|
The sky looks greasy, grey, streaked with rust-red befitting a ghost town on top of a forever-burning, underground pyre of poison. The graffiti that lined the streets on their way in warns people to turn around, to go back, and seem more ominous than the official signs with their official seals warning residents and passersby of the same.
"GOING DOWN?" one tag asks, only a few feet from a steaming fissure in the ground; the smell of sulfur and ash boils up. The earth seems to rumble softly, like an engine is deep underground, purring and sputtering sleepily, idling.
In the burrow, the Hosts are teeming, and tense. Their hostages, gone; their Soul Jars, destroyed; their allies, hamstrung. If they are not ready for an attack, they may very well be planning one of their own.
Vasha loiters at the entrance to the shaft, wearing his black tactical suit with his obnoxious American Flag and Bald Eagle 'These Colors Don't Run' T-shirt worn over it all. He's bristling with weapons, has a massive flamethrower tank strapped to his back with the nozzle end in his right hand. There's an AK-47 strapped to his left shoulder, another across his back, pistols down his thighs, grenades on his bandolier, and ammo and magazines filling his hip pouches. There's a respirator mask on the top of his head, a tactical ear piece in his left ear, and he's working an Apple ear bud into his right ear. Then down comes the mask, and a test of his radio. "Radio check. How do you copy."
"I copy with a xerox usually," Rena says, sticking up a hand for Guy to high five. She's dressed pretty normally, a long dried blood and grass stained shirt with a flak jacket obscuring its strange text. She's flipping around her knife to show off every so often and also to make her less nervous
Guy arrives on his bike with Rena, and instead of wearing his usual leather jacket, he’s wearing a full leather duster. He high-fives Rena, and glances around the area. “Gonna be a hell of a show, I think...”
Artie comes walking up having parked a little ways off. Backpack and spear on his shoulders, his hands hang limply on the shaft. An aura of searing heat and embers swirls around him obscuring the lines of his body. "Hi guys. I hope we don't blow up a mine today." He jokes quietly.
"I copy, KGBeast." Leta offers to to the mouthpiece from about two feet away from Vasha as the radio crackles with his voice. "Or should I say NKVDemon? FSBadass?" She continues to prattle off stupid nonsense codenames - barely even paying attention to the reception of her jokes - as she runs down the mental checklist of her equipment. Shotgun? Check. Ammo? Check. Pistols? Check. The twiggy Mastigos is currently wearing her hair in a tight bun, and she's wearing a tactical suit similar to Vasha's -- though, rather than a silly t-shirt, she's wearing a flak jacket -- and draped about her shoulders is a beautiful black hooded cloak with gold trim. She adjusts her goggles, and lets the respirator dangle around her neck. "Holy shit, I am so fucking excited to have this many guns - especially now that I know how to use all of them - you have no fucking idea." She hefts the flamethrower for emphasis, and throws a thumbs up.
"GopniKilla, I think is more appropriate. I work for neither agency any longer." Vasha shuffles forward onto the lift for the trip down into the mines. He strikes the pilot on his flamethrower, which hisses quietly in bright blue flame, then points the nozzle towards the ceiling so others can board with a modicum of safety. "Your excitement will fade once you realize what they do to living flesh. But I'm glad you're excited." Though muffled by his mask, he raises his voice a bit, "The gauntlet here is paper thin, and Spirits will be able to manifest super easy. Barely an inconvenience. Keep your ephemeral weapon handy, you'll probably need it. Let's get to it."
"Shit looks rough here," Rena confirms for Guy. "You gonna be good with all the noise and fire? Obviously I am, but you?"
The stretch of overgrown meadow sways gently in front of the party, deceptively peaceful given the firestorm that brews in the earth, the teeming, murderous monsters enraged over the loss of their sacrifices and sacraments.
Visible to those with Exorcist's Eye, and hovering in Twilight, a snake-like spirit coils upon itself, accompanying the party docilely.
Guy takes off his boots and stows them in his bike, stretching and flexing his toes before he lifts his hands and closes his eyes. Wiry hairs erupt from his hands and feet as pits open on his face, and his fingertips extend into 3 inch long bony claws. When he opens his eyes, they’re those of a snake, yellow and vertically slitted. “I’ll be fine. I will find the scent of my enemy and frenzy to hunt it.” A forked tongue flicks out of his mouth.
"Good copy," replies Liezel, tone flat, calm, cold. She's armed simply- two pistols and an assault rifle, wearing a flak jacket and a respirator with her tactical earpiece in. She's dressed in old fatigues and a tank top beneath the jacket, combat boots on and a knife shoved in her hand- her Orichalcum ritual blade. She's got her pistol- a heavy son of a bitch that's straight from her service days, an obscenely expensive looking laser sight strapped onto a scope slide that seems a touch out of place. She's got the blade held underhand, supporting her firing hand and the pistol in it, weapon trained at the ground.
"That sounds like a rapper's name, not a comic book villain. Where's the panache? The excitement?" For all her protests, Leta shrugs - her interest in codenames evaporating when she realizes there's no rise to be provoked from the surly Ukrainian. She shifts the configuration of her weapons one last time, swinging the Benelli M4 into position and letting the flamethrower hang from it's strap. God she looks fucking ridiculous covered in all this nonsense. Like she's cosplaying a character from Metal Gear.
Taking a second, Arthur flips a set of goggles over his eyes and squats down to rummage in his pack, extracting some flashlights, a lantern, and some glowsticks. "Oh here. I brought along these just in case. I-I assumed it'd b-be dark in the mine."
Standing he offers the light sources for anyone to carry along. "I figured we could clip on the g-glowsticks so we dont lose each other."
"If you have a choice between dropping a host that's on fire and one that's not, drop the burning one. If these things drop while on fire, that's it. The rats burn, the spirit shards with them. Obviously, do what you have to do to keep alive. But if you've got a choice, drop the lit ones." Vasha's head is tilted from one side to the other until it cracks, and then he hops in place a few times, causing his gear to rattle and clank, just limbering up a little before the shooting starts. "And if you're on fire duty, keep that shit away from the vampires. Please and thank you."
From the vantage point of the cemetery, the coming-and-going of Rat Hosts is visible, non-stop, at the main entrance. A handful trickle in, or trickle out, and then there will be a still moment before another appears.
"Gimme the all clear when you're done torching the cunts," Rena says, her normal too loud going to a hush. "If I get burned things'll go bad."
A push of a half dozen or so Rat Hosts surface from the burrow, like the ground is just belching them up, and they start to move in different attendant directions, leaving the entrance bare, for a moment.
