Logs:Spiders and Danger Flaps

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Cast

ST: DadHoc Characters: Mel Joyner, Line Ritmo, Sigrun Ljosdottir

Setting

Freehold Trod towards Old Iron

Log

Summer has yet to peak in Philadelphia. It gets the worst in August. But it's still ninety in the shade and humid as the inside of a gym sock. It makes patrol torture of a sort. Extra water needs to be carted around, and more or less everything is done in as energy conservative a manner as possible.

Poor Sigrun, though. A Minnesotan, she's hardly built for this weather. Plus she's in armor. Leather clad brigandine armor to be precise, with a padded gambeson beneath that and no doubt some sort of clothing beneath that. Her normally alabaster skin is pink and blotchy, and the hair that escapes from her braids is plastered to her face by sweat. She can't be made to even put on her helmet in this heat.

The hedge is a desiccated mess of brown and blotchy thorns, most of the life leached from the trods by the so-called hedge blight that's been attributed to the Patriarch's Tree. It makes the trods exponentially more likely to contain perils. The hedge critters are starving out. And the first to start behaving erratically in those circumstances are always the apex predators.

Knowing this, Sigrun warned her company of the potential risks before setting out to at the very least clear the trod to the first checkpoint north towards Old Iron. Simply hiding under a rock isn't really an option, after all. Good thing she brought her spear with her, it gives her something to lean on while standing in some shade to cool down intermittently. "Fuck, this is miserable. You both good, yet?"

At least Line was wearing pants. Jean overalls to be precise, tucked into bright green galoshes. She finished a swig of water with a satisfied gasp as she nimbly lept over a fallen tree. "Oh yeah, this is fantastic! A chance to get out and about," she exclaimed, then got serious. "I mean, for a good cause, of course."

Still, it was evident that Line was happy and excited- pulses and arcs of multi colored light raced across her otherwise black, shadowy skin. Her vibrant headphones blasted music that seemed to not impair her hearing, and left trails of actual visible music behind her that popped like bubbles. He technicolor hair swirled in the Autumn's mantle, as excited as she was.


Mel is... less enthusiastic than Line, though that doesn't seem hard. Since they aren't carrying weapons -punching the Hedge has always worked thus far - or armor, they've got a backpack full of water bottles. One of which they crack open and dump about half of down their throat before offering bottles to Sigrun and Line. "Could be worse," they say, with only a little resignation. "Could be stuck in a car on the freeway."

"Ugh. I just want to soak in a cool pool for the rest of the year. The boob sweat!" Sigrun's whining is amplified by her inability to do anything about the sweat without removing her breastplate. And that's not happening any time soon.

She accepts the bottle from Mel with an impossibly relieved look, cracks it, and pours it down her throat. At least about half of it. The rest is poured on top of her head and down her collar with another profound groan of thermal relief. "Oh, fuck. Oh, god. That's so good." Still dripping, she caps the empty bottle and offers it back, letting the cold water do its work in the shade for a few moments.

Line's enthusiasm is eyed with suspicion. Nobody should be happy in this weather. "You should maybe drink a little more water. Delusion is a sign of heat exhaustion."

The mention of boob sweat caused Line to look down at her own chest. While not evident beneath the baggy t-shirt, it was certainly not something she would have to particularly deal with. She shrugged. "Good idea, gotta stay hydrated!" she agreed with Sigrun, chugging more water from her own bottle. "I'm pretty sure I am not seeing anything yet, but I have my goggles just in case."

"Some folks don't mind the heat" Mel says, though they give Line a dubious look as well. They finish off their bottle and crush both it and Sigrun's together before shoving them back in the bag. Then they notice the web, and point towards it. "That... wasn't here before I'll bet. Cut through or risk going around?"

Sigrun does a double-take at what Mel is looking at, and has to squint and tilt her head to notice it, herself. "Good eye. Yeah. That wasn't here before, no. I took this trod to Old Iron last week, ran the whole way. So it's at least that new." She wets her lips and sucks them between her teeth, thinking it over her own self. "Webs like that tend to imply there's a spider nearby waiting to jump out and eat us. If we touch that web, we're probably in for a fight." Sigrun eyes her unarmored companions dubiously at that possibility. "Peter will box my ears if you two get hurt out here. But I've got your backs if you want to keep pressing on."

Line halts in her tracks the moment she sees the web. "I'm seeing something now," she says with some urgency, but once she notices that both Sigrun and Mel see it, she sighs. "Aaaaaand so are you." She reaches into her overall's pockets with a gloved hand and pulls out a nine volt battery as she moves closer to investigate. "An orb weaver style web on a grand scale," she says evenly, like narrating a nature documentary. "We should clear it out, especially given the state...but the muscly one is correct...there is likely something waiting....maybe its a decoy, and there is actually a trapdoor spider like nearby!" She seems oddly excited by the concept.

