Trail of Tears: The Search Chapter 3
The flash as a small quarrel impacts with the man's forehead, parting and then following with a rather sharp explosion reverberates through the entire building. The stunned man underneath Sky and Aidan, has a brief flash of pain on his face, and then shakes and suddenly throws the two off of him in a burst of power. Sharp teeth fill his jaws as he jumps on Skylar and bites deep into her shoulder. Elsewhere, Selene, is covered in a wave of fluid, quickly turning to blood red goo and seeping into the ground. Her mate's corpse still hanging from the wall, still.
Selene coughs and hacks the disgusting red fluid out of her mouth, before rushing over to her mate's body, hoping against hope that there's still some life to be found within her, that she wasn't too late.
Skylar lets out a squawk mixed with a snarl of pain, her face reflecting her surprise with the attack. Pulling her survival knife with the hand not attached to the shoulder being bitten she tries to stab the man in the neck and twist the knife
Seeing the man assaulting and biting Skylar, causes Aidan to react quickly, her sharp canines extending like those of a saber-tooth tiger. In a feral attack, she moves behind the man and tries to dig her superior teeth into his eyes' orbs, the lower ones into his nape. Beside likely killing him, it would quite force him to release Skylar from the bite. She doesn't seem to be going to use her impact weapons, likely to avoid Skylar to lose her shoulder if the man shouldn't release her.
Snowblind enters as fast as she can. Back to being on all fours after her brief time as a frost phoenix and with hearing the sounds of more battle happening she runs as fast as she can towards the commotion. Under her right arm is her lance, cocked and fully ready to charge tight into something. In her left hand, not ready to shoot is her gas grenade launcher. The medic looking intent to help by stopping those that are causing all the pain. Yet when she enters and see the goo... she just stops up short and stares for a moment.
The man seems not to really care about much, bloodlust in his eyes, a creepy grin around sharp teeth. He hardly notices the change and attack from Aidan, the big teeth coming down on his head with barely a reaction. The man doesn't goo, rather the area around Aidan begins to radiate, a field of tiny devouring nanites strikes out at both the man and Skylar below. The man's body flesh begins to dissolve, while Skylar feels a different assault, her feathers and fur receding, exposing pink human flesh. She's bleeding from her shoulder and struggling with something internally. Around the two, the bodies all open their eyes at once, including the girl who was previously screaming.
Selene's inspection shows the body completely lifeless, limp, though still some warmth in the flesh. Very recently deceased. There's no pulse, desiccated from blood, pooling in the bucket below her. There's a laugh as Selene can just hear her father's laughter in the back of her skull, egging her on. Snowblind can see Selene frantically searching for life.
Almost at once, the girls around, also begin to goo, sliding and slipping into the soil, heading off somewhere. The whole building shakes as there's a rather large roar of pain from elsewhere in the structure.
Skylar thinks of warning Aidan but by the time the thought strikes the teeth are already deep onto the man, the not-really-gryphoness quickly pulls her knife out of the going man and pushes the solid but not so much form off her as she rolls to the side trying to escape from the goo and Aidan's weird nanites. "Argh, he's a packmind...what the hell is happening to me?" She says confused by her lack of fur and feathers, the feeling is echoed again as she gasps when the girls begin to goo. "Ah...I see what's going on now...this is awful..."
Selene frantically checks the body for life, tears in her eyes as she can't find any. "No.. no no no no...." she mutters softly to herself. "You can't be dead... not like this...." she says, tears beginning to fall.... under she hears that laugh in the back of her head. A sudden snarl escapes her lips, anger replacing the despair. "You bastard. This isn't even her, you sick freak. This is some poor woman you've... twisted, altered to look like her."
Aidan doesn't have much time to be surprised by the man dissolving between her fangs, nor fully getting a taste of what she bit. She tears some of her upper clothes, knowing that Skylar will likely bleed normally now. Only her head is completely shifted now, her muzzle horned and fanged now. "Stay still, you'll bleed bad now." she roars, moving closer to lick Skylar's wound before applying the emergency bandage.
