"Oh my god. Who is this?"
Bea exclaimed, as soon as she opened the door.
Raeden walked in through the door with an unconscious girl in his arms and laid her down on the nearby couch.
"Why are you here?" Eugene asked walking past her, followed by Jade and the twins.
Bea, a rabbit beastmen was in the village Chief's residence when her brother and the rest of his colleagues walked in carrying an unconscious girl.
"Not the craziest thing we've ever brought home" Noah passed as he ruffled Bea's hair.
"So why are you here? And where's the Chief?" Eugene asked again.
"I was helping Melina with a few errands" Bea closed the door and crunched down near the couch.
"She is with the Chief in the back"
Bea moved the hair away from the woman's face as Raeden put a pillow under her head to elevate it.
"Wow... She's pretty. Where did you find her?"
"She found us"
"Or found Eugene to be precise" Jade added.
"What?" Bea frowned and turned to her brother.
She felt curious about the beautiful girl that caught her elusive brother captive. She noticed that the ends of her hair were different from her brown locks.
'Hair colour?'
Just then Chief Gorden came out from the backroom thinking of grabbing a coffee from the kitchen. He had returned from helping his daughter Melina restock the medicine cabinet with the herbs Bea had given to them.
Being the only medical practitioner in the village along with the position as Chief came with a lot of responsibilities. He merely had time to have breakfast when a bunch of villagers came with bruises all over their bodies.
Now that everyone has gone home, he could finally get the coffee he deserved.
Gorden stopped dead on his tracks after noticing the room filled with people who were not supposed to be there.
The Nero mercenaries stared at him with a suspicious expression and then uniformly shifted their gaze to the couch in front of them.
Gordon could feel by instinct that something was not right. From his position, he was only able to see the back of the couch but was able to notice the pair of feet protruding out of it.
He took a step forward to find a woman.... or rather a girl he had never seen before lying on his couch with her eyes closed.
"Oh no. What now?" Gordon sighed.
"Chief...." Noah put a hand on his shoulder as he said,
"You better sit down for this"
Within a few minutes, Eugene gave a full rundown of the events of the past few hours without leaving out any details starting from the goblin attack till how they ended up in front of the Chief's house.
According to their theory, the mysterious woman had come to the Sterron grasslands with the same goal as the Nero mercenaries. That was to collect the Golden Rosales Plant which was a highly demanded medical plant.
After noticing that the grass may be potentially poisonous she climbed the tree which had a branch suspended right on top of the plant to avoid stepping on the grass. But the branch snapped and she fell to the ground triggering a pollen burst.
For unknown reasons, the women must have crawled through the grasslands while inhaling a toxic amount of pollen in the process. Driven by hallucinations, she coincidentally wandered off to where Eugene was in the forest.
Under the influence of the hallucinogenic pollen, she mistook Eugene for someone she knew, possibly a child, and tried to kidnap him?
But instead passed out from exhaustion (fabricated fact). And to save her life the Nero mercenaries brought her to the village.
"Why not bring her to the guild clinic?" Bea interrupted Eugene,
"Not that I don't want you to. I'm always happy to see a new face"
The reason they brought the girl to the Nero village instead of taking her to the guild clinic was because the healers were not skilled enough to cure pollen poisoning of this degree.
So they came home where the only person with enough skills and experience was present.
The end.
"Bring her to the backroom" Gordon gestured to Raeden.
He checked the girl's pulse. To his surprise, her pulse was stable and there were no problems with her breathing. He took a seat next to the bed and started checking any possible injuries sustained during the fall.
That was when Gordon noticed that the left side of her head was swollen red.
'Most probably caused by the fall'
Aside from that, there were no other external injuries.
"Hmm..." Gordon fell into thought.
The main concern was the pollen in her system. Small amounts of pollen may not be a problem. But a lethal dose could turn a person crazy or in worst cases could result in death.
"Melina..." Gordon called his daughter,
"Bring a few cleansing incenses and my medicine kit"
Fortunately, the girl did not seem to have any problems. Her body was fighting against the toxins quite effectively. Given a few hours, she would wake up without any complications.
