Poison's Story

Heart pounding, eyes wild and strained, silently scanning the area for movement, she waited. A twitch of movement, some kind of Elk looked up, clearly tainted by the wilds. Its three heads all stared at Astrid, at her twitching left hand swirling red and black, ugly with biomass. It had the look of prey; all nine eyes beheld her with fear, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. An acceptable break fast.

Astrid crouched, quiet and low, legs tensing, and with a swift leap she was only paces away from the Elk. It turned to run, but she was already on it, claw tearing into its flank and crushing its back two legs. It cried out in terror, birds flocking from the trees and away from the noise, its pack and most other creatures quickly and silently making their escape. Astrid howled with delight, as the Elk continued to attempt to flee, the front four legs scrambling desperately to carry it's broken back. "Sorry Love, Law of the Jungle" Her left hand crushed the Elk's first skull and it collapsed in shock.

She knelt by the beast, gnawing on its second skull with her left hand. Something in the distance shifted its weight, a rustle that sounded quietly in Astrid's ear and made her look up with the eyes of a predator. A bear, heavily plated in some sort of osseous plates and spurs, with long and serrated claws. It looked hungry, very hungry, however so was Astrid. She stood with an aggressive snarl, left arm swirling angrily as it digested the mutant Elk. The bear took a cautious step forward, a low growl in its throat as it sized up the girl. "Nuh-uh! Mine!" She shouted, the words grating against her throat. "Go find your own." The bear took another step forward, growling louder.

The Wilds weren't forgiving, something was always trying to swoop in and steal her food. She loved it, it wasn't a mistake you can make twice. The bear charged, a guttural roar of action as it tried to maul the small girl to the ground. With a light jump, she flipped into the air, her feet above her head and seemingly floating for a moment a few odd inches above the bear. Its neck was heavily armored by the bone spurs, but her claw tore through it all the same. She ended her jump and landed to the side of the bear, where she was met with a swipe of the bear's talons across her abdomen.

It's head barely held onto the body by a slab of meat and fur, jaw moving in mute frustration. She'd severed it's neck but the bear seemed less than put off by this. The slashes in her stomach started to close themselves using stored biomass. Astrid tackled the bear, clawing into it over and over again, her manic howling echoed throughout the Wilds.

It was silent, broken only by the occasional crack of bones as Astrid ate. She wasn't sure how many other things she'd eaten since the bear, or even where she was. She did know whatever she was currently eating wasn't nearly as tasty as Bear. "At least it sated my hunger," she belched as if annoyed with the thought.

Her clothes were ruined yet again, blood-soaked and torn, and she'd let her mutation take her on a bloodthirsty rampage. Astrid sighed, her left hand finally reverted to normal and been properly bandaged to hide its unsightly appearance, sitting on the half-butchered torso of Puma. She'd packed up what meat she could to take home and cook, but there was no way she could transport it all. "I Wonder how far out i am this time...." There was nothing for it, and she followed the signs of carnage, heading back to one of her makeshift camps.

Poison sat perched on the top of a tall tree. She glaced over the wilds with her Aura vision a mix of colors taking the shape of living things and dark black void where lay dead things. Her sight rested on the town of Crow's Wallow many miles away. many humanoid life auras surrounded by a void of black. A black void of dead life to hold back the life of the wilds.

Poison would have kept looked but was alerted by a sound off in the distance. There she focused on two auras one humanoid the other in the shape of a bear. The fight was brief and she watched as the bear's aura went from colored to black void.

"Interesting..." Poison mused

Poison watched as the humanoid walked off and decided to follow them for a while. She jumped from the tree spreading her wings she took to the air. She glided downward and pulled up as reached the treetops. Flying low her wings flapping lightly she moved to to follow.

In the darker reaches of the wilds resided from the marshes, home to many a beast that would drag down its prey into the depths of the swamp. It was where some of the more clever monsters would thrive, hidden amidst the foliage and the water's depths, under the mud and muck. Equal to its horror, there was a symphony of animal song, perhaps more fiendish in its allure. However, offset by the sounds of the animals and insects was something peculiar, a soft lullaby of sorts, humming by a warped deep reverberating voice.

The beasts, regardless of size shrunk away from the source of the melody, giving a wide berth to its originator: a massive form who gradually emerges from under the muck, long black hair dragging out across the earth connected to an obscure monstrous body of gray, black, and white. A long maw held agape, an expansive grin of teeth, large enough to swallow whole even a horse, perhaps. What happened after its escape from the marsh, as with each step upon dry land, with sickening wet pops and cracks of bone and joint, the creature's form contorts wildly, its body compressed down with, until it was nearly the size of an average human.

