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"Just a reminder, if you're being held at gunpoint by a Van Pelt lookalike, you're probably safe to write it off as a bluff until Spring's over!" Johnnie calls up into the living area as she emerges from her Cave of Wonders (also more commonly known as Her Room) via the basement stairs, wrapped up in her longcoat and rubbing sleep from her eyes.
"Hmgh?"
Teagan fell asleep on the couch last night, coming home late from wherever it is that Teagans go. They're laying face-down on the couch, topless and in boxers, with a blanket draped over them. The Mirrorskin has a pillow shoved under their head, held in place by their right arm, and their left hand is wrapped around the handle of Baby, the blade laying on the ground next to the couch as their arm drapes down to it. "MMrrrghhhff."
Sigrun's truck pulls up outside, which means her two week duty stint is over. Garm leaps out of the back once the truck is stopped and starts barking and wagging his tail furiously at the prospect of licking all the faces at THIS house now that he's done licking all the firefighters. Sigrun rolls out of the truck and pulls her duffel out of the truck bed, slinging it over her back as she leads her dog up the steps, knocks to announce her return, and shoulders in through the front door after some key fiddling. She drops her gear near the front door, gets Garm inside, and shuts the door behind her with a bump of her hip. "Mom's home!"
June pokes her head out of the kitchen at the sudden sounds of people stirring and moving about, then emerges herself. She's in pajamas, which at this time of year means a pair of sleep shorts and a tank top, and her hair is in french braided pigtails along either side of her head. "Johnnie! Sigrun!" she exclaims happily. "Please don't call yourself mom, that makes me feel really weird about wanting to jump your bones. What's this about Van Pelt lookalikes?"
Tegan is most easily accessible and as such the first recipient of a smooch and a belly pat. Then June, with the pat swapped for an enthusiastic hug, and same for Sigrun and Garm, though the latter gets more of a "hug and craned neck to avoid face licks" than the others.
"I dunno, Mom has its upsides too- though not any worth putting you out. And- I've got an answer to the Van Pelt thing but it's heavy and maybe not great as a conversation starter for Sig's first day home. I voluntarily table that 'til a more appropriate moment."
"If that's your kink," mumbles Teagan, yawning big, rolling up to a sitting position and scratching underneath their right boob. Rolling up to their bare feet, they rest Baby gently on the coffee table. The kiss from Johnnie gets returned, and then they scoop up Sigrun first since Johnnie's saying hello to June. Up off her feet, spun, and smooched, as a Sigrun deserves. Then June. This is how a Teagan does, even barely awake.
"No, we talk about important things," yawns Teagan. "Coffee, conversation."
Sigrun returns the smooch with a smile and a laugh, copping a handful of a posteriori reasoning in the process. Then she starts to make her own rounds, heading over to June and Johnny to offer her hellos in the forms of hugs and smooches all around. Once she's taken the time to offer proper greetings to all and sundry, only then does she head into the kitchen to fetch a mead from the fridge, pour some food into Garm's bowl, and begin her time off from work in earnest. Two weeks on, two weeks off? It's a pretty sweet way to make 75k a year, honestly. She takes off her PFD ballcap and spins it across the room, towards the hearth, then flops down onto the couch with her drink, gusting out a mighty sigh. "Okay. You can jump my bones now, June. I'm holding still."
June returns the hug with similar enthusiasm, and then proceeds toward Sigrun and Teagan while Johnnie is greeting Garm. "I actually just started coffee a few minutes ago," she says as she puts her arms around Sigrun to give a tight squeeze, smooches, and then moves on to do the same for Teagan. When Sigrun finishes all the other tasks and flops onto the couch, June climbs onto her lap and nestles close. "How's everything at work?" she asks.
Johnnie meanders back over towards Teagan while June clambers into Sig's lap, glancing briefly off in... some direction, a specific one, for the second or third time since she's come upstairs. "We do, yes- but perhaps at times," she hazards quietly, "-that don't involve interrupting moments such as these?" These moments, of course, being snuggly Junes and relaxing Sigs. "I've kept a bead on. We can afford a little wait, I think."
After being butt-grabbed and snuggled and smooched hello, the Mirrorskin scoops up their tank top and pulls it over their head before going to fetch themself some coffee.
