Welcome to Gaia! ::

Tomlin began losing speed almost as soon as he left the picnic area. While larger feet stomped over the uneven ground, sharp twigs and unstable leaf litter, the cat's small paws felt every irregularity. Tomlin's natural terrain was the city streets, concrete and ashphalt, fences and garbage. He quite liked grass, especially the bright springy kind that came with little signs to warn him off. Long grass, too, he was familiar with, and soft farming earth, and long open roads with no hiding place and no end. The undergrowth here was new to him, strange and thick, and the tree trunks that rose up around him were far too tall to be a useful alternative. He stumbled and somersaulted over a leaf-hidden root, the leather cord around his neck catching on a fallen branch, pulling him up short, awkward and embarrassed.

Ahead and all around him, he felt the energy signatures as they came to life, friend and foe, all moving in the same direction. The play of order and chaos along his feline senses only heightened the strangeness of the new energy still some distance ahead. It wasn't anything he could recognise, and senshi (unprotected, familiar senshi) were heading right for it.

He pressed on, fur scuffed, pendant tangled, but determination in full force.

Score: 1

[Apparently, Fukalite was very bad at running through the woods. She growled with frustration as she felt something tug at her hair. The lieutenant turned around to roughly tug at her bandana until it was free from the branches. She sighed and weaved her hands through her hair to untangle it before she went back to tripping over tree roots and slamming into more branches. The shadowed figures continued to flicker in and out of her sight, but eventually she could recognize a few of them. Who was in the lead…? Some DMC senshi? Better than the White Moon senshi, at least.

She shook her head and rushed forward, running and running until she screeched to a halt. A stream. Fukalite glanced at the edge and then looked at the other side of it. She cocked her head curiously. She could attempt to jump, or she could cross it. Green eyes stared at the slippery rocks. Fukalite frowned. Yeah, crossing didn’t seem like a good idea. She took a couple steps backward and leapt, except it wasn’t enough. “AGHHH.” She shrieked, the cold water chilling her feet and soaking parts of her uniform. “This sucks,” Fukalite hissed as she marched across the water and out of the stream.

Score: 2

Remarque had little time to appreciate the lack of trees trying to murder him before he noticed the river. The large, rushing river. With what he could only imagine to be near freezing water, given the time of year and how long the sun had been down for.

In a moment of weakness, he hesitated.

There were other people rushing forward, apparently racing towards the same thing he was, though Remarque wasn’t entirely sure that whatever was up there was worth risking getting wet for. If he fell, not only was he putting himself at risk for catching a cold, who knows how many people were going to see him soak his a**?

…But was he going to let anyone see him quit, either? Especially not Lesath—wherever she was, he knew she’d never let him live it down if he just quit and walked away. His pace had slowed too much for him to leap over the river, though he spotted a few rocks that he imagined wouldn’t be too hard to reach.

Provided they weren’t covered with moss or something awful.

His foot landed, and though he was a bit off balance, he caught himself, eyed the next rock, and aimed. It was a somewhat slow process, as he was more paranoid about falling down and soaking himself than he was about speed. The water splashed at his feet, and the rocks were already wet enough that he suddenly had to consider the fact that he could just slip and break his head open.

Could. Could. But, that would have been very unlike himself to be caught in such an undignified manner. Reluctantly, Remarque proceeded with caution so as not to ensure any sort of humiliating casualty. The result was a slow process across as he hopped from rock to rock on his way to the other side of the stream--but at least he hadn't fallen.

[Score: 15]

Maia frowned at the ridiculous of the forest and how it seemed she managed to hit so many branches and root as she ran through. She could see a bunch of he other's pulling ahead, but she of course couldn't tell exactly who. She was happy to reach the water and decided to simply jump it in one go.

However she managed to trip on a root as she jumps and loosing her balance didn't make it very far. She nearly went in, but managed to land rather clumsily on a stone, which was slippery and hard to balance on in her heels. She cursed them, as she had though the majority of her senshihood.

She resorted to hopping or rather stumbling from rock to rock to cross the river and when she made it, she was extremely happy to be past it and to continue on.

Score: 2

Soldiering on, Babylon forced his way towards the sound of water and the general sense of others. The squire was solidly disappointed to encounter another rock scramble instead of a footbridge, but began trying to cross anyways. The more warriors on the side of Order who chased the stone, the less a chance that it would fall into chaotic hands!

His boots gave him good traction as he initially started across the rocks, but a slick patch of ice and too much rushing water soon spelled the squire's downfall. He landed wetly in the freezing water and scrambled to his feet, struggling to the far bank.

Zero for two on the rock scrambles, thought Babylon to himself. The squire scowled and picked up the pace, squelching onwards into the woods.

Score: 3

As the trees cleared somewhat, Athene realised that he wasn’t the only one in the woods, although it seemed some of the others had had better luck making their way through the trees, given the way that they were ahead of him – then again maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise given the way the dark-haired senshi had pretty much stumbled his way through. Still Athene didn’t want to be the last one there and so he tried to increase his pace a little, although to be honest he was till stumble-walking his way through.

And then he reached the stream and if bumbling his way through the woods hadn’t been bad enough, the water was fast moving with the water bubbling over very slippery rocks that seemed to be the only crossing point – well apart from flat out trying to jump it.

Eventually the dark-haired senshi decided that attempted to make the jump was probably better than trying to struggle over the slippery rocks and maybe it would have been if he hadn’t managed to trip over the double sashes that he had gained on his upgrade to super. It was therefore a soggier Athene that ended up making his way onwards towards the fallen meteor.

[Score: 1+1 = 2]