"Oh... Yeah. Guy. Rena. Try not to touch me. I'm... Kinda on fire right now." Artie mutters into the radio as people start lining up for what comes next. "That said. Who is a-acting as leader and calling our sh-shots?"
"I have clear sight lines. Will open fire once you do, priority on burning targets. Follow orders and keep fire off of V-class allies. If you catch fire, I'll put it out, try to stay calm." Liezel murmurs into the headset. She's crouched in the graveyard- not least of which due to her Legacy's fondness for such places- staying low and taking aim.
"I think Boris Badenov is in charge. But I'll do whatever Guy-Sensei says," Rena shrugs
“I’m for avoiding them to conserve strength; but I’m also not the stealthiest,” he whispers. “And Rena, follow my lead, but once nobody is home in my head, do your best to work with everyone else...”
"His codename is actually the Crimea River," Leta offers in a deadpan. "Get it right."
Visible in Twilight: There is extensive spiritual activity here. They are running back and forth across the Gauntlet on a whim, mostly Vermin spirits, small, rat-like things with animal-intelligence that scurry away when they see the group.
"Leta, you fry the pair on the right, I'll fry the pair on the left, meet in the middle? Either way, we need to close on them." Vasha pats Liezel on the top of her head twice as he crouches beside her. "I've led company sized elements before. If you're all up to taking orders. If not, no skin off my back.
We're not going to kill anyone from here, though." He motions for those who are coming for an ambush to... come forward for the ambush, and starts moving forward in short bursts of speed, low to the ground, from cover to cover, until he can get himself in a position for the final charge. He takes cover behind a tree and looks back to see who all is coming forward and into what cover, and where.
"I agree. L-let's avoid the little ones and get inside. We can clean up afterwards."Arthur says.
As people move to ambush, Artie darts into the entrance and waits for the others using the Accelerated speed.
"I don't mind taking orders," Liezel confirms for Vasha. "And maybe you won't be killing anyone from here, but for me?"
Liezel smiles faintly.
"What was it you said?
Super easy. Barely an inconvenience."
She does up and move closer, keeping her distance, well aware she only needs to get so close. Her weapon might look like a pistol, but it has the heart of a sniper rifle.
Rena darts up to Boris Vasha and waits near him for the all clear. And tries her best to hide her fear.
Leta clicks her teeth, winking at Vasha as she readys her precious flamethrower in response - biting her tongue instead of making an inappropriate comment - and mirroring Vasha's movements, taking up a similar position. She should be able to effectively cover the rightmost group with her fire.
Guy rolls forward, stance low and predatory, the Acceleration making him flicker in and out as he moves to one of the forward-most cover positions, near the left side.
The Rat Hosts don't notice when Arthur bolts just inside the lip of the burrow's entrance, clinging to the dark. They don't notice anything. The three pair of them are moving further away. They all appear to be the standard variant of Host.
"I'll tell you when the worst of the fire is over, Rena," Vasha assures the vampire once she's reached his cover. "It'll be about a two second burn, and then you'll be good to close. Be careful." Vasha glances over at her and gives her a nod of the head, then swings his nozzle up over his cover and takes careful aim. Over the radio comes his voice, quieter. "Engage on three, Leta. One. Two. Three."
There's a flare of heat and light and the roar of fire spraying through the air.
Liezel holds her position and aim, her senses focused enough to make the distance between her and her targets absolutely trivial. She's waiting for the first one on fire and still up.
Leta can't really shout "yippee ki yay, motherfucker" aloud without giving away their position, but if anyone is looking closely at her facial expression, it... gives off the impression. The spraying flames cast her face with light, revealing a stupidly huge grin. Anyone listening very carefully could probably hear the Mastigos's chittering giggle. Friendship ended with investigation, now fire is my best friend.
It all happens so quickly! A burst of flame engulfs two of the Rat Hosts, another pair erupts in a likewise gout of flames, and then zipping bullets pierce through the thick hide of the Hosts, shattering bones and pulverizing organs upon contact.
Over comms from Arthur: "Heads up. I've got... A lot of hosts down the tunnel about ... 50 yards. Too many to count. If... Yeah. If we use the tunnels we can maybe surprise em in smaller groups. H-holding position."
The two that are on fire are sprinting off to scatter, trying to outrun the flames - they can't.
"Leta, engage one of the unburned pair. Nearest you. I'll hit the other. Go." Vasha once more warns Rena, "One more short burst. You can close on these two once they're lit. On three, okay? One. Two. Three." Once more Vasha pops over his cover, firing off a brief jet of flame at one of the remaining non-torch Beshilu. The jet arcs through the air and sprays into the Beshilu's side, setting it alight. Vasha drops back behind his cover and radios back, "Copy, Artie. We're mopping up out here."
As the flames fly, Liezel's promise of fire support pays off. Gunfire rattles, sounding far more like a sniper squadron than one woman with a magicked-up gun, and the two enjoying Vasha's impromptu sauna . "Copy that, GK. Empty and reloading. Do we need cleanup on the runners? I'll move up otherwise. That tunnel sounds like a good killzone if we can get them coming into it, over."
Leta's little giggles turn into full-blown cackling as she turns her still-flaming weapon on the not-burning rat. Well. It wasn't burning. Well. Now it is very much on fire, and Leta ducks back behind her cover.
Guy darts now into the tunnel entrance, staying low, and begins listening and smelling the air.
Rena wants so badly to shout and taunt and caper but she doesn't. Instead she dashes at one of the burning rats, and quietly runs it through with her formerly beat up pocket knife, her body barely even registering the fire.
"I count six targets neutralized. Can I get confirmation, over?" Liezel murmurs over the comms as she breaks cover and darts towards the others, pocketing her empty mag and clicking another into place, popping the slide to chamber a new round.
"Their lives are over," Rena says, doing a crotch chop. "Y'all are fucking awesome. Any chance I could suck one of you while we got a spirit to fix you up? I don't want to run low."
With all the hostiles down, Vasha rises from his cover and gives the all-clear signal to Liezel before radioing back to her. "Affirmative, overwatch. Six hostiles down. We're advancing to the cave, I'll cover your advance from here." Vasha takes up a position at the cave mouth and motions for everyone to move up and move in, watching their backs as they do so. Vasha gives Rena a double-take at the question and suggests, "Once we're all linked up, sure."
Artie waves absently to Guy as he appears before squinting into the darkness.
