By the time they'd gotten their gear stowed in the van, and put a dent in Steve's reserve of ready cash by eating at the Lost Lake Lodge, it was getting late in the afternoon. Some of the other members of the Fellowship, notably Dean and Queth, had argued in favor of setting out immediately, claiming that travelling at night was common, and not at all dangerous. But Luthien had found out the date, and a nagging sensation had told her that The Powers wouldn't have given them almost a month to travel to Nantucket if they didn't need it, so she'd insisted that they make camp-which also required a small fee-, and leave in the morning.
But now they were up, bright and early, and hitting the road. As the drove along, Luthien was torn between interest and terror at the speed they were travelling at, and at the sights they saw. So many people on the road, in towns as they passed.
And the road itself. Smooth as glass, without the potholes or bumps that came from centuries of repair done by hand or with horse drawn machines. And the land itself was odd.
This wasn't Luthien's homeplace, but she'd been here, when she was still an othar, the Ranger equivalent of a squire, before the War of the Jaguar. This was the heart of Association territory, which meant that it was a patchwork of small hamlets, each with its castle. The castles were still maintained, because of law and custom, even if the lord of the manor lived in a more comfortable and modern manor house.
In this world, the land was more-or-less familiar, but everything else was different. How different struck her when they passed by-flew past by-a sign for Odell.
She'd been to Odell, the Dunedain Rangers had been hired to accompany the Duke of Odell's bride from Westria, something that had been done for the sake of show and the swank of the thing, rather than any need to secure the lady's safety, but there it had been. It had been a festival, rather than a job, really. The last time things had been really carefree, before the War started. And...
"That was where Beren and I-" she trailed off, not wanting to give words to her thoughts. Realizing that Castle Odell didn't exist, that Conrand Renfrew still lived in Portland and that if she failed in her Quest, that her world might never be.
Well here at least Belle fell easily into the role she'd expected to play: it wasn't the first time she'd been a camp counselor the only difference was that she didn't end the meal the night before with paper crafts...but there had been s'mores.
Breakfast had been really rather elaborate, bacon, eggs, pancakes, she'd even traded for the use of the next door RV neighbor’s waffle maker and tiny oven. They had been awful nice and adding two more folk to her meal for the supplies just made good sense. John and Sam were awful sweet but couldn't cook for the life of them.
Stuffing the rest of the party with good hot filling food, Belle had tucked a basket of apple cinnamon muffins under her seat. Sure they ended up in the 90s and she didn't have to cook as much as she'd planned on, but she'd rather they have some good known cooking than risk every dingy truck stop McDonald's and dinner from here to nantucket if she could help it!
“Ya know if we stop by that motel 8 ah can pick up their national map an’ start makin’ reservations as we go. Ah mean we have some cash an’ are in modern America no need ta have to spend every night in campin’ grounds or in the van.” She pointed out logically. “Plus showers an’ hygiene are a thing.” Belle wiggles her nose, between the left overs from the previous occupants and seven full grown adults in it for the majority of the day…
Well let's just say Belle was very very sad Febreze had not been invented yet.
It was reasonably amusing, Arjay had to admit, they’d spent so much time preparing for this quest in the Hub, but once they got here, they ended up having to restart all of their preparations owing to a complete change in the situation of the quest. Some might be annoyed by the prospect, he simply went with it as another step on the journey. When Luthien had announced that they would wait until morning, he’d put down his own suggestions, ones that he thought were going to be fairly important in making the trip easier on them. The details were worked out as they ate dinner (during which he was increasingly aware of those staring at them), and a quick run into town was arranged, first to sell some of the gold for local currency, then to get clothes for those who didn’t have anything that would blend in.
That done, their first night, Arjay actually almost felt at home. How many nights had he spent camping rather than in an inn? More than he could count, regardless of how much he liked his luxury. For his part, he spent the night accustoming himself to the guitar he’d bought, strumming quiet tunes as he got used to the differences between that and the much smaller lute that he played. There was something about sitting in front of the fire, letting his music drift up with the smoke, that made him feel almost as if the world had more magic that he could touch if he could reach just farther. He supposed that if he could find an actual place of power, he could draw down enough of it to power a few spells, but he couldn’t count on that. If it happened, he’d count himself fortunate, but if it didn’t… well, he wasn’t going to make any plans around the idea.
