Out of the Tunnel
Characters:
Aden, an ex-circus performer
Magramba, a warrior
Horde Scouts, spoofed by Dylan
Setting:
Near the coast, on the road to Marshank
"Okay...I think these are - they are!" Aden, torch held aloft, turns left to reveal a [rather precarious] set of stairs. The performer is blessed with a constitution hardened by years of hard drinking - it comes with the circus territory - and, therefore, has managed to avoid the hangover that one can typically look forward to after a binge. "Alright, up we go... You doin' alright, Magpie?" She pats her rucksack, which gives the familiar 'clank' of glass, softly rubbing against glass. "You need some hair of the dog?" The steps creak and groan as she climbs.
"Maybe we should just stay down here," comes Magramba's voice from the bottom of the stairs, as the warrior slowly makes his way up towards the glaring light of day. "Next time let's just agree to spend a full day /after/ the wine in recovery, okay?" As they step out into the sun, his eyes narrowed to slits, the squirrel groans and stumbles towards the nearest tree, setting himself down on his rump.
All things must come to an end, even dark and foreboding tunnels. The area around the mouth of the tunnel is rather covered in foliage with a few trees. The sound of the ocean can be heard just over the ridge.
So can the sounds of laughter.
Just over the ridge to the right there is a narrow hill filled with rocks leading to the shore of a small beach. A small camp has been set up with several beasts milling about. Vermin beasts.
A grand total of four can be seen. A pair of weasels, and a burly reptilian monitor lizard sit around the camp fire with a stew pot set over it. A fox leans against the parties luggage, a large pot bellied cross fox picking his fangs with a dagger.
The monitor lizard appears to be putting the last touches into making a coat made from the hide of some unfortunate beast.
"It'll pass." Aden croons, sympathetically, as she crouches beside the other squirrel. "If you want an easy fix until we can get back to camp, then you can just...take sips. Or -" She stops, her voice hushing. "Do you hear that?" She stands, suddenly and slinks towards the ridge. "We've got company." She whispers. "Want to try to get around them?"
"Yeah, we can just-" But then she's hushing him, and although the last thing Magramba wants to do is listen harder, that's what he does, picking up the sound of laughter on the breeze. "Blast. Of /course./ This. This is why I don't drink," he grumbles, dragging himself back onto his feet. "Let's try to slip past, I'm really not in the mood to chop heads today." Maybe because his is in such terrible pain.
"Funny, for a beast who doesn't like choppin heads you are awefully close to loosing yours!" A voice cackles behind them. A green scaled lizard wearing an iron pauldron over his shoulder leaps off the tunnel enterence and lands behind the party, brandishing a halberd at the pair. "Scratch so much as an itch an' I'll pop ye open like a melon!" he hisses.
"Okay, here. Take this to tide you over." Aden mutters, sliding away from the ledge and pulling one of the bottles free of her rucksack. "Don't smell it just...grin and bear it." She offers it out to him, grimacing in sympathy. "C'mon, let's -" And then she is spinning about with a snarl. Slowly, she raises her paws. "Alright, handsome, you've got us." She casts a side-long glance at the squirrel. They doing this?
A slow nod goes back to the other squirrel as she gives him that questioning glance. Magramba is really off his game today, it seems; normally he'd notice a giant green lizard on top of the roof. But at least if he was going to kill them, he'd have probably done it by now. "Should we put our paws up or not? I can't put them up if I can't move." The warrior's going to be stubborn about it, though.
"You think I was born yesterday?" The lizard licks something off of his own eye before waving the halberd closer to them. "Paws up and git on the ground. Now!" He lifts his head up and calls out, "Hey! HEY! Ransk! Ransk!"
Leave it to the party to find the one scout smart enough to call for assistance...
Still holding the wine bottle, Aden grits her teeth. "Mate, you got anything for hangovers? M'friend here 'as a killer headache." She bends a knee, going to hit the ground...And then chucks the bottle at the lizard's head. Such a waste of good wine. It may not be her knives, but her aim is still pretty spot on - the weight helps. The squirrel rolls, swiftly, to the right. "Thanks anyway!" Alright, time to run - they do a lot of this.
