Talulah remained silent after delivering the warning. She looked at Bagpipe's wide, stunned eyes, then glanced down at the quiet wireless transmitter, imagining the shocked expression on the wolf girl's face across town.
Rather than disturbing their shock, Talulah simply sat back, took an unhurried sip of tea, and waited for them to process the grim reality.
"Are you serious?" Horn's voice finally came through the speaker, tight and incredulous. Naturally, no soldier could take such a staggering claim at face value; the immediate human response was to assume it was an impossibility.
"Of course," Talulah replied, a subtle smile touching her lips. "You asked for the truth. Now that you have it, why start doubting its validity?"
Watching Talulah, Bagpipe couldn't help but feel that the Draco—who didn't seem so terrifying after all—had held back information earlier just to watch their reactions.
A heated dialogue broke out across the line. As the conversation progressed, Horn slowly began to accept the reality of the threat, falling into a heavy, contemplative silence.
"We will launch an immediate investigation," Horn stated firmly. "If we uncover actionable clues, we will find a way to get word back to this office. Bagpipe, return to base at once. Over and out."
Recognizing that prolonged transmission put her unit at risk of discovery, Horn cut the link to regroup her squad at their concealed assembly point.
"Alright then! I'll be off! Let's catch up properly next time—bye-bye!" Bagpipe said cheerfully. Thanks to Ch'en, the rapport between Bagpipe and Talulah had grown significantly warmer—far warmer than the tense relationship between their respective leaders!
"Now then, come along. We might actually turn up something useful," Talulah said, turning toward Jeanne and grabbing her firmly by the cloak.
With such a reliable luck charm by her side, this investigation was bound to yield results.
"Hey! Don't drag me, I can walk on my own!" Jeanne squirmed, wanting to break free yet hesitating to use her monstrous strength for fear of ripping her clothes to shreds.
"Dragging you just feels right," Talulah teased, a rare spark of amusement in her eyes as they took their leave from the Rhodes Island team.
Once they stepped out onto the cobblestone path, Talulah turned to her personal navigator. "Which way should we head?"
"Even if my intuition comes in handy, you could try relying on yourself for once!" Jeanne grumbled. "I swear, if you ended up walking straight into a Catastrophe back in the day, it was only because you relied on me so much you forgot how to read a map!"
Despite her teasing, Jeanne closed her eyes, picked a direction based on a gut feeling, and pointed down a winding alley, unsure of what awaited them there.
As they navigated the quiet streets, Talulah observed the bleak surroundings. "How do you think this city's story will end?"
"I don't know," Jeanne admitted softly. "But at the very least, we ought to stop the disaster looming over it, right?"
"Yes," Talulah agreed, her expression darkening as she watched the hollow-eyed residents shuffling past. "We stop it, no matter what it takes."
Passing through several narrow thoroughfares, the pair suddenly caught the sound of a woman weeping, overlaid by a sharp, agitated male voice. The two seemed to be locked in a bitter argument.
Approaching the source, they found a weeping Feline woman and a red-eyed man arguing in an alley. Rather than a personal dispute, it looked like two people driven to breaking point over a shared tragedy.
"We can't just sit here and take it anymore! We have to strike back!" the man declared, his voice trembling with fury. "No matter the cost, we must make them pay! We are Tarans—we cannot let those Victorian soldiers drive us like cattle until we die! We have a chance now, all we need to do is—"
"Enough, Ronan! I won't join your group!" the Feline woman sobbed, shaking her head violently. "I have a child to protect, I can't—"
"Then bring him along! He can avenge his father!"
"Are you out of your mind?! You want my boy to kill people?!"
Before the argument could escalate further, a sudden rustle broke the silence—a small alley animal, startled by the presence of strangers, scuttled across a pile of trash.
"Who's there?!" Ronan froze, panic instantly draining the color from his face. If a Victorian patrol overheard his words, he was as good as dead.
The Feline woman gasped, terrified that their conversation had been discovered by garrison informants.
"Relax. We're just two travelers passing through," Jeanne said, stepping out into the light alongside Talulah.
"You two..." Seeing only two seemingly harmless women, Ronan's fear instantly morphed into dark hostility as he sought to eliminate any potential witnesses.
"Leave this to me, you need to run!" the Feline woman pleaded, attempting to pull Ronan back to buy the strangers time.
Roughly shoving her aside, Ronan drew a hidden dagger from behind his waist and stepped toward Jeanne and Talulah with a murderous glint in his eye.
Without missing a beat, Jeanne casually threw a light punch sideways, striking a solid iron lamppost.
CLANG!
The heavy iron post buckled in the middle, bending at a sharp angle.
Ronan froze mid-step, cold sweat instantly drenching his back. Dropping his dagger, he turned and fled down the alley at top speed without looking back once, completely abandoning the woman behind.
"Am I really that intimidating? Is there a rumor going around that I eat kids?" Jeanne joked, glancing at Talulah, who merely responded with a dry roll of her eyes.
"What... what do you plan to do with me?" the Feline woman stammered, recovering slightly from the shock. She stared at the two with a resigned expression, assuming her fate was sealed.
"Don't worry, we aren't Victorian agents," Talulah reassured her gently. "We heard what was said out of pure coincidence, and we have no intention of reporting you to the garrison."
The woman relaxed slightly, realizing the two had no reason to lie. Examining them closer, one appeared to be an unusual Vouivre while the other showed no obvious physical traits of the common local races.
To settle the woman's doubts completely, Talulah pulled up her sleeve, revealing the dark, crystalline Originium clusters embedded in her skin.
"Infected..." The woman blinked in surprise, her posture softening further. "Then... please, I beg you, keep this secret."
"We want to know what's happening here, and what kind of uprising that man was talking about," Talulah said calmly. "If you share what you know, your secret remains safe with us."
The Feline woman hesitated, torn between fear and caution.
"Ma'am, I'm sure you want to keep your child safe from harm," Jeanne added gently. She felt a twinge of guilt for using leverage, but time was not on their side.
"Very well... I have nowhere left to run anyway," the Feline woman sighed heavily, stepping back to open her door. "Come inside. I will tell you about the terrible things that have happened to us."