He sat up later than the others, only stopping the soothing music when he could tell that they were all asleep, only then getting himself comfortable enough to slip into reverie, that restful meditation of the elves, letting his subconscious mind work through the problems of the day, the problems of his life, while his conscious mind went blissfully blank. He was alert and awake far before any of the others, only needing four hours of rest, and was pleased to find that while he hadn’t been able to turn them invisible, his minor magics still functioned. It was more difficult to power them, yes, but it only took one little spell to clean himself, and another to clean the clothes he changed out of before he stowed them away.
Breakfast had been much more enjoyable for him than dinner had been, and he had to wonder just how Belle paid the bills. If she could cook like this… but no, she probably had some other living to fall back on, he couldn’t start trying to get everyone he met to work in his tavern, now, could he? Besides, a woman like that would be wasted stuck in a kitchen all day.
He was reading one of the ‘newspapers’ that they’d picked up at the start of the journey, puzzling together things about this world, when he heard Luthien’s quiet statement with a pang of sympathetic heartache. He knew there was nothing to be said for that sort of feeling, he knew it from repeated experience, and he knew that she was not a woman who needed coddling to start with. Glancing over, catching her eye for a moment, he reached over and squeezed her arm before turning back to his newspaper, leaving her to let the thoughts pass as she wished.
“If time is an issue, we can drive through the nights, but finding an inn would be a good idea if we have the time to spare. If any trouble comes up, we’ll want to be fresh and alert, not road-weary and sore,” he agreed, nodding with a slight smile in Belle’s direction.
Steve didn’t require the amount of sleep most people did. The serum had done wonders for his health, as well as for his abilities, and so he tended to be an early riser by habit, if not because he was naturally a morning person (years spent in bed trying to catch as much sleep and rest as he could had not left him naturally inclined to mornings) but he enjoyed watching the sun rise nonetheless, and his time in the army, and as an Avenger, had him awake well before they’d need to get up to pack and leave.
He’d gone to shower in the campground’s outbuilding, taking as little of the hot water as he could to leave enough for the others (he didn’t mind cold showers really) and then he’d returned and combed his hair and gathered his things. He had a bag, yes, but he also had his shield, which… Honestly, in this setting he worried just a little bit about it standing out too much. Not that he had any intention of leaving it behind anywhere; Tony had been kind enough to let him take it for the quest, and Steve knew that he’d have to give it back when he got home, but in the interim? He didn’t want to let it go any more than he had to, keeping it nearby wherever he went. He obviously couldn’t wear it comfortably in the van, but it rested against his knees just fine.
The night before, Steve had let Arjay’s music lull him to sleep. He didn’t mind camping; he’d done that plenty, both in the army and since. He liked it, it was peaceful, and sometimes, with his senses increased the way they were due to the serum, he found it easier to unwind in the relative quiet of the woods rather than the hustle bustle of the city. Still, he had pulled out a sketchbook and had drawn what he could see before he’d slept. His companions, his shield…
And he’d drawn what he’d seen before they’d all arrived, too. Tony and Bucky, standing together, talking to him…
He was still wrapping his mind around what had happened, what he’d seen, or been shown. What the two had said to him, how they’d admonished him. What he’d realized.
Luthien’s words reached Steve’s ears as well, and he looked up, his expression that of someone who understood. They’d all lost and had their own troubles. Then his gaze dropped back down to the shield, wondering at how easily Tony had handed it over, trying to puzzle out what, if anything, that meant, and what it meant that he’d asked for it in the first place, knowing he shouldn’t, that Tony had been right about it. They all had their issues, he supposed.
“You’ve got a point, both of you. I don’t mind driving, and I don’t need all that much sleep,” he shrugged, “But it’s nice to rest properly. And I’ll agree about the hygiene… It’s more important that we give it credit for most of the time.” And not just because of their noses, either. "There's really no reason for any of us to get trench foot or anything."
Having spent nearly a lifetime on the road, Dean was surprised at how much of a...thing everyone was making of it. In his experience, there was a rhythm to traveling by car that didn't change much, whether it had been him and Sam or him and Dad or the three of them. Depending on how much of a rush there was, you drove in increments of 8 or 12 or 16 hours, trading off if necessary. Gas stations were reliable sources of fuel of both the gasoline and caffeinated varieties. Food too, though, there were more options for that, fast and cheap. Wherever you were gonna land that night, it was motel first, hit up a local joint for food, pick up some cash if needed, then back to the motel to plan for the next day. Then wake up, pack up the car, and do it all over again. Sometimes they might stay a while in a town to work a case, or otherwise break the routine to have a little fun, or wash the blood out of their clothes or do maintenance on Baby or heal up from a case.
