Snot did keep talking for a while.
He only stopped once he ran out of bread, took a drink, and pushed himself back to his feet with the same restless energy he seemed to bring into everything. "Alright," he said, brushing dust from his clothes, "break's over. We move again, yeah?"
No one objected. The pause had done what it needed to do. Max got his bag back over one shoulder, Alice rose with the axe appearing in her hand, Marika stood up, and Nep followed a second later, still carrying that sour mood around him like it belonged there.
Neo got up with them and fell into step without saying much. This time he stayed a little farther back than before, not enough to look separate from the group, but enough to keep his own space. Marika happened to be the closest one to him, while Nep remained more toward the middle. Neo walked in silence, then glanced at Marika without turning his head fully.
"Did the rabid dog give all of you that boost?"
Marika blinked.
Then a short laugh escaped her before she could stop it. It caught her off guard enough that she had to lift a hand wiping at the corner of one eye as the laugh faded.
"Rabid dog?" she repeated, still amused. "That's one way to put it."
Neo only looked ahead, he didn't think it was that funny.
Marika let out the last trace of that laugh and answered more normally after. "Yeah. He did it to all of us. So I assume that's what he was trying to do with you as well." Her mouth curved faintly. "Though, judging by how he handled it, he clearly didn't want to explain that himself."
That part did not fit.
He could imagine Nep being unpleasant. Arrogant, suspicious, petty. That had already been obvious. But awkward? Embarrassed? That did not sit right with him.
'Why hide it, then?'
Neo looked ahead, then briefly toward Nep's back.
'That doesn't feel like shame.'
He turned slightly back toward Marika. "What does it do?"
She opened her mouth, then paused.
For the first time since the conversation started, her expression shifted into real thought. Not confusion exactly, more the look of someone realizing they had accepted something without ever checking it.
She took a few steps before answering.
"Now that you mention it..." She frowned slightly. "I don't really feel anything different."
Neo noticed that at once.
'Hm. That's weird.'
He kept that to himself for now. No point forcing it yet. Either it meant something or it did not. Still, the small weight of it remained in the back of his mind.
The next street gave him no time to stay with the thought.
It opened ahead at a broken angle between two collapsed structures, narrower than it first looked because rubble had piled up along both sides. Part of one upper floor had fallen across the path and left a half-open stretch beneath it, dark enough to hide movement until it was already there. Skeletons stood across several levels of it. Two ahead at ground level, one farther back near a cracked wall, another above where part of the second floor still held.
Neo read the positions and slowed a fraction.
The others had seen it as well. Max moved first, shield coming up as one of the ground-level skeletons rushed. Bone struck metal with a hard crack. Alice stepped into the opening that created and drove her axe through the second one before it could get around his side. Marika lifted one hand, flame gathering there in a brief orange pulse.
Neo did not go in with them. He watched.
The skeleton above shifted its weight toward Marika, drawn by the light gathering in her hand. Another one at the back started angling toward Max's right side. Alice had already committed forward. Snot darted in from the left with that same loud, loose rhythm, saying something that sounded half like a warning and half like a joke, then slashed through one skeleton's side and forced the one behind it to turn the wrong way.
Neo moved.
Not toward the closest target. Toward the one that had already made its choice.
He crossed the distance in a diagonal line, came in under the descending skeleton before it could fully settle, and cut into the back of its knee first. The joint gave. Bone shifted. Its whole body dropped crooked, and Neo's second strike took it through the neck before it could hit the ground properly.
He was already turning.
The other one, the one trying to circle around toward Marika, had reached the wrong point at the wrong time. Neo used the half-fallen body at his feet to break its angle, stepped around the jut of bone and stone, and drove his sword into the side of its head before it could bring its weapon across.
Quick, clean, then gone again.
That was how he fought, ending things before the exchange had time to turn ugly.
By then Snot had slipped past Max again and finished another skeleton from behind. "Okay," he said, breath a little rough but voice still annoyingly alive, "yeah, you're actually useful."
Neo pulled his blade free without looking at him. "Try not to sound so surprised."
Snot laughed.
After that, the rest of the fight ended fast. Alice crushed the last grounded skeleton that tried to hold its position. Marika sent a short burst of fire into the one near the back wall and left it open for Max to smash apart with the edge of his shield.
A moment later, nothing was left standing.
Bones lay scattered across the street. Dust settled. The ruined overhang above them creaked once in the silence that followed.
Neo lowered his sword slightly and let his breathing even out.
Then his attention shifted to the side.
Nep was already looking at him.
'Still watching me.'
That was starting to bother him more than he liked.
Snot, meanwhile, had climbed onto a low stretch of broken stone to get a better look ahead. His expression changed a little as he stared past the next turn in the ruins.
When he spoke again, some of the easy playfulness had thinned.
"Well," he said, "that looks promising in all the wrong ways."
Neo followed his line of sight.