From the Vast

Chapter 4: Facade

The sight the scouts were treated to after looking out of their room was less scary than it was sudden, the couple medics that had been tending to the girl backing off as she began to scream, left unsure how to proceed or even what had caused it. With Aria's reemergence into the main chamber of the tent, the medics had turned to face her, wordlessly asking her to advise- she wasn't about to do that though, instead walking right up to the screaming child to intervene herself.

The good news was that Anne clearly wasn't screaming because of what she saw, her eyes clenched shut as she shook on the soft bedding, feebly trying to twist her body to its right side. Unfortunately, that left the other main possibility, even a cursory check of her thoughts revealing the pain she was feeling in her left arm, unceasing even as her screams turned into pained whimpers. Aria's own medical expertise was very limited, but she still had enough of it to put a Healing Pulse and a Calm Mind to use, her touch on the cast-wrapped arm numbing the nerves and gently cooling the panic building inside of the poor child, whimpers replaced by quiet gasps and then eventually deep breaths as the pain left her be.

"^She was in pain.^"

"Must've underestimated the dose, damn it. Can you hold her like this for a while?"

Close watch over the child's thoughts let Aria know she'd heard Maple's words even if they were not understood in the slightest- and also that she was much too tired to pay any real attention to them, content in laying on her right side for the time being, the Gardevoir nodding towards the Leavanny as her hands gently held the cast-clad arm. The leafy medic wasted no time walking back over to the bed, one leaf-like arm looking for the right spot of exposed skin as the tip of the other began to glow light purple. The Poison Jab that followed was almost entirely painless, completely paralyzing the girl's left side once more.

"Better now?"

"^Much better, thank you Maple.^"

"Are you gonna put her back to sleep?"

"^I may, but it'd be good to see if I could figure out what-^"

The girl's mumbled words interrupted the hushed conversation, the rest of the gathered group freezing as they realized they still had an awake human in their midst as they saw her slowly rotate back onto her back, Aria quickly glancing between Maple, other medics, and the rest of the scout team, passing a message to them all-

"^Back off for now, I'll handle this.^"

Aria watched nervously as Anne's head turned to look over in her direction, remembering to link up with the girl this time, torn between wanting to help the injured child and protecting her village and its secret, though Anne's current weakness skewed her mostly towards the former. After a few long moments, their patient was back to laying on her back, eyes slowly beginning to pry themselves open and staring into the ceiling, squinting almost immediately. Her gaze took its time moving around the walls before eventually landing on Aria, squinting just as hard, the whole room's collective beat skipping as they watched how would their inadvertent guest react to their current situation-

"~T-thank you, n-nurse...~"

Out of everything Anne could mutter out in her pained state, Aria wasn't expecting gratitude, the mentally translated words making her feel that much warmer- at least until she finished taking the rest of them in, having no idea what did the girl mean by that, or why was she squinting at her like that. Without saying anything in response, Aria walked a half step closer, eyes closing as she tried to more invasively dig into her thoughts and piece together just what was going on in here-

...

Figures she wasn't scared, she could barely see her.

An attempt to see through the girl's eyes revealed the resulting image to be unfocused beyond all recognition, Aria's own appearance reduced to a tall white and greenish blur, blur that Anne was interpreting as some sort of human with a white and green outfit with a mask covering their face-