Outside 48: Hotter than Inside

[Nova_Eclipse]

[City Out of Time]

Electra takes Cass's hand gently, and smiles as the sorceress pulls her in close. She does her best to keep her composure, but she can't help her smile from getting wider when they begin to float upwards. She's never been able to truly fly, but always wanted to, secretly. She has to mightily resist the urge to kiss Cass, and focuses on their surroundings once they've cleared the wall, trying to get her bearings so she has a better idea of where they need to head. Perhaps Cass can fly them to the areas they need to get to?

[Morty]

[Nightmare Forest]

The person's pockets seem to contain some small coins, a handkerchief, a box of matches and a picture of someone. All of them have been touched by time just like the body itself, but all in all it's just what you would expect from the pockets of someone living in a house like this one.

[Earl of Purple]

Nightmare Forest

Well, the picture- if it's a photograph- might be able to give a clue as to what species this poor deceased person is, or if it's a sketch on a piece of paper might disintegrate under her fingers. She'll try a match to see if they're still good or if the age has gotten to them and they don't work. If they work, they're going in a pocket; matches might come in handy.

"Nothing that says who they were, but... This picture's a personal touch. I'm not sure if the Fear knows enough about people to produce one on a random corpse it created. Unless this is a duplicate of a real corpse, or something." Which would be creepy, but not as potentially worrisome as weaponised time. She'll leave the coins, because she's not a very good adventurer. She'll pull the handkerchief out and see if it's monogrammed or something, but she'll put it back either way.

[Rebonack]

[Nightmare Forest]

"So..." Lapis begins slowly, ears drooping. "So it might be that everyone who lived here got aged to death?"

Technically most humans get aged to death.

Just not this swiftly and gruesomely.

"I don't love that even a little bit..." she whimpers.

Before today, her hate for fae was a mostly nebulous thing. She knew she wasn't supposed to like them, but she wasn't totally sure why.

Now?

Now she has a VERY concrete reason.

"If everyone is dead what should we do? Keep looking just in case?"

[Morty]

[City Out of Time]

The first thing Cass and Electra will see as they ascend above the city gate is a wide, straight street leading straight ahead. It's no doubt the city's main artery. It's lined with tall buildings with small windows and narrow doors, each slightly different and almost artisanal in structure. There are smaller streets heading off from the large one and the buildings there are far more subdued. All of them are built out of some kind of dark rock, with slate roofs. The street seems to be split into one central thoroughfare and two side-lanes. However, the centre doesn't look like it was made for cards... it almost looks like a pavement made for pedestrians, but is very wide.

In the distance, the two will see that the main road eventually reaches some kind of city centre, with tapering towers of some more important buildings pointing into the sky. If what they seek is indeed in some kind of library or university, there's a good chance they can find them there. There's another building a ways behind the centre, a truly enormous one. It reaches at least half again as high as the other towers.

Another thing that they will notice is that the entire city seems empty. There's no people, not even traces of any. No carts, vehicles or any other items on the streets. No litter or garbage, even. And yet they might get a feeling they're not quite alone in here. Cassandra will likely feel the sorcery that permeated the city once.

[Recaiden]

Manticore's Village

It's a small place, a handful of turf shepherd's huts, a simple wooden temple, a crudely repaired two-storey brick house converted into an inn and a lone watchtower, little more than a little shed on rickety-looking stilts. Sheep wander around, accompanied by the occasional chicken, goat and alpaca. There's some bodies lying around, most of them shot, all human and none armed with anything more than sharp agricultural tools and slings. The slavers didn't even bother searching them. It's also not that far, as the shuttle flies, from VIGIL's base; just over the horizon. The manticore flies over the small village- more a hamlet, really- and away, following a rough track marked by recent tyre tracks.

It doesn't take long to see the slavers; they've got two double-decker buses, fitted with bars and chicken wire over the windows, a metal farm-wagon with an open top and fitted with seating, currently unhitched and empty except for seven corpses, and a light van, which lies on its side as a tall green open-topped tractor tries to pull it upright again. There's about twelve armed people visible, as a group of young men clad in clothing similar to those of the dead villagers try to help the tractor pull the van upright again. The armed people carry shotguns and wear bullet-proof vests, but mostly they're using whips and bludgeons to try and motivate the villagers.

