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Tuck's eyes widened as Stormy jolted forward, and with long strides he took the steps necessary to place himself between the Mist and any danger that loomed. Everything felt so chaotic, but there was no way that he was going to let anything happen to her - or anyone else that might need his assistance.

His barbaric axe flashed to life in his hands, runes gleaming a hot, electric blue, and Tuck took a defensive stance, ready to block any incoming damage that came Stormy's way.

"I got you, sweetheart," he growled softly, mostly to himself, eyes narrowed. "I got you."

Defending Stormy for 4
HP: 40/40

Sherry suppressed a shudder as she continued to step back, trying to get a good look at the field. This was the first real mission she had since the tomb, and though there had been distractions since then, the sand had helped remind her of all her previous failures. Sand, walls, death...

Something solid at her back stopped her progress. Oh, look at that. She'd found the large boney spikes. Backing away from the battle wasn't a good idea anyway. She wouldn't be of much help if she did that.

Sherry swallowed. She really should pull herself together and do something.


HP: 50/50
Target: --
Damage: --
Charge: --
Items: Dionysus Wine, Runic Bandages

Grinning a rather charmingly cocking grin, the Lifer pulled back the hammer of the extended pistol, putting his arm up to shield himself from the small sandstorm the horseman had made. Playing games? Lex's life was a game. You didn't even know, pony man. You didn't even know.

"You stay careful, niña. I can deal with this mule." His grin was pointed at the horseman, and he clicked the headset off. Concentration was needed, after all. "Sorry pony man, I don't have time for games." He said, firing a warning shot at his feet. "So if you want to play, find someone else."

Quote:

HP: 50/50
DMG: --
Target: Shikoba
Charge: --
Runics: Bandages (Unused)
Artifact: Arrowhead of Artemis (Used)

Too close, she'd been way too ******** close, his heart racing in his chest as she defied him to his face. His lip had curled in distaste at her comment about how she could make a man out of him, him, when he'd slept with too many ******** hookers in his life to count. He had earned his masculinity fair and square, hadn't he?

But her confidence, her sensuality, it reminded him of -

Tracey cut in.

It had been difficult to push aside the anxiety with her so close by, but somehow externally he'd kept his cool. It was only after his attack on her that he hit real issue, he hadn't been expecting how fast the heir was, too caught up in the moment, in the flash of blood in the air. It felt like revenge and it consumed his world, and for one brilliant moment fallen angel and human were mentally indistinguishable from one another, a perfect sadistic eclipse of delight.

Tear off her wings.>

That perfect moment was shattered like a fractured mirror as he was seized, suddenly struggling to breathe, chest heaving, he hissed in fury, an inhuman sort of sound that was relayed from Tracey involuntarily. But it wasn't the oxygen starvation that panicked him - no, that heightened everything sharply - it was the very principle, the very premise. Her touch against his skin made it crawl, unwanted, wrong.

Whatever attack he'd been initially intending was set aside as in sheer terror, he reached up the hand not still clinging to the axe to try and pull her hand off, his thoughts freewheeling wildly through all the women he'd hated, Sasha, his mother, even the horsewoman who had first slighted him. He was going to lose, he would lose, he always lost -

He almost lost it.

Tracey roared, nothing dainty or lovely about his voice any longer, not a single voice but layers of intonations and voices, like a faceted mask. The hunger was tangible, and it hurt. The fallen angel needed another charge and he felt it so acutely it was as desperate a need as his desire to breathe. Instinct narrowed down to a single brilliant point and he tightened his grip on the axe. <Hurt her.>

A twist of his wrist was all it took, tension running through all his muscles like an old, dear friend. His wings were made of adrenaline, his feathers steel.

There wasn't much room to manoeuvre but Harrison had made sure there was enough. The serrated blade was twisted to rake across that perfect, curvaceous skin and the charge flooded through him, the runes across Tracey's surface haemorrhaging light.


"Yssssssss"

Now it was personal. And it felt so ******** good.

HP: 60/60
DMG: 15
Target: Eris
Charge: 3/3
>> Y3 GC - 99 Problems - Unused
>> Y2 BC - Judgement - Unused
>> Y2 Chill - Penance - Unused
Runics: Bandages
Artifact Waves of Oceanus - Unused

A sharp look was given to the other Hunter as she felt the heat of a bullet ricochet off her shield, one of fire and disdain for the damage done. This was not that one's fight, how dare she attack her.

Of course, she knew that it was everyone's fight at this time, colours be damned, and seeing the little woman become defended by another, she couldn't help but swallow the discord in her throat. She was defended, she had those who would still stand by her side, after all that was said or done. What did Lifen have right now?

