Going to market

[gale_force]

Gale did not expect it to be raining. Weather proceeds as usual, apparently, even if life does not. Through the wet smack of raindrops, he can barely hear the sea breathing a few blocks away. The dust from the millions of bodies, trees, plants, and animals seeded the clouds and dragged down moisture from the sea. The precipitation has turned the

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[gale_force]

A few spikes of earth pierce all the way through the rival Atma, and Vayu arches his torso out of the way, still managing to keep his jaws clamped tight and his feet firmly planted. The demon keeps struggling for a few moments, doing more damage to itself on the spines of rock. The movements finally slow, and the demon slumps back, blood crawling outward across the floor. Vayu holds his position until then. The nostrils on his chin flare to take in full breaths of the pungent smell of fresh Atma blood. Saliva creeps from his mouth in strings.

He's only half-aware of the sound of others approaching as he begins dismembering their shared kill (which Vayu considers entirely his, thank you.) The famished demon is choking down a hunk of arm when the second wave of rogue Tuners comes into his view down the tunnel. His sense of sight is poor down here, still as the air is, but so long as the demons keep moving, they're easy to spot

[gale_force]

The entirety of Vayu's concentration is keeping that stranglehold on Prithivi's air supply. It takes a lot of energy to stop even a lungful of molecules from moving; it's like trying to hold water in cupped palms and not spill a single drop. Easier by far to invoke violent gales with a simple push

[teradyne]

Prithivi doesn't seem to realize that any of her hits connected. She's too busy sucking in air, once Vayu releases his hold on her lungs. After all of that, the demon half finally sinks away from Argilla, too battered to offer much of a resistance.

The change of minds is obvious, as Prithivi wavers before crashing to the ground in a spray of dust, mud, and more sand. One can hear Argilla's tone underneath the gasps, if they strain to listen. Her voice becomes a lot more obvious as the demon twitches in the ground, and lets out a pained whimper as a collection of lines spreads over her. Her legs and arms spasm as the pink light reaches them, and it feels like someone is rubbing grit into the raw and bleeding parts of her skin.

After a moment, Argilla is aware of a dull throbbing in her left arm. She blinks when she realizes she can clearly see it...And a long stretch of dark tan hexagons that have climbed from her collarbone and onto it.

[gale_force]

Vayu's lead lolls in a few last shivering attempts at resistance before he sinks to the ground completely; the agony of the transformation makes it almost impossible to keep his feet. His now-human body is beset with the pins-and-needles sensation of his nerves reorganizing and his limbs are heavy, numb, and almost entirely unresponsive. Vayu's injuries are a deep ache beneath it all.

Back hunched against the wall, Gale takes in his surroundings. It goes without saying that the tunnel looks drastically different with Prithivi's modifications. He coughs raggedly as the smoke from the still-smoldering wreckage drifts over.

His eyes wander over to his sniper comrade, reassuring himself that she's still alive and moving. "Argilla?"

[teradyne]

"Alive, still." Comes the response, although she certainly doesn't sound very good. Her arm throbs in time to her heartbeat, and the pounding in her head. She goes from her side to laying on her back, trying to get her lungs to open up more, and take deeper breaths without coughing.

Her entire body complains as she rolls over; rocks dig into her, and her muscles tell her about every little hurt and bits of phantom pain she had to endure in that fight.

"Do...You mind telling me what just happened?" She forces herself to stare at the ceiling, instead of her arm, or the figure she could see slumped just a little further over, against the wall.

[gale_force]

There comes another coughing fit, muffled into his shoulder. Gale slowly flexes his muscles, making a slow fist with either hand to help his body remember how to move. A sharp pain registers along the top of his head. Superficial, not like a headache.

"I lost control," he says weakly, assuming that he was the only one of the two to do so. "Were you hurt?"

He manages an awkward, kneeling crawl closer to Argilla. Shards of brick on the floor dig into his hands and knees.

[teradyne]

"A bit...Nothing that I can't walk off, though." So says the sniper who is still laying on the ground. She'll be getting up in her own time...Which will be once she's sure she can stand without doubling over, gasping for air. Her voice sounds raspy, testament to how her lungs are feeling.

"We both lost control of the Atma...I should probably be thanking Vayu for that attack. I don't think I would've been able to change back if it didn't happen..." She'd actually laugh at that, if it didn't hurt so much.

Her arms shake as she tries to prop herself up on them, to look over at Gale. She finds herself putting more weight on the left one, which holds up despite the pulsing feeling in her skin. She reaches over to gingerly touch the skin, looking at the new mottled pattern on it.