The fire absorbs the rats, and the rats inside the rats, and their bodies leave smoldering piles on the surface of the burrow. But they scream in death. They roar in those few seconds of being caught on fire, maybe too loudly.
Visible in Twilight: The snake-like healing spirit winds narrowly through the grass of the meadow, forked-tongue flicking, following the party.
With the happenstance guards dispatched, the group is able to move into the main entrance of the burrow and assess the tunnels that Artie had found, and Guy had scouted in advance: one that leads to the main chamber where prisoners had once been held, one that leads to a faraway, private room, and another that leads to a near-surface den comprised of another half-dozen or so Rat Hosts that were, at least until a moment ago, sleeping. Based on the sounds, at least one of them has been woken up by the screaming and is starting to shuffle towards the entrance to see what all the fuss is about.
"I don't think we have time for blowjobs right now, but..." Leta turns to wherever Rena is and mimes a call me sign with her free hand. Gremlinosity done, she turns back - following Vasha to the mouth of the cave. She tucks a freshly lit cigarette between her lips and inhales, stifling a giggle. Y'know. For Yantra reasons. Just in case. Yes. Leta did light her cigarette with the ignition flame at the end of her brand new toy.
Guy gestures silently to the others. '5 that way. 1 awake'
"If nobody else volunteers, come to me, it'll be faster than waiting for me to catch up judging by how you move. I've got your provisions, over." Liezel reports, still booking it to cover the distance with everyone else.
Rena does indeed blow a kiss, before going to drink from Liezel. She also asks, "does anyone here know ASL? It'd be a good time for it, I bet."
"Can anyone... Get the woken rat?" Artie whispers.
Liezel studies the sensations of being fed on, doubly so the magical healing to follow from the spirit, before responding. "I can if everyone can stay out of sight 'til I catch up, over."
Vasha briefly gestures with his free hand, and for those unclear on what Guy's hand gestures were, they're now fluent in ASL. And every other language, for that matter. Quick on the heels of that, Vasha unclips a pair of grenades and holds them up. "Toss in two, spray the room, no more rat problem. Leta, you and Rena can take the lead. Burn and stun. Juno, Artie, you can lob the grenades and I'll lay the fire down. We can regroup here and get Rena and Guy topped up. Guy, you good?" Vasha asks the question as he starts walking towards the sleeping room.
"I could use the top off, since we have a moment, and the healing snake."
Artie gives an affirmative nod and collects a grenade.
"When we're ready then."
"Just tell me when and I'll hit 'em, Drago," Rena says, bouncing in place, like a boxer who just took an upper.
"Got your provisions here. Give me a second to kill the audio and we'll move, over." She holds out one arm towards Guy so he can get a snack, trusting the snake to heal her afterwards, using her knife in hand to carve a sigil into the air, her nimbus flowing as she does and sharing the sound of angelic voices layered with the percussion of thunder- or guns. That done, she shoves her knife into her boot and takes a grenade. "Nothing outside the burrow will hear anything from inside. We're good to go."
Guy moves in to drain 3 Vitae worth from her, licking the wound neatly closed.
"In one of the Rocky books, they mention that Ivan Drago's loss lead him to flee the USSR in disgrace- and this is irrelevant chatter, so I'm going to shut up." She puffs her cigarette innocently, focusing on her surroundings. "Beneath us, the Beshilu are going to town on the Gauntlet. Burrowing yes, obviously, but also just... chewing the thing full of fucking holes. In case anybody cared."
At Vasha's command, Leta creeps into the shadows ahead of Rena - flamethrower at the ready. Thanks to the fact that Liezel soundproofed the group, the scorching jets of flame that sprays down the unaware rats -- and the Mastigos's cackle -- go entirely unheard.
Rena is quick. She sprints up to one of the burning ones with perfect speed and bisects it with a knife that used to have trouble cutting apples before remembering what the plan is next and bolting back behind Leta
As Rena darts back past Artie, the wizened takes that as his cue and dashes forward , biting the pin free with his teeth before throwing the 'nade like a baseball.
It goes boom. Or it would if they could hear it.
Vasha rushes forward around Rena and Leta once they deal with the lead scout. He crouches beside the entrance to the sleeping chamber, waiting for Juno and Arthur to toss in the happy funtime pineapples of death. Once they're thrown in, however, Vasha swings around the entrance and cuts loose with a full burst from the tank on his bank. Fire sputters out of the nozzle at the last, which is when he ducks back around the doorway and covers his ears. Which are already covered. And have ear buds in them. Even so. Kaboom. Silent kaboom, but even so. Vasha glances back into the room to confirm their work, then gives everyone a thumbs up. "Clear. Back to the main chamber. Rena, come top up." Vasha breaks from his cover, tugging up his sleeve as he heads back for the main room.
Rena nods. She winks at Leta, puts her fingers in a V in and sticks her tongue through it. "Who wants to get sucked this time?"
The awoken, shuffling Rat Host roars its agony at being caught on fire and pummeled, stabbed to death by Rena's lightning quick attack, set on fire by the pleased Leta.
The sound doesn't travel, but the light does, and the Beshilu slumbering in the dead-end burrow start to rouse, opening their beady eyes into the flickering light of another flamethrower volley from Vasha, but their reactions are too slow and not enough, because another wave of fire rips into their den and right on that blast of heat and flame's heels bounces in those innocent little clinking baubles -- until they explode.
The sound is contained but the structural damage is not, and this part of the burrow starts to close in on itself, collapsing and forcing the group back towards the main entrance.
Liezel whips round to huck the grenade down as directed and ducks back to wait for the grenades to trigger in the wake of the flamethrower, reaching down the tunnel to claim the fire and pull it to herself, ending her vision spell in the process and reducing the fire once controlled for the moment to a match-sized flame at the tip of her knife, which she keeps well away from both Rena and Guy. Once the cave in ceases, she lets the noise spell end, as well.
Slipping a little ways up the tunnel, Artie spies ahead to the big chamber and the vamps can hear his heart skip a beat at the sheer number of hosts he spots.
He slinks back to the group. "Uhm... I think there are about... 60 hosts in there. Maybe more but they're all... Sq-squirmy so it's hard to tell. I'm gonna think of a plan."
"That is...an unmanageable amount, without tactics. A plan...is good." Guy speaks up.
"We've already eliminated a fifth of that number and we're doing fine. We just need to find a way to split that number up and pick them apart. Right now we have the advantage of surprise and superior firepower." Vasha says this as he sort of ... reappears amid the conversation. He points off to one of the small branching tunnels, "This leads to a room full of traps. One of them is supernatural." To the other tunnel he points, "That one leads to a different vantage of the main chamber. There's one hostile in there, we can probably bypass it until we're mopping up if you like." Vasha pauses to light up a cigarette, himself, though his eyes are watching the exits warily.
