Johannes Volkner bid farewell to a favorable work-life balance. As the light streamed into the shack that Heliopolis's Callers were using to sleep and shelter themselves, he found himself waking up just past dawn in time for another day of rough work. He hadn't finished his work on the white topaz the night before, given Jill's insistence that he properly eat and sleep, but he frankly needed as much. Soon after, he headed to the laboratory bright and early to continue working on it. Carrying on where he'd left off, he started on the second rune array, the one BANE had been made to help with targeting. Berkano in reverse was placed again, alongside Othala, the rune of gifting. Laying Merkstave, that was, vertical beside it, was Uruz, the Rune of strength, endurance and bulls, made to attack that same strength.
As he wrote, he wasn't concerned particularly with each rune's implications and direct meaning. He was instead focused on the overall meaning of the array. BOUDICA, the name of his foe. The name of someone that he absolutely had to kill, because it was he and Jill's lives or her own. He would kill her, because he had no other option. He was pouring those feelings into his own conceptualization of the rune array as he went, adding Dagaz, the rune of day and awakening as well as Isa, the rune of ice. Kenaz was placed in Merkstave as well, and he finished the array with Ansuz, the rune of communication, other runes, and wisdom. He could practically feel the palpable negative intent of the gemstone when he was done, a weapon with her name literally written on it.
By the time he'd finished that intermission, it was near noon, and he needed to take at least some kind of break before starting into his next project. As much as he wanted to immediately leap into another craft, he had expended plenty of magical energy putting together his cursed stone, and needed to eat and rest before his body and spirit were ready to continue onwards. Unfortunately, he'd missed any form of morning food, and supper would not be available for quite a while, so he found himself briefly asking the Governor to allow him to take some of the bread from the storehouse. He could swear the man had bored holes into him with his gaze, but he ultimately relented and allowed him to grab some sustenance for himself. Given his lackluster performance, and the amount of resources he had been taking up from the colony - Johannes couldn't blame him for being fed up, quite frankly.
After quickly running through some stale, cold, and overly hard bread to get something in his system, Johannes left back to Heliopolis's designated shack, when he found one of his fellow Callers, one who he'd meant to check in with but hadn't had time to. Pádraig was swinging the sword he kept with him, moving through a series of obviously preplanned motions. Yet, he could tell from the blistering of his hands, and the sweat that had built up both on Pádraig himself and practically puddled up on the grass under where he'd been training, that he had been here doing this for a while. Johannes couldn't blame him, everyone had their own coping methods after all.
Still, despite the fact that he was swinging that blade around, it didn't seem to be with any finesse or heart behind it. It was rote training, but his mind wasn't on it, and Johannes thought that it couldn't be particularly helpful either for his mental state or for his skill with that sword of his. He doubted that Pádraig would hear him even if he called out, even if his body physically acknowledged the speech headed his way, and getting close enough to shake him and get his attention would be a risky endeavor. Luckily, he had a safer, if somewhat more alarming way to get his attention, drawing Beissende Hunde from its sheath with an intent for the first time since he'd created the magical blade.
With a tentative swing of his arm, he placed the blade in the path of Pádraig's own, blocking its path in a shower of sparks and clanging metal as he met the young man's eyes through his tinted glasses. It felt like he'd tried holding back a full force swing of a baseball bat with his hand, arm aching in pain, but he didn't let go of his sword as the two clashed. Finally, Pádraig spoke up, forced to acknowledge Johannes's own presence. "Did you need something?"
His voice was cold, slightly distant, a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn from the boyish confidence he'd held when they first entered the Distortion. Johannes sighed as he finally let his sore arm drop down, Beissende Hunde hanging by his side. "I needed to check on you, Pádraig. After Tadakatsu was gone, I wanted to make sure you're okay." Those words only made him clam up more, slowly sheathing his own sword and looking back at Johannes, but not saying anything as if he was still looking for the words.
He sighed as he looked Pádraig over. "Seriously, I understand if you're disturbed by it. They have a therapy program back at base, they're... A lot more qualified to talk about this stuff with you than I am, honestly. But you have to actually make it back in one piece to talk it over with them first, you know? So, don't do anything stupid, like trying to fight a Spirit entirely on your own."
Pádraig was still silent for several seconds, before he shook his head. "You wouldn't get it, Jojo. It's more than that, okay?"
