair and drag her out onto the pavement...

The bugs skitter to a stop on the ground at different distances from the door, slightly unbalanced by their fluid-filled underbellies. the on that had stayed on the ground scurries after Vincent first, catching itself with all eight legs, moving like the world's most horrifying puppy or kitten chasing a ball on hardwood. The other follows it seconds later

Lisa swallows; her throat dry and tight. You don't need to say that twice. Magic she can't get to stirs with the sinking dread in her chest as she clenches her fists. A pitchy warning and maniacal laughter follow the unearthly cries. Something terrible's happening and there's nothing she can do about it but stay the hell out of the way.

At the absolute least, she realizes, she can step in front of her familiar. Whatever happens, Raven will be well-protected by a mighty Pentatheic warrior and the harmless meat-bag she's become in the face of these new horrors. In a twisted way, this idea comforts her. Helps her breathe.

Raven's itching to move. Her entire body quivers with the impossible urge to run, but she forces herself to hold still because she doesn't know which direction her legs plan to take her. Lisa steps in front of her and the cat knows exactly what the girl must be thinking. God dammit, Liz. Just run!

And not towards the trouble! That's Raven's job.

Niskali makes a snap decision, collapsing and holstering his glaive before scooping up Lisa and Raven, and dashing toward the windowless part of the building. The sounds had just started to close in, and that building was NOT large. That, and he deeply suspected that the shifter would lure the bursters toward them if possible, as a chance of wiping out all three of them at once. "My apologies," he says as he does so, "but while I commend your implied heroism, I hope for us all to survive today."

With that, Helynah backs out the door into the quiet halls. So quiet...too quiet. She's starting to get the same sense of unease as Victi’s. A trap could spring at any moment and kill them both in seconds. Yet it doesn't. Why is that? She doesn’t understand the sadistic glee a predator gets by drawing out the chase, not in the same way her ally might, so she can only guess at the purpose they serve by being left alive so long. That lack of understanding chills her to the very core.

She shakes off the feeling and finds the desk with the yellow picture frame. The woman sets the papers down and starts sifting through them, skimming their contents. Mutilation here. A mysteriously missing person there. Some of them are actually mundane cases, with clues that point to classic gang violence or crimes of passion. She sets these aside. They might have something in them, but what matters the most now are the weird ones.

She finds the most recent ones first, the ones where that thing isn’t so shy about taking dozens of lives at once. But as she goes back in time, she notes that they get less extreme. She hits a freak accident where a gun not only fires on its own handler, but the rifle’s barrel had been deliberately twisted back to face the man, who’d either not noticed, couldn’t escape it, or did it himself. She’d never know; the report passes it off as a suicide and the investigation didn’t go any farther. She must have hit the beginning of the terror where no one’s got enough evidence to suggest something unnatural is going on (Or it really is a bizarre suicide, but still, it’s weird.). She goes through a few before and a few after it, scrambling her brain in search of a connection but finding nothing aside from how weird the reports all are.

Hold on.

Could be a coincidence, but…

She jerks her head up and calls Victi. “Hey, come look at this.”

"Still don't think I can read yet, not for a little while, but what did you find?" Victi asks, coming over beside her, "Some kind of correlation? A hint about something?"