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As the group sets out onto their Trod from Philly, they notice that their well tended to path does, in fact, show some signs of the so-called Blight. It doesn't seem as bad here, as in other places in the Hedge. But there are some dry and withered patches of thorns and plants along the path. But the further they get away from Philly, the less effected the Trod appears to be. (Go ahead and set yourselves and I'll jump in after.)(edited)
As per the usual, Teagan can't be seen, because Light Shy is a thing. They walk casually along the walls, eyeing the Blight, and keeping an eye out ahead of the group. Occasionally, they turn and walk backwards, watching behind the group. It's not very exciting to pose, but has a proven history of keeping things from jumping out and eating Direct Action.
"So like I was saying, the goat-folx called the Blight a "her" and said I pissed her off when I tried Spinning, so keep that in mind. Most of the rest just confirmed what we knew- it's coming from the ground, which of course it is, there's parasitic roots, so it most strongly affects plants that stay on the ground rather than growing up or growing above ground," Johnnie exposits as she strides along with the absolute confidence she often bears. Her shadows are arrayed behind her, displaying a random assortment of idle poses designed to emphasize her relaxation. "Aside from that, the Armsmaster was the only big news, and it's not like the Hedge is short on "dangerous shit the Fae made." But it did wipe out a small briarwolf pack presumably alone, so. That puts it roughly on par with one of us, likely."
Sigrun marches at the visible head of the column, as per the usual. She's a hard one to miss when she's trying to be seen, and of course most of her battle strategy is to be spotted first and become the focus of enemy attention. It works, most of the time. Her shield is glowing brightly, as is the Fairest herself, as she marches down the trod at a leisurely pace. They have no particular agenda for this patrol, so collecting fruits and tending to the trod along the way means taking it slow enough both to notice fruits and what needs tending. "Keep your eyes out for fruits, everyone. I'd like to take another shipment up to the Rivermen soon, and we don't need these to survive. I've picked over my own stash, so." She nods over to Vorpal. "Noted."
June is ambling along in her ridiculous armor, helmet on her head and everything. When she's under the effects of all of her contracts she's astoundingly fast, so her casual amble still has to be dialed back not to out-pace everyone else. "I'm sorry I missed the otters," she laments softly, by way of contribution to this conversation. Otherwise, she's mostly keeping a lookout.
Today, Sturm's wearing a ballistic vest atop her street clothes when she enters the trod. Her lip is bloody, because she's a masochist the magic of her wristwraps is active, and she's got her thumbs hooked into her pockets as she takes up the column's rear. She's quiet, preferring to just listen to the others speak, and - even though this is her Motley'a trod - her eyes are peeled for signs of trouble.
Glitch is ambling along in his not quite as ridiculous armor, though such things are subjective. Wrapped in handpainted quilted leather and dark armored plates, eyes obscured by his visored helmet, he prowls with nothing in his hands this time. Only a thin, unassuming length of wood is carried on his back. He looks over to Sigrun as they walk nearby. "I thought the Hedge dying was because of the Bridge-Burners. Or at least that it'd get better after we took care of you know who. Guess that'd be too simple," he intones dryly.
All of a sudden, standing up on the Hedge wall, there's Teagan. "Wait. You said the 'Armsmaster'?"
Yeah, that's right. Teagan broke Light Shy. They're crouched up on the Hedge wall, their broken-mirror eyes glittering sharply, Baby in their left hand. "Are you fucking shitting me, Johnnie?" Why would she be, and yet, this is Teagan's response.
The Trod's floor starts to become a little uneven--dips here and there on the otherwise smooth cobblestone and dirt ground. But Sigrun, Teagan and Johnnie realize that these dips--they're actually footprints. Very large ones, coming out of the thorns and heading down the path.
Sigrun eyes the first depression the come upon a bit oddly. By the second, she's no longer really eyeing it. She's taking a knee on the trod and resting her hand in the depression, then inspection the ground at the depression's edge. She edges around it a bit, brushes some of the loose debris out of the way, and nods to herself before pushing back up to her feet and continuing forward. "Am I entirely off my rocker, here, or are those huge footprints?"
June pauses about the same time that Teagan does, before she turns back to look toward the previous footprints. She pops the visor on her helmet up and then turns back to Sigrun. "I'm pretty sure those are footprints," she agrees.
"That's deffo a big-ass footprint. You're not crazy, Sig."
