Completely inexplicably, a giant snake with a mirror for a face is charging through a gap in the buildings, mangling topiaries and nearly shattering a metal sign. It moves lightning-quick towards the closest thing that might sate its hunger, the girl's reflection growing switfly larger-

It's too fast. By the time she looks up, it's meters from her. By the time she can decide to accelerate, less than one. All her acceleration gives her is more time to see it still speeding toward her, even as she kicks backward. Oh no she only just got here!

When the mirror touches her, she finds herself very abruptly elsewhere. There is no moment of transition, no sense of movement. Simply a sudden discontinuity of experience.

Now, vast reaches of open sky surround her, a cold wind bites at her skin. Above, black sky dotted with stars. Around, miles away, towering edifices and slopes of stone encrusted with vegetation, and swirling clouds and mist, green-tinged from reflected light. Below, what looks like nothing more than a truly titanic flower with houses and halls built atop it and connected with spars of steel, looking like tiny dollhouses of distorted scale and painfully flimsy wires.

Aaaaaaaa—What—where— How. Okay, no time for that, falling now.

She twirls through the air, little gusts helping her reorient, angling face-first down toward the biggest and sturdiest-looking clear area she can see on the... enormous inhabited flower. Right. She can bleed off her speed once she's sure she's on target for something she can land on. Her uniform jacket and skirt don't flap quite as much in the wind as they probably ought to, and she keeps her mind accelerated to spot any sudden changes.

Those little figures are certainly running around a lot! And not all of them are identical. Some are smaller, swooping and nimble, even flying through the air, while others are confined to the surface of the flower. The mingled sounds of singing, of screams, and the odd sharp crack can be heard over the rushing wind as she falls closer. It becomes clear that the inhabitants of the flower are defending themselves against a great swarm of - dog-sized bees?

...They're not doing particularly well. Many bodies, both bee and human, lie still.

Well crap. Looks like she's landing in a fight. She unclips her orbal batons, forming sheets of wind around them to help steer as she builds more speed, aiming for a cluster of bees just far enough from the humans that she won't knock them all on their asses with her landing gusts. Maybe she can smash one or two on her way down, drop some momentum in an acceptable target?

A faint grin creeps onto her face as she plummets.

Dog-sized bees, though. That's kinda new.

The Chorister Bees are the source of the eerie singing, harmonious hymns escaping their wings instead of buzzing. Each of them has a dark, ichorous symbol carved into their back, sullenly glowing with power.

They're not particularly nimble or intelligent as individuals. It's easy enough to smash one or two on her flight downwards.

The resistance to the bees is organizing slightly as the most panicked are struck down, strong-looking leaders shout with commanding voices in a strange language. Half-coordinated volleys of gunfire lash out and rake the insects, tearing holes in them. Someone has wheeled out a gun on wheels whose six barrels start rotating rapidly, barking out a cra-cra-cra-cra-cra-cra that tears apart whatever it hits and almost drowns out the singing.

Ooh, those symbols look important. Always break the glowy bits first, she reminds herself. She twists to one side, getting her flight path out of the line of fire, targeting a group of three bees together. Whipping her arms out to either side and flattening out the fins of air around her batons, she quickly flips backward to get her feet under her, hammering her batons onto the backs of two bees to either side and dropping feet-first onto one below her.

Gotta time the gust right, she's almost down.

The raging battle continues below. Nobody and nobee has noticed her quite yet.

When she hits, the three Chorister Bees never learn what hit them. The nearest knot of resistance about fifty feet away swears in her general direction, but they're all too occupied with firing or frantically reloading their guns, or raising knives and cutlasses against the bees, or simply cowering or even screaming as venom ignites every nerve in their arm, to pay her much mind. 

She shakes squishy bee-paste off her batons, then twirls into launching a pair of windblades at a pair of bees getting close to the resistance. Ramping up her acceleration enough that bullets are at least visible in motion, she kicks off in a wind-assisted lunge toward the group, arms out to club the few she passes along the way. As she approaches she leaps into the air, uses a bee as a springboard to launch herself backwards to a sweepingly elegant and floral building, and then with another kick hurtles back through the cluster, slicing them with blades of wind formed around her batons.

She lands with a graceful roll and comes up swaying, the eerie choir of hymns echoing in her mind.

Shouts of fury and pain and the thunder of guns and pleading and prayer, are all drowned out by plainsong. It devours noise and mind. Dies irae, dies apis. Quantus tremor est futurus-

A bullet grazes her neck, missing a lethal blow by mere inches.

