legionmissions | PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

Wash blinks. Well, she's not wrong. "Point," he concedes. "Do you plan on using it at all?"

"Only if you're selling comedy," Wash replies. "This is bloodsport." Like Grifball, but with far fewer rules and potentially more casualties.

He probably shouldn't be thinking about that right now.

"That sounds right." What he wouldn't give for the timer on his HUD. Hell, what he wouldn't give to have his armor here at all. But wishful thinking isn't going to get either of them anywhere, so he cuts it off. "Do you think the walkway's wide enough for both of us?"

"Nah, not my style."

Once, she disarmed a guard of his rifle and then swung it like a baseball bat to club him. Nita is very lucky to be bulletproof.

"You're a pretty good shot, though," she says, looking up at him as she cleans his knife on her pant leg. While not exactly a born diplomat, she's nice, and doesn't comment on Wash's general human squishiness. "You want it?"

Admittedly, Wash has survived a lot despite his general human squishiness. (Then again, he usually has armor to help with that.)

"I'm that obvious, huh." He gives her the beginnings of a smile - it's not like he was trying to hide his interest in the rifle. "Yeah, I do want it. I'm a marksman, so that's right in my wheelhouse."

"Hey, nothing wrong with efficient allocation of resources," Nita says with a laugh, flipping the knife around with a graceful motion to offer it back hilt-first. "It's all yours. ...Remind me to give you the bullets, too."

Yeah, she didn't even load it.

"The place could be better," says the Chief, giving his head a little ceilingward toss to indicate the tunnels.

As always, his delivery is perfectly flat and serious. But it's still a joke, and still Chief for 'it's nice to see you too'. Wash is moving and talking and seems to be as alright as the circumstances allow, and that's a status report the Chief's happy to have.

A motion tracker is also no replacement for a teammate when fighting in narrow places.

"Where did you find that?" he asks, eyeing the plasma blaster speculatively. It's not that the Chief doesn't think he can get them the hell out of here as is, but it could certainly be easier.

Wash accepts the knife and sheathes it with a practiced motion. "Thanks. And yeah, those would be helpful." Somehow, he's not surprised Nita didn't load the gun. He's not sure whether that's better or worse than Mabel waving her handgun around with wild abandon; at the moment, it's probably best not to think about it.

As for the matter at hand... "Do you have any idea how to cook shark?" He's got fire starters, but beyond that it's just a big question mark.

Nita blinks, taken aback by the thought of cooking perfectly good shark. They don't have fire where she's from, and on the surface, she subsists on takeout and invitations to eat at friends' places.

"Uh...campfire?"

"Oh, yeah, definitely. Bring in a couple of throw pillows, a sofa, and maybe walls that aren't alive and it'll be great! A real Martha Stewart makeover." It's reflexive sarcasm and a reference Chief isn't likely to get, but Chief is alive and moving and here, which means the situation just got a hell of a lot better. He's relieved, at the very least.

He glances at the blaster, then back up at Chief. "I killed a man." Okay, that's not exactly accurate. "Kind of." Details. "I slit a Tribute's throat and took his gun. Arcade teleported him away before I could finish the job." His tone gets a bit too bright and his smile a bit too wide. "So if you see a fucker with a Chicago smile running around, tell him hi for me." And by that he means finish the job, please.

Evidently it's a big question mark for Nita too. "...okay. I have fire starters, so we just need something to burn." And the ocean itself is not going to be helpful with that. Hopefully the beach has driftwood. "Meet you back here in 20?"

"'Kay." She rises smoothly, gathering up the poncho and shark steaks as she does. "Don't want to lose this to another cybershark or something."

Her first stop is to collect her things from their rock farther up the beach, and she stuffs everything but the trident into her pack.

While most of what she knows about fire involves how to avoid it, Nita has seen enough disaster movies to know that wood has to be dry to burn, so she tries up near the high tide line--and finds a big chunk of tree. In life, it had probably been majestic, and now it was still an impressive chunk of wood, perhaps a foot thick and substantially longer than Nita is tall, studded with the remains of branches.