"Huh? Of course I'm not," Johnny asserts. "I'm not lazy in the field, you know. I even checked the corpses. Combination of blades and claws, with a scattering of what looked like weaponized flame leaving scorch marks and tire marks. Why? You know something I don't know? The only thing I could remember hearing about this thing was that it was associated w-" Johnnie pieces together the reaction abruptly, her eureka moment visually notable as all her shadows freeze at once and turn to look at Teagan.
Except one, that's eyeing the huge footprint.
"... the fucking General, shit! I didn't even make that connection, I barely remembered the association at all. It's not a Huntsman, just some fucked Hob got made there, so not necessarily any reason to panic, right?" She looks around, patently ignoring the fact that as the group's occult scholar and local Autumn, she is definitely the expert on stuff like that.
Glitch is silent as the footsteps come to light. He turns to give Vorpal a token stare when they have their realization, then turns away to face front and make sure he's scanning the perimeter still, since enough people are looking at the ground and each other. Even so, he can't help but glance back over his shoulder at Teagan from time to time, now that they're visible and likely agitated.
"Those are footprints," Teagan says -- not quite dismissively, just with the same sort of expression Sigrun would get if someone said 'are these footprints' when someone had just mentioned Huginn hanging out by their front door -- and then focuses back on Johnny. They stay some ten feet up in the air, standing on the Hedge wall, their coat draped around them, and shake their head. "Actually, it's a big fucking deal when he's not -- near Le General's realm." They bite at their right thumbnail, head turned slightly. "He gets ... drawn away from home by war, by conflict, by ... anger, death. Violence. If there's something pulling him away from -- his home -- that's ... more than our Hue and Cry. More than... that's bad."
"The Armsmaster? Is that a Huntsman?" Sigrun asks the question once she's back under way, glancing back at Teagan with a quizzical expression. She's not well versed in the doings of Le General's realm. Or the General's titles, for that matter. "Should we be worrying about this Armsmaster coming from the General's escapees?" Her own keeper's huntsmen? Terrify her. Someone else's? She seems perhaps slightly eager, honestly. Putting some righteous punishment on a true fae's servant suits her general mood lately just fine.
"No, no, he's... he's a really powerful, fucked up Hob. Not a Huntsman. Thank God." Wait, has anyone ever seen Teagan cross themself before? (No.)
June gives a worried look to Teagan and Vorpal. "Fucked up and powerful in what way? What should we expect, if we run into this Armsmaster? I assume it means arms in the sense of like... swords and axes and stuff. And not that the hob has a lot of arms?"
Discussing one's keeper - and their huntsmen - while inside the Hedge seems like a pretty foolish time to let your guard down. So. Rather than participating in the discussion fully, Sturm turns her attention away from the big prints and focuses on the horizon. A frown etched into her features as she searches for anything that might provide cover for a potential ambush.(edited)
"Porque no las dos?" Vorpal chimes towards June, suppressing a moment of aggravation as Sig repeats a question she just answered herself. The moment fades as Teagan crosses themself, startling Johnnie into pausing. "And I'd be hella down to putting down one of Their hunting dogs. Any black eye on their account is a good step in my book, though... now I'm curious what dragged it all the way out here, if it's drawn to conflict. Extant conflict, or like. Upcoming, or?" She looks to Teagan for that information.(edited)
The Trod doesn't have a lot of large obstacles to hide behind, but Sturm could likely duck behind some small things that line the walls--bushes, boulders, the fossilized remains of thorn-covered cars. Not a lot of cover, but some.
"I... don't... remember that much," Teagan confesses when people ask them for more information. "And, like, arms and armor, yeah. Not like a bunch of arms. Though who knows, maybe it has a bunch of arms by now, I haven't seen that fucker in twenty years." And they pull in their breath, letting it out slowly. "Conflict that's happening right now." Like Teagans who can't even read know words like 'extant.'
Glitch rolls a shoulder and takes a few more steps down the trod, scanning ahead of them. "Maybe it's lost," he beeps. "Maybe it went nuts and is doing things different. Maybe the General slipped in the bathtub while jacking off and broke his fucking neck. Who knows," he intones, with an odd sort of grim hope.
"Oh, yeah. Right." Sigrun rubs at the back of her neck for a moment or two, then continues forward. "Well, then I'm with Johnny on this one. A hob is something we can take out. And will stay taken out. I mean. Summer is coming up. Seems like a pretty good time for a hob like this one to show up. Because doubtless there is about to be some conflict coming down the pike. Yeah. Makes me wonder what it's keying in on. Do the roots count? Or is there a hedge war underway and we just haven't had it spill over our trod yet?"
