Ryan would say she's cool under pressure. Eryan? The poor girl didn't know what to do with herself. Ryan had watch Eryan latch onto the nearest calm-headed human and through the process of mental osmosis stay out of the way until the situation was defused. Sky only had the two modes, attack and stalk. For the past twenty-four hours she had been standing guard in the hotel we had rented out after Craig, Jason, and the queen disappeared. Specifically sitting in a chair, quiet as death, her blue eyes following Aurora as she paced back and forth across the room. Aurora's hair bun was loose and disheveled, she was wearing the same shirt from yesterday. Aurora was not cool under pressure.

   "Have you got any further on the plan, chief?" Eryan ask, glancing nervously up at Aurora, wondering if she was the best person to seek guidance from right now.

   "No?" Aurora sighed and finally sat down and held her head in her hands. "We have no idea where they've gone. No leads. No way of contacting them until they reach out to us. Which, if they'd been kidnaped probably isn't likely..."

     She kept rambling and Ryan watched as her eyes developed a glassy outer layer. "You're thinking out loud again, Rora."

    Aurora glanced up at Ryan with a dim sense of realization. "Oh Kosmos."

     Craig, in his own nervous, stammering, stumbling way, had managed to be quite clear headed in these types of situations. Without Craig, the mantle had been passed over to Aurora, the eldest who clearly was not expecting it. Ryan was of course worried about her brother, but she had seen the muscles on Jason Griffith, wherever he was, Craig was fine.  

     Lucy poked her head out from Ryan's hair and crawled down her arm in avian fashion. She frilled up her yellow crest a few times and Ryan waited patiently for her advice. Lucy clicked her beak together and glanced around. Soaking in the scene of various amounts of panic.

     "Do you know who took them?"

     "The masked people."

     Ryan remembered the fleeting sight of her brother's green poncho as he chased after Jason. Disappearing into the crowd. She remembered the chill that ran down her spine as she watched the masked figures melt into the street, faster then she should run. Ryan had been scared then.

     "Who else do we know that wears a mask?" Lucy asked.

     Ryan's eyes flicked up to Eryan. The first time she and Craig had run into the orange-haired girl she had been clumsily pointing a long bow at them from behind a red and white mask. It was still clipped to her bag that had been tossed in a corner. Ryan stared at the design and concluded that Eryan could not be affiliated with them because the designed were too different. Eryan's mask was crafted and intelligently designed, the others were painted sloppily to look intimidating.

     "No one."

    "Who else is part of a large group of dangerous people?" Lucy tilted her head.

     Ryan glanced up at Sky, who stared back coldly. Sky lived alone, so no. She stared at Aurora, who lived with her dad. She had a town, a group of people that she was a part of, but they were peaceful. Well, Ryan could see that old woman Connie rising to a sword given the opportunity. Wait... Sky... she had lived next door to Katestra for... years? Ryan didn't know. Katestra was here on that day as well, Eddie had tried to kidnap Craig first.

     "I've got it." Ryan said.

     Aurora glanced up at her with surprise and honestly relief. Lucy closed her eyes and smiled in the way birds do and crawled up her arm again to sit on her shoulder. Ryan stood up and took a deep breath, preparing herself to address her comrades.

     "You're going to hate this idea but I don't think we have much of a choice." She started.

     "I love it already." Sky smirked.

     "We need to find someone in Katestra and convince them to take us to Craig. I think I might know who but... It's Eddie." She grit her teeth.

     Ryan watched as the other girls cringed sympathetically.

     "There has to be another way." Aurora begged.

     "You weren't there, but I watched the look on Eddie's face when the masked figure appeared in the smoke. They know each other." Ryan insisted.

     They still glanced up her with faces of uncertainty, even Sky.

     "Come on. We're strong, fierce, capable women and we're going to get our boys back! No matter what stands in our way." Ryan insisted.

     "She's right." Eryan spoke up.

