It was a quiet night in Darkveil City. The workers in the shops had mostly gone home. The lights were out save for the those that lit the city’s streets.

It was not unfamiliar to a certain bespectacled traveler. He’d planned on heading straight for the inn that he always stayed at when he found himself here. Of course, Fate, as always, had other plans for him and his companions.

Passing by some dimly lit alleyway, Ulrich spotted what seemed to be some sort of shady dealing. Accompanying that was the moving of large crates into wagons large enough to hold a crowd of people. As he hesitated for a second, that gave the shady party a moment to spot him as well. Sensing the oncoming danger, the young Behir and Pixie traveling upon his shoulders were taken away to safety by the Dagger and the Hammer. They hid in the shadows as they watched their friend be taken away by some big, burly looking thugs in dark clothing.

Hands tied and set on one of their wagons by one of the giant sized men, Ulrich was whisked away into the night to an unknown location. At least, the location would have been unknown had the group not made the choice to tail them from the shadows.

Their journey had brought them to a warehouse where they seemed to be storing the crates into. Sneaking in through an opening in the roof, the unlikely gang of heroes hides in the rafters above searching for the friend. It didn’t take long to find him; he’d been tied up to one of the beams. One of the men seemed to have been tasked with watching Ulrich, but it looked as if it weren’t a prisoner and guard situation. The two of them looked to be sharing a conversation with each other! Ulrich was looking pretty comfortable sitting there for someone who was just kidnapped and tied to a wooden beam!

The gang jumps down from the rafters and obscure themselves behind a pile of crates.

Since the Pixie, Aella, is the smallest of the bunch, she is assigned to keep lookout. She nods her head and peeks out from the top of a crate. The others start to devise a plan.

“Okay, so how are we supposed to do this?”

“Honestly, if you ask me, he looks quite comfortable there. Their conversation seems to be quite light hearted.”

“This ain’t the time to be jokin’ around like that. I says we give ‘em the pummelin’ of da century!”

Alvis and Xavier float silent for a second as they stare at the mustachioed Lil Frijole.

“What happened to your voice? Why does it sound like that? It doesn’t usually sound like that.”

“Beats me. I gue-” Lil Frijole stops as Valz, the mustache, starts to wriggle on his lip. The Behir is nodding along as if someone is talking to him. “Ooohh, so Valz here says it’s just how they work. The voice changes depending on the situation.”

Another pause of silence.

“Are you sure that they’re not lying?”

“Aren’t they used for deception?”

“Valz is telling the truth here, fellas.”

At this point they all elect to have a look at the situation for themselves when Aella signals that they coast is clear. They all peek out from behind the crate shrouded by the darkness fighting the light casted from one of the torches.

“Ah, we might need some help with this one, fellas. Dere’s way too many of ‘em around for us to bust out Pops.” Lil Frijole says shaking his head. “If only we knew someone who could give us a hand right about now.”

Oh, if only.

Slinking through the warehouse like a stalking cat, the large, alabaster skinned fellblood woman seems to have no trouble whatsoever in slipping unseen among the dark corners of the space. The light from the torches seems to bend around her as she makes her careful way, doing what gumshoes and private-eye's like her did best; snoop.

Darkveil was not one of her usual haunts; it wasn't exactly local, but there was an awful lot of interesting things happening in the area that called her attention. Especially when the person involved was paying a hefty amount of solars for her investigatory skills. For the right price, she'd go just about anywhere. Today, that meant a shitty warehouse in Darkveil where she was supposed to find out whatever was being taken here in such vast quantities, and report back to her client. Easy peasy. No one had to get hurt.

The tell-tale signs of approaching guard tips Izzy off fast enough to make sure she gets off the ground. The last thing she needed at this point was to be caught out in the open, of course. Fortunately an incredibly tall woman, Izzy easily jumps up to catch one of the overhead beams in her palms, swinging up and around onto the beam with a cat-like grace as the guard pass below. She grins to herself, all sharp teeth and mirth. These fools were about to have no idea what hit--

Her eyes drift up to see, across from her down the beam, a group of... small creatures, all gathered together, as though she had just stumbled into an ongoing meeting. One, a behir, had on a mustache of some kind. Izzy stares for a few heartbeats, unsure of how to react before just firing a wink and finger-guns at the group in a friendly and not-at-all-totally-unexpected hello.