"I just really have no idea how to pull my dick out while I'm wearing this ridiculous onesie," Leta offers to Rena as an aside, patting herself down and feigning confusion. Then, the Queer-ent turns her sight upon the two tunnels, peering at them and jotting down ideas in a notebook pulled from an interior pocket of her cloak.
"So, about that, Vasha. I have some bad news. I don't know whether or not splitting our team between both paths will be beneficial, but I do know that the Beshilu are likely very prepared for us at this point. Additionally, due to the intense strain they've put on the Gauntlet, we're going to encounter a lot of nasty, big spirits. Spirits of Smog, Entropy, Neglect, Over-Industrialization. Y'know. Normal Philly stuff, but bigger."
"Do we know where their human ally is?" Liezel asks quietly. " If we know he isn't here, I can fill that room with fire. Perfected Fire. It might not catch all of them, but it's pretty likely to catch most.
If we DON'T know if he's there or not, it's too risky to chance killing him accidentally with magic."
"Why the fuck does it matter if there's a human there? Like I get that it's a felony, but we'll all be here to cover it up," Rena says, not liking how skittish the uberwizards are getting
The wizened seems to be in deep focus as he listens to the info everyone seems to know.
"How... Bad would it be if we just collapsed the cave on them and... It were on fire?" Artie queries.
"Is there a...Rat...King we need to take out, or is this just a 'kill 'em all' situation?" Guy asks.
"We knew that coming in here. Our close order combatants have ephemeral enchantments, as do our kasserite rounds. Approach, identify, engage, and clear. Same methods, different targets." Vasha plucks his cigarette from his lips as he squints back at Leta, exhaling sharply up into the air. "We have to keep moving forward. Keep the initiative." Vasha takes another drag and shrugs at Artie's question, "If we bring the roof down, there's no guarantee we get them all. Bringing it down after we've rooted out every last rat suits me fine. But to do that, we need to clear it room by room. Find them and fry them."
"I mean, the other problem is that they based a game franchise and a series of movies on this place. It might be a ghost town, but people know about it. It will not go unnoticed -- especially considering people live nearby -- if we just... fucking collapse the place." Beat. "Obviously we need to keep moving forward - I'm just suggesting more caution."
She trails off, taking more notes in her notepad.
"Good news, though. I just got off the phone with Future Leta, and we do not, in fact, encounter other humans on this mission. So. Feel free to fuck shit up with impunity."
"They didn't base the games on it. Only the movie. There wasn't a second one," Rena adds, deadly serious
"Ok then... How about we just... Use the tunnel to our advantage. We could get them running our way up here... And mow them down a few at a time. Make them more manageable. If you uhm m-magic people can do a little of y-your mojo so they can't swarm over each other too bad. You said you can make us invisible right? What about the fire? Can you make fire invisible?" Artie finally offers, laying out a plan.
The healing-snake spirit, still in Twilight, coils around the group, in an almost protective 'We Are Groot' sort of way, rubs against Vasha's leg with its tail, flicking it up the operative's calf.
Liezel offers quietly, "I could do that, yeah. But invisible fire means we can't enter the room and you'd all be reliant on me to tell you when it's safe. GK?" She looks to Vasha. "What play are you backing, here? I can provide fire support- or fire."
"I can make it impossible to notice us, but I cannot make us invisible," Leta offers. "... and invisible fire sounds like a recipe for disaster."
"We aren't going in the room remember? B-bottlenecking with the tunnel." Arthur grins devilishly.
He bends down and draws in the dirt. "Y-you make invisible fire and snake it around the edges of the room. It becomes big oven and they can't run away without getting burned. And then we make em spot us here. They come to attack. We slaughter 'em right w-where we are now."
"R-really the only problem is the pile of c-corpses." The changeling points out to finish.
"Fucking Americans," Vasha complains in Ukrainian before flicking his cigarette on the ground and stepping it out with his boot. He hoists his weapon, pets at the air with his hand at the spirit not everyone can see, and mutters a quiet, "Thank you," to the spirit likewise in Ukrainian. "Always fucking hollywood movies with stupid fucking idioms..." His grumbling carries him towards the room chock full of rats, via the side tunnel and its overlook. "I like Artie's plan. It's good. But we should do it from the overlook. From there we can line up our weapons and just swap them out when they're empty. You put fire on the exits, get them lit up, and we can just rip them apart from above. Rena and Guy can guard the approach to us and slash or the entryway to our overlook in the event they start coming up the walls at us. We can command that whole room from up there."
"I can fight on the wall, so that will work just fine." Guy points out.
Liezel nods slowly. "So make them fish in a barrel except the barrel is fire?" She considers. "I think I can do that. But that will be a HELL of a lot of fire. Might be better for our V-class friends to either watch our backs in the tunnel approach or-" She shrugs a little. "That's pretty much the best way to keep the raging amounts of fire out of sight."
"Either way, I am ready when you lot are."
"Are you guys not ok if the fire is invisible? C-cuz I'm actually immune to fire... Not that it matters much. I figured if you can't see it it might not be so bad." Artie queries toward the vamps.
"I can mitigate the issue with seeing all the fire. Be out of my mind with the mission 'kill all them that climb'." Guy answers.
"You can just call us Vampires. It ain't exactly a secret we're keepin' right now," Rena says, rolling her eyes at Liezel. "I think I can handle it. Colossus's pick me up gave me enough strength to push back on it."
"Yeah, Juno. You can just call them vampires," like duuuuh. Vasha's 'American Accent' sounds like someone from Texas went to Germany via London. It is not good. But he tries it out anyway. He starts the march up the narrow corridor leading to the overlook, still on his guard with the flamethrower nozzle leading the way.
Leta is following Vasha - slightly to the right of him, specifically - and she fucking cackles at the impression.
"Sorry. Vampires, then. I- sorry. Trying to be discrete," mumbles Liezel, tone crumpled and flat.
"I would not test your protections with this fire," Liezel warns Artie. "It's Supernal- it's not just fire, it's what Fire is supposed to be. Your protections might not hold and if they don't, it will be Very Bad." She rises and follows Vasha, already rehearsing the spells she'll need to tangle to spread the flame to ring the room below.
