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Kale yanked his foot out from under the guitar, displacing it in the same way that the Domo had to his leg earlier, but since the Domo was only pressing down with the guitar, not leaning his weight on it, he kept both his balance and his instrument.

And now, since that electric bullet was no longer bothering him, he swung his guitar back into the playing position (though it was a mystery as to how he would play when he had a bullet in his shoulder) . . . and suddenly, he was getting smaller . . . because he was running away from Kale.

As Scooby Doo would say, "Ruh?"

As his little legs pumped, he started playing some sort of metal song (though, again, how he managed to do that with his shoulder was a mystery), the tall grass swallowing him entirely as the music echoed behind him.

So far away, we wait for the day
For the lights all so wasted and gone . . .

"Huh?" The man seemed honestly suprised when Rayner said that, "No, I'm fine. It's only a flesh wound really..."

He said this as he turned around, and honestly kind of trailed off at the really just as he saw his questioner. It was almost as if he saw a ghost.

"Minor really." He dropped his arm from grasping his shoulder. There was no blood, either he was telling the truth or had changed clothing.

It would probably be about this time he took note of the man's features. He was tired looking, that would be the first thing anyone would notice. But perhaps that could be chalked up to being injured. Then there were his eyes, or more accurately, lack of them. He seemed to see the world through a perpetual squint, lines on his face versus details. His hair was copper and scraggly, and his clothing was pain. Yet there was some reason that he seemed remarkably familiar to Kael.

Perhaps if he had been talking to the other Owle, she would have told him of the man named Leonard that spend quite a bit of time up in Syntaxis with her. He matched that description.

"Strange place to run into a good samaritan though." His tone was strangely casual.

Grass was set aflame all around the Domo, but he did his best to ignore the heat. It was tolerable for now, and his fur was pretty resistant to fire (though water was a different matter). A couple of them struck somewhere nearby, rocking him, but his low stature meant low center of gravity, so he managed to keep himself from bowling over, so he could carry out his trap.

That is, almost immediately after sprinting into the burning grass at full tilt, he would find himself running quite hard straight into the hidden tip of the Stratocaster at groin/lower stomach level. Almost immediately after disappearing within the waist-high green, the Domo had turned, knelt, and braced the base of his instrument against the ground in case of pursuit . . . and simply preparing to use the guitar's next attack whether his opponent chased him or not.

His strumming did not stop, and he had nearly finished by the time Kale would practically incapacitate himself, also complimenting the painful blow with a shove of his guitar, likely causing the probably stunned man to topple backwards.

We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days
Through the fire and flames we carry on

The Domo flashed a devilish grin, and struck the whammy bar of his guitar. Suddenly, a torrent of fire at least 8 feet long would gush from the end of his instrument, for all intents and purposes now a flamethrower, and turning Kale into a living inferno.

It was too bad that the tiny creature didn't have any 'mallows to roast.

Shortly after having loosed all four bullets, Kale had stopped; his ankle was already considerablly swollen, and he didn't want to further the injury anymore than need be. Thus, he fell not upon the guitar which was being held in his direction.

Hoping to see a blazing furball come whizzing out of the mess he had created, Kale held his gun aloft and in the direction of the flames; casual and cool was his persona. Though, not for long. His eyes widening as a return flame torrent was sent in his direction, he dove to the side quick as possible and rolled a few times. "********," he muttered during the two consecutive rolls as his ankle throbbed painfully. The rolls; however, would work in putting out whatever flames may have latched onto him.

Now a few feet away, he swung himself upon one knee - the knee belonging to the leg with the sprung ankle - and looked about for that damned guitar.

As he felt the heated flames continue to follow him, Kale decided to keep on with the roles rather than to stay in one position. Soon as those flames were off him, though, he swung himself out of that rolling execution and onto his knee, as described in the previous post.

