The tingle is still super concerning-- but at this point she doesn't care.

She gives in to it, hoping something good will happen--

She clatters to the floor.

She's a sword. A big one, one of those two handed ones with a silly long grip and an even longer blade.

Whether this is good or bad is subjective, and she can feel a poorly time existential crisis coming on (what does it mean if she can be a weapon? what does it mean about her? how is she going to tell her boss? is that even relevant?--) that will just have to wait until this is over.

...she let's herself have a moment of gee, thanks, I appreciate the magic, but it would have been nice if I could MOVE ON MY OWN.

Turning herself back is at least straightforward, and the bugs seem to have been greatly startled by her transformation.

Also there's someone shouting in the distance.

To the human voices! Either they need help, or they can be help, and frankly she's happy with either.

(...and who knows, maybe they need help in the form of a huge fuck off sword.)

There's two people fighting the bugs, who look about as underprepared as her - one, shorter and girl-shaped, has nothing but their fists, which they're using quite efficiently.

And the other wields a non-magical knife.

"We should have brought a gun as a backup," they're saying.

"You're the one who always hated guns," says the other.

"Do you guys need help?"

She isn't quite sure how to properly phrase 'and would a sword be the sort of help you need?', so she... doesn't say that. Yet.

Punching a critter: "I appear to have stopped being able to effectively sword, and we didn't bring backup magical weapons - " they say, "Also other odd phenomena. This dunj has been doing some quite strange things. Help is greatly appreciated."

"If lack of a sword is your problem, I can help with that."

...and clatter.

Sword! They'll scoop her up before the Marian body can, and whirl, gripping her two-handed, to cut a swath through the kitten bugs. 

'Thank you!' they send. 'Did you just get this ability?'

Literally a minute ago. ...yeah, this is much more affective than a chair.

'It is! I got my weapon abilities from fist-fighting my way through a dunj, that was fun... Didn't run into someone to team up with, though, this is lucky.'

I wouldn't say that using a chair was a bad idea-- but there's something to be said for being edged. And teaming up is better than being a chair-wielding potential-sword.

...should I be worried about suddenly not being able to be a sword?

Swipe swipe.

'It was a very odd sync interaction of ours - we were starting to be able to share thoughts and memories and notions unusually well, and then the barrier between our minds stopped existing. As best as we can figure, we stopped counting as relevantly different for wielding, but we've been unable to test that hypothesis.'

...so not something that's likely to come up.

still, uh, sorry to hear that? it sounds unfortunate.

'We are not certain how we feel about it yet, but yes, that's the general attitude.'

Swing. For an ex-weapon they're skilled, martial training clear in their movements.

Louie is way less skilled at being a sword, and is basically sitting there, with no powers manifesting yet.

you got too good at being a weapon to be a weapon.  that's gotta sting.

'Kind of. I think I prefer wielding, though. Oh, hey, figuring out weapon-ing's hard when you start human, here's some of the tricks - '

And they'll send mental impressions of assorted actions associated with working with their wielder to the sword. 'What's your name, anyways? I'm Lianne.'

I'm Louie.

She takes the impressions, and tries to make them work -- and produce a crackle of electricity along the blade.

The electricity makes the sword even more effective at debugging! 

'Good name. Where did you enter from?'

That-a-way. From a mall. That's why I headed in. It was crowded enough that evacuation didn't quite work.

'Ouch. Crowds are the worst time to have a dunj pop up, yeah, I've worked emergency response enough... We'll want to move fast, then, get this portal closed - or at least moved, that's what happened when Marian and I got to, well, what I suspect was a portal stone, rather than the central one.'

this one had multiple entrances? jesus.

'Yeah. I've never seen one that does that, before.'