Saia sighed in resignation as Ruth’ warning reached and reluctantly returned the beautiful armlet she had admired back to its place. This little store was really incredible, too bad that they wouldn’t be able to browse around any longer. Making her way through the somewhat labyrinthian lanes between the shelves and tables, stacked with handcrafted wares, Saia returned to the counter where Vee and Jak had already finished paying and now wondered what to do and where to go next.

“… in the park, we really haven’t done anything romantic on our date yet, after all~” The chameleon weasel teased Jak, pressing into his side as she played it up with exaggeratedly fluttering and shimmering, soulful eyes. Victory was clear in her smirking eyes as Jak wasn’t able to suppress the dusting of red coming to his cheeks.

“Sure, didn’t think you were such a sappy romantic, though.” He grinned, keeping his cool as he teased her right back.

She ducked under his hand as he went to ruffle through her hair with an evil glint in his eyes and quickly slipped behind him, pulling him into a headlock. Lightly she pressed her kneed into the back of his own with a playful smirk.

“No ruffling of my hair, I like it the way it is.” Vee warned him, eyes narrowed.

Saia gave a deadpan stare as she saw the interplay, sweatdropping lightly. It reminded her of the time when Grant had managed to accidentally piss off Kass, though he hadn’t pulled the rug from under his captor. Now Vee was flailing in Jak’s hold, the wolf cat grappling her in both a head- and armlock. As good as Vee’s self-defence training had been, she hadn’t actively needed to defend herself like Jak had. Saia could only shake her head amused as the old shop owner watched the scene with fond reminiscence.

“Sorry to break this up, but something came up. We’ve to go.” She called out with a sigh.

“Seriously, you didn’t consider that this could happen…?” Jak drawled out as he and Vee learned the reason for their sudden need to depart.

“Feels pretty obvious that someone would notice her.” Vee deadpanned in agreement.

“General City Guard we expected… Not an Abyss damn tail extra on the lookout for her!” Saia hissed back, flushing both annoyed and embarrassed by their rather justified critique. Quickly she lead them through the buzzing crowd of the Lebensfest. The swallow took a deep breath and calmed herself down as the entrance gate to the festival came into view. No matter, even if things had gone somewhat awry it wasn’t a total disaster. Hopefully it had even pulled attention away from the Dampf Tower and allowed the Infiltration Team to get inside more easily.

Saia was glad when her two charges didn’t immediately reply to her sarcastically.

Saia was much less happy when Myra suddenly popped up besides them. The cheerful bunny cat caused quite a bit of a commotion as she leaped towards them from behind and pulled Vee and Jak into a hug, arms wrapped around their waists.

“Agh, damnit!” Jak cursed startled.

“Don’t just jump us like this!” Vee growled. Both of them having quickly recognised who that girl was after the initial shock.

“Hey! You’re okay! Grant was really insistent on us leaving but didn’t really say any more.” Myra exclaimed, voice turning into a loud whisper that with all the noise of the festival was perfectly private.

“We would be better if you hadn’t jumped us like this.” Jak sighed, the attention she had drawn feeling incredibly uncomfortable to him.

“And where is Grant…?” Saia asked Myra pointedly, glaring lightly.

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“Back with the kids.” She cheerfully replied, not at all guilty of her actions. “I decided to already go on ahead to check for you all.”

Saia groaned, feeling a headache starting to pulse behind her temples, and pushed Myra’s disregard for their previously agreed upon rules out of her mind for now.

“Fine, we will talk about this later.” She pressed out, suddenly wondering if this was how her mother had felt sometimes.

“Sure…?” Myra replied, her carefree attitude turning a bit worried as Saia reminded her of her gramps before one of his many reprimands at her.

