Cynthia atleast notices a bit of the reaction. "It goes away, even then I can turn some of it into just me being more tired. It can go away with you still being alive!"

A sigh. "Okay, few seconds now probably." Cynthia finishes her ambient winding of the pocket watch, double checks it. "It's here, like it or not."

In the time it takes to blink, the world changes. The moon takes on a sickly yellow hue, while the clouds turn a poison green. Nearby people are replaced with looming jet-black coffins. Grass turns to burnt strands, puddles to splashes of blood, electronics to unworking pieces of plastic.

Welcome to the Midnight Hour. Cynthia is still standing there, pocketing the watch.

Thea shudders a little. "Is there any chance that thing will come back again tonight?"

"Nah. We dealt with it. So, what first?" Cynthia takes a peek into the road. "Nothing nearby. Feel free to scream wildly if you want, nobody else but us."

"Ahh," she says jokingly. "Maybe I should try getting my Libby-equivalent? In case we get attacked."

"You won't have to keep saying Libby-equivalent for much longer then. I atleast remembered it's easier if you -- oh, good target! Uhm, easier if you don't know the proper word. Come here, a stupid little one popped up down the street. Could beat it even without help! Look look look." Cynthia waves Thea over.

Down the street, like pointed, is a blob like advertised. It's just making it's way across the sidewalk, slowly getting onto the road.

The Shadow is a moving black puddle, moving in the way a slime pile might. It protrudes two arms out of the same black material, they remain looking solid as they grip the edge of the pavement as if to pull itself forward. Sitting in the middle of it, upon a little hump, sits a blue neutral expressionless mask, like one of the old Greek Theatre masks. The mask is looking towards where it is headed, but is mostly tilted upward as if laying backward. (The icon is of a more advanced one; it lacks the knives and the raised mask, but the mask design and colors is the same.)

The night remains mostly silent, but focusing you can hear the Shadow slowly... Scraping its way across the ground.

"Alright, here's the thing. Even if it sounds like crap, follow along and realize I'll pull you out if it goes wrong."

"You're going to have to call it out. Listen to your heart," snrk, "seriously though. You look inward to yourself, and listen. You tell it you want to hurt that little blob. Listen back for it. The words will come. I find it helps to have some sort of weapon to point at your target down there."

Cynthia pulls out her pocketknife, flicks out the knife, then turns passes it hilt-first to Thea (holding the blade in her hand) and smiles. "So yeah. Walk out there, get its attention, and feel."

Okay, Cynthia's right. It sounds like crap. Thea looks at her incredulously, and asks, "Feel what exactly? Feel that I really hope my heart can kill it?"

She takes the knife anyway.

"Did you expect that the weird, magical things would be straightforward? Try explaining how you move your arm. You just, DO. Try, and make sure I get that knife back later. Come on."

"Um. Okay."

She tries focusing to see if there's anything obvious, just in case. She focuses on how the blob is almost certain to attack her if she gets its attention, and how it'd be best to just get it out of the way by attacking it before it attacks her back.

... It's not really working.

So, instead, she walks out there to get its attention, as Cynthia suggested. She said she'd bail Thea out if it went really wrong, right? So it should be fine for Thea to just... get the blob's attention. Then she can see if she can call out her... Libby-equivalent.

The Shadow scrapes itself across the street. It does not care that Thea is out in the street looking at it.

At least Cynthia steps out onto the sidewalk and looks encouraging.

Does it care if she gets a bit closer to it?

Closing the distance towards it, sending echos of steps around, doesn't seem to bother it. When she walks close enough to it that there might be a little less than two or three house-lengths away, it stops. The mask turns upright and points towards Thea.

Cynthia, though about a house behind Thea, kept up. She's still walking on the sidewalk. Cynthia remembered to grab her backpack off the ground this time atleast.

Oookay, That mask is just a little frightening. Is there anything inside of her that might like to go... stop it being frightening? Maybe? Please?

Of course not. She steps a bit closer – maybe she just needs to be a bit more frightened?

Well, even a single step more looks like Thea pissed it off. It lurches forwards towards her, its arms scrabbling against the road. If it was 'walking' before, its speed is now 'running' at her.

It would only take a few moments to close the distance at this rate...

Ok, ok, um. Uh. She turns to start running, still trying to get something, anything to just stop it because that is frightening. Aaaanything?

No – there's no apparition to help her, at least not one of her own. Good thing she turned around to start running.

The Shadow continues its scramble after her, untiring. Noises vary between scraping against the pavement and burbling over top it.

Thea can atleast catch Cynthia giving a confused look as she jogs after them to keep up pace. She won't step in yet.

Thea's actually running pretty quickly, because that is a very scary monster and why is nothing happening yet.

Actually, that's a good point: "Why is nothing happening yet?!"

"Because you aren't MAKING IT HAPPEN! How do you feel, after all this?! Focus on that!"

Scraaaape. Burble.

"I feel scared and I want it to go away!"

Still, nothing is happening, except Thea running away from the blob. She's probably getting a bit of distance on it by this point.

After a few more seconds, the Shadow stops chasing. It turns around and heads back towards where it was earlier.

"Why are you telling me this? Think and feel, you aren't asking something like me to show up. You're asking a part of yourself."

"Well I don't know how to ask a part of myself! Usually they all just understand what I want and do it! I was focusing on wanting it to be gone, what with the wanting it to be gone."

"No clue. Take a minute to think? We have an hour." Cynthia is absolutely unphased by suddenly running a few blocks, still breathing normally.

Thea's not out of breath either – she's kinda athletic – but she's shaking a little. She does as Cynthia suggests, and thinks for a minute. Brain, is there any way to ask you a question? Of course there is. But it didn't do anything last she tried.

She tries fumbling around a few different ways, focusing on her reaction to the blob to try to get something to appear. While it didn't actually pose a proper threat in the end, she'd still rather never be in a scenario like that again.

She'll try this for a few minutes unless Cynthia interrupts her, but nothing actually happens.