Katsina sews as quickly as possible. The cold wind rushes in through the missing windows. Once its done, she staples it up so that it can block the worst of the wind and maybe retain a bit of the van's heat. Chino and Sam are in the front seats. They have the heat cranked up as high as it will go, which creates a bubble of warmth around them that largely disappears by the time it gets back to everyone else in the rear. One nice thing about the wind though: it helps cut down on some of the stench. The decker vomited when Doc dumpshocked her ass, and the sour scent does not benefit from the heater being on high. Katsina cleaned up the worst of it, but still. You miss the RV already.
Doc finishes his rounds of first aid about the same time that Katsina is done sewing. She sniffs, smelling the liberal application of NuSkin to Chino's crispy exterior. She has two healing preparations already prepared. She moves forward to the space between Chino and Sam.
"Chino, hold this." she instructs, passing a throwing knife to him.
Chino, at least passingly familiar with the ways of magic, obliges. He nicks his finger on the point of a cold throwing knife as Katsina says, "Dae" in Sperethiel. He's about to protest the pain when suddenly it disappears. A glow envelops him - as if Ohanzee's Torch Bearer has jumped into the van - then fades. When it's gone, Chino's pain goes with it. He looks at his arms, checks the fist that he punched the fire spirit with. They look good. Better than that, they look great! It's almost as if the spirit had given him a manicure instead of a third-degree burn. He flexes his hand, which moves freely and easily. The relief in his face is palpable.
Katsina does the same for herself next. Her face hurts from where the spirit kicked her astrally while she was down. You would hope that an enchanted mask, present on the astral, would provide some protection against that sort of thing, she thinks to herself. But no such luck. Is my nose broken? Are my teeth loose? she wonders, but she doesn't want to take off the mask to find out. Instead, she grabs her other preparation, triggering the same hot glow around her - like an open oven - before it fades. When it's gone, her face feels whole again. She relaxes a bit, then pulls out a lynchpin and begins to inscribe it for Ace.
She draws on the throwing knife, listening to the others talk while she works. She draws a peasant woman in traditional garb, perhaps a young mother, on one side. On the other, she draws a farmer, an ancient depiction with a pitchfork instead an army of drones to do the work. They are passing something between them, from one side to the knife to the other, but what is lost to the edge of the knife. She looks on it proudly when she's done, then leans forward to hand it to Ace.
Ace reaches out to take it. He touches the small hilt and a flash goes off. The flare compensators in his eyes react quickly, dilating his pupils to maintain continuous vision. When his eyes refocus he sees that the inscription on the knife is gone, the magic reducing the scene to dust. The wind circulating around the Bulldog whisks it away. Katsina grabs Ace by the shoulder suddenly and grips it tightly. Ace is shocked by the strength of it for a moment, the force far exceeding Katsina's size. It feels like she's pressing something into him, an outside force. Then she withdraws her hand, leans back, and looks out the window.
It's noisy in the van. The blankets don't protect from road and wind noise, which are substantial at 100kph. You practically have to yell for everyone to hear you.
"When Ace and I were in town, we stopped by an apartment tied to a fake SIN of mine!" Katsina begins, almost bellowing. "It was a safehouse, not burned yet! We found evidence that we were looking for APB! Why, we don't know!
"The blood was in the fridge! It's not 'mine' - I know my bloodtype! I don't know if it 'belongs' to Ace or APB though! I doubt it! I brought it because our previous selves thought we needed it!"
She looks over the message from Doc, the forwarded transcript of the troll's glasses. Behind the mask, she sighs.
"The elf was Black Lodge! I'm guessing the other Johnson was too!" She holds up her hands to absolve herself of the association. "I'm not Black Lodge! ... I don't think! Whenever I think about them, I get a sinking feeling! Seems like they're after me, probably figuring that I'm with the obelisk!"
She leans back, wrapping a blanket tightly around her. She doesn't seem keen to linger on the topic.
"We should go to Carbondale! The bigger, the better!"
