"Ready?" Mal had tucked his glasses away again, and he watched Mercy steadily. They'd gotten someone to be ready with the door; it'd open and they'd run out into the snow, chasing after--
A young woman, he thought, or maybe a little girl. An older man had found him to ask if he was there to help, and could Mal look for his little girl? From the way he described her, Mal was pretty sure it was his daughter, and she could have been any age from twelve to twenty some, but he suspected it'd be somewhere closer to twenty.
Who would have let a younger child out alone to ski on any kind of slope? The man had been nice enough about asking, but not as anxious as he would have expected if the girl was as young as he made her out to be.
Sometimes fathers just thought of their daughters as much younger than they were. That was alright, he thought. Dads and daughters were strange things. He gave Mercy a nod when he was ready, and held up his free hand to the woman on the door.
He didn't want anything on the far side to have warning verbally, so he held up five fingers, then four, then three--
Two, and he took a deep breath.
One, and the door was open and he was running. More snow, calf high and higher in some places, so they were wading more than running, and the birds. Not eagles, he thought, recalling the myths he knew vaguely.
Bronze beaks, metal feathers-- automata? He couldn't remember the name of them, but the description was ringing a vague chime in the back of his head somewhere as they broke across the wide, snow-filled area around the fortified hotel.
Viva Viola
There are three parts:
Part 1: Running through the birds
Each of you rolls 1d4. If anyone in the thread rolls a 3 or 4, you successfully make it through the swarm outside the hotel. If no one participating succeeds, you each take 3 damage and have to start over. Repeat until you succeed.
Part 2: Searching the mountain
Each of you rolls 1d8. If anyone in the thread rolls an 8, they find 2 people. If anyone in the thread rolls a 6 or 7, they find one person. Otherwise, you're mobbed by birds that force you back inside before you can find someone, each take 3 damage, and have to start over at Part 1.
Part 3: Bringing the lost civilian(s) home
Each of you rolls 1d4. If anyone in the thread rolls a 1, you're viciously attacked and your rescued civilian(s) runs off to hide again while you fend off the birds. You each take 3 damage and have to start over at Part 2. Otherwise, if everyone in the thread rolls a 2+, you successfully bring the civilian(s) back through the mob of birds and back into the safety of the hotel.
If you complete Part 3 with a minimum of 500 words you will receive 10 XP each. Please make sure to post, at the end, a tally of how many people you rescued!
Viva Viola rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1Total: 1 (1-4)
Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 8:46 pm
Mercy plucked another feather out of her hair. After all the hard work it took to get in the damned hotel, she was about to go back out...She looked to Mal with a "seriously" look before swinging her hammer so that it rested on her shoulders. "No not really, but we gotta do what we gotta do right? Let's get this s**t going!~" The fact that this man probably wanted them to find his daughter made her feel even more rushed to make sure they brought the child back safe and sound.
Mercy nodded to Mal as he made the silent countdown, bringing her hammer to the front so that she could come out swinging, She watched him take a deep breath and charged right with him into the snow, preparing herself for more claws and bird feathers to find themselves in her hair or elsewhere on her body. The snow was a little deeper in some places, and it made it hard for Mercy to traverse through, but she kept going, looking around for the lost girl so they could bring her back to the hotel.
If only these damned birds didn't have to keep attacking!!! "We might have to go back! Ow! Damn it!!!" Yes....Going back might be for the best in this case since the birds were now attacking in full force.
"Crap, crap, crap--" Mal chanted it. Chanted, firmly, because the diving, pecking, digging damn birds meant that they had to retreat back to the hotel. Once they got back to it, though, Mal was only willing to wait a bit before trying again; long enough to bind up wounds, but that was about all.
The damn birds and their beaks were surprisingly nimble. The name of them itched at the edge of his tongue, like something he'd forgotten a long time ago, or maybe never really learned.
He took a deep breath and grinned at Mercy. "Ready for another try?" With her assent, or even a face made back at him, he nodded. "Three, two, one--" And they could dart back out, together.
Mal faltered at the birds' attack again; he was thinking seriously about armor next time, maybe, or some kind of thing that would at least protect him a little. He kept his glasses in his inner pocket, too.
Viva Viola rolled 1 4-sided dice:
3Total: 3 (1-4)
Posted: Sat Aug 06, 2016 9:25 pm
Well, at least she wasn't alone in her suffering.