Hylltywyll watched it all, able to see everything happening up in the shadows of the rafters. He could practically feel the presence of anyone else within the shadows around him. A Pixie, egh, some little lizard thing with a mustache, and a couple of floating weapons. A short distance from them, some kind of big, lizard woman? How many intruders were going to show up here? And was anyone going to help him???

Hylltywyll watched everyone from within a tiny metal box with one side made of bars while the rest were solid. He felt horrible just standing within in, the cold iron it was forged from making the bottoms of his feet burn. If he tried grabbing the bars to push it open, his hands burned. Even the stupid lock on the cage was made from the stuff! He couldn't even use any of his magic while he was in it, the cold iron messing with him too much.

There was one ray of hope in all this. That guy tied to the beam was familiar! That was the guy that had saved him from ...her... Maybe he'd help him again? The group of little intruders looked like they were here to save him, peaking at him from behind some crates. Wasn't that his floating dagger? Well, he didn't really see any other options beside sitting around and wait for one of his captors to let him out and he didn't think that was going to happen.

"H- hey! HEY! Help?" Hylltywyll half whispered, half yelled to the small group nearby him, hoping to get their attention without alerting any guards.

The group of unlikely heroes turned from their meeting to notice a woman staring at them from the rafters above. A quick pulse of panic crept in before she winked and performed a strange gesture with her hands at them.

“Uhhh, what’s she doin’? Is that s’posed ta be friendly or somethin’?”

“I believe what she’s doing is called ‘finger guns’ my Dear Boy. Usually people do it back, but that’s if they know each other.”

“Yes, she seems quite friendly. The teeth would give anyone a fright though.”

“So do we do it back?”

“I would, but seeing as I have no arms or hands, it presents quite the problem.”

“Yes, no hands here either. Sorry, kiddo.”

Lil Frijole and Aella smack their foreheads simultaneously. The little Pixie returns the woman’s gesture to show that they understand she’s friendly.

And then there’s the voice that calls out to them from within a cage.

The group peers out in the voice’s direction to find… Wait, a minute! He’s familiar to one of them at least!

“Hylltywyll? Is that you?” Alvis whispers over to him. “Gotten yourself in another pickle yet again, I see.”

Everyone turns to look at Alvis for an explanation.

“Ulrich and I helped him escape from someone we know. It was quite an ordeal. I still feel bad about that one.”

“Well we have to help him too then.”

“But we seriously need to come up with a plan.”

“Don’t worry, Hylltywyll! We’ll get you out of there. Just hang on.” Alvis whispers to him reassuringly.

Everyone nods in agreement, and they duck back down behind the crate.

So between the strange finger gun woman who found herself inside the warehouse along with them and Hylltywyll stuck inside a magical cage, the group didn’t know what to expect anymore. Not that they knew what to expect in the first place. They broke in here only to find out that Ulrich was having a nice chat with one of his captors!

Aella signals to the woman in the rafters. Gesturing for her to join them in formulating a plan to now save both Ulrich and Hylltywyll.

Elsewhere in the warehouse, Ulrich is having a bit of a chat with the big burly man assigned to watch him as the others continue their work.

“And what happened after that, Fred?”

“So I says to the wife, ‘Better late than never!’”

And the two men burst out in laughter which catches the attentions of the other men who give them the stink eye. They’re not getting paid to give bad looks so they get back to business.

Ulrich could know there were multiple beings hidden the shadows around the warehouse. Lil Frijole and the group are sure to be here, but he felt two other presences as well. One unfamiliar, and one that was. Truthfully, he’d been making small talk with Fred as means to buy time, but he found himself enjoying the man’s company. In all honesty, Fred wasn’t all that bad. Just down on his luck and looking for any jobs he could find to put bread on the table.

“You know, Fred, you don’t have to work for people like this. You should take your talents elsewhere.”

“Yeah, me wife says the same. But this is all I know. I’ve been doin’ this since I was just a punk kid.”

“Something tells me that you wouldn’t have a problem finding work in a much better environment. Away from all the dangers that come with this line of work.”

“Aw, yer too kind, mate. I wish I could, but I just don’t know. It’s a bit scary for me.”

“Not knowing what comes next after taking the first step?”

“Yeah. That’s the scary part for me.”

