World Tree MUSH

    The grendel chased after the Beacon Society's scout team, hundreds of the shaggy things with their fog of darkness snapping and snarling through the dark and dank utility tunnels of Daly City. The nest had clearly been something sensitive for the magical beastmen to react with such unrelenting hostility.
    Aurelia ran, metal boots scraping loudly against the concrete floor. She occasionally stopped to help somebody who was lagging behind, being slower because of the massive armor she wore. Zero, her metal lion familiar, was leading the way because of his speed.

Benedicta is barefoot herself, shoes were uncomfortable for her in this form. She doesn't have trouble keeping with her speed, but she doesn't want to be seperated from the others either. She doesn't have unlimited stamina though so she trails behind Zero a bit. Her horn is glowing yellow like crazy providing a source of light in the dark tunnels.

    Next to Aurelia, a shadow coalesces to form Serrah. "How the hell did we even get into this mess?" she mutters, casually throwing baseballs at to the advancing grendels in order to slow them down. "Fuckers must be pissed if just showing up was enough to kick this hornet's nest up!"

    She stops time so that she can gather up the thrown baseballs from among the grendels (carefully, without touching them), then reappears closer to Benedicta; to an outside observer, it looks like she was near Aurelia one instant, and closer to Benedicta the next with a more full sports bag, as abruptly as a video skipping ahead. "... I mixed that metaphor up, didn't I."

     In a puff of black smoke which smells of brimstone (which may not even be noticeable given the things chasing the scout team, they probably reek like nothing else), a short red jackal boy appears next to Benedicta. "Hey Benny, I was wondering if you were free this- oh boy, bad time." he remarks upon realizing what's going on, flying after the horned rabbit girl while facing back towards the creatures. "Okay, obviously I missed one hell of a party. Cliff notes, anybody?"

Jun can fly about as fast as he can run, but it takes far less energy to fly than it does to run, so he's flying. He is, of course, in his maho form -- does he ever have need to be in his untransformed state? Not really. It's not like he has a personal life to go back to now.

He's managing to keep up with the others, but he's still lagging towards the back of the group. Though that's not just because he's slow, it's so he can maintain the wall of scalding hot water between the group and the grendel as a discouragement from actually trying to attack them.

There was a term from growing up for Anne from a SCI-FI movie. Bug Hunt, and that is what she sees it is. As ever Anne looks like some kind of Busty anime pirate as she holds a staff in hand keeping with the rest of the team it's lit up slightly to help guide her way. 

 "Any ideas on the numbers we're going to be facing down here?" Either way, stay alert who knows what else could be down here." 

 Sometime later, Anne is running as quickly as she can turning about to fire the odd spell. 

 "YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME!" 

 She turns letting lose a beam of water magic at the horde trying to slow them down. Anne has her answer finally way too damn many.

    Damian hears it before the others, an intermittant high-pitched screeching sound, like metal being dragged against concrete. Serrah sees the source while retrieving her baseballs. Two metal-clad female maho trading blows as they smash and scrape against the concrete sides of the utility tunnels, hurtling towards the scout team. One is clad in an oily black metal, the other in the gleaming silver of moonlight. Their magical metal wings shatter and reform every time they crash against the tunnel, sparks flying freely. The flight through Jun's scalding steam elicits shouts and screams of pain from the clashing maho. They separate, with the dark clad one managing to pull ahead and the moon silver maho in close pursuit.
    The grendel do their best to avoid harm, but the combination of Serrah's baseballs, Anne's water beams, and Jun's steam wall do a lot to keep them from closing with the fleeing group.
    Aurelia ducks as the two maho plow through the steam wall, glances at Damian. "Monsters. Lots of monsters. Keep up!"

"Dammit, does Noctis go around shooting everyone she meets with arrows?!" Benedicta can't believe how many grendels there are or how they've been kept a secret for. Her nose flares a bit as she catches the scent of Damian, "You seem to have the worst timing, we're kind of running for our lives right now." She cringes at the loud scraping noise and the smell, it would be nice to be human right now but then she would have trouble keeping up with the others.

 If things weren't bad enough to avoid she would have to avoid crashing into Aurelia and Noctis as well. She doesn't really have a good way of fighting the grendels from a distance and it's taking all her effort to not experience a sensory overload.

