"Tree Stride: You gain the ability to enter a tree and move from inside it to inside another tree of the same kind within 500 feet. Both trees must be living and at least the same size as you. [...] You can use this transportation ability once per round for the duration. You must end each turn outside a tree." - Dungeon and Dragons 5th Edition, Basic Rules

This chapter contains canon dialogue from episode 27 of Critical Role.

As they all waited for the sun to set, Beau took up a perch in the middle of the graveyard where the frail late-autumn sunlight actually touched the ground. It was just slightly warmer there, even with the damp grass and lingering frost, and nobody talked that much in the aftermath of that fucking disaster of a fight. But more importantly, it gave her a perfect vantage point to look down at Obito while the elf sat down next to a headstone with a pile of clothes in his lap.

Beau didn't want him to fuck up her uniform, okay?

"I promise I won't sew a smiley face into your stuff," said Obito, not quite glancing in her direction. Like, he did the right motion, but Beau was on his left and he only turned his head enough that the flower on his blind side faced her.

Beau looked at him sidelong, too.

He was on the tall side for an elf, though she'd never met an elf who was green. His clothes were kind of a clusterfuck with no coherence, like he'd raided a couple different closets at top speed and in the dark. One side of his face was scarred and lined with whorls like a piece of wood, and he unscarred side of his face was the one with the empty eye and the flower that replaced it. The sleeveless shirt he was wearing at the moment mostly kept loose bits of thread from contaminating his sewing space, but also made it really obvious that the upper right corner of his body was an animated tree in the shape of an arm. The transition between green skin and somewhat-patchy bark was as seamless as smoothing two pieces of clay together.

Jester would want to draw him so much. She seemed to have a thing for older green dudes with scars, and Beau guessed Obito was probably…two hundred? Maybe? Elf ages were hard enough to figure out on a good day.

Today had not been a good day, and it wasn't even noon yet.

"Unless you want something specific. A design?" Obito held up a needle in demonstration. "I do a pretty good pumpkin, too."

"I wasn't gonna accuse you of anything. Yet. But now you put the idea in my head, so thanks a lot." Beau rolled her eyes as Obito snickered. She crossed her arms and leaned forward so she could see his needle, and definitely not because her coat was the only thing that made running around in the frostbitten Greying Wildlands even a little tolerable.

"Sounds right." Obito turned the first item—a coat clearly sized for someone skinnier and a foot taller—inside-out in his hands and fiddled with a disorganized sewing kit until he found a spool that somewhat matched the cloth. "So, where'd all your friends go? Caduceus just handed me all your stuff like it's my new job. Not that I mind; I'm not a healer, so you can't argue with the way he divided the workload."

"Sleeping the day away," Beau said with a deliberately casual shrug. Not that she thought Obito could read her that well. If he did, he was polite enough not to say so. "I don't blame 'em. So like, what's your deal?"

Without looking up, Obito asked, "Which part?"

Beau waved both of her wrapped hands at him, encompassing his entire being from the weird sandals he wore in winter all the way to the tips of his near-vertical green ears. His hair was even a really dark green, streaked inconsistently with a weaker version of the pink in Caduceus's mohawk. It looked like shit, honestly.

"No, seriously, be specific. I have no idea what you want me to say," Obito said, craning his neck a little farther to actually look at her with his single dark eye. That'd been red earlier. What the hell.

And Yasha…would've wanted to know what flower was sticking out of the other side of his face. Beau shook that thought away.

"So, uh, why's your arm like that?" Seemed like a question he might've got a lot, so there was probably a stock answer lined up and ready to go.

Obito clearly paused, turning his wooden hand palm-up and offering it to her. "I mean, I dunno. It doesn't normally look like this, like all tree-like and stuff, but it works like it used to."

Beau paused partway through poking the sealed-over gash in the back of his hand. It was still sticky with sap, which she scraped off against some random bit of graveyard moss nearby. "Wait, then what does it normally look like?"

"Like a normal arm, mostly, except for being pure white. No veins or anything, and no fingernails," Obito responded mildly. He gave a crooked little smile. "Unless you're asking how I lost my first one?"