The tunnel leads to a second level, a mezzanine-esque overlook, tunnels snaking off into the dark. And a Rat Host could come out of any one of them at any time. But the tunnel to that overlook gives them no trouble, except for the view Vermin spirits that dart here and there in the dark and in the Twilight.
"Supernal? Wh-what's that? Cuz to my magic, fire is fire. Here. Let's test?" Artie offers a hand that's still coated in heat haze and ember.
Once they reach the mezzanine level overlooking the central chamber, Vasha carefully, quietly takes a knee and begins to slip some of his weapons from his person. Three hand grenades are set before himself in grooves in the floor to keep them from rolling. His spare rifle is set down next, followed by him unstrapping his first one and taking a moment to load its undermount grenade launcher. His pistols he leaves in place, however. He gestures to his dwindling bandolier of grenades in question. Want a happy fun ball? They really leave an impression!
Leta, meanwhile, leaves her Flamethrower to dangle from the shoulder strap, unslinging the Benelli M4 that she's been pampering for a week as if it were her actual child. She fetches her trusty casting tool from it's leg holster, and she waves it experimentally in her free hand while muttering some words in a language that -- despite Vasha's spell -- only Vasily and Juno understand. There's a flare of her nimbus and then the spell takes hold. The wand is placed back into the holster, and she racks a shell into the chamber with a very satisfying chck-chck.
Liezel had planned to take a little more time to get the spell prepared, but when she catches wind, even brief ones, that they've been noticed, she starts to sing. She wrote a song for this occasion (or more her player rewrote an appropriate song to suit), and as she lifts her voice, the pinprick of orange flame at the tip of her knife sails down beneath her. Small, harmless, unconcerning- until it flares impossibly, brilliantly white and erupts in a literal ring of fire that swallows the edges of the room and leaves everyone's hair rustling dramatically in the breeze in the tunnels as the fire devours air and negative pressure pulls in more from the tunnels they just walked.
"God damn you, every one
You're a rotted people try'n to crown a rotten son
Think you can't be outfought
you can't be outdone
you can't be outmatched
you can't be outrun?
NO."
Once they're all in position, Vasha plucks up a grenade and pulls the pin and releases the clip to start the countdown to fun! He glances aside at Liezel, waiting to sense her nimbus and the knowledge the fire is lit before rising up from his cover and hurling the grenade down over the mezzanine, landing it right into a pile of cushions and trash to spare the sound of the grenade striking stone. It still makes a sound, of course, just less so than otherwise. And then he drops back down and covers his ears again.
As some of them make their way onto the mezzanine overlook, none are spotted... except Guy. First one, and then two, and then more of the Beshilu turn towards the Kindred, curling their dirty lips and jowls back to reveal a mess of jagged, dagger-like teeth, beady eyes narrowing, coarse fur bristling.
The fire blooms outward, hypnotically, instantly, absorbing at least a half dozen of the Beshilu instantly, turning their bodies to ash, and the literal ring of fire circles the chamber, flaring upwards and blowing a dry, thick heat.
The grenade clatters down amidst a crush of Rat Hosts as they panic and rage to get away from the searing flames, exploding from underneath and jerking body parts off of bodies.
Guy walks out to the edge of the ledge and then steps up and sideways to stand horizontal next to the ledge the others are set to fire from. As the Rat Hosts scream and scurry and notice him, he plants his feet and lets out an inhuman shriek, like a snake hiss and a dinosaur scream mixed together. The claws on his fingertips turn black, and begin to gleam in an unusual way, becoming so sharp they kinda hurt to look at.
Artie steps up behind Guy as he finds purchase on the wall. With a wicked smirk he sets his feet and directs his spear towards the lot of rats and waits. "Come get a taste of this... Tin, buttholes!"
chck-chck. BOOM.
Leta whoops at the top of her lungs as a volley of buckshot from her Benelli splatters one of the flaming beshilu. It might be more effective to swap to the flamethrower once the swarms are more dense, but for now, this'll do just fine.
A Rat Host rushes Rena. Unfortunately for it, she's faster than she has ever been in her life. She dances around it, showing off as she pokes and prods it with her knuckles and elbows to keep it off balance. And then when the thing can't tell where she is and has its back exposed, she cuts into it, not unlike a chainsaw. As the thing burns into two seperate crisps, she shouts out, "Hey, Ratfucks! Stop hidin' and get your ass over here! I got revenge to take!"
Rats sprang at their attackers, leaping onto the walls to confront Guy with an unsuccessful attack, onto the mezzanine to attack Vasha, claming down on his kevlar, and the others, slashing and biting and raging, fur and flesh singed, the smell of the burning protein thick in their, co-mingling with the sulfur and ash. It's enough to choke on.
Several attacks slash, and miss, and Dread Powers put some of the Beshilu suddenly close to Artie, unloading a powerful attack directly into his armor, which blocks all of it.
Vasha waits for the explosion of the first grenade before he begins reaching for the second one. It's a fluke that he catches sight of the massive Beshilu bearing down on him in that moment. Rather than pluck up the grenade, Vasha pushes away into a backwards roll and comes up with his sidearm in his hand. There's a rapid series of discharges from the weapon once he's back on his knee, two to the chest and one to the head which sends the creature toppling back over and landing on his prepared grenades. Vasha sighs and opens his arms wide. "Really?"
Standing steady, the sole changeling present is a bit surprised when a rat blinks into being beside him.
It swipes with all its heart at him and finds his hide a bit too tough. What's worse for the poor sod, is the plume of smoke coming from its hands as the shell of elemental flame burns it for its audacity. Artie barely grunts at the impact as his head turns.
Target 1: acquired.
One of the largest of the Hosts roars in Vasha's face, and then it's chest cavity and face roar a different tune as the bullets plume black-red blood from its new holes, and it tumbles backwards. Yes. On the grenades.
Two of the Rat Hosts somehow managed to escape, burrowing down through the ground!
In a blur of motion, Arthur and his spear twirl arond and the air sings with the sound of a blade cutting through flesh once... twice.... Three times.
The blows are astonishingly forceful for a kid so wiry looking. His strikes are sharp and precisely placed to unbalance the rats but he hits so hard the first 2 explode into sprays of blood and discorporated rats, flying back towards the flames hopefully. The third target however just manages to keep his humanoid shape as it gets knocked flat.
"Crap! Sorry. I hit 'em t-too hard! My bad!" Artie apologizes.
Leta sidesteps past Vasha's fallen grenades, letting her shotgun dangle from her shoulder strap as she unslings the flamethrower, lighting it's igniter before bathing a small cluster of beshilu in cleansing fire.