Skylar stands still and silent as the considerably scary Aidan approaches her. "Uh.." She stammers during treatment. "What...happened to me? I mean, did my nanites reset or...something?"
Snowblind makes sure to keep her paws from touching the goo as rarely anything good comes from that. While her eyes pan about to see where it is going she listens to what Selene is saying. Getting close to her she taps her lightly with the side of her lance to get her attention. She says nothing but if Selene looks she will see a bit of comfort coming from the snowleopard taur. Holding out the grenade launcher she closes her eyes briefly and mumbles. "First do no harm is for doctors, Medics need to stop the source of the pain."
Aidan spits some blood before starting to bandage Skylar's shoulder. "That's me. Likely, when I bit him, some of my nanites got into your bloodstream, devouring part of your own nanites. This is not too bad right now, I think. If he tried to infect you, it likely countered the attempt." she hopes and explains.
The ceiling to the warehouse ripples as something impacts with it, the walls buckling, and then there's a large explosion as half of the warehouse' roof tears off the walls and is thrown to the side. A large red scaled tail whips about throwing furniture at Aidan and Skylar.
Skylar seems to be a bit scared as her visage goes more and more to the human side. "I uh...alright...I can understand that...so it's like you have 'hunter' nanites." She says, clearly not wanting to look at Aidan's face at the moment, the moment is cut short by the flying furniture. "Augh! I don't have any experience on the subject but I 'think' that was a dragon landing in the building! We better find a basement or something!" She says hoping the bandaging is good enough to sustain her normal movements.
Aidan expands her tails, creating a fluffy shield of fur around herself and especially Skylar, protecting them - or at least preventing too much damage - from the flying furniture. "I agree to move away from here!" she exclaims, waiting for the right moment to grab Skylar and dash away from the danger.
The quaking walls shake the lifeless corpse that still looks distinctly like Cilan off the wall. The bucket is thrown over, splashing her blood onto the floor. The whole building is shaking apart, and the buckling walls give the impression the whole building will come down soon.
The furniture bounces harmlessly off the protective swaying tails. They move to get free as more furniture comes crashing down around them. The whole building is being torn apart and they have little time to get free before the ceiling and walls come down on them.
Selene is distracted from both Snow and the corpse as the entire building quakes, the sound of the roof being torn away deafening even here. "Shit! Whatever did that is bringing the whole place down!" she shouts to Snowblind over the noise. "We need to get the hell out of here right now!" she adds, running back towards the part of the building where she separated from Aidan and Skylar.
Skylar grabs onto one of the fluffy tails enveloping her, still feeling weird due to her current human-ness.
Aidan emerges from the cocoon of tails, carrying Skylar with her. The huge tails wag around, deflecting or breaking some of the furniture as the fox run to the place where she separated from the others. She's charging, using her powerful tails both as shield and weapons to sweep out of the way the debris.
Nodding as she runs with Selene, Snow drapes the lance over her lower back before pulling on Selene's arm to get her onto her back as well. "Speed is key, tell me where the rest are and I can get us there a bit faster." She keeps her ears pined to her head though as by now the rumbling is starting to get to her. "We really need to get back outside before this whole place comes down with whatever it is on top."
Selene uses Snow's arm to vault onto the taur's back, and points over her shoulder the way to go. "Back where you came from! If they're able, they'll meet us where we all came into this place!"
The four practically collide as they hit the doorway at near the same time, furniture continuing to crash down, and a loud roar filling the air. One familiar to Selene in the raw power, vibrating the very air around the four.
Selene gasps as she recognizes that roar. "Shit shit shit! That's a dragon like Cil! Fuck, he got his grubby mitts on the virus! And Glaurung went with Sori!" she says, cursing her decision to let the gatling cannon go with a different group.
Heat fills the room, and the sky flashes, fire escaping up into the atmosphere. The intense blast of heat sizzling fur and skin amoung the four.
Skylar groans while still holding onto Aidan. "I thought the virus was rendered safe by Balina and everyone else...let’s just get out of here, we need to lose this dragon as soon as possi-" She's interrupted by the suddenly flash and clutches onto Aidan as if trying to take cover, the blast making her shriek in pain. "We need to get out of here...NOW."