Shaking her head a little, she was taken aback by another swipe of the large sword, this time standing her ground as she felt her fear leak from the damage of the sword once again, swiping out with her right fist again, feeling the disadvantage of close combat.

Her defense was strong, she'd give the little Huntress, and, raising her bow again, she gave Stormy a look, one that said "This is our battle to wage, later."

"You hide behind your weapon now, but deep down even you know that you are affected by a memory that you cannot discern real or not. Whispers of an old home. The feeling of emptiness." She stated sharply, before lowering her bow.

"Deny it, I dare you."

How was it... that this was happening? A handful of hunters, mere children by any horseman's terms, much less an Heir's, cutting her down not by inches, but by terrible hacking slices.

The hilt of Harrison's weapon hit her in the gut hard enough that the flames surrounding her hands snuffed out suddenly, like a candle deprived of oxygen. It wasn't much, but it was enough to do what he had intended. She had only a second to realize how deeply Rep's hatred burned, how much it affected him for her hands to be around his neck, to wonder why that was before her body was physically shoved out of contact with the redhead's, Bonez a physical barrier between them. Her hands didn't quite slip from Rep's throat, her arms extending to bridge the distance created, but it didn't matter; Tracey twisted between them, and the blade cut deep into her, the serrated blade slicing a long, ugly wound against her ribs, tearing into her shoulder, clipping her wing, as if they had planned it that way all along.

It hurt.

The Protector was dripping in blood now, her hands stained with it as she pinned her arm across the new wound, holding her gut as she wrenched herself away from him, from them. She had meant to kick up sand as she shoved herself physically from them, put them off their guard, but the first beat of her wings sent searing pain shooting through her shoulder, like a thousand shattered pieces of a white hot glass. It was... shocking. The pain was fierce, but that wasn't what left her reeling now. She had dealt with far worse on numerous occasions. The War clan was no stranger to pain, they spent their whole lives reveling in it; it meant they were alive, and there was no greater feeling. She had clawed her way through a tournament against her peers to become Heir, worse wounds than this inflicted by her own people... she had nearly died at the hands of the hunters once before, when the Spire had collapsed, when she'd lain broke and fading and impaled by the twisted metal and glass of what had been her home, and only Insanity had saved her and made her whole again. No, it wasn't the pain... it was them. So few of them, doing this.

Was this her fall from grace?

She was not yet at the point where she needed to call for help, but would she? Would her pride even let her cry out to Invictus, beg him to help her, if they managed to bring her to her knees?

Pulling her arm away from the wound, she spread her bloodied fingers, fire flickering to life again. Eris didn't wait for them to regroup; fingers pointed towards them, she screeched as a column of flame shot towards the pair, cracking it like a whip. She wanted them to burn.

Mule, a**, hell he was laughing by this point. Had Shaheen infected them with her favorite insults? Shik rumbled with amusement, dark eyes shifting to the familiar little huntress and her odd hand cannons. He surveyed her with a tilt of his head, lightly drawing a lengthy nail over his forehead and brow to match the one he had left upon her.

"All of this is a game," he stated, baring a toothy grin. "Your superiors called you here as mine called me." His wings kicked up another burst of sand, this time lazily tossing his dagger to nick her shield as a warning shot of his own, a curve of silver augmented with the barest hint of green and orange from Distortion.

"Did the little huntress come to get a matching sister for her scar?"

The trainee raised her sword too slow to deflect the second punch. Tuck's defense shaved off most of it, but it still collided with her shield, a minor hit that still made her feel like paper behind the barrier nevertheless. Thane spat a curse in Draconic as Stormy stared at the horseman with a hollow expression and swallowed thickly.

It was like she was a peasant all over again and Lifen the queen. It was like when she tried talking to Gale about it and the words wouldn't come out.

"Th-they're not memories, they weren't real," she said in a hushed tone. "It was just a mission, just a disguise, i-it wasn't supposed to be real. It's not real." To debase herself before their very enemies, to feel as if she had been liked, fed, and employed by the very things she was supposed to destroy, to say she had admired them-- Disgust and familiarity and regret intermingled.

Memories were memories because they were too stubborn to really leave the mind.

Stormy's resolve weakened at the horseman's words, her initial burst of anger sapped by an indeterminate emotion, She passed Nevada an apologetic look for causing a scene and stayed behind Tuck, her hand coming up for a moment as if to grab at his shirt like a child seeking security--and then it fell back down again, clutching at the greatsword's hilt before it slipped from her grasp. It wouldn't do to look more weak.

"Dido was the f-founder of Carthage . . . The--The Colosseum was built between seventy and sev--eighty A.D. Antonio Stradivari made the first violin . . ." She mumbled to herself even as her gaze remained fixed upon Lifen, the repetition of trivia she knew the only means she had on her to calm herself down.