Ohanzee dreams...
The colors are amazing. Gold and blue and green, a sunset like you never see in the city where the smog leaves the sky a drab brown instead of the scintillating rainbow he was observing on the tropical beach as the greenish blue waves roared and crashed upon the shore. Salty air filled his lungs as he breathed in, and in seeming seconds the sky darkened into deep reds, then purples, and finally the deep blue of evening. In thermo, the world was alive wit color though - the water still a warm 27 degrees. The sand, cooling rapidly, was just over 25. The trees were cooler still. The humid air was around 22 though it felt cooler because of the breeze off of the ocean. Shifting to the astral, the rainforest the edged up to the beach was positively vibrant as nocturnal creatures stirred and went about their lives.
"The wireless here is crap" said a voice, and a man Ohanzee had sworn was not there a moment before, kicked at the sand on the beach. Ohanzee recognized him as Doc, née Crumpled.
Broken out of his reverie, Ohanzee began to panic as he could not recall where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Which was just as well, as a dragon appeared overhead, thundering displeasure at the intrusion of mere mortals into its domain.
"Who disturbs my slumber?" roared the beast, its astral aura nearly blinding to the dwarf.
AROs lit up around the flying creature like the lights of Old Vegas. Or New Vegas, for that matter, though now it was all AROs rather than extravagant physical lights.
"We've got to move before that chopper comes round again! Can you distract them with an illusion?" Sam this time, and Ohanzee turned to see him crouched behind a burnt out car. Blood dripped from his leg onto the pavement. When Ohanzee looked, Doc was gone, along with the tropical beach. This was an inner city, probably Denver, and Ohanzee judged the temperature to be closer to 15 degrees. The dragon had been replaced by a helicopter, shockingly similar to the one used by the strike team mere hours ago. He looked back to Sam to ask if he had a plan only to find the burning wreckage of the chopper laying in the snow and trees off of the road to Aspen.
"Whatever you think you can do to me will pale in comparison to what they'll do to you when they find you." the prisoner from the strike team was at Ohanzee's feet, broken and battered but still defiant. Ohanzee was aiming his Warhawk at the man's head. The gun fired even though he had not pulled the trigger or willed it through his trodes. Time slowed as the back of the man's head exploded out onto the snow, brain and blood covering the pure white powder. The man's eyes were open, staring at Ohanzee. A soft breath - the last - escaped the man's lips as he fell, painfully slowly, to the ground. The stench of feces and urine wafted up from the body where the man had soiled himself as his muscles relaxed completely in death. Ohanzee recoiled from the horrific sight, distraught over the slaughter.
<<<@Team [Doc] Looks like they were looking for us in Aspen.
Doc was again next to him, this time fiddling with the remains of some sort of flying drone. It was still burning brightly, but it did not burn Doc. Ohanzee thought to caution him about the fire, but the flames suddenly died down, revealing the prone form of Ace. "They've been tracking us the whole time. It was in his body!" But instead of blood and gore, the mangled body was metal and wires.
"I didn't know" Ace said softly, his face a mix of revenge and apology.
We're tearing ourselves apart. Ohanzee looked up from Ace to see Katsina's astral form floating above him. Look at them!
Ohanzee looked ahead of him and found himself sitting at a table in the dining room of the house with the entire team gathered around it. "What do we do?" they all asked at once, the sort of disturbing effect that one gets when dealing with insect spirits. They stared, demanding he respond.
"I don't know." was all he could manage before waking up to the dark loft. He'd forgotten to turn off his trodes, and he checked the time finding that he'd dozed for only a couple hours. He caught up on the messages from his commlink and considered responding, but reflecting on the dream he paused.
Was his dream telling him that he was stressed out from having the team look to him for guidance? Maybe he should just go back to sleep, leave the team to their own devices for a little longer, not alert them to the fact that he was conscious. Procrastinate.
But he was a leader. He had extensive knowledge of the psychology of leadership, group dynamics, team management. He had an innate understanding of the social aspects of group hierarchy and encouraging people to build loyalty and follow orders. And if his earlier dream was to be believed, he had no qualms with taking the lead. The truth was, LEADING was not the problem. Or rather, it wasn't what scared him. In a flash he realized that what was eating at him was that he hadn't been leading, he had been directing.
The distinction was small, but integral to what makes a good leader. A leader's job isn't to make all of the decisions, or even the majority of them, it was to encourage those under you to reach their potential. It was to garner a cooperative atmosphere. It was to help them reach their own conclusions in their areas of expertise. Provide ideas, ask questions. But leave the decisions to those that have the most appropriate skill, and support them in what they decide. When faced with a problem, the best leaders won't start by handing down orders, they'll start by asking "what do you guys think?"
And so now he approached the decision of whether to respond to the messages he had read with a different perspective. Instead of fear of having to be the crutch, he had to decide whether the team even needed his input - from what he could see, they were handling things quite competently. Maybe a "good job, team?"
But he kept coming back to Doc's text. They are looking for us in Aspen. So the ruse failed. Not that he expected it would work, but he had hoped. We need a plan B to shake our pursuers - when they find the burned out rover, they'll concentrate their efforts here.
"Can you distract them with an illusion?" Sam's question from his dream surfaced. He hadn't known he could create illusions, but both of his dreams seemed to indicate that he could. The spell appeared in his mind - he DID know how to create them! But how could that throw them off our trail?
A good leader would start by asking the question.
>>@Team [Ohanzee]: I forgot to turn my trodes off. If anybody asks, I'm still sleeping, but I wanted to get your input on how to misdirect our pursuers - they're a little close and taking out the drone and burning the rover pretty much alerts them to us being in the vicinity. We need to throw them off our scent. Best I got is stealing another car and sending it on autopilot to another town. It gets reported stolen and found abandoned, maybe they put two and two together and think we switched vehicles. What do you guys think?
Ohanzee lays there and "listens" to the team discuss their options. His eyes are still heavy and before long he is drifting back to sleep. Just before he loses consciousness again, he wills the trodes offline so they will no longer disrupt his sleep.