Oh, they're actually making a run for it. It takes Magramba a second to process this in his disenfranchised state, but once he realizes that Aden is taking off, he does too, ripping his sword free of its scabbard as he abruptly sprints after the other squirrel, not waiting to see what effect her volley of the vine will have on their scaly friend.
The lizard leans backward, bending at the knees until the bottle goes sailing over his head until it breaks against the tree behind him. He swivels on his feet, giving both beasts a proper stink eye. "RANSK! WILL YOU GET YOUR FAT FLUFFY TAIL OVER HERE! I NEED HELP!" The lizard shouts at the top of his copious lungs, charging after the fleeing squirrels. "Get back here!"
"How did I /miss/ that?" Aden swears at herself, checking over her shoulder for Mag. "I still have another bottle, don't worry!" Grasping at the bark of a tree as they sail past it, she spins to scurry up it, using the tree as an anchor to redirect her momentum. Her claws dig and scrape at the bark as she scrambles her way up.
That is some serious Matrix level stuff, and Magramba is not about to mess with that in his current state. "Run run run run," he chants, probably for Aden's benefit, since he's so habitually quiet in most circumstances. And then she's /climbing/ which is not /running/ and he's still running, but surprisingly not in the same direction as he had been; no, he's circling towards that laughter he heard earlier. Might as well get the element of surprise while it lasts; as the vermin around the fire glance towards the big lizard's shouting, instead of their familiar scaly matey, a very grumpy squirrel with a very sharp sword comes hurtling into camp instead. The lot of them start up, but Magramba's already hewn into one of the weasels, a vicious chop that cleaves his shoulder and collarbone in half, spilling and squirting blood in all directions as the warrior rips his blade forcefully free of the unfortunate soul's shoulder and sends his body crumpling to the forest floor. He never stops, taking off into the woods just as quickly as he burst into the camp.
A large shout goes through the camp as this crazed warrior just tears through it, slaying one of their own and then just running back into the woods. "Blazes!" Shouts the cross fox as he grabs his sword, "Don't just stand there! Get after him!" They leave their alley bleeding out on the sand and chase after the squirrel.
Meanwhile Neo Lizard skids to a halt at the tree, his halberd sinking into the bark inches away from Aden's tail. Pulling the ax head free he growls. "Get down here and die!" He thrusts the halberd up into the tree, trying to dislodge Aden from it.
Narrowly avoiding both of the lizard's strikes, the acrobat swings herself, higher and higher, among the branches. "Mag!" Up in the tree, Aden is pulling her knives free and brandishing her rucksack. "Hair of the /dog/, Magpie!" She whines, hurling herself from branch to branch in pursuit of her blood-splattered partner. She glances over her shoulder and flicks a knife back at the lizard, aiming to piece him through the top of his head.
Aden's whines fall on deaf ears, as Magramba's pulse beats heavy through his head, throbbing with the pressure of the hangover and the exertion of the chase. The blood runs down his sword-blade and coats his paw with sticky, rusty-smelling red. He's stopped chanting, just sprinting as fast as he can, glancing up over his shoulder to make sure Aden is still moving through the trees. He's not leaving her.
If the sight of a snarling monitor lizard waving a halberd about like a hatchet isn't sobering nothing is. "I will feed you yer own TAIL SsSSQUIRREL!" The weasel is not far behind, the heavy set cross fox how ever has to pause to catch his breath. "You...you go get em. I'll just...ah man."
Meanwhile the second lizard turns in time to see the blade coming, and little else. "GEYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!" He screams as the blade takes out an eye. He falls to his knees, squirrel forgotten as he struggles to pull the blade out. The curses he shouts are unrepeatable.
"Red is really your color." Aden comments, airily from the tree above Magramba. "Hold on one second, I liked that knife." And then she doubles back towards the lizard - a blade now protruding, savagely, from his eye socket. She drops from the tree, sliding down the trunk with unnecessary flourish. "Can I have this back?" She slaps the hilt of the blade with the flat of her palm - driving it into his brain - before yanking it free with a sickening squealching sound. "Thank you." The silver squirrel shoots back into the tree tops, a blur as she passes among the barren branches, racing back towards her friend. "Miss me?" She releases her hold on the branch beneath her and drops - straight down - to catch herself at the last second and slow her descent. She lands next to Mag, already running. "Which one do you want?"
