The trend of Joon getting loyalty increases for frankly insulting displays of basic decency continues!

Twinned Souls, huh.

Tanya will be pleased to hear about that, it seemed like she was frustrated with how much faster he was learning earlier. Is he powerful enough for her to get a boost from that already, or is she still stronger than him for now? She sure felt stronger when she was training him outside Sorian's Castle, but that was a couple of levels ago.

Fenn drifts over to Tanya. 

"This is the life, huh? When we get Cypress to set us up with cushy fake jobs, I want my luxurious mansion to have a pool like this."

It's nice to talk to someone who doesn't stare at the teeth every time she opens her mouth. 

"And some hunks to keep it clean and look pretty." That gets an unsubtle glance over at Joon, currently either engaged in deep monastic focus as a distraction from the sights around him, or just staring at his character sheet.

With no mercy for Joon, Amaryllis is scrubbing near the other girls, her musculature readily apparent. This is a woman who could have scaled the exterior of Sorian's Castle if left to her own devices.

She is not jelous! She’s not! Not about Amaryllis’ height, or muscles, or… other assets that were larger than hers. Definitely not burning with jelousy! She just hates being tiny!

She damns Being X for the umpteenth time, it’s almost a mantra at this point.

Tanya’s focus on not looking at Amaryllis while feeling jelous almost looks more suspicious than Joons monastic meditation on not looking at the women in the bath.

Since that concept seems to have left Tanya speechless, Fenn will smile and enjoy the awkwardness of these too Airthlings.

Then she gets a bad feeling about staying in the baths any longer.

"We're leaving. Now." The alarm in her voice is clear, without any of the usual playfulness.

Tanya does not even hesitate, standing up to leave without even bothering to cover herself. Shame is for when there is no threat. “Which direction?”

Next time she is coming to the bath, it’ll be with a waterproof knife strap. Her lack of weapon makes her feel more naked than the nudity.

Fenn points to one side of the baths, where a commotion is already forming and spreading. They're in luck, because the changing rooms with their clothes are on the opposite side. 

"How good is your throwing arm?" She hands Tanya a bar of soap and points to Joon at the opposite end of their pool. "We need to get him out too."

She pegs Joon in the side of the head with the bar of soap. She is great at throwing things. She gestures a urgent “let’s get out of here” pointing gesture.

Yelling at him to go seems like it’d draw undue attention from whatever the threat might be.

Huh? He wasn't even looking! That bar hit hard enough to take off a hit point!

Oh shit, there's trouble.

They're out of the pool and in a position to run for the changing rooms when the blood starts to spread through the water. Fully clothed men, armed with swords or pistols, are attacking people at random.

A few of the bathers carry the means to retaliate with them, and a chaotic melee rapidly develops while everyone else rushes for the exits. The party is at the front of the pack.

Why does she have to be a fire mage in a bathhouse. It’s all water! Even the air is super humid! This is like facing cerulean city water type gym with a fire starter in pokemon. 

Tanya is not shy about throwing elbows to get other, taller, people to move out of the way.

There is a staff-only door next to the changing rooms that might contain some chemicals for cleaning that she could use...

Then again, this is Aerb, it could equally hold tanks of slime that magically do the same job while being chemically inert.

Going for her locker is a much safer bet, knives always work no matter the environment. She probably doesn’t want to reveal the void pistol unless things get desperate. They are illegal right?

(Yes, though in Barren Jewel that just means a bribe fine to whichever guard catches you with one.)

It seems like the attackers had planned ahead for this rush to escape. There's three of them waiting in the changing room, swords out. The lockers are on the other side of them, and there's a dead body already on the floor from someone who was changing when they entered.

The good news is, they're not experienced combatants, and they split up to deal with each of the new arrivals.

Amaryllis rushes her opponent, ducks his telegraphed swing, then rises with a Crimson Fist uppercut that snaps his head back with a crack of breaking bone. Jaw or neck, he drops either way. 

Fucking bullshit unfair that Amaryllis and probably Joon get a fucking street fighter fire fist when she is the fire mage!

Tanya slides across the floor and kicks her opponent in the shin, gouging his eyes with her thumbs when he falls down. Now Tanya has a sword.

Those moves bear a noticeable resemblance to the school of combat taught to noble daughters of Anglecynn, one stripped of all the formalized rules and fairness of the other martial arts. A question for another time.

The man whose eyes Tanya has gouged screams in pain, a momentary distraction that allows Fenn to slip past her own opponent to the locker. She grabs a knife, arming herself first, but the last of the attackers has put his back to the wall and is pointing his sword at each of the women in turn.

Tanya rolls her eyes at the idiot and chucks the sword at him. He either gets stabbed in the neck or he is too busy blocking the projectile to stop her kicking him somewhere sensitive. And if that doesn’t work, she trusts the competence of Amaryllis at least in taking advantage of the opening that creates. 

Only that porcupine guy in Silmar seemed to be any good at close combat, they give these people swords but do they not train them at all? It was the same with the Fuchsia gang.

Throwing the sword works perfectly. He tries a parry on instinct but the sword has too much mass for him to knock it away and he's left awkwardly grabbing it by the blade with his off-hand to not get cut. 

Right in time for Fenn to run along the wall and ram the knife into the side of his head. 

"There, one each, that's fair. Let's get the robes on and get out of here before the guards arrive."

Robes, rifle, tote bag with void pistol and sprayer and clothes. All ready now.

Nice that the third employee is good at close combat as well as archery. Getting a knife through a skull without enhancement spells isn’t easy either.

Joon better not have gotten himself killed in the mens changing room. “Should we check on our basically a civilian friend? He might have high skill levels but he is very green, I mean inexperienced.” She doesn’t know if ‘being green’ is an idiom that exists here.