Amidst all the hullabaloo, the police officers had overlooked Limen slipping across the road and into the warehouse. The hunters were mostly on the retreat, less than fond of all the attention — supernatural or otherwise — they had gotten. 

Now he was free to touch all the rocks he wanted. Of course, his overwhelming desire to not get blown up had by now completely quashed any lingering thoughts about going any closer to those unnatural explosives. A quick knock on the rocks with a barrier gave him the only answer he needed: instant dissipation of the barrier. There was hardly any bigger warning sign than that.

The ghost girl’s temptation was hard to turn down. Limen hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so croissants sounded pretty nice, albeit indulgent. But they don’t make them like they used to anymore. Refrigeration was a wonderful technology, but frozen dough was simply inferior; yet that had unfortunately become the norm at some point. The pâtisseries were in a sad state. Perhaps homemade treats were the way to go now, with all the authenticity and character sapped from commercial baking. He hadn’t been to France in a while, either. The southern regions were more scenic overall, but he’d always thought La Boulangerie Viennoise in Paris made the best Austrian-style pastries. They had fit his palate better than even the ‘real deal’ in Wien. Was the little bakery still around after all these tumultuous decades? The odds were not, unfortunately enough, in its favour.

His French was rather rusty, and he’d never exactly mastered the language in the first place. But it would suffice. [color=ffbf69]“Est-ce que je pourrais avoir un croissant, s’il vous plaît.”[/color] Still, it felt odd to speak in a Romance language to a yamato nadeshiko — at least, she might have passed for one with a bit of effort — sporting a hime cut.

Then again, it was a French pastry of Austrian origin that she had baked.

[color=ffbf69]“Je suis Limen, un dæmon.”[/color] The lingua france of global diplomacy had long since become English, after all — and even then he would have expected it from the lips of a high commissioner, not a high schooler. Perhaps she was a Gallophile. [color=ffbf69]“Et vous, êtes-vous aussi un diable? Peut-être devrions-nous partir, avant que les chasseurs ou la police ne nous attrape, ou pire.”[/color] The officers were shaping up to be more troublesome than the now-fleeing hunters, though not so much in terms of threat to life and limb. That is, if you ignored the spooky rocks completely. Did that still count as being hoist with his own petard?

[color=ffbf69]“You ought to go too, tree. Looks like the Doña Quixote there won’t be leaving this place until every last devil’s gone.”[/color] The lancer girl was still trying to make skewers out of the plant. There was roasting flesh to go with it not too far away, if shish kebab was what she was planning. 

A portal opened amidst the flames.

Did the homeless man just steal some of the bodies? Could’ve just eaten his own arm.

Ah, now he was hungry again. Tired, too. Making a staircase and walking away would be easy, but Limen was feeling a little lazy. He waved at the tree and the biker. [color=ffbf69]“I don’t suppose either of you could give a fellow a lift?” [/color]