The hums became softer, more beautiful, as the creature now stood to its feet... the creature, now appearing as a woman, excess hair reforming so she is draped in a black dress, both eyes gleaming, as she marched forward barefoot against the moss and grass. There was no doubt in any beast's mind, this woman was something formidable: the Sanguine Witch, Bellatroix. A long striped black-and-white barbed tail retracts its blade, and slowly slithers up her spine like a serpent, completing her transformation. It would be annoying to endure such a form, so crunched and... limited... but, it would be the only way she'd finesse her way to her destination, behind those wooded walls. Well, there was another, but it'd hardly be civilized.

There were... others, in the forest that garnered some attention from the flesh weaver, shifting her eyes slightly from the devices of man. Of particular, there was something distantly familiar, nearly nostalgic of a baser era. "Ah, perhaps finally there is an echo..? T'joy or t'pity?" she asked in a low voice, left to only the winds to answer. With a dismissive bat of the eyes, she smiled, and continued to hum her sweet, morose melody.

Kaza hummed merrily to himself as he guided his raft through the thickets and marshes, inhaling sharply the smell of the swamp that he called home. It wreaked of rotting foliage and stagnant algae covered water, and he would have it no other way. Using a long rod, he pushed a little further into the thick trees, heading far into the back woods where few would ever consider trekking. Kaza knew the swamp though, and he knew if you respected the order of things, and wanted to survive more than the various creatures of the swamp you might just survive. Besides, was it really living if you didn't almost die about twice a day?

Kaza figured not, as he jerked the rod out of the water, away from a snapping gator. He began to yell at the reptile smacking it repeatedly with the rod over the head. "Dammit Rodney!!" he chastised the gator. "You do this every gad dang time i come 'round here and I ain't makin another one of these ya bastard!" He gave the gator a hard poke right in the eye and gave him a very evil one of his own, as the gator sourly surrendered and retreated to the black depths of the marshes. "Stupid lizard thinks he gon get me one these days..." he mumbled to himself as the darkness of the overhead canopy began to swallow both him and his makeshift raft whole.

Kaza suddenly shot up, ripping down his hood and letting his long ears perk up. That sound! He had heard it here before, but never so close... Never so haunting. He had to see what it could possibly be, after all, maybe it was a damsel in distress, who desperately wanted rescue from a daring and dashing swamp folk like he. Heres hoping, at least.

The scene Kaza found himself gliding up to on the back of his raft was not that. He had arrived just in time to have both his eyes widen as he watched an unworldly transformation take place directly in front of him. He crouched low on his raft, grabbing a nearby tree to stop the motion as he watched what seemed to be the very swamp itself forcing itself into a sentient body. His mouth was agape as he haphazardly hid behind the tree, watching the figure take on a more ocularly pleasing form as the humming became more human, more ethereal.

Though the full transformation didn't exactly take a large amount of time, it was definately enough to distract him from a very irate Rodney silently gliding towards the back of his raft.

"Ah, perhaps finally there is an echo..? T'joy or t'pity?"

God, Kaza had some questions, but wasn't sure if he should even ask them, or if he should just leave before the thing killed and ate him, like most things in the swamp would like to do. Before he had his answer, he felt a violent rip at the back of his raft, and the sound of visceral splashing and wood splintering. He looked back to see rodney, who apparently had finally been smacked for the final time. Now visible and audible to all, the usual master of stealth became a swamp attraction of his very own.

"GOD DAMMIT RODNEY YOU SUMBITCH!! WE'RE BOTH DEAD NOW YOU STUPID..." He grabbed for his trusted bowie knife to send Rodney to the afterlife, plunging it into the gators skull, which seemed to not phase the beast at all. "Rodney you stupid..." He groaned, pulling the bloody knife out of his head as he took a swipe at Kaza, very nearly getting his arm. Rodney then grabbed a hold of the raft again, and began what gators do best: the death roll. This threw all of Kaza's traps, full and empty into the swamp, and Kaza himself flying towards the very creature he was attempting to spy on, splashing down into the water with a yell of major dissatisfaction as he broke the surface of the water.