The manticore isn't flying very high, and swoops down to land behind a hedge, out of view from the vehicles. If the shuttle follows it down, it'll rumble as quietly as it can. "I will fly over and disstract them, whilsst you get in and help the villagerss and find my cubss. They know I will come back for them, but they don't know I've got humanss to help."

Calm Reed surveys the scene grimly. Slavers. Slavery is an unavoidable part of life, but this spectacle of cruelty does not fit within the proper order of things. Time to restore it with some force.

"They won't know what hit them. Let's be quick, before they catch on."

The VIGIL members will follow the manticore down, so they can approach on foot (as it were) and maintain the element of surprise.

Alice notes, with conflicting feelings, that neither the watchtower nor the temple were much help.

Now remember, she tells herself, the point is not to kill the slavers, it's to rescue the captives.
Killing the slavers is just something they'll do to make the rescue part easier. A bonus as well as a means to an end.
"The prisoners will be in the tall cars." 'Bus'? What's that mean? "Let's aim for those guard first, closest to the crashed car." Alice suggests. When given a chance, will those tormented villagers flee? Take cover in the ditch? Take up dropped weapons and turn on their captors? They're in the most danger, but Alice hardly thinks of that.

For purposes of fighting, Alice has brought two little robotic drones (currently being levitated over her left hand so they don't make noise), which are connected by little cables to a port in her left side, and plenty of guns. One for each drone, four for her. As the manticore puts its distraction into play, she'll step out from behind the hedge and she and her drones will each take a shot at the slavers. Aim for the heads, before they become difficult moving targets.

[Morty]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed nods. This does make sense. When Alice starts shooting, she breaks into a run, making a straight line towards the slavers, seemingly heedless of the risk of being shot.

[Earl of Purple]

Manticore's Village

The slavers are currently more interested in the manticore than their surroundings, and the slavers who had been directing the slaves in lifting the van start pulling them away and forcing them back into the buses to prevent the manticore knocking over another vehicle if it comes back down. At least, that's what they start doing, before one of the slavers keels over with a bullet in its head. The surviving slavers start to panic, then, looking around and shooting somewhat randomly at movement- until they spot Calm Reed, and start focusing their fire on her. They've swapped out the shot shells in their guns for solid slugs, in the hope they'd be more effective against the manticore.

The manticore still flies above, roaring occasionally; it's out of range for the slaver's guns however.

[Recaiden]

Approximately eleven targets remaining

Aim assist off

Disabling vehicles...

Suppressing fire...

The drones start up their propellers and disconnect their cables, hovering off to each side of Alice. The one on her left shoots at the tires of the further double-decker. The one on her right fires at the slavers, more to keep them worried about getting hit than to actually hurt one of them. The recoil is clearly a lot for the little machines to handle; they need a moment to right themselves and recover their position after each shot.
Actually hurting them is left to Alice, who paces methodically towards the slavers. Reload, take aim, there, that one second-from-the-right, just as he lifts the gun towards Calm Reed, pull the trigger~

[Morty]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed charges inexorably; bullets that strike her armor seem to do far less damage than they reasonably should. When the monk is close to the slavers, she leaps, landing with a powerful thud that cracks the ground around her and sends shockwaves that threaten to topple all nearby enemies. She then moves forward, slowly this time, delivering deliberate, powerful elbow strikes, knee strikes and concussive slams at whoever's in reach.

[Nova_Eclipse]

[Nightmare Forest]

"This is just one village. There may be others at other places that are affected differently. I'm no expert on these sorts of things, but we may find survivors elsewhere. The creature is called 'The Fear', after all," Quin posits, one hand on his lower faceplate, like it's his chin or something. Not that the others can probably see him, what with him standing outside. "Time or its ravages, is just one thing people could be afraid of that could be weaponized."

[Earl of Purple]

Manticore's Village

The buses are disabled, the tyres popped and the wheels possibly damaged. The slavers are wearing bulletproof vests, so the drone's inaccurate fire doesn't actually phase them... Unlike Alice's more targeted shots, as another slaver finds himself toppling over and shooting into the ground after a bullet hits his leg and breaks it. There's quite a bit of blood, so it looks like his femoral artery has been cut as well.