This was totally a trap. "Uh, yeah, sure, how'd you lose your…first arm?"

"A rockslide." With that, Obito turned back to his sewing.

There was no way that was the end of the story. Absolutely not. Beau would bet actual money Obito was telling her exactly enough to spawn more questions that he wouldn't answer. He was messing with her.

Beau gave up on that line of questioning as momentarily unproductive, but she wrote it down in her notebook anyway. Even without digging into the haversack, Beau had enough pencils and paper to make a wizard do a double-take, even if she couldn't share her stash and frankly didn't want to. She wasn't that kind of nerd.

"Next question?" Obito flipped the jacket in his hands so that its sleeves were back in order, then folded it. He set it aside in what Beau assumed would be the "done" pile once there was more than one thing in it, then picked up her long vest and dug through the thread supply again.

"It's not any fun if you go first," Beau grumbled, snapping her notebook shut around the pencil. "Then I guess I wanna know how you got Lorenzo to fuck off. Like, was there some secret? I figured something was up as soon as I heard you talk in that language." She didn't really need to justify being willing to name names. At least, Obito probably wouldn't ask her for much more detail than she'd volunteer past this point. Even so, Obito probably needed more information rather than less. "What'd you say to him?"

"I threatened him. I mean, I don't remember exactly what I said, but that's the gist of it." Not great memory, got it.

"I figured that," Beau drawled. She scratched the side of her face with the blunt end of the pencil. "But like, why'd it work for you?"

"Well, some threats work better if you can yell at someone in their language," Obito said, resting his chin in his hand. "Why was that weird, though?"

"Because I heard Kei and Rin yelling at each other like that when we were fighting—" here, she waved a hand dismissively, "—something else."

She doubted Obito cared much if they were busy killing a frog demon at the time. Beau didn't really hear enough to pick out more than when they used each other's names, but the tone was easy enough to understand even while Toya was still singing.

"Hah, they tend to do that. More Kei than Rin, usually. She doesn't do as much field work." Obito sighed. "Did they look all right when you saw them? Like, healthy and stuff."

"Uh, yeah. Kicking ass as much as I assume they can." Beau hadn't seen all that much of them during the early part of the fight, but "punctuality" wasn't among the virtues of any of her friends anyway. After having killed a frog devil thing with them, she was only halfway sure they were friends until Kei started to respond to Jester's Sendings. "But back to my question. Why'd you think that was gonna work on him?"

"Right." Obito held Beau's coat up to the sunlight to scrutinize his stitches, then said offhandedly, "That's because he's an oni."

Beau blinked. "An oni."

"Yep. He's even blue with horns, like the old stories." Plunk went the needle through Beau's vest, and Obito lifted his hand to find that he'd stabbed the needle to his wooden finger. "Uh, whoops. Guess that's why people have pincushions."

"That sucks—" Beau shook herself. "Wait, no, you're distracting me. How the fuck do you know Lorenzo's not human?"

"I got close to him and saw through his bullshit," Obito said, in the honest way of children and people who had no idea how much they were missing. He pulled the needle out of his hand with a wince, then said, "I couldn't tell you if it was a genjutsu or what, but I saw the human-him and the oni-him at the same time, and then I told him I'd rip off his horns and stab him with—Wait, is that offensive?"

"That is not remotely the main concern right now, dude." Beau tapped her pencil against her temple. Ugh, she'd definitely read about this shit back when she was still trapped in the library by Zeenoth, but it'd been between sparring sessions when either she busted her fingers or got a concussion. "Fuck, give me a minute."

"Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight—"

"Holy shit shut up."

Obito stuck his tongue out at her and went on with his sewing. Silently this time.

Beau wracked her brains until she finally shook something loose, swearing almost the entire time under her breath. She flipped her notebook open again and scribbled out a quick doodle of Lorenzo's ugly mug, and then added the horns and the blue tone Obito described. Having seen neither, she figured it wasn't such a big deal if the portrayal was garbage. After a few seconds, she added in tusks that grew almost level with the pointed nose, then matching fangs that went toward his chin.

Obito peered at her art. "Kinda like that, yeah. The fangs were a little less extreme, but—"

"Shut up, I'm thinking."