But however you spun it, there was certainly no... lute playing. Or homemade apple muffins. Or wide-eyed amazement at cars or cities or roads. Or (and this seemed to be the big one) sense of grand adventure. Dean found himself town between bemusement, because really, there was nothing exciting about driving to Nantucket, and genuine enjoyment of his companion's antics. It beat sitting around in the bunker, that was for sure.
So he got up that morning, secured his weapons in the hippie van, and went to use the campground's showers. Having a sweaty gigantor of a brother, he'd very long ago learned the importance of hygiene on the road. "Nobody wants trench foot."
Breakfast was good, though he'd done a serious double take at their campground neighbors being a John and Sam. Sam had gone off to college in 2002, which meant that '98 was one of the last few years Dean and Sam and Dad had all been together. Hearing the names, along with the unmistakably late 90s surroundings, brought with it a strong tug of nostalgia. If only his 19-year-old self had known the crazy shit that was coming his way.
"Yeah, no reason to sleep in the Scoobymobile if we don't have to," he said in response to Belle and Arjay's talk about lodgings. "I wouldn't worry too much about reserving ahead. Way we're going, there'll be plenty of stops along the way. That way we can cover as much or as little ground as we want." Not to mention, the idea of staying at a Motel 8 made something in him squirm uncomfortably--even when they were kids Dad had insisted on shitty no name motels to make sure their names didn't end up in any system. It wasn't like anyone was likely to be tracking them here, as far as he knew, but he still didn't have to like it.
Arjay, in the meantime, had been picking through one of the songs he’d heard played in the van, having worked out how to play the tune on the guitar and now using it to get his fingers accustomed to more rapid playing on the new instrument. It was something that gave him an excuse to remain quiet for a while, studying his companions, studying their surroundings, with the eye of someone who wasn’t a visitor to the world. Not that he could ever really look at it as a native, of course, but he had many roles to play in this. He was a visitor, yes, but he was also a bard, he was a soldier, and at the moment more importantly, he was a spy.
It was a role that he had found less at odds with his other callings than one might think, something coming naturally particularly to a bard. He’d taken naturally to it, acquiring the necessary skills, like how to assume a role and not drop it, how to get through a situation you knew nothing about while picking it up as you go, and particularly of use, how to spot a tail.
“Not to prevent an answer, I’m sure that the subject will come up again, we have quite a bit of time to pass, but could you get us onto a different road at the next chance?” Arjay interjected. “I would rather like to see, and please no one turn around to look, if that large black… what did you call them? Truck? Yes, if that black truck is actually following us like it appears to be.” He, himself, didn’t appear to have been looking backwards either, but there was, sure enough, a black truck behind them a couple cars back. “I realize this is a much-traveled road, so I might be in error here, but it has been mirroring our shifts in the road from a discreet distance for a while now. It seems worth confirming or refuting.”
Queth almost wanted to turn right back around after arrival- so that she could go back and get her things if she didn't need to go entirely archaic- as it was she had managed to swing a moment to purchase a pair of pistols and ammo. The difficulty to acquire them was ludicrously little- Had it truly been so easy to acquire arms in the past? As it was- she had slept quite well being able to hold the two weapons close to her. The smuggler was sure that the others were grateful that she was a very stationary sleeper.
It was strange for her to sleep during the night however- not only did she very rarely need it- but when she did, she slept through the day seeing as it was often for the best to move during night when smuggling. People were more likely to be alert and attentive to movements in generally empty areas during the day- it was quite simple to convince someone you were simply a weary traveler stopping at the first place you saw- then that you being a half cyborg elf had a reason to visit during the day.
Queth woke up and was instantly alert the moment she had her eyes open- though it took her a moment to fight back the fear that was inherent in every dream she had had for fourty years. Pretending to be groggy she stretched lightly as she sat up- carefully moving to prevent her recently reassembled limbs from pinching their disguised coverings. (Something Queth did when she couldn't sleep- took herself apart, cleaned everything and put it back together again.)