Two slavers and a slave stumble to the ground as Calm Reed lands, the slave not getting up. The slavers do, but are quickly dispatched by Calm Reed's powerful elbows. I'm not sure if they're more likely to survive their wounds than the one Alice just shot; I'm not sure if she's trying to be non-lethal or not. One of the slavers drops their gun and pulls out a trench knife with a knuckleduster hilt and moves in. He's got some martial arts training, though nothing supernatural and he's unlikely to last long. He's just a distraction, as a woman steps off one of the buses. She's a half-elf, with long ears, blonde hair, dark ochre skin and red eyes, and she wears crimson robes and carries a short steel wand tipped with red lightning. She raises it at Calm Reed and the lightning arcs from the tip of the wand to the Exalted, but it's not a directly harmful attack. It should trigger all her pain receptors, however, and that may be distracting enough for the knifeman to get past her defences.

[Recaiden]

They trust in their armor. Wise of them. Bad for our heroes.

Eight-
Nine targets remaining

Now Calm Reed is in amongst the slavers. Her armor is probably impervious to Alice's guns, but people getting thrown arouond by shockwaves, ducking and dodging and pulling knives on each other, it all makes it harder to pick out a target. Alice glances at the half-elf, and the drones both twist to shoot at her right away (this probably leaves the one on the right at a vulnerable angle relative to the other slavers, if they're paying attention). Then she charges in, planning to club one of them with the stock of the gun (this should not be mistaken for a non-lethal bludgeoning sort of attack; with her strength a hit would do terrible harm to a human and, honestly, the gun itself).

[Morty]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed turns to meet the knife-wielding slaver, intending to dispatch him quickly. However, as she shifts into another stance and prepares to rush him, the lightning bolt strikes. The monk halts in her steps, a blue aura appearing around her as she powers through the pain. It does give the knife-wielder the initiative, however.

[Earl of Purple]

Manticore's Village

The half-elf is shot, the bullets hitting her robes and creating a burst of light and throwing the cruciamancer to the ground. She's alive, but that seems to have hurt and she's dropped her wand.

One of the slavers takes a shot at the drone, and unloads the other barrel at Alice as he sees her charging in. He's closest, so if he misses or doesn't do enough damage with his slug he'll be clubbed down quite easily.

The slaver fighting Calm Reed steps in close to try and prevent her using her full strength. When he's closer, he tries to stab her in the eye before she recovers from the pain, which ends when the wand falls from the half-elf's hand. Another slaver moves behind Calm Reed and will shoot into her back. If the shotgun slug goes through and injuries his colleague, it's still better than not stopping Calm Reed.

Nightmare Forest

"We should keep looking. There may be others who have survived. I... Do not look forward to some of the other things that may have killed, if this is the fear of time's passing." Like confined spaces. Makuro doesn't like those, but now she can't help but think of them. She's going to leave the hut rather quickly, just in case the walls start closing in now she's thought of her fear.

[Rebonack]

[Nightmare Forest]

"Yeah, let's keep going," Lapis agrees. "Let's check a few more houses. Maybe someone in one of them is okay?"

That said, she'll slink back outside and head for the next run down, decrepit home.

This place sure is cheerful, isn't it?

That's the problem with enchanted forests.

Enchanted doesn't always mean sparkly and enchanting.

Sometimes it just means 'in the sway of awful magic'.

Which certainly seems to be the case here.

[Recaiden]

The drone is shot at the edge of its propulsion systems, and starts spiraling increasingly wildly through the air.
The shot aimed (perfectly) at Alice stops a few inches in front of her chest, sending a visible hexagonal ripple through the force-field around her. I don't think they have any chance of shooting her like that. Perhaps from a different angle, or with a fancier gun.
The other drone attempts to shoot the half-elf while she's down.

She drops the dented gun, forming her hands into fists-
Eight targets remaining

Lightning attack partially effective. Remember to investigate

Battery - sustaining; Heat levels - trivial

Alpha out of control. Attempting soft landing...

-glances towards the damaged drone (and thus away from Calm Reed's corner of the fight), and leans in to swing a wild punch at the next nearest slaver.

[Morty]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed lowers her head when the knife comes, which causes it to strike a gash along her head, which looks less dire than it should be. She responds with a bone-breaking jab to the knife-wielder's sternum, which she barely has time to execute before the slug slams into her back. It staggers her and almost knocks her down, but the shooter might end up feeling a deep sense of regret for having fired in the first place. It might seem like a waste of ammunition, or perhaps recklessly endangering allies. It might slow him down just enough to make him unable to react when Calm Reed recovers from the shot and takes off in his direction.

