Riding The End (L3 | Archived | Fantasy/Sci-Fi)

[Venom3001]

"So... I dunno, just throwing this out there, does anyone know why Aeon is so important? Or his name has gotten around so much?" Theridan asked.  

[Isa-sama]

((Venom is now in charge of the NPC Phallo.))

Ashling, for once, had nothing to say. But why, she wasn't sure. She'd have gone on, but for some reason she stopped walking. <...something's not right here.> Usually, the trees were more upbeat (so she understood trees feelings, got a problem with that?), but all she could sense was silence.

A shot rang out, and she felt something fly by her leaves - it was a gun. She considered herself lucky - this human forgot that her head was not like a fleshbag's head. All he's hitting are leaves.

Shots were ringing out, and she realized not all of them were aimed at her. They were going after her group as well. With a mighty roar, she started running forward and was hoping to squash the pesky human trash.

There were 6 humans all in all; it seemed they were just a scouting party. "Run! We've got a tree after us!" One of them threw a grenade at her, but she merely grabbed it and threw it to the side. A little acorn like that wasn't going to hurt her bark. Did they think an acorn was really going to hurt me? All of a sudden, that "acorn" blew up, tearing apart an innocent tree.  

[Venom3001]

Theridan followed Ashling, spinning his dual crossbows as he drew them and firing at another one who was raising one the curious spherical constructs to throw. Two shots at the man's torso from each crossbow should easily be enough to ensure one or two hits, even while running.

Phallo pulled his bow from his back and strung it in one fluid, perfectly-practiced motion, raising it and firing an arrow straight at the human at the back - after all, if they didn't see their compatriots falling, there would be more loot on the corpses after the battle.  

[Jokerman-EXE]

Osiris responded rapidly. "Zuberi, with Ashling! Hide in her branches, I'll be back in a moment!" He pushed the little boy towards her and Zuberi ran, climbing into the Trent's branches and hiding on the side opposite the attacking humans.

Osiris, in the meantime, took to the wing, wheeling over the group of attacking humans. He was about a hundred feet above them when he morphed back, brandishing more than two dozen knives, three or four between each finger. He gracefully threw them all straight down. It was one of his basic techniques: Falling Rain. Accelerating due to gravity with the force of Osiris' practiced arm, they would fall all over the enemy group, tearing them into bloody pieces.

But the Druid wasn't finished; he changed back to an owl before he could fall, darting off to avoid enemy fire. He landed behind the enemy group, then spun, slinging more knives at the enemies from their backs.

((Zuberi Skill Point Allocation:

1 SP: 1H Revolvers
1 SP: Adapt
1 SP: Stealth

This kid is gonna be a badass ********.))  

[Isa-sama]

The person that Phallo struck hit the man's jugular. It wasn't enough to keep the person from attempting to run away. So Ashling stepped on him. To Zuberi, she grabbed the child and tossed him into her branches. Surprisingly, he grabbed on quickly and made sure to keep himself on her.

Theridan's man got an arrow through the arm and shot the thigh. He was hobbling away; it probably wouldn't be long till he got stomped by Ashling.

Osiris' spectacular attack was enough to stop the humans temporarily. One unfortunate soul got knives stabbed on the top of his head. He fell quickly, but it was unusual that he did not get stabbed in the chest by any of the knives - it seemed that the humans were wearing some sort of protective vest to protect their vital organs.

The humans hid themselves in the surrounding forest - the grenade thrower crouched to help the man with arrows in his arm/thigh (he was the medic of the group). "s**t, what the hell happened here? I thought this was supposed to be an easy mission!" Another man was busy setting up his machine gun, "Apparently not." A woman's voice could then be heard. "Didn't I tell you to be on guard?!" She held a shotgun in her hands, and on her hip rested a machete.

The injured man was busy using his radio to call back to his camp. "This is Commander Reed requesting back up. 2 Trow, Trent, Fae, and Druid attack. Mission has been breached!" He yelled as the medic broke the arrow head off so he could pull the piece of wood out of the injured man's arm.

------------

Dupont and Trajan had gotten all of their equipment and supplies and were already on their way. They'd yet to run into anything, but it didn't hurt to be too safe. All of a sudden, the radio went off. "Surprise attack between Zangar and Fae territories. Trent, 2 Trow, Fae, and Druid." This group sounded like the one that they were ordered to follow!

Now they knew their direction - off to the Fae territories.  

[Venom3001]

Theridan gestured to Phallo: Up. they both ascended the branches of their Trent ally in a matter of moments.

"Steady, I'm going to take down the one with the backup-box," Theridan ordered, leveling his dual crossbows at the man. Adjusting for wind and the falling of the bolts from gravity, that put a headshot right... about... there. He squeezed the firing mechanisms, sending two bolts at the man on the radio as Phallo fired arrows at the man setting up the gun. He'd seen enough humans to know what a machine gun was and how important it was that they not be able to use it.  

[Jokerman-EXE]

Osiris was already gone, after having assaulted them from behind. It was hard to see, but he was in the trees above the enemy. He was no Trow, but a Druid in the trees was almost as good. He moved slowly around to their rear, though he stayed close.

The Trow bolts whizzed in and, regardless of if they hit or not, Osiris took the chance to drop down from the canopy and execute Falling Rain from behind and above them. Upon touching the ground, he threw a handful of blades at the machinegunner in particular, though he was mostly indiscriminate in destroying them entirely.  