"To be honest, it's a miracle she is even still breathing" Gordon spoke as he removed the gloves,
"The amount she took is enough to knock out a grown beastman. Yet this human girl survived. She's a fighter"
"Is she ok?" Raeden stood by the entrance beside Eugene, waiting to hear Gordon's diagnosis.
They stayed behind after sending Jade and the twins to submit the plant to the guild on behalf of the girl. Since it was an urgent request, they surmised that the guild might need it sooner.
"She's fine. I have treated her head injury. The incense will help her heal faster"
"But it's been six hours. Why isn't she waking up?"
Right then, Bea came inside the room with a bowl of water,
"She's just sleeping. She'll wake up when her body recovers from the stress accumulated by the hallucinations"
Having studied under Gordon for the past few months, Bea was grooming into the next doctor in the village. She concocted medicine for the swelling and wrapped the girl's head with bandages.
The incense placed under the bed would accelerate the healing while helping relieve stress.
The only thing left was to wait for the time to pass.
"Eugene..." Gordon turned towards Eugene with a grin.
"?" Eugene frowned.
It was time to discuss the most important matter at hand.
"So what is this about you being rabbitnapped?"
After talking for a few minutes, they decided to take the party elsewhere leaving the girl behind to rest.
Three hours later, Bea returned to the Chief's house to change the incense. But before she could open the door, a loud crashing sound was heard from the inside.
*CLASH*
She rushed in to find an empty bed and a broken window.
"Uh-oh" Bea awkwardly bit her tongue looking out through the hole in the wall.
"I'm in fluff land" Angelica looked around in bewilderment.
She walked down the street in staggering steps while trying to figure out what happened.
Wherever she went, people stopped and curiously stared at her from a distance.
Though Angelica was able to wake up and function, her mind was not completely cleared of the pollen's influence. Her confused self found it hard to remember the existence of beastmen.
The last thing in her memory was witnessing the acts of a ninja squirrel. Everything after that was a blur.
'I need to get out of here' was the only thought running through her mind.
Angelica managed to make it to the local breakfast house in a hazy state.
There were benches outside the breakfast house with a few fluffy animals seated on them.
*jiggle*
The door opened and a woman stepped out with a tray in her hands. Her eyes widened for a moment from recognition but she soon changed it into a sweet smile.
"Do you want a cup of coffee?"
That woman was the first human Angelica had seen till now. But there was something peculiar about her too.
"Your ears...." Angelica's eyes wavered.
They were cat ears. Were they always like that? Her head was starting to throb again.
"Is something wrong with my ears?" The woman tilted her head.
"Melina! Can we get a.... wait a second. Isn't this?"
A cheery voice was heard from behind. Angelica could faintly remember hearing it earlier in the forest.
From the corner of her eyes, she could see a young man with bright blue hair standing beside her.
"Do you know this person Noah?" Melina asked worriedly.
Angelica's face was turning pale and her eyes were unsteady.
Having helped her father before, Melina recognized her as the unconscious girl brought by Raeden and the others.
"Yeah... but not really" Noah bent down and peered at Angelica.
He was shocked to find that she walked on her own after only half a day while it normally took two days to recover from pollen poisoning.
"The Chief did say she was recovering fast. But this is astonishing..." He mumbled.
Noah noticed Angelica clenching her fists tight with her head sunken down as if she was hiding her face.
He tried to put a hand on her shoulder as he asked,
"Are you alright?"
Everything after that was over within a second.
Noah was only able to realize what had happened after Melina dropped the tray in her hands with a loud shriek.
Because before he could react, Angelica had twisted Noah's arm behind his back and held him down by the neck in a tight lock.
"Grr.."
By instinct, Noah shifted to his beast form and tried to get off her clutches. But his opponent had a firm hold on his neck and was too strong to shake off.
"You....." Angelica spoke in a menacing voice,
"I remember you. You're the monster who hurt him. Didn't you?
Alerted by the sound of the breaking glass, Eugene and Raeden came out running towards the source of the noise.
They found the broken window at the side of the Chief's house and footprints that led towards the road. There was a faint scent of pollen lingering in the air.
"She couldn't have gone far" Eugene furrowed his brow.
Suddenly his ears started twitching. He could hear a commotion in the direction of the breakfast house.
"Raeden..."
"She's there" said Raeden, looking in the same direction as him.
"Let's go"