Etna had scurried away and hidden herself atop the awning of the balcony outside the hotel room, anything to avoid having to see Flonne and Laharl in the state they were in. Besides, her throat still hurt from earlier and that seemed like a good excuse as any to get some fresh air while she tapped away at her journal.

It just wasn't right, they didn't lose, they're self proclaimed protagonists, failure was supposed to be a wholly alien concept to them, but it was finally coming to Etna's realization to the extent to which nothing was right in this city. She hated it, how it had swallowed her and her friends up, refused to let them go, choked them in under some dome and she looked up at some fake painted sky as it drifted by.

Something started stirring down below though, -doors opening- new voices. It wasn’t that guy from the message board finally deciding he had the gut was it? Etna peeked down from the awning and angled herself as best she could to see through the part in the curtains. It was Ivan, what a relief… and some other guy and three other people? What the hell’s going on in there?

Things didn’t seem bad, but they were strange enough to coax the little demon to flip down and press her ear against the glass.