…
Dim Lilong saw the sun fade slightly, and a quiet rumbling emanated from the dying light, coupled with a soft whistling. The sounds he had heard before were gone, ending with a set of loud cracking snaps. He paused his walking, and waited for the small bobbing light to reach his position.
"Hey, Dusky!"
His mouth closed abruptly, stifling his greeting to his sister. The team now reconvened, Dim making a few small comments.
"Oak. You seem happy."
As an aside, he knelt down to the white Creep. "Avero. You're faring well?"
The two nodded quietly.
Good for them.
His greetings paused, as he noticed something was… wrong.
"Ilmar. Did something happen to you? You're a human."
"What?! No greeting for your lovely siste-"
Ilmar waved aside the male Lilong's question as Dim glanced at the gaping holes that usurped the place where human ears normally went.
"-Did something break your antlers?"
His sister muttered in disgust. "They tore them off."
Why? There's no reason to do that, right? Ilmar, you can just… shift them away, can't you?
"It would frighten the child. I am preventing all chances to make mistakes."
"… Hell. This is going to get hard. I'm not allowed to be near the kid."
… Dim looked at Ming and Ilmar in confusion. "How do we do a rescue operation if our target causes one of us to mutilate themselves, and another isn't allowed to be near them?"
"It's dawn, right? Or it's close to it. Shouldn't the Grimm attack supposedly be over by now?" Ming questioned.
"Ming. The child is currently very emotionally unstable." Ilmar interrupted, holding out their scroll, turning it on and showing it to her.
...
Ming Lilong took the scroll noting with some perplexment the state of the device.
"Ilmar. It's dead."
"What?"
… Ilmar looked through their dead device. "No. it's just that the recording stopped. No matter. I presume you all know what a traumatized young man reciting mantras of murder would do to a Grimm population."
…
The group started running, Ilmar and Dim Lilong directing them toward the previously noted location where sounds had been coming from.
… The past tense had was in central focus on their minds right now.
They eventually encountered various signs of Grimm: broken trees, trampled undergrowth, and large swaths of packed dirt. After a while of searching, the group ended up in a clearing outlined by mangled trees and pulverized wood.
… The boy was in the centre, looking towards them.
"Sorry about this. It was rather childish of me, wasn't it?"
They acknowledged the hunters presence, speaking quietly as the four of them approached the centre of the carnage.
Ming spoke first before everyone else, despite standing in the back.
"Hello, Tie. Are you okay?"
"I'm much better after some stress relief. I've needed to do some anger management for a while now."
Mal stood up and walked towards them. When they were a few feet away, they turned towards Ilmar briefly.
"Your look's probably a coincidence. Sorry about my response."
They didn't explain, and just walked to the approximate direction of the town.
Dim Lilong surveyed the destruction for a second.
"Ming."
"Yes?"
… He gestured towards the scene. "Could we do this?"
Ming thought for a moment. "We can easily do this much."
"Just the two of us? In… how long, against a veritable army of Grimm?"
….
Ming didn't speak.
He knew the response his sister hadn't said already.
…
They went to leave, Dim questioning another choice of his sister's as they went back.
"Tie?"
"A mix of our semblances, along with whatever incredible defense they had to cause that damage barehanded."
… Dim Lilong sighed. Puns. I wish you never met the last Long.
The five planned to the town soon after that.
...
...
Ming Lilong had finally met another Long. She sighed quietly while contemplating her last attempts, which mostly resulted in her fist fighting the last two.
… This one was refusing to admit their Long relations, but Ming could tell.
This… Megan…
The boy was close with this unseen person, they even talked about the future together. Now… if they were that close, they were one of two things:
Lovers, or siblings.
Ming was settling on "Engaged or married in secret, but forgotten from the amnesia." The bond between these two young lovers definitely impacted the semblance, and caused a very useful ability for single-handedly surviving the Grimm to return to their beloved's arms.
Ming smiled. And Dusky said those romance novels weren't useful!
Megan… The real trouble was what it could actually be spelled as. Ming had a suspicion this boy doesn't know Mistralan, but there was always a low chance they did...so if his partner is here…
She can trick out a Long reveal.
…
Dim was watching his sister with an uncomfortable look.
He knew that look.
He had to carry her out of the Emerald Forest the last time she had that look.
So, he began his countermeasure, and started to silently load his Anti-Ming ammunition, cursing that he had the need to even bring it. He hadn't expected her to start her mission multiple times in a row. They had at least expected Longs on the last journey, since the previous one was a known figure. Finding he had a child with the name was a bonus for Ming.
Again. Really? Is she trying to be funny? Why did I even bother to repack my satchel if I'm packing the exact same materials as last-
… Something was wrong. The texture of this Anti-Ming bullet wasn't the normal, 0.43 refractive.