"For now, let's get out of here!" Aidan roars, the fox dashing forward to clean the way to the exit and giving those behind her an easier time to follow. Her fur stand proudly in the heat, showing quite a good resistance to the heat... but this doesn't make the fox slower, but makes her charging even faster.
Selene grits her teeth as the damage to her fur and feathers is near instantly repaired, thankfully her resistance to heat making the pain a mere itch. "Must go faster, must go faster!" she yells, seeing the exit up ahead.
Snowblind follows Aidan out of the building. The heat having more of an effect on the normally slightly frosty kitty then the rest of the group. As almost an after though before she leaves though she twists her upper body and takes a quick aim. "Spirits, let me get a bit lucky." She mumbles and fires off the loaded gas grenade at the mouth of the dragon. With luck she might get it there and then with more the old tear gas with actually effect the dragon.
As soon as they are out, they can see the dragon writhing in pain, still changing, still growing, it's body thrashing about distracted. The roars, blasts of fire going out in random directions.
Skylar cheers as Snow hits the dragon with tear gas and quickly begins looking around for some cover. "Let’s go, Snow's aim will be for nothing if we don't get out of his sight!"
Fireblasts come out in many directions, none even coming close to the group, the creature clearly distracted. It backs up knocking the rest of the building over.
Selene launches herself from Snow's back as soon as they're clear of the building, taking quickly to the air, rapidly gaining height as she observes the thrashing dragon, trying to remember the weak points she'd found with Cil's help. She draws a bolt from a pocket, this one with blue fletching. "Let's see... ah, yes... wingjoint. Soft and vital." She dives down towards the dragon, nimbly dodging the occasional gout of flame, landing on its back and ramming the bolt into the soft flesh around the point where wing meets back, the impact arming the fuse. "Fifteen seconds till boom..." she mutter to herself, launching into the air again and winging back up to a higher altitude, hoping an incidental fireblast doesn't catch her.
Aidan doesn't do much else for now, just taking Skylar and guiding Snow to a safer place.
Snowblind is a bit surprised that she actually hit but with a quick thanks to the spirits she dashes with the rest of the group till Selene leaves her back. "Sel..." She starts to say then shuts to try and not draw the attention of the dragon. With a bit of a huff she dashes to cover and hopes that at least Aidan and Skylar make it with her. "Now what?" She asks as she digs around her saddle bags for another round. "I have only two left and Selene seems to want to get killed by facing it one on one."
Selene dodges thrashing and manages to land and jamb the bolt into the distracted creature's flesh, but he seems to notice her, and emits a roar, his wing hits her, knocking her from her feet and throwing her toward the ground. It’s still thrashing limbs, another knocking into her hard, slamming against the lunerin's body and throwing her onto the rubble of the building.
Skylar looks surprised at the flying and then falling Selene, she grumbles something before turning to Snowblind and finally says. "Quick Snow, you get Selene, me and Aidan try to find somewhere we can defend ourselves from that."
Selene yelps loudly as she's smashed from the air, hammering hard into the ground, and again as she's hit hard again, crunching against the rubble of the destroyed warehouse sickeningly. She weakly struggles onto her hands and knees, equal parts fear and fury driving her to try to get away. Her left wing hangs limply, the angles.... wrong. It's obviously been pretty badly broken by the abuse she just took. Regardless, she grits her teeth as she struggles to crawl out of reach, aware that there's only a couple of seconds left on the fuse of the explosive bolt she stuck the dragon with.
Snowblind tosses the launcher to Skylar, not seeming fazed that she is much more human looking right now. As she turns her tail seems to brush over both Aidan and Sky in a bit of comfort as she runs back towards the crushed building and towards the dragon. She just has to hope and pray that someone can distract it while she searches for Selene in the rubble.
Aidan takes a deep breath, her heart starting to race fast. As always, when she sees someone she knows getting hurt, her body starts to change. Once it was the safe wolf beast form. Now.. it the Feral Hunter form. She falls on her knees, her body burning in fear and hunger. And her nanites feel it, answering her call, protecting her. Her wings become more like those of a dragon, her tails uniting in four strong tentacles. Scales starts to replace her fur, but this is not enough. Not with this opponent.
