Fredrick listened to the entire situation, taking note of each of the seeming web if influence and crime that was happening. When she went to the blind kid he hadn't actually got the name of he watched with intensity jaw clenched but followed with Gareth and left him alone to tell them the thing he seemed to know himself. When Jilly's voice spoke up firey and ready for action he found himself joining in.

"YEAH LETS GO RAID THEM!!!!- he called before stopping "though we need a proper idea of how to do that, their mobile and never stay in place meaning we have to find and intercept them right?" He asked the greater group the jelly reminding him of an overexcited little sibling but he did agree that attacking them would work and maybe cause issues but we'd deal with those later.

Fredrick's question prompted Jilly to think strategically, even if only a brief moment. She still didn't have any particular strategy in mind but she remembers something that would help. She ruffled through the bottom of her cauldron and pulled out a small baby blue coat with some cloud-like pattern on it.

"I can use this to fly and scout! It's called Cape of Cotton Candy." To demonstrate, she tied the coat around her and wore it like a cape, a superhero cape. Once donned, a puff of cloud lifted her several feat upward, giving her enough altitude for her to initiate the flight function. Jilly flew through the sky around the group, her left arm was tucked next to her body while her right arm extended forward as if directing the flight direction.

"See? I can fly now. Tell me what do the bandits' look like, Mr. Guard. I will look for them."

Action:
1) Use cloak of soaring - jumping F, Flight F
2) Scout for bandit's camp

The boy was nervous after the old man's words. He wasn't sure if it was worth talking about. And whether it makes sense. But after Jilly told me about her plan for the raid. I became more nervous. For me, everyone who was around in my imagination was just ordinary people, not wars. To me, the old man looked like an old man with a sword. But no more. The boy was worried about the others. He didn't want them to wait for any bandits. After all, if you just wait for them to arrive, the girl will obviously not be with them.

After a long silence, the Boy could not stand it, the conscience inside him would not allow him to remain silent. His silence could only lead to a waste of time. He remembered the guards' words and finally decided to speak. His voice sounded shaky when everyone didn't know what to do.

- "I am... I do not know what to do, but..."
When he heard them pay attention to him, he stopped talking for a while because he was nervous.
"They are... The guards... They were talking about who took the girl... by them... There's a captain in charge... They said this: "The Captain said to keep clear past the old logging path anyway. If they’re smart, they’ll move east again. They always do.""
After that, he pondered the phrase of one of the guards: "never thought they'd take a kid this close to the village.”. And then he assumed.
"Maybe... The ones who stole the girl... Not so far from the village... One of the guards said, "never thought they'd take a kid this close to the village.""

After that, the boy hoped that it would somehow help everyone.

Harrowfen Bridge held the group in its narrow calm while the marsh below whispered on, indifferent to urgency. Marra’s hands still shook against her apron, but the fact she hadn’t been dragged back to Wickerford yet was a kind of fragile victory—one she seemed afraid to acknowledge out loud.

Jilly’s impatience cut through that fear like a bell. Her answer to the whole tangled mess was immediate and simple—raid them; get in, save people, get out—delivered with the kind of certainty that only comes from not overthinking it.

Frederick’s enthusiasm sparked right along with it, then tempered into something sharper: if the bandits never stay in one place, the real problem isn’t courage—it’s finding them in time, or intercepting them on the move.



Marra swallowed and forced herself to add what she could, as if afraid that speaking too long would summon the guards again. “They don’t take from everyone,” she said. “They take from the ones who can’t afford to resist. And… they came close this time. Too close.” Her voice caught on the last words, and she pressed her lips together hard, as if holding the rest inside would keep her standing.

It was Rat who finally put the missing piece on the bridge between fear and action. His voice came shaky at first, then steadier as he pushed through the nerves: guards talking about a captain, orders to keep clear past the old logging path, and the certainty that the bandits—if they were smart—would move east again, because they always did.

He added the other line too, the one that made Marra’s face go even paler: never thought they’d take a kid this close to the village.



Above, Jilly’s flight widened into a true sweep. From that height the world simplified: dull greens, dark water, pale birch stands, and the thin geometry of human passage. East of Wickerford, the logging cut revealed itself as a faint but unmistakable line—ground packed harder than it should be, with breaks where carts had bitten into softer mud. Further along, half-hidden beneath the canopy, a smear of gray rose and vanished: smoke kept low, as if someone was trying not to advertise a fire.



