Managing the Situation

Elmo wasn't sure if Elin was really going to be alright. She'd collapsed, and caught by Lance, when the devourer had come out of her, though it hardly looked like anything. Almost like it was entirely a pink kind of tail.

Closer to a worm in appearance than what he'd expected it to look like.

Yet, as soon as it hit the ground, it seemed to disappear from Elmo's vision. Which told him that it had either used a kind of invisibility on itself or that it was just incredibly fast.

What he suspected was that it was invisible more than anything else. As if it moved too fast for his eyes to catch up with it, then he couldn't see what the point of getting it to come out in the first place or even why they hadn't spread all across this world.

Then before he could even say what was going through his mind about them, Kim jabbed the ground with her short sword, creating a squeaking sound that Elmo thought was completely out of place, until he was able to make out what had been caught by the sword: the devourer was now completely visible and unmoving, as well as cut into two pieces.

"That should take care of that," Kim declared, sounding satisfied with the result.

Elmo couldn't say why, but the sight of the pink tail-like thing severed like it had been, made Elmo feel a little squeamish and just a little nauseas. It iddn't look like anything he'd seen before, other than worms, but those typically hadn't been more of a pink color.

"You know, I expected it to look a little different," one of the people observing what had happened remarked. "I thought it would look more like a rodent than whatever that."

"No kidding," another replied. "If I saw that when I was walking along, I'd have thought that it was something else entirely."

Enough!" Jonas called out, drawing everyone's attention and quieting all the conversations that had suddenly sprung up. "What we need to do now is find those who have a devourer in them."

Jonas' gaze swept across the entire group, and even to Elmo it felt like he was looking at each person individually, even as his gaze moved, not lasting for more than a second on any particular person

"If we all disperse and check everyone, we can then have Elin use Treat on them once she recovers," Jonas continued when he'd finished looking across those who had been at the meeting from the start of it. "First, we should check everyone present to make sure that none of us has a devourer in us, and second, we'll figure out who should check whom so we're not all checking the same people multiple times."

"Okay, what should we do if we find someone with a devourer in their head?" Kim asked dryly. "I'm certainly not going to just let them wander away after we've identified them."

"We should set up to areas, maybe with multiple tents, for those who have a devourer inside them, while those who don't will be directed to a different area," Jonas answered. "That way we shouldn't need to worry about having to sort them out again."

"What good will that do?" Lance asked, with several of the others nodding, clearly on the same page as the self-named second-in-command of their army.

"It'll keep us from having to figure out who's infected with these parasites when Elin is able to start treating them," Kim said. "If nothing else, it'll save us time from having to deal with that then." Kim paused for a moment, the look on her face making Elmo feel like he should be getting out of here right now, even though the look wasn't directed at him. "Unless you're really wanting to make us wait here another day."

Even though he found their expressions at Kim's last sentence rather amusing, Elmo bit his tongue to keep from showing any of the amusement he felt. He could tell that Kim wasn't in a good mood, and the best way for him to know he'd be able to survive that was to have her notice him as little as possible.

Especially since he didn't have Elin as a buffer against her.

"So, Elmo," Kim said a second later, making Elmo jump, "You start marking tents for quarantine and tents for those who aren't infected."

Elmo quickly nodded, a little scared at the fact that she remembered he was there. However, he was at least happy that he had a task that she was willing to entrust to him. That meant that he wasn't going to have her wrath directed at him.

So, he quickly started going around looking at which tents would be best used for which, as well as a way to mark them that wouldn't harm the tent or leave a lasting mark. For one thing, he couldn't help but think that it would be easier if they didn't have to eventually explain what the marks were for later on.

Just in case other complications might rise up as a result of that.

+++

Even though Jonas had notice thirty of the members of 'her' army, Kim was a little shocked to learn that over half of the army had been infected by the devourers.

Which also meant that they were going to be stuck here for a while still.

As no matter how good Elin had gotten with her magic, Kim was certain Elin didn't have enough MP to take care of everyone in the army in one go.

Which also meant that Elin would need time to recover her MP while they waited. Otherwise Kim doubted that it would turn out in a positive way for them.

It had taken only taken until around noon for them to have moved all the people into the quarantined tents, if only so it wouldn't be easy to lose track of who had that pink tail-like thing hanging out the back of their head.

Although, they didn't need to worry about one of the members of her army, who out of curiosity had reached behind his head to touch the tail. At which point, he started screaming and thrashing around for a few minutes before he stopped, his gaze vacant and staring. Having clearly died a very painful death.

Not that it was entirely a bad thing. As it gave the rest of her army a close up view of the danger they were facing with these devourers. Plus, it helped keep any complaints about the quarantines down to a handful.

Which mostly consisted of sleeping arrangement and other creature comforts that didn't really amount to anything significant.

It also helped that they were able to get the devourer when it tried leaving its victim's head after that. Since it gave essentially a 'face' to what they were facing.

"General, is there anything we can do to help?" Lance said, as he walked from behind another tent, clearly looking for her.

Kim shook her head. "Not really. "All we can do is wait for Elin to recover her magic after each time she runs out of her MP," Kim replied, not really giving Lance much attention.

"Uh, I didn't mean that," Lance said, looking startled.

"Then what did you mean?" Kim asked, not sure she should give him much more attention.

"Just that if there was something we could do to help with determining what supplies are necessary to use up or if we should send someone out now to get more supplies, since we're still rather close to the capital," Lance answered.

Kim sighed. One of the things she really didn't care to have to deal with about having her own 'army.' Yet, she was still stuck with it even though she hadn't tried to assemble the army herself.

"If you want to do that, go ahead," Kim said, not really caring one way or the other. "If it takes as long as I think it might, we might be here around a week while we wait for Elin to be able to get to everyone."

"Is there a way to increase her MP without waiting for it to recover on its own?" Lance asked.

"Technically, yes, but I don't think we have any of the potions that would restore that," Kim said, wondering partly when Elin would wake up. The sun was close to setting, which meant that she'd been out for most of the day already.

"I'll see if we can get someone who knows where something like that can be found," Lance said, giving Kim a salute before walking off with a clear purpose in his stride.

When he was gone, Kim couldn't help but sigh. Things like this weren't something that she really cared to deal with, but it wasn't anything that she could think of how to get out of either.

She was confident that if she ordered them to disband the army and go their own ways, they'd acknowledge the order and ignore it completely. Or maybe they would 'disband' and immediately reform.

She wasn't sure what they were thinking, only that it wasn't anything that she could do anything about herself. Much like being in this lousy competition.

Although, unlike the army, being put in this competition had at least one silver lining. Which was the fact that she definitely wouldn't have been able to meet Elin otherwise.

That alone made her not as annoyed at Jonas and Elmo still seemed about the competition.