"Which one /what?/" Magramba's pace, slowed while Aden made her return for the knife, is back up to near-sprint levels, dodging trees and hopping fallen logs, although the scenery is sparsely furnished with forestry, a blessing and a curse for the pair as they attempt to shake their pursuit. "I'll take the big one," he gasps out, glancing over his shoulder to gauge the monitor's progress. Having just come from the Mapleleaf area, his resentment for monitors as a species has made a resurgence lately. The warrior abruptly darts off to the left, coming around to charge at the lizard, blade sweeping up from the ground to bat that halberd away.
The lizard, for it's size navigates the forrest like he is experienced with it, hopping over logs and dodging between trees just as fluidly as the squirrels, but not fluidly enough to dodge the sword. He comes to a hault, staggering backward as his halberd is deflected high into the air and into a tree branch.
The spotted weasel unslings his bow as he runs, notching an arrow as he leaps over the log, and ready to launch it when he lands...
As Mag splits off to race left, Aden does the same to the right. "Weasel it is. See ya in a bit." She sighs; a knife - still bloody and goopy from the lizard - already in her paw. "Oy! Nibble-nibs!" She calls out at their slinky friend - just as an arrow buries itself into a tree beside her, splitting the fabric of her tunic as it passes. "So that's how it is." She grumbles, ducking low and racing towards him from the side. She throws the first knife, aiming low, and another follows it in quick succession - attacking as she closes the gap between them, sliding her short sword free.
With the halberd knocked high, Magramba reverses his swing, bringing the sword down hard from above, the twist of his torso stretching down into his hips for power, aiming to chop the lizard at the shoulder just like he did to the weasel back at camp, or if he moves back, at least split his chest and belly open a bit.
The lizard steps back but the damage is more than a little. The lizards own scaly skin provides some protection but not enough to keep a deep bloody gash running from his shoulder to the bottom of his gut, but not enough to spill his underbelly onto the forest floor. He staggers, then lunges forward, snapping his jaws the squirrel before trying to lop his head off with a halberd.
The weasel manages to actually deflect one knife with his bow, but only one. He yelps as a knife burries itself halfway into his shoulder. Grinding his teeth and working through the pain to draw another arrow and launch it at Aden.
It's going to be a pain to find that knife, later. At least the second one found its way into the weasel, even if it's just a shoulder, though that isn't enough to keep him from shooting at her. "Oh - crud." She spins left, swinging behind a tree without a second to spare - she can feel the arrow tugging the currents of air behind it. Aden throws herself from behind the gnarled oak, pulling her third knife free in her left paw and charging forward, swinging the sword. It's just a play, though - the sword whistles in a harmless arc, glinting in the light - and the knife is flung as it passes. She throws herself in the wake of the blade - short sword clutched in both paws.
Halberds /look/ imposing but they're big, heavy, slow, and rather than combining the best of both worlds between axes and spears, tend to bring the weaknesses of either together in one weapon. There's not a lot of cutting space on the end of that pole, no matter how hard or fast the monitor manages to get it going. Magramba knows this, and works it to his advantage, stepping forward in the wake of the bite and throwing his arm up and at the halberd's pole, stopping it against his armored forearm. Despite the protection and padding, the warrior lets out a shout at the pain of the impact, paw grasping in an unsuccessful bid to latch onto the handle himself. The squirrel uses this time to hack at the lizard's legs while they're unprotected.
The sword slashes across the lizards unprotected flesh, just shy of the beast’s kilt, dropping him to one knee and nearly toppling over the squirrel!
The weasel takes the knife in the paw. Quite literally. His fast reflexes taking over and grabbing the knife by the handle before it hit him in the face.
A smirk over comes his snout right before the sword blade cuts him from side to side. The weasel drops his bow, clutching his stomach as his inner workings spill out of the wound to his gut and collapsing to his knees. "You...you..." he kills over, a look of shock more than pain on his face before falling forward.
"MAG!" Aden's head spins around with Mag's shout of pain, eyes wide with panic - she isn't even able to celebrate the horrible murder she's committed, lying at her feet. With an uncharacteristic snarl, she races towards the fight - but something gives her pause. The fox - there was a fox! She spins around, sliding the last of her daggers free as she casts a wary glance about - but that can wait. She continues to race towards the lizard and squirrel, muzzle rippled in a growl: she'll deal with that later.
