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A silent night, a silent ride.

Tens of thousands of feet in the air, Colin sat with five others who were their for the same enigmatic reason: capture or destroy the SF-32 Carrier. Looking at the rest of the troupe, Colin was sizing them up.

First was the militant called Spooky, from what he'd picked up. This man was the epitome of efficiency. Colin was sure that this man could do the entire mission by himself, so it would be best to not get in his way.

Next was the giant of a man and the girl sitting next to him. They seemed to be in a conversation, giving Colin the idea that they were friends. The behemoth seemed made of pure muscle. Needless to say, Colin was surprised that the plane could keep balance with him in it. The duster around his shoulders worn from use. Whether from wear and tear or scuffles he didn't know, but this man had seen a lot of action.

The girl next to him was an odd sight. Nothing that strange except her hair. He really couldn't describe it in an words other than wild.

Shifting his eyes over, Colin would then spot the man with the arms. Steel and rock, both looked menacing.

The most curious was the last. Small in stature, the man looked like he could kill without a second thought. Before getting a chance to look in any greater detail, the pilot's voice would sound over the intercom.

Quote:

Closing in on jump point. ETA three minutes.

The man would lean back, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. He'd wait, watching his team sit, wondering what each was like.

An apparition appears!

Well, not much of one. An old man playing with his grandson in the woods, pale and transparent, flickered into existence a few feet ahead of Spooky. They were silent, visual only, and they didn't notice him. The man looked up to the sky suddenly, hollow eyes opened wide, mouth agape. He raised his arms to cover his face, and then--

They were gone. A smooth vanish, unlike the flicker that made them appear in the first place.

((I'll be handling GM requests with this account from now on.))

The air seemed to ripple in front of him, as though the forest was making a concerted effort to show him. The grandfather and son appeared again, and repeated the same routine.

A moment of silence, even the animals grew still. The grandfather's head, and only his head, appeared in the same spot, flickering and rippling violently as it came into being. The scene would play in slow motion, zoomed on the face, and when it faded it was a slow, smooth fade, like someone had used a dimmer to turn out the lights.

"HEY RYKE! YA EVER FREEFALL BEFORE?"

Even over the sound of the engines and the vicious buffeting of the wind around them, the bellowing voice of Ebris Dhifi could still be heard. It was probably the only warning Zandra Ryke would get before a massive hand clamped down onto her gear and, with one big yank, he hurled the younger bounty hunter right out of the aircraft.

And right after catapulting her out, the massive hunter propelled himself out as well.

"YEE-HAW!"

Express elevator to hell and all that good grod.

Life was good, at least so far. After winning that rathin' tournament, Ebris had been contacted covertly by some company that he initially thought had the dumbest rathin' name he ever done saw in his life. Still, for the amount he was gonna get paid for this gig, Ebris would have worn a damn kitten hat for the entire Throne-damned mish. Seemed the suits of that corporation took interest in him after Bloody Pandas smashed their way to the top. It was a rathin' shame that his blood buddies couldn't have made it, but oh well - at least he got the damn bounty b***h tagging along, and she made a mighty fine meatshield if anything ever got a wee bit too dicey. Ebris mulled over the question of why they invited her as he yanked the primary cord and deployed his chute - he figured that it was because she was pretty much the only damn person to ever consistently stay alive after multiple associations with him.

Like he said, not that he cared - meatshields are always good, and tossing her outta the plane was quite the hoot.

Landing unceremoniously with a pretty big thud, Ebris rolled with the landing. It looked cool initially, but that quickly faded when he got tangled up in his parachute.

"Rathin' piss!!!" He whispered through clenched teeth, ripping the damned thing to shreds with his bare hands. Ebris never liked air drops, as it left too much outta his control. Beggars can't be choosers came to mind as he buried the remains of the thing under a snow mound by a large tree.

After that was all said and done, the bounty hunter went to look at the rest of his compatriots. Spooky was the closest one to him. Spooky was his kind of fella - he met the hardened sumbitch in a bar a bit back, which was the initial contact point for the gig. They had gotten into a bar brawl over drink choices, and after bruising each other considerably, they had become pretty good chums.

"Spooky! What the rath are ya doin'!?" He called out in the most restrained voice he could - didn't want to be too loud this early.

Spooky watched as Ryke and Ebris hit the ground, of course the bounty hunter had no idea how to land. The larger man was certainly useful, and had a good deal of experience and genetic favors working his way. They certainly had gotten into a tussle alright, if you could call broken ribs, smashed jaws, busted kneecaps, and split skulls 'a tussle'; and that was just what happened to the other people in the bar. In a circle of fire and broken bottles, they had shown down and then decided that it wasn't ******** worth it. Or something like that. Coincidentally, it had been this show of grandiose force that had gotten the two hired without question.

Still, this operation should be made all the more easier around and his somewhat female counterpart. Unlike the two though; Spooky was a much more somber guy. Mellow to the point of almost being depressed, so he wasn't much for cracking wise or cursing unless the situation called for it. All the same, his potty mouth was renown. He had already figured out something very important in the whee minutes past their initial arrival. With both hands, he grabbed onto his M4 and held it down across his chest, flicking the firing selector from safety to 3-round burst. Preparing for the impending violence, as his trigger finger rested above the trigger in a perfect show of trigger discipline.

