Medal: Team Gino starts to figure out what went wrong.

Too much explanation, but less screaming, so there's that.

All the good things belong to MonolithSoft.

The group was unwilling to give up but they could tell that Gino couldn't take much more. Diego finally suggested going to the Mimeosome Maintenance Center. To be honest, they should have done that at the very beginning. Gino burned what little energy he had left to argue against that.

"I don't trust them. I don't trust them with whatever is on my legs."

"They can fix it, though. Better than we can," Diego pointed out.

"Sure, I'm fixed, but then what are they going to do with the info, huh? Who are they gonna use it against?"

The silence that followed was uncomfortable. They all had reasons to distrust the Mim Center's ethics, each different and unspoken. Diego's comm device shrilled and it was treated with delight as a very welcome distraction. If Lila Brown was surprised by this atypical friendly reaction, she didn't show it. "Okay, let me give the run down. Pathfinder from the start, got a team wipe early."

"Not someone to be trusted then," sneered Josefina.

"Didn't raise alarms. The first months were tough on Pathies. She was MIA, presumed lost, for 9 days. Then the Nopon, we had just met them, they contacted us. It took a while to extract her from the caravan. A small one, on the outs with the larger group in Dodonga, vanished shortly afterwards. The Nopon aren't talking about it. Since then she's done a mix: still with the Pathfinders, but lots of rough medic work for more active missions. Spends time in the MMC, testing new products."

"Told you," wheezed Gino. He didn't bother to open his eyes.

"Tell her about the magic stuff," Diego said to Susu.

Lila interrupted. "On the Whale? She was connected to a coven, yes, but they didn't keep her long. What does that have to do with Gino's legs?"

Susu shook her head, miming the need to keep silent. To Diego's surprise, Josefina huffed impatiently and explained. "Susu sort of recognized the script on Gino's legs as some kind of spell."

"A charm," corrected Susu. She might not want to talk about it but she also didn't want things to be explained wrong. "Something to draw influences to the carrier, or ward against them. I mean, everyone practices differently, but parts definitely look like a charm." She frowned. "That stuff should be on an object, not a person."

"Can you tell what kind of charm?" Lila's voice indicated no disbelief.

"Worst. Love charm. Ever," wheezed Gino. The pauses weren't for emphasis, but to catch his breath.

Diego shushed him and tucked the blanket more snuggly around his body. "Save your energy, babe."

Susu chose this moment to give her acceptance speech for the Miran Nobel Prize for Magic. "Our connections to the world are different and so everyone's process is different. Latin and Greek, that's more performative than I prefer, but if she's reduced to learning from texts, it makes sense. The criss-cross overlapping is a standard method of intensifying contact, covering all the options, as well as forming a restrictive net. So maybe-"

"Su!" Josefina snapped.

"A pain charm," Susu blurted out. "To draw pain away."

a/n: I am making this up as I go, but then again so is Cesar.

Next up: H, I, J... I'm just going to jump to the solution.