Mel blinks, slowly and deliberately. "Spiders are solitary aren't they? I mean I know stuff in the Hedge can be way dangerous, but there's three of us and probably only one of it. And the trod should be kept clear, right?" They don't look excited per se, more... intensely interested as they idly crack their knuckles.

"Yeah, but look at that web," Sigrun counters, indicating its size. "I know there are psychoactive trapdoor spiders out here. One jumped me once. Literally. That was an exciting afternoon." She plants her spear into the ground and carefully draws her sword from her hip, hefting up her shield higher and edging forward, herself. "If you guys are sure, we can at least try. If we have to run--"

Whatever she was about to say is cut off when from the south the sound of droning wings and high pitched squeaks can be heard bounding up the trod. Is it an army of mice doing a fan dance? A squadron of pixies with rotary egg beaters? A flight of a thousand tiny squeaky doors? Then a cloud of flying somethings round the bend in the trod and surge forward through the air in a swarm, about five feet above ground.

Sigrun ducks down and puts her shield over her head. You all do you, though!

"Oh, now that is exciting!" Line exclaims, then alarm sets in. "....oh...that is coming this way!" She glances around, and runs towards the web, taking a driving roll underneath it, and hugging the ground, to put the web between her and the swarm of. "Yuck! Thornbats!" she called from the ground. Not at all happy.

Mel's first instinct is to hide from the swarm, but they're pretty sure at least a majority of the beasts are going to hit the web. Which, could potentially solve two problems in one go. Efficiency! Still, they move as close to the edge of the trod as possible, and crouch down, hands up in a guard position. "Looks like we might have to deal with the spider after all. And those things"

The swarm tears through the trod like a blender full of scissors. Sigrun was trusting her shield to protect her, perhaps foolishly. Because while several of the beasts bounce off of it, several make it under her guard, too, and she winds up on her back with a great gash down the left side of her face. "FUCK!"

The others are much luckier. One or two bats smack into them along the way, but either their thorns don't catch flesh, or the contact was unintentional. Still, the swarm spots the web far too late to arrest their progress. The lead few bats slam into it, stretching it back several feet before it rebounds back again. The strain means the trailing bats that impact it have their razor sharp thorns hitting stressed silk. The web begins to give way in pieces as increasingly more bats make it through the snare to continue on down the trod in search of blood.

The web collapses to the trod floor, filled with numerous struggling bats that are shrieking and squeaking. And in one case, swearing like an affronted longshoreman, "WHAT IN THE FUCKING-- WHO THE HELL PUT THIS-- I SWEAR WHEN I GET OUTTA THIS...!" It's better that that screaming is of a pitch barely in the register of human hearing.

Sigrun is starting to roll over again, hissing in pain, as the hedgewall begins to crackle and strain as a truly giant multi-hued spider begins to crawl out through it. Dinner bell ding.

"Hah...nice..puppy?" Line says, hesitantly, taking a step back. Then she grins, holds up her batter for a moment, then presses its contacts to one of the metal snaps on her overalls. It sparks, and Line draws the electricity out like a reluctant friend, using the point of one of her throwing knives that was suddenly in her hand. It arced a few times in protest until it settled into a hissing, sputtering lightning bolt in the palm of her hand. The electricity flowed down her arms over her shoulders, and gave her something of a cloak of lightning.

With a hiss, Mel springs forward to punch the spider in it's spidery face, but as they move they realize they're about to step on one of the downed thornbats. Trying to avoid that makes their punch go wild. "Fuck" they hiss, managing to regain their balance. "Stupid bats"

Sigrun pushes up to her feet off the ground and readies her shield again, rolling out her shoulders to adjust the lay of her armor, since it got all mussed around by flopping on her back like a codfish. "Be careful! Try to get it from more than one side!"

Meanwhile, the spider comes crawling a little further out, though it quickly flinches back from the swipe Mel takes at its beak. It utters a rather annoyed shrieking hiss and baps out at them with a sharp bap of its foreleg, trying to drive them back.

"Oh, this one is spicy!" Line says, dancing back a little as the Spider came crawling out. She whipped her hands in its direction and a bolt of lightning cracked out and smashed it in its side, knocking it silly. "Look out!" Was she saying that to Mel, or the spider?

"Fuck" Mel growls again as the spider smacks their leg. But they seem more angry than anything else. They hunch their shoulders up, fluff all their feathers and spread their arms, letting out a very avian hiss. It's the whole "I'm a bigger predator than you" display.