Standing up she did some basic yoga movements before sitting down to begin her meditation. The process for her helped center Queth's thoughts on the here and now and what mattered to this quest in particular. She gave a grateful nod for the muffin before climbing into the car and zoning out to start driving. She only started to come back to the here and now when the other elf made a remark. Queth started cursing, she should have been paying attention to their surroundings.
Testing but not sudden- Queth changed lines to make her way to the nearest off ramp. When the black vehicle trailed after her her suspicions were raised- but when she changed her mind to remain on the highway- and the damn van followed her hesitantly she cursed and maintained speed. Looking over her shoulder at the people in the van with her she aimed for another exit- that she took at the absolute last second, ignoring the angry honks from the cars she cut off.
Queth propped a knee on the wheel for a second to load both of her pistols and put them in convenient locations to have at hand before putting her hands back on the wheel. When the black van swung around to follow her she finally cursed loudly enough for others to hear. "FRAGGING HELL. Right- we're definitely being followed- before I choose something that anyone will have moral quandaries about- Opinions? I can shoot, start truly evasive driving- which will be a bumpy ride, or we can ditch to steal a different vehicle. If I can switch places with someone for a minute and they can drive the van in a straight line I'm also confident I can blow out their tires if you'd rather I do that."
"Beren was my husband." Luthien started to explain, before Arjay's response cut her explanation short.
"I think that you are right." Luthien said to Arjay and Queth, then continued to watch with concern as the van kept following them, even when they took the exit, and headed off of the highway onto a much more rural road. There wasn't much to do, and she was very aware that she didn't have anything that would be much good against the "guns" of this world. Not that this stopped her from uncasing her bow and making it ready.
"For now, just try to put some distance between us and-" whatever Luthien had been going to say was silenced by a hard THUD as the black van pushed into the rear of their bus, clearly trying to knock them off the road.
Well, this wasn’t going very well, now, was it? At the very least, they had their answer: Yes, that thing (truck?) was following them, and no, it probably didn’t have anything good in store for them. Case in point: When they were no longer surrounded by traffic, it began… attacking them. He wouldn’t normally call a bump like that much of an attack, but at the speed they were going, he judged it was a considerable risk. So… what to do next?
Arjay weighed his options, his present capabilities, his equipment, and made a decision in the moment. “Find a good place to stop,” Arjay said. “We want to know why they’re following us, and we can’t have them destroy our vehicle. Find a place to stop our vehicle.” He looked back through the rear hatch. “I’ll handle theirs.”
He slid into his sword belt, more for the various equipment it also held than for the sword sheath. Squeezing over the back of the seat, he popped the rear hatch open and jumped out. A clear, vibrant melody rang out as he drew the singing sword and, landing on the hood of the van, stabbed it down into the hood. He wasn’t exactly a mechanic, but he stabbed the sword down over and over until something gave, the magic blade punching through the lightweight metals of the van’s workings, jerking his hand around every time it hit something moving, but still pulling out clean (aside from some fluid he’d clean off when this was done).
He dove off of the decelerating SUV, rolling in the grass to the side of the off-ramp and coming to his feet, rather hoping that his friends would be out of the van fairly soon and helping him not take the whole SUV’s compliment of assailants on his lonesome.
Truth be told, it was sort of a relief when the SUV started to ram them… He wasn’t really much for sitting around singing songs and passing the time by listening to the radio. Steve preferred action, especially in a situation like this one. So while the others might be upset, or perhaps concerned, he blinked, looked at Arjay as the elf strapped on his weapon, and did the opposite, reaching down into the satchel he carried with him and pulling out his shield with a smile that smacked of fondness for it and said plenty about how little he minded being suddenly thrown into battle.
Even as Arjay leapt from the bus to the SUV, Steve was right behind him, though he wasn’t aiming for the hood of the vehicle, but for the windshield.
Not even tempered or laminated glass could hope to hold up against vibranium being driven against it via inertia and more than 200 pounds of super soldier. Even better, the shield would stand against bullets, if the men who had been following them and had now attacked them unprovoked had guns. Steve wasn’t particularly afraid of being shot at. He crashed through the windshield of the SUV even as Arjay forced the vehicle to slow down, giving the men in the car a once over as he told them, “We don’t actually have to do this the hard way, but that’s up to you.”