Mercy shook some more of the metal feathers out of her hair, eye twitching when she saw a small piece of her hair fall to the ground. She was ready to try again and hopefully smack another bird with her awesome hammer and save the girl. She moved to a more controlled stance and readied her hammer, nodding and leaping out as soon as she heard three, swinging her hammer. She heard the amazing ting of metal hitting metal and kept going, seemingly clearing a path through the metal monsters. "I think I got it! Let's move before the window closes and I lose more than just a little bit of hair!"
She really liked her hair okay? Keeping it in a nice curly afro is amazing and freeing in its own right.
"Some window!" But he darted after her, following in Mercy's footsteps and letting the broad swings of her hammer keep the area around them free of the feathered nuisances. He could only hope that it lasted, and he did.
Once they were past the concentration of the eagles, they could start looking. Mal knew the odds of finding a lost child; they almost always got worse the longer the child was gone for. For this, he hoped they were looking for a young woman, and not a child. A child in the snow, mobbed by these kind of birds?
No good outcome.
A young woman, on the other hand, might have enough sense to hunker down like that one tourist, and hide under something heavy enough that the birds could neither strike through it nor yank it away from her. Mal could hope, especially as he didn't find her close by.
Viva Viola rolled 1 8-sided dice:
2Total: 2 (1-8)
Posted: Mon Aug 08, 2016 6:18 pm
Two steps forward, five steps backward it seemed.
While she was able to clear a path through the birds so that they could start looking for the man's lost daughter, the window she created didn't give them enough time to search properly. The birds were making their way back quickly, and Mercy decided it was time to make another executive decision. She looked around before finding Mal, tapping him urgently on the shoulder. "We might have to start heading back! It looks like the birds are coming back for another round!"
Sure enough, they were already flinging dung and trying to claw at them both wich didn't sit well for Mercy who wanted to live to fight another day thank you. She grabbed onto Mal's arm with the intent to pull him back towards the hotel. "We really should go now!"
"That's a way better plan," Mal said, as their window closed. He swept an arm around Mercy's shoulder to pull her back to the cleared area around the hotel. They could shelter for a bit in one of the doorways where there weren't too many birds. Maybe the things could learn, and they weren't just automatons. Maybe there was some programming in there, too.
He kept Mercy with him, scanning for a clear space, and once he saw it coming, he linked hands with her. "One more try." He pulled her with him into the clear space he thought he could see coming--
And he found it. "Yes!" Quietly but with vigor, as they made it through the swarm around the hotel to the cleared field and the mountain beyond. Once they were out past that swarm again, they could look for survivors again.
Viva Viola
(current HP: 44)
Viva Viola rolled 1 4-sided dice:
1Total: 1 (1-4)
Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 6:08 pm
Normally she was a take-charge kind of girl, but she didn't fight or argue when Mal started to pull her back towards the cleared area she made earlier. She didn't even get the chance to catch her breath and rethink the situation when she was already being pulled back out through the birds towards a clearer space in the distance. One more try indeed. Mercy smiled and almost laughed when she heard the quiet yes, carefully unlinking hands with Mal in order to cover up the slight redness to her cheeks, coughing.
"I-Ill go search over there~ Holler if you find someone or if we need to go back alright?"
Mercy began her search, frowning with frustration when she wasn't able to find anyone, but she kept searching. Maybe there was a clue she could follow?
Mal managed to find enough clues-- or maybe he was just used to thinking in ways that were useful for this kind of thing. Maybe all of the training from his first life would actually be useful in this second, stranger one.
And he had been right; the girl he helped up from where she'd been hiding, hidden in a tiny dip of land under a sign piled with snow, was not a little girl, but maybe late teens or just twenty-- but clearly sheltered, too, from the way she clung to his arm as Mal got her up, out of the dip and away from the shield she'd used to hide.
"Mercy!" Mal kept her close to him, letting her cling to his off-side arm. He was actually glad now that there was no such thing, apparently, as dual wielding in this new life of his.
(current HP: 44)
Viva Viola
Viva Viola rolled 1 8-sided dice:
1Total: 1 (1-8)
Posted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 10:01 pm
Mercy wanted to say that she had found a civilian as well, bu apparently, life was trying to make sure she failed at nearly everything she set out to do so far. She turned around and waved at Mal and the scared woman clinging to him like her lifeline, which if she had to be honest, he was. "On my way!" She ran as best as she could through the snow and placed a reassuring hand on the woman's arm before trying to decide how they were going to get her back without taking any damage.
Mal was truly more concerned with making sure the girl got back to the hotel okay. If it meant that they lost a few more pieces of their coats, or a few more locks of hair, he was willing to call that an okay trade. She didn't look too badly off-- understandably terrified (and if Mal wasn't a detective, he might have been terrified, too) and shaken up, but she had been very smart to find that dip in the surface of the snow and hide under that fallen sign. Very smart.