"GAAAH!" He yelled, trying to jump straight out of the water as a very happy Rodney began to swim towards him. He scrambled as best he could for the nearest bit of land he could see poking out of the swamp, just barely dragging himself up on the shore before Rodney could take him down for good. Still brandishing his knife, he waited for something, anything to happen. Rodney was coming, and surely the swamp creature knew he was there by now. Hell, he was looking right at her. His hand nervously gripped on the knife handle as the log shaped creature came closer and closer through the water at him. "You gon' be a nice pair a shoes for some city folk Rodney! I ain't scared a you!" He bared his teeth.

The walks back to her various camps were surprisingly mild. So long as she moved swiftly, the baser beasts of the Wilds wouldnt approach her, due to sheer fear. However, whether due to curiosity, hunger, or sheer chance, not everything avoided her. As few encounters in the Wilds are amicable, she quickly re-traced her steps. She'd gotten far in her mutated rage, to the edge of the swamplands, too far to make it back to her favorite camp.

Astrid still had some spices and potatoes that she'd purchased from Crow's Wallow traders, perhaps the long night called for a stew. High up in the tree-tops, asleep in her hammock, with a belly full of stew, that was where she needed to be. Hunting knife clutched in her right hand, and thoughts of dinner pre-occupying her mind, she almost mistook the sound of wings beating for a bird's. However they were deliberate, the sound of something large. Her ears perked up, and she swiveled around to face the source of the noise, teeth bared and hissing at the winged creature. Dryad?! All the air left her lungs in an impotent wheeze.

She sheathed her knife as a show of respect, not that it'd be of much use against the Dryad. A little respect cost only a bit of time and could possibly save her a lot of hassle. So she knelt, ready to fight or run as either need arose. Something else was moving not much further out. It shouldn't have stayed quiet for this long, not just from Astrid's rampage. There was something else that the animals were staying away from, she could feel it.

Faint screaming, someone fallen prey to the creatures lurking in the swamp, perhaps a gator. She didn't want to stay here for much longer, or a turf war might spring up. The Dryad had horns and was presumedly blind. Astrid's left hand tingled, the tiny sensation of her mutation. She tried to stop the feeling by squeezing that wrist with her right hand, which found limited success.

"Dryad! I've just finished hunting, as all nature does, I didn't mean to encroach. I was just leaving."

There was no telling what you would find in the Wilds anymore. Everything kept fighting to stay on top of the pile, any niche they could carve out to survive. At this point most Dryads were basically wrath personified, and Astrid tried her best not to attract their ire.

Poison couldn't help but smirk and give a dark little chuckle as the Female humanoid groved before her. As she landed the plants under her feet grew into thorny vines with buds like those of a Venus Fly Trap on the ends. The buds dripped with what looked like a green acid. For several moment Poison just looked over the kneeling aura.

"Few things can kill a bear with just a knife...by themselves...I had to see the creature that could do such for myself... Your aura looks human... But I know no mere human has the power to fight a bear as you did alone.." Poison stated.

Poison walked a circle around the woman as if examining her. "So girl indulge a Dryad's curiosity... Who...or what are you?"

The sounds further into the Swamplands continued, perhaps even a full-blown conversation at the fringes of her hearing, it made her uncomfortable. The Dryad landed before her, sprouts of the primal side of nature appearing underneath her feet. Astrid nodded while looking at her knees and refusing to make eye contact, listening to the plant lady's inquiries. Apparently Astrid's little tryst through the Wilds had attracted someone's attention, no telling how many more. Need to be more subtle...

The Dryad seemed amicable enough, it was here to talk, for now. Your aura looks human... But I know no mere human has the power to fight a bear as you did alone..." Astrid smiled, a look of juxtaposition. Her mutation afforded her a sustainable life out here in the Wilds, but it had come at quite a cost.

"I am Astrid, I'm mostly human. As human as anything that lives in the Wilds can be. The Genetic Arms Race out here keeps us all a little inhuman." She took a deep breath, full of trepidation, before continuing. "Sometimes I get lost in the moment, I don't usually come out this far. I got turned around..." Her left hand started making small designs in the dirt, index finger seeming to move mindlessly.

Try as she might, her left hand refused to be controlled, drawing gibberish on the ground. "D-Do you live around here then? Like, this far from the towns?"

"I am a part of the wilds...and they are part of me. I'm not welcome in human cities...Not like I would want to go to one anyway..." Poison said.

Poison took a step closer to Astrid. "You should be more careful where you roam...Most of my kind are not as friendly as I...." she warned.