Returning with a mug mostly filled with half and half but also some coffee, Teagan shuffles to sit down next to Sigrun and flop their head on her shoulder. "I'm gonna kick you in the ankle if you don't just explain to June and Sigrun about the fucking Huntsman that is after you, Johnnie. If you think our family can't snuggle and also talk about murder, you don't know us as well as you think you do."
"Wait. What?" Sigrun perks her head up at the mention of a Huntsman out on the prowl for one of her Motleymates. "I'm going to kick you in the ankle with my axe if you don't sit down and explain matters." She says this while peering over the back of the couch with a squint in Johnnie's direction. "Sit your doopa down and out with it." Sigrun tilts back her mead for a nip, rather than a guzzle. Sobriety is typically beneficial to discussing impending doom.
"Wait. What?" June says at the same time as Sigrun. "I'm going to kick you in the ankle too. I hope you brought some spare ankles, because if you don't start talking you're going to need them." She stops snuggling quite so aggressively and turns her attention on Johnnie as she says this all. "You've got some explaining to do!"
"Nope, nonono, nope, I have a doctor's note to avoid future ankle kicking, via appendage or appendage proxy, specifically, to avoid complications from-" Johnnie looks between the collected, and rapidly course corrects to melt down onto the couch with ankles tucked firmly beneath her. "So good news, it's Spring, so this dashing gentleman- the Viscount of Victims and Villainy- isn't able to go after anyone of us besides me, which Teagan has ideas on how to exploit. But apparently something like ten years of self improvement has made my old Keeper decide I'm the one They want back, well and truly." She clears her throat, appending, "It may also be my failure to stay the monstrous, predatory bounty hunter I was before I got freed, every other escapee from The Den I met was one step short of "menace to society" at best. But apparently the Viscount is well acquainted with high caliber rifles- as a result of which I am unpleasantly well acquainted with high caliber bullets- and so I've been tracking him- Relentlessly, ahaha, you get it- to give myself a heads up if he ever tries to set up another sniper blind nearby."
"Which about brings everyone up to date!"
Clearly Teagan has heard some, or all of this before, on account of Johnnie saying they have ideas on how to exploit Spring. They stay curled up to Sigrun and sip their coffee, listening. "Huntsmen just come back, which is ... fucking annoying. I want... to put a machete in his head, but that won't help."
"And we're not out there right now having a boot party for this asshole why?" Sigrun looks from face to face to face in genuine question. Surely there is a compelling reason why they're not capitalizing on the season for murder purposes. "I can go change. I'll have to do without my token, but I've got other shields I can use. And, yeah. They come back. Eventually. They always come back eventually. Even if we get this one's heart and undo it all, there'll be another one eventually. Just got to make each death progressively more terrible and painful until the thing decides to go hunt something else." Sigrun then suggests with a bright chirp, "Ooh! Blood eagle! Has this guy ever killed a king, you think?"
"Okay, so what are we going to do about it," June asks, looking between her motley members. "If they keep coming back, perhaps we could just entomb it somewhere so that it can't get out? Or is there some other way to stop them from coming? I've never had to deal with one directly before, really."
"I mean, don't get me wrong, I like the idea of taking the hunt to him as much as anyone-" Possibly more, as Johnnie's never once been the sort to turn down a chance to Hunt something new. "-but at the end of the day, a short solution may turn out worse than settling a long-term one while it's still Spring. If we kill it, and it comes back some other month, it has a lot of other targets that open up. Spring forces it to deal with me and only me as far as the Lost go. It can't threaten you all because it can't harm you all. So if we can get its heart and broker a deal to get it well and gone, that's likely a better resolution. That's been the thinking, at least."
"And - I doubt it? The sort of folx that come back from the Den aren't exactly the sort likely to get themselves crowned. We're either monsters made from previous victims, or martyrs made from previous predators. Or- I should say my chunk wasn't likely to yield royalty. Maybe there was a more socially monstrous district above ground. I dunno."
"Yeah. The big thing was the threats against humans that the fuckstick made. Humans aren't protected by the Bargain, so, like. It set some terms on Johnnie, which I deeply dislike, but... " Teagan scratches their cheek. "I was thinking about ways to make it difficult or undesirable for it to attack Johnnie, so that she can work on finding where its heart is, and we can get that before Summer, and get it gone for good."
"If we can't do that, then all we have to do is get it to throw the first punch, and we'll get a rest from it either way."
If this motley can't kill a Huntsman, after all... who can?