Flailing lizard arms, with pointy claws at the end, are never something you want anywhere near your personage, and so Magramba recoils as the monitor tumbles forward, stumbling back away, two claws catching him across the face (it's always the face) in the process. Rather than try to chop down at the scaly thing, the warrior lowers the tip of his sword and then thrusts abruptly upwards, intent on putting the encounter to an end.
The monitor lizard let's out a scream as the sword burries itsway through his intestines and out his back. His body stiffens, both paws clutching at the metalic object in his torso. "GRK!" his eyes begin to lose their life before the burly beast falls limp upon the squirrel.
If nothing else he proved to be a distraction to Aden. As moves to aid her fellow party member a cuttlass appears around the tree, stopping short of slitting her throat. "Ah Ah ah!" The fox shouts, "That's far enough lassy." Much of the cross fox's exotic black and orange fur is covered by a simple vest and shark tooth necklace. He wears a pair of ratty trousers that hardly button across his obese black furred stomach. "I always told them, the simplest methods work best. No they had to rush into danger and get themselves killed." The fox tut tuts his slain companions, "Let's see if you are a better listener than my stalwart companions. I could slit your friends throat and then battle you...or you can leave the sword in the lizard then get onto your back with your paws over your head and you both might live. Your choice." The foxes paw on his cutlass is steady, "And you lass can keep your paws where I can see them..."
As the lizard goes down atop Mag, she loses her sight of him. "Ma - !" She stops short, but not short enough to keep the steel from nipping at the curve of her throat. "Nice trick, lard-arse." She growls, eyeing the fox sideways, as her grip tightens on the hilt of her sword. "You okay, Mag?" Her voice is tense and hoarse as she swallows, the movement scraping another shallow nick against her neck. The drops of ruby offer a sharp contrast to the silver of her fur - though the combo matches the blood on the steel quite nicely.
"Yeah, I'm alright." He's just covered with gross lizard entrails; Magramba worms out from under the monitor, leaving his sword behind. The risk isn't worth it, apparently. "Way I see it, we did you a favor," the warrior starts off, knowing that a good dialogue is always a good place to start in the business of staying alive. "Freeing you up to get all the glory when you meet up with your boss." Please have a boss.
The fox would agree. He would rather survive to die of his own vices than die honorably in combat...especially like the poor weasel behind him. "You just killed two of my friends lass. I'd be carefull with name calling if I were you." The fox positions himself behind Aden with his blade never leaving her neck, "I bet I'm up for promotion when Rojir hears about this...now lass, the monitor lizard has a length of rope on his kilt. You take it and bind yer friend..." The fox looks to the monitor and peers, realizing that the lizard didn't take the rope with him, "Blast...uh, new plan. Squirrel. We are going to march down to the camp. You stay ahead of me, and no funny business or yer friend get's it!"
"Yeah, see? We're just here to help." Aden allows herself to be repositioned and led, obediently. As they go, the squirrel - with slow, calculated moves, is twisting her blade behind her back, towards the fox at her side. It's hard to keep an eye on all of her /and/ Mag, at the same time. "We're full of information, too!" She continues, in a much lighter tone of voice. "Like this: when taking hostages, it is wise to take their weapons. I'll help." With an acrobat's reflexes, she jabs the blade sideways, behind her back - jamming it between his ribs - and keels backwards, twisting away from his blade. The last of her knives follows it as she plunges it into his chest. "You worried me." She calls to Mag, over her shoulder.
"You worried /me,/" Magramba calls back, already rolling the monitor over to pull his sword from the corpse. His left paw is held empty, carried gingerly against his side while his right does all the work. That pole-stopping stunt isn't something you can just shake off. "Running around getting almost-kidnapped," he grumbles, wiping the sword clean on the reptile's kilt. "Quit that." The squirrel glances over at Ransk, wondering if he needs to be finished off or not before they carry on.
After Magramba disconnected, the room stopped broadcasting – and I did not get the last two poses. But, to make a long story short: Ransk dies a horrible, messy death.
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