Scott was still in a state of disbelief. Sure, weirder things have happened (though that was an entirely bold-faced lie), but still, the pure strangeness of the moment momentarily froze him.
Of course, one cannot fully confuse the titular Canadian (again more lies). As a few certain words connected in his mind, he shook himself out of his daze. "Wait...We get rooms to do whatever we want with? Yes!" He began to march towards said rooms, before stopping mid-step. "Waaaait a sec. 'Prison'...?" He turned to Yee, an eyebrow raised. "What do you mean by prison? Is it, like, the good kind of prison, where we can do whatever we want until our sentence is up, or is there a bad cop to your good cop?"

The Scaled Nations, Village of Threshold
Before Jobek could open his mouth to answer Jack, Elizabeth had summoned her Pixie. The driver stared at the tiny little sprite, eyes widening in amazement. “A fay?” he breathed. “Fasscinating.” He glanced at the white-haired woman then. “Are you being a thaumaturgisst, yiss?”
He turned away before she could answer though, distracted by the sound of Selim moaning as if in pain. The lizardman’s brows drew together. “I do not undersstand, ” he rasped in confusion. “That iss clearly being healing magic, yiss… sso why iss the boy being in pain? I am not being a healer, but to my knowledge thiss should not be happening…”
He paused, his next word almost sounding suspicious. “Unlesss…”

The Marshes of Ia-Kong, Riverbank
“Yeah, I’m fine, ” Sazh said distractedly, turning in place as he took in the group’s immediate surroundings. Now that night had fallen, it was almost impossible to see; the dense coverage of the jungle canopy prevented all but the faintest slivers of the moon’s pearly rays from reaching the forest floor, and as such the darkness was almost impenetrable.
A grim look came to Sazh’s face as he glanced in the direction of the river. The raft had fallen apart after it flipped over, its timbers floating away on the Brandt’s current. “Well, we ain’t goin’ that way, ” he muttered.
Spotting a small piece of driftwood on the riverbank, he knelt down and picked up; it seemed the perfect size for a torch. The pilot held his free hand over one end of the sodden branch, and his l’Cie brand glowed briefly with a red light, shining visibly through the fabric of his shirt as he drew upon his power. Fire leapt from his fingertips, and soon the end of the driftwood was flickering with a strong, controlled flame; its light didn’t extend beyond twenty feet or so, but it was better than nothing.
“Gonna be hard to fight in this darkness, if there’re more critters like Mister Head Case lurkin’ around, ” he remarked, shooting a glance at the spot where the hydra’s carcass had sank beneath the water. “I don’t know ‘bout the rest of you, but it might be a good idea if we found a place ta lay low for the night; we can start again in the morning.”
He paused. “Well, that’s my opinion, at least. Whadda you folks think?”

Samus, sastified that there no one was in need of immediate attention, swept her gaze around her surroundings. Her dark blue armor seemed to blend into the night as she stood there.
A few seconds later, after taking in everything around them, she looked back at the raft and grimaced in her helmet. They were going to have to stake it out on land, then. Nothing for it.
Samus glanced over at Sazh as began to speak — not even reacting anymore to his display of magic — and while he spoke she turned in place, taking another sweeping gaze of the river, the shores that stretched to either side, and then again the forest. She was silent and idly toyed with her now literal cannon as she thought.
"Indeed", she said cooly, "there will undoubtedly be predators far more capable of hunting in the night than we are. Going into the forest would severely limit our perception; I recommend we set up camp here on the bank." Her gaze settled on Sazh's torch, its light playing shadows upon her darkly tinted suit. "If you all believe it will be necessary, then we can keep a fire. I'd rather not bring more attention upon us then necessary in a foreign environment, however."
She motioned to a spot roughly in the middle of where the group lay with her gloved hand. "I further suggest planting the torch in the ground. After we have taken care of what we need, we should put it out and you all can rest." She brought a hand to the side of her helmet. "I have a...radar, if you will, in my suit, so I can detect any enemies long before they are upon us. I'll keep watch; I do not require sleep nor does the darkness limit my vision. If I notice a life form closing in, then I shall wake the rest of you. We can relight the torch then, for what I assume will be an ensuing struggle. In the meantime, the darkness should serve to keep us relatively hard to find."
—Speaking of which...— She flipped a small round knob on her cannon, and a port opened with several switches. She pressed one, and with a stereotypical digital sound playing a hologram appeared about a foot in front of her; an amber square display, about a foot square, filled with indecipherable read outs and varying graphs. She began to manipulate the surface of it with her hand as if it were a physical console, and after a few seconds of calibrating her radar — which up until this point had been filled to the brink, detecting the thousands of beings in the forest around her — became vastly less cluttered. It would now only read life forms that were of a decently threatening size.