     Damian reacts a second before the two maho even come into visibility, already flying up to the tunnel roof to stay out of the way of trouble... and trouble does indeed come! He isn't sure exactly what the deal is with these two, but their crashing and bumbling around looks like it could indeed be dangerous. He does try to keep up with the others though, in particular conjuring a black cloth sack from thin air which he dumps out onto the floor behind them, the contents turning out to be countless spiky metal caltrops intended to further deter the pursuing grendels.

"Okay, monsters, got it. Also crazy flying metal girls. Are they a threat?"

    For some reason, Serrah looks nervous and contrite as she sees Damian appear, but she keeps it to herself; they've got more important things to deal with. "Also, we've got com--"

    The two other mahos make a particularly loud crash. "-- pany," she says uncertainly. "But, uh, yeah, that's a good question, Benedicta!"

    When the two newcomers fly through the mist-wall, Serrah rises off the ground -- she's been staying lower, because even if Jun's mist-wall is just very hot water, she still has an instinctive avoidance due to his life-powers -- and turns a glare at Metallia Luna, but her expression slowly turns to worry. She gestures uncertainly towards the two combatants. "Do we go after them, or ...?"

The screams of pain get Jun to look up, and... actually he's not really sure what's going on. Over the past short while he's become quite confused as to who are their enemies and who are their allies. If one of those is an ally he'll heal them later, he decides -- the wall of scalding water ist just too important right now for him to pull down. Those monsters are nipping at the group's heels pretty urgently right now.

So for now he keeps that wall of steam up, reinforcing it with some new water in the air to cycle out some that's cooling down. He's got to try to keep the temperature somewhat consistent, otherwise it won't be as effective a barrier. That's also part of the reason he's using his flight to keep up instead of running. What he's doing with the steam isn't like chewing gum and walking.

Avoiding the wall o' steam is probably a good idea, yeah. It's not life-water, no, but jumping through a wall of scalding hot steam that's an inch or two thick is probably still a very unpleasant experience.

Anne Read has some up-close options but those are going to have to wait until she's in a better situation as there are just so many monsters coming after them still. 

 "Worry about that later! We need to worry about dealing with this horde!" 

 Anne is trying to think as best she can take a moment to get better she holds the staff and starts to prep some sort of spell as runes dance about her she seems content to keep with the group while she attempts to make use of the brief moment the wall has bought her.

    While the scout team originally came in through a utility access, Zero shouts and nods his head upwards, indicating another utility access the group could use to escape. Nevermind that it looks like it has been blown apart by large shards of metal.
    Aurelia grins as Damian throws out a whole mess of caltrops, using her own metal manipulation magic to make the things move and tumble, following along close behind Jun's steamy barrier to deter the grendels more. It seems that they aren't following the team en masse anymore though, instead clambering through various means upwards to the surface.

"Well, there's going to be more and more of them unless we stop Noctis! I really need to start carrying some kind of ranged weapon..." Being limited to close combat is a bit of a problem for Benedicta. She's more concerned about the enemy maho at the moment though. There's going to be a city full of grendels unless they do something. "One of them is on our side, the other we're trying to stop." She takes a deep breath as she exits through the utility access.

     Damian grins as well once he realizes what Aurelia's doing with his caltrops. "Haha, nice. I admit I didn't really have a plan after that, but steam boy looks like he's got it covered." he remarks, then glances toward Zero and, following the nod, the utility access that seems to have suffered some metal-related trauma. "Going up? Don't mind if I do, this tunnel's kinda stuffy anyway."

As they go for the surface, he also shrugs apologetically at Benedicta and returns Serrah's nervous look with a raised eyebrow. "What? I got something on my face?" He also nods as Benedicta explains for him. "Yeah, looks like it."

Good, the grendels are leaving off chasing them. Though... well, that could be a bad thing, too. He's not sure where they're going honestly, and not knowing could prove more of a liability than them being here. Looking at Aurelia, Jun asks, "You don't happen to know where they're going, do you?" He doesn't figure she does, since they're not really 'hers' as far as he knows.

Thankfully Benedicta explains kind of what's going on. "Thank you," Jun replies, giving a grateful nod in her direction. He really does have that feeling that he came in halfway through things, but that's nothing new, with all this magical stuff. He seems torn on what to do. "...Should we go and deal with the monster things, or worry about those two?" He points in the direction of the fighting maho.