The spider is blasted by the bolt of lightning and is flipped back into its little ambush warren. It spins about on its back, shrieking and flailing its legs, righting itself with few powerful kicks of its spindly legs. Once upright it starts to surge back out of its burrow and is -- in an unexpected turn -- hypnotized by the Hunterheart. Rather than press its attack, its forelegs slowly lower to the ground and the spider hunkers its body down towards the ground again in its resting pose. Its eight eyes all twitch and focus on Mel solely.

Sigrun rushes up to the fighting line, skidding to a halt beside Mel, and wisely arrests her swing when she cottons to what's happening. "Um." She clears her throat and inquires, "How... uh. How long can you keep this up? Exactly?"

Behind them, the twitching pile of bats continue to flail and flap at their webby constraints. The mouthy one squeak-croacks, "Little help, here, fellas? Fuck."

Line glances between Mel and the Spider, and her eyes widen along with her smile. "Oooo, pretty!" she says, though about who or what isn't clear. "Well done." She almost dances over to the spider, and leans toward it to examine it without touching. "I haven't seen one of these. I need to draw it."

"Only until someone attack it or it manages to muster the will to get over it's fear" Mel says in a whisper. "So I wouldn't get too close" That to Line. Without taking their eyes off they try to back towards the small voice. "Just let me get this little guy free"

"Line," Sigrun warns quietly, "back away. You get too close, you're going to get a pedipalp to the forebrain." Sigrun is keeping her distance for now, herself, though she's got her sword and shield at the ready should it come time to finish the creature off. She does glance back at Mel's work with the bats, "You sure that's a good idea?"

"I am," the bat squeak-complains, twitching its wings ineffectually against the webbing it's caught up in. "Oh, hey. You're sweet as shit for helping a guy out. No chance I can fly over there and suckle on your friend's face, though, huh? Help a brother out."

Sigrun looks suitably apalled, "Ew!"

"New plan- going to back away slowly from the spider and keep my eye on thornbat. No suckling," Line narrated, still holding tightly on her mini lightning bolts. She spared a side glance to the others to see how and what they were doing.

"I don't think they'd like that very much" Mel says to the thornbat. "Hold still though so I can get you free, then we can maybe work something out." They try to pick at the webbing without getting too much stuck on their own hands. "We still should probably kill it," They say to Sigrun and line. "Otherwise it's just going to build another web"

"Good plan, I like that plan," Sigrun agrees with Line, moving closer to the other woman to form a defensive line. "Once you get your friend free, there, Mel, we can all lay into this thing. I think Line got a good lick in on it, shouldn't take much more."

It's hella sticky, yes. But with it all wrapped up and constricted, its stickiness is annoying rather than dangerous. To Mel, in any case. It takes a little bit of work to get the webbing off, and especially because the bat wrapped up in it all is ... well. Covered in razor sharp thorns. But eventually he's freed enough that he can sit up and use his own teeth and wings to clean himself more thoroughly. "Awh, shit. You're a peach. Thanks a ton. Seriously, though. She's already bleeding, I'd be cleaning her up! Doing her a favor, even!"

"NO," Sigrun once more says, this time more forcefully.

"No means no," Line reinforced in a bit of a sing song, and stuck her tongue out at the thornbat, before turning to focus on the still Spider. "Well, it is going to be a shame to kill such a fine specimen. Can I have its carapace?!"

"No does mean no," Mel reinforces to the thornbat, but it's said with a hint of amusement. "I think she prefers to clean her own blood." They give a little hiss in the direction of the spider, to remind it they're there, and then they offer their arm to the thornbat if it wants to crawl up. "Let's get the thing killed, and then we can argue over it's corpse."

"Careful. These things'll get inside your head if you let 'em," Cautions the bat as it scrambles up Mel's arm. It is pokey and sharp and probably uncomfortable to have attached to one's person, but it's not trying to, at least?

"Ready when you both are," Sigrun assures them.

The Elemental nodded, sniffed, and bounced on her feet. Then she stopped, wound up like a pitcher from baseball, and let fly with another thunderbolt at the poor...poor spider. Her throwing style was decidedly submariner, like Chong Tae-hyon. She even blew on her fingers when done, causing small sparks to fly off.

Well, Mel was going to try punching the spider again, but Line's attack made that moot. "Nice shot!" they say, impressed. "Well, that's one less Hedge threat."

"Well. Glad I was here to keep you all safe," Sigrun jokes at her own expense, though she's beaming with approval. "Great work, you two." She slides her sword back away as the spider begins to curl in on itself and twitch the twitch of the soon not to be twitching whatsoever. "For my part, I don't mind if you get the carcass. I never even touched the thing, so." She does head over to the webbed up bats that haven't been rescued to triage them. The ones beyond help, she puts out of their misery with her boot dagger. The rest she starts to help free. "We should head back and report on this. Put up a trod advisory."