“I understand that all too well, my friend.”

If the group was going to do something, now would be the opportune time to make a move. It looked as if they still had loads of crates to store. So really, it seemed like they had all the time in world at the moment.

Upon receiving back the customary response of finger guns from the pixie, Izzy grins, and shuffles her way along the beam towards the small group of creatures she almost certainly could not understand. One appeared to be... a bemustached drake of some kind. A sword, a hammer. She thought she had heard discreet whispers but--

A stage whisper draws Izzy's attention, and she looks down at the ground, to see a small crate with someone, ostensibly smaller, trapped inside. Just how many people were trapped in this warehouse situation? She slinks along the rafters quietly towards the crate below. She waits for relative silence before dropping down behind the crate that hid the small ones, the act of lowering herself profoundly easy given her exceptional height.

"What is uuup my fellow sleuths," Izzy whispers to the crew, winking at them all. She thinks about offering a hand to the floating sword for a handshake, but realizes they have no hands and that, in fact, Izzy is not quite sure where their face is, so she better not assume. An odd day, thus far.

"I dunno, kind of sounds like that guy's gettin' therapy." Izzy muses out loud, her own voice husged to keep them from being noticed. So far, her snooping had revealed something of a kidnapping scheme. She wondered if these were bandits holding people for ransom, or if something more nefarious was going on.

"I can get whoever's in the cage out first, just gimme a distraction. Subtle-like, though." She winks again, and then flicks the collar of her coat up[1]. Izzy suddenly becomes thin as six inches and tall as twelve feet, and slithers along the ground, suddenly snakelike and casting no profile or shadow, towards where the small person she could not quite see trapped in the cage was. Abnormally thin and spindly hands curl as she lifts her pics out of her pocket (how strange to hold a three dimensional object while you were currently existing in the second dimension) and starts to pick the lock on Hylltywyll's cage.

---

[1] Coat of the Red Rogue
[2] Lockpicking

Hylltywyll was jumping from one foot to the other, trying to keep them off of the floor of the cage as much as possible. Though it was cold to the touch to mostly anyone else, it felt to the Fairy like he was standing on a pan over a fire. If he had his little poncho, maybe he could have taken it off and used it to cover the floor to make being in this cage a lot less painful, but the jerks that captured him and shoved him into the damn thing had taken it away. Maybe they thought he could be hiding something in it that he could use to escape. Or maybe they just enjoyed making him have to do this stupid dance.

Either way, Hylltywyll was going to ruin them once he got out.

"Uh-huh, talk later, get me out of this thing now!" Hylltywyll whispered back to the talking dagger, his pain and discomfort exceedingly obvious as he flinched every time one of his feet touched the floor. A slight sizzling noise could even be heard if the group was close enough.

Then the big, lizardy lady came over. Finally, someone was going to unlock his cage. She just needed a distraction. These other guys could handle that, he was su- WHAT IN THE HELL?

The lizard lady suddenly got even weirder, stretching and thinning out until she was like some twelve-foot long worm. Hylltywyll almost stopped his jumping to just be baffled for a moment. Why? She was picking his lock, which he was happy about, but why? Why did she have to turn into a giant worm to do that? Well, some people must just have their ways. The chaos gremlin could understand having unconventional ways. This one was just a little more unconventional than he'd expected, even for him.

There is a pause of silence as Izzy becomes extremely thin and tall, and proceeds to slither on the ground towards the cage to free Hylltywyll. The group has seen many weird things on their travels, but this was a first for them; mouths agape and exchanging side glances at each other.

Lil Frijole shakes his head like he’s attempting to wake from a trance.

“Right, a distraction!” He whispers to himself. He looks around for anything that could cause a good enough amount of discord. He spots a box settled upon another slightly leaning off of it’s edge. “Oooh, looks like somebody’s out of a job!”

“Hey, you be careful now.”

“Try not to get caught, kiddo.”

He nods and turns to crawl away from the group; slinking his way through the dancing shadows casted by the torches.

A close call here and there, but he’s made his way to the aforementioned box.

“Don’t you worry, Pops. We’ll get you outta there before you can even say… Hang on, what does he say?”

Valz starts to wriggle on his face reminding him that this was no time to mess about.

“Oh, right.”

