Tostundir, it seemed, had struck a nerve. The expression of the woman in front of him clearly was not one of joy. As she approached him, her rage exploded - no, wait, that was an actual explosion. A very large one indeed, he saw in his peripheral vision. Suddenly, time slowed down. He looked over to his side at the magnificent and destructive sight. He gazed at the fiery depths of the explosion, and he stared at the masonry and debris that it had kicked up like pebbles. He also noticed that it was hurtling in his general direction. He began to panic, and was about to throw himself backwards to take cover behind the crates, when a large object took him down heavily from his front. That's strange, he thought as the ground came up to meet him.
As far as he could tell, he had blacked out for a second. The large object that had struck him turned out to be the woman with whom he had been talking (until they were rudely interrupted), evidently to get them both behind the crates. Perhaps he had misjudged her character. "Thank you," he said sincerely, looking her in the eye as he said it. A few years ago when he was in the army, he would have had no problem avoiding the explosion, but the way he'd settled down recently was making him lazy. He was lucky she was there, and he knew it, allowing it to come across in his voice.
He looked around, dazed, and saw that debris littered the ground around him. Hastily extricating himself from underneath the woman while letting out a dusty cough, he took stock of his situation. It wasn't too difficult to find his hat: it had been thrown across the yard a few metres. Dusting it off (and in this case, the pieces of dust were rather large: around the size of a fist) and donning it, he tried to lower the monocular he had attached to the hat some time ago. It failed to materialise. After a bit of searching, he found it among the rubble and used it manually, quickly looking over to where the explosion had appeared from. He allowed the scent of destruction to fill his nostrils - yes, that was certainly a cleverly designed mixture - very precise. He could tell this wasn't an accident, and certainly not an amateur job. Also - something else hung in the air - but he couldn't quite place it. It infuriated him, but, realising that more important things were at stake, he put it out of his mind. "Curses. I can't see anything of the blast site through all this dratted smoke." He put his monoscope in one of his coat pockets, checking another for his wrist-mounted ballista. It was fortunately intact. He suspected that he might need to use it later, if this attack heralded anything more than widespread terror. For now, though, it remained in his coat. Finally, he picked up Opal, his cane, twisting the handle and checking that the 10cm blade shot out the end as usual. Cleaning a little dust off it to smoothen its use, he then retracted it again in case no violence was to ensue.
After a brief respite and a failed attempt to sit on a now decimated crate, he heard the sound of crunching as merciless - or perhaps the merciful - people moved into the city. Eventually deciding that it would be worth mounting his ballista, he pulled it out and strapped it to his leather bracer. As he did this, he voiced his thoughts. "I propose that our first move is to go deeper into the city. It sounds like there are terrorists" - or rebels, he thought to himself - "moving into the city. If we can get to my house, we might be able to see the situation better from the balcony, and, importantly, see if we need to get out of the city. I have some... trinkets... there that might help, too." He thought of the reassuring warmth of his leather vest. He had the horrible feeling that he would need it before the day came to an end - and time was getting on. Already he could see the sun sinking very low in the sky.
He earnestly inquired, "Are you hurt at all?"