"Joy!" she said with Sigrun's approval and permission to loot the corpse. She was positively over the moon. "I just want the carapace. You two are more than welcomed to the guts!" She pulls out a different knife, and advances on the poor...poor spider.

"We survived at the very least" Mel says to Sigrun. They start to move to help, but then decide it might not be such a good idea when they realize Sigrun's having to put some of the critters out of their misery.

Their feathers hide any green tinge at the thought of taking... anything from the spider. But they pointedly turn away from Line advancing on the spider and instead focus on their new pointy friend. "Got a name little guy?"

"Sure do, birdie. You have the honor of speaking to one Vinnie Two-Flaps." If the bat had a collar, he'd pop it. As it is, he puffs out his hairy-thorny chest proudly at the proclamation.

Sigrun's armored gloves make this an ideal job for her, really. She saves the ones she can, hanging them up on the hedge wall so they can rest and recover before flapping away on their own power. Of all the hedge's many dangers, they're at least not total murderous jerks about it. Once her work is done, she sheathes up her boot dagger and pushes up to her feet to eye the mess. "Can you get the fangs and venom sacs? I'd like to make a gift of them to Mearcstapa."

"Ooooh, that's a good idea! i will see what I can do," she replied, and then gave the dead spider a solemn look. "You....were not much of an opponent, but I shall accept your sacrifice and try to make good use of your parts." She patted the corpse with a nod of thanks, then raised her knife, and went to work.

Mel's eyes crinkle at the corners with amusement at the little creature's attitude. "Well Vinnie Two Flaps, its good to meet you. Feel free to hang out a bit." They turn their attention back to Sigrun and Line, and pulls two bottles of water out. "Here. We probably all need some hydration and/or cleaning after this."

Sigrun accepts the bottle with a grateful smile and drains about half of it again before pouring the rest over her head and down the back of her armor. She heaves out a sigh of relief and heads over to the corpse herself, tugging out a dagger to start carving into the dead spider's facemeat. It's green ichorous and gross. It oozes. It smells. It even spurts at one point. But she doesn't seem much to mind and winds up tearing out its venom sacs, ducts, and fangs in more or less one whole assembly. Dripping gore, she steps away and shakes off her hands a bit, flicking the mess at the ground. "Maybe the little guy could dine on the spider, maybe? Line, you going to be able to finish up quick?"

She was arms deep in the spider, doing her best to cut off its outer shell in as large of pieces as she can manage. She already has a stack at her feet of the carapace sheets. "I believe I shall be done in precisely ten...nine..." she says as she finishes skinning off one last piece. She wipes off her knife and tucks it away before picking up her stack. "Done! This is going to be great. WHat are you going to do with your bits?" Line asks Sigrun.

The spider ichor and, well, mess in general gets a dubious look from Mel. "Getting that mess out of my feathers would be... a pain and a half," they say, taking a step backward. "But I can help haul if you need. Vinnie? You wanna eat?"

"No fucking way am I touching that thing," the thornbat says with supreme, if high pitched disdain. "I'm a red blood only creature"

"Hmm? Oh. I make arms and armor, weapons, equipment, stuff like that. Not with this, though. I'm friends with Mearcstapa, the Autumn Scrivener. He's super clever and spookycute. Spoopy? Anyway. My love language is giving him things I don't know what to do with but seem something he'd think is cool. And I just realized I'm basically his feral housecat, but darn it. He really needs this mouse from me." She throws the glands and fangs over her shoulder with a wet slap of gore and wipes her ichor slicked hands on her trousers. She's such a gremlin. "Well, if you're good Mel, I'm good. Line? Let's get back home."

"But green blood is high in blue and yellow!" Line told Vinnie with a confident nod. "Oh! Cool. Im good. Hey, thanks for taken us on your patrol. Was getting cooped up, you know? "

Vinnie gives Line a withering look, but doesn't dignify the comment with an actual response. Mel on the other hand nods in agreement with the rest of Line's statement. "Yes, thank you. It's... good to feel like I'm helping out. And there's worse things to be than a feral cat. I like cats."

Sigrun glances aside at Mel at makes a purrmrowl with a trill of her tongue. She will stop flirting when she's dead. "Me, too. Also, I'm going to like my shower after all of this. Nice work with freezing that thing in place, Mel. That was a hell of a trick. Honest." She starts the march back the way they'd come in order to report back the fresh new dangers on the trod.