Swinging his gun up, he decided upon a more tactical route: Disemboweling his weapon, he shoved in a Leviathan clip and proceeded to loose a torrent of fragile bullets in a linear patter right before him, creating a streak of water beginning three feet from his form and leading up to his opponent. By now, that demmed Domo was surely getting close. Hoping frantically to himself, he unloaded and reloaded quick as possible that Shocker magazine of his and aimed at the beginning of the liquid stream; voltage and water was one bad mixture, as he'd learned from science class.

Of course, if that Domo could reach him before all was said and done - which wasn't out of the question by a long shot, unless those exceptionally short legs were taken into account - Kale would switch the position of his gun to his fleshy left arm and attempt to oppose that magical guitar with his bionic right.

A comical look of most obvious disappointment overrode Kale's face as the water was soaked into the ground soon as it even was distributed, leaving his plan a no-go; he didn't even bother to reload his gun with the Shocker bolts.

As his opponent approached him, he had freed up his right bionic arm well enough; nothing was in the way of clashing with that guitar! Looking to time his counter-swing just right, he would meet that flailing guitar with his bionic appendage and then rotate his body so to provide increasing momentum in order to loose the guitar - hopefully its owner would accompany it - off into the tall grasses.

However, in releasing the grip of the guitar the strange creature left nearly all opposing momentum to be dropped, thus a follow-through for Kale's swing would be allowed. His abdominal region twisting slightly as his right arm continued on for a few inches, the flying Domo would meet with the metallic arm somewhere about the elbow.

Kale was sure the creature would have fun wrestling with that.

Hopefully the furry critter would be taken by surprise and stunned for an instant, thus allowing Kale retaliation time. Allowing the pull of gravity to work upon him, he quickly went into an elbow-drop, aimed to take out the critter by pure force alone.

"I'd say. Guess that's why I find it such a good place to collect my thoughts. My name is Leonard A..." He stopped mid sentence as that pang of recognition finally set in, "Wait a sec. I do recognize you, you fought in Heaven or Hell with the big guy and captain angry."

With as little recap as possible: Leonard, Athan and Vahn had been in Syntaxis at the same time. In fact, Leonard and Vahn had traveled there together, although under the information Leonard scared up that Omikron and his bunch were actually the Shades helping Victor. Vahn and Leo spit up when they infiltrated a friendly base, which led to Vahn getting into a fight with Omikron and Leo showing up after Alpha had come and gone to tell Vahn their princess was in another castle far too late.

Vahn and Leo didn't part on the best of terms. Athan and Leo on mostly indifferent terms. Owle on the other hand, had spent a good deal of time with Leo, and in a very Omikron move, the shadelord had forgiven Leo his trespasses and provided him a place to stay.

Later on Leo, with the help of Owle, would urge Omikron that his place was out in the world actively trying to stop the Forgotten. Not in Syntaxis hiding away.

"Your name's..." It was at that moment that the colour drained even further from his face, "Kael..."

He made a few funny krinkles of his mouth as he thought.

"You're gonna wanna see this, it'll probably blow your mind considering how we met out here like this. Follow me."

Leonard would motion towards another part of the central monument and start hopping from rock to rock across the uneven ground ahead. It wouldn't be that hard to keep up, but you could get the sense that Leo had been here before. He never jumped on a rickety rock, and seemed to know the most effiecent path.

"You're not going to believe this." He spoke as he pointed towards a large flat part of the monument. It looked like this was the first marker ever placed on this field, with so many inscriptions it seemed to mark a large battle... or even a slaughter. Name after name after name. Obviously not done with a chisel or an actual tool, but they actually looked like they had been clawed in. Then it would become apparent that every marking on every stone looked like it had been clawed in. The less eroded stones looked as if whomever was doing the work had gotten a little better at doing it cleanly, but it was a claw like tool none the less.

But Leonard wasn't pointing to all that detail. He was pointing to what looked like the first name ever carved here. Uneven, large and deep.



But there was a detail that Leo wasn't aware of. In front of the monument there was a shimmering outline... Just visible enough to want to reach out and touch.