He fully expected them to do this the hard way. He sort of hoped they did…
As the van screeched to a halt, two men, dressed all in black and wielding machetes leaped out and ran at Arjay, screaming loudly and wildly, swinging their machetes with more enthusiasm than actual skill, Luthien noted as she knocked an arrow and sent it into the torso of the one furthest from Arjay-the one that she could hit without risking hitting her sometime lover. Oddly, the first arrow, aimed at the torso, which should have gone through his heart, although it stuck in his chest, didn't drop him. The next arrow, fired a moment later, hit him in the leg, to similar lack of effect. He just kept coming at Arjay. Luthien shouted to Queth to stop the van, that this was going to take all of them. Because she hadn't seen anything like this since the War of the Jaguar, and if men like that were here, now, in this time and this place, that was bad. Very, very bad.
Steve, meanwhile, was in the front of the van, alone with the driver. The man had been knocked back in his seat when Steve had crashed through the window, but now he sat up, grinning, blood spilling from the cuts on his face, from all over his body. "You are a stranger." he said, flat, blank, dead eyes fixing on Steve "But I.See.You."
11-03-2017, 05:52 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2017, 05:53 PM by Thea Queen.)
Thea hadn’t been antisocial on the quest, not exactly. She’d been friendly, laughed at jokes, helped with the journey so far, though it hadn’t exactly been action-packed. But she’d shared exactly nothing of her life in her own dimension with the other members of the party.
Her life had been complicated, and people she loved had been used against her, and here… here was an opportunity to be the skilled fighter, contribute to a cause, and not be vulnerable for once. Not have people trying to save her, or stop her, or make any decisions for her.
She wasn’t going for mysterious. Or maybe she was, a little.
She was also zoned out as they started driving for the day, lost in the very thoughts she had no intention of sharing with the others. Feet curled under her, eyes on the landscape, watching the trees blend together at speed, she almost turned around to look as Arjay mentioned the possibility of a truck following them.
Her reaction wasn’t too far from Steve’s. Finally!
She didn’t have to look behind, she just flicked a glance to the rearview mirror to see the truck in question. Why was it always a black SUV, why not just paint “we are the bad guys trying to get you mu ha ha” on the side of your car?
As soon as the truck hit them she had her bow out from under the seat, shrugging her quiver over one shoulder. ”What’s the feeling, we going to shoot to kill, maim, save one for questioning?”
And then Arjay was leaping onto the hood and literally stabbing the truck to death. Hmmm, how serious were he and Luthien, because that was both ridiculous and sexy as hell. Then Steve went shield sledding through the windshield and she decided to go for disabling and see where things went from there. As Queth maneuvered the van she kicked the door open and rolled out, loosing an arrow into one of the truck’s tires - just in case stabbing and shield smashing hadn’t done the trick - and then saw Luthien skipping the tires and just shooting one of the machete-wielding thugs in the chest. Well then. ”Maybe save one for questioning?” she threw out as an idea.
The arrow should’ve dropped the guy. He acted like he’d been stung by a bee. A small bee.
”Nevermind,” she mumbled and instinctively dodged a thrown machete, nocking a teflon-tipped arrow that should go through whatever armor these guys were wearing. She fired at his throat, not stopping to see what effect it had, running at a diagonal and firing two more arrows as she went.
Queth hadn't minded the company thus far- even if she had very little chance to show off yet. She hadn't been allowed to steal a vehicle, nobody wanted her to talk to folks (Rather reasonably), and it wasn't like checking to see if they had a tail was difficult to do while driving. Still- being given an opportunity to pull the tight stop and get her guns working was something she enjoyed- felt more like how this sort of thing was supposed to go. As it was she swung the van wide to present a broadside to the other vehicle before cutting their momentum fully and launching herself out her window.
(One benefit of being lanky as hell- it wasn't even a tight fit for her. She just flew straight through.) Queth curled her head down to land with a somersault- guns drawn and firing. On one knee, the elf thanked heavens that she had taken the time to fix her eye- as it automatically calibrated with the length and angle of her arm to give her the best position to shoot at. Though she supposed that it wasn't necessarily calibrating anything- she had certainly taken enough shots for it to just be one of the many memories she had stored in her mind.
Queth made sure that her eye was recording so that she could review the footage later- something she was sure she'd be grateful for since van stabbing was officially the best thing she had seen an elf do. And also their quest leader was one hell of a shot- as though Queth didn't already think she was sexy enough.
Focusing on her own tasks, Queth grinned as she became accustomed to the firing power and slight differences in gun variety. She pulled the trigger one more time, biting back a chuckle that she was entirely certain was inappropriate as the pursuer she had targetted took a bullet straight to the forehead and didn't get back up. "Well at least we know they can be stopped." She offered to the others.