"Well..." June glances around them again and then says, "that's probably a problem for future us, right? Right now we have something really big leaving footprints on our trod. Maybe the same thing? Maybe not. But why don't we focus on finding our intruder, for the time being?"
As the group heads down the Trod a bit further and finds some clearer footprints in a more muddy patch, most of them become pretty dang sure they recognize the footprints as belonging to Trod Trolls. Abnormally large Trod Trolls.
Naturally? No.
The Mirrorskin actually laughs a little when Glitch makes his comment, which is good. And then they roll their shoulders uncomfortably. "Right. Let's find out what the fuck is up on our trod." Teagan holds very still until they disappear again, because that is how a Teagan do.
"Do trod trolls count as a problem?" Johnnie inquires. "I mean, I walked all the way out to fuck-over-Noplace and not a single thing tried to jump me. Not that I blame them for not trynna jump me, but it was super boring. Trod Trolls sound like a pleasant date with everyone I love on board, but maybe that's just my ego talking? Teagan, what's your take? Trod Trolls- competence porn version of pizza delivery guys, or serious business I should be taking-" Bamf. Teagan's gone. She sighs. "-seriously."
"Sturm? June? Glitch? You lot been quiet, what's your take, since my easy agree answer just vanished into the winds? Sig, you can answer too if you want, I'm just trynna be inclusive and shit."
"If it's a trod troll, we won't have to look that hard. They'll want to find us and extract a toll. They're also known to make use of hollows, so it's possible that first print back there originated in a hollow built on our trod. We'd have to backtrack some to figure that out. But. I'm also curious where it's heading. We should probably keep tracking it, either way. If it made it out to the main trod, we'll have to clear it out. Or get it working for us." Sigrun eyeballs Johnny for a moment before letting out a small sigh, "Trolls aren't a problem unless we make them a problem. They're strong, but not particularly clever. Having a troll on our side would be a huge win for the freehold. Assuming we can convince it to join with us."
Glitch looks over his shoulder at Vorpal, his facial expressions limited to those of Robocop or Judge Dredd in his armor. "Trolls regenerate," he beeps flatly. "We need fire or we're gonna be here a long fuckin' time."(edited)
"I don't particularly want a troll hanging out on our trod asking people to pay tolls. Asking us to pay tolls," June grumbles as they move. "Mostly because we spent so much time working to maintain it. If anyone should be charging tolls to people passing through it's us, and we're not doing it, so nobody should." She shrugs. "Otherwise what Sigrun says. If they're not causing any trouble, there's no reason for us to start anything."
Sturm nods along with Sig's explanation (something that she's been doing a lot of lately) because much like a Trod Troll, Sturm is strong - and good to have on your side - but uhh. Not much else - especially considering she doesn't know shit about the Hedge.
She shrugs at Johnnie's cocky comments, and her hands disappear back into her pockets. There's a hint of something on her features, but it's quickly brushed aside in favor of keeping an eye out. Everyone seems to think the Troll's'll be fine so long as they don't fuck with anything, but Sturm doesn't trust like that. Better to keep her eyes up.
Following the footprints a little ways further, their suspicions are confirmed. In the distance, there is a massive figure plopped down in the center of the Trod, so large that it looks almost squished in and making it impossible to squeeze past it. But they can catch a glimpse of a second Troll sitting on the Trod a ways past it. They seem to be talking to each other. Their skins are dirty-brown, flaking and cracked here and there.
"Like our old Trod better," complains one in a gravelly, nasally voice.
"Yeah, but it's all dried up, ain't it?" says the other--the one closest to them--while idly picking it's nose. "Stop complainin'."
"Ain't complainin'. Just sayin' I liked the old one better."
The Troll closest to them also has a thick rusted chain wrapped around it's forearm, connected to something they can't immediately see behind it.
Now is the time when all good Teagans circle around the Trolls, or at least walk past them on the Hedge wall, so that said trolls are Surrounded By Direct Action. They aren't the talkiest of the bunch. They can lie, but persuading is not exactly in their wheelhouse. So they just maneuver around and wait.
Johnnie- and her delightfully Acute Senses- picks up on the voices a bit before everyone without manages. Her grimace at being informed they'd rather recruit than execute turns into a calm expression and a sage nod. "Well, then," she says, already noting the voices murmuring down the way. "I'll be sure to let you lot do the negotiating, then! I'll just be over here, being quiet and behaved, so as not to get in the way, shall I?" ... why is she so okay with that?