"Fine, fine."

Beau stared down at the drawing, then added the creepy leather straps and metal hooks that made up Lorenzo's armor. As she brushed the excess away, she finally said, "An oni's a type of giant. They sometimes creep into people's houses at night and steal children."

"More subtle than the version I've heard." Obito flipped her vest over and checked his work with a critical eye. Then he bundled it up and tossed it up to her. "Here."

"Thanks," Beau muttered, and was surprised at herself for sounding almost genuine. Slipping her vest back on, she said, "So, oni being shapeshifters—think that was what you saw? 'Cause how else do they get in places like that?"

"Maybe," said Obito. He scratched the base of his right ear, where the cartilage was a bit twisted up by the tree pattern engraved in his skin. "I'm not super clear on a lot of this, honestly. But I figure it'll come together once we find his hideout and burn it to the ground."

"You were saying he's more subtle…?"

"I mean my version of what an oni acts like is a big club-wielding dickhead playing king of the mountain and eating people who wander up the passes." Obito pulled the next scrap of cloth—which turned out to be Molly's off-white undershirt—into his lap and started assessing the damage.

The lingering mental image of Lorenzo bashing his head on a door was funny, but only a little. It was subsumed by the brand new worry that Jester, Fjord, and Yasha might get eaten. A brand new worry, scooching into her brain alongside the image of Molly being impaled on that glaive.

Unaware of Beau's processing, Obito went on, "And honestly, the idea of one of them heading down to the foothills to start selling people…"

Yeah, Beau thought as Obito trailed off with a sudden scowl. Makes you want to break things. Instead of saying so, she set one hand against her curled fist and said, "Then if there's a—"

Obito held up his left hand in a clear stop signal, cutting her off.

Beau hadn't taken orders from anyone in years. "What—?"

A bird flew overhead, circling the clearing. One of the tiny local birds, like a sparrow. Instead of just flitting from tree to tree, it looked like Frumpkin's spying pattern from the times Caleb turned his familiar into something more useful than a cat. It didn't slow down as it swooped high and low, all around the Blooming Grove's temple and the trees draped with unseasonable greenery.

Beau looked at Obito, whose eye was red again and tracking its movements, and she palmed a throwing dart in preparation.

"Is that a shapeshifter? Is it Lorenzo?" Beau demanded.

"Uh…" Obito squinted up the bird with a baffled look on his face. "I'm seeing…a firbolg. Sort of blinking in and out as she gets within ten meters, but flying around like the bird. Guess that answers the range question…"

Firbolg. So, like Caduceus—wait, no. Caduceus was a cleric and, more importantly, didn't resemble the members of the Guiatao firbolg clan the Mighty Nein met on the road between Hupperdook and that curve in the Glory Run Road. If that tribe—what few members they'd met in the middle of their grief—were focused on living with nature, and were more mobile, the Clay family were the guardians of a very particular space. And Beau hadn't seen any furs or animal bones since they arrived in the Blooming Grove, so a lot of the full druid vibe was notably absent.

On the balance, a shapeshifting firbolg wasn't even remotely one of their major problems right now. So, Beau slipped the dart back into her pouch.

"The way she's flapping her arms is just the weirdest thing," Obito went on, unaware of Beau's mental calculus.

"Then stop looking at her," Beau suggested. Then something clicked in Beau's head. They'd only met a few firbolgs, and they'd mentioned someone missing. A name. She held up a hand to cup her mouth and said to the bird, "Are you—you're Nila, aren't you?"

There was a pause as the bird clearly considered the words and the attitude behind them, looking down at them both from the gnarled branches of one of the trees overhead. Beau kept her eyes firmly on the bird as it shot toward the ground and warped in midair, which was a little nausea-inducing to watch. It looked a little like the effect Obito's weird spell had in the air, when he'd first appeared out of nowhere, like water circling a drain.

Or flowing out, and the bird spiraled outward like a firework until there was a firbolg standing there. Beau found herself looking up at a seven-foot firbolg who had possibly the kindest face of anyone Beau had ever seen. Powerfully built, yes, and more grounded than Caduceus, but somehow sweet. If Caduceus was all pastels, Nila was all warmth and earth tones with big, dark eyes and black hair.