"If it starts murdering people, I am not going to want to sit around idle and wait for an ideal solution, I'll take the expedient one. I'm not going to sit on my hands while that thing racks up a body count, all to keep my neck off a block. That's not who I am." To put it mildly. Sigrun's expression has gone less warm and welcoming and more steeled and resolute. Let the record show she's prone to rather drastic changes to her life for the sake of humanity. "So. Let's get on the job and try to resolve this Johnnie's way with the time we've got. How did that snippet of Icelandic text you found tie in to all of this, exactly?"
"Likewise," June agrees with Sigrun. "If it's making threats about humans, then we need to stop it before it can make good on those threats." She slides to her feet and heads toward the kitchen in search of some coffee of her own. "So where are we going to start?"
"Oh, I really don't think that'll happen. It's well aware that if it breaks the bargain, I'm liable to take a nice sabbatical in the Shadow and leave it utterly unable to complete its one driving task while I enjoy Slumberwell preserves on scones for the next- however long it takes for it to get bored. The threat's only that it'll start picking off mortals if I go someplace it can't follow. It wants a fair game, and forgive me my ego, but I feel like I'm capable of giving it one at least 'til Spring closes out."
"Oh, the text hasn't a thing to do with the Viscount. The text was something I found where one of the Helldivers was fought. I found a battered raven's feather; a chip off Glitch's sword; and a scrap of Parchment I-" She pauses and snickers to herself. "- that I hamburger'd back to the full page it came from."
A page she produces from an inside pocket of her coat, setting the page of parchment before Sigrun. "It's your writing. I'm not sure what it says, or means, but I mean-" She gestures towards the fridge, to one of many notes stating who owns the mead and who isn't allowed to have any. "-I know SigScript when I see it."
She glances to June, too, adding, "I'd -like- to find its Heart and make a deal. Like Sig said, we definitely have other options, but that one keeps everyone safest the longest. It's also the trickiest, but since when have any of us shied away from challenge?" She grins. "That means our starting point is finding the Bastion with the Heart. Which... I don't even know how to get started. I'm gonna ask Lux. Dreams're their thing."
Teagan falls silent for a moment, because they haven't heard the bit about the piece of paper. They do mouth the word 'hamburger'd' and wrinkle up their forehead. "Lux is good like that," they agree absently. "I have an idea about how to make it ... difficult... for it to go after Johnnie in the meantime."
What Johnnie has? A small square of thick paper, almost parchment, with an incomplete text on it, as if the bits of verse flowed from one page to the next, and some of the verse is on the page before, and some on the page after. The piece of paper is about 4" by 4" and written in a careful, beautiful script by that handwriting all of them know so well. Sigrun especially, because it's hers:
ef þú vilt sigr hafa, ok rísta á hjalti hjörs, sumar á véttrimum, sumar á valböstum,
"It's Icelandic, from the Poetic Eddas. The tale of Sigurd and the Dragon Fafnir. And his journey to the hilltop shield fort. Where he encounters Sigdrifa, one of my sisters, who teaches him the runes. The Tiwaz and the Sigrun. This translates to 'Winning-runes learn, if you long to win, and the runes on your sword-hilt write; some on the furrow, and some on the flat.' It's why my makers mark is the Tripled Tiwaz. And why my name is Sigrun. This is the story that made me." Sigrun's words, and choice of the term made is pretty conspicuous. She might just mean literally. "And this is my handwriting, though I do not remember transcribing the Eddas onto parchment. Ever."
"Old one eye keeps ravens. His huntsman's heralds are Huginn and Muninn. It's possible this came from my durance. And it's possible I might have another icon out there, if this is just ... lying about, and in the hands of Helldivers." Sigrun glances Johnnie's way after some more lengthy consideration of the snippet, "Did you try using Relentless Pursuit on this paper?"
June comes back with her coffee and sits down on the ground by Teagan's feet. "If it's something from your Durance, it's no real wonder if you don't remember it, right? So that would make sense." She doesn't have a lot to offer at the moment, so she falls into quietly sipping her coffee while the others discuss the paper.
Johnnie catches Teagan's response and offers, "First time I met one of the local wizards, I turned a scrap of hamburger into a full burger for them to munch before I knew the fox I was talking to was a Mage. So." The term hamburger'd. "Do you wanna share your idea to render me significantly less assailable with our ladies?"