"I don't think that-" Whatever she says gets lost when she looks up as Gale comes closer, and she can't keep herself from flinching backward.

Please, please let what she's seeing just be the result of a tired, overworked imagination.

[gale_force]

"Either way, that was far too close."

He glances down, not seeing anything out of the ordinary about his person that would elicit Argilla's reaction. There is, however, his face. Fingers rise up to his forehead, and instead of the flat plane of flesh he expected, he feels a series of vertical lumps which define a zig-zag pattern. A dead give-away.

Luckily, the teeth stop at his eyebrows, and they don't seem ready to open anytime soon. That is, as far as he can tell, his skull is still intact. The teeth are just . . . extra, like the blue arms he had several weeks ago. Purely cosmetic.

He sighs. "Harmless. It should disappear after a while. Hopefully yours will, too." He nods at her markings.

A hand fishes around in his pocket to pull out his PINpoint. It's still ticking off their proximity to the portal. "Once you feel up to walking, we really should leave. No telling how many more Atma might be attracted by the smoke."

[teradyne]

Her stomach does a slow, quiet flip when she sees Gale touch his face; it's not just her imagination, then. Although his reaction is a bit reassuring; it keeps her from scrambling back even further, at the least.

She manages a nod, and slowly starts to climb to her feet.

"I won't disagree with that." Her eyes flicker over to where the half eaten carcass of the first demon is laying in the tunnel. "There might be more coming, if they can smell that." More reason not to stay around. "I think I can manage, if we don't go too quickly." To prove it, she takes a step forward.

"You're certain you're fine? I heard you...Screaming. Before, when we were about to fight."

[gale_force]

He can't remember the screaming part. Probably for the better; he hates the idea of seeming weak, especially since it's becoming a recurring theme in the past months. "That . . . was just a moment of pain during the shift. It has passed. I should be fine after some rest."

He offers his arm. He's not any less wobbly, but maybe they're better off being wobbly together. "Need some help?"

[teradyne]

Argilla, on the other hand, doesn't have much of a problem with excess emotions and expressing them. (Then again, she never has considered them 'weak' in the first place.)

"I...Help would be appreciated." She takes the offered arm, but tries not to lean too heavily on him; she can remember a certain time back in Muladhara when she was practically carried back, and doesn't want a repeat of that. Especially if there isn't a Sera around to help either of them.

"If you say. But...That didn't feel right, at least for me. Changing has sometimes hurt, but never like that." Talking is good right now; it's a welcome distraction from how sore she feels.

[gale_force]

As they navigate over the shattered structures and earth, he continues to be amazed at just how much damage they managed to do. Another argument against the use of the Atma; especially when they happen to be starving. Just how bad must the situation be in Karma City if this was the work of only five?

"I believe it comes back to the lack of control, the hunger . . . all of the other symptoms. Something is definitely changing, Argilla, and not for the better. I have no idea what will come of this."

They come upon the living space from before. The wall Gale had touched just prior to the fight is now crumbled into a pile of its constituent bricks and mortar. It was concealing a heavy door made of ancient wood and rusty hinges.

A check of his PINpoint confirms that this is definitely the portal. "We were so close . . ."

[teradyne]

He can probably feel her hand tighten around his arm, clenching into a tight fist. A lot of the strength in her body goes out as she listens to him, and the only thing that keeps her from completely leaning on him is that it would put her too close to those teeth.

"W-we have to do something about this..." Deep breaths aren't doing anything for her voice; it's determined to be shaky, and make her tone waver.

She slumps forward when she sees the door, realizing what they could have avoided if they'd just moved forward a little further.

"...I just want to go back now. Get our strength back, and think."

[gale_force]

"We will do something about this . . . somehow. We are the Embryon, after all." He tries to infuse his voice with a note of encouragement, in spite of the uncertainty that's eating away at him.

With a grunt, he breaks the latch from its covering of rust, and pushes the handle inward to be greeted by the sound of the milling crowds of the Nexus. It feels like he just walked off of a movie set, and into the bustling backstage. Funny, no, tragic to think that the refugees were huddled right next to this -- a deus ex machina escape route if ever there was one.

Gale swings the door closed behind them, and takes a moment to grab a "CAUTION: Dangerous Portal! Marked for assessment and sealing!" sign from a handy "Nexus Safety" kiosk and tacks it firmly on the door.

That done, he fiddles with his PINpoint again to pull up the coordinates to Mayfair.