The bridge didn’t offer comfort, but it offered clarity. With Rat’s warning and Jilly’s eyes in the sky, they finally had something Wickerford had refused to give them: a direction that meant more than hope.

Open next steps, depending on what the group chooses to do:

- Follow the logging path east and close the distance fast—treat it as an interception before dusk.
- Use aerial scouting to confirm whether that smoke is a camp, a rest stop, or a decoy—then move with better certainty.
- Set an ambush at a pinch point Garreth identifies along the cut, forcing the bandits to come through on ground that favors the party.

Jilly fly low as she tried to scout, the streak of gray coming from beneath the canopy caught the interest. Would that be their target? She flew around in circle as she consider the best approach, though that didn't last long as she gave up on thinking and just decided do it the most direct way possible.

"It's a bird... no, it's a plane... no, it's... Supergel!!" Jilly landed next to the source of the smoke as she yelled the last sentence. One knee bent deep and one hand slammed down into the ground for maximum superhero landing, or at least that's how she imagined herself look. However, with her jelly limbs it looks more like she just got her bottom half squashed into the ground.

Fredrick seeing that the Jelly could fly would follow his best into the treeline swinging from branch to branch like monkey bars looking to keep up wkth the speedy flying ball of slime. And trying to avoid being seen by others by moving to fast in the tree canopy to really be recognized as a human person. Stopping up in a nearby trees limbs to assess the situation that Jilly just plopped themselves right into the middle of.

The canopy swallowed sound the moment Jilly dropped below the treeline. Up close, the “smoke” wasn’t a towering plume at all—just a thin, gray smear seeping from a shallow firepit dug into damp earth, coaxed to burn low with green wood and wet bark. It smelled of soot and resin and something greasy that didn’t belong in a forester’s cookfire.

Jilly’s arrival turned that quiet into chaos. Her shouted declaration and earnest attempt at a heroic landing sent ash puffing outward in a soft burst, scattering pale flecks across moss and bootprints. For a heartbeat the clearing froze—then two men in drab travel leathers snapped upright as if yanked by strings. One kicked a pot-lid over the coals too late to hide the heat, eyes wide and unfriendly; the other’s hand went straight to his belt, fingers curling around a whistle cord and then—after spotting the jelly figure—hesitating, unsure what exactly he was looking at.

Fredrick, moving above it all, reached a branch thick enough to hold him and went still. From there, the scene sharpened into details a ground-level glance might miss: the firepit was positioned where the logging cut could be watched through a slit in the trees; the men weren’t relaxed like hunters or workers, but keyed tight like lookouts. Near the edge of the clearing, a short length of rope lay half-buried under leaves—an improvised snare line, the kind meant to trip an ankle in the dark. And leading away from the fire, pressed into softer patches of mud, were tracks that didn’t belong to villagers: heavier boots, irregular spacing, and the faint double-groove of a small cart that had been dragged rather than rolled.

Behind the treeline, Garreth moved with a veteran’s economy—no wasted steps, no snapped twigs—keeping close enough to Fredrick’s line of travel that a quick glance upward could still catch the old man’s position. He didn’t climb as readily as the younger man, but he knew the ground routes beneath the canopy, weaving between trunks to stay parallel, one hand occasionally raised in a silent signal: slow, watch, don’t commit yet.

In the clearing, the lookout’s fingers tightened on the whistle cord the instant Jilly’s landing scattered ash. The sharp inhale that followed was the kind Garreth had heard a hundred times—an alarm about to be born—giving only a breath of warning before sound would carry far beyond the trees.

The man with the whistle recovered first. He raised it toward his mouth, breath already drawing in—either to warn someone deeper in the woods or to call for help that wasn’t far. The other slid a knife free, not yet lunging, but angling his body so the firepit and the thin path behind him were both covered. Neither spoke a name. Neither asked who Jilly was. Their eyes kept flicking, not just at her, but past her—measuring whether more were coming.

In the hush between breaths, a third presence made itself known: a soft shift in brush off to the side, the sound of someone who’d been crouched low and was now moving away fast, careful not to break branches. Whoever it was didn’t want a fight—they wanted distance, and then they wanted to be a problem later.

