As most of their team scrambled for ideas, Shimmer had one; cunning, malicious, and requiring Luke as a prop. She approached the target, who’d managed to maneuver his way into a crouch despite his pinned hand, and with quick steps she slipped behind him, placing a dagger to his neck again, only this time his back was to her, his form a meat-shield to whatever effects the glowing fish intended.

Interposing Luke between herself and the familiar had had the effect she had hoped for, seeing as it immediately stopped looking from target to target to directly face them instead. Her teammates were quick to catch onto this as well, with Foxtrot throwing her a disapproving glare before issuing more commands to the team.

“2-1, hold and ground!”

Shimmer and Echo held their positions whilst Stampede approached the familiar, with a speed initially hampered to a crawl by the cold, but his acceleration increased with each step, his approach eventually improving to a rush. The comet’s halo was now in full effect, ready to freeze the familiar’s actions, or to slow any attack coming his way if it managed to fire one of before he got to it.

Stampede managed to get within 4 meters of the familiar and to most, the tides would seem to have turned back in their favor, but for some reason, Foxtrot couldn’t feel the relief from the inevitable. He chalked it up to nerves and tried to dismiss the whole issue entirely, but the nagging feeling refused to leave him, settling in his shoulder blades as tension.

The situation had progressed despite his preoccupation with doubt, placing Stampede at 2 meters from the familiar when he turned back to them. “This is it then…” he muttered, turning his attention from the familiar to Luke, whose lips curled as he winked at him. This crystallized the subliminal doubts to a certainty something was wrong. It was a trap, and he opened his mouth to issue a warning, but the snare brought its fangs to bare before he could do so, reconfiguring the situation to their disadvantage.

◆◆◆

Eleven’s plan had been a multi-pronged approach, and all three were dependent on the charge she planned on building up. Like Luke, she had the amplification modifier in her bag of tricks, and she’d thought to couple this with her understanding of illusory effects to make the best of that charge.

Building up to such a charge from scratch would’ve been impossible, but lucky for her, Luke had just the thing to address this shortcoming. She used her tail to trigger the device before placing her lips onto the container’s open end and tipping its contents into her mouth. She gulped them down, briefly tasting the sweet and stinging fluid that’d covered the dull metal before that very dull metal began to glow.

A light explosion preceded the glow, but the rays of light beat the tiny shockwaves that came from it, resulting in them being affected first by the amplification Eleven triggered. She grew in luminance and size as a result, and she used this to scare their attackers into thinking she now housed an imminent wide-area ray or charge.

She’d been hit by a setback when Luke had been taken hostage, but his mental instruction told her not to panic, but to bide for the incoming opening instead. She did so, relaxing a bit despite the ever-nearing brute who’d reacted to her pause. It came a second later, and not a second too soon, and she made the best of it, pouring everything she had into the attack before the brute could get to her.

◆◆◆

Luke feigned a weakness in his knees and his body drooped in response, bringing his head in alignment with Shimmer’s. He timed his headbutt perfectly and managed to mask the forward wind-up as a cringe in response to Stampede and Eleven’s inevitable collision before ramming his head in reverse whilst bringing his hands closer in the same motion. He caught Shimmer in the face off-guard, and the blow broke the contact between them, putting enough space between them for him to execute a blink.

He removed the dagger from his bloody hand and turned to face Shimmer before blinking out of phase. Enraged, she wanted nothing more than a chance to extract her pound, or five- of flesh, and she’d make sure to get it before Foxtrot could stop her this time.

Lucky for her, they’d already been informed of the skill’s weaknesses prior to their engagement, and she’d seen the exploitation of them first-hand. As such, she was confident in her shoulder-check being capable of forcing him to materialize, but just like her, Luke had witnessed that exploitation, albeit on a more personal level.

To him it was an actual experience, and one he’d already adjusted for. He’d blinked in a side-diving motion, ensuring he’d be in a position to roll to a crouch when he made contact with the ground. Shimmer’s shoulder-check found empty air as a result, and she opened her eyes wide-open in surprise, worsening the effects of the attack that came a split-second later. The familiar had finally levied the light attack, and it met her eyes in all its intense glory.

Luke looked around after materializing. He took stock of his surroundings, noting the assailants in their still blinded state, as well as his deflated familiar, who now looked like a discarded sock, if those could me made with jelly. A look at her status told him she was now afflicted with a spent status. Her description now had a line starting with combat-ready, but this part was crossed out, and next to it sat a single word in all caps, RECOVERING. This offered Luke some reassurance and he attempted to scoop her up, but she melded into him on contact instead. He now had one less problem to worry about without needing to carry her delicate form around.

◆◆◆

He'd wasted no time after that, making a run for it whilst the effects of Eleven’s skill still hampered his pursuers. He’d taken a health potion and replenished the stamina capsule on his utility gloves before opening as much distance as he could between himself and Foxtrot’s team.

He’d spent less caution in that wild dash, leaving a clear trail for them to follow for the first 5 minutes before switching it up a bit. For the rest of his journey, he took to the treetops and by hopping from one strong branch to another he retraced his steps for 2 minutes before hopping away in a different direction. He knew the misdirect wouldn’t be enough to escape them, but he hoped it would be enough to buy him more time until his next mad dash in the near future.

He would’ve stuck around to see how effective his misdirect had been, were it not for the team’s aerial support in Echo, and the haphazard nature of Foxtrot’s hops, since either could happen upon him were he to remain in the vicinity.