Oh, because she gets to feel like she pulled a fast one, even though it's exactly what would have happened, so she gets to bask in a little self important glow and avoid messing things up for everyone else.
Glitch actually joins Johnnie off to the side, almost mirroring the trolls as they let the more genteel among them initiate social contact. He even keeps his hand off the completely innocuous thing on his back. "You said yourself they're just..." He pauses, doing a double take to the trolls, lowering his voice, and trying to find the right word. "No xp for you. Right? Been there, done that. We don't need to punch down. Tell me more about this Edgemaster thing."
As the visible DA folx approach, the Trolls stop talking and look over. Then stand up--their legs are short, their masses still very much blocking the Trod. Unless you're a Teagan and can walk up walls. But they catch a glimpse of what is between them--a massive horse sized black dog with a couple white toes, floppy ears, the chain connected to a heavy, too-small collar around it's neck. Old, deep scars are visible here and there past it's thick black fur.
The one closest looks down at them, looming. "Well, well. We were starting to wonder if we'd have anyone come by at all."
Sigrun makes certain everyone's on the same page, here, and finding that everyone more or less is? Sigrun advances forward ahead of the group, letting her bright light and sunny disposition lead the way. And hopefully give time for her motley to find good covering positions. Once she's near enough to be easily heard but still out of swiping range of their arms, Sigrun raises her voice and calls out to the trolls.
"Hello, friends! You should have knocked on our hollow door a ways back, we would have come out to greet you and collect the toll for using our Trod." Sigrun just keeps smiling her best, most cheerful smile. "Cute dog. Is he friendly?"
June is absurdly fast. Despite the heavy armor that she's wearing, it takes her the space of a couple heartbeats to make it to the nearest troll, where her claws provide her the leverage and grip she needs to pull his leg out from under him. Those claws leave ten long tears in his flesh, turning his legs into loose ribbons of flesh for most of the length that June's capable of reaching. "Yield!" she demands, her crimson armor splashed with blood.
Their arms were flung around Oso's neck, but the moment that the Troll starts to move for the dog that, it must be reiterated, Teagan literally killed a man over one hundred and twenty years ago, their machete drops into their hand as if Baby was meant for their scarred palm. They slice longways up the body of the prone Troll, cutting deep into the creature's thick skin, showing his insides to his outsides. "YOU FUCKER! YOU ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE! I KILLED A MAN OVER THIS DOG ALREADY, DID YOU THINK I WOULD LET YOU KEEP HIM? OSO IS MY BABY! LOOK AT YOU! YOU PUT A FUCKING CHAIN ON HIM!?! YOU HURT DOGS? YOU ARE INFERIOR! YOU ARE THE LOWEST FORM OF LIFE! WORMS WILL LOOK DOWN ON YOUR CORPSE AND REFUSE TO EAT YOUR PUTRID FLESH! MAGGOTS WILL VOMIT UP ANY TASTE OF YOUR HORRIBLE SKIN! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!"
There will not be any yielding if Teagan has anything to say about it.
The first Troll is gurgling on it's own blood at this point, flailing--so close to dying, blood streaming from it's ears after Teagan yells. Barely, just barely, hanging on. But it doesn't look like it's going to be getting up very quickly anyway...
The other Troll staggers quickly backwards from the brutality, blinking rapidly. Then it reaches into the hedge wall and pulls from the thorns with a grunt a massive boulder the size of it's head. It hurls it down the Trod towards Teagan. It should have hit dead on--but their mantle flares, heat and light radiating to send the boulder aside, just grazing them. (1 Bashing after Armor.)
Sturm steps over the fallen troll - leaving it to bleed out, or be hacked to pieces by her savage comrades - and trucks it towards the one that just hurled the boulder at Teagan. There's a gutteral roar - the one she'd been holding back through Sigrun's attempted negotiations - and she throws every ounce of her very considerable strength into a powerful (and admittedly reckless) right hook. There's a sound like howling wind as her glacier-like fist connects with the unfortunate bastard's head - just behind the ear - with enough force to kill a normal being. The runes on her now-bloodied wristwraps begin to glow - as do the matching rune-shaped scars on her biceps.
The troll falls to the ground at her feet unconscious, and she plants a boot on his back before spitting blood into the grass.
June huffs out an annoyed sigh when the two trolls are dead within moments. "Dumb bastards," she growls. "You should have just given us the dog." She kicks the one nearest to her, not with any intent to actually damage the corpse, just out of frustration. "Nobody ever fucking listens." She looks over at Teagan, making sure they're okay and enjoying the company of their lost dog, and then looks at Sturm. "Want to help me move these bodies off the road or something?" It gives her something to do other than think about the situation, which makes her as uneasy as it makes her happy.
