While traveling through a forest, Van rescues Wendy from being harassed by a thug piloting a small armor, and very shortly afterwards collapses with a high fever. Wendy manages to drag
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While traveling through a forest, Van rescues Wendy from being harassed by a thug piloting a small armor, and very shortly afterwards collapses with a high fever. Wendy manages to drag the unconscious Van to a cave and where, in the process of nursing him, she discovers a strange symbol on Van's abdomen. As his fever worsens through the night, she determines that she needs to hurry to the nearest town to get help. She is able to get medicine from a disabled doctor and kind nurse at a private clinic called the Denehee Clinic. While she is gone, Van's fever breaks and though still weak, he manages to summon his armor (which lands an unfortunate distance away forcing him to travel to it) which has the ability to heal him, but at the cost of time spent dreaming about the wedding and his bride's death at the hand of The Claw. Meanwhile, Wendy's hurried return back through the forest is interrupted by a boar which prompts her own remembrance of how she received her brother's gun and how she first met Van. She returns to the cave to find Van gone, and while she is despairing his absence, the thug from earlier returns with friends looking for payback. They are more than willing to take it out on her. Van makes a sudden reappearance, in Dann, just in time to save Wendy from the thugs, and then, without Dann, confronts Wendy about her own disappearance. She tells of trying to take care of him, offering the bag of medicine, then collapses against him. She wakes in the cave next to a cozy fire, surprised to be covered with Van's tuxedo jacket as he stares into the bag of medicine. He tells her again she should go home, and then tells her to go back to sleep, ending the conversation by -- deliberately -- calling her by name and wishing her "pleasant dreams." Back at Denehee Clinic, a knock at the door interrupts the doctor's musing over the drawing Wendy made of Van's mark. At the door is a dangerous looking blonde man in a white coat asking about a man with a clawed hand.