Aidan roars once, still on all fours.
Aidan roars again as her body starts to grow, increasing her mass and density. First as a fenrir wolf, then as a giant. And it keeps getting bigger, slowly starting to match the opponent that is hurting her friends.
Skylar blinks and seems a bit distracted, she manages to grab the grenade launcher in the last moment before it smacks on her face, fur and feathers slowly appearing onto her again. She shakes her head as her nanites recover and shakes it again as Aidan transforms, making her and Snow's grenade launcher goes the other way, scouting somewhere that the dragon would not notice them or at least have a hard time entering.
A loud explosion, napalm bursting out in all directions. The impact sending a piece of the dragon's body with it, a wingless stump waggling about as the creature snaps in all directions, confused, a feral glint in its eyes. It hardly notices the approaching taur, trying to find the thing that injured it so. The eyes focus on the growing wolf creature, finally something big enough for its brain to focus on as a threat. It begins charging directly toward the growing devourer. There's a few other buildings nearby that could be used for cover, Skylar's searching finds one of the rare buildings with a basement in the area, a storm shelter for the town in a small older warehouse.
Snowblind climbs about the wreckage as the explosion makes her ears wring and temporally deafens her. Yet she tries to stay focused and ends up finding Selene and her broken wing. Once again acting as a living stretcher she helps the wolf get up onto her back and reaches back to steady her as she tries to get out from under the fight of the larger creatures. Here is not the place to try and do anything but survive.
Skylar turns back and starts sprinting towards the group, that is, as fast as a ankle wounded, grenade launcher, 5 feet mutating gryphon can run. Knowing that time is not a luxury she starts shouting. "I
FOUND A PLACE, C'MON EVERYONE-" She stops herself from shouting and as a stray thought about the dragon hits her, she keeps on moving towards the group so that they can hear her.
Selene scrambles onto the taur's back gratefully, yelping as her shattered wing is jarred during the process. The loud explosion and resulting roars of pain, however, causes a feral grin of delight to spread across her face. "Don’t fuck with me, -dad-!" she yells viciously at the roaring, crippled dragon.
Aidan stands slowly, preparing to face the charging dragon. Her body is still growing, far from being done.. but it gets ready for the fight, her nanites already starting to prepare for a forced regeneration. Her talons get a strong grip on the ground, the tentacle tails wagging slowly behind her, huge and strong.
Though she got caught by the full force of the blast and cannot even hear what Selene said she pats the flames out on her fur while wincing. As soon as she even starts to slow down and the adrenaline surge starts to fade she starts to limp from the pain before her own nanites start to slowly try and patch her up. The little spirit of the phoenix inside of her doing its best to help but always it worked better with healing others. The saddest part would be that most of her fluffy tail is now mostly just burned skin till it can regrow.
Among the chaos, another voice, a roar erupts in the air, and a woman falters, falling from the sky maybe a few hundred yards from the explosion. An equally limp wing bringing them out of the air. Red scales flashing in the sunlight. Down below the dragon, Snowblind helps Selene to her feet, trying to get her out of the mess, but her voice carries in the air. The charging dragon stops in it's progress toward Aidan, it's head spinning and eye focusing on the wounded wolf below. Aidan, now half its size, is still growing, and has a moment to attack while it's distracted. Skylar sees the whole mess as she gets closer.
Skylar notices the dragon changing targets and hopes her wings are good enough to maintain flight. She takes off and tries to repeat Snow's feat with the grenade launcher so that she can buy the snowkitty some more time to escape and then proceeds to fly towards the falling woman.
Aidan notices the dragon's distraction, so why not taking advantage of it? She doesn't have breaths or another natural weapons ready to fire, but she has few upgrades to make up for it. *Click* and her arm change, becoming a heavy rifle ready to fire. She points her fearsome weapon against the dragon's large head and fires, her body already preparing for the huge knockback that will follow..