     Ryan glanced down at the teen as she coughed and brushed her hair away from her eyes. Eryan stood up straight and grabbed the straps to her bag and put it over her shoulder. She shot Ryan a confident look and unclipped the foxlike mask hanging off her bag.

     "You're going to need me if you're going in there." Sky admitted, grabbing her own bags.

     Aurora frowned. "I can't let you do this alone... oh no."

     Now it was Ryan's three girls who were waiting for an answer. Aurora sighed again and nodded.

     "Let me do my hair, then we can go."

     Ryan smiled to herself. Thirty minutes later, with her pale white hair in a crisp bun, they boarded a Scobi bus towards the west coast, the last direction they had seen Jason, Craig, and the Queen traveling. Sky had unfolded a map and was working on guess a location for Katestra.

     "They have a day's head start on us but they don't have a bus." Sky said, thinking out loud.

     Aurora glanced around nervously, they're group was taking up quite a large amount of space with Chubby aboard. Most of the Scobi buses Ryan had been on were empty, but this was the Capital. People were trying to get to work and they didn't appreciate a polar bear being added to their daily commute. Though Chubby was unapologetic.

     "Where's Carra?" Eryan asked Sky.

     Sky shrugged, not even bothering to look up form the map. "Why should I know?"

     "You're her... human?" Eryan asked slowly.

     Sky stuck out her tongue.  "I think I've made it perfectly clear we have a different relationship. Carra will catch up with us if she wants."

     Eryan looked bewildered, but then again that was a usual look for her. Ryan had been keeping lists of information about her friends since day one. It was how she was able to read people so well. Eryan was clumsy and awkward and kind of quiet, but Ryan could tell she had a lot of potential. Sky was the hardest to read, but Ryan knew she probably had a history of being backstabbed. Sky was tough, like the sole of a well-travelled foot, even at thirteen. She shouldn't have a familiar but did anyway. She was a walking enigma. Aurora was a classic case of taking care of anyone who came her way. They might have only stayed with her for a few nights but she was their guardian now. She would even fight for them if it came down to it, no matter how scared she was.

     Ryan couldn't think of anyone else she'd rather spend her time with.

     Back at her orphanage, despite the one thing everyone had in common, she had a lot of trouble mingling with the other kids. Most of the girls were mean and the boys didn't want to play with her. The only people who were continuously unconditionally kind were the caretakers, Jamal and Bee. Bee would read her stories when she was younger because Ryan used to get nightmares. Jamal was the father she never had, he taught her everything she knew. He was the one who dug through miles of paper work and found out her parents were the ones who left her knife, then taught her how to use it. Jamal walked her through the forest to the summoning circle and was there the whole time encouraging her that she could summon a familiar. Bee was there to celebrate with her when she returned with Lucy. She owed them everything.

     Ryan smiled to herself.

     "Okay, we should be heading here... or at least somewhere around this bubble." Sky circled an area of grassland.

   "That's our next stop." Aurora realized.

     The bus slowed to a halt and they piled out. The whole bus tipped and wobbled back as Chubby stepped off. Then it was their band of ragtag girls, ready to take on the world.

     Sky groaned.

   "What?" Aurora asked.

     Sky dragged her hands down on her face. "We're going to need disguises."

     Eryan smiled at her. "Do you want one of my dresses?"

     "No." Sky hissed. "But I will take one gratefully because a dress will drastically change my appearance. "

                Sky threw a dress over her shirt and shorts (despite the weather being dangerously cold already) and grumbled to herself. Ryan looked away for one second to don a dress herself only to find Sky was trying to tie up the bottom to mimic pants. Aurora swatted her hand away, and then went back to pulling out the pins in her updo. Her long white hair fell out of it's bun for the first time Ryan had ever seen and cascaded down to her waist. The other three girls stared at her for a moment.

   "What?" She blinked.

     "You have a lot of hair." Eryan mused.

     Aurora blushed and shrugged. "We don't usually cut our hair in Zestos, it's tradition."