"Come here you guys, I figured out something."

He crouched, kneeling down and pushing the dirt around with his gloved hands before looking up and around. Spooky was trying to decide where best they should go while puffing on the cigarette he had lit just after the ghost had disappeared for good. The soldier was methodical and checked his compass to figure out their exact direction, no need for the GPS yet.

North?

Yeah, that sounded good.

Spooky stood up to his full height and stared at the somewhat taller Ebris, nothing could be read of Spooky's face as it was hid entirely behind his combat wrap and sunglasses. Clearly though, he had something important to tell.

"An old man and a kid, ghosts, showed themselves."

He stated plainly and waved a hand towards where they had been before continuing while beginning to walk north, as judged by his compass.

"Anyway, they refused to talk but their actions spoke loudly to me."

The soldier had simply asked for some peace of mind from them, and thus it was foretold. Continuing to walk along, heading out of the woods steadily moving towards the housing area.

"Whatever it, was that killed the people here, did so through..."

He paused and mulled over the proper term, trying to best describe what happened.

"Sort of like a... force, one that disintegrates them, destroy their physical bodies but not leaving any sign of destruction."

Spooky kept it short and simple, as he waved Ebris and Ryke onward, heading straight into The Worker's Rest.

An hour after drop time...

"s**t!" Shouyin shot up in bed to the sounds of a tired alarm clock and a mattress squeaky with shot springs. He leaned over to the right and swung his hand down on the alarm as if he'd been listening to it for hours, a steel covered palm crushing the cheap plastic body of the device and muffling the speaker permanently.

"Gotta get used to that arm," he stood up, halfway dressed with eyes red from some ridiculous adventure the night before. Groggily, he began pulling off his clothes and stepping into the shower, letting steaming hot water pour down his head and shoulders. He smiled into the stream, scratching at his forehead and rubbing his chest down, which was uncomfortably grimy. It wasn't often he went out drinking, and certainly not as heavily as he had last night.

"The ******** did I do... ?" the half-golem climbed out of the shower as he muttered to himself, stepping back into the motel bedroom with a towel wrapped loosely about his waist and rummaging through his belongings. Slowly, and with dawning awareness, he eyed the new backpack - tightly packed - that was stuffed into a corner, and, reaching over, grabbed his axe and brought it up to his nose. The Tearbringer reflected the late evening moonlight that seeped in dimly through the closed curtains, highlighting the swirling root network of greens and blacks and yellows that made up Shouyin's eyes.

"... s**t."

Three hours later:

The man, the half-golem, the avatar of earth was hurtling through the air, plummeting through free space and grimacing as the wind forced itself against him, halfway throttling him despite the resistance of the oxygen mask he wore. He watched briefly the sleek stealth plane as it flew away at some unimaginable speed and counted his blessings.

He'd taken this job almost out of boredom, but mostly out of a need for capital. Turned out those tournament winnings - however massive - simply couldn't last forever. The two-time member of the championship team of the Heaven or Hell tournament was ******** broke, and it sucked. He scrounged up odd-jobs breaking bones for criminal characters or running errands for old idiots who used to be criminals and slept in motels that smelt like s**t and aftershave. The holy representative of the mother earth itself acted as a servant for the senile and depraved. It was true that he'd come into an interesting sort of wealth and power with his spiritual promotion, but the use of that entitled a servitude all its own, and he simply wasn't read for it. Despite all his self-self-promoted wisdom and enlightenment, Shouyin - who was getting on into his late-twenties - was as childish as ever.

Now then, back to this man who was falling through the air. How he'd acquired a second drop vehicle without Cat's Cradle's help, or even their permission, who really knew, but one could imagine the contacts one developed working for and training with a covert mercenary organization for a year, and well, let's just say Shouyin was much further in figurative and financial debt than he had been in quite a long while. Those sorts of guys hadn't out favours like spare change, but what they took in return was rather dire. Although that's a whole other story.

The half-golem checked his altitude, sighed inwardly, and pulled the cable on his parachute, his neck jerking back as he 'pulled the brakes' on his descent below radar level. His float down was uneventful, and thus professional, and he released the cables on the parachute and hit the ground with a gentle roll. Shouyin wasn't one for sentiments with useless material, so rather than gather the chute and pack away all his evidence, he simply removed the harness and mask, rolled everything up together, and threw it straight at the ground in front of him, which for some reason opened up and accepted the trash as if it was a generous gift closing itself greedily behind the lost items and hiding them within its debts for an eternity limited by the inevitable nature of biodegradability.

The moon had waned, but it still persisted in its glow, shining on the former/not all that former-soldier face as he turned about and summarized his surroundings. His winter garb sat heavy on his shoulders in the climate-controlled arena of his deployment, and he went about packing the heavy camouflaged hooded coat and pants into his bag, taking hold of his axe for the second time that day and walking forwards, trying to seek his way out of the empty woods.

04:00 Mission Start