Sturm rolls her shoulders, kicking the Troll's now-lifeless corpse as she steps down from it's back. She brushes her bleeding lip with the back of her right armguard (which, honestly, only gets more blood spread across her face) and nods at June, grunting her affirmation. She takes a knee, wrestling the headless troll into a fireman's carry, and then pushing off to reach her full height once more - ready to dump the body wherever June's suggesting they dump them. "Fuck, these bastards are heavy," she grumbles. "Dumb sons of bitches, too."
"Mommy," the dog says in his low voice in between licks, in Spanish. "Mommy, I found you. I followed you and got lost and waited and waited." The dog lifts his head, ears tilting back. "Why did you go? Was I bad?"
Them sons of bitches are heavy, but with some effort they can together drag them off of the Trod, to be reclaimed by the Thorns.
Glitch walks back towards Teagan and their long lost dog, coming up quietly behind the mirrorskin to be present in support. And to get a look at the dog, because he is clearly a good boy. There's a glance spared over his shoulder at one of the troll's heads, which might still be too heavy for him to move.
Johnnie is 1000% happy to not be part of hauling giant bodies off the trod. "Oh, are we cleaning up what we killed? Here, I'll do my part." She picks up both halves of the single chain link she surgically bisected and carries them off with Sturm and June whilst they struggle with the bodies, hucking the delicate tiny bits of chain into the thorns. "Ah, there we go. That's my mess cleaned up! Good day's work, right, girls?"
That is the shit-eatingest grin that shit-eaters ever did grin.
"Oh, baby," sighs Teagan, carefully working at the chain around Oso's neck, loosening it, and removing it, petting over his big blocky head and kissing between his eyes. "No, baby. I didn't go on purpose. Someone stole me, like someone stole you. Someone stole me from you, that's all. But here I am, and here you are, and no one's going to take you from me again." Certainly something emotional is happening, because Teagan's voice is wobbling as if they're sobbing -- even though their eyes aren't meant for it -- "You're so good, you're so, so good."
The dog lets out as relieved sigh as the heavy chain and collar is worked off. Oso nuzzles into Teagan, sniffing in their scent, licking at their face.
Then says, "Did they steal the other puppies too?"(edited)
It's probably good that June can't understand this, too. She and Sturm work together to clear the road, and she keeps one eye on the interaction between Teagan and Oso, but for the most part she seems intent on staying out of it.
"... the what?" Teagan asks, sitting back on their heels, reaching to slowly scritch at Oso's ears. "I only had you. You were my only dog, ever. There weren't any other puppies to steal, baby." Literally, they totally miss Johnnie's clowning, which hopefully she will forgive them for.
Sturm tosses the lifeless corpse off her shoulders, and grumbles something mostly unintelligible about blood, and her tank top, and maybe about not getting to finish this bastard off herself, but you probably can't actually tell what she's saying -- and since she doesn't speak spanish, she's trying her best to give Teagan privacy. Or what passes for it when you're surrounded by people.
"You could've at least carried the head over, Johnnie..."(edited)
Oso's head tilts this way and that, looking at Teagan with a puzzled giant doggo stare. "The puppies without fur. The small boy and girl, and the big boy that threw a ball for me. Your puppies, Mommy."
"First off, I have the noodliest of noodle arms. That's not a head, that's a boulder. And second off, I was cleaning up my mess. That's what everyone else was doing, so I thought that's what we were doing! I can totally provide moral support to whomever wants to get that hunk of dumb off the trod, though," Johnnie promises.
She would not be saying these things if she knew what was going on En Espanol.
Glitch has turned away from Teagan and Oso now, after a brief reaffirming squeeze to the shoulder. He wanders over to join Johnnie and Sturm in the comic relief corner, jerking a thumb towards the heads. "We should leave them on the side of the Trod with a message. Make sure nobody else gets the same foolish idea."(edited)
"That sounds like it's probably going to be pretty grisly. You'll have to get Sigrun on board with it first - I don't imagine she's going to want to put any heads on pikes." Sturm shoves her hands back into her pockets - staring down at the headless troll, and spitting again. More blood. Into the grass.