Lil frijole gives the box a shove just strong enough to get it to slowly tip over the edge. He uses that time to slink away back into the shadows to avoid detection.

A loud crash can be heard throughout the warehouse. The men all look back towards the sound, and they all look to one man in aggravation.

“Tony, are ya freakin’ kiddin’ me right now?! How many times do I gotta tell ya’s?!”

“But I made sure that it wouldn’t fall just like ya said, Boss!”

“Go check on it, ya clown!”

Tony’s shoulders droop and he slowly makes his way to the box, passing by Ulrich and Fred in the process. Fred offers him a shrug and Tony offers a sad nod.

The others seized this opportunity to take five. The sound of chatter began to fill the warehouse indicating that the distraction was a success.

Izzy, grinning like a loon (as was her custom) proceeded to deftly pick the lock of the curious looking... personnn?'s cage. They could speak in complete sentences so they were sapient, and in Izzy's book, that made you a person, no matter how much of a scary worm or a tiny gremlin or a talking dagger one appeared to be at any given moment.

That didn't stop her from gleefully relishing the disconcerted look that the subject of her rescue gave her. She had a method! A system! She couldn't expect just anyone to understand her proclivities. Such as they were.

Behind her, the sound of a crate crashing to the floor and the annoyed shouting from the other "workers" in the warehouse. Yeah, Tony, what the fuck? But it worked to her favour; with all the kerfuffle, there was plenty of noise to cover the less-than new hinges of the cage that held her new friend captive.

"This door opening brought to you by the extraordinary Issala Arodre," Izzy whispers as the latch binding the door closed pops free. Popping the person a little salute, she slithers backwards, the motion uncanny and deeply unsettling, as she makes her way under the eye-line of the shadows and back towards the unlikely group of people, wherein her shape changes back to her more typical form.

Finally! Hylltywyll didn't want to stay in that cage a second longer! As soon as the latch was unlocked, he jumped out of the cage, landing on his feet on the floor. He yelped in pain and fell onto his back, holding his feet in the air. The others could see that the bottoms of his little bird-like feet were completely blackened, as if they were horribly burnt.

Thankfully, outside of the cold iron cage, he could once again use his magic. Hylltywyll held a hand up toward his own feet and they became surrounded in a faint purple glow. The charred skin crumbled away as new skin rapidly grew, his feet healing in an instant. He let out a little sigh of relief as his feet stopped hurting, but his smile soon faded into a look of fury as he glanced toward the direction of the voices.

He'd make these people pay for capturing him and shoving him in that hellish cage! He'd find the one that put him in there personally and get some special revenge on him. He'd start with the one that was making his way away from the rest of the group.

Hylltywyll ran off, right over to the fallen stack of boxes that Lil' Frijole had knocked over. The guard walked around the stack of crates to inspect what had fallen and make sure nothing was damaged. When he spotted Hylltywyll, his eyes widened in panic.

"What the- Shit! It got out!" He called to the others and started to turn to run, but Hylltywyll was ready. With a snap of his finger, a wall made of a dull purple light suddenly appeared right in front of the man who ran straight into it and bounced off of it, falling flat on his behind. Hylltywyll scurried forward, placing a hand on the ground behind him. He looked back at the Fairy in fear as the shadow below him expanded into a perfect circle of pitch black and suddenly the floor was gone, leaving a hole in its place.

He fell down into the hole. It wasn't that deep, only a couple of feet, so he wasn't injured from the fall. Still, he looked back at the Fairy and pleaded.

"Wait, please!"

Hylltywyll didn't listen, waving his hand to the side. The shadows at the edges of the hole shrank, the floor reappearing again, until it closed in on the man sitting inside the hole. The floor filled back in, leaving him trapped from the chest down, buried in the stone floor.

Hylltywyll looked toward the remaining guards, still furious and ready to get some payback.

---

Major Healing
Wall of Light
Create Door

“You know, whatever you just did there was a bit unsettling. It was very efficient though so I can’t argue with your methods.”

“It was absolutely brilliant! I wish that I’d known about a spell like that back when I wasn’t a piece of metal.”

Lil Frijole crawls up to the group from the shadows, happy that the distraction was a success. “Yeah, that was a bit weird, but it’s been a weird day.” The shouts of the others inside the warehouse draws his attention from the group. He peeks over the crate they’re using to conceal themselves along with Aella. “So how’d it go with gettin’ th—” He couldn’t finish his question as he was interrupted by the sounds of panic. The rest of the group peeks over the top of the crate.