[Nightmare Forest]

The other homes seem much the same as the first one. They look as though they had been abandoned for years. Though the exact amount of apparent time seems to vary. Some bodies appear to still be actively rotting or otherwise aren't quite as old. The unfortunate victims are humans and halflings.

However, the more the party stays in the village, the more the deer-creatures seem to shake off their lethargy. They start to focus on them instead of starting off into the distance. There's a sort of dumb, directionless malice behind their attention.

[Earl of Purple]

Manticore's Village

There's a crunch as the knife-wielding slaver is knocked from his feet. He's not getting up; that hurt a lot. Also, he's pretty sure she hit him hard enough to break something, and if he's lucky it's his bulletproof vest. The slaver with the shotgun, meanwhile, doesn't fire again and Calm Reed can close with him and throw him around, too.

The half-elf is shot again, generating another flash of light and little other effect. It might stop her standing up, as she's staying on the floor.

The next nearest slaver is one who had been focused on hustling slaves back onto the buses, and is caught totally unaware by Alice's punch into the side of his head. He goes down like a sack of potatoes, dropping his shotgun. The next closest slaver lowers his shotgun towards Alice's legs, blasting a load of buckshot into her knees and shins. He doesn't know how good her force-field is, and he didn't have any slugs to load when everyone else loaded up to try and take out the manticore. So he's hoping that maybe enough pellets get through the forcefield to do some damage.

Nightmare Forest

"We should go. Those deer things have noticed us. Which way did we come from?" Makuro's unnerved enough she's not sure, and she really thinks they should leave this place before the deer headed not-people do more than just turn and stare at them and start acting hostile.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Nightmare Forest

Quin points in the direction they originally came from, having not moved terribly much while the others were checking the houses.

"That way, I believe."

[Rebonack]

[Nightmare Forest]

"Directions aren't always the same in an Enchanted Forest, that's why I've been dropping bread crumbs!" Lapis cheerfully announces.

What?

She has a pack loaded down with supplies. A hearty amount of those supplies happens to be fresh bread from VIGIL's cafeterias. As she begins trotting along the trail of little white specks she left on the ground, she decides that it might be a good idea to explain why a trail of bread might be more reliable than their memory.

"Fae don't like things that are really real. And they don't like things that are banal. They HATE them so much. Things like normal boring house work. But one of the things they hate THE MOST is fresh bread, since fresh bread is one of the most mundane things that there is. That's why they get mad when people bake bread at night."

They might even send a buggane so smash down your house for doing it.

The jerks.

"Let's go quick these deer are spooky."

[Recaiden]

Hmm. The half-elf's magic seems to be protecting them alright.
The intact drone settles back into place in midair as it clicks and shifts, reloading its gun.
The damaged drone careens out of the air and comes to rest in the ditch.
Six-
Five targets remaining

Alpha landed and deactivated

The force-field is quite good. You might even say it's her best feature. But it's not necessarily everywhere at once. Many pieces of shot hit the shield as uselessly as raindrops, but the lowest-angled bit of shot breaks through enough to...be painful, if not dangerous.

She lifts her hands up, fingers spread out, and sends a piece of the forcefield out to crash into that shooter, an invisible blow.
Not as strong as an actual punch would be, but harder to see coming, it might knock him down or off-balance, while she stomps closer.

[Morty]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed rushes the shotgun-wielding slaver and attempts to dispatch him handily with a powerful two-handed hammer-blow that ought to snap his neck when it strikes home. She then turns around to approach the half-elf that Alice is keeping on the ground.

[Earl of Purple]

Nightmare Forest

"Then that's not where we want to go, if we're going deeper." Makuro's going to head away from where they arrived, headed deeper into the woods.

Manticore's Village

The shooter was not expecting the blow, and is knocked just enough off-balance that he can't do anything else until Alice gets closer.

The slaver who shot Calm Reed is knocked off his feet with a mighty crack, his neck broken. He's dead before he even registers it.

Now she's not being shot, the cruciamancer is starting to stand up, and when she sees Calm Reed approaching she grins maliciously and holds her hands up before grabbing her little finger and yanking it back so it breaks. She screams, and then tries to transfer the injury to Calm Reed, using magic to repair her finger and break Calm Reed's in the same place hers was broken.

[Nova_Eclipse]

Nightmare Forest

Quin shrugs and moves to follow Makuro.

"Indeed. Let us hope we can find some survivors."