    Serrah shakes her head back at Damian. "Nothing. Just ... last time we met, I, uh ... y'know what, never mind for now." She nods to Jun and Benedicta. "Luna's the aunt of one of Aurelia and Bene's allies," she says. "I ... we were there when she transformed. It did a number on her head when the moon was out." There's an obvious strain in her voice. Serrah does not like the idea of her own mind getting messed-with, and even with the damage she's taken to her empathy as her humanity dwindles, she wouldn't wish it on anyone else, either.

    She raises her eyebrows at Zero, and turns into a shadow, following after Benedicta and Damian. "Judging by the damage, I'd guess this is where they went," her voice answers Jun. "I got a bad feeling about this ..."

Anne Read says "We can't stay like this forever. Also any idea where they willhead now?" 

 She banishes the spellshe wasworking on as she takes a moment. 

 "We may want to split into two groups then."

    The scout team emerges from the underbelly of the city to witness... pandemonium.
    The streets above in Daly City are swarming with grendel and panicked people trying to flee. Car alarms and horns blare as citizens try to escape the hive of supernatural creatures of darkness. The creatures are unnaturally strong and fast, catching pedestrians easily and avoiding vehicles in the streets with great leaps.
    Above, faintly illuminated by the glare of the city lights, two Metallia do battle in the sky upon wings of metal. Their bows releasing bright meteor-streaks to the sound of thunder. The dance of war has nine additional participants; the specters of former Metallia Lunas with banshee-howls and ghostly talons tearing at the dark figure of Metallia Noctis. The bow shots often fly wide, only for them to erupt into plumes of smoke where they strike the many-story tenenment houses of Daly City.
    There are news vans at the edge of the disaster, broadcasting the footage to all of California and the world beyond. A tinge of panic and fear creeps into the reporters' tone of voice...

    Luke seems quite a bit late, rather late even, given the way things seem to be going, but at least he managed to get to the location!. The very scared, but brave soul driving him to the edge of town barely stops to let him out, and accept his gold, before tearing out as fast as his car would do. "Wow, this is such huge mess." the boy mumbles, reaching for his belt. "Dynamo!, I choose you!". He kinda feels the need to go over the show of throwing the pokeball, while the round looking tiger pokemon appears. "We have a whole mess to deal with, and we have a lot of monsters to stop, so let's go!". The two move into the town, and noticing the large group of monsters just running around. 
    "Hey you ugly beasts!, come at me!", while his pokemon roars and begins building up charge. "Dynamo, let's try that move you learned, electroweb!" The tiger pokemon roars again as the two stand in the middle of the road between a couple buildings, a large orange orb of power building up in front of it's muzzle, before the tiger releases it!, the orb 'explodes' midflight, turning into a huge 'web' of electricity, aimed at the closest monsters, both trapping, and electrocuting them.

Jun quickly climbs up to the surface... and then pauses at the sight of all this mayhem. "...Oh God, what a mess..." Jun mutters as he views the chaos above. Grendel, and maho, and newsvans -- oh my! It's all just going so wrong -- the grendel are going everywhere, the Metallias are destroying the city, and the newsvans are capturing it all.

Well, Jun is support, and he doesn't know which of the Metallias to fight, honestly. So the first priority he has is going to be to keep the chaos and loss of life to a minimum. Jun flies up into the air (though not high enough to interfere with the Battle of the Metallias) stretches his arms out to his sides and tilts his head back. He gives every bit of concentration he has to trying to pull cloud cover together, over this part of the city, and darken the clouds to cause rain.

He's aiming for a pretty rough downpour, too. Hopefully that'll dampen any fires that break out, and give the fire department some help in putting them out. Of course, from a clear sky to a downpour, that's going to take Jun a little while, since he can only really push the weather a little bit at a time, change it by degrees...

Benedict makes her way to the surface and the noise makes her cringe a bit. At least the grendels would draw attention away from her, but then again most people aren't afraid of rabbits. Unless you happen to be a certain-holiday themed witch... Her open a bit as she watches the grendels grab random people, someone needs to stop them before even more go missing. She leaps at one of the beasts before doing a dive kick in attempt to make lose its grip on its victim.

    Serrah smacks her forehead. "Welp. So much for the masquerade," she says. She pauses. "Or, wait, people are just gonna assume that these are outworlders, aren't they. Ignore me."