[SiberDrac]

Upon the unveiling of the human scouting party, Nine let loose a piercing, chuckling howl that in the past had unnerved full-grown, battle-scarred militants. A wild, umbral, and hungry grin on his pale face, he clambered his way to the top of Ashling's branches, a wedge of wind between himself and the oncoming bullets. It wouldn't stop a direct hit, but most everything else would be tossed to the side. The grenades, he knew were too heavy for his light shield to block, and he took advantage of this - every single one that came in range of Ashling, Nine caught with a laugh of infantile delight and hurled back down to its thrower. One benefit of having Trow stealing human curiosities for as long as they had been: he knew exactly where to toss that grenade. With an extra buffet of wind to supplement his weakness, it was aimed to land dead center of the machine gun nest.

"COME TO ME!" he shrieked. His charms and trinkets swirled around his face and he giggled as a bullet grazed his face. He licked up the trickle of blood. "COME! THE LORD OF HELL AWAITS!"

The instant Theridan's blows started hitting, Nine made a pulling motion with his hands and started draining the water from the pierced victims, quickly exsanguinating the punctured limb. Not many people had a ferocious giggle.

Saturnine Rhapsody was not many people.  

[Isa-sama]

With everyone working together, the fight was finished as quickly as it had started. The humans had no chance of winning against the eclectic group. The machine gunner had died, the woman was twitching madly, and the injured man was face first in the ground.

The medic was dead as well, but there was something in his hand - a pulled grenade.

Trents weren't very fast creatures - they were too big to run in a forest. Usually they lumbered around at a steady pace. But when they needed to run, they were impossible to stop. Ashling didn't know whether the acorn man had more of those things on him, but she didn't want to take any chances.

The group was lucky; the medic's clothes were stuffed with grenades, and the whole place blew up leaving a cloud of smoke in its wake. Ashling felt the heat hit her back as she ran away from the explosion. Yeah. There's no way those humans would have survived that.  

[Jokerman-EXE]

A moment later, a dark gray owl with slightly singed feathers flew past overhead before doubling back and landing on the ground. A second after that, Osiris stood in its place, the end of his long coat smoking just a little bit.

"What the Hell was that!" he said, more exhilarated than scared or injured. "Those weapons are incredible! We need some of those."

In the meantime, Zuberi prompted them to go back to the site. The trees and ground were totally blasted, the bodies gone. Osiris was inspecting the site and called back, "Lord of Hell, that was certainly impressive!" to Nine.

Zuberi, in the meantime, was running around the bodies that had fallen before they made it to cover, so they were still intact. He looked over their bodies and found his attention drawn to a pair of twin gleams. Climbing over the other bodies to approach the one that had been stomped, Zuberi struggled to roll it over, to find a pair of dark, smoky-gray revolvers and twin belts of ammo.

Giggling silently to himself, he strapped the belts on and slid the guns into the attached holsters, like the human had been wearing them. That felt pretty cool. He drew one tentatively, put it back, drew it again. Ohhhh.

He ran back to Osiris' side, now fully equipped with weapons. The Druid raised his eyebrows, but otherwise let the boy do as he wished.  

[Venom3001]

Theridan and Phallo swept down like vultures upon the bodies, searching for what had made them so much more durable than they should have been.

Look at this. It's some sort of special protective vest. Theridan poked it with his sword tip, then with a bolt from his crossbow. This isn't their normal armor. It's higher-quality but it's not even heavy.

Theridan and Phallo salvaged the only two they could find intact and put them on. The vests were a negligible impairment to their movement.  

[SiberDrac]

Nine struggled down from Ashling's branches, landing gracelessly on his back with an unceremonious fwump. He leaned into Osiris and fluttered his eyelashes, saying, "You do love me! I knew it!" He danced off, clutching his hands to his heart, and found himself at the site of the blackened bodies. It seemed that for the most part, they were intact. Nine, seeing the scavenging occurring and not being one to be left out of a romp through corpses, brought out his blood skein.

He then went about the delicate task of plucking out eyeballs and putting them in said skein. A few minor, fluid, gestures, and he quickly had one dozen human eyes and about a pint of human blood in the waterproof bag. He sealed it shut, then stood and blinked at his apparent allies. "Oh hi," he said, waving innocently. He held out the bag. "Snacks for later. Want any?"

He neglected to answer the Commander's question and watched Zuberi with some interest. So the child wanted to play with guns. This... this was going to be fun.  

[Isa-sama]

Ashling was standing there in shock. The...the forest. It's been blown up... And everyone was stealing stuff from the dead! Okay, maybe she didn't really care that they were looting from humans, but she DID care about the poor trees. Some were barely even the size of bushes. It was uncertain whether she was talking about the humans or her team members.

If she'd been the type to cry, this scene would have made her bawl. All it did was reinforce her goal to be rid of the humans. She walked through the burnt site and squished one of the blackened bodies underneath the foot that hadn't stepped on a human. The sooner they die, the sooner the forests will grow again.  

[Jokerman-EXE]

Osiris was already alongside as they began to move. He was accustomed to the tactics of the humans, and backup always came, usually quickly. He whistled and Zuberi ran over, trotting alongside the Druid as they headed onward.  

[SirBayer]

Trajan slapped the G660's mag, ensuring it was locked tightly, and checked to see a round was loaded. It was; it had been a bit hot recently. The camo would keep them concealed for long enough to get close. And they couldn't be too far anymore, right? Hopefully. It was time to move.

"DuPont, think we can get jogging? I hate to rush us, especially into danger, but we might miss them." The 4x ACOG caught the light, and Trajan glanced down. He wasn't fighting yet, he didn't want the glass giving away his position just yet. The front side had a cover anyway, and he flipped that down. Everything else was painted dark colors; it would keep him concealed.

"So?"