There's a whistle as the rocket in the air collides with the creature's neck, an explosion that really doesn't seem to hurt it, but the things already enraged, yet another source of attack drives it's focus off its daughter for a moment longer, and then Aidan's great blast impacts them both, the explosion being dissipated by its scales but still sending blood flying from the creature as the dragon falls backward. Aidan's impact is equally great, sending her flying into the trees beyond, knocking them down like grass, her mass is almost that of the dragon's. Sky spots the dragoness falling, as her vision returns entirely to her familiar gryphon heritage she can see her limp wing and panicked decent, and then she impacts with the ground with a thud, and is still for a moment.
As her wing stops functioning, and she begins plummeting to the ground, Cilan flaps her one working wing in a futile attempt at keeping herself aloft, or at least slow herself and fall into anything that
looks soft to make her fall less painful. All the while, as she falls the dragoness shouts, "Shitshitshitshitshit!" the woman trying her hardest not to panic as the ground approaches quickly. As she smacks into the earth a weak groan can be heard coming from the dragoness, showing that she's still alive at least.
Selene takes the opportunity to load another blue-fletched bolt into her crossbow, ignoring the pain of moving her bruised body as she aims it at the weakpoint on the dragon's underside, exposed now that Aidan has knocked it over. She forces the pain from her mind, steadying her aim, and releases the bolt, hoping it hits somewhere it can penetrate, if not the point she aimed at. Her ears are ringing from the two previous explosions, leaving her barely able to hear. As such, she misses Cil's fall, her gaze focused as it is on the dragon.
Aidan stands again, only her reinforced skeleton prevented her shoulder to get dislocated by the powerful knockback. Growling, she focused on what's happening around her, before preparing to face the dragon's retaliation.
Snowblind sees Skylar move first towards here and then away towards something else and she turns to follow the gryphon. Her hearing shot for likely a long time till the nanites and the magic can work their magic she focuses all she can into her aura to help with the healing of her nearby friends. The promise of pain likely just an annoyance to the dragon but it is there as well. Her hands steadying Selene on her back she feels the wolf moving around and wonders what she is doing but just keeps running as fast as she can. When she spots Cil on the ground she does her limping run towards here though Skylar will make it first. "Get him Aidan." She comments as she sees Aidan doing some damage as well.
Skylar divebombs towards Cilan, considering the weight of Snow's grenade launcher so that she doesn't end in the same shape as the half dragon woman. Once landed she shouts, almost as if giving an order. "Cilan?! Are you okay? Wake up! Quick!"
The dragon is stunned, preparing to get up and go for Aidan's throat when another blast hits it between its belly scutes, the explosion hits everyone in the area, blood streaming out its stomach and another painful roar emitting. The creature seems dazed, and slow to react now, trying to get to its feet. It's attention now very focused on the Lunerin, it's eyes glaring with possession and rage. In a surge that causes the wound in its stomach to rip, it pulls itself back on its feet and begins to charge Selene. It loses all focus on everything else, just blind rage driving the newly feral creature.
A groan is Skylars answer as Cilan rises to a knee, the dragoness "Gawd.. damn.." she mumbles as she clenches her stomach, "S-Sky?" she asks before looking to Selene and noticing what she's doing, the woman calls out in a weak, and raspy voice, "S-stop.." the woman seeming to have had the wind knocked out of her. In her mind, she speaks to the dragon inside her, "C'mon.. partner, fight that fake! Weaken it.. show it that a phony is no match for the real deal.." with her internal pep-talk over, she looks to Skylar and tells her, "You good with patching up wounds?" before pulling a hunting knife from its sheath and jamming it into her right leg.
Snowblind sees Cilan stab herself and is now quite confused. In a very raspy voice of someone that does not know how loud they are talking she asks, "What are you doing?" Still limping towards the pair she actually gives a bit of a laugh before groaning from the pain and coughing a bit. "Damn flyers in a flying battle." She only lightly has her hands on Selene to keep her stays as right now she has no clue that the Dragon is once again coming in her general direction.
