Trash beasts. A pack of them. Mixes of scrap metal, plastic, and things better left unknown, given life and malicious intent by the pollution of the Ground. Their forms were all jagged edges and oozing filth. One scraped a twisted limb of rebar against the wall, sending sparks skittering across the damp concrete.

You backed up, but your shoulder hit a solid wall of corroded sheet metal. Dead end. Your heart hammered against your ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the slow approaching Trash beasts. You could hear the distant shouts of your team, but they were muffled, worlds away. You were alone.

The largest beast, a monstrosity with a door for a chest and a shattered screen for a face, let out a grinding shriek and lunged.

You raised your arm, bracing for the impact that you knew would shatter your guard, and you.

It never came.

A blur dropped from the rooftops above, landing between you and the charging beast with the soft grace of a falling feather. The beast was yanked backwards mid lunge, a web of threads suddenly wrapped around its form, tightening with a sickening crunch of compacting garbage.

Tamsy didn’t even look at it.

He stood with his back to you, his long sleeves swaying gently. His distaff, Tokushin, was held loosely in one hand. He sighed, a sound of mild inconvenience.

“Now, now,” he said softly, his voice a calm. “That’s no way to treat a guest.”

The other beasts hesitated for only a second before surging forward as one. Tamsy moved. A flick of his wrist sent threads shooting out, entangling two beasts in a net that constricted the more they struggled. With a gentle tug, he reeled them in, the threads spinning them into a tight, struggling spool of trash.

Another beast lunged from the side. Tamsy himself simply sidestepped a clumsy swipe from the final trash beast, his , eyes were half lidded with boredom. A single thread lashed out like a whip, severing a critical juncture of wires and rot, and the beast collapsed into a lifeless heap.

Tamsy turned and tucked his vital instrument away, the threads vanishing as if they’d never been.

“That was a close one,” he said, his tone sincere. “You okay?”

His smile widened under his gasmask, just a fraction. It reached his eyes, but something in his eyes was unreadable. “Think nothing of it. Delmon would never let me hear the end of it if I let something happen to you.” He said it like a joke between friends.

But as he helped you to your feet, his gaze flickered over the mess he had so casually created. For the briefest moment, you saw something else in that calm facade. Not concern, not relief. It was a spark of satisfaction. A glimpse of a man who had just witnessed something he found captivating. A passionate struggle for life, your near death experience that was, to him, nothing short of exhilarating.

The look was gone in an instant, replaced by his usual reliable kindness. He brushed a bit of dust from his loose fitting coat.

“Now,” he said, his voice back to its easy, comforting tone, hiding the thrilling, beautiful pain of the world he truly saw. “You look like you could use a hot meal. Shall we get some noodles?”