"... hrm. No, I haven't tried to track the document as a whole, I wanted more information, but- it does beg an inverse question. Perhaps the reason they had this parchment was to give them a way to hunt you specifically? Is there any chance they're from Old One Eye's realm? Or- no, it's definitely at least possible they've been sent after you, even if just on loan and not residents."
A glance to June, nodding along- it does make sense if she can't recall, considering, after all. June's got the right of that.
"One Eye wasn't big into Helldivers. He was one of those 'too clever by half' sorts. Send out the old cloaked wanderer, visit the markets and slavers, make bargains with the mortals. But he did have them, and he did use them. Most of what we termed as his loyalists were just his helldivers viking here in Midgard for fresh meat for the mill." Sigrun has yet to touch the paper, keeping her arms folded up snug across her middle to keep her hands from wandering near it when she's not thinking about it. The desire to do so must be palpable. "It's quite possible, yes. That I was being tracked. It's Spring, after all. Perhaps Old One Eye wants me bad after all."
She turns about slowly, however, and states manner of factly, "One thing at a time, though. I've not seen any ravens tracking me. So I'm going to assume there aren't any, and we'll deal with your more manifest problem first. This is just a curiosity at the moment." It's wishful thinking, but it's also typical Sigrun. Not looking too hard at a threat to her safety so she can focus on someone else's.
"Hunh." And that is all Teagan has to say about the term hamburger'd. "Right on."
"Uh, yeah, once Sigrun is done thinking about the thing, I do have an idea." And coffee, more of it. But then they comment, "But we found Sturm's dog in October, didn't we? Who knows if Fartface McGillicutty sent a pre-declaration to Owlbutt O'GoblinDebt." Okay then, Teagan.
"Yeah, so, my thinking is, we can probably engage like... someone is who better with computers, 'cause the Freehold has a bunch of them, and like... make Johnnie into a Social Media Thing. It'll be easy enough to disappear that and make a big Mystery about it later. That will mean that when like... Johnnie's in public, there will be people watching, it'll put up more difficulty in The Viscount of Sloppy Masturbation attacking her, because the bargain only works if it doesn't hurt humans, right?"
"Small problem in that Johnnie sucks at being in public or on camera, but, like, if only we had someone who was real good at it but hated being on camera with their own face, amirite?"(edited)
"That sort of deception might not work with a skilled hunter like our quarry. Doubtless it also knows Relentless Pursuit, and if it verifies its target before it pulls the trigger, it'll know you aren't Johnnie. Unless you were talking about you just doing the social media stuff and making sure Johnny remains Johnny for if we spring a trap, or whatever." Sigrun looks back to the slip of paper, rubs her arms a bit with her hands, and then turns away from it fully to walk back to the couch and sink back into it. Her mead's been barely touched. Relative to her quaffing standards, anyway. She's not on her third bottle, in any case.
June blinks a little bit at Teagan's explanation of what they think the Motley should do, looking a bit like she didn't quite follow it at first. "It could work, with the caveats that Sigrun just started in mind," she agrees, after a sip of her coffee.
"Mm-mm," Johnnie murrs, undoing a couple buckles and laying out a heavy, birch-bound manuscript on the table, flipping it open and turning the brilliant, Autumnal leafpages towards Sigrun. "That's the one thing they can't do- no Huntsman can learn a contract because they cannot, themselves, swear bargains. Not without their hearts, and if they had their heart, they would be going back to wherever it is they come from. It IS documented that they have a knack for intruding into wherever their quarry IS- but if I'm hanging around as a pile of leaves in the same place that Teagan is sitting around looking like me, well."
"--Then two of you are in danger, rather than one," Sigrun observes as more of a point of confusion than judgment.
"I mean that if I can make enough hubbub, it might think it can't come after Johnnie without hundreds of humans, who it can't hurt, springing out of the bushes with cameras, and since the bargain it made with Johnnie only holds if it can't hurt humans, it might make it less willing to just come after Johnnie," explains Teagan, and then gestures toward Johnnie when she puts up a second idea.
"There are a lot of things we can do. I'm looking at this as a way of... "
"This thing expects us to act in one way, and one way only. It uses humanity against us as a weapon -- against Johnnie as a weapon -- and expects us to do nothing, to be confused. Well, I didn't always have this motley, so this is one of the things I used to do. Find another leverage point. Fight a different war than the one that's expected of me. And that's what I'm suggesting we do now."
