Rebecca is -

Rebecca is tired. She was supposed to appear in Chicago somewhere, nobody was actually sure if she'd wind up home or near where the Chicago enclave used to be or what, and call her dad, and get picked up, and by now she'd be home and hugging her brother and borrowing her sister's clothes and crying over how big Judy must be by now and letting her parents fuss over her -

But she lived this long by landing on her feet. So she walks with everybody else.

By the time they're actually navigating around the altercation going on nearby, the red-uniformed troops....seem to have surrendered? They're kneeling and surrounded, at least. Someone else in the extravagant red-and-gold robes appears to be unconscious on the snow. Some people wearing green robes are turning up, now, with escorts guarding them, and they seem to be maybe treating the other injured but entirely ignoring red-robed unconscious person. 

One of the blue-uniforms jogs over and exchanges some incomprehensible conversation with Marius. There are a lot of glances at the kids. Their own armed escort is...definitely watching them with suspicion, as well as watching for external threats, but they're not hostile, exactly, just wary. 

Words cannot convey how little Raleigh wants this to be the thing that's happening right now! On another day he might have known what to say - or, well, to think at the telepathic people who don't speak any of the languages he knows - to de-escalate this, but right now he's crashing hard after the adrenaline high of graduation, and he hasn't showered in a week and he thought by now he'd be in his mother's arms and it's surprisingly hard to, instead, stay alert and keep pushing through. 

She should probably be trying to have thoughts about what's happening? That sounds very hard, though. 

Orion is having some kind of post-hunt drop, the kind where the mal gets away into the ductwork before he can kill it, and he feels pretty blank, and he's looking around but not really seeing much and just vaguely sticking with Rebecca and... Rebecca's friends, who probably have names that he learned at one point.

Marius is vaguely thinking, in some quiet distant place in the back of his mind, that these kids seem...really not okay? 

- he's not sure what he's supposed to do about this. 

Their party, and the blue-uniformed Guards still holding a perimeter around the kids and watching them suspiciously, eventually make it around the confusing altercation still going on between the kneeling rust-red-uniformed soldiers and the others around them, and reach a cluster of tents. 

:Dara?: Marius sends. 

She blocks his Mindtouch entirely, doesn't even pick up the link. 

....Okay, sure, whatever. Fair enough, she's got to be just as busy as he is. 

:Over here: Marius snaps to the group of teenagers, and gestures toward the nearest tent. 

Tent. Okay. She went camping once... when she was eight, in a campground with running water and a convenience store a mile off and her entire family less Judy since Judy hadn't been born. They still had the au pair who introduced her to Shakira, then. She needs to not think about missing people or she'll start crying. Into the tent.

This place is so incredibly confusing! 

...Raleigh is still in the mode of using his hard-trained reflexes to fight off mals in the graduation hall. He is not in the right mental state to ask questions about mysterious tents that don't appear to contain mals. He follows the white-clad stranger. 

:Tran -: 

....But, of course, Tran isn't there. He's so very far out of her reach. 

:Marius: 

Marius freezes on the spot, a couple of yards away from the tent-opening. :What: 

:Vanyel: 

:I - wait. What: 

Several tents away, a voice cries out, screaming, in apparent agony -

Rebecca's response to that is to bolt out of the tent and run AWAY from the screaming, singing a ward onto her shield-holder.

Orion's response to that is to bolt out of the tent and run TOWARD the screaming, sword crackling with mana.

Shannon's response is to freeze and - after a half-second moment - cast a Healing-divination spell she knows, in Mandarin - she's distracted enough to not even worry about the rest of the team overhearing her but it's not like this even matters, anymore, or ever will again - 

Raleigh's response is to grab Shannon and haul her into the nearest gap between two tents and throw her to the snowy ground where he can cover her. 

When Orion reaches the tent, the flap is flopped shut but not fastened. 

The scream of agony is falling off, now, and a kid who looks about Orion's age is flopped on a mat on the floor, with a rough blanket half-draped over him, curled into a ball and sobbing. 

Dara leaps to her feet, drawing her dagger, and snarls something in yet another incomprehensible language. 

Well, Orion doesn't SEE a mal, but there could be an invisible psychic one? He doesn't need his sword for that; the sword calms down and he tries a psychic-mal spell.

Nothing in particular happens. 

This doesn't make any sense! Then again, nothing tonight has made any sense anyway! 

....Dara isn't that strong of a Thoughtsenser, but the random blond kid is like five feet away from her, and also not even shielding at ALL. She tries to read his mind.

The yelling kid does not look super okay! Which might mean that a mal already did enough damage that he's just stuck like that and going to die? But also, the spell did not work, so maybe there wasn't a mal and he's screaming about something else? Orion does not really feel equipped to handle this situation. He can maybe just go back to the tent with Rebecca and her friends, who almost definitely have names.