They spot Hylltywyll looking over one of the guards, Tony, as the floor closes around his chest. A look of concern finds itself upon their faces.

“Uhh, are we sure lettin’ him out wasn’t a bad idea?”

“Don’t worry about it! Hylltywyll is just a little mischievous, that’s all!”

The group all turn to look at Alvis, and the dagger turns as if looking to each one of them.

“What?”

——————

The remaining guards scramble to their feet hearing Tony’s panicked words. They’re met with the sight of Hylltywyll standing over their comrade; stuck inside the floor up to his chest. He’s flailing his arms around in sheer panic.

“Why you little— Get ‘im boys!” The Boss commands.

And they charge the little fairy.

——————

Ulrich and Fred exchange glances as the commotion starts. Fred is unsure of what to do at this point. He’s been doing his job in watching the prisoner, but he’s also found that he’s a pretty nice guy. He’s conflicted. Should he use the situation as means to set him free or not? They can hear one of the guards tell another to check on him and the prisoner.

“Ah damn, what the hell am I s’posed to do?!” Fred says to himself.

Another one of the guards appears and looks at Fred, “Let’s get take care of this idiot! He’s seen too much ! We can’t let him get away!” The guard grabs Ulrich by the collar and yanks him up onto his feet.

Fred stands there hesitantly, and then he spots something odd. Something was left behind on the floor where Ulrich was sat leaning against the beam, and it seems the other guard has noticed it too. Is that the rope they used to bind him?!

Fred looks back up to see Ulrich holding his hands up in an almost comedic fashion. A look of confusion permeate the two guards’ faces.

“Sorry bud,” Ulrich says. In a series of swift movements, Ulrich grabs a hold of the guard’s wrist, and delivers a number of strikes to the man’s face in quick succession. The guard’s grip loosens on Ulrich’s collar, and he drops to the ground unconscious. “Well, that takes care of him.”

Fred stares in disbelief at what just unfolded in front of him.

“You could fight like that the whole time? Why the hell did you let us take you prisoner so easily?”

“Martial Arts is a game of deception, Fred.” Ulrich was bouncing on his toes now; stretching his muscles to ready himself for the fight going on in the warehouse. “Your opponent doesn’t know what you can do, and you should keep it that way.”

Fred stammers, his words caught in the back of his throat.

“Fred, throw yourself onto one of those crates and act knocked out.”

“What?”

“If you act like I knocked you out then they won’t suspect anything from you.”

Fred hesitates, but eventually nods in agreement. He throws himself back onto one of the crates, smashing it underneath him.

“Get yourself and your family out of here, Fred. You have a choice to be better.”

Fred watches through squinted eyes as Ulrich runs off to join the fight elsewhere in the warehouse.

——————

The group’s jaws drop as the watch Ulrich dispatch one of the guards and convince the other to throw himself back into a crate.

“Ya gotta be kiddin’ me! Pops had it handled the whole time?!” Lil Frijole exclaims.

“Sometimes I wonder if our dear Ulrich does things like this just because he thinks it’s funny.”

“I’m inclined to agree. This happens to him too often for it to be a coincidence.”

And they all give a collective sigh.

"Alright lil guy, so what do you think we sh--" Izzy cuts herself off, as a casual turn of her head follows the near-silent pitter patter of bird-like feet away from the group, at a dead run to one of the members of whatever press-gang this was who's back was turned.

Her brows lift, impressed as the little... creature wreaks absolute havoc on their situation, sending a man pleading for mercy to the shadow realm (to Izzy's eye, that was how it looked anyway) and turn their fury on the guards around them. So. There was a reason for the big heavy iron cage, then. Izzy was even more glad, then, that she had freed this tiny hellion. They were a kindred spirit!

--It's not until the guy she had seen tied up suddenly breaks his bonds and tosses a man in a crate, and the other gaurds start to rush the gremlin, that all hell breaks loose, and Izzy realizes something very key.

"AUGH! MY EVIDENCE!"

The chaos, the destruction! Normally, that was precisely what she liked to be a part of, but not when it compromised her gathering of information! She still had to get paid, dang it!