Brandt
To say the least, Sayaka's second grab at madness was stupid. She was not half as desperate for slaughter as she was last time and also twice more frightened than when she had last charged. This led to the unfortunate combination of not being able to block out the pain yet too scared to completely lose herself. In one word: Amateur. Thankfully this did not hinder her healing factor which being without would leave her without anything to live in- in other words: no functioning body.
However, one must at least credit her for the bravery of rushing in a second time and also the amount of damage she managed to do again though this time it was compounded by Sazch's Enfire spell. Nevertheless she was degraded to a truly sorry state in the battle: she had her right arm nearly wrenched off nearly a dozen times, her cape was now a tattered piece of cloth fluttering pathetically in the breeze, her entire body was covered in cuts and scratches- some deep some shallow with the nasty ones already healing. She was quite sure she had dislocated her left arm and her right foot felt numb.
Damn it..
Thus when the Hydra finally came down and sent the champions flying in its wake, Sayaka was in no position soften her own landing; she was then sent flying in the general direction of the shore- a piece of the raft hitting her quite hard in the back as a painful reminder of her own inadequacy in battle. No matter, she was already too battered and bruised to really care.
Sayaka hit the ground and simply crumpled into a heap; she had never felt so tired or so in need of rest. Thus she simply blanked out as soon as her head met solid ground, she refused to think anymore about the battle what with all the putrid water than she might had swallowed by accident or the plague or the sneering of the other magical girl who she was convinced was in better condition than her. She was simply too tired to care.
I guess I've still got a bit to go till I can be like Mami....
With that thought Sayaka was lost to deep unconsciousness.
Thus Samus would get no response out of the blue haired magical girl currently out cold on the soggy bank of the swamp.

Fluttershy saw Sayaka crumple unto the ground and immediately went over to carry the poor girl away from the bank. "She needs room, clear the way!" the pegasus said before depositing the girl gently unto the ground of the clearing.


Marshes of Ia-Kong, Riverbank
“In my experience, ” Sazh started to say, “wild animals an’ monsters’ll usually steer clear of a fire—”
That was as far as he got, for at that moment Sayaka collapsed in a heap. Chirping in alarm, the Chocobo chick leapt from his shoulder and fluttered over to the unconscious girl, hovering worriedly over her head.
Sazh, for his part, dropped to one knee at her side and grimaced as he took in the full extent of her injuries. “Damn, she really took a poundin’ from that thing.” He looked up at the other Champions. “Who had the potions?”






Elizabeth blinked. "Ah." She muttered. How could she be so stupid? "Just a moment." With a flick of her hand, a card◊ appeared, suspended between two fingers. A second later, it vanished with a faint sound like shattered glass, and Pixie◊ popped into existence accompanied by a brief flash of blue fog.
The faerie made brief eye contact with Elizabeth and somehow knew what to do. She flew down until she was in front of Selim's face and pressed both hands onto his forehead. She began glowing faintly white as she imparted the energy of healing into the boy.

Pride mentally cursed as he saw Elizabeth summoning something to heal him. And that something fluttered right up to his face. Fantastic. He wanted to slap it away, but he had to think quickly. He couldn't force himself to vomit- he had no food in his stomach, and for that matter, he didn't think he even needed or had a stomach- and he couldn't use his shadows- that'd be way too soon.
The only thing he could do was breathe faster, the somewhat calm look he had on his face getting even more pained as the Pixie's healing magic went into him. He clutched his chest with one hand, almost gritting his teeth as he scratched his fingers against the ground. His feet started twitching as his breathing turned into grunting, and then into moaning, and if she didn't stop, he'd start yelling stop as loud as he could. Why, it seemed much more sensible to act as if trying to heal him was actually making things worse...

"Surely healing magic is healing magic, regardless of origin, " Jack said, to Ranmaru a deep frown settling over his face. "I cannot think why it would not work unless this is a complex kind of illness, but he has done nothing we have not done as well. It should at least have some effect, even a minor one. Perhaps as a child he is more vulnerable to the illnesses of this world, or healing magic of this world might serve better." He looked to the woman and her small fairy companion. "You're certain that should have an effect?" But the samurai felt no substance behind his own words, for though he had seen stranger things, something just didn't feel right about this. Was the eye of their enemy upon them here? He had already shown he could strike down those in a crowded city, why not here? And targeting their youngest member was the sort of sadistic touch Jack had seen before. No, this sickness, like the plague, was not natural.

