You know better than to quibble with girls who have That Look on their faces, or who speak with That Tone. Bowing to the inevitable - literally, even - you make your way back to the corner, letting Altria cover you.

"A little faster, perhaps?" the British blonde suggests after a few steps.

"Need to focus," you remind her. "Don't want to lose the bats yet."

"Ah. My apologies." She falls silent after that. You're grateful; this is tricky enough without having to hold up one side of a conversation, or even just having to make the appropriate monosyllabic responses that will prevent a show of feminine pique from boiling over into full-blown feminine anger.

Gained Concentration F
Gained King of Women E+

Although it's clear that she's not thrilled about your little unannounced breakaway maneuver, either, Ayame takes her cue from Altria and withholds comment as you take a seat, letting you can focus your full attention on keeping up your spell. Kasumi is too focused on her own task to even look up at your return, and while Briar spares you a glance, she doesn't stop guiding the young kunoichi's medical efforts. Studying them for a moment, you see that they've unbound the dressings from maybe two-thirds of Shiden's wounds, and he is no longer bleeding in those areas. The man's going to have some remarkable scars from this incident, assuming that Briar doesn't give him a full heal once Kasumi has all the cursed shrapnel removed, but considering the alternative...

Your train of thought is interrupted as Lu-sensei reappears outside the door, looking about the same as when he ducked out. He frowns in the direction of the shrieking swarm and their two hapless targets, who - from the Doppler-shifting sounds and your sense of the spell - seem to be running or flying down the hall, away from the box, but gives them only an instant's consideration before turning to you.

"Alex, we have a casualty out here. We need Briar."

"A little busy, here," the fairy says tersely, as she patches together another of Shiden's wounds. Kasumi kneels nearby, dropping a sliver of gory metal from the tips of the bloodstained tweezers into a growing pile of similar fragments.