The clearing held several truths at once: this wasn’t the bandits’ “home,” but it looked very much like a forward tooth of it—a place to watch the road, rest briefly, keep a fire small, and vanish when needed. And right now, the difference between a quiet lead and a raised alarm was the space of a single breath through a whistle.

Jilly wasn't sure what to expect when she landed. A welcome party? The entire bandit camp staring her down? Two lookouts was definitely much more tame than what's in her imagination. One of them would pull out a whistle and Jilly immediately leapt towards that person without much thinking. Her right hand clenched into a fist before she shoots it at the bandit's face, particularly the whistle.

Action:
Jelly Punch - Componentless Magic F, Magic F, Water Element F, Elasticity F, Change State F, Transmutation F - Jilly throw a punch with her noodly arm and transmute any non-living hit into gum-flavored jelly

Fredrick caught the noise and movement of someone moving at the edges of the forest not part of the group he moved to intercept, moving through the trees using
[Climbing] F
Once above or close enough to the individual Fred would drop down from the tree canopy. Aiming to punch the fleeing individual using the force of the punch to slam the individual into ground.

Action:
Drop Punch:[Climbing] F [Fighting Style, Martial Arts] F, [Super Strength] F, [Knockback] F
Fredrick uses his position higher up to drop down onto an enemy and punch them carrying the power from the fall into the punch.

The whistle lookout snapped the cord up and drew a sharp breath, lips already pursing around the metal as his eyes fixed on the absurd blue figure in front of him. For a split second it looked like the shrill note would cut through the trees and wake the whole cut of forest—

Jilly’s punch landed.

It didn’t hit like a fist so much as a springy, impossible force, and whatever magic clung to her jelly-limbs flooded into the contact. The lookout’s cheeks ballooned on instinct, not with air for a whistle, but with a thick, glossy bubblegum swell that pushed out past his lips in a wobbling pink dome. His eyes went comically wide as the bubble grew—bigger, and bigger, and bigger—until it obscured half his face.

He tried to gasp, tried to spit, tried to pull the whistle away and make it work anyway, but the bubble only trembled and then—



A wet snap of sugar-scented goo burst across his nose and chin. Strings of gum clung to his mouth and the whistle alike, sealing his lips in a humiliating mess. The lookout staggered back coughing, shoulders heaving as if he’d sprinted a mile, one hand pawing uselessly at his face while the other shook with sudden fatigue. The alarm, for now, died in his throat.

To the side, the second lookout—knife already out—moved to pounce on the distraction.

He never reached Jilly.

Steel whispered, clean and practiced. Garreth’s sword slid into the gap like it had been waiting there all along, intercepting the knife hand with a sharp clang that rang off the low trees. The old captain didn’t waste words; his blade pressed, angled, and turned the bandit’s momentum aside, forcing him back a step, then another. It was not flashy. It was efficient—wrist control, footwork, and the quiet message of a man who’d fought in places where mistakes were fatal.

Above and beyond them, at the clearing’s edge, the runner bolted—fast, light, desperate.

Fredrick dropped from the canopy with the kind of decisive weight that should have ended it in one clean motion, a falling strike aimed to hammer the fleeing figure into the ground and keep them there. For an instant it looked perfect: runner distracted, Fredrick descending like judgment.

At the last heartbeat, the runner turned.

Not a panicked flinch—an uncanny, trained pivot as if they’d heard the shift of air itself. An elbow drove hard into Fredrick’s stomach the moment he came into range, a compact blow that stole breath and forced his body to fold just enough to ruin the angle of the drop. Pain flared, sharp and intimate, and the runner used the contact like a lever—slipping under and past him, twisting away into the brush with a burst of speed, gaining ground instead of losing it. [Fredrick's actions reduced from 3 to 2 this round]

The clearing held its breath.

No whistle screamed. No horn answered. But the forest was no longer asleep: the runner’s retreating footfalls were already carrying the news deeper into the trees, and somewhere beyond sight a branch snapped—either a second set of feet moving, or someone changing position to watch.

In the firepit, the coals still smoldered under the hurriedly kicked lid. Smoke continued to seep, thin and accusing.

Fred landed upon the runners fist with a sickening thud that sent his stomach i to his throat and landed on the ground breathing hard. His stomach and throat hurt.

He didnt stay on the ground long popping up onto his barefeet and dashing to catch up with the runner. And punch at them aiming to punch them into a tree and Tangle them up into the thicker foliage.