Poison watched Astrid for a moment "You can't fully control your powers can you?"

Astrid nodded plaintively, thinking about the city, her family, the home she lost there. Now she was feral, living in the wilds and communicating only with what beasts didn't try her patience. This Dryad was one of the more sensible things she'd found in the Wilds, something that wasn't instinctively trying to steal her food. "Yeah... Human Settlements. I come from Crow's Wallow, but... after the incident... I had to leave... It's just as well. Better suited to life out here anyhow!"

She bit her lip while looking the Dryad over. It was, a magnificent thing to say the least. Tall, proud, and powerful looking. Almost terrible to behold, but Astrid herself was quite a terrible specimen, so she couldn't really say. The beasts around here seemed as willing to eat Astrid as they were wary of her. She smiled back at the Dryad, "I wasn't aware much of anything was friendly in the Wilds. I try to keep to myself when I can, hiding among the tree-tops far from the beasts that prowl on the ground. My name's Astrid.

"You can't fully control your powers can you?"

The Dryad's words were true enough, her left hand went numb and the fingers began to twitch ever so slightly, a sign of shot nerves. It was never good to show weakness in the Wilds. "It's not so much that I can't control them, as they are disorienting. Everything starts swimming, I get memories from lives I've never lived and I start to think like someone else. I'm fully in control, but I'm not fully me... If that makes sense." Her smile turned to a crooked frown as she thought about the last few years in the Wilds, living like a wild animal almost.

Astrid laughed, slightly wistfully as if the joke were in poor taste. "I guess I'm not entirely sure how long I've been out here, time seems to blur together. I'm rambling.... Not many chances to talk out here, haha... Your name? Her hackles began to raise, whatever was making noise in the Swamplands was suddenly more numerous. The Fight or Flight reflex was strongly kicking in, and her left hand clenched tightly together, blood seeping at the bandage that covered it.

"Take a bite outta someone."

"'lo there, honeychile..... far from home ain't ya?"

"My home....ten miles.... can really call it a home."

Bits of conversation floated from out of the swamp, the last voice sounded young, no more than a child. "D-Do you hear that...?" She rose to her feet, taking a few tentative steps towards the noise. There was a child out, this deep in the Wilds, so close to nightfall. She called out to the voices a bit louder.

"H-Hello!?"

Boot-heels clicked rhythmically as Ein ran, the gate quickly approached. "Gee, Ein, 'ere I thought ya didn' care much fer kids." She shot back an annoyed glance at the Chief Hunter, there was so much more to this than simple worrying about a kid. "I couldn't care less if he died out there, it's what he might rile up that im worrying about. What if another city's caravan finally reaches us and he slaughters them?! Then what!? Or if he leads something back to the city?? I swear Anselm..."

The Wilds were... wild. Ein hated being out here, but when Anselm picked up speed she forgot all about that. A lesser human wouldve been out of breath, but Ein's mutation excelled in cardio. She tore after him, following exactly in his footsteps with inhuman vigor. It was eerily quiet today, something was happening out here. It only ever got this quiet when Alphas were fighting for territory.

Akina sped into view, like he was running from something, perhaps from his own defection. Ein drew her twin-sword, pointing the saber at Akina, "Akina! You know how dangerous it can be out here. Why are you running...?" She wasn't exactly being quiet, though she probably should have been. It would be an understatement so say she was on edge, anything close to her that moved suddenly would be slashed at, the swampland was dangerous enough without divided Hunters. Which is why when something began speaking nearby, she drew her dirk and cut her hand open.

It looked sort of human, perhaps a mutated villager, but it had flora sprouting from it. Ein took a defensive posture, saber in one hand, dirk in the other. Her bleeding hand let loose blood that floated around her aimlessly, waiting for direction. "And THIS is why we dont wander off alone, Akina...."

Akina came to a screeching halt, narrowly avoiding Anselm. He banked to the right and jumped against a tree before bounding off to slow his momentum.

"I was running to try to get home before it got too dark out." Akina said matching Ein's intensity, but he didn't quite understand why she was angry.

"I was only out here because I saw someone who looked like they were in danger, don't bite my head off!" He growled.

Akina heard the sound of another mutant trying to speak and saw Ein draw her weapons and institutionally retracted his claws.

"And don't patronize me either. If I hadn't been out here it might have made it to the city before we saw it." Akina snarled as he took a defensive posture waiting to see what the plant creature would do and decipher what else was out there.

"They call me Poison.." Poison told Astrid.