Much like his companions, Arjay was rather glad for the chance to do something, to know that yes, there was a purpose for him being here aside from providing the musical accompaniment to the road trip. So when the two men with the machetes came out of the van at him, he wasn’t overly impressed, but he was feeling validated here. Requiem, his newest sword, enchanted just for this trip, sang out as he spun it to the ready, and the melody made his blood surge as he lunged forward. He didn’t care about the ones still coming out of the van, he didn’t care about the one in the front seat, these were the ones that concerned him, these were the ones that had chosen to challenge him, however ill-advised that challenge was for them.
He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Luthien’s arrows sprout from the chest of the one on the left, then his thigh, though the man didn’t show any sign of falling. Armor on these Earth worlds must be more subtle than the armor he knew on his world, but no matter. He wove around the wild slash of the one sporting no arrows, driving his sword through the man’s heart before yanking his blade free and rounding on the other one, intending to finish what the arrows had attempted.
Two things happened in rapid succession. The first was that the man he whirled on sprouted several more arrows, wounds that bled, but still did not make him fall. The second was that he learned that even his sword driving through the other man’s heart had not been effective, which left the man free to chop his machete down onto Arjay’s shoulder.
The elf cried out, turning away from the blow, warned at the last moment by movement out of the corner of his eye, the only thing that probably kept him from losing some part of his body instead of just earning a heavy gash on his shoulder. Pain blossomed in his sword arm, and he felt the sword fall from weakened fingers, even as he grasped at his belt with the other arm to draw the other sword. The thing should be dead. A sword through the heart should kill anything, unless… that something was already dead, or if something was keeping it alive. “They have magic!” Arjay called to the rest of the group, teeth gritted in pain muffling his words. “Which is patently UNFAIR!” he shouted, pulling the other sword from his belt with his left-hand and bringing it up to meet the next slash that had been aimed at his back. He blinked his eyes through the wash of pain, fighting off a wave of nausea that briefly passed. He could feel his sword’s rage, and that steadied him, at least a bit. “I don’t know what drives you creatures,” he growled, keeping both of the machete-wielders in front of him now, at least until someone could peel one of them off to deal with themselves, “But this is Starwind, the Goddess-touched, and I don’t think you’ll enjoy her bite!” His swordplay was defensive now, looking for an opening and not risking taking another hit… but that was all he needed, right? He’d heard the report of Queth’s gun, seen the one fall as it came rushing from the van. All he had to do was keep these ones occupied until she got a shot at them, and to try not to think about how badly his shoulder might be bleeding.
11-09-2017, 07:40 AM (This post was last modified: 11-09-2017, 07:41 AM by Steve Rogers.)
“Language!”
Steve was a man who tended to wield weapons that were not weapons. His shield was definitely his favorite, and it showed as he used it to pave his way into the SUV that had been following them, but it wasn’t his only weapon, either. He had the rod that Arjay gave him, and the form he preferred to use it in was not one of the forms that were a weapon. Today, he made an exception to using the rod exclusively as a battering ram.
Stranger, the man said. I see you, he told Steve. The man was creepy. Those eyes… There was something very wrong about them, Steve could feel it in his bones. “Yeah, I see you, too, pal. And I see your friends.” Steve threw his shield, the motion instinctive, able to calculate the force necessary, the angle needed, to fly through the broken windshield, to hit and ricochet, hitting two of the men in black before curving to fly back to him. In the meantime, he drew the rod that Arjay had given him months ago, still in its mace form. He didn’t hesitate to swing it down at the driver of the SUV.
Magic. Well, Steve wasn’t entirely sure how to deal with magic, or what these guys having it meant for this fight, but he knew it wasn’t good. Hearing Arjay’s cry, Steve grit his teeth against the curse he wanted to bite out. Damn it, what he wouldn’t give for… He caught his shield as it returned, twisting to then thrust it into the driver of the SUV.
Hopefully some good, old fashioned blunt force trauma would work better than a sword or arrows evidently did...
“They are trying to kill us.” Luthien said to Thea, knocking another arrow. “What else do we need to know?” she continued, once the arrow was flying at the goon closest to Arjay. Not that she was opposed to giving quarter, or taking captives, if the situation called for it. In this case, they could be nothing other than servants of the Others, of the Powers who sought to stop her from fulfilling her purpose.
