bluefall

Currently: our crew is hiding out in Miyeong’s apartment while trying to track some wraiths and prepare for battle—after Rumi just straight up killed some dudes (it’s fine, Mira knows a guy who’s covering it up), she, Minji, and Miyeong have been left at home, while Mira, Zoey, and Celine went to track down a healing spirit

Zoey, for her part, is too busy peppering Celine with every possible question under the sun about healing spirits, summoning rituals, and how to determine an appropriate gift when you don't have a magpie spirit to do it for you, to really notice Mira's distraction. Not that she would likely have read that much into it regardless, considering she fully grabbed Mira's jaw once she was healed, palpating and checking mobility and generally inspecting the river's work, and apparently attributed the near heart attack it gave the taller woman to crashing adrenaline and the after-effects of magical healing rather than the natural consequence of Zoey's hands on her face.

About the fifth or sixth time Mira pulls her eyes away from Zoey, Zoey herself stops to take a breath, and Mira interjects herself into the pause, slightly anxious.

"So, he was in our heads."

"Oh you felt that too? It wasn't like when we were practicing with Rumi, not like he put anything there, more like, hmm. I was thinking about a dozen different things as usual, and the ones that were stressing me out just kind of… floated away, and I sort of heard him say I should take it easier, which is not historically a very successful piece of advice to offer me personally but it's sweet that he cares!"

"And that's… okay?"

Celine can see them both look for her eyes in the mirror, at that; the trust warms her, a little, deep in her chest where she's still unsettled from the river's claim.

Healer.

"It's not impossible for a healing spirit to do harm, but it isn't in their nature to do so intentionally. And the Han is too old and skilled for accidents. He wouldn't have intruded past your need, nor beyond your level of comfort."

You are troubled by very old wounds, Granddaughter, he had said, brushing up against the memory of—

— a single firm push, and he had flowed back out of her past like a receding tide, perfectly respectful.

Celine should feel good, right now. She does feel good, superficially. Her shoulder is loose and her hand moves on the steering wheel without pain, the twinge in her back from the too-soft mattress on the roll-out is gone, the faint arthritic ache in her left hand has faded away. But—

Healer. It can't be a mockery, it must be a message, but it doesn't make sense.

She wants… she wants to put it in front of Minji-ssi so they can pick it apart together, wants to lean into Miyeong-ssi's side on the balcony and look out over the road and hear her make fun of Celine for being too in her head until it feels small and silly and easy to put away.

She won't, of course; they have more pressing matters to put their time toward, and Celine has been handling her own problems nearly as long as the other two women in the car with her have been alive.

This is what I drew after this situation 👇

In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:

Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.

Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (“And did I panic? I think not!”)

Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.

Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.

Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).

Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).

Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.

Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.

Yes, he’s fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So he’s a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But he’s clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while he’s at it.

I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.

When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.

At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.

He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.

He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.