"Yes." Nila extended her huge brown hand, palm-up. "I saw what happened before, and I think I have abilities that may help you when you fight those bad people again." Her ears pulled back a little into her hair, shrinking her face a little. "And I wished to apologize for taking so long to find you, and for not helping during that fight. I did not know who I could trust."

"Wasn't just you, but…" Beau sighed. "I get it."

It wasn't like the Mighty Nein never found helpful people—Calianna and Shakäste and Keg all sprang to mind immediately—but Beau always looked for the other shoe by instinct. If things were going well, someone needed to keep an eye out for trouble. Might as well be the one who never expected good things to last, right?

"More friends is better for us," Obito said, even as he rubbed his eye with the air of someone who'd stood too close to a campfire for a while.

But Molly wasn't dead. They were all safe and just patching themselves up for round two. Beau knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, at least with this kind of trend. Things were on an upward curve, at least until the next string of violence.

"Nice to meet you, Nila," Beau managed, taking Nila's hand.

"It is nice to meet you, too." Nila paused and tilted her head slowly to one side. Her ears twitched again, restlessly. "I do not know your name."

"Right, right, lemme show you around. So first, this's Obito—"

There was something kinda perfect about how the first thing Nila did, once she was in the kitchen and everyone introduced themselves for the second time today, was to hug Caduceus. Not that Beau would've done that anyway, but it kinda seemed like someone ought to get one. Might as well be the firbolgs, who were the least-dickish people here.

"Did you two know each other?" Nott asked, yellow eyes flicking back and forth between the only people sized correctly for the room. She had to stand on top of a chair to reach the table.

"I did not," said Nila, after considering the question maybe longer than it really deserved. "Have you heard of my tribe? The Guiatao clan?"

Caduceus's face scrunched as he thought for a minute or so, and then he said, "No. As I told these folks, I don't get out much."

"But you're both firbolgs. Oh, wait, do you know Pumat Sol?"

Keg groaned. "Nott, not all firbolgs know each other!"

"But they might!"

"They didn't even know each other, and you're saying they'd know someone who lives in the Empire?"

"Who?" Both Nila and Caduceus gave her blank looks.

"In her defense," Obito said in a mild voice, his arms piled high with repaired clothes, "I know people who might be halfway across the Empire, but that's because of a different thing."

"You're kinda muddying the data," Beau said, even as she helped him distribute the clothes. "And you're not making the assumption that you know all the elves in the world. Or if Nott knows all goblins or whatever."

Obito muttered something about barely knowing one, but Beau ignored him as the conversation flowed past.

From talking to Jumnda and Ombo the day before (had it really only been yesterday?), they already knew the Guiatao clan was in serious shit. The clan had twenty members to start with, and then the Iron Shepherds showed up, and now Nila was out here, on her own, looking for her son and her mate.

Well, not on her own anymore. Nobody around here was arguing against tearing Lorenzo's face off, even for self-preservation reasons.

"The more the merrier, I think," said Caleb, just emerging from the…Beau honestly didn't know if Caduceus's temple had real bedrooms or just the dorm-style room with a bunch of beds.

She hadn't explored the space that much after they forced Molly to rest, and since he was weak enough that Caleb's skinny arms could keep him there, it didn't take too long to win that argument. And if he'd tried to fight, Beau could still stun him.

Beau didn't want to, but Molly wasn't allowed to die of his own bullheadedness now.

"Before we get too far ahead of ourselves," Caleb said as he sat down at the table, "we need to meet with our, ah, employers. In town."

"Employers?" Obito asked, raising one dark eyebrow.

"…Ah, I think we may have forgotten to explain."

Beau sighed and walked back out of the temple to start her over-procrastinated workout routine.

Obito crossed his arms despite the twinge in his ribs, leaning most of his weight to one side as the others "negotiated." While he'd agreed to shuffle people around for errand purposes, there seemed to be a lot more posturing with crime lord types than he remembered.