Two more goons spilled out from the van, these charged directly at the van, and Luthien put an arrow in each of them. One was hit in the throat and went down, but then rose to his feet and started back at them, the second, she missed the throat shot by a few inches and the arrow buried itself in his sternum to no visible effect.
The arrows that Thea shot had little effect, except for the one that hit one of the two goons who was attacking Arjay in the throat. That sent him reeling, and a moment later he went down, an arrow sprouting from one eye as Luthien’s arrow hit him.
The second good who had emerged from the van didn’t last long, exploded as Queth’s bullet hit him. That dropped the man. And this time, he stayed down.
That left the one man who was charging the van and the remaining one that was on Arjay. For the moment the elf was holding the goon at bay, but that might not last for much longer.
There had been two men who were preparing to emerge from the van, but they had been knocked down, bleeding from the head wounds and not, for the moment, showing signs of getting up to do anything.
Meanwhile, the blow from the staff shattered the driver’s shoulder, and he didn’t react, except to duck, with inhuman speed, when Steve slammed the shield into him. He didn’t evade the blow, it crushed his ribs with a sickening crunch, but he managed to grab on to Steve’s wrist, and as soon as they were in physical contact, then the man did scream, as every sense in his body, and every sense in Steve’s body was screaming that they’d both burst into flame at the same moment. To an outside observer, there would be no sign of fire, or burning, but Steve’s senses would tell him another story.
Dean had been...slightly less excited than the rest about the chance for combat. Once he'd gotten used to the idea that the quest was, well, a drive to Nantucket, he'd settled into the pleasant routine of a cross-country trip. It had reminded him of the days before he and Sam had done much hunting, and life had involved a lot of bad food and good music and watching the mileage on the road signs go down between towns.
But, hell. He'd signed up for an adventure. As soon as the SUV rammed them he was grabbing for the Colt M1911 in his duffel, his fingers closing around the grip even as the hippie van juddered and shook alarmingly. They'd said technology wouldn't work here, but shit, Dean had never voluntarily gone anywhere without something that went bang and he hadn't been about to start.
Before he could figure out what their plan of attach was supposed to be Arjay and Steve had already launched themselves bodily out of the moving van. Then Queth swung the van around with a mighty screech, Thea disappearing out the door, and leaped out the window after them. Throwing Luthien an exasperated look--because how the hell did everyone else have superpowers or ninja powers or whatever?--Dean waited until the van was reasonably not moving and jumped out.
It was already pandemonium. The SUV dudes apparently didn't die when you shot them with arrows, but Queth's gun was working all right, which was a weird but not unwelcome twist. Dean aimed and joined the fray, firing at a goon coming out of the van and another one swinging a machete at Arjay. A head shot seemed to work but the bullet that caught in the second goon's thigh barely slowed him down. He was trying to figure out how the hell that worked when he felt a blow from behind and stumbled forward, stars skittering across his vision. He swung around dizzily and aimed at the nearest goon's head, which he was seeing about three of, fired and hoped for the best.
The downside of being the one to lead the forces into the fray was that when some surprise hit, you were the one who didn’t have time to react. Granted, it meant that you were the one creating the time for the others to react, but that was some sorry consolation when you had a machete take a chunk out of your shoulder. While Arjay recovered, or more accurately steeled himself against the pain coursing through his body and lighting his arm on fire every time he tried to move it, he saw the goons start to fall under the onslaught of his companions’ adapted attacks. He, himself, held his own against those ones that had been attacking him, while arrows and gunfire made them fall.
The grunt of pain from somewhere beside him alerted him to the continued hostilities, and only as he turned did he see that it was Dean who was being ambushed, and who’d probably just taken out one of the men that he had been holding off. Spinning in place, Arjay reversed the grip on the sword in his right hand, making the left hand the primary sword here, knowing better than to try to attack with his injured side when it counted like this. With a smooth lunge, he surged forward, bringing the holy sword to bear against the evil, enchanted opponent.
The blade of the sword flared with holy fire, and Arjay could feel a smug satisfaction from the blade as he drove it through the side of the man’s head. Though she might not be able to answer his calls for magic in this world, this blade still held a splinter of his goddess’s power, and he could feel that she was positively livid that these creatures had dared injure one of her favored servants. Golden white power flared from the point of the wound as divine energy touched whatever was empowering these things that had once been men. Each sought to annihilate the other, but in this case, the wrath of a goddess proved more deadly than the driving force of their enemies, and the offending ambusher fell to the ground, smoke pouring from burned-out eye sockets and a gaping, shocked mouth.