"You did just right," was what he told her, while she clung to his one arm with both hands and his eyes flicked restlessly, back and forth along the swarms of birds still mostly (thankfully!) focused on the hotel. If any of those big swarms focused on them, he had a feeling he and Mercy would lose their lone civilian rescue, and that would be one hell of an additional headache on top of the smaller ones they'd already given themselves.
Mal kept his voice steady and pitched soothingly, herding Mercy and the girl a little sideways, a little backward, looking for a moment or a place where the swarms looked less likely to overtake them once they made a break for the hotel. He knew at a glance that it wasn't going to be easy; how could it be, when it'd taken them two tries to get out this far in the first place? But they had gotten out, they had found someone, and so Mal had faith that it was possible.
Even the remotest possibility could happen, after all, or else it was an impossibility.
Still, he nudged them sideways a little, watching the swarms. They had a kind of flocking movement, not that Mal could track with just his eyes. He wished suddenly and sharply for Quig, even if Quig was a pain in the a**. Quig could have given him an idea of when to run that wouldn't make all of this work useless.
"Ready? We're going to have to all run for it together when I say, okay? We're heading right back for the hotel, and everyone stay right close together." He still kept his voice pitched soothing, and on purpose; if the girl was going to break and run, it'd be during their flight toward the hotel, especially if a swarm decided to swoop at them unexpectedly. "Keep your eyes on the hotel as much as you can, okay? Mercy, try to keep an eye behind us, and I'll keep eyes ahead."
Mal kept up soothing chatter, bits of nothing, until he found the kind of opening he wanted. He wasn't, after all, sure that the girl could run as far or as fast as they could. Their group needed a good sized opening in the swarms, and he thought he saw one coming, though he couldn't be a hundred percent sure. Then again, what was a hundred percent anymore? Not even death, after Zeus's visit.
"Now!" He ran for the gap he saw coming, trusting that the girl's grip on his off arm and Mercy's closeness to the girl would pull them along in his wake. He ran steadily, not yet sprinting. He wanted them at that upcoming break before he pushed a little harder.
(554 words)
Viva Viola
Viva Viola rolled 1 4-sided dice:
3Total: 3 (1-4)
Posted: Mon Aug 15, 2016 7:31 pm
The hardest part of these rescue missions for most people was finding their way through the birds, but the hardest part for Mercy was trying to make sure the civilian remained calm enough for transport back to the hotel. One screw up and she was sure the frightened girl would've run right back to her hiding spot [ which was a very good one she had to admit ], and they would have to search for her all over again. Mercy smiled once more at the frightened girl, giving her arm a gentle squeeze to compliment what Mal had said to her just before.
Mercy made sure to look behind them on occasion as Mal lead them around, looking for a safe way to get them all back in one piece. There was a spot where the birds were the thinnest, but Mercy didn't say anything about it since it still seemed a bit shifty to her. If anything, it could've been a trap and the birds were waiting. As much as she enjoyed smashing in metal birds, she did not want to do any of this over again. In fact, she wanted to go back to her room once they got back and have a nice bath with some of the cheap hotel soap and chills.
If they were smart, the hotel would've thought to have a Netflix subscription so she could catch up on Orange is the New Black. Mercy was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard Mal's voice again with instructions on what to do. "I can do that. Just let me know when and I'll watch the rear." She watched the birds as well, wondering when their opening was going to come. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf now, but she seemed like she would be able to run with them without tripping or breaking down. In the horror movies, the first person to do that was always the first person to either get killed or skipped over and killed later.
Of course, if they were running from Jason instead of metal s**t flinging birds, Mercy would've told the girl to move or get left behind. As nice as she was, if this were a horror movie, she had a greater chance of dying than anybody since she was half African American. BUT, since this wasn't and she was sure Jason, Micheal Myers, Freddie Cruger, and Leather face didn't exist [ as far as she knew ], she wouldn't have to worry about movie stereotypes and murderous assholes trying to kill them for whatever reasoning they had.
The birds could kill them too but still...
Mal had given the cue and Mercy began to move, checking behind them and making sure the girl was safe, keeping a death grip on her hammer so she wouldn't loose it in the snow. Otherwise, it was game over since she was NOT about to go back for it. The hotel grew closer and closer, giving Mercy the motivation to push even harder, the safety of the civilian they had also helping. As soon as they made it to the doors, Mercy nearly pushed the girl inside, getting her out of the way while a bird tore into her coat. At this point, she was beginning to wonder why they even needed the thing in the first place since it didn't offer as much protection as it should have.
