First section is a collab post with [@BlessedWrath]
[hr]Justin gave Sam a friendly grin.  "Sure thing - funny that you happened to drop in today, these guys were actually about to move into the lodge themselves."  He glanced over at Jaiden and Amie, and the grin turned into a grimace.  "That is, if they make it that far."

"Yeah...about that..." Sam tossed a too-casual glance over her shoulder at Amie and Jaiden. It did not take a developmental psychologist to recognize this was not the first time she had witnessed the prelude to violence. The fact she barely knew any of them did help to reinforce a reason for her lack of interest in their affairs, however. She paused briefly, studying the two for half a second or so, before finishing that thought.

"If, by 'lodgers', you mean to include Captain Creature and Princess Cut-A-Bitch...d'ya think maybe somebody should do something about..." she trailed off momentarily, waving a hand in the general direction of the would-be combatants. "...[i]that?[/i]"

She turned back to Justin, wearing a more serious expression which, in itself, betrayed the fact that she did, in fact, believe there was a stake in whether they would become violent. That this vested interest in them hinged on whether they would also come after [i]her[/i] may not have been expressed, but it was heavily implied in her eyes. After all, she had already been through enough this week. Waking up to three feet of alloy steel sticking out of her chest would seriously hinder her repair efforts.

Justin could tell there was a little more to Sam's tone with her comment than the words themselves expressed.  What exactly, he couldn't say, but he had a feeling that this spaceship crash hadn't been the first bad thing that had ever happened to her.  Hopefully, he could turn it around into a good thing.

"Yeah, I just barely got done inspecting the place and repairing things," Justin explained with a sigh.  "I don't really want to get a call and have to come back to fix something they broke on the first day."

He approached Jaiden and Amie and held up his hands in a non-threatening way - but interposed his own body between the two of them.  "Okay, easy - you guys are going to be living at the lodge together, both of you, so can we just have a do-over with introducing yourselves, please?"

[i]"Now's your chance,"[/i] Sam's inner voice butted in again. [i]"Ditch the spares and find your own way back. Hell, maybe you can wait it out in the bushes until they leave, and get your ship running again before they notice you're gone."[/i]

That would have ended her up lost in the woods. The [i]alien[/i] woods. The alien woods crawling with unidentified, potentially dangerous life forms, and at least one shapeshifting would-be bad boy. There could be others. Besides, even if she did find her way to the lodge, there was no guarantee she could get in. Waiting for Justin was just as acceptable an alternative; she got his name, and the fact he was crazy enough to step between a monster and a sword-slinging aristocrat. Apart from that, she didn't know him from Adam.

[i]"No..."[/i] Sam decided. [i]"I need options. That's going to take time. Gotta figure out what I need before I figure out how to use it."[/i]

Instead of rabbiting, Sam stuck her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and leaned against a tree, propping up one of her workboots on the trunk beneath her. If Mr. Diplomacy failed to calm the situation, she'd be ready.

[i]"Yeah?"[/i] She chided herself. [i]"Ready for what, exactly?"[/i][hr]Nora sighed despondently and slumped her shoulders as she and Boxcar walked along alone through the forest.  "Well, so much for being in charge of the glorious rescue expedition," she said, more to herself than to anyone else.

Boxcar shrugged, though it was hard to convey the motion as he was moving along on all four paws.  He had just finished a friendly bark of greeting in response to Ashley's called-out statement.  "Look, yer just bein' too hard on yourself.  Stop mopin' and just be yourself - if they want to follow you, it'll be because they like you for you, and not-"

The wolf paused, his nose twitching as he sniffed the air.  Nora squatted down next to him and regarded him curiously.  "You have something?"

"Yeah..."  Boxcar tested the air again, separating the scents he smells from each other.  One scent was purely physical and not related to his super-powered sniffing ability - the remnants of smoke and damaged metal from the crashed ship.  He also could smell Justin, he recognized that from earlier, as well as Amie's royalty-tinged perfume.

The other two scents, however, both were charged with power, each in their own way.  One scent was like a spritz of effervescent dormant psychic emanations...a telepath of some kind?  It didn't smell like a more dangerous psionic power, like telekinesis, though Boxcar had to admit that mental powers like those were a little trickier for him to figure out.

The other scent caused the hackles to rise on his neck and back, and he growled involuntarily.  There was a musky odor that reeked of chaotic transformation, a protean polymorphic pungency, along with an underlying...[i]hunger[/i].  Specifically, hunger of a predator...

"B-Boxcar?" Nora yelped as she stood up and backed away a few steps quickly.  "What's the matter with you?"

With an effort, the wolf stopped growling, though his senses were all on high alert.  "I smell Justin, Amie...and two others.  One of whom might be very, very bad.  This way."

And he ran off through the bushes, with Nora on his heels trying to keep up.  "H-hey, wait for me!"