Pleased with her find--that ought be enough wood for anyone!--she picks it up under one arm and jogs back to where they'd left the shark carcass. It strikes her as not the most appetizing location for dinner, so she unilaterally relocates a few dozen yards upwind, to a pile of conveniently chair-height rocks.

It won't be hard for Wash to find their new campsite. He can just follow the loud cracking sounds as Nita breaks off the branches one by one. She then casually picks up the log itself, and just as casually snaps it over her knee.

The clockwork robots in front of Casey are frozen, not moving while he's looking at them. It's like a homicidally demented game of statues. Unfortunately, the one behind him is out of his field of view and has no such restrictions-

Which is why that's the one that Wash goes for when it starts to move, running up to it and lashing a solid heel kick at its knees (or whatever passes for its knees). The monster goes down, and Wash works his knife through the caging on its chest and tears through the smaller pipes and wiring encased within. The thing screams through its steam vents, and Wash snarls in return. He glances up, past Casey to the Harrubian dissidents that had been cornered before Casey's arrival, and bellows, "RUN!" He can fight these things. Casey can fight these things. The Harrubians can't.

"Sounds like a plan." Wash gets to his feet and heads in the opposite direction from Nita, already searching a bit further up the shoreline. He's not terribly successful: he does manage to find a few sticks of driftwood, hopefully enough to build a small fire, and some tangled seaweed that had recently washed ashore. (He has some vague idea about wrapping the shark meat in seaweed to cook it; given that the memory is pre-Epsilon, it's fuzzy and vague and he's honestly not sure if it's a legitimate idea or something he got from a movie or TV at some point. Still, it might be worth trying.)

He heads back up the beach, following odd and vaguely worrying cracking sounds, to find Nita manhandling the biggest piece of driftwood he's ever seen, culminating in her breaking the log in half with seemingly no effort.

Uh.

He makes a concerted effort not to stare as he approaches the relocated campsite and sets down his comparatively pitiful findings. Nita, he's starting to realize, is weird even by crazy future standards and is definitely going to take some getting used to.

"Hey, Wash!" Nita drops half the log to wave as he approaches. "Do you have any idea how small the pieces have to be?"

She's pretty sure what she's got is still too big, so she digs her fingers into one end of the log, and simply tears it apart lengthwise with another loud crack and a shower of splinters.

It wasn't tough to figure out the game, and as Wash came up on the one behind him, he charged forward for the goal.

But then the screams, Wash's shouts, the Harrubians running...it snaps Casey's attention to the commotion behind him momentarily and that leaves the robots free to take a swipe at him. It catches his shoulder and snags a fistful of his shirt, which provides time for the other one to advance on him. Casey takes a half-second to consider that the one who still has both hands free is more dangerous than the one with one hand free and takes a swing of his hockey stick.

It PLANGS off the robot's head, staggering it back, but he still can't get free of the one on his shirt and turning around to look at it is a lot more difficult than he anticipated.

"Yeah, about-" He pauses when she just. Rips a log apart. Okay, then. He blinks and tries again. "About this big," he gestures with his hands, indicating a shape about a foot long and three or four inches wide. "Any bigger and we'll have a pretty clunky campfire." At least the little sticks he's gathered will serve as kindling. You start a fire with something small, right?

The clockwork monstrosity on the ground in front of Wash wheezes its last and goes inert, and he stands in time to see the last of the Harrubians turn tail and flee. He's half tempted to follow them and try to protect them, but Casey's gotten himself in over his head. Clear and present danger takes precedence over potential danger down the line.

Also: dammit, Casey.