    She looks around at all the grendels, but something inside her -- the part of her that isn't human -- feels as though it can't ignore what it considers to be a slight against her from Metallia Noctis.

    And so she takes to the skies, to join the two Metallias. "Hey Noctis!" she shouts. "Stop the World!"

    In an instant, there are baseballs suddenly flying towards Noctis, as abruptly as a video skipping ahead, and Serrah has her arms raised.

     Damian shoots up to the surface as well, flying above all the madness going on and getting a nice, good look at the grendels doing their thing. "Yeah, that looks bad." he states the obvious, scratching his chin as he thinks about how to help out. Not a whole lot he /can/ do without potentially harming their victims as well, unless... aha!

Snapping his fingers, the jackal conjures a firehose which he attaches to the nearest hydrant, grinning so wide that his face almost seems like it'll tear in two. "Always wanted to do this~" he remarks, then pushes the handle forward and unleashes a powerful stream of water aimed at a grendel menacing a nearby helpless pedestrian. Oh, almost forgot something... there we go, a puff of smoke and flame summons a firefighter's helmet on Damian's head, just for completion's sake!

Anne Read is also heading for the surface keeping her staff at hand. 

 "Lives matter more than a bunch of stuffy old wizards afraid of the masses." 

 She looks and will start chanting once she gets the Grendals insight she'll make a shield barrier of solid water as she then starts to shrink it trying to crush any Grendals who get caught within it.

    Some of the fastball specials that Serrah deployed strike against Metallia Noctis, knocking her this way or that as they clang against her oily black metal armor. With a thundercrack and a streak of light across the city skyscape, Metallia Luna lands a shot with her bow, hurtling Noctis out of the sky. The darkly clad maho crashes through several buildings and rips up a stretch of the roadway before coming to a stop next to a news van. The ghosts of the old Lunas gather around Noctis and leer triumphantly, screeching about how she was a pretender, an interloper. A *foreigner* who somehow got her hands on a badly made copy of Artemis' Bow.
    The news crew barely has time to flee before Noctis stands, drawing all the metal in the van to her, forming a sort of night-black exoskeleton around herself for protection. "I'll turn you all into obols after I'm finished with your newest puppet." The maho sneers at the ghosts.
    The grendels have thinned and withered under the combined assault of police officers and the heroic deeds of Luke, Benedicta, Anne, and Jun. Many of the grendls evaporate into ash and leaving behind smoldering cherry-red hot obol, a mark of how different they are from the earlier grendels. Aurelia and Zero are caught up with a pack of larger grendel who seem to specifically be targeting her, light dancing off her sword as she defends herself. A grendel is knocked off his feet and sent down a storm drain by a conjured firehorse, courtesy of one of Hell's Princes.

    Luke's attention is still on the roaming monsters, but Jun's attempt to change the weather gives the boy another idea. "Dynamo, Rain dance!", the electric pokemon nodding and roaring, giving his own small nudge towards growing downpour, shooting a small orb of energy up to the sky, into the forming clouds, furthering the weather changes, before turning to a more offensive method. "Dynamo, let's finish these things before helping with the flying ones, discharge!" This is less subtle than the web, the pokemon starting to throw bolts of energy towards any of the nearby creatures, but also a bit riskier given the rain.

To be fair, Jun's rain, even at a downpour, probably isn't doing a lot to the grendels. He'd been more aiming to address any fires that might spring up due to the two Metallias' shots going wide and blowing things up. The rain itself isn't really holy, just his sword.

Jun also finds the weather easier to manipulate here, once Luke's Pokemon assists in pushing the weather towards the downpour. He offers a thumbs-up at Luke and Dynamo, and then notes quickly, "Thanks!"

Once he's sure there's a good enough downpour between Luke's Pokemon's efforts and his own push towards the rain, Jun returns his attention to the fight. Aurelia and Zero seem to be having some trouble. Jun draws that sword of light -- that it is holy might help here -- and drops down out of the sky to attack some of the grendels harassing Aurelia and her familiar.

It's also worth noting that he's staying on the opposite side of the grendels as Aurelia and Zero are on. That might have a 'pincer' effect and make it easier to take these particular grendels down.