Pixie looked up at Ranmaru with an annoyed expression, but looked over at Elizabeth for confirmation. After another moment of eye contact between the two, she dropped her arms and stopped trying to heal the boy. Instead, she flew over to sit on Elizabeth's shoulder, being sure to pull a face at Ranmaru as she flew by him.
"That spell is only meant to heal wounds, really." Elizabeth said sadly. "I'm not all that surprised it didn't help his illness." She looked down at Pride with narrowed eyes. "Even so, it wouldn't hurt anyone. Or at least not a human." She sighed. "I was only going to mention this later, in confidence, but... The boy isn't human. I could sense it from the moment of his appearance. I don't know what he is, though. His energy isn't like anything else I've felt before."

“All that you say is possible, Milord Jack, Milady, ” Ranmaru told Jack and Elizabeth. “However, I would like to test my theory.” Gently lifting Pride's arms from from his chest and putting them, palms up, alongside his body, the samurai pressed a variety of points on them which formed a line from near the elbow to the wrist with his forefinger and middle finger.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked Pride once he was done.

Pride had no idea what Ranmaru was doing, but Elizabeth's comment meant he had to do something fast. He gasped for air as Ranmaru finished pressing those points, before returning to his one eye closed, one eye half open, fast breathing and trembling state. " Y-yes... " He muttered. " Slightly... my chest still hurts... " His eyes wandered over to Elizabeth, and he opened them just a little, just enough to feign surprise. " What are you t-talking about, Miss... " Before he could finish his question, he fell unconscious, the breathing slowing down to acceptable levels.



The Scaled Nations, Village of Threshold
Jobek froze. “Not human?” he echoed, sounding almost fearful. “Iss he being a… doppelganger, then?”
“Perhaps he is, ” a voice that was old yet firm said from somewhere nearby. “And perhaps he isn’t. We shall soon find out, in any case.”
If the Champions were to turn towards this newest voice, they would find that another lizardman was making his way towards them. It was immediately clear that this latest fellow was much older than either Jobek or Tethrasur; he walked with a stoop-shouldered hunch, and his scales had lost much of their lustre. Little wisps of what might have been hair sprouted from his chin and above his upper lip, giving the appearance of a goatee and mustache, and his eyes were clouded and milky.
At the same time, he was clearly someone important. He wore fine robes of red, gold and black fabric, robes not unlike a kimono or the habits worn by certain monastic orders of the Far East. His arms were folded within the robes’ voluminous sleeves, which were richly embroidered with draconic designs and patterns. And despite his wizened, aged appearance, he carried himself with an unmistakable gravitas and dignity.
Upon seeing him, Jobek immediately leapt from his seat and prostrated himself before the figure. “Lord Shinuaq’tan, ” he breathed.
The chieftain inclined his head to Jobek in a subtle nod, then turned and fixed his pearlescent gaze upon the Champions. “On behalf of the Scaled Nations, I welcome you to our lands, ” he said to them gravely. “Let me apologize on Tethrasur’s behalf for his misconduct; our First Shaman has been under considerable stress of late, and sees agents of chaos and ruin at every turn.”

Jack was deeply troubled by the revelation of the boy's status. Ordinarily, he would have thought little of it. Many creatures chose to hide their true nature from the rest of the world, most for simple reasons such as fear or a preference for going unnoticed. But given the child's reaction to healing magic, the samurai feared his nature might be something truly damaging to their group and its goals. If Selim awoke, he would have many questions, but he still believed matters could be cleared up to the satisfaction of all. He was about to say as much to Jobek when the newcomer approached.
Seeing their guide bow as if to an emperor, Jack bowed deeply at the waist and held it for a significant while, the most respectful gesture he could offer.
"You need not apologize, " he assured the elder lord when he straightened up. "Your shaman's vigilance is to be commended and he did no more than his duty in seeing that we came here for just reasons. We are honored to meet you. We had hoped to speak with you regarding the rumors of war with Riverrock, but first, I would ask what you intend regarding our youngest companion." He glanced down towards the prone form of Selim briefly.





'''Yee; Common Room'''

The old Remnant took Scott's words at face value.

''"There is no 'bad cop,' Scott Pilgrim,"'' he said understandingly. ''"I have provided this place to make your imprisonment less harsh. Do what you must to make yourself at home - only do not disturb the peace of the others."''

----

'''Link; Village of Treshold'''

Selim wasn't human? That...