He’d changed direction for the umpteenth time along the course of the next two hours, but his pursuers now seemed to be but a few minutes away from him and cutting a direct path to his position. After a few more adjustments, his pursuers were now arranged into a cupped formation that adjusted its heading accordingly to every adjustment he made.

The fact that they were corralling him towards the west wasn’t lost on him, but worse still was how they seemed to know his every adjustment the moment he made it. Despite not being able to spot anything, he’d had the feeling there were eyes all around him, watching his every move and relaying them to Foxtrot and his team, and this disconcerted him.

Any and all attempts at identifying these eyes had been met with little success, save for the brief visions of starry splotches that always winked out upon the briefest of inspections, always one step ahead, always just out of reach. Instead of dissolving his worries, their evasion did more towards solidifying the idea something was watching him, and now that he’d had a glimpse at the thousand eyes, he was hell bent on poking-at at least one of them for confirmation of what they belonged to.

From what he’d seen so far, the eyes always occupied the dark recesses of the forest lands in front of him, so in order to get the best chance at landing a shot he had to limit the target spaces. He scoped the area ahead and bounded for the least dense area. He'd kept one of Shimmer’s daggers with him so this would be the only shot he would get without dipping into his own supply of alchemical projectiles. On second thought…, he trailed off, deciding to bet a bit more on this instead.

He slowed his pace to allow for some quick handiwork and retrieved a single flash bomb for some extra umph, as well as a length of wire. He attached the device to the dagger’s side, pin-side point-facing, and fastened it to the dagger using the length of wire. Done with the adjustments, he picked up the pace to arrive a few meters from his target spot, and all the while he kept his face down so as to not spook his watchers.

He’d removed the pin, planted his left foot in front of him and used the momentum to spin in place, all the while winding up the attack, releasing the dagger at the arc of one of those spins towards the only blackspot in that area, and closing his eyes to avoid the blinding effect. He ignored the sound of the dagger sinking into a tree trunk and counted down the time for the detonation, and once he hit the mark, he held off a split second longer to avoid the intense lingering effects.

Now back in phase, he sprang into action, hopping from branch to branch until he stood on one a few centimeters from where his dagger had sunk into the tree. The ‘eyes’, despite his attempts at being sneaky, had seen his attack coming, and as such they’d scurried away from the projected point of impact. This had resulted into a circular formation that was centered around a dagger-shaped wound, a vacant area that extended 30 centimeters from the blade. The speed and coordination they’d showed in their evasive response meant that a simple dagger attack wouldn’t have cut it, but lucky for him, that extra umph had done the rest.

◆◆◆

[Advanced Appraisal] has been invoked on a group of entities. Singular, Isolating appraisal target… is under the [Freeze] status effects. Duration: 5 seconds. is under the [Blind] status effects. Duration: semi-permanent, awaiting restoration.

Although the point had missed, the flash hadn’t, and it had been intense enough to affect all the entities in view. They were metallic spiders with a vice-like attachment in the space where a head was supposed to be. The vice housed a weird, compound mounting in its jaws and the eye-like long extension of it continuously flashed as if in an attempt to blink away the blinding effect.

Now vulnerable, this would be a good chance to take out the whole swarm, but he knew better than to divert his efforts to this, since for one, his pursuers wouldn’t be too far from his position after this short break, and more importantly, his efforts wouldn’t take out all the watchers, since he’d previously seen more stars than the fifty-something eyes the frozen swarm accounted for. As a compromise, he took only one of the entities for further examination, choosing to leave the rest in his continued retreat.

◆◆◆

+--------------+

|Personal Alert|

|--------------+-------+

|”Itsy-bitsy Spy.. Duh”|

+----------------------+---+

|Class: Object Registration|

+-----------+--------------+

|Description|

+-----------+---------------------+

|- - - - - - - ”???” - - - - - - -|

+-------+-------------------------+

|Details|

+-------+----------------+

|Exhibit A: Secondary Eye|

|------------------------|

|Exhibit B: Secondary Ear|

+------------------------+

, has been registered. Rename object, (YES / NO) ?

He selected ‘NO’ and began reading into what he’d just discovered. “JORO-00001,” he read, eyeing the picture now included in the entity’s entry. He didn’t know what ‘JORO’ stood for, but he did know one thing; he’d been right to forego destroying that swarm, since the numbers suggested here pointed to an even greater horde in the forests. There were 5 digits in the entity’s numbering, and if this was true for all entities, then there could be as many as 99999, one shy of a hundred thousand of these ‘eyes’ in their horde.

It lacked a description but lucky for him, there was no shortage of detail in the title and unironically, the details section. Although the condescension dripping from that title left him a bit miffed, it did go a long way into revealing the entity’s purpose. Coupled with the exhibits in the details, it was obvious to him that this was an observation entity. It was possibly a crystallized skill, or a familiar even, and though the former spoke volumes on the level of effects their invoker could levy, the latter possibility scared him more, since it would take quite the mind to handle that many familiars. An impossibly deep mind, or an insane one.

These were definitely the eyes that had been hounding him from the jump, and the fact that they just had to be spiders gave him no amount of comfort. Could this be the monarch’s doing? he wondered, hoping to never find out the answer to that question, but dreading it was going to be inevitable.

I am headed west, after all…