7 TWLA 07

King turned back from his place in the lead to look at Jeremy with a leering smirk, face mask flap of the frog suit already in place. He didn't even know they had one. Feeling a little dumb, he put it on while looking at Rain Maker to find out that she still wasn't covering her mouth.

"It's alright. I'm analyzing it. I have a high tolerance against toxins and parasitic...things. It's a given that you are too. Still, an extra warning isn't a wasted one. I'm glad to see that you're alert." she assured him.

Crying a little inside, he thought, "Rain Maker, you're such a nice person. But, why didn't you say something to me?"

"It's Rose's spores. They're stronger than I remember. I'm thinking we're looking at a dank base." she said.

King nodded. "Hang back with Blue Jay. If Rose nixed but kept some of her marbles, I doubt her interests have changed much. Worse case, we still need to know what's going on."

While they waited, Jeremy focused on 'analyzing' the spores under Rain Maker's guidance. There were so many tricks and subtle nuances to figuring things out, he almost felt like he was back in chemistry. It was all so overwhelming at first but he knew the key for him was to break off a small chunk and work outward from it.

In the midst of the impromptu study session, a weird sense of time stretching out happened. Everything seemed to go slower for a moment before things settled back down into a normal perception of time passing. It was like all the little feelings of jumping forward that Rain Maker called 'short times' was a rubber band being drawn back in increments to prepare for a slow motion release.

She grabbed a hold of him suddenly and started running. It was weird. From his perspective, she seemed really fast but that feeling slowly faded the longer she held onto his arm. "That was a 'long time'. People who are separated by distance de-synchronize. Physical contact or power contact aligns you with another. One long time could be a lot of short times for someone else."

Huffing and puffing, he asked, "Isn't it... too late then?"

"No. We're in a 'long time'. You'll know it's over when you feel a 'short time' pass."

In his head, he rearranged his knowledge. The little glitches where it felt like the brain couldn't easily keep up with what was going on for a split second marked a 'short time'. A slow motion moment where the brain was working faster than the body marked the beginning of a 'long time'. In a long time, unsynchronized people experienced the passage of personal time differently.

The Hush put everybody back on the same page, at least. If not for that, people would continue to drift into different dilatation of personal time. The feeling and accomplishments of seconds for one could be the passage of minutes for others, possibly hours at its worst. It was considered the responsibility of a 'fast' one to bring 'slow' ones up to speed.

His thoughts nearly halted when they came out of the cavern path and onto the plateau top. A collection of monsters and half transformed people were moving four, maybe even five times slower than they should be. Despite being in the same perception as the rest, King was moving at nearly half speed and glowing like a fog dimmed sun.

Not everything was moving that slow. At the edges, meek creatures were nudging against other more aggressive ones. Like a slow spreading stain, the nixed and half transformed were moving towards the center of carnage, where King was, at an ever increasing pace. Taking it in, Rain Maker had Jeremy stay put as she rushed around the perimeter, dealing quick, lethal blows without nearly a moment's pause.

She was slowing the spread of quickening time perception. It was obvious why. Somehow, King could take advantage of the difference. It was more something felt than could be explained by words but it seemed as if the tyrant's mind worked at normal speeds even if he was slower physically.

Adrenaline pumping at the display of violence, Jeremy wanted to join the fray but he would only be helping the wrong side more. He felt confident in facing some street punk but his scrapping skills weren't even in the same world, much less the same tier as King and Rain Maker. They were savage.

It wasn't that the monstrous opposition was bad at fighting either. Rain Maker was fast, even for normal speeds. She dodged and weaved between opposition like she was flowing on some invisible current. King thrashed around his vicinity like an explosion in human form. It was as if he was filled with coiling springs he released in sections at a time. Had the tyrant been fighting in sync with Jeremy's perception, he felt like he wouldn't have been able to follow it at all.

Absorbed in the scene, he missed the skulking 'wicker child' that had closed in and grabbed him inside the shadows he was crouched in. Startled, he quickly turned terrified looking at the hollow eyed, perpetually wailing maw of the creature. More in desperate reflex than calculation, he slashed it with his dagger.

With a hiss of filthy smoke, the green and supple wicker parted to reveal a pale, heavily nicked arm underneath. The blood flowing from it had a sickly green cast but it was still red. Upon seeing and registering the wound, the creature fell on its backside and started scooting away in fear. It suddenly occurred to Jeremy that it had come to him seeking help or safety, not to attack him.

With a quick scan to make sure no more creatures were closing in on him, he whispered to keep from attracting attention. "I'm sorry. I thought you were trying to hurt me."