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Before he could continue going, Johannes took the initiative of the conversation himself as he sheathed Beissende Hunde. "You feel useless, right? Like you can't do anything. But beating your head into a wall won't make you any more useful than you are. If anything, it's just throwing yourself away. If you fucked up your hands and ended up bloody and dehydrated from overtraining, what use would you be then? I understand that you probably feel like it's your fault. That you weren't enough. Believe me, I get that more than anyone. But if you want to be able to be useful, and not feel like you're just doing the same thing again, then learn to use that huge cannon we've got, or see if Yoshinaka will let you accompany him in a fight. Those are the best ways you can be useful right now."
He let Pádraig have it, acting as drill sergeant in a way that he, frankly, had wished someone else had done for him at some of his lowest points. Taking the initiative and pulling it away, setting him on a path that would give him short, measured progress. Everything about it felt like it was the right thing to do, and for just a second, he could see a glimmer of light return to the younger man's eye.
Ultimately, though, he walked past Johannes, waving him off. "I'll think on it. I just... I need some time, okay? I need time to figure out what I can do on this adventure."
Johannes let out another sigh, he'd been doing that a lot lately. Still, Pádraig seemed just a bit better off now, at the least. With that taken care of, he took his rest, now not just for his magical energy pool but also his poor aching arm. Twenty minutes or so later, it was still hurting but he had work to go do regardless. If he was going to bombard Boudica with one of two sneak attack options, he would need to pinpoint the exact moment and spot to use it in. Of course, he could try to rely on Flash of Inspiration alone, but that seemed like it had too high a chance of going awry. Instead, he took a sewing needle and began working a large patch of scrap fabric with some thread, sewing runes directly into the fabric as if it would somehow help him directly.
Sowilo, Kenaz, Ansuz, Laguz, Mannaz, Othala, Laguz, Dagaz. He had a clear vision of what he needed, and a clear vision of how to get there. There was a Valkyrie who's name would particularly help with this runic array, and the designated effect of helping with precision timing and aiming. Skalmold, that is 'sword timing', a minor Valkyrie who was mentioned once in an old poem and never again. Putting the eight runes he used together into a singular meaning and effect, he reached his endpoint. 'The Sun’s rays cascade like a slow burning torch, as wise ideas quickly flow through the eye of man. He inherits this flow, achieves enlightening ideas.'
In other words, when combined with Skalmold's own name, an effect that would be able to change the user's perception of time, making them 'think quicker' and the world around them, as well as their own body, seem to slow down in comparison. That being said, he couldn't stop there. A piece of scrap cloth with a rune array on it wouldn't be much use unless he focused on holding it close against him the entire time, and even then would be easy to knock aside or lose access to. Rather, continuing with the sewing needle, he began to pull that fabric into a rough sort of form, a dual layered cap that would lay close against his head and be relatively easy to tuck in behind his ears. It could still be knocked away, but it was much easier to carry around and use as needed this way.
Unfortunately, he looked outside and realized that, once again, he had spent almost the whole day on his work, only occasionally coming out to take light breaks and deal with Pádraig. He would have the rest of the evening and the next day to finish his preparations, before they marched on Tenochtitlan tomorrow night. The pressure was starting to come on harder, even though he knew that he was preparing as well as he could. The bomber could interrupt their last day or night of preparations, and there was no chance that even when they marched, they would be able to do so properly. Whatever act of god had smited them the first time they arrived, there was no complete guarantee that it could not occur at night, only a theory.
And, even if they did succeed, they would still have to fight their way through. Boudica, the enemy soldiers in a fortified city, their shamans and medicine-men, not to mention any other Spirits. Though they no longer had Lady Tomoe among their numbers, he highly doubted that they would only have Boudica and whichever Spirit that flying behemoth might belong to. If anything, rather, they were likely to have several more, if the magical energy output of that plug was truly as high as the Director's initial graphs and estimates had placed it. Perhaps the worst unknown was where their final Caller and Spirit had gone. They'd never reunited with the group, and he couldn't tell what their goals were or weren't. Were they betraying Heliopolis from the inside, in the Distortion itself? Was such a thing even possible?
A single phrase came to mind as he thought about the possibility, and how they might be able to 'solve' the Distortion without the rest of the team, or otherwise work against Heliopolis's interests to their own benefit. The plug itself was all that needed to be removed. If those two managed to steal the plug for themselves, they would have a frankly absurd amount of energy at their disposal, pumped in from the focal point of whoever was running the ritual. At all costs, then, they had to be disallowed from reaching the plug during the final siege, should they appear during it. It was the only way to make sure that they couldn't cause everyone's hard work to be for naught.
Johannes eventually pulled himself to sleep in the shack once more, though thoughts of their mysteriously vanishing teammate and possible status as a traitor plagued him through the night.
