The surgery was a success but the patient died.

The air blazes, parching throats, dessicating soil to the cracking point, and weighing heavily upon Tolbana's citizens. Sunlight glitters harshly off the nearby river, flashing sparks off each little wavelet. The usual hubbub of the town has died down to a low murmur. Not that business has come to a halt. Food still needs to go on the table. Rent still has to be paid. And so the town carries on, if at a sleepily subdued, peaceful pace. Peace, as is often the case, does not last long. There is a shout of warning. A shrill shriek. A more substantial crash followed by the clattering of wood fragments bouncing.

And then...WHAM. The entire clinic shudders. Equipment, bottles, and plates rattle ominously. The overhead lights sway, penduluming to and fro, the amplitude gradually decreasing until they still at last. A plume of dust gently wafts past the open doorway.

* * * Moments before * * *

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

No matter what world you're in, medical work is at least 50% paperwork.

Clipboard in one hand, pencil in the other, squinty, tired eyes on the face, Uta checks boxes with musical regularity; she has slipped into a regular rhythm, a groove of sorts. A soothing one, whereby the exhaustion on her features inches into a more relaxed smile with each iteration. A sort of physical meditation, a gently sloping stairway to enlightenment, half mantra and half bubble wrap.

"Tick, tick, tick...", she begins to whisper to herself, when her smile has eased past a specific threshold, and exhilarated by this game of sort, her next whisper is a mischievous, "Boom!"

And there you have it! The ground shakes, the walls rattle, and a certain Spriggan instinctively squeals and jumps in the air, as her battle-honed instincts have taught her when the ground begins to shake: her wings spread to full extension at the same time, so her feather falling back to the ground minimizes the impact of destabilization.

Thank you, Tremble Step.

"I DIDN'T MEAN IT I DIDN'T MEAN IT FOR REAL!", she whimpers as she falls down, eyes popped into terrified guilt. "Oh goddesses please tell me I didn't do that..."

Uta's fervent, desperate prayer gets a mixed response. On the one hand, a glass cylinder wobbles. It oscillates. It tips, tips back to safety. Rocks, hovers in a last, valiant effort to remain upright. Silence reigns, until it tumbles off the shelf and smashes on the floor, as though to symbolize the sharp-sharded splatter of her hopes and dreams.

On the other hand, the tremendous sneeze from the exterior side of the wall would seem to suggest an external component to the issue. The follow up fit of coughing would seem to suggest minimal injury, and the tell-tale cracking of pottery definitely suggests that someone...or something...has flown into the decoratively welcoming flowers. "Ow," comes the rather plaintive announcement.

All of which, naturally, would only lead an onlooker to one conclusion. The Spriggan race has fallen very far indeed from the days when it once terrorized the lands.

If the Spriggans of Old were the Wolves that struck fear into the heart of anyone who might qualify as prey, what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the St.Bernard and Chihuaua of the modern world.

Uta sighs, calls "Janitor in ward 1" over chimlink, "we have a shattered hopes and dreams incident to clean up." Once that's taken care of, she follows the trail of destruction to locate the epicenter of the recent detonation. One shattered bottle, one skewed picture on the wall, one shocked but otherwise fine patient, and soon enough, she's there, poking her head through the door to assess the situation.

"I think we have a top priority triage case here. The kind where if we don't treat it, everyone dies in a massive structural collapse of the building." She peeks around, first of all determine what kind of room she's looking into, and second, who (or what) the source is.

The shock outside the clinic is comparable to inside. The trail of destruction and chaos is considerably worse. Chickens, previously peacefully pecking at their noon feed, run rampant through the street, squawking and sending a flurry of feathers everywhere. A cart has been overturned, the coarse wood of its underside shielded from the burning sun by a patch of roof thatching...which seems to have belonged to a house three doors down. At the far end of the street, the street sign creeks as it sways to and fro, a demented, rhythmic metronome to lend order to the uproar.

As for the culprit? That would apparently be Robert who, with a dazed expression on his face and a broken daisy on his head, is seated beneath a vaguely Spriggan-shaped counter-relief imprint in the clinic wall. Shards of pottery, and the remnants of a mixed assortment of peonies lie strewn about him. One hand lifts, delicately removing the flower from his head and setting it aside. "Uta," he greets her pleasantly, with the sort of smile that seems to suggest he's not at all responsible for any of this. Never mind that there's a path of disorder leading from the end of the block right to where he is.

This is no ordinary trail of destruction, no, this is a masterpiece thereof. This is a pinnacle of achievement, a paragon of what imanity can achieve, possibly a unicum in history, and as a connoisseur of Reinassance masterpieces, Uta is overcome with an appropriate Stendhal Syndrome.

Or, at least, she stands still, mouth open, and stares. She just stares.

"...Robert?", Uta finally says.

One thing the game system nails down correctly from real life: half of the profession of a healer is Etiquette, and as such, avatars on whom the Doctor profession is bestowed receive a point in such skill. Dealing with interpersonal relationships is as important, if not sometimes more so, than coaxing the biological machinery back into working order. She begins by not addressing the sneezing elephant outside the room directly at first, but focusing her attention on steadying someof the pottery in the vicinity. "Judging by this battered pot of petunias... either a whale has fallen from the sky, or some other mysterious force is at work here."