Not that he did a lot of that. Obito really just…went through a wall or a window and scooped anything useful into Kamui's infinite expanse, then dumped it all out wherever Sensei needed him to. He needed to know enough about the people involved to find the important stuff, but the actual processing of that stuff was not his job. On most of his missions, he didn't even run into guards or security measures worth talking about. "Phantom" Obito really was as impossible to stop as a ghost.

And then there was the lingering sting of a new bruise on his side, which Obito had asked Caduceus not to bother healing until later. Better save the magic for the evening.

After seeing Beau shadowboxing in the graveyard, he'd volunteered his services as a sparring partner because, well, he had an arm made of wood and a brand new lack of brain-occupying chores around the Blooming Grove. It seemed like a decent way to spend a bit of energy. The realization that Beau's punches could make his muscles lock up like a Gentle Fist strike was a very unpleasant surprise, but not so bad once he got over the initial impact.

"You shook that off pretty well," Beau commented afterward. He didn't exactly know if that counted as even a backhanded apology, but she didn't seem the type to make them properly.

"Sure hope so. Otherwise you'd be short a ride."

Beau scowled.

"Didn't think that far ahead?" Molly suggested from the sidelines, cupping one of the wooden teacup in both hands like it didn't burn.

"If you end up bleeding from your eyeball again, that's not gonna be on us," Beau said stubbornly. "And what the hell, Molly. You can't prove you've planned anything ever."

"At least I admit it!"

"It's fine, Beau," said Obito. He rolled his non-wooden shoulder, then shrugged once he was sure it wouldn't hurt. "Only made me go numb for a few seconds."

Wasn't like he had to check himself into a hospital for a busted organ after fighting her, at least. Hyūga clan members were way worse.

Thinking of even the asshole contingent of Konoha's population would make Obito homesick sooner rather than later, so he shook his head slowly to clear it.

Accompanying the Mighty Nein—well, some of them—from the Blooming Grove to Shadycreek Run's excuse for a "nice" part of town wasn't so bad. Obito heard about two sentences about a meeting and decided if Molly was bedridden (at Caduceus's suggestion/order), he might as well go. Nila volunteered alongside him, though she was uncomfortable with civilization outside of her tribe, and Obito made sure to offer her his right arm in an attempt to be reassuring. She was just busy enough wondering why his right arm was made of wood that they made it through town without stopping. It was a pretty chill experience.

Thus, the group (Beau, Caleb, Keg, Nott, Nila, and Obito) trekked to the Mardoon family manor. They only had to glare at a couple muggers before numbers scared off the rest, and there were only so many people even in this town that would take a risk like that while outnumbered six-to-one. People liked having intact limbs and being alive.

It occurred to Obito only later that maybe he should've grabbed a sword or something from one of his prior muggers to seem a bit more armed now. There wasn't anyone alive who could disarm (ugh) Obito now, but he was the only one who knew that.

Anyway, big meeting. Big fancy house. Big secret tunnel entrance into a big receiving room with a bunch of nondescript mercenaries with crossbows and also a gray-skinned tiefling with horns that curled up instead of around each pointed ear. Her black hair went almost to the floor, tail be damned, and signified a real trip hazard. Obito, who had never seen a tiefling before this morning, wondered where they got an affinity for fancy coats. Molly's was sort of the same color, but way more embroidered. Thinking about that—and looking around at the signs of money—was more interesting than the actual mission details.

The sound of cocking crossbows wasn't one Obito had grown up with, but spending any amount of time in Shadycreek Run forced him to learn quick. He'd only been shot at…fourteen times? Obito's ears twitched a little against the sides of his head at the sound. Still not exactly a sensation he was used to, though they moved less than Caduceus's or Nila's. He'd been able to wiggle his ears before, but this was ridiculous.

"What assurances can I have that I not need strike you down where you stand?" Keg must've told Ophelia about the ex-Iron Shepherd thing while Obito wasn't listening.

Oh right, crossbows. And guards and stuff.

"You don't have any, but I have a lot of information about them," Keg said quickly, clearly trying to think on her clanking feet.

Nott nudged her with one elbow, then winced as she hit Keg's armor. "We just killed one of them."

"Oh, that's true. That's better." Keg turned her attention back to Ophelia, earnest as she could be. "We killed one of them."