The strange chorus is almost overpowering in its distraction, and only the sharp pain of the grazing shot drags her back to the present. Forcing a bit of energy into her neck to stop the bleeding and lightly numb the pain (not too much, can't get distracted again, ignore the song), the girl surges back into action, whirling and slashing and battering her way through the bees in a flurry of flips and kicks. She fights to keep her focus on her surroundings, on her batons, on the speeding projectiles from the civilians' slugthrowers—on anything but the hymns. The bees bear the brunt of her frustration at this.

It is unclear how long the battle has taken. At some point it dissolved into little more than song and pain and violence. But ultimately, the chorister bees decide that they have enough, and depart as one, heavy with stolen poems and songs.

And there is a lasting silence.

In what probably sounds like a guttural, Germanic language, the girl shouts after the bees, "Come back and fight, you buzzing monsters! I'm not done with you yet!"

And then with an exhausted laugh, she drops to her knees, flops onto her back, and lies there, giggling tiredly.

"Whew, that was a mess."

There is sobbing and praying. There are shouts of outrage and anger and defiance at the departing swarm. There is drinking, and a lot of staring and muttering at the woman wielding strange weapons and powers.

And then they settle themselves and start getting to the business of cleanup. Cleaning up the array of weaponry, finishing off any still-twitching bees. Tending to the wounded and dead. A Maudlin Poet hands her a frothing mug of beer as he wanders and gazes at the carnage, muttering stanzas in three languages, none of which can adequately describe what he has just felt.

The girl takes the offered mug and sips at it, a bit shocked to discover alcohol as its contents, but continues to drink it very slowly. After pausing and pushing some more energy through the cut on her neck, closing it more properly now that she has time to breathe, she starts looking around for somewhere she can help.

The locals seem to have things more-or-less in hand. The wounded are being tended to with what seems like reasonable (non-magical) competence and supplies. The wreckage and dropped weapons are being swept up. A few overeager artists have set up easels, trying to capture the carnage before it is cleaned up too much.

It looks like there are broadly two groups. Those who seem like artists of various stripes, in clothes that are more stylish than practical, whose grips on their weapons are ill-practiced. And a group of a couple dozen tougher men and women in work clothes, if not quite a uniform, who are busily gathering bee-corpses to themselves as if they're somehow valuable.

Meanwhile, an Unscrupulous Sculptor wielding a delicate-looking handsaw, a funnel, and a bucket tries to wave the mysterious stranger over to the nearest bee-corpse, saying something in a clipped but slightly pleased tone. Alas, he speaks only English.

With a curious look on her face, she hops across toward the Sculptor. "Hello there," she says brightly in Zemurian. "Do you need help with this bee?"

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, but opportunity is swiftly elapsing. You deserve a cut of the spoils, no?"

The Sculptor digs out a little glass vial of... Honey? From inside a coat pocket. He points at it, and then at the bee. Then he brings out a large silver coin with some sort of queen on the face and swaps the coin and vial between his hands.

 "Chorister Bee nectar is valued, and with your strange weapons we can work as a team to extract it." He traces a line down a particular section of the dead bee's underside with a finger, and looks questioningly at her.

Her eyes widen at the coin, and she gestures sharply with her hand along the length of the bee in a slashing motion, and follows it by miming something opening with both hands, and finishes with a curious headtilt at the Sculptor.

Nod, nod. He holds one finger up and mimes opening something a bit more delicately. "There's a bit of a trick to it. Eh. Blast this language barrier. Hmm..."

One finger, pointing at himself. Two fingers, pointing at her. Gesture of grabbing a small portion and a large portion of something, taking the small to himself and handing the large to her. Raised eyebrow.

The girl smiles brightly and nods. Holding one of her batons near the tip, the rest of the length along her arm, she forms a very short windblade and cuts the bee open along its underbelly with a swift but careful motion, aiming to follow the same line the Sculptor had indicated originally, keeping to just a quarter or less of the bee's total depth.

When finished, she looks over to the man again, a hopeful expression on her face.

Rather beautiful weapons, all things considered. Guns are all so brutalist and functional, thunder and noise and defiance. Not elegant in the least.

Anyway. Prod, prod. He peels back the carapace-like shell a bit and carefully extracts an... Organ. A hard, slimy thing, which he holds over the funnel and carefully saws open, draining a viscous stream of nectar, and gives a satisfied nod and a greedy smirk.

"Very good. I'll handle the filtering and whatnot, if you can bring me more?" He gives a wide gesture at the field of battle.

Eager to put her kills to use (and make money to survive in this strange new world), the girl runs off and grabs another bee, dragging it to the Sculptor and splitting it open carefully, before repeating this process as many times as she can find unsplit bees.

Good division of labor, this, and hopefully it'll net her enough coin to buy a language book or something, along with some kind of shelter and food.