He surges forward, heading for the one latched onto Casey. It turns its blank face towards him and freezes upon catching his gaze. Good. That's not about to stop him: he grabs the wrist of the mechanical hand holding Casey and uses his momentum to throw his weight against the elbow connected to that arm, bending it the wrong way and abruptly snapping the joint, breaking metal casing and tiny pipes and all sorts of works that are too steampunk for him to really puzzle out. The steam escaping from the tiny pipes sends up a high-pitched, tinny wail, and the arm separates completely from the elbow. The hand doesn't let go, so there's definitely a mechanical hand and forearm hanging off the back of Casey's shirt, but he should be able to move again.

That doesn't mean they're done, and Wash brings his knife to bear on the now disarmed clockwork robot. "I have this one - take the one in front of you!"

"Right-o, hang tight." They might not have the proper tools...but Nita's demonstrated she doesn't need them, and it's a few quick, albeit noisy minutes until she's dismantled the log into roughly firewood-sized pieces.

"Okay." She dusts splinters off her hands and clothes, grabbing the end of her ponytail to inspect that as well. "Your turn. I've never actually seen someone start a fire with matches or whatever."

She knows a lot of people with flame powers.

Wash has definitely spent those few minutes sitting on the other side of one of the larger rocks. Removing splinters without the proper tools is a bitch, and just because he can heal doesn't mean he wants to have to cut himself open just to get wood out of his skin. He goes for the ounce of prevention rather than the pound of cure, pride be damned.

"Right." He sets about building the fire. It's been a while since he's had to do anything close to this, and he pulls on very old memories to try to figure out what to do. The fire starter in the middle, smaller pieces of wood and twigs built up in a loose pyramid around it, and four of the larger logs in a pyramid above that. It's a moment or two before the fire starter catches, but then the fire climbs up the twigs and then the logs and they're in business. Wash sits back in satisfaction, grinning. He's prouder of himself than he probably should be, but fuck it, that's a nice fire and they're going to have a hot breakfast with the first meat he's had in months. He's allowed to be happy, dammit.

It's Nita's turn to hang back. She can hardly be hurt by something as trivial as a campfire...it's just that she has no idea what a person does to light one. Wash seems to know what he's doing, and she sits quietly on a rock with her knees tucked up under her chin, watching. She might even remember how to do this if it ever comes up again.

The flames flare up unusually yellow as the salt on the surface of the driftwood burns, and then settle into the normal orange at the fringes.

"Ha, good job. I'd say it's time for s'mores, but I never want to see a piece of candy again in my life."

Edited 2016-11-06 02:33 (UTC)

Casey yanks himself free the moment he's able, catching the second robot in his gaze. "On it!" he shouts, attempting to free the hand from his shirt.

...Well, he kind of wanted to beat the robot to death with the other one's arm but he's going to half to peel up the fingers which will take too long, so forget it. Hockey stick's fine. Whatever. He aims his whacks straight to the chest, hoping to knock a few gears loose in it's chest. The soldering on a pipe ruptures, joining the chorus of wailing machinery. He can hear the mechanisms grind to a halt and steps back to admire his handiwork.

...When the sound of mechanical footsteps were audible over the sound of crunching mechanisms and dying whistles. Casey looks up just in time to see another mechanical monster launch itself at him, and he has no time to react before it slams into him.

When Casey can actually see again, there are a lot of stars and a lot more open space. He's dangling out the window with what feels like a ton of metal hanging off him. The hockey stick he's clinging to is wide enough to stay in the window frame but it's not going to hold forever.

Did he scream? He might have screamed.

It's been less than twelve hours since Wash woke up in this ridiculous murder arena, and he's already completely tired of it. They'd been a hair's breadth away from busting out of this godforsaken place before Arcade had interrupted them (though really, that's to be expected when the person running the place cheats as often as he breathes); he'd had a hard landing from that; and he'd long since been separated from Grif, which isn't too bad - Grif has a habit of taking care of himself - but that doesn't stop Wash from worrying. He can't not worry, what with everyone being caught in a goddamn death arena.

But worrying isn't going to help them or him, so he moves on, walking through giant trees and toadstools as quietly as he can manage, looking for uninhabited shelter and listening for threats.

What he hears instead is muffled whimpering and crying echoing through the trees. It sounds human, and female, and young.