Skylar is stunned by Cilan's reactions mirroring the dragon's...and then the self inflicted knife wound. "What...are you doing? And no, I'm no doctor, that's Snow's area...are you linked to that dragon somehow?" She grabs onto Cilan and tries to prop her upright so she can guide her towards Snowblind. "C'mon, I'll get you onto Snow's back and then we can rest for a while and plan what we'll do with this thing. Snow! Come her-" She notices the dragon charging against the Snow Humvee and its Selene Turret and promptly screams. "SNOW, WATCH OUT!"
The big point that the feral dragon has missed in its madness, is that endangering Aidan's friends is a good way to make her mad. Again, it likely missed what it means to endanger her family. The huge feral hunter dashes forward, her right punch getting speed against its target.. which is just charging against it. The fearsome knuckle bomber is about to crash against the dragon, going to hit with a power that should perfectly be able to sweep it away from Snow and Selene. And true enough, Aidan has no idea of its weak points. But what the usual harmless fox lacks in knowledge, she covers for raw, pure power that is about to clash against her enemy.
"Linked.. yeah," Cilan says as she grimaces with her twisting of the knife in her self-inflicted wound, "Damage done to it.. happens to me too.." she says, trying to move towards Snowblind, "And.. hopefully vice versa!" she finishes as she pulls the blade from her leg, "Hopefully teach 'im not to steal my dragon!" the woman seeming to recover from her fall more and more.
The dragon's eyes go wide as it feels something harming it internally, as if the pain in its stomach and flesh where nothing compared to the corded muscle snapping in its leg. It falters, just as the large devouring creature crashes into it, the two flying away from the four small targets, it's jaws snapping down but a few yards away from Selene and Snow before it's pulled away.
Sadly Snow is still hearing only ringing in her ears but seeing Skylar's face she pauses just long enough to turn and see the dragon get a punch from Aidan to hopefully knock it off course. Without much to do she just continues to hurry towards Cilan and Skylar. "Run! Run if you can or grab on!" She once again yells not knowing how loud her own voice is. As the dragon crashes down away from her she feels that ground shake and gives a smile. "Or at least lets get to some good cover!"
Selene gives a cry as she sees Cil, reaching her hand out towards her mate. "Cil! You're alright! I knew that wasn't you! We need to get out of here, though!" she shouts, though everything she says is whisper-quiet in her own ears. Apparently her relief at seeing Cil has also made her totally ignore the fact that she nearly got eaten be a dragon not ten seconds ago.
Skylar phews as the Cil's and Aidan's efforts don't go unrewarded and the dragon doesn't eat Snow and Selene. "Looks like it goes both ways...and...it seems like hurting you hurts him way more...now...if Snow's powers can fix you up and at the same time not fix HIM up, we...could have a rather grim but effective tactic." She is a bit scared by Snow's shouting and begins helping Cil up onto the slightly burnt Snow. "Selene, you hold onto Cil, there's a storm shelter that way, I'll go over there by flying so I can call Aidan on my way back." She says pointing towards the old warehouse.
A faint grin takes over the grimace of pain that Cilan had worn only recently, the reason for the grin known only to her, and with an exasperated groan, Cilan pulls her arm away from Skylar if only to dive the blade of her knife into her now free arm, taking out two limbs of the giant dragon. "C'mon.. partner.. take back.. what is yours! Before.. I run out of safe places to stab.." she says openly to noone in particular.
"S'good.. t'see you too.. love.. talk more later though, got a pest that needs.. exterminating.." Cilan says to her mate as she pulls the blade from her arm. ".. sorry.. by the way.."
Aidan roars again, getting back her balance and staying between the little people and the dragon. She's not fully understanding what's going on - she could have good senses but she's a bit distracted right now - but her priority is protecting her close ones. Both her main weapons are still unready, but her trademark one, her sharp bite, is still ready to sink its fangs in the dragon's neck.
The dragon flails trying to attack the beast on top of it, and then the creature shrieks as Cilan delivers another blow of pain. It's clawed limb shifts and shimmers, losing shape and definition, the hole in its stomach attempting to repair is halted and the claws retracting and scales shedding reveal softer human flesh. Its slitted orbs shrink back into human pupils, intelligence returning to the feral creature.[[Category:[REDACTED] Events]]