She scrambles towards crates and tables, searching for papers, documents, folders, whatever she could get her hands on and shoving them haphazardly into her leathers. Most of them probably have nothing to do with anything, but it would, hopefully, be enough to at least give them some information as to what was going on here... before it all went sideways. She could hear it now. Sorry, Client, it wasn't my fault, it was a gremlin and a floating dagger, and a behir with a sick mustache and some guy who was only pretending to be tied up. I just HAPPENED to be there.

...Yeah, they probably wouldn't buy that, but that was exactly why Izzy needed to get involved.

Out of the corner of her eye, one of the guards along the back wall starts to channel their arcane energy, pointing it at the convergence point where both the Gremlin (affectionate) and the Guy with his Retinue were located, in an attempt to hit everyone in one fell swoop.

"Hey-HEY," Izzy throws her own hand out, her magic negating[1] the energy as it channeled through the guard's arms and stopping the spell dead. She points at him from across the room, her free hand still stuffing papers into her shirt. "NO! No. Bad guard."

---

[1] Counterspell

Hylltywyll growled, his hands on the ground in a stance like an angry cat with his back arched and his fur raised. He paid no attention to Ulrich simply escaping from his bonds like they hadn't even been there in the first place or Izzy's frustration with the unfolding situation. He was entirely focused on the men in front of him that had shoved him into that iron box to suffer from his feet burning and his magic being cut off.

His eyes snapped to the man who had begun channeling magic, the Fairy instantly sensing the spell being cast and the magic in the air. He knew exactly what the man had planned and was about to make his own move to stop him when he sensed the big lizard lady also start to channel magic, her spell to cancel the man's magic readable to him as easily as words in front of someone who was literate. He'd just let her handle it then. Fine by him, that just let him focus on his payback.

In a flash of smoke-like darkness, Hylltywyll suddenly vanished to the confusion of everyone who had been approaching him, weapons in hand. They all looked around in confusion, trying to spot him wherever he'd disappeared to, when suddenly all of their weapons disappeared in the same way, a puff of shadow dissipating around each of their hands.

"What the-" One began, but he stopped as Hylltywyll dropped down from above onto his head and scratched at his face for a moment before leaping off and scampering into the shadows between some stacked crates. The man didn't have time to recover from the sneak attack at all. He let out a startled shout as he realized he was floating in the air as if gravity had stopped affecting him.

The others didn't even know how to react to the chaos, now just looking around in panic, defenseless without their weapons and with no idea where the next sneak attack from the Fairy might come from.

---

Expanded Mind
Blink
Disarming Aura
Fairy Dust

Ulrich joined together with his group of companions; Lil Frijole tackling him and Aella aggressively hugging his cheek.

"Yo Pops, we were worried about you! If you weren't in any trouble why didn't you do anything?!" Lil Frijole asks a bit irritated.

Aella agrees with the young behir; shaking her head up and down with an energy matching his own.

Ulrich offers them a nervous chuckle and throwing up his hands in defense of his actions. "Haha, well, I'll tell you why later!" Their reunion is short lived as more of the goons notice that Ulrich's broken out of his bonds. They begin to charge at the group, weapons drawn.

"Lil Frijole, Aella! You two remember what I taught you about defending yourselves, right?!"

The both of them nod quickly to Ulrich.

"Good! Alvis and Xavier—"

The two floating weapons suddenly appear beside him on either side.

"You rang?"

"You called?"

"Keep these two company and watch their backs."

With that the group readies themselves as the goons close the distance. The groups finally clash with the sounds of metal against metal. Ulrich catches a goon's arm as they attempt to swing their sword down at him. The goon can be heard screaming as he flails through the air crashing into a beam. Two more goons run past Ulrich towards the others; one of them stopped by Alvis as he clashes against their blade, and the other goes to charge at Lil Frijole and Aella. 

The young Behir rears himself back, lightning dancing it's way out with a growl through of his bared teeth. The goon readies his knife for an attack, but his attention on the Behir is interrupted by some sort of flying creature; a Pixie! He follows the little creature with his eyes in confusion, and Aella takes the opportunity to spring her attack on him. She suddenly jerks forward, pokes him in the eyes! The goon's head flies back as he screams from the sudden pain! Lil Frijole springs forward; jaws clamping down on the forearm connected to the hand gripping the knife. It clangs to the floor as the goon loses his grip; flailing his arm with a Behir clamped down onto it!