     "Most of us don't." Sky, whose hair barely went past her ears, raised an eyebrow.

     "Right."

     Eryan simply placed her mask over her face and pulled the strands of hair that framed her face back.

     "Where did you get that mask?" Ryan asked.

     Eryan shrugged. "Nowhere... just a feel-good buy from a town I was traveling through."

     Ryan realized with surprise that she was lying

     Her own disguise was taking some of the mud from the ground and covering us the lighter patches on her skin and getting Aurora to put her hair up. She barely recognized herself when they looked into a puddle together.

     "Alright ladies, let's go kick butt." Aurora ordered, taking charge.

     "Wow, hotel, makeover, what are we going to do next? Get our nails done?" Eryan asked, laughing.

     "The only thing I'm I putting on my nails is the blood of my enemies." Sky growled.

     "Komos, Sky." Aurora shook her head is amusement.

     We walked until we spotted the caravan. It was a massive gathering of people on all sorts of locomotive animals, horses, elephants, even ostriches. It looked like they were setting up camp. Ryan took notice that indeed, they were all women. Ryan had never seen so many females all in one space, and they were of all ages, sizes, shapes and colors.  She clutched tightly onto the strap on her own bag and walked up to the nearest one, a younger looking lady with dark curly hair who was putting up a tent next to her... camel?

     "Excuse me?" Ryan asked.

     She turned around, bewildered, and reached for a dagger at her belt until she saw it was just a scraggly group of kids that looked like they had been dragged through all of Zoo's biomes and back.

     "Is this... Katestra" Ryan asked, almost instinctively lowering her voice.

     The woman glanced around and leaned down towards Ryan's face hand still on her belt. "How did you hear that name?"

     "We want to join... please." Sky suddenly stepped forward.

     She opened her eyes really wide and Ryan watched (amused) as fake tears started to form in the corners of the redhead's eyes. The woman was taken a back and glanced over her shoulder. Then turned back and bit her lip.

     "Okay no, we're just the extraction division for missions, I can probably get a few girls to take you back and initiate you..."

     Sky sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Thank you so much."

     "Oh, bless you." The woman sighed, "hang on where's- "

     "Hey!" A new voice called out.

     There, standing in the midst of the crowd was that short, dark haired teenager. Eddie locked eyes with Ryan as he pushed his way across the clearing towards him. She glanced at him up and down and noticed he was holding himself like he was uncomfortable.

     "You know these girls?" The woman glanced at him.

     Eddie frowned. "Yes, I do, they're old friends of mine."

     The woman's hand fell back on her dagger but Eddie waved it away. "No, I mean, good friends, I've got this go back to your duties."

     Eddie waved for them to follow him and Ryan glanced back at her girls in approval as the followed Eddie through the crowds, the now five of them looking exceptionally out of place in this exceptional crowd. He led them to a tent and opened the flap ushered them inside. Ryan ducked and glanced around at was she assumed was Eddie's living conditions. Bland. He wasn't staying here long. Eddie ducked inside and pushed some of his belongs out of the way, a pillow, and satchel, a pile of clean bandages, more interestingly a small tank meant for carrying with his axolotl swimming around inside.

     "What in Kosmos' name are you doing here?" He demanded.

     Eddie glanced at her with something that was akin to the glare of a wet cat. "Why should I talk to you? I should flay you alive for coming this close to my turf."

     Ryan bit her lip and stared at him, going through her list of information about Eddie. His name was short for Edmund. He had an axolotl familiar. He seemed to surrounds himself in secrets like a cloak. He was the only male participant of an all-female terrorist group. The list wasn't long but... Ryan felt that light bulb turn on with a click.

     "It's about Craig."

     Eddie froze. "What about him?"

     Ryan shot him a look, he would get that information once he agreed to their terms. For a moment the two of them stared at each other like that, then finally Eddie bit his lip and glanced at the ground.

     "Alright." He said. "I'll talk."