Jak had glanced back into the crowd at Myra’s words but sadly didn’t see Grant, Mina or his little sister anywhere. He couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous that Grant wouldn’t be able to handle the Jenny. The jackalope seemed a bit of a pushover in regards to enacting authority. And he was rather annoyed with Myra for just leaving them behind like this. But he had faith that Jenny wasn’t about to… he had faith that Mina would be able to block Jenny from following up on any of her more stupid ideas.

“Ugh, how are you this heavy…?” Vee groaned to his side as she struggled against Myra’s arm weighing down on her, the bunny cat’s arms now laid over their necks and shoulders.

“Oh! Sorry, forgot to lower the weight.” Myra apologised sheepishly and a soft hum became more audible from her arm, visibly growing lighter on Vee’s shoulders.

Any response that Vee may have had was forgotten as just before they reached the entrance gate, a deafening scream of agony drowned out the chatter of the crowd. Shock, surprise and worry rippled through the crowd of people.

“W-what was that?”

“Did anyone notice where that came from?!”

“Somebody needs help!”

Already the City Guard stationed by the gate were starting to move out. But before they could run towards the obvious source of that scream, Saia, Jak, Vee and Myra had burst past them. Vee was taking the lead as she instinctively recognised Rehn’s voice, Jak and Myra immediately on her heels with Saia deliberately falling to the back. Swerving into the alleyway with Ruth and Rehn, the cat girl let out another terrifying scream.

“Status!” Saia barked out immediately, eyes locked onto the twitching and convulsing form of Rehn. The sound of a high pitched, crackling static whine fluctuated within the air. It should have been barely audible under her screaming and the noise of the festival but somehow it rung clear within their ears as if the world was dead silent, impossible to miss or ignore.

“Sudden seizure. No clear reason.” Ruth immediately shot back, the dragon mare doing her best to keep the cat girl steady and from cracking her head open against the stone with her spastic movements. “… her Arc’s building up.”

The glowing Halo of beautiful gold that appeared above Rehn’s head left no doubt about that. It was spinning rapidly, jittering and twitching alarmingly.

Ruth could feel the Amber in the air reacting to the pulsing waves of energy that were now tangibly erupting from Rehn’s body. They traveled away from Rehn before collapsing back into her with rapid, consecutive implosions. Everything they touched shimmered golden for a second, dancing over Ruth and now also the rest of the group.

Gasping wide eyed, Vee rushed to Rehn’s side without even acknowledging Saia’s grip on her shoulder as she ripped herself out of it.

“Hold here.” Ruth was quick to tell her, making Vee actually useful instead of getting into an argument. Nodding back, the chameleon held tight onto Rehn, whispering reassuring words to her best friend.

“What the Abyss is going on…?” Jak muttered wide eyed, feeling his still fresh scars throb painfully all of a sudden.

“What’s her Arc? We need to know or things could go really…!” Before Saia could finish her sentence, the world was swallowed by blue and golden light. A sphere of radiant energy consuming part of the alley and everything around it, dipping into the walls and street.

The City Guards gaped at the phenomenon, forced to a halt just a few metres away as they had been just a bit too slow to arrive.

With a trembling pulse the sphere imploded, leaving crackling bolts of golden energy in its wake. It had carved a perfect bowl into the pavement and left two great holes in the neighbouring buildings, steam and water rushing out of the carved open infrastructure. A moment later a massive pillar of steam also exploded from the ground with a deafening whistle, the damage of a primary Steam Pipe brought an immediate stop to many attractions of the Lebensfest.

“W-we’ve got a really big problem here…” One of the City Guards spoked numbly, blinking wide eyed at the gaping hole that had suddenly formed. To the side, his partner stood on trembling feet before collapsing to the ground, eyes blank, as he blacked in realisation to how close they had just come to being sliced apart by the edge of the destruction.

A crowd stared terrified into alley, among them Grant who had had just arrived with Jenny and Mina in tow. Quietly he ushered them away even as Jenny strained her neck to get a look past the crowd. It was wiser to leave. The silent receiver weighted heavy in his pockets.