Ulrich spares a quick look back over his shoulder to see that the two young ones are handling themselves just fine. He has time to smile proudly for a quick second before he ducks down out of the way of a club intended for his head. The goon's momentum causes him to overshoot his strike with no time to correct his posture. Ulrich delivers two quick blows to his stomach causing him to double over, a quick strike to the goon's chin sends him flying upward onto his back. Another goon takes the chance to charge, but he's knocked out cold by the heel of Ulrich's boot as he delivers a devastating spinning back kick to his temple!

"I don't think so, Lad!" Alvis says as he pushes back against the goon from earlier.

The goon steps back in an attempt to correct his stance. He was surprised at the force a floating dagger could exert against him.

"Oh, and don't forget about me, young man!" A voice calls out from above him.

The goon looks up to see a toy hammer barreling down onto the top of his head. All he hears is the squeak of contact before he feels a a great gust of wind¹ push his head down slamming into the floor!

The remaining goon manages to shake Lil Frijole off of his arm, but as the Behir flies through the air; he whips his tail at the goon's face. He manages to make solid contact with the man's jaw causing his body to go limp and fall headfirst to the floor.

"Well done everyone! So what's th—" Ulrich is interrupted by the sound of panicked shouting from one of the goons elsewhere in the warehouse. He looks to see a man floating into the air; an expression of horror etched across his face. "What the— who else is here?" He turning back to the group; pointing his thumb back over his shoulder towards the floating man.

"Ah yes, that would be Hylltywyll."

"And a cool snake lady that can flatten herself!"

"Quite unsettling, that one."

Ulrich looks around at the group with a puzzled look, "Wait, Hylltywyll is here? And what snake lady that can flatten herself?"

---

1. Gust Thrust

Though the little... creature... hardly seemed to need her help at all. The wya they bound around the area of combat, even in the midst of the chaos, was nothing short of impressive, effortlessly dealing with the people who had captured them. The same could easily be said for the other guy, with his entourage of talking objects and a mustache wearing Behir. He was no slouch either, she observes, as he kicks a man in the temple, before deviating to speak to his cohorts.

It was such a perfect introduction, she could hardly pass up the opportunity.

With that, she alights on her feet with a bounce, the tip of her rapier drawing lazy circles in one hand as she walks over, her shirt absolutely stuffed full of papers.


"That," she all but purrs as a grin splits wide across her face, flashing all of her sharp teeth at the man who had, apparently, only been pretending to be tied up. "Would be ya girl~. Issala Arodre, private investigator extraordinare and OOP--" She cuts herself off, ducking down to avoid a knife being hurled at her head by one of these cave-dwelling bandits. "DO YOU MIND, I'm tryna be COOL over here!" She unfurls her whip and lashes out with it, cracking against the person's hand as they go for another knife to fling in her direction. It wraps securely around their wrist, and with a twitch of the handle, the captured foe goes flying with a yelp of surprise, straight into a wall of crates that splinter and shatter.

"They're just so needy, you know?" The tall fellblood cackles with glee as her eyes alight on the struggling man as he floats in mid-air. "A balloon! How festive."

The chaos in the crowd continued as the little Fairy kept up hit and run tactics. With their weapons vanished, the criminals had little options to counterattack whenever Hylltywyll ran past than to try and punch or kick him, but he was a small and easy to miss target, especially when he was scurrying around.

It only became even more difficult to try and catch him when a cloud of darkness like whisps of ink in water started floating above them, casting a large shadow on the entire area. In the dark, Hylltywyll was almost invisible and completely silent. One of the criminals suddenly felt his pants tugged down around his ankles. Another one felt a hit to the back of his knee with something and fell to one knee. Another hit to the back of his head had him lying facedown on the ground.

The crowd grew more and more panicked by the second, looking around, trying to find where the little menace was and who it would strike next. They were unaware that their panic was being heightened by Hylltywyll's magic. They were also unaware that most of them were now missing their coin purses, along with any shiny things they had in their pockets.

Another guard fell to the ground clutching his knee.

---

Overcast
One With the Shadows
Pass Without a Trace
Foreboding Presence
A metal pipe Hyll found