Action: [Fast] F [Fighting Style Martial Arts] F [*Tangle*] F

"Oh, I thought we are going to scout first." Jilly tilted her head as she saw the guard and Fredrick battling a bandit each. Glancing at the bandit she just punched, Jilly had a large grin on her face as she transformed her body into blob of jelly and slipped underneath him. Like an acid that corrode the ground, the soil underneath the bandit sizzled for a moment before it got transmuted into water. Potentially sunk most of the bandit's body. Jilly would wait before the bandit's head was above the water before she cancelled her transmutation, turning the water back into its original form as soil to trap the bandit inside it, except the head. She wanted to ask some things first.

Action:
Ground cage - Change state F, Transmutation F - Move under the target as liquid and turn their footing into water and then cancel the transmutation to trap them.

The knife lookout tried to capitalize on the chaos—one quick step, blade angled low, the sort of ugly, practical lunge meant for ribs.

Garreth didn’t meet it with force. He met it with precision.

Steel kissed steel with a short, biting ring, and the old captain slid inside the bandit’s reach as if he’d been born there. The sword’s edge snapped down in a flat, punishing cut across the man’s knife hand—not enough to sever, but enough to make fingers spasm open. The knife fell into the moss with a dull thunk. Before the bandit could recover, Garreth’s shoulder drove forward, compact and brutal, and the guard staggered back a step with a wet grunt, pain flashing across his face as red began to bead through his sleeve.

He was hurt. Disarmed. Still on his feet—still in the fight—but suddenly very aware he wasn’t bullying villagers anymore.

Near the firepit, the whistle lookout made the only sensible choice left to him: panic.

He tried to backpedal away from Jilly’s shifting, hungry-looking jelly form, heels skidding on the softened ground. His foot caught—half in the churned mud, half in the viscous drag she’d left beneath him—and he went down hard, arms flailing for balance that wasn’t there. The back of his head clipped something unkind—a rock or a root jutting up through moss—with a sharp crack that made the sound in the clearing go momentarily thin.

He slumped.

Not dead. Not neatly restrained. Just sprawled with his eyes rolling, breath coming in uneven pulls, jaw slack as if his body hadn’t yet decided whether to wake or drift deeper. If anyone wanted answers from him, they would have to force him awake quickly, and even then whatever came out could be muddled by pain and shock.

At the edge of the clearing, Fredrick’s pursuit paid off despite the runner’s nasty elbow. He surged after them, driving a fist into them, using the momentum as his weapon. Vines and low branches snapped tight around limbs as the runner hit the tree; roots and brambles caught boots. The runner twisted and snarled, fighting the bind, but the greenery held fast enough to steal their mobility and turn speed into struggle.

Tangled.

Still dangerous. Still breathing.

For one precious breath, it looked like the clearing might belong to the party.

Then the forest answered.

Somewhere deeper along the logging cut, a branch snapped with purpose—not like a startled deer, but like a man shifting position to run. Another sound followed: a faint, sharp birdcall that didn’t match any bird in the marsh. It came once… then again, answered from farther away.

Garreth’s head lifted instantly, eyes narrowing toward the direction the runner had tried to flee.

“Signals,” he said, voice low and urgent. “They’ve got ears out there.”

And as if to underline his point, the smoldering firepit’s lid rattled faintly—vibration carried through the ground—followed by a distant murmur of movement: boots on packed earth, not close yet, but closing. The kind of sound that meant the window for leisurely interrogation was already bleeding away.

"Signals? Are they getting to us?" Jilly was about to try poking the slumped bandit, but if their reinforcement is coming then she wouldn't have enough time for it. Time to use Plan J.

"If their lair is roughly that way..." Jilly pointed at the direction the runner was headed to.

"And some of them would come this way. Then the number of people there will be reduced. I will see If I can spot their place." She said her plan to Gareth before once more taking off into the sky. This time she fly low near the canopies to better spot the lair or other enemies.

Action:
1) Search the bandit lair location with Fight F

Fredrick would move to hide in the very branches and foliage the tangled runner is now tied up in. He went to grab and keep the runner tangled and quiet as he listens to see what happens. Hearing the rumbling of the others making thier way to the clearing. Calling out to Gareth "Hide in the forest!"