Poison heard the voices but she also felt something... She suddenly took to the air and looked around.

Looking down at Astrid Poison said " have to go and check on something..."

Poison flew off and was soon in a tree overlooking a strange creature... Some type of mix of death and life in a humanoid form. it had an odd aura and for now Poison just watched.

Nissan stopped as she saw two... two hers-but-nots. Things. Her, but not. What were they? She did not know the word.
"Wan-durr-off?" she chirped in her warped voice, saying the words the others did. "Havv two gow ch-ch-check on sum-thin... Ack-keen-nah? Nicesan? Ni-ni-nicesan?"
Of course, these words were complete gibberish to her. She did not know their meaning, but she spoke them anyways, perhaps in an attempt to negotiate with these hers-but-nots.

"Th' hell!?" Anselm yelled as Akina nearly crashed into him. His trance broken, he spun around to look at the kid. "Dammit, kid, ya know at times like this, th' weird stuff creeps out and..." he paused, turning to look at some kind of mossy zombie... thing? He then looked over at Akina and Ein quickly and back at the creature, holding out his hands. "Okay, what the hell is that? The hell is it babbling?"

He then heard heavy footfalls, casting a side glance at Dahlia, smirking a bit. "Well, hell, th' gang's all 'ere, it looks," he mutters, letting out a short laugh. His scars still ached for some reason, more than the typical, and it clearly wasn't from this... poison ivy monster. Something else was approaching, humming a melancholy lullaby of some sort, something... nostalgic to the chief. He now readied himself, something etched deep into his very being now quivered. "Kid... ya stir sumthin' big this time... like a house."

"Oh, good, you came to get the lil'un," a voice spoke, Anselm's body seized up, his hair on ends. Bellatroix stands just feet from the party, her eyes scanning the gathered hunters, a smile on her face. She then spots Anselm, glaring directly at her and her smile fades. "Oh," she uttered, holding out her arms to him, causing him to back away without a word. "My, how you've grown, my chile," she said.

"You," Anselm says under his breath, his breathing becoming shallow, his inhuman pupil constricting. Finally drawing his knife, he points it at the woman, his face wrinkled with rage. "Vapor of fevers and nightmares, ya dun' exist!" he yells, his speech growing somewhat incoherent, his eye twitching. But to his shock she somehow broke the distance, now only inches from him. His eyes widen, he never felt her get this close.

"Easy, honeychile," she says, smiling, taking the knife from his hand and with the other touchis his cheek. "Ya remember the cruel fate ya were dealt, the father that hated you, the mother who looked away..? When no love was left, they cast you to the wilds... to me." Without warning, Bellatroix gently reached out and hugged Anselm against her, his body going limp for a moment, his face blanking. "When ya ran, I worried, thought the bit inside ya would eat ya away..." Realization came to him, however, and he pushed the woman away, or more like himself away from her, as she barely budged.

"The... what inside me!? You did this t'me!?" Anselm yells.

"Well, t'be fair, ya did it to yerself, but you were barely awake then," she responds, holding up her arm and forming a shape like a bite mark on it. "Was a scary thing you did... and look at your hair, and that eye... must ahve been awful painful. I'm truly sorry, mon chile..."

"Sorry?! Y-" Anselm began, but something in the distance caught his attention. The sounds from earlier that Bella heard have gotten slowly closer, and they sounded like motors to machinery. He didn't remember any of the city dwellers going off into the wilds, let alone with functioning machinery. Bella herself was distracted by it. He then looked up into a tree, and felt another odd presence nearby, as his senses were no longer fixated on the witch. "Damn, th' hell is with this day..?" he mutters. "As much as I hate it... we... gotta pull back."

Lying in wait in the overgrown bushes nearby was a rather large being or predominately dark coloration. This was Magnus, an ancient mutant from since the near beginning of the cataclysm. The sounds of his breathing were apparent if one were to come close him. His rather large horns were a stark black and white stripes and curved inwards.

As the group of people conversed nearby, their talking began to disturb his slumber and he began to stir. He rose from his grassy patch and revealed his true size and despite the humanoid appearance he was quite large. He let out what could be best described as a throaty grunt as he yawned, revealing razor sharp teeth.

The her-but-nots turned away from Nissan, prompting her to step a little bit closer, still muttering. A very large her-but-not made a noise, and she replicated the noise in her warbly speech.