Palming the dagger in a slit he'd made in the stretchy arm of his suit, he made an open handed gesture. "I have a first aid kit. If you follow me back here a little, I'll patch you up."

He opened the waist pouch he was wearing to show a sterile pad package, the least intimidating thing in it.

In a distorted and struggling croak, the creature said, "No...me. Hep see-sir."

"Your sister's in trouble? Where is she?"

The creature paused and trembled for a breath before pointing to the western edge of the 'battleground'. Partially hidden in shadows was a 'half transformed', nearly sliced in half. They had dragged themselves out of harms way, leaving a trail of glistening brownish red behind them.

Empty hollow pits stared back down at the red cross on the bag that had seized its attention to begin with.

"God... I don't know how much help I can be, little guy, but I'll try," he said, not feeling very hopeful.

Exercising as much stealth as he could he made his way to the dying creature. Drawing near, he realized there were quite a few more 'half transformed' there than anywhere else. A portion of them further away towards the northwestern side protectively ringed a humongous, tree-like flower bush. It was one of them that had tell-tell signs of the same glistening brownish red blood on their bone sword.

They were looking with disdain at the half transformed Jeremy was being called to save. It made him nervous but he decided to go through with seeing what he could do to help. With fighting so near, the bush guards didn't seem likely to wander from their posts. It looked like the whole western group were relatively neutral stance in what was happening anyway.

Clearing his head of distractions but asking the wicker creature to alert him if anyone approached, he got to work. It was difficult to understand what he should even do. The cuts had sliced through a portion of tangled matter that was more plant than animal.

With a thought that was more guess than anything else, he used some ring conjured water to wash out the gruesome slice and dried a few of the largest 'vine-testines' off enough for medical tape to hold severed pieces together. Starting from the more human side, he channeled a few small bursts of his power to push talent claimed corruption to the taped up parts. Seeing that the pieces were stuck back together, he removed the tape and repeated the process a couple more times.

During his work, the wicker child was clinging to his back, watching him go to work on their loved one. He had to stop for a moment when he felt a multitude of tiny little tendrils pushing their way into his skin.

"I don't mind you watching but you're about to poke a lot of holes in me. That's not going to make it any easier to save your sister... Don't look much like a gir- That's rude. Forget that."

Backing off him with a sound akin to parting velcro, the creature said, "Sah-ree."

After a few more finishing touches, he took out the dagger and pushed some power through it while holding the hilt to his patient's head. It made the wicker child screech softly in protest. But after seeing that it didn't cause smoke to role out, it even submitted itself to a power filled love tap from the handle.

Done with that, weak dizziness started returning. He could feel the armband he had been using to channel cleaner magic with starting to warm up uncomfortably too. Figuring that he'd done all he could afford to, he sewed up the human-ish outside parts and slapped some heavier masking tape over the rest.

Muttering to himself, he said, "Giving me a funny look for putting some of this silver beauty of a tape in the first aid kit. King, this stuff is worth its weight in platinum out here."

A growling voice said, "I know."

Jeremy looked up to a mask of barely contained rage. Before he could say a word, he was lifted off the ground into a dangle from a fist full of his frog suit's chest area.

"Your team needs your skills and... purification power. And, what are you doing!? You're over here, back on the wrong side of the first threshold, wasting precious supplies on background extras!"

Hobbling up, Rain Maker interjected. "How much did you accomplish before your first Hush? How much before the second? This boy marched right back to his drop site not a 'short time' after waking from his flare out to get those supplies... FOR us! Do you remember how your insides felt when you had even the smallest bit of magic pushed through them after yours?

"I know how you think. Fine, discount saving us from nixing as an accident. But, when your little magic experiment put us in a state worse than the one we're in now, he was right there picking your project out of us and doing what he could to make us better.

"Cut him some slack. He'll learn. We should be thankful he's not one of the worthless simpletons who stagger around in denial for their first few hushes instead of one with useful skills and the heart to use them."

King's demon face now pointed at her while Jeremy still dangled off the ground, clutching at the tyrant's hand for support so his suit wouldn't rip, the angry man said, "A little too much spine, even for you. If it was any one else, Rain Maker, they'd be picking their teeth out of the dirt."

Taking a slightly more submissive pose and looking to the side, she said, "I know it's the battle heat talking but even Rust knew who and what to point it at. He knew how to show gratitude when it was deserved too."

King trembled on the verge of lashing out a moment longer before he slowly sat Jeremy back down.

Fury tightly packed behind a more neutral face, the gore covered man said, "Thank you... for everything."

Through a wheeze, Jeremy tried to graciously accept when he was cut off with, "Use our supplies on someone outside of our team without permission again, I'll take it from you."