"Yippee ki yay, you rat mothafuckaaaas," Leta cackles as the spray from her weapon casts a wash of light over her features. The flames reflect in the lenses of her goggles as she continues to joyously whoop and holler like a Batman villain. Someone will be taking a Firearms (Heavy Weapons) spec when this is over.
Three more rats try their weird little vermin hands at stopping Rena. But as they stutter and flicker through time towards her, she slices, dices and juliennes through them, leaving splatters of poisonous black ichor around like the world's smelliest Jackson Pollock. Unfortunately a tide of small actual rats begin to flow around her and she shouts into the radio, "Hey, Guys? I fucked up and I killed three that weren't on fire. Can someone come help me kill these?"
Every single person in the party was next subjected to an attack, but the Beshilu, caught off-guards as they were, enraged and injured by the fire, corralled here in their own warren, were off a step, the Time magic too strong, too quick, and every single ragged, fearsome attack snapped into the air, like a vice slamming, except one, burying a bite into Artie's torso and wrenching before releasing being struggled away.
The ground started to rumble, shaking violently, and whatever it was, it was coming from very close to them. A much larger Beshilu, approximately the size of a VW bus, came out of the wall alongside the group, almost forcing them back the way they came with its forward surge, lest they be trampled as it emerged from its makeshift hole. Its front claws were giant, like fanged oars and despite its size, it was quite sleek, and long, all the better for getting through tunnels of its own making. It turned towards the group, screeched at them, and started to slam its feet into the ground, quaking and disrupting the earth like it was the other end of a bounce house.
Vasha somehow manages to retain his footing as the whole earth shudders around him. He calls over the radio, "Heading your way, Rena. Good job." As in 'these things happen, you let us know, we can fix that problem'. Vasha comes rushing her way faster than any human has cause to move, makes certain Rena herself is out of the way, and very quickly roasts the writhing carpet of fleeing rats. Fwoosh! Apparently he's handling problems in order of receipt rather than in order of epic entrance music.
Guy howls in the face of the Rat Host within reach, his screaming claws ripping through it and carrying on to slice through the stone wall like ten lightsabers through styrofoam. He howls some more.
"We will close your eyes tonight
to symphonies of blinding light
You're memories of old decay
Just transmissions echoing away
It's in this world that you will die
Your pyres rising to the sky!"
Liezel is very much unprepared for the quaking, and is immediately thrown off her feet. The impact is, for her, essentially nil- no Matter Master has issues with getting bounced around a little- and whips her head back up, levelling her weapon at the massive rat encroaching on their tunnel. Her gun cracks- just once this time- and the massive shell crashes into the giant beast's skull, the sheer impact of the gunshot hurling it off its feet and ringing its bell, all the while singing uninterrupted- one of the benefits of those enchantments she's carrying is that she is absolutely, inhumanly unflappable.
"We'll end you, every one
See you burn inside the fires of a perfect sun
for the deaths at your hands
the necks you have wrung
the theft of those bodies
now your toll is rung, OH!"
Maintaining his footing, but only just barely as the FatRat appears, Artie scowls at it as it shoves around his allies.
"Stop that!" He hollers as he dances forward and bounces off the wall in order to stick it in the eye with his spear which... Sinks deeper than expected and skewers its brain, leaving it dead.
Pulling his shaft free, it bursts into yet more rats. However Artie lands in a rain of rodents, his spearpoint finding home in the prone Host's heart with a superhero esque landing and it too dissolves into plaguebearing vermin.
"Aaaah! They keep dying! Someone help. I n-need fire over here!"
So enraptured by the cleansing power of fire is Leta -- or perhaps it's a quirk of her strange Destiny that propels her forward -- the big rat's entrance doesn't even fucking faze her. Hell, he's dead before she hardly even notices. There's another chattering cackle as the Mastigos turns her attention on the nearest cluster of rats, and fwooooooshhhh. Bathes four of the poor bastards in napalm. We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn!!! Muahahahahaha.
Screaming as they burnt into oblivion, as another scorching ream of Beshilu fell, collapsed, and gave into the flame that consumed their flesh, ate them from without and destroyed the rats teeming within them and desperate to flee, to run, to hide, to live.
Too bad.
Those left standing attack relentlessly, every single body throwing itself at the invaders, the fire-bringers, the non-adherents. Twenty-six beady eyes trained on them, enraged, flinging themselves up the wall at Guy, lashing from the corners at each of them.
Most notably, a nearby Host takes advantage of a downed Liezel and Rena, one clamping and dragging on the former's arm, jerking her around and tossing her into a wall, while the other's armor just barely deflects an attack that makes a sickening crunch as the force of it breaks off the attacking Host's claw.
All Beshilu take the Berzerk Condition.
The lines are all porous now. The enemy is mixed in, and things are getting hairy. Vasha dodges and jukes, dashes, ducks, and jukes to his best ability. But even so, his course through the throng leaves him with a tear in the shoulder of his armor. Once he gets a good bit of clear ground, he pulls the pin of one of his grenades and skips it across the ground, banking it off a rock to send it skittering into a cluster of the Beshilu, sending shrapnel and smoke in every direction. Thank goodness for composure boosts, because he's somehow not freaking out despite the chaos.
The lights are on, but only the Beast is home in Guy's head as he's rushed. He's slippery, even the creatures' supernatural prowess isn't enough, teeth glancing off his enhanced leather and one missing completely.
He swings back at the one he struck before, only landing a glancing blow. Despite the light connection, his supernatural strength and ferocity tears through the creature, his overswing neatly cutting chunks of stone from the wall.
Liezel's arm makes an excellent handle on the ragdoll that is the Matter Mage, and it shreds through armor and magic to chew deep into the flesh beneath, threatening to interrupt her song by drawing a howl of pain out of the ex-soldier.
She doesn't miss a beat.
Instead, she calmly lifts her weapon, plants it against the thing's too-thick skull, and pulls the trigger, slamming a bullet against its skull and its skull against its brain as it goes briefly senseless, releasing her as it tumbles backwards and collapses on the mezzanine, casing clattering to stone as her eyes move, tracking targets uninjured enough to risk shooting, finally breaking her song to shout over the chaos of gunshots and grenades.
"WE NEED FIRE ON THE RATS. STOP LETTING THEM ESCAPE. DRIVE THEM INTO THE FIRE, OR HOLD YOUR SHOT UNTIL THEY'RE LIT UP."
The Gauntlet reaches Zero.