[Shadowcaller]

[New Inside - Castilla]

Their differing perspectives was about the only clear thing here. Still, maybe it was more than it seems. Maybe the demons weren't looking for something, but rather wanted the place itself. Fey tended to gather around magical energies, capable of naturally twisting that energy to hide themselves as the pixie put it. The demons could just be paving the way for something else by claiming fonts of power. Ilpholin may be able to find more checking out the scene of the crime.

"Can you tell me where your hiding spot used to be? And maybe how to find your other friend? So I can, uh, squish em for you."

[New Inside - Castilla]

"It was the big tree! The one everyone was hiding in when they burned." The pixie explains. "Except me." They grin, which soon turns into a frown. "And Thinky of course." They look up at her. "Thinky should be close. They brought them in here as well, you guys even told me about it but you never squished them for me. It would be a favor really. They just come back with everyone else and don't have to be in this boring place all day." They gesture around.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Hillside Rambling]

It's been a little while since Lucy last visited Vivi. Not to say she's been absent entirely, but she's definitely been around...less often.

But perhaps to make up for that, she's promised to take Vivi somewhere really nice today! And, true to her word, their trip today has taken them into one of the more scenic parts of Outside's substantial landscape. Beautiful rolling fields of green, copious amounts of plantlife and wildlife - the perfect place for a walk, and a picnic.

Lucy still hasn't exactly been her normal cheery self today though. Definitely seems like something's up.

[Reinholdt]

[New Inside - Castilla]

"Close, huh?" Ilpholin frowns. Previously, she thought the pixie meant they were in this hospital somewhere. But upon revisiting the idea, what if they meant Thinky was in the room somewhere?

Ilpholin starts to look around for anything out of place. "Hello, Thinky? Are you there?" She calls out to the room.

[Recaiden]

[Manticore's Village]

Calm Reed rushes the shotgun-wielding slaver and attempts to dispatch him handily with a powerful two-handed hammer-blow that ought to snap his neck when it strikes home. She then turns around to approach the half-elf that Alice is keeping on the ground.

The shooter was not expecting the blow, and is knocked just enough off-balance that he can't do anything else until Alice gets closer.

The slaver who shot Calm Reed is knocked off his feet with a mighty crack, his neck broken. He's dead before he even registers it.

Now she's not being shot, the cruciamancer is starting to stand up, and when she sees Calm Reed approaching she grins maliciously and holds her hands up before grabbing her little finger and yanking it back so it breaks. She screams, and then tries to transfer the injury to Calm Reed, using magic to repair her finger and break Calm Reed's in the same place hers was broken.

The half-elf is screaming! That seems like a good sign if you aren't watching her to know about the magic.

Alice reaches the stunned slaver and-
No flourishes, no threats. Fight efficiently.
-just tries to hit him really hard. A jab to the chest. A hook to the left. And an overhand punch if he took all that.

The undisturbed drone finishes getting its rifle back in order.
Are there any good targets left to aim at? Maybe if it circles around to the left...

[Rebonack]

[A Secluded Desert]

Nothing but rolling hills for as far as the eye can see. A high, cold desert, dominated by frost, sagebrush, and the occasional antelope. Cold wind whips across the land, carrying ice crystals that sting the eye and saps the very heat from one's lungs. Desolate. Inhospitable. But not without life. Hundreds of miles from the nearest habitation, surely. No person in their right mind would be traveling through this trackless wilderness as the fangs of winter close in.

It would appear then that the lone human woman, her green scarf flapping in the freezing gusts, is quite out of her mind.

Or at least she would be.

If she were a person.

The woman unfolds for lack of a better term. Perhaps she blossoms if one is feeling particular poetic. Wings and tail, scales and claws, larger and larger, taller and taller until at last there crouches among the rolling hills a seraphim of otherworldly scale and splendor. Stronger than biting wind, brighter than the anemic late autumn sun, her Glory spreads across the land and fills everything it touches. Dull gray sage brush and dead brown tufts of grass come to life, twisting and growing and blooming into a riot of impossible shapes and colors. The earth churns and roils as great monoliths of something like metal rise and intertwine into a cathedral of silver and light, vines and fragrant flowers climbing the trellised edifice. From their eyes outward, herds of antelope are transformed as the warm radiance of Perseverance fills them to the bursting, remolding them in the celestial's image.

For perhaps a mile in every direction the bleak rolling hills have been transformed into an empyrean garden.

Zee had said she needed a snack.

She wasn't kidding.