Garreth didn’t let the knife-man recover. He drove in close, caught the man’s forearm with the flat of his blade to keep the weapon-hand off line, then turned the hilt and cracked the pommel across the side of the bandit’s head. The strike was short, ugly, and final; the man’s knees buckled and he went down into the moss with a wet exhale. Garreth immediately melted into the brush, dragging the bandit with him, disappearing the way professionals do—no dramatic flourish, just a shift of weight and a vanishing angle between trunks.

At the clearing’s edge, the runner strained against the vines and brush Fredrick had forced them into—tangled, off-balance, still armed and very much still fighting. The bandit thrashed and twisted, trying to free a knee, trying to find purchase for a boot, trying—most of all—to get enough breath to shout. Each attempt made the bind bite tighter and the struggle louder, and Fredrick’s presence in that same foliage turned “call for help” into a gamble the runner didn’t quite dare to take.

Then the forest signaled again. A clipped birdcall—wrong for any bird—answered from deeper east, followed by the faint rhythm of feet on packed ground. Not a stampede yet, but purposeful movement, closing. Whoever the runner had been trying to reach had heard enough to start reacting.

Jilly’s “Plan J” took her low and fast, limited to short bursts—ten feet up at most, skimming beneath branches rather than soaring over them.

From that height, the canopy still blocked the wider world, but it couldn’t hide everything: cart grooves that cut east, a strip of trampled fern where bodies had passed recently, and—through a thin slit in the trees—a darker pocket where smoke thickened and voices murmured around something larger than a lookout fire. A wagon silhouette, maybe. One or two shapes posted where the logging cut narrowed.

Jilly landed a few distance away. She didn't want to alert another whistleblower so she wanted to do this more stealthily. Her body shudder as she's trying to change her molecules, from bright pink jelly into soft green matcha-flavored jelly to blend with her surrounding. She entered the deeper pocket posing as a green jelly sludge, crawling very close to the ground, hoping the grass would be enough to hide her presence. She hadn't forget her mission to find the daughter here so she focused her search on where they might keep their prisoners.

Action:
Use Change State F and Transmutation F to sneak in as green jelly

Fredrick decided to knock the runner out standing up and using the runners state of being to slam his fist straight into the jaw of the runner. He hears a bird call and recognizes this is getting out of hand. Deciding to try and make his way back up into the canopy of the trees to hide. He was worried about Garreth but hed seen him as a skilled fighter. And it would be preferable to be free to help him escape should he get captured. Or at least that was his thoughts. Hoping that his punch knocked out the runner.

Action: Fighting Style (Martial arts) F, Superstrength F, Climbing F

Fredrick’s second attempt lands with the kind of blunt certainty that ends arguments. The runner—already half-tangled from brush and vines—tries to twist free with a sharp inhale, shoulders turning as if to slip past the bind one last time. Fredrick closes the distance instead, drives a compact strike into the side of the jaw and follows through with his weight, forcing the bandit’s head to snap sideways. The runner staggers, feet skidding in the leaf litter, then collapses in a limp heap among the roots—breathing, but out cold. Whatever warning they meant to carry deeper into the woods dies with them for now, bought with seconds and bruises.

Low to the ground, Jilly’s scouting run keeps to the treeline, her height limited and the undergrowth doing most of the hiding. From the bushes near S7, the camp opens up in broken sightlines—clear enough to count bodies and landmarks, but not clean enough to guarantee every corner. Still, the important pieces are hard to miss. A steel cage sits at E14, and inside it a small figure shifts—Marra’s daughter, alive, curled tight and motionless between moments. A bowman at F12 keeps a steady angle that watches the cage and the clearing, while another archer holds a wider overwatch at I4. Three melee bandits patrol the open ground—one near H7, another at J10, and a third acting as the cage’s leash at H13, pacing to G14 where the cage gate and lock sit within arm’s reach.

Voices carry in clipped bursts: talk of “the others” returning later, of needing to move before they’re pinned, and of their leader “working the new plan” beneath the central tent at E9. Whatever this camp is, it isn’t settled—it’s bracing, watching, and waiting, and the window to act feels measured in minutes, not comfort.

"1... 2... 3... 4... 5..." Jilly used her non-existent fingers to count the bandits present. Thankfully it was no more than 5 so she wouldn't need to use her non-existent toes. Still though, that would be too much for her to handle alone. She could sneak in, but getting out with Marra's daughter safely would be much harder.

"Let's regroup first." Jilly retreated back a few distance and waited for Fredrick and Garreth to arrive.