Magical Warriors of Silvatica

It was a completely not-ridiculous thing to say and Padma got the feeling that even now Dae-Jung was scorning her mentally. Her outfit changed back too and she'd already turned away when Dae-Jung started speaking, only to be grabbed by Maui. "Oh, broth... M-Maui.You are too kind," she murmured, tilting her head and smiling bashfully at him. Why did it only make her smile when Maui complimented her?

The group rested and recuperated with Dae-Jung for a few days, where he boarded them and showed them reluctantly around his city. Padma was mesmerised by this place with its towering structures of metal and glass that lit up in the dark. She even did something she'd never had the opportunity to do before - she bought some new clothes. Her drab robes made her stand out here, so she got a long, dark blue abaya-like robe to where instead. Elvira wanted something new too but Dae-Jung refused to fund that, which caused a ruckus between them. Nevertheless, it was time for them to move on. This time, the place they ended up in was sort of like where Maui was from, with sweeping green hills and an endless ocean, only this time the ocean was darker and the air cooler. It was foggy, too, with the hills disappearing into the clouds above them. Something about this place was utterly magical. "Alright, let's find this other loser," said Elvira, cracking her knuckles.

"Are you calling me fat?!" Elvira snapped, getting up in Dae-Jung's face again and flexing her arm muscles. "This weight's called hard work, sweetheart, somethin' your girly ass wouldn't know any-" "Ssh!" Padma shushed loudly, much to Elvira's surprise. But the reason became clear as Padma was staring in awe ahead of them as a something emerged from the undergrowth. It was a fat, green bird with sparkling eyes. It regarded them for a moment before hobbling back off into the brush. Padma giggled and began to walk forward into the forest of twisting trees and ferns. "This is a place of magic," she whispered excitably. Elvira raised her eyebrow but followed her anyway.

They wandered further into the forest, just looking around and admiring the green beauty of the world around them. They didn't see anymore birds like the fat green one that had waddled passed them before, though. It started to rain at some point, and Padma enjoyed the cool trickles running down her face. The droplets made a symphony of patters on the leaves all around them. Truly magical. It stopped after a few minutes, and the group came into a clearing through which a stream ran. It leapt over mossy boulders and bubbled under bridges made by fallen trees. As they approached, another person did too from the other direction. They didn't notice the group as they went to fill up a flask from the stream. It was hard to tell what they were, as they were wearing loose jeans, a big dark green raincoat with the hood up, and muddied boots.

Maui trod on a twig as he approached and snapped it loudly, alerting the person ahead to their presence. They lowered their hood with their free hand and turned to look at them. Padma was then convinced that they'd crossed over into some other reality where magic existed, and Elvira was also thinking that might be the case. The person was a girl. She had the palest skin Padma had ever seen, which was flecked with light freckles across her nose and cheekbones. She had the biggest blue eyes, framed with large glasses, and rose pink lips that matched the slight flush in her cheeks. Her hair was woven from sunlight and gold, slightly wavy and damp in places from the rain. She blinked at them a few times, then spoke in a soft voice. "Are you lost?" Padma gasped and clasped her hands together. "An angel," she breathed.

A group of exotic looking strangers in the middle of the jungle with no idea where they were? Yeah, the girl didn't look convinced by that. She took a few steps back as Maui approached her. "You're a long way from anywhere," she said, with a funny twinge of an accent on some of the words. "Who are you?" Padma sensed the girl was uneasy and wanted to calm her. "We are friends," she said warmly, waving at her. Elvira was a bit annoyed at how beautiful this girl was but tried not to let it show. She'd not seen anyone with such delicate features or light hair before.

The girl's eyes widened slightly and she stopped back away. "Uh, yis, I've seen some of those," she said quietly, putting her hand behind her back subtly. Did she have a shard on her body that she was trying to hide from them? Padma wanted her to trust them so she stepped forward to and pulled her hijab back slightly. "We have them too," she told the girl, showing her the blue shard in the top of her forehead. The girl paused and then brought her hand out in front of her and shimmied up her sleeve. She had one too, a pale green, buried in the heel of her hand. "I fell on it," she mumbled. "It won't come out. What is it?"

The girl looked dumbfounded for a bit, blinking slowly at Maui and then flinching from Dae-Jung's fireball. Padma joined in and created a small plume of rain drops, and Elvira hopped on the bandwagon by making a small swirl of snowflakes. The girl just stared more and... Shook her head and chuckled quietly. "I'm going mad," she murmured, turning away and walking back upstream. "Oh no," Padma whispered. "Did we frighten the angel?"

"She is an angel," Padma insisted, frowning at Dae-Jung. The girl looked a bit frightened now. "No," she said with a shake of the head. "Leave me alone."

The girl looked to the left when she heard the roaring sound. "Not again," she hissed. She flung her flask into her small rucksack and then flicked her arm slightly - out of her sleeve slid a long rifle. Padma was about to tell Dae-Jung to be quiet, but then the girl was running off, leaping through the stream and running towards the roaring. "A warrior angel," Padma said vehemently to Dae-Jung before running after her, with Elvira in tow.

The girl murmured a profanity, and pointed the gun at the creature. "Get offa that nest!" she shouted, firing a warning shot right next to the creature's ear. Padma caught up and transformed into her magical outfit. "Don't worry," she said proudly. "We will defend this land!" Elvira was finding it kind of funny that Padma had an obvious girl crush on the pretty blonde, but to be honest she didn't blame her. Even from this distance, the blonde smelled like strawberries. They were all in their magical outfits now and ready to fight. Their transformations made the girl lose her focus on her target a bit.

[You need to fix the autocorrect that capitalises Dae all the time...] Elvira and Padma didn't understand the science behind this, but when Elvira directed cold air from one side and Dae-Jung shot heat from the other, it increased the vortex of wind that Maui was able to create. It was quite powerful. And when Padma added water to it, it became quite lethal. The girl was watching in part awe, part anger. The nest!!

"Then we have to fight smarter," countered Elvira, though she wasn't really sure how to do that. "Let's try to tire it out," she surmised, shooting a beam of ice at it to get it to keep running around and get exhausted. But as they were fighting, for some reason it was getting really foggy. Soon it was foggy enough that no one could see anything.