"We can display their bones, I suppose," Sigrun suggests, "setting actual corpses out is not going to make us many friends in the freehold, I don't think. Plus, with all the scavengers pushed up from underground, we'll just attract razorworms and whatnot. Plus, yeah. They were assholes, and now they're dead assholes. Grudge over, as far as I'm concerned." Sigrun nods her head over towards Sturm. "Not that my customs are the only ones that matter around here, or anything. I'm just thinking practically." She eyeballs the head over yonder and notes, "I wonder if that skull is big enough to make into a chair. Maybe a punch bowl?"
"Already turned one of them into a punch bowl," she grumbles with a perfect deadpan. One might not even realize that she made a pun on purpose. "Be a weird chair, though, but that's on you if you wanna sit on this jackoff's head." She doesn't really see much difference between displaying bones and displaying corpses, but. Enh. Whatever.
The Mirrorskin just sits back on their heels, and their eyes go rather -- strange. The broken mirrors melt together at the corners a little, and the sharp focus with which they reflect things goes all soft and distant. "My -- " And then Teagan just sits. Very. Still. In the middle of the trod, their hands dropping to their knees. They just sort of stare off into the distance.
Oso lets out a soft whine, laying down beside Teagan, curling around them protectively. He noses gently at their legs.
"I'd just as soon just dispose of the bodies," June starts saying. "I don't need to--" she cuts off when she hears the talking just stop from Teagan and the dog, and then she rushes over to wrap Teagan in a hug after taking in the fact that Teagan is just staring off into space.
Glitch is following the banter about corpses and bones, assured that Teagan and their dog have already had a happy ending. It's June rushing over that drags his attention over to them again, and his face crashes into a wincing grimace. "Shit," he hisses, pulling his helmet off as he heads over to stand nearby. He knows to give June space, but the look of worry on him is clear.
Sturm's frown deepens, and the conversation about what to do with the dumb trolls is forgotten as she follows Glitch over - hovering at the same distance he's adopted to give June and Teagan some space.
Johnnie turns, catching on as the others notice Teagan's state, facing the cluster and frowning worriedly. Stuff like this is terribly disempowering- she's got no tools to help someone feel better, and she hates (HATES) feeling this helpless to save someone she cares for.
Sigrun makes a small 'oh shit' face when the implications of what is going on with the dog and Teagan settle in. There is a glance over to June and a raised eyebrow, then a glance back to Teagan. "Is. Is everyone okay? Right state of mind, I mean? Cos I can help with that. And so can June." Sigrun carefully wipes her axe off on the leg of the troll before hanging it back up on her hip and smearing the blood on her hand onto the thing's leg as well. Gross. "If we need to get back home we can deal with this mess later. Worse comes to worse, I just burn them both."
"I'm okay," murmurs Johnnie, just to make sure nobody thinks they need to worry about her right now.
Sturm grunts. Which. Y'know. Means she's good.
The Mirrorskin just sort of sits there for a moment, and rubs their hands over their face. "This is Oso. Oso is my dog." Everything is all muddled, and they don't resist June's arms around their shoulders, and lean their head against her. "Oso ... remembers things I don't." That's a classic Teagan Hedge Against Saying Things, right there. They're not being totally forthcoming, the way they never are forthcoming, at first, about Things From Before.
June's hugs might be more comforting if she wasn't clad in bloody steel from head to toe. "Shh," she says quietly. "Oso is a good boy, who apparently carried some memories for you that you couldn't carry for yourself, for a while. It's fine. He's here now. You're here now. We can figure the rest out as a family." The armor is also why nobody can see the sudden blossoming of bruises. Well, the armor and the fur. The fact that she lets out a choked off grunt of pain through clenched teeth might be some clue to what she just did, though.
Glitch gives a small frown at the noise June makes, but then reaches out to Teagan. Splattered in blood as they all are, he slowly reaches out to touch the mirrorskin's shoulder, then cautiously moves his hand up to their face. "I'm here, Player Two. We all are. We won. Oso is okay. We're gonna go home." His tingling thumb brushes against Teagan's mirror-black cheek, tenderly wiping some of the blood from them.
Johnnie catches the grunt. How could she miss them? Her senses don't really let her miss much. Her jaw tightens, but she knows it's necessary. She puts herself on watch, starting to pace round the group, eyes up and searching for any threats that might interrupt her family helping Teagan recover from the shock of... uh...
... whatever the dog said.
Sigrun puffs out her cheeks at June's pained sound. Nope. She does not like that sound at all. Which has her gravitating closer to June and turning her back to she and Teagan so that she can intercept anything coming for the wounded panda before it gets to her. Just in case. The important business has been seen to. Now it's time to get out of dodge. She's already said her piece, though. So now she's waiting for everyone to be up and about it.
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