As she paces towards Robert, she swipes through her menu, and selects the option for medical inspection. "Mind if I check your status, to make sure you're alright in the aftermath of whatever caused all this?"

"I think I broke something," Robert confesses, not yet making any attempt to stand up, "but I believe I am alright. There is no need." Not having a point in etiquette, instead of staying put for examination like a good lad he attempts to push himself to his feet--only to end up sliding on a bit of potting. True, he nonetheless manages to get to a standing position, but there's more than a few moments during which he appears to have far more hands, legs, and wings than any self-respecting Spriggan ought to.

Some measure of regaining dignity is attempted. He dusts himself off with one, two, three quick slaps of his hand, and draws his fingers through his hair to straighten it as best he can. And to remove any daisy bits. Silence reigns for two moments more. He surveys the street before him. He clears his throat. "So. Purely hypothetically. How hard do you think it would be to sweep all this under the proverbial rug before the Doctor returns? Scale of 1 to 100."

"I can keep mum on you being out here, I suppose, but..." She looks around at Exhibit D, for Devastation. The flowers. The pots. The Robert-shaped dent. "We're going to need a bigger rug. A rug consisting of artisans skilled in Construction and Farming. Or Herbology." Her menu is flicked open again, "Do you have anyone on chim-speeddial?", she asks as she lets out a smaller sneeze. Dust is in the air. Chin tilted up, gaze lost in the distance, with faster blinks due to the particles wafting about, she adds, "We might need a lot of Negotiation as well..." She gestures around, vaguely. "...you know, witnesses."

"I know it's none of my business, but what in Alba were you doing out here?"

SpritesHero continues glancing over the street that was once a civilized part of Tolbana. A peko wanders through, high-stepping and prissy, being far too good to be caught slumming with these heathens. Robert, too, sneezes, though as per the previous metaphor it is St. Bernard sized next to Uta's chihuahua sneeze. Formidable though the sneeze may be, it does not blow away half the street. "I don't think the Doctor would approve of removing witnesses," Robert reflects with a considering frown. Again, silence. Again, that long gaze. Presumably he's not actively considering murdering half the street.

He sighs. Grimaces, one side of mouth pulling away from his teeth, his nose crinkling in distaste. "I was testing something," he answers at last. "I was able to get going pretty nicely. Didn't realize I couldn't turn...or stop. At least not easily. Not until I was going rather quickly." There's another pause, and a considering gaze as he glances towards the street's end, then back to the clinic. "What about Modern Art?"

"I was considering -bribing- the witnesses, not -removing- them," Uta comments in... probably humorous mock-indignation. Almost certainly. "But then I remembered that time I was trying to find something out and, oh boy, are they impossible to bribe. On the plus side, they seem well set on minding their own business and being no snitches, so, there's that."

Arms crossed, thought. "Modern art? 'Modern' is such a confusing term in this world..." Uta trails off. Silence. "What was I going to ask again- Oh, right!" With a snap of her finger, she leans closer to Robert and points at him. "You were testing a thing. Some sort of vehicle? Must be some sort of vehicle. It takes quiet the amount of momentum to produce..." She looks around and gestures at her surroundings. "...Art."

"Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. It is clear what we must do," quoth Robert, as he diligently sets about re-assembling the flower-pots and reinstating the decorative peonies to their rightful duties in boosting patient morale. It is a pity that another old saying--one involving all the king's horses and all the king's men--comes to mind.

"Art that is of baffling and incomprehensible value," Robert clarifies, lifting one droopy leaf with his pinky. It perks right up, but only hangs, morosely, once he withdraws his more-than-moral support. There's a pause. A faint twitch of his lips. "But yes. A vehicle of sorts. I've been trying to hover while moving around. But it kicks up a lot of dust. Also it would seem that it is rather difficult to stop." He trails off, hands on his hips, surveying the questionably-improved wall before him. "Do you think somebody would buy it?" he wonders.

Uta levels a stern look at Robert. "Robert, no. No killing the witnesses nor the cultprit. Seriously, what's with these reckless, ill-conceived plans?" She leans forward and squints. "Have you been hanging out with Merek?"

Uta gives the dent a long, pensive look. Weight on one leg, one forearm held horizontal, other elbow resting on that fist, other fist covering chin and mouth.

"I suppose it all depends on how good the seller is, in the end," she finally declares with a shrug.

Her resigned expression switches to one of interest without advance warning. "Wait, wait, hover? Like, air skating? Faux flying? Being a iman hovercraft?", she rattles out. "Oh man oh man oh man, this sounds amazing."

SpritesHero's return-glance is far from repentant. "I will have you know," he opines, in rather hurt tones, "that getting rid of witnesses is positively traditional and has well-demonstrated effectiveness. And that if performed properly it is neither reckless, nor ill-conceived, and certainly not a plan derived from hanging out with Merek." He trails off, nose crinkling. "Though you are correct that in this case it is probably unnecessary." At this, the swinging street-sign at the end of the block detaches from its support and clangs off the cobblestones. Robert winces, and rapidly moves on to safer topics of discussion. Like possibly offending the Tower.

"Yep. You've just about got it," he concedes, if a trifle sheepishly, turning properly towards Uta. "Though it's certainly more of a...ah...work in progress." The devastation behind him is pointedly ignored.