"Let's take the fact that it's using humanity as a leverage point against us, and create a situation in which it suspects it may be placed in a position to break its ... agreement... with Johnnie. I'm not saying it's the only solution. I'm saying that it'll put the thing in a place where it'll be warier, less cocky, more on guard."
"And eventually, we can use that to spring a trap."
"Providing, of course, that Johnnie doesn't find its heart and get it to fuck off, and this mess rolls into Summer."
"Well, so long as it's Spring, it can't hurt Teagan- so as long as we can have Teagan and I in the same place and only Teagan visible... it's hamstrung. It can't do anything," adds Johnnie.(edited)
"I'm all for manipulating the terms of engagement," June says with a nod. "That could be a good plan, if it believes the work we do in the process. Anything we can do to make it less certain of its ground is a good thing." She finishes her coffee and starts getting up again. "Who has the skills we'd need for that kind of computer work?"
"I'll get to work in the forge crafting some ballistic armor for us all. I know Teagan and Johnnie have their jackets, and they do at least a semi-decent job of stopping a bullet. But my gear is all tailored for fighting in close. I just ride in close and get to work. But with this thing using long arms, I don't want to get into Summer without us being prepared to start taking fire. I'll let the Kraklin and Rivermen know there's another Huntsman out there, and that it's shown willingness to leverage outsiders against us. The Rivermen patrol in groups, I know, and still have the ballistic armor I gifted to them during the Armsmaster hunt. But the Kraklin are recent allies and, to my knowledge, lack ballistic grade armor. Unless their chitin is more potent than I was aware of." Sigrun leans over the side of the couch to grab one of her sketch books, flips it open, and begins scribbling in the pages some notes and sketches for the aforementioned new armor.
"I'll need a new shield, probably. And your hedgespun and tokens-- we'll probably want to craft mundane substitutes for them." She then shrugs at June's question, "Fucked if I know. I get near them and they hiss at me."
"Huntsmen can touch iron," Teagan agrees with Sigrun quietly, and then looks at the blade on the table and shuddering. (A Mirrorskin full-body shuddering is a rather ... impressive thing, their skin rippling like someone threw a rock into a pond of liquid onyx.)
"Oh, goodness me, if only we had someone we'd worked with before who'd already exhibited talent at computer things like scouring the hard drives of bridge burning traitors to help us with this online campaign," laments Johnnie wryly. "One of the old Fae-Touched who used to hang around here helped us with the whole Iron Dreamcatcher mess. We can reach out to her, I bet she'll be delighted to have something to chew on."
"I think getting mundane ballistic armor is a good idea for everyone else. I'm the one person it can't afford to shoot with cold iron, not even after Summer starts. It's supposed to capture me, not kill me, and sticking iron in me is a real reliable way to make sure I don't survive to make it back to the Den."
"I ... I mean Margaret, the Sun's Tongue, she's really good with social media. But I think there is... has got to be... someone else. I met some weird-ass vampire-fae-touched person, so... "
Waiiiit, what?
Johnnie offers Teagan a fistbump. "Great minds. That's the same person, I bet."
"I do have a suit of riot armor," June says as she goes into the kitchen to deposit her mug. "It's just standard off the shelf stuff, but it works, and it probably means I should be lower on the priority list for equipping with ballistic armor." Cup in the dishwasher, and then she returns. "Did you say a vampire fae-touched?"
"You're a lot easier to drag back to Arcadia when you're bleeding out, actually. I can't imagine recapturing you without dropping you first. In fact, it tried to do just that when you first encountered it, didn't it? Sure, you survived. But that just means it'll try harder the next time. You know me. I'll make it as light weight and maneuverable as I can, but I'm not putting you out there with a Huntsman coming for you in a friggin kevlar lined trench coat. If your intention isn't to kill the thing, then sacrificing some of your lethality for durability isn't actually a sacrifice. Is it." Sigrun's tone has taken on the firm but affectionate edge of the mead mom. Johnnie will eat her greens before dessert and after putting on her ballistic armor.
"It put a bullet in me, but a mundane one," Johnnie clarifies. "If it's not using cold iron, it's gonna have to deal with the full weight of my Wyrd reinforcing my armor, and even my hood's as good as full riot gear at this point. And if it puts a cold iron bullet in me, I'm gonna be dead and dust in seconds."
"Thus the armor," Sigrun states, once more confused, though this time as to why this is meeting with resistance. "So as to prevent that from happening in the first place. The bullet hitting your skin, I mean."