     It turns out the firehose isn't quite as effective as Damian hoped, so he carefully shuts it off, tosses it aside, and thinks about his options now. Perhaps if he... turns into a big shark on squid tentacles, what with all this water around? Yesss, and fifty eyes, ALL THE EYES, to see in every direction, so he can grab the grendels off of people with his tentacles and give them some great big CHOMPS.

Yes that is what he's doing. Right in the middle of the street. Some straight up Lovecraftian shit going on here, but at least the black-and-red sharktopus with way too many eyes is eating the other monsters and not the innocent civilians.

"Mwahahahaha! Feed me more! I demand more sacrifices!" the beast chortles in a wet, rippling voice as its hideous rubbery skin slaps around, making its way down the street. A moment later, it adds, "I mean the monster things. Not the people. I'm not evil, I swear."

    A shadow swoops down through the group of Lunas.

    It suddenly coalesces to form Serrah, baring her fangs and arms outstretched. But only for a second. She turns back into a shadow, slips behind Noctis, and abruptly materializes attempts to grab her armor and throw her onto the ground!

    There's an uncharacteristic fury in her eyes. A fury which suddenly evaporates at the sight of the ... the ... the Damian monster. She's suddenly looking rather nervous, and a bit shaken. "... man ... w-what the fuck." She barely even seems to notice the rain at first.

"What the hell?!" Benedicta looks a bit confused at the smouldering obols left behind by the banished grendels. It would be a good idea to pick those up later after they cool off, after it would be troublesome if they fell into the wrong hands. She decides to take advantage of the rain and her horn flashes yellow as a long elephant trunk grows from her nose. The al-mir'aj collects the water and sprays it upwards at Noctis.

Anne Read has made some serious headway but it's not enough there are just so many grendals. Well not anymore as Damian seems quite keen to finish the bulk of the remaining ones off this will allow Anne to focus her on the other matter at hand. she looks at the other magical girl. Something in the back of Anne's mind rages a memory that should be gone but persisted in the back there. 

 "I think not...you bilge rat." 

 Anne raise her staff and fires a focused beam of Water at them hoping they are a bit too distracted with their jeering.

    The grendel problem has been sorted. Gruesomely at the end, with much gnashing of teeth and lashing of tentacles. The rain does clear out the smoke and dust caused by the battle in the skies, making it easier to assess the damage. The horrors of this night are being washed away by the downpour, thank goodness.
    Pinned in place by Serrah's grapple and the torrential stream of water from Anne and Benedicta, Metallia Noctis can't respond quickly enough when Metallia Luna descends from the clouds above and skewers her with a shot from her bow. The exoskeletal armor shatters into dark metal particles, smelling of brimstone and hot sand, oily black smoke billowing out.

    The trainer and pokemon group pause as they spot a giant ravenous monster eating the grendel, and they just... stop, Dynamo growling and sparking threateningly, even as Damian tries to quickly clarify he is there to just eat the evil monsters. "What in the name of..." he mumbles loudly, just momentarily frozen and confused.

     When all the grendels are gone, the demonic sharktopus shrinks down, tentacles and extra eyes retracting while its head reshapes itself, until Damian finally stands once again in his natural form, coughing and spitting out an obol. "Ugh, those things taste /awful/. Not doing that again if I can help it." he remarks.

Then, glancing at Serrah, he finally says, "Oh wait, you meant the baseball thing? Nah, not the first time someone's thrown something at me for my sense of humor. Heck, there was this one girl at school, pretty little Christian thing..."

And then as he notices Luke staring, he just shrugs at the boy and his tiger.

    Serrah raises her hands, then lowers them. "... Damn," she says. "Wow it's raining." She stares down at Metallia Noctis. Or rather, what was once Metallia Noctis. "Oh. Oh shit. I ... ugh ..." She sinks down to her knees, clutching her head; all of a sudden, she looks like she feels worse than anything else in the world, and like she's about to panic on top of that. "... shhhhhhhit ... I am running way too low on my ... on my essence of humanity to kill someone ..."

    She glances up at Damian distractedly, as if she'd completely forgotten her earlier reaction. "Uh ...? Oh ... oh right ..."

Jun sighs as the grendels appear to mostly be gone. Though he's not letting himself rest too much. Looking to Aurelia, he asks, "Did we get all of them?" He doesn't see any more, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any more around! These things do tend to crawl out of the woodwork, after all.