Continuing on his rampage, the murder blender that is Artie seems to skate on the blood, entirely unfazed by the swipes he's taking as he strikes like lightning again and again, 3 more hosts meeting their demise at the end of his weapon.
The mezzanine is practically cleared at this point and the changeling is a crimson mess.
Rena roars as she runs up to a badly injured one and guts it not unlike a fish. Her knife being this sharp is weird to get used to. And then she blinks twice. "Hey guys? Did you feel that?" She asks into the radio.
Leta's job is to make sure the rats are on fire. Leta loves her fucking job. Paying personal attention to the rat that Guy's been fucking obliterating, Leta fires a jet of flame with a whooooosh and a cackle, dragging the line of napalm over to the only other enemy target that's currently not flaming. "Goddamn, I love the smell of napalm in the morni-" The first of her targets melts into nasty-ass rat soup. "Okay, the smell is actually quite awful, but."
The final rat is picked off by Vasha with a single shot from his pistol. After the carnage of fire, explosions, and shells? The pop of a .44 is rather anti-climactic. He holsters his sidearm and moves to reclaim his rifles from the ground. Those two grenades are, sadly, lost. "Sound off! Everyone still up?" He turns about, literally trying to take a head count. "Rena! Guy! You two still with us?"
Liezel hauls herself up onto her feet, groaning and flexing her repaired arm, nodding a grateful nod towards snekfren. "If someone tells me what our familiar likes to eat, or would like to try to eat, I can discorporate whatever snack it wants when we're done," she states, relieved to be on her feet again. "And-"
She pauses just before Rena calls over the comms, pulling a couple bullets from her jacket's pockets and thumbing them into her mag before slotting it again and starting to refill the mag she emptied before. "... yes. The haze between worlds just cleared. Regroup, over."
Guy dives out of view of the flames as his senses return: all viable targets have been eliminated. "I'm here. Doin' fine..."
"Yeah, this is what I was telling y'all we should be worried about. They've been chewing on this cud for, like, weeks. It's soggy as hell, and they're ready to spit it out, and ain't nobody wants that." Leta pops two shotgun shells free from the bandolier with her thumb, and feeding both into her shotgun to replace the ammo she expended while engaging in wholesale rat murder. "We should definitely expect big spirits moving forward." Beat. "I'm fuckin' dandy, though. Everybody get a load of that big motherfucker?"
For those who can see in Twilight, the room starts to fill with Spirits reaching across the Gauntlet, effortlessly, flickering onto this side. They are of all sizes. They don't look friendly. They glare at the spirit snake.
The largest of them might look familiar, to anyone who conspired with Nevermore Usher prior. A massive spirit seen walking across the city of Philadelphia; Nevy had reproduced a drawing of the giant spirit when people first started going missing.
[1]
Vasha lifts his favorite of the two rifles-- the one with the undermount grenade launcher --and levels it at the spirits eyeballing ol' mister floaty-snek. Vasha even places himself between the spirit and the enemy.
"Yes," Vasha agrees in his suddenly quite thick slavic accent, "that is a big motherfucker. Get your ephemeral weapons out. We're going to have to engage. We can't fall back now."
"I'm fine. Everything g-got taken care of by someone in the scuffle. " Artie chimes in as things peter into silence.
"S-sorry about those few I dropped before the fire got em. I-I was trying to knock them b-back into the fire but... They were softer than I guess I ex-expected or something. I kinda m-mowed through em too fast. Sorry." He says a little sheepishly, his normal demeanor slippong through.
"But um... This gauntlet thing. Do we know if people can fix it? I understand it being eaten is bad?" Artie asks, oblivious of the gathering spirits.
"Fuck is that?" Rena whisper shouts at the group. "Uh, Boss, there's a giant fucking ghost thing."
The spirit lumbers and leans back and forth, swaying like a rocking horse, back and forth, back and forth, and then it kneels down, spindly, many limbs and feet and arms and difficult to tell which is which, and holds its face up close to Vasha's, suddenly very, very close. It looks at Artie, who is oblivious. It looks at Rena. It looks at Leta, and then Liezel, and then Guy, studying each of them very closely in the face, assessing from multiple angles. Then it takes a step back, cocking its head to the side and scuttling slowly.
<<My allies.>> They all hear it, in their heads, because it wants them to. <<Who kept me fed. Who will feed me now? You?>> It turns towards the slithering healing spirit. <<And you...>>
Milling about down in the chamber it's obvious that Arthur cannot see the spirits as they move through the hole between worlds as he scavenges unperturbed.
Finding these jars busted, he stands in front of them and holds out his arms clapped together. Then he moves only his left arm. Tick. Tick. Tick. Three times like the hands on a clock. The Mages can feel supernatural power going off each time his arm moves, a rush of... Temporal energy different from their own.
And in turn three separate jars reform as pristine as they were before. He looks satisfied until... Something speaks in his head.
Arthur twirls around lookimg for a source, eyes a little wide. "Wh-what was that? Who? G-guys?" He asks around.
Motes of Essence burn into the air above the Decay Spirit. The spirit snake that had kept them healed, had stilled the ichor from the bites of the septic-fanged Rat Host, now it suddenly shrunk back, away, cowed, compelled to flee.
June 22, 2020
"That was the Marquess of Decay we're currently face to face with. Why haven't you regrouped yet, over?" Liezel murmurs into the headset, staring at the massive spirit before taking out her knife and passing it over the handle of her gun, quietly enchanting the ammunition therein with a relatively simple Forces effect while the spirit attempted to play Saint Patrick and Vasha takes point on the diplomacy side of things.
"Hey! Not cool, man!" Vasha once more inserts himself between the snake and the big spirit, the Acanthus pointing his finger up at the massive, towering spirit with a pointed scowl. As though he were scolding a bad dog, rather than something that could probably squish him with a thought on a good day. Vasha looks back to the snake and makes an 'I'll handle it' motion with his hand before turning back to the house sized monstrosity. "Be kind, please. In fact, I'd be grateful if you would collect your friends and get back on the other side of the gauntlet, please." As Vasha's talking and gesturing with one hand, his palm rests on the hilt of his silver plated pistol. There's a flare of his nimbus for those able to see such things, and a dizzying sensation around his location for a moment or two, and when it's done Fate has intervened on their behalf. "Would you please do that for us? And if you would destroy any rats in the area, we'd be grateful."
The Decay spirit looks nonplussed by Vasha's sudden scolding, and tilts its head in the wake of the Numina's flare.