Dim glanced down at his bag.
… He looked again in disbelief at his hand holding one of his Anti-Ming water soluble Dust orbs.
It was one of his five 0.46 reflective. It was one of the few hallucinogenics he had left after he hid them in his Dust experiments case to stop Ming from taking them.
Dim Lilong held the pellet up to his eyes in horror, watching the subtly different shine to prevent Ming from locating it amidst the placebo casings.
Curse my distractedness. Ming's going to have to be physically stopped by someone.
… He noticed the surface slightly glimmer as they he took a step. Is it sunrise now? If it is, we're done, then.
They kept walking., but Dim stopped occasionally when his sister moved towards the boy. He became more tense with each second where nothing bad happened. He started to hope Ming had listened to his request to moderate her actions last time…
-Then he remembered her actions not even hours ago. It turned out, maybe luckily for Dim Lilong, that other people had remembered them as well.
…
Ming pulled her scroll out, muttering something about plums, and very slowly sidestepped towards the young lad in their ring.
{Ms Lilong. I have your number now. It's sunrise, if you couldn't tell spending on how deep in you are.}
... She managed to not make an immature squealing. Ming didn't know if it would have been one of excitement, or pure terror, and she didn't want to risk her team hearing either one.
"Hey. Greenpath says it's sunrise now, in case the forest's too thick where we are. We won."
… Ming became slightly worried, now. If they're done, she won't get a chance to talk.
"Mai?"
…
Hmm?
"Who, me?" Mal turned to look at the black haired woman as she leaned towards him out of the corner of his eye.
"What's the weather like in a few minutes? Sky's rather dark now." she asked, looking at her phone in a questioning mood.
Light rain. We won. We beat the bad end, buddy. Go us?
Go us, Meg. We won.
He smiled, returned to neutrality, and glanced at her scroll, frozen on a weather map."… Weather? I think it's meant to be raining lightly soon."
"Thanks, Guanlong."
Mal nodded, and turned back to watching for the town. They would be there soon.
…
Ming smirked. That was far too easy.
Dim noticed her smugness, and wondered what was so unusual about the weather now.
… Ming was waiting for a reaction. She noticed nothing. Am I seriously meant to believe this kid just so happens to be so fluent they had a chat mid stride without batting an eye?
…
"Mai Guanlong. Why are you afraid of Ilmar?"
The young adult stopped, and stared at her, frowning. "Isn't it rude to ask personal questions related to your teammates? It may be problematic."
… Silence fell.
Dim understood immediately. She thought the kid was lying about his history. …He honestly felt they were lying as well, but he wasn't going to do the "Talk to them in a Mistralan dialect", especially when they were just walking in the forest. That was a ridiculous idea.
…
He wanted to do it in front of the kid's father. It had significantly better shock value if you just timed it right.
Ilmar sighed. "Dim. Ming. I'm getting Oak to ban that interrogation tactic."
… well damn. They caught on.
The siblings turned to Oak.
…Wait, how? Ming wondered
…Well Fuck. Dim's face dropped like a brick.
"Oak. What do you mean by 'ban'?" Ming questioned.
Dim started trying to change the idea. "Oak. Don't. Please don't do that again. Just do something less drastic! Like… uh…"
"Punch Dim in the head!" Ming cried out.
"Yes! Do that!"
Dim watched frantically and his sister watched him in shock. "Dim. That was the most drastic thing I could THINK of. What's worse than that?!"
Oak ignored the question.
"Avero. If they try to do this again, please don't let Ming pet you."
…
Ming froze to a glacier. Her brother breathed a sigh of relief, and began to chuckle at her horro-
"-and-" he continued. "-I will not stop you from devouring Dim Lilong's sugar bullets."
Dim stared in silence. Ming was mimicking a block of ice. Oak and Ilmar continued walking.
...
…
Mal questioned one part of that.
"Sugar bullets?"
Ilmar chuckled quietly. "Dim says that he brings a Dust compound bullet that causes incredible tiredness if it is ingested. He's used it quite effectively by shooting his sister in the mouth whenever she gets a bit too…"
"Insufferable?" Mal offered.
"I would say overstimulated, but both definitions work."
…
"So he just shoots her in the face with candy? How did you find out?"
"It turns out, during the last Vytal, he went to help their aunt with her work when we weren't competing."
"What does she do?"
"She makes confections. Her handmade sugar spheres were quite delicious when I tried them. Secret family recip-."
"-I'M GOING TO MURDER YOU!-"
Oak gave a long wistful sigh.
"Ah, They were lovely. It's a shame we won't be able to get them anymore."