There is no way in hell that's not a trap. There's just no way.

He takes a deep breath, wrestles for a moment with his conscience, and goes anyway.

The source of the sound isn't too far away - it only takes him a few minutes to get there - but it definitely confirms his worst fear. There's a Harrubian child - a teenager at best - bound at ankle and wrist and dangling from one of the giant toadstools at what would be chest height for him. She's fallen silent aside from the occasional whimper, a terrified expression on her face and eyes fixed to a point to his left. He slowly heads around the side of the tree he's hiding behind, following her gaze, to see a wolf the size of a horse standing by another tree, licking its chops, eyes locked with the young girl.

Well, shit. It's obviously a trap - if he exposes himself, he either gets eaten by a wolf or attacked by whoever set it, or possibly both. If he does nothing, a child dies. There's not really a choice to be made.

The wolf starts trotting towards the girl, teeth bared, and Wash surges forward. The wolf hears him, pricks its ears, turns towards him-

And he plunges his knife into its eye.

The wolf rears back with a scream, and Wash manages to yank his knife out and land on his feet, When the wolf lands, he lashes out again, slashing across the wolf's nose and opening a deep cut. "Get out! Go!"

There are some meals that are worth the trouble; to the wolf, a mouthful of girl isn't one of them. The wolf yelps and turns, heading back into the woods away from the assailant with the knife. Absolutely not worth it.

Between the noise the wolf made and his own yelling, Wash knows they don't have much time before whoever set the trap is attracted by the noise. There's no way they're not nearby - you don't set a trap with live, sentient bait and then leave it. You stick around and wait to see what you catch. Wash doesn't intend to be here long enough for that to happen. He sprints for the girl and cuts her down, catching her as she falls and slicing through the ropes around her ankles and wrists. "You need to get out of here-"

There's a sharp report and an even sharper pain in his arm. He yells in pain and dodges to the side, dragging the girl with him, as another plasma blast tears through toadstool stem right where his head had been a moment before. "Run!" He pushes the girl towards the foliage and turns to face his attacker.

Attackers, in this case. Cashmere smirks and twirls a plasma blaster around his finger, as though it had been a trick shot that he was particularly proud of and not an attempt on someone else's life. Next to him, Gloss smiles, and it's sweet ad terrible, poison all the way down. Their trap was a success, and they can't help but toy with their prey. "Should I chase the girl?" Gloss purrs.

Cashmere gives a rolling shrug, locking eyes with the Legionnaire they've flushed. "No. She'll still be close when we're done with this one. Plenty of time to hunt her down after we've finished here."

If there's a cue, it's silent - both of them raise their blasters as one and start firing, leaping off the toadstool they'd been on and heading in semicircles in opposite directions from one another. If they can herd their prey, it'll be that much easier to kill it.

There are some days when Wash hates being right. This is absolutely one of them. He bolts the moment they start firing, heading behind the toadstool and trying to think. He's got a very short length of rope, a giant toadstool, a knife, and two people after him who won't think twice about killing him - hell, they probably think it's a sport. He's got three and a half seconds to think before they make it around the toadstool and he gets caught in the line of fire.

Two seconds later, a chunk of toadstool flies out from behind the toadstool itself, hurled from an improvised rope slingshot and aimed for Gloss. Wash doesn't stop to see if it hits - he's darting towards another toadstool, trying for cover in the less terrifyingly giant foliage growing around its base. Anything to get away from these two.

Gloss sidesteps easily to avoid the flying fungus, though it does interrupt her firing pattern for a moment. "Oh, that's funny," she says, all predatory amusement. "He thinks he can actually get away."

"Well, he has another think coming," Cashmere shrugs easily, gesturing at the underbrush and drawing his plastisteel sword. The plan is simple: he'll go in there and engage the target in hand to hand combat, and Gloss will lay down covering fire and kill the target if it escapes. It's child's play for them.

Gloss smirks and waits as Cashmere heads into the underbrush.

PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

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