Prickly

  Esstrey floats slowly through the gathering hall of the PMC with Cathy by her side, very few of the matriarchs are paying attention to the duo, but the ceiling ninjas ag as security haven't fotterey so soon. Their wariness of Esstrey and useless attempts to stop her st time caused them to adapt their onry. It now includes throwable hooks on strings which they use to hook any unstoppable forces and physically restrain them, it would have been a good on agairey in such a rge number if she didn't e fully armed and armored. The hooks may be able to find initial purchase in her armor if they are lucky, but the strings aren't tough enough to be able to hold back Esstrey herself, and she doesn't o care as much for the iy of her armor as much as her skin. Using a probably would have been a better idea, but it's hard to act as ceiling security while carrying around a heavy enough to keep the biggest of catches down for more than a few seds.

  Esstrey makes a mental note of the worried looks on the faces of the otending today's event. The dimensional merge seems to have these people much more shaken thahe more worried officials ba Malencia, and she herself doesn't believe they itted a coup on the pces they inhabited, they seem too tame for that. This anization was supposed to be the light in the darkness for the people in this world, but now with their own lives in danger f them to act, Esstrey 't help but feel that they were even more pathetic than her initial estimate. Hushed whispers of fures haunt the halls, corrupted beings that do not work like the usual magical beasts. Shallow perspectives from those who have worked with magic their entire lives, and thus fail to prehend the creatures and their as. Esstrey did her own research, and the corrupted flesh-forest outside Malencia is actually reted to the gods, one of mas of a powerful being closely ected to mana dying. Every dream and nightmare of such a being made ma right outside their doorstep.

  At the very least endants have beuch less popur, many of them did inate from Ri, apparently they were funding the PMC to prioritize Rin problems. This anization was never meant to have a cept of priority, and robably a rge factor in the reason why the Rin people decided to chop off the heads of the nobles. It might also be one of the few reasons why Esstrey isn't getting jumped by ceiling ninjas. The only thing that the true leadership of PMC hates more tharey's pt for them is the fact that the Rin revolutionaries have ehe nobility most vocal about funding the PMC had every record about them edited to refer to them as past-tense. She would have to send a hank-you card when she to them, maybe something practical as well, like a Spetsnaz tactics manual.

  Esstrey's thoughts are interrupted as she spots her target talking to some other attehey all look incredibly bored with the expnation given by her, but begin to shake out of their stupor as Esstrey and Cathy approach. Before her target notices that she's now in someone's shadow, Esstrey grabs her target and begins tinuing the iion she was forced to drop st time, much to Cathy's dismay.

  "Well, if it isn't my favorite Ameri pnt, the Industricus Texanicus." Esstrey's smile is visible behind her facepte, and the [Dryad] is momentarily surprised by being subjected to a medical iion all of a sudden, before rec quickly.

  "Well howdy to you too dy fish! I ain't too sure what them fancy words mean, but they sure sound funny! To e look me up must mean you want to hear my wonders about green energy, greenskins would be jealous!" The dryad quickly begins ranting about a world she envisions after introdug herself as Jesse. O uhe orey es from, but every copper wire is repced with a root, and every mppost is lit with bioluminesce. One where GMO takes a whole different meaning, as the walls between engineering and biology colpses, but Esstrey 't help but feel like Jesse is trying to sell her something. Now that she thinks of it, Jesse has always talked like this.

  "Jesse, you sound like a real estate salesman, why?" Esstrey gets straight to the point, and as expected the overly joyous dryad cmps down for a moment before tinuing in a somewhat mrim tone.

  "I was hoping that someone here would be willing to take me in, the soil around my tree got acidic because of my earlier experiments, and no one wanted me before the dimensional merge over their fears of me ruining crops. Now, no none even afford to accept me, at this rate my tree will starve." Jesse has told her sob story many times hoping to inspire sympathy, but usually people would just look sad and back away from there on out. Potentially poisoning crops through acidic soil is no joke, people's lives depend on those crops after all.

  Yet, instead of looking sad and dolehe smile orey grows wider, showing her sharp teeth. Her grip on Jesse instead of sing tightens slightly, and her eyes seem to relish in the misfortune of the dryad.

  "Jesse, how about a deal? I happen to own a city at the moment, and I believe the future you envision could start here. We fixed the food crisis retly, and security gets stronger by the day. We also still have funal trade with two major fas without needing one of [The Veil]'s dimensional portals. Of course, any food y to the table would be nice as well, an all meat diet isn't great for your health you know. What do you say?" Esstrey extends a cw to Jesse, while the other attendees look on in shock. Esstrey seems some other familiar faces as well, the [Naga] isn't here, but the [Sheep-kin] and [Kitsune] are.

  "W-Well gee dy, that's a mighty fine deal you offer. That... that there be almost too good to be true. Almost." Jesse takes the cw of Esstrey, who then gives it a firm shake before rising back to her full height.

  "Cathy, you help the madam here move her stuff to Malencia?" Esstrey didn't pay much attention to what Cathy was doing, but at some point she started standing very close to her.

  "This one will do it on the [dition/requirement/prerequisite] that the dy does a medical examination on this one." Esstrey looks at Cathy in shock for a moment, she doesn't often want things, but she never believed that the [Shoggoth] didn't have wants.

  "Sure, I do that."

  Prickly