[img]http://i.imgur.com/SsySWU5.png[/img] [b]“Tch. Don’t wet your panties or anything. You’re safe. And you’re welcome.”[/b] Leila was rather glad that she was safe, yet Vincent’s “you’re welcome” was uttered before Leila had time to thank him not to have crushed her or snapped her neck between his arm and chest. The crash landing left the catbus lying horizontally, five pairs of feet squirming idly on the sloped surface they landed on. It growled weakly for a couple of times, perhaps out of hunger or pain. Leila almost felt sorry for the poor creature. She gathered the strength to push herself upright and, hands and feet carefully choosing points of support to make up with the incoherence between the direction of gravity and the orientation of the collapsed catbus, made it to an exit which was once one of the windows. She carefully slid herself out through the opening, and off the side of the catbus and down to the ground, finding herself standing alongside many of the other humans and a couple of Nobodies that accompanied them on their trip, all recovering from the recent fall. Quite curiously, the ground was...a bit bouncy. And sweetness. Sweetness was in the air. Leila looked around in amusement as the sugary flavour registered itself at the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t that noticeable back on the bus, beneath the scent of expired tuna, yet now a look at the scenery and it was now clear that they have arrived in a very different biome in Nowhere - a place where the ground was jelly, covered in a layer of fine, powdered sugar; rivers and puddles of water were viscosious fluids that were various kinds of syrup, and vegetation and flora bore the bright, splendid colour schemes of the sugary goods arrayed in candy shops. [i]Interesting,[/i] Leila thought as she dusted her skin and clothes of the powder and combed her partly tangled hair mostly free of sugary flakes, while she resisted the childish urge to start hopping up and down on the elastic substance that composed the ground. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the surreal scenery around the place. Red-and-white striped branches and leaves extended off tree trunks in the shapes of spiralling, rainbow-coloured vines sprawled the space between other plants, twisting and turning in a fashion reminiscent of the chewy sour candy strips as their ends hung freely. The colours were so toxically vivid and saturated - this sight gave a whole new meaning to the term “eye-candy”. Leila wondered what sorts of creatures would populate an area like this. What even was she thinking. Slimes, apparently. * * * * [i]Why were they attacking the slimes?[/i] Leila couldn’t quite make out what was happening as she scurried around the scene that was now a frenzy of fire and ice and lightning and classic Latin spells and all that jazz. Leila maneuvered around the scene, cautious not to step on anything she isn’t supposed to and not to be hit by the icicles that also happen to be raining out from the sky and not to accidentally step on something she shouldn’t. There was this once she almost shoved her left foot right into a slime, and prevented it narrowly by stumbling a couple of steps backwards and almost falling over herself. [b]“Ah! I am so very sorry - ”[/b] She immediately apologized - part of that “proper etiquette” her elders back at home stresses so often - hopefully the little jelly creature didn’t take that accident personally - and then she had to take another sudden jolt back because if she hadn’t the gelatinous jaws may have closed on her foot instead. The question just changed from [i]why were we attacking the slimes[/i] to [i]why were the slimes attacking us[/i], and Leila found herself hopping around the field evading the furious bouncy cubes at any cost, the dimly glowing green amulet swinging around dangling from her neck as she did so.. A few staggering steps later, she came to a halt besides Harper, who was trying to fend off the incoming slimes with the pipe he was holding. The combat came to a pause as all parties took a moment to assess the situation. [b]"Leila, let's keep the slimes away from them."[/b] [i]Allllright? But with….with what?[/i] [b]"Team?"[/b] The boy then asked. Leila, however, did not have time to react at first because one of the slimes just decided to start charging towards the two of them. What to do? [i]Try to stop it.[/i] With what? [i]Something.[/i] There was nothing in her hands. [i]There had to be something.[/i] A candy-cane twig fragment some distance away. [i]Too small to do any good. Too far away anyway.[/i] Jelly-dirt or sugar dust or something else from the ground. [i]Bad idea.[/i] A shimmery, translucent thing a couple of steps away - one of the icicles from Haku earlier. That would work. [i]That would work![/i] But still too far - no, just close enough. Worth a try- Leila wasn’t exactly sure what went through her mind, neither what exactly she did in accordance. Yet at the end of that half a second, she recalled her arm swung in a rather elegant curve that allowed a trajectory of the sharpened piece of ice into the direction of the threat - the slime now throbbing unhappily with the heavy icicle buried halfway into the centre of its front face. She was panting and she could feel the liquid draining away as the weight of the amulet decreased slightly. Team? She looked over her shoulder to Harper. [b]”Team.”[/b] She replied in what was probably the faintest, most uncertain voice possible as she stepped back into a defensive stance she had no idea where she learnt from.