More and more mutated beasts of the wild began to encroach, along with the city's last Hunter, Ms. Eis, if Ein wasn't mistaken Then something large came crawling out of the woodwork, a creature of nightmares. It was starting to look like a fight was inevitable, this is why she hated the Wilds, this is why humanity was confined like rats in a sinking ship.

"Oh, good, you came to get the lil'un," Ein shot a sidelong glance at Akina, of course he was the reason this... thing was harassing them. Just what was the thing anyways..? It looked like the unholy abomination of all the nearby wildlife. Whatever it was, it spoke like the traders from many towns over.

Anselm began to lose his cool, the creature knew him. Apparently had known him for most of his life, a thought which made Ms. Crowley only slightly suspicious of the strange man who appeared on the outskirts of town and quickly rose to chief Hunter. Anselm always seemed to cause property damage whilst running about, and the thing thought of him like a child. Could he be a spy?

Contemplation were best to be had later, machinery that definitely didn't come from Crow's Wallow could be heard in the distance. Is the city under attack now? It's always the quiet days! As the Chief called to retreat, Ein used her bloody saber to fell a nearby tree. It fell between the group and Bellatroix, creating an impromptu wall.

"Good call Chief, time to go." Turning to run, Ein kept an eye on the newest recruit, ensuring she didn't fall behind.

---

Astrid needed to get home, but the demon-looking woman had piqued her interest. What is she checking on... She began to follow the lady, sprinting in the direction she'd flown away in. Voices could be heard in the distance, someone screaming.

"The... what inside me!? You did this t'me!?"

The voice sounded familiar, like a hunter from Crow's Wallow, a thought which served to speed up Astrid's stride. Skidding to a halt, she barely avoided running into a zombie. It warbled at her, confused and lost; it almost seemed like a baby. A patch of grass then began to move and tremble, something large with horns and razor sharp teeth began to surface. Astrid grit her teeth and dropped her bag, it would only weigh her down if it came to a fight.

"Hi, I didn't mean to upset. Following friends..." She wanted to say something more, but the words escaped her. She rarely had this many people to talk to in a single day. In the distance, was the sound of motors. The sound wasn't coming from Crow's Wallow, Astrid needed to find somewhere to hide soon, but for now it was best to pay her respects to the other mutants she'd ran into. Perhaps they'd even help her out further down the road.

Nissan cocked her head at the her-but-not who had run into her. She was alright, and when she looked at her feet they'd grown tendrils of some sort, locking her to the ground. "Following... friends...?" Nissan asked, a bit less warbled this time.
Suddenly, a bunch of strange monstrosities popped out of the woods. A large something fell, and most of the her-but-nots retreated away. Nissan turned to the new her-but-not and said, "Friends... wan-dur-off... we wan-dur-off?" she asked. She was beginning to get the hang of this whole speech thingy. She only knew the words from the body language of those who had said it. It was almost like actual speech. Almost.

Akina looked around. More creatures were coming out of the wood work it would seem.

"I was only trying to help, I didn't realize so many creatures would come following. I didn't know that Anselm knew Bell." Akina tried to explain.

Akina had no idea there were others out there like him, or at the very least similar. The nice cat man, and a girl that looked like she was part fox, it was making him feel more and more like he belonged out here in the wilds. The only thing holding him to the colony was his parents really. He had hunting skills, he could defend himself against the creatures of the wilds, but should he do it?

No. Not yet at least. He should help his fellow hunters get back to the safety of the colony without the plant thing or the others following them.

Dahlia had decided that this day was just one of those days now, Anslem tearing a path of destruction after skitters, Akina jumping the wall for some reason, going after Akina and finding that plant thing.... Wait where did that thing go anyhow? She listened for a moment but couldn't hear it's strange breathing noise anywhere nearby but as she was listening it was revealed that the patchwork monster there with them somehow knew the chief. And so the weirdness continues. She thought to herself. What next? A.... Did that big monster count as her jinxing it?

Dahlia's ears flattened back against her head under her helmet. Could the world and this day in general just chill out for a moment? Whrrr ...... " Sigh. Just one thing after another today" She commented softly. Definitely one of those days. Looked like the chief was ordering a retreat....Had the tree been necessary? That creature with the shape-shifty thing was weird but it hadn't shown any hostility so far. Dahlia shook her head of all the contemplative thoughts, they could wait until she was back on the other side of the wall. Dahlia lurched off to a slow and gradual start but soon enough she was thundering along in pace with the rest of them once she got through the inertia her weight brought on.