It stands half again as tall as a man, and as wide as one too. Burning eyes peer upwards as whatever confusion as to how its prey got up there is replaced by wondering how its going to get to her now. It would seem that it can simply wait for her to come to it. The monster takes advantage of the ample warning and steps aside, and readies a swing with the greathammer clutched between its claws. It's perfectly timed.

When the swing is loosed the weapon hits only rain.

Her teleport sends her back above her target, and crucially, she stops screaming. The monster only has a second to look around confused before her sword hits the back of its skull at terminal velocity, plunging all the way down to the hilt. "Ha ha!" She cries triumphant. The magical girl rides the beast as it collapses, using the sword as a handhold.

"Time for your pre-frontal lobotomy, bitch!" She punctuates the statement by pulling out her sword.

Tries to remove the sword. Her hand comes back empty. She looks confused for a second before she sees that its still in there. Wait, pre-frontal is the front, what would the back be? Strawberry grabs the sword and tugs at it, its stuck in there good. "Time for your... post...? Back... lobotomy?" Ugh, what was the back part of the brain called? 

She puts a foot on the skull and pulls. "C'mon!" Superhuman strength fights against suction for agonizing seconds. "Gahhhh!" The sword emerges with a wet pop as the girl is sent sprawling backwards.

She spends long seconds getting rained on. A sigh. "I have pulled the sword from the bastard, I am now the queen of Crucible." She deadpans.

She puts her feet beneath her and approaches the corpse. "Alrighty, come to mommy." the purple warmth of Azoth crawls up her arm and into her chest as she sets a hand on the body. It feels like a good amount. "Good, good. But that's not all I need." She eyes one of its horns. That looks like one of the things I need for my flask. Or its ashes, at least.

Whatever the clean and efficient way of removing a horn from a monster was, Strawberry did not know it. She was left kicking the damn thing for minutes, then wrenching at it for many more. Her colorful string of curses did nothing to loosen the accursed anatomy, but she liked to believe that it was helping.

Eva stares at Journeys of A Conduit, leafing through pages. The train-ship's in station off a siding. "So we think the bad luck is a living bridge effect from this, uh, academy place, right? I think in order to figure out how to control it we're going to have to go there. I can't justly keep inflicting our random misfortunes on our poor parkour instructor." 

Sable laughs and shakes her head. "They've put up with so much. We should get them something when we come back, maybe, as a thank-you for putting up with it." She stretches and hops into the pilot's seat.

"Well. I think you're right, heading there next is the best plan. Can you give me a bearing on the nearest Academy bridge, sweetie?"

Her fingers dance across the controls as she boots the trainship up and gets it ready to roll.

Eva focuses, then points. "North-northwest, through the city. I think it's near the docks?"

She nods and throttles up. Once the trainship's in motion, she starts flicking through the routing system until she finds an entry for the docks in that general area, then locks it in.

Off they go.

It's not until she has the horn and is strolling through one of the Academy's many, many idyllic beaches that she realizes that she doesn't actually know how she's going to cleanly combust that horn. The most obvious place to start would be a bonfire, but she'd need something to catch the ashes. Can I do it in an oven? That... might work? Do they get hot enough? Maybe she can just... hold a light to it? "Bone doesn't burn well, right? Maybe I can ask the next time I'm at-"

She feels the Academy. A bridge to the Academy. And Earth, and Bevin, and Rorch.

"Conduit."

"Okay, so the whole place is one big huge college campus -"

She blinks, pauses. "Wait, is that another Conduit? I feel - a feeling of safety and boredom, coming from somewhere out among these buildings..." 

Sable looks up as well. "Huh. Yeah, think so. Distinct Bevin vibes, and maybe some other stuff too."

She links arms with Eva and starts walking toward the unknown Conduit. "Hopefully a new friend?"

"I really hope so. Let's investigate, though. We've got the train, we've got your electricity, if we have to we'll be able to fight." 

The Pirates smirk, Hailey slipping into front for just a moment as a little bit of electricity crackles between the fingers of her free hand. "Damned right we will."

"Hope it doesn't come to that, though."

They're flying. Flying in a... "What the fuck is that?"

If she didn't know any better, she would say it was a-

Her fancy new wingsuit appears in her hands. She frantically starts putting in on. She doesn't know if the conduit on that train is friendly or not, but she is going to say hello.

As it approaches she transforms and finds that the wingsuit has morphed to fit her dress's aesthetic. No time to gush! I gotta catch that train! She jumps horizontally in the direction that the flying train is travelling to build up momentum, then teleports vaguely above it.

"Whoa, they suddenly got a lot closer - I can feel more worlds now, ones I don't recognize -" 

Eva flusters a little and rubs a hand through her hair. "How do we hail them? I don't know how all the controls work on this thing!" 

As she skydives recklessly towards the flying train, it occurs to her that other conduits can probably sense her from far away and that they were probably headed towards her anyway and that this method of approach could be seen as hostile. The rest of her brain was more fixated on the fact that skydiving onto a moving train housing an unknown, potentially hostile conduit is fucking cool so her brain could just shut up now.

She lands onto the train with a thump and a squeal as her fingers find friction. "Ok!"

"That... sounded like an excited teenage girl," Sable remarks in surprise as she brings the trainship to a smooth stop. "Still don't know our guest's not a threat, though. Dark magical girls are a thing."

The thump sounded directly overhead, so she heads to the door. "Stay in here at first, since we're better armed than you."

She opens the window and leans out, bracing the small of her back against the frame as she peers over the roof, right hand pointed cautiously toward the new arrival but not sparking.

"Hi. Quite the landing."

Wow, this is awkward. "Hi!" She shouts over the howling wind. "Deep in my soul I want to say that I can't explain this. But I think I actually can."

Hailey slips into front, arches an eyebrow, and grins. "Oh? That sounds like it's gonna be one hell of an explanation. Does it include anything about who you're friendly to and when?"