He looks back about the time to see Damian the Sharktopus turn back into Damian the tiny jackal-thing. And he blinks. "That's... something..." he replies, more confused than anything else.

Though should Aurelia give the all-clear, Jun will... go start helping people that might be injured, trapped, or otherwise in trouble! He can heal them, after all.

Benedicta frowns at both the odor and her wet fur before her trunk vanishes as quickly as it appeared. "It's going forever for me to dry off...essence of humanity? You're not going to try and suck us all dry are you?" Her gaze turns towards Serrah, she doesn't need this on top of everything of everything else right. Her attention then turns back towards Damian, "So what were you going to ask me before we had to start running for our lives?"

Anne Read lowers her staff but does not lower her guard she's not certain if it's over just yet. She would look around and try to figure out just what is going on now ow what might happen next. 

 "IT could be worse, right? You could get dragooned by another puff ball with less standars and manners than Polly." 

 She notes

    Metallia Luna and her nine ghosts stare for a long time at the shattered remains of Noctis. One can feel the smolder of rage emanating from the woman. Then she takes to the skies, the ghosts fading from sight with pleased looks on their faces. The remains reek of a sort of magic to Benedicta and Anne, though it will take some time to determine what exactly.
    Aurelia and Zero help people who are injured, calling Jun over where needed. The large metal lion aids the first responders by moving large chunks of rubble. There don't seem to be any grendel lurking about, though the first responders are examining the obols that were left behind with a sort of morbid curiosity.

Jun is quick to move to where the trouble is. Though he might actually be able to help with pulling heavy things now that just about everything on the scene is wet -- he might be able to use the water to 'grab' the heavy thing and pull the water!

It's also worth noting that he's not trying to hide the fact that he's healing people with magic. Newspeople, first responders, whoever sees him, he doesn't care. By this point it's pretty clear that there are supernatural things afoot.

However, if he happens to catch anyone screwing with those obols, he frowns. "Hey hey hey hey, don't mess with those," he says. "That's how you get more problems like the one that was up there." He points up, indicating the scene that just happened. "That's how you sell your soul to the devil."

It's close enough, right? Though he's not completely sure what they are, he knows they're seriously bad news and people probably shouldn't be screwing around with those things.

    Once it becomes clear there is no actual monster left to fight, Luke joins on the efforts to clean and save any civilians left in the mayhem, switching his pokemon to Bewear, since it was far more capable at moving heavy rubble!. The poor thing looks very... sad under the rain, the fluffy thing soaking water like a sponge, and the poofy fur matting down noticeably.

    Serrah quickly shakes her head at Benedicta. "N-n-n ... no no no no no!" She hesitates, and furrows her brow. "I can't even drink that much from one person, either, let alone a whole group." She pauses. "... Well. I've been ... I've been told that as long as that's my reaction, I'm good ... but ..."

    She gets to her feet, and heads out to join with the relief efforts, putting her own superhuman strength to the task. She doesn't want to be the sort of vampire who sits around moping instead of actually being useful. "I got my own problems, basically," she says uncomfortably. She shakes her head, and looks over at Aurelia. "Did we ... did we at least accomplish something?" she asks weakly.

Anne Read thinks things are over for the moment and she'll move to banish her staff. "We should not hang aorun here much longer." 

 She takes note of Jun's warning an bobs her head a little bit. "Right... I think we at least put a dent in the horde that will have to be enough for the moment."

     Damian, wringing some rainwater out of his fur, shrugs as Benedicta asks him the question that had nearly been forgotten in all the chaos. "Eh, was just gonna ask if you wanted to hang out. Safe Haven's been kinda boring lately. Heck, we could get together with a couple of my pals and form a search party for those jerks that took your soul, y'know? Fun stuff."

    Aurelia nods to Serrah. "Yeah, I think. There's not a nest of hundreds of grendels anymore at least, and Noctis is gone so there shouldn't be more of them."

"Well if Noctis is no longer around there shouldn't be any new grendel right?" Benedicta smiles as she realizes that. "We've accomplished something huge if that's the case!" There's still the problem of Luna though..." She's not quite sure how to deal with that. "I wouldn't mind hanging out sometime, Sybil's been keeping kind of a low-profile ever since she's been trying to take over the Cabal. I'm sure she's planning something especially if Noctis is gone. Maybe we should try to keep her from finding out for a while..." It would be best to try and cover this up.