Doors and Corners

Kael went in first, the way he always does — quiet, to the edge of the wall, a look around the corner before anyone else moved. He found the blast door and the droids sealing it shut, and the old scorch marks that meant somebody had already died trying to get through. When the fight came he did what he does best: in, out, a knife in something's throat before it noticed him there. He didn't plan the charge that got Velveteen dropped and he said so afterward, plainly, the way he says most things that matter to him.

Mistarion hung back and watched the room the way he watches most rooms, waiting for the moment things went loud. When they did, he burned droid after droid down at range with firebolt after firebolt, methodical, a little smug about it, cracking jokes about pathetic wizards and tiny damage numbers that turned out not to be so tiny. He's good at this part — the part where nobody asks him to remember anything, just to point a hand and let the fire do the explaining.

Now moved south along the wall same as the others, patient, waiting for her moment. The droids barely registered her — whatever they're tuned to notice, it isn't her — and she used that quiet to get further into the room than anyone before the shooting started. When it did, she took her share of arc-welder fire for it, dropped near to the edge herself, and kept fighting anyway. She still doesn't know her own hit points. Nobody does, really.

Verum-Gaea caught the worst of an arc welder meant for someone standing near him and nearly went down for it, feathers singed and patience thinner than usual. He held the healing until it mattered — stabilizing Velveteen rather than bringing him fully back too soon, reading the fight well enough to know a half-conscious ally wasn't yet safe to wake. By the end he'd spent a scroll he was saving and a serum he hadn't admitted to carrying, and kept the party standing through sheer attrition.

ND-E found the truth of the yard before anyone swung a weapon: a virus in the control crystal, data being quietly erased, and underneath it all a calling card he knows too well. Saint Crow — the bot who sold Onerous out, took the money, and vanished — is somehow threaded through a recycling center's dying droids. ND-E said it plainly to the group, no flourish, because that's what he does with the truth: hands it over complete and lets everyone else decide what to feel about it. He fought carefully after that, stunning what he could, never once needing to swing wide.

Velveteen heard "we need to get to that door" and did the only thing that made sense to him: ran straight for it. He hit every tripwire in the room at once, got lit up by three machines in a single turn, and went down bleeding and unconscious before anyone else had finished their first real move. He came back up groggy, out a healing potion, and utterly unbothered by the lecture that followed. Doors and corners, Andy told him. Velveteen just goes where the universe pulls.