The stranger did not understand. The stranger... the stranger...

Rena was stunned. Not from fear or awe at 'being shown not to mess with him'. From... complete and utter bafflement? And also a bit of pity? That looked like it really hurt.

It didn't even occur to her that he'd tried to attack her. That didn't look like an attack. It looked like... well, she didn't know. Slowly, she extended a wing to brush toward the very head that had just slammed into the floor. Sometimes Gembounds got hot and feverish and did things that didn't make sense. Was this one... okay?

@Brother

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Unfortunately for both of them, Brother was completely fine. Beyond a now throbbing headache, at least. It made a confused noise as a wing was held to its head. Its temperature was completely normal for a dinosaur.

The only diagnosis here is: not the sharpest tool in the shed. Hot-headed but healthy.

Belatedly, it recoiled its head away from the wing. It leaned its own head down to reach too short arms up to touch the spot, but they didn't reach. So it just sort of gently touched its own snout. Well, at least the stranger had stopped stealing bones now. He supposed.

Save file ? ( Y / N )

@Rena

The touch of wing to dinosaurian forehead revealed nothing. They just flinched away in a very delayed reaction and then touched their own snout. Rena... supposed that she didn't have any real reason to care, but she still asked.

"Why did you do that?"

From the beginning, this stranger had been one inexplicable action after another. She could not understand it at all. She wondered if it was trying to do anything, if it had an actual goal in mind to the... the bone smashing, the bone standing, and the head slamming. It might be relevant to the Hive, or it might not at all. But Rena was... curious.

@Brother

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More people asking more questions. Expecting him to answer too, no less. Why couldn't people simply understand everything he was doing without asking? It was all very simple to him. It was fun, until this stranger tried to take away the fun, that was.

With a bone-weary sigh, Brother looked back up at the buggy-stranger.

"Fun." He grunted. As if that single word explained everything, from the internal accusations of thievery to why he smashed the bones. As if a single word could somehow encompass his feelings and reasoning perfectly.

He looked at the stranger with big round eyes, as if expecting something after having told her this.

Save file ? ( Y / N )

@Rena

In the latest turn of events, the stranger seemed more annoyed by the fact that she'd asked it a question than by the fact they'd just smashed their head right into solid rock. Also they thought that everything mentioned above was fun.

"... Okay." Keep having fun, then. Rena was going to do something productive.

She turned back to the bones littering the Canis Entrance again. The main pincers at one end grabbed hold of a particularly large chunk of bone embedded in a geode formation and yanked aggressively. The structure of the millenia-old bone had less integrity than Rena expected. It crumbled almost immediately in her grip and she was thrown backward by the force of her own tug, landing hard on her back. Infinite legs flailed in the air for a second or two until she managed to right herself.

Rena breathed hard and considered the lingering soreness of the impact on her chitin and flesh-and-bone wings. Don't get what's so fun about it.

@Brother

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Brother's eyes widened as the stranger was tossed back by the falling structure.

He'd been too busy nursing his head to figure out what had happened exactly, but he'd heard the sounds of geodes crashing and promptly stomped over to the remaining pieces and gave them a whooping.

Geodes made a satisfying crunch underfoot, they scraped the skin at the soles of his feet, but the dinosaur seemed undeterred. The pain was nothing against the feeling of feeling better, stronger than gemstone, harder than rock. They would crumble but his own body would remain in one piece.

The adrenaline even dulled the pain, the wonderful machine it was. It felt good to destroy, especially things that deserved it, like the geodes that had rudely tossed the stranger; no matter that he'd planned to attack the stranger himself earlier. All was forgotten in favour of the rush of finally getting to destroy something.

The geodes didn't crumple much, but splintered off into more pieces that, once again, went skittering across the tunnel. But, there was satisfaction nonetheless that his body could crush something so hard.

Save file ? ( Y / N )

@Rena

Embarrassingly, it was the stranger again that showed up to 'avenge' Rena. He stomped and crushed the geodes around her with alarming ease. Before she could make space to process any other reaction, Rena went skittering after the pieces again to collect and arrange each of them.

Belatedly, it occurred to her that maybe this wasn't the most efficient way to do things. If they worked together on smashing up the bone and crystal for now, she could rearrange them all in a more orderly manner on her own once they were freed from their stony fetters. Provided that she could tolerate the temporary mess.

Change of strategy, then. "Thank you," she told the dinosaur. "Let's smash them together." She wound up and whipped one pincer-laden end at a particularly bone-infested piece of crystal. The impact reverberated through her chitinous exoskeleton as it shattered upon impact, freeing each category of solid from their entropic fusion with one another. Beautiful.

@Brother gonna wait for her brawler advancement before continuing

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The trumpets triumphantly blared in his head. He got to smash now! And they'd do it together!

What is better than lifting smashing things, than doing it together? It was perfect. A real bonding activity for only the toughest of tough and this stranger was proving herself just that! This whole tunnel would be nothing but rubble in no time!

Brother let out a thrilled rumble before leaping back into action, the adrenaline pumping as he tried to find an extra-good crushing spot.

Save file ? ( Y / N )

@Rena no problemo!

The dinosaur's enthusiasm for violence would have been almost scary, if Rena wasn't a fearless machine of order designed to enact violence herself. Or at least, she aspired to be. Twin pairs of eyes quickly locked on their first target, a skull awkwardly engulfed in a mess of violet crystal. That wouldn't do. Rena drew back a limb and stabbed right at it. Glassy knives cut into the crystal, chipping away at the material trapping the foreign object, but it did not break completely. Undeterred, Rena wound up for a second attempt—unless Brother got there first.

@Brother

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In what had been unlike Brother this entire time, it actually stopped. It stopped whatever it was doing to watch Rena with a keen gaze. Eyes travelled down the length of the glassy knives, flickered to her form, then to the partly destroyed crystal.

It took particular time eyeing her form and those blades. Waiting for them to strike again.

With how intently it studied, one could likely guess its intent without words. It was observing her. Trying to study how she'd broken the crystal, its own claws flexed a little as it no doubt imagined using them for a similar purpose.

Save file ? ( Y / N )

@Rena