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Zebulon was, in general, avoiding the outdoors.

It wasn't that he didn't want to save people, necessarily, or that he didn't really want to help with the birds (although to be honest, he was fine with not helping with them) but he thought he would be much more useful away from ... that. He was a chemist. He would probably be more useful trying to find supplies indoors that he could mix into things to destroy these birds with.

Like bleach.

Still, he couldn't really stay inside forever, and so he squared his shoulders and went outside warily. Of course there were still a bunch of birds circling around, though a couple in particular seemed to be swarming nearby near another Chosen with a bow and arrow--

Dammit.

Zebulon jogged over to help out, swinging out his shield when he got there in an attempt to smack one of the birds out of the way. The odd clang sound that the bird made when he touched it with his shield made him suddenly aware of something he hadn't noticed before.

"They're metal?!"

It still surprised her to see people using the shields--though she wasn't sure why she was surprised by it. If anything, they seemed to be immensely effective, for both offensive and defensive reasons. The clang of metal against metal rattled her brain a bit, and when the man holding the shield gave a startled commentary--Tara laughed a bit.

"Yep! Bronze beaks and talons, metal feathers. Burning, maybe poisonous dung... and weird blood. That's what we've been up against." Tara might have shot the guy a curious look, wondering where he'd been to not know this yet, but with all that had been going on around the hotel, she wouldn't have been shocked to hear if he'd just been busy helping out inside. Or just... wasn't a combative sort.

Pulling back on the string of her bow, Tara picked another target and loosed the arrow. Again she managed to strike a bird, knocking off a chunk of metal feathers and clearly pissing off the bird. Though she gagged as the thing flung some of the dung at her, splattering it on her lower leg. "Use snow to get it off when that happens," she tossed to the guy with the shield, quickly bending down to do just that, before straightening again and shaking her leg a little to hopefully shake off anything she'd missed.

A flash of extremely bright hair caught her attention, and Tara blinked a bit at the other girl who joined them, whom was also an archer, she noted with delight. Ducklings? Still, Tara somewhat positioned herself so her back was to the others then, even if she kept a little distance to avoid hitting anyone when she'd pull back on her bow. "Just watch out they don't hit us from above!"

A bright, bubbly laugh broke from Sid at the ‘mechanical poison s**t birds’ comment. It was accurate, she had to give him that. Neither of these two were ones she had met before, or seen at any of the group things she had dragged herself to attend.

“Its weird how they don’t make any noise, but I’m just glad they aren’t real birds.” She said as she aimed for a bird diving at them and released, the arrow flying in a smooth arc to puncture through the flapping wing with a ping of metal on metal. It swerved, thrown off course, and broke away to circle back around, giving Sid a decidedly self-satisfied grin.

She turned that grin to the man beside her, her dark eyes bright with mirth.

“Of course, G-man! Isn’t it working?” She laughed, reaching down to the quiver strapped to her hip. She notched the new arrow onto the string, catching the glint of flung feathers just in time to throw up an arm to protect her face as they pelted down around her. The small cuts stung, but no more than she could stand. She’d had worse, after all.

“I wonder if I could blind them by standing in direct sunlight.” She said when she lowered her arm, shaking out her hair as she shrugged her heavy coat straight so it wouldn’t affect her draw. Practice back at the compound with bare arms was a sight different than trying to fire a bow with so much weighing her down… but ******** if she was taking any of it off.

Zebulon snorted. The rainbow-haired girl could shoot back!

"Well, you're certainly drawing something to you," he remarked, eyeing the birds as they swooped towards them. "I just don't think they're adorable ducklings, unfortunately. Tough luck there."

When the other Chosen managed to back into them both, Zebulon lifted his shield to defend them from any further bird attacks while they resituated themselves. A secondary bird saw this as an opportunity to come down and swoop as he predicted, which Zebulon was not having. When he thought he judged the bird had come close enough, he swung his shield outwards, attempting to smash the bird into the ground. It did send it backwards, at least, off them for the moment.

He shifted the shield to his other arm afterwards, shaking his arm out. He wasn't exactly well practiced with shield bashes, and it admittedly still stung quite a bit, especially when these birds kept tossing metal feathers at him when he moved the shield around.

Picking up where he left off, once he plucked a metal feather off his arm, he continued, "Not sure you'll even need to stand in direct sunlight. Get enough reflection off the snow here and you'll probably be golden!"

All this mention of ducklings made Tara pause, wondering briefly what these birds might have looked like as hatchlings or if they ever had a fluffy baby bird time. The mental images made her a bit queasy, and she shook her head with a shudder. "If you could get them to fall in line and listen to you like ducklings though, that'd be pretty rad." Birds of death following someone around affectionately would be pretty cute.

Not happening far as she could see, but hey.

"Use snow to get the dung off--don't get it in any cuts you might have!" Tara tried to turn around to help the other girl when she got sprayed, only to feel a metal feather zip by her face and cut her cheek a bit. Hissing, she turned back around, pulling up her bow and pulling back on the string. She fired quick, not really setting up the shot like she should have. It hit the bird, sure, but only really managed to graze it before it swooped away.

"You'd think as an Artemis chosen animals would like me more," she grumbled, eyeing the remaining bird. "Or that I'd at least be a better shot." She glanced towards the other two--the girl had mentioned something about someone that smiled at her... her deity? The lines made her grin, humming the tune of the Imagine Dragons song.

"Grab his shield and you can add another spotlight in, too," she jested, glancing over at the metal shield. "Though I'm kinda surprised they're not going after the shiny metal."

“Yeah well, you wouldn’t think an Apollo would be night owl, would you?” Sid laughed as she broke off her singing for the moment. “Good to know I’m not the only misfit in this little rag tag band of Merry Men. And women.”

She tossed a salute over her shoulder to answer the taller man’s question, the gesture flippant and jesting. Their efforts seemed to be paying off and the flock was thinning out, birds falling around them to litter the snow with their corpses like discarded teakettles, the light glinting off their metal sides. With one left, Sid set her stance and drew her bow back, sighting down the shaft.

“Ready, aim, fire…” She hummed. “Ready, aim, fire!”

She released on the last note and the arrow sank into the breast of the last bird, sending it into a death spiral before it smacked into the snow with a muffled sound of clanking ******** YES.” Sid crowed as she threw her arms up over her head, dancing in place. “SUCK IT BIRDS.”

A light spin on the toes of one foot and she turned her bright grin on her two partners, her arms spread wide.

“Good job folks! That was some good work with that bow and shield you two have. You’ve both got a job if you ever want to guard my back again.” She offered them a jaunty wink before she shook herself out, left over energy and adrenaline practically sparking from her like static electricity.

"It takes all sorts, really," responded Zebulon with a shrug, probably his most serious answer of the fight so far. He imagined, besides for the whole doctorate thing, he might have seemed a little off for an Athena Chosen himself.

But what really was an Athena Chosen supposed to be like? He wasn't going to pretend to understand gods at this stage. That was probably something that would come with more time...

When the question was shot at him, Zebulon temporarily considered withholding that information before remembering that they were all supposed to wear those obvious pendants anyway to make them all known to each other. Not that the ancient weapons didn't already make that rather obvious--

The Rainbow Apollo Chosen brought down the last bird with a whoop, distracting him from his temporary mental dilemma. He grinned wickedly at seeing the stupid thing go down. "At least we don't have to deal with that crap anymore." Literally. "The bows and shield combo seems like a pretty good combo to me."

So Artemis Chosen was Tara and he was probably expected to actually introduce himself this time-- "Zebulon, here. Chosen of the Goddess of Science."