<<They do not answer to me, Pavlichenko. They are here to feed. They are hungry. The other side is cold. Here it is warm. I could tell them to go, and some of them might, but they will come back.>> It rocks back again, swaying like a flag. <> it taps its head, <<With your tricks to make me eager, you cannot change what is. And we can do nothing for free. What do you offer?>>
Can't kid a kidder, huh? Fuck. Vasha sucks a tooth and lifts both hands again, one no longer resting on his pistol. "You got me." Can't blame a guy for trying. "Fine. In my line of work, I come across a lot of dead bodies. Just tripped over a few getting in here. Once the rats are gone, this place will be empty. No more meat. No more rot. Just the slow decay of stone and anthrocite. No fun. Do this for me, and this becomes my new burial ground. Fresh bodies for you to pick over and fester within and corrupt. You like that, right? Bargain at twice the price, friend spirit, and I'll even throw in two slightly burned hand grenades." He kicks the smoldering corpse of the mammoth rat.
The big spirit wavers back and forth like fabric in the wind, except there's no wind in here, just the stale stink of corpse-like husks, sulfur, ash. <<How many?>>
Rena finally grasps the magnitude of what's happening and leaves it to her Eurasian friend to handle and heading to Guy so that they have each other if and when shit breaks bad
"I can't promise the timing, of course. I have one I could deliver tomorrow. And say another... eleven? For an even dozen? We don't have to be enemies, spirit. We're just here to stop the Beshilu, and then we'll be on our way. Tell all of them to leave us be and we'll be out of your way in short order. And so many greasy, meaty corpses we'll leave, too."
"Oh! R-right." Artie says, still looking a wee bit clueless.
Picking up the jars he repaired, he. Moves back to the group. "M-my bad. I didn't realize we had a new danger. I-is it the big thing Nevy saw in the park? Has a lot of hands and is reaally big?" He asks.
He takes a moment to tuck the jars into his backpack to hand out later.
Leta removes a cigarette from behind her ear, lighting it with the igniter at the end of her trusty flamethrower before tucking it between her lips. There's a brief flare from her odd, eldritch nimbus as she puffs on her yantra, nodding at the spirit as she peers into it's mind. "Cool."
The spirit's many limbs move like it was walking on steps that wound around and around, but it was just walking on air, rising up higher and higher in its consideration, and then pausing. <>
"Fine, yes," Vasha says, exasperated, throwing his arms up like he's being raked over the coals by a used car salesman hard-selling the undercoat. "I will bring you every single body I personally have a say in disposing of. Which, again, is a lot of corpses." Vasha gestures around himself in indication. "But these things were so picked over, sickly and full of illness. Not decay. You want a nice, plump, hale and healthy body to watch supperate. Don't you. These things are half-dead before they're dead. It's like chasing wine with water. You deserve gourmet fare. And that's what I bring you. Fresh from the back alleys of major metropolises, straight to your table." Vasha lifts his hands again, "You're not going to get a better offer."
"It's true," Leta pipes up. "We probably kill a lot of people here in Philly. As, like, a city - and I've got pretty regular access to a pile of corpses that don't have names and will end up needing burials. We can feed you tomorrow, but that doesn't have to be where our relationship ends..."
Rena turns to Guy and, assuming Vasha's magic is still going, signs "Do we have bodies to dump here?"
The Decay spirit rises, expands, almost like it's inhaling a breath, but of course, that's impossible. And then it deflates, and draws closer to Leta, inspecting her, and then over to Vasha again, settling in between the two who had spoken to him. <<Very well. I do not know where they will have gone from here, but I know that some do still live. I will help you to drive them out, for so long as I am fed. I will do this, and no more.>>
"Hey... Um. Mr. Spirit. D-do you have a name? I'm Artie by the way. I can't see you but I don't wanna b-be rude and never know who you are."Arthur pipes up.
The Decay spirit looks at Artie. <<It would take a thousand of your lifetimes for you to learn how to pronounce my name. Mr. Spirit will do.>>
He replies to Rena. From time to time, we inevitably will. Here would be a decent place to leave them.
"Hmmm... Ok. Well then it's n-nice to meet you... S-sort of, Mr.Spirit." Artie replies with a slow grin, though his eyes are looking around for some aign of this ghostly being.
"It's probably 'Bernice'," Vasha offers back to Artie with his hands still raised. "If I were a spirit named Bernice, that is exactly how I would answer that question." Vasha then looks back to the spirit and inclines his head respectfully. "Yes. Please. Keep the rats out, and from reforming. You'd be doing me a profound favor if you did. We'll track them down from here." Vasha slowly lowers his hands and backs away from the spirit. Like he's not exactly certain he really pulled that off and he's still in some timeline where the impossible didn't happen. No? All good? Great. "Whew! Hey, Artie. What are you doing with those soul jars? Our operatives came in here to destroy them. Those should be busted soul jars. On account of they're jars for literally souls."
"Just full disclosure, I will be taking them from you if you don't hand them over - and you will not like the way I take them, I promise you." Leta cocks her hip - the flamethrower rests on her shoulder - and she puffs her cigarette.
<<My name is not Bernice,>> the spirit feels compelled to point out. But it makes a mellow sound in an ancient, foreign, gutteral sound, and many of the lesser spirits do indeed begin to slip away, either back across the Gauntlet or out, although a few bolder ones do linger in the corners or the shadows.
"Oh. Well I was g-gonna give them to each group to have to study and stuff... I-I didn't realize they were that s-sort of bad. I figured the Mages and the Vamps could learn something maybe."
Artie takes a jar out and looks it over. "Do you want em b-broken again?"
"Let's maybe talk about all this when we aren't right by Bernice?" Rena says, with an emphatic head nod
"That's good thinking, honestly," Vasha admits, "but they're a known quantity. They're called soul jars. They capture human souls to fuel ritual--" He cuts short when Rena gives him the 'you are a dumbass' head nod. Right. He is a dumbass. "Yeah, just bust 'em, buddy. We'll explain them later." He mouths 'sorry, Bernice' to the spirit, then heads off to begin piling bodies and collecting evidence.
"Oh. Well... Alright then." Arthur says with a shrug. Without much to argue on, he tosses the jars over his shoulder and lets them shatter all over again without a second thought.
And then, with a sigh, he follows the others out. "Man I need a shower... Hey w-would you guys be willing to write me a couple notes for my people's uhm... L-leaders. Let em know I did well and am not making anyting up in my report? Cuz this was a bit... Unbelievable."
A smile flickers across Guy's lips. "I think I could manage that."
| ![[1]](https://i.imgur.com/e14qWR6.png){kind=link}