The fistbump offered is taken. "Johnnie, we're reaching 'kick you in the ankle' levels. Take the damn mundane armor. Let your girlfriend take care of you and express her fear and love by slamming a hammer against metal for hours and getting hot and sweaty. Bonus: then you can help her shower." Teagan finishes their coffee and then leans back, resting a hand on Sigrun's thigh companionably. "Yeah, I guess she's a vampire now but she ... was a Fae-Touched, she's part of Jack's motley, there's a whole... thing... she's still part of our society somehow and I'm supposed to like 'give her a chance' or something because Jack lets her live in the house where he sleeps." Huff.
"Okay..." June says, reaching up and scratching the back of her head with a claw. Carefully, since she's not trying to give herself a haircut. "Well, if she can do computers, then I guess that's useful? For some reason I always think of vampires as all being old immortals who are out of touch with modern society." She shrugs and goes over to the couch to sit down again.
Johnnie glances around and shrugs, holding her hands up. "Far be it from me to deny my Norse Amazon her love language- or a chance to shower with her. Just- so the logic of my resistance is available to be dissected, because I feel like I'm missing something, I was thinking- "well it can't kill me. and if it shoots me with cold iron, it will kill me, so it will not shoot me with cold iron, so i can rely on my magic to make my armor stronk. I'm perfectly happy to see what Sigrun wants to whip up for me, I just don't want to keep missing whatever detail I feel like I'm missing."
"Yeah, we relied on her earlier to scour up the data after y'all executed the traitor. Got all sorts of good info off her phone. I don't recall that I've met her personally, but unlike me, for instance, she's been around for basically the entire lifespan of the online era, instead of crash landing in the deep end with floaties on. I'd trust her with this."
"I have my methods," Sigrun points out to Johnnie. "I don't mind picking fights. At all. But I hate picking fights I'm not sure I can win. Call me a cheat. Call me an opportunist. But I learn about my opponents first. I did with King Kril. I did it with the Armsmaster. With dozens of others before them. Learn about your enemy, learn how they fight and how they flee. Build gear to exploit what you learn. I've forged swords specifically to help me kill exactly one person. And then I've retired them." Sigrun is still scribbling on her page, her focus there for the most part.
"I don't go out looking for fights. But if you start one with me, I will go out and I will end it. The point of all of this is to win. It's to survive. The only reason we're talking about killing it is because it hasn't just fucked off and left us alone. I don't owe it a fair fight, or even ground, or a good death. I don't owe it anything more than a pyre at the end of it all. It came for my hearth. You don't do that if you want the comfort of a fair fight and Holmgang rules. You do that if you want me to murder you ugly. And I do that after shutting every door I know you want to go through right in your face. That means armor on your doopa, so yeah. I'm afraid you'll have to cope, Johnnie." She looks up and blows her a quick kiss.
The Mirrorskin seems particularly content to watch Sigrun work right now, not hiding the fact that they're looking over her shoulder. "I've decided I'm going to use he in addition to they," they comment sort of in the middle of all of it, then shrug. "I dunno anything more than that she helped us before and that Jack thinks she's okay, so, I dunno. Someone who hates vampires less should talk to her. I've gotten to 'not putting a machete right in her face in public,' so someone should praise me for that, actually."
"Oh?" June asks Teagan with sudden interest. "Thank you for letting us know if you're going to use new pronouns," she says with some evident excitement, as she sidles over to give Teagan a hug. "I'll be sure to keep it in mind. Also, good job not stabbing someone in the face in public. That tends to cause a bit of a scene."
"I'd rather call you as smart as you are gorgeous. That's smart planning." Johnnie snags the blown kiss out of the air and kisses her palm after, smirking in satisfaction, then glancing to Teagan. "Ooh! Noted. Any preference between the two, or times one is better? And I wouldn't mind talking to her. I've had civil discourse with a few of their kind so far. And yeah, like June said- well done not face-stabbing! That is a remarkable amount of Teagan-restraint."
Johnnie glances towards the parchment a moment during a lull in the conversation, then pulls the Book of Leaves back and flips through to a new segment- Loopholes And You: How To Cheat The Fair Way. A brief check, and she nods. "Okay. So- theory here. Pursuing the page just leads to Sigrun. Sort of doubling down on the use of the page to find her. But it's not a large page. The question behind that is why didn't whoever has the book itself hand it over to the Helldivers in the first place? That's something worth thinking about."
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