One dark eyebrow rose and the crossbows went down, and thus Obito decided he could safely tune out some of the negotiating.

"...We cannot deliver our retribution with hands that can be traced back to us. As this affects both the Mardoons and The Gentleman, he is wise to send you, and this kindness shall be repaid in person. The Jagentoths have slaughtered and stolen from us a major source of contraband and income."

Obito frowned a little at the phrasing. Depending on what she meant, he might be morally obligated to come back later and burn down the manor and all of her holdings.

"It's only fair we do the same in kind. We here of the Estate Sybaritic require you to cut one of the limbs of their business. Kill their best handymen. Hunt the Iron Shepherds."

Oh. That was convenient. Maybe Obito should actually listen.

…A little.

"…They live at The Sour Nest, a small stronghold not far from here on the edge of North Clover to the eastern side. They have a number of hired hands that guard the locale. It's a difficult infiltration, but it's your best chance of catching them off guard. If you have other ideas, we are open to suggestions. Am I to believe that you have been sent," and here, Ophelia's flat yellow eyes fell on Nila, "as trained killers, able to deal with this?"

Apparently, the whole reason the Mighty Nein even headed toward the eastern half of the Dwendalian Empire—before stuff happened—was because their crime boss wanted to help this crime boss with killing the shit out of a different crime boss's lackeys. Who were, conveniently, the Iron Shepherds. Which they hadn't known until they stopped by the middle crime boss's mansion to get their actual assignment.

Real serendipity there.

Still a ridiculous setup, but it made the idea of creeping into the Sour Nest at night and stabbing everyone in their beds more, uh, expedient.

And honestly, Obito didn't think Ophelia needed to turn a skeptical face toward Nila of all people. She hadn't listened to the sweet, motherly firbolg offer to turn into a crocodile and devour Lorenzo alive earlier this morning.

Though given the whole crime boss thing, maybe that wouldn't have mattered.

So, anyway, that meeting gave them their marching orders and that was good enough.

"Are you going to bring back Molly and Mr. Clay?" Nott asked, after they'd left and started heading into the bear-infested woods.

Well, now that Obito specifically thought about it, the bears lived there. They had entire generations of spiky babies and spiky grandparents, probably. Should it be "human trafficker-infested," then?" Hm.

"I would also like to know the answer to this," said Nila, with a faint frown. She'd been doing that a lot lately, but Obito assumed it was down to stress.

Obito didn't relate to that quite as a parent would. More as a peer? Given that Kakashi and Kei had both been kidnapped once apiece and it still pissed him off to think about it. And if Naruto or Tatsumaki were kidnapped, Sensei would flip the world upside-down looking for them. Hell, Kei wasn't even that nice and she'd killed people who threatened her students before they'd ever set foot in Konoha.

Oh, right, people were asking him things.

"Should be a quick trip." Obito jerked a finger between pointing at his eye and at Nott's hooded head. More information than he'd usually give to just anyone, but most people hadn't traveled through his eyeball-portal already. And it totally disguised how much he'd been wondering about wildlife. "Just need to aim for you all on the way back. Try not to start fighting without us."

"That will not be a concern," Caleb said, snapping his fingers. With a poof noise, a common owl appeared on his hand, claws delicately avoiding his skin. "We will be scouting at most."

"Then I'll see you soon."

Notes:

1) Obito has no real idea what the Mighty Nein's deal is. In his defense, at this point, the Mighty Nein don't really know what their deal is either.
2) Stunning Strike is how monks break PvP. Thus far, the encounters are not mostly made of things immune to being stunned, Obito included.
3) I know that Matt says none of the Mighty Nein know what an oni is, but they are canonically giantkin in 5th edition (and one of the examples given for the Haunted One character background), so a monk of the Cobalt Soul can theoretically have read about them at some point. Beau's academic memories can get a bit of a jumpstart with Obito's cultural ones, at least in a less stressful environment.
4) Given what Cree said about Molly's long-forgotten backstory segments, there's a real chance he'd have been recognized if the entire group walked directly into Shadycreek Run. So, since he also died a bit ago, he used convalescence as an excuse to Not Do That.

Next time: The Sour Nest.