Vincent hesitated as Liam urged for him to go ahead. A part of him somewhere actually didn't want to follow after everyone else. He wanted to run freely through the city with free reign to play around with his skills and improve on them. He felt that if he entered that portal he'd enter nothing, but a velvet prison. That was a feeling he didn't particularly care for. Then the robot sharpshooter burst through a mass of the Grit that had managed to follow them downstairs in quite the racket.

At this point, Vincent's hesitation had caused him such delay that now he had no choice but to run for the safety of the portal. He suspected the portal would only last for one or two more uses before collapsing on itself. Such a hastily built portal lacked any permanence. Father always drilled quality over quantity into him. Vincent always preferred quality time rather than learning, but now he wished that he paid better attention. He dismissed such thoughts quickly as he had no time to waste on regrets and what ifs.

Stepping through the portal left Vincent with a disorienting feeling which passed quickly enough. He let out a small shout of surprise as the Queen leaped on him to hug him from behind. He felt he had made his feelings about her clear and yet the Queen still embraced him. He was quite impressed at her resilience and caught off guard by her energy. She pulled herself off of Vincent as he stepped off the sigil and Liam appeared behind him.

Vincent saw Kat and Moth were alright. He nodded to Kat with a light smile. He barely acknowledge Moth as a presence. He was truly impressed by Liam's resilience to still be standing after taking such serious injury.

Vincent bowed his head towards Liam respectfully. [b]"Well done."[/b]

Then the Queen addressed the group.

[quote]She stepped back to allow the robot to assess Liam's injuries for immediate treatment, and she looked up to the others gathered there. "We're underneath the palace spire. We should be safe, at least for awhile."[/quote]

Vincent frowned. Safe was good at least for now. Everyone here needed to rest and recover after what happened, except maybe Kat and himself. He glanced over to Kat, whom he suspected that she didn't want to stick around for long, because she wanted to find her family. He simply felt that staying around would be a waste of time.

[b]"So, how are we going to deal with this problem?"[/b] He immediately asked with a serious tone. [b]"Hiding clearly isn't going to work. The effort put into the Wall was clearly wasted since the Grit cleared it so easily and are already working on getting the grounded Grit inside. From what I've seen our current pool of weapons to fight back are very much lacking."[/b] 

He then pointed towards the ceiling. [b]"And what in the Hell is going on with the sky out there?"[/b] He had no interest in holding back his tone in speaking with the Queen when most of her subjects were frozen in stone or dead or scattered to the wind.