It all happened a little fast for Maël. What had first seemed to be hardly anything more than an unexpected holdup until they'd have dealt with some petty wannabe thieves developed into an ambush of the supernatural sort. The man suddenly let go of the bag and the frenchman failed to hold its weight in time due to the unexpectancy. The suitcase dropped onto Maël's shoes, hitting his big toe and causing pain. That was nothing against the sight of the individual's teeth though. Obviously in shock and somewhat frightened, Maël stumbled backwards and nearly lost his footing due to one half of it still being wedged in between the floor and the suitcase.

Who were they ? This could not be just some random occurrence, it had to be something with a plan!
How could they have known this ? Was it related to the attacks they had come here for to investigate ?
And what should they do ? Flee and hope for police and other people to hold them back while they'd make a run for it ? Or start a fight on the spot ? Worst of all there was no time for communication: Clive would probably go crazy and then the officials would go crazy as well. This was an airport!

Another surge of pain. This time much, much more pronounced and coming from a much more unexpected place. Maël raised his arm and looked down onto it. Val's impact in the shop had not only littered the ground with many Shades Of Grey, but also with glass shards. One of them now was stuck firmly in his left hand while the other had many cuts on its fingers. Someone knew the thin line between insanity and cunning...

The threshold was about to be crossed. Maël leaned against one of the massive columns and pressed against his hand as hard as he could in an attempt to quench the pain while, because of that and the overall distraction, there were not enough mental resources left to fight against himself. He saw Edgar deploy some weird kind of his own magic and it felt like a Get Out of Jail Free card: If more 'reasonable' people could do supernatural things in the public so could he! It was the point when Maël's vision turned into a mess in red and Eleanor's Merlin-meter might have had to switch to another measurement range. What had been invisible connection points grew into a swarm of tiny portals to another world floating around him, happily eating away at the nearby concrete in order to clear the space for what they were bringing in. It was like the non-sci-fi equivalent of tiny drones working on a starship while it was already in flight and not only happened on the outside, but also inside Maël's body simultaneously. It was the reason why Edgar, if using his mind-reading abilities, would hear nothing but unintelligible noise. Maël's mind and brain was under reconstruction, quite literally.

By the time the magical cocoon started to vanish a pair of large eyes started observed their surroundings. They were a mixture of pitch black and ember, no pupils or iris to be seen. Pretty much the only way to guess what they were looking at was to backtrack the direction the head was pointing. Right now it pointed towards Edgar.

[i]Mind-read this, my favorite quizmaster: I don't need a chain to immobilize someone. I'll just twist the part below your knee until your toes point the right way... again. It would be the first time for you to actually be a decrepit old man instead of just making a mock out of decrepit old men by faking being one, right ?[/i]

The pair of almost ridiculously large horns turned a few degrees to watch what strange things Eleanor was doing. She was... typing on her phone, [i]now[/i] ?

[i]Oh yeah, just keep taking your smartphone addiction to the next level! Maybe your app even has a real-time money calculator for all the damage that will undoubtedly happen ? Please tell me, I need more motivation! And why is Val crawling away! Doesn't she have some kind of drug to just make any dangers disappear in her own reality ?[/i]

Those with a more sensitive nose would notice early that things started to smell a bit like fireworks. Or rather... Maël smelled a bit like fireworks as he had gained that certain, sulphuric aura around him. That was not the only new thing though as the tip of his tail suddenly slammed against a nearby wastebin. It flew over the battlefield into the direction of tethered-to-an-eldritch-hole-man, tumbling and spraying any contents along its trajectory and the lines of gravity. Some of those halfway eaten cookies, one-time coffee cups, sticky plastic bags and other disposables had a good chance of hitting members of the Sunday Group without evasive maneuvers being taken, but the primary goal was to gain their enemies' attention as the metal container hit the intended head partially before crashing into what remained of the shop's window.

[i]Not to forget you two morons: You designated yourself for eradication. The good news is that an annihilation device has just powered up![/i]

Maël moved forward on all four limbs, fingernails turned into small cones of claw leaving probably not so temporal imprints in the linoleum. Despite still being perfectly capable of bipedal locomotion, behaving like a quadruped had a few advantages he had had the opportunity to discover: More grip, combatants struggling with something that did no longer reach the height expected from a fully grown man, more length of his tail available for grabbing things and, last but not least, the fact that his tremendously large horns would not scoop up the hung ceiling as he was moving around, but could be used for impaling things instead.

He reached the small puddle of saliva one of the two monsters had deposited when opening its mouth for the first time and dipped his tongue right into it. There was a lot of dust, rubber from countless shoes of countless passengers and other shit, but also a taste to be remembered. Maybe a detailed enough description later on could provide some hints towards what they're dealing with ? One could never know if there'd be enough of a high quality corpse left for an autopsy, so better to take some samples right away while his infernal stomach could handle them.

Speaking of samples... As Maël opened his newly designed mouth one could see that its inner workings indeed had potential for... taking bloody samples so to speak. That was assuming that he wouldn't use the remainder of his refurbished body to rip even bigger samples off his object of study. Said remainder pretty much yelled 'Toughness!' from top to bottom and approached the chained individual at rapidly increasing speed. Edgar's mysterious chain was good, but it had two significant flaws: That guy could still move around in circles whose radii matched its length and even an indestructible chain could separate from the object it was holding in place by said object lacking enough structural strength itself.

It appeared that Maël was trying to find out about the latter as he was going for a head-on collission.


[hider]Maël wants his teammates to finally start taking him more seriously. Among some other things.

[img]https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/f4d1a1d2-5094-43fe-a455-b52b6c34c456/d3atu1l-f166f149-6c85-4fb0-a522-15d3d539a02e.jpg/v1/fill/w_900,h_1009,q_75,strp/demonic_by_dannycruz4_d3atu1l-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD0xMDA5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvZjRkMWExZDItNTA5NC00M2ZlLWE0NTUtYjUyYjZjMzRjNDU2XC9kM2F0dTFsLWYxNjZmMTQ5LTZjODUtNGZiMC1hNTIyLTE1ZDNkNTM5YTAyZS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9OTAwIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmltYWdlLm9wZXJhdGlvbnMiXX0.Lb6NL3rhV_vzUN8DI4ALec7x6rC2P12L-z3_rjHjuMA[/img][/hider]