“Steve!” Arjay cried, hearing the shouts from the front of the truck. Steve had been the one he’d been most sure of when the battle had been joined. Had he been overconfident in his friend’s abilities? All the same, he was rather helpless in the situation, with no magic to throw ahead of him and his ability to vault over the hood of the truck hampered by the injured arm.
11-20-2017, 11:25 AM (This post was last modified: 11-20-2017, 11:26 AM by Steve Rogers.)
“Language!”
Even in the thick of combat, Steve rarely went all out and tried to kill his opponents. But he could hear what was happening outside of the SUV; he could hear the shouts and the dismay of his, for lack of a better word, temporary teammates. Destroying the guy’s shoulder would leave him effected for the rest of his life, but when that did nothing to stop him… Steve’s attacks grew stronger, but nothing seemed to work.
By the time the guy grabbed his wrist, Steve was no longer thinking in human terms of what would kill a man and what wouldn’t. Still, he was nowhere near prepared for what happened next.
At least it wasn’t ice.
Steve hated the cold. But then again, he was finding he wasn’t overly fond of fire, either. The first reaction Steve had when the man grabbed him was to take half a step back, surprised. The second was to reel from the shock of being on fire. He gave a shout that made it clear that whatever the driver was doing by grabbing him, it was causing no small amount of pain. Having done a whole series of PSA’s for schools a year or so before, Steve remembered what you were supposed to do if you were ever on fire.
Stop, drop, and roll.
There wasn’t enough room in the van to do those things, not with the vigorousness that Steve urgently felt would be required in this case, so he did the next best thing. He snarled at the man, and then yanked him along, leaving the SUV to head outside. He didn’t really think about the fighting, or what anyone else might think; a man on a mission, Steve simply left the vehicle, dragging the driver along. The moment that he had a place big enough, Steve, breath coming in short ragged gasps of pain, dropped to the ground to try to get the fire out. He needed to not be on fire anymore. He needed… Something. He was supposed to do something, but the longer he burned, the harder it was to keep his thoughts straight, and he simply turned his pain and rage on the man who was holding onto him, smacking him desperately with his shield before yanking his arm from side to side, trying to shake the man.
Queth had been just about to launch herself into the other vehicle to lose Steve from the enemies grip when Captain America... Stopped, dropped and rolled. Well at least he wasn't a hypocrite, she thought idly as she quickly guaranteed that no other enemies were still standing. Comfortingly, they had all been dropped, by arrow, bullet, or sword. With that under control, she dismissed a pang of anxiety that had occurred upon viewing the state of her fellow elf's shoulder. That he was still fighting said plenty about his personality- and Queth would have to trust that he could treat himself, as her stabilization pack was built into her chest.
Focusing on the task at hand she did run forward a few steps before swinging her foot up and dropping the heel down on the remaining enemies wrist- doing her absolute best to avoid injuring the captain- though she was thankful she had chosen to use her prosthesis since the Captain's wild flailing included more than one whack at her leg. Queth gritted her teeth against the ringing sensation, even as she watched the enemy's arm drop to his side- wrist at an unnatural angle.
"You alright Cap?" She asked softly as she put a bullet in the last fellow's forehead, mentally apologizing to Thea for not leaving one alive. As far as Queth was concerned though, if they could fill the Cap's mind with such excruciating pain, they were too dangerous to leave 'alive.'
She awkwardly shifted the majority of her weight to her left foot when she noted the minor denting in her right leg- something she did her best to avoid drawing attention to. It may hurt like an s.o.b. but she hadn't exactly warned Cap that her leg was about to be there. In the mean time, she had some questions, Arjay was losing a decent amount of blood, and it looked like Dean had a concussion. Queth wasn't even certain that her intervention had fully stopped the pain Steve was feeling so she took a deep breath to prioritize.
"Right. So that happened. Do we have some bandages, sutures, disinfectant?" She asked, mainly directing her query to those who came more prepared than she. Queth walked as best as she could over to Arjay and Dean to try and get the two of them sitting as a start. "And maybe a flashlight? I'd like to check to see if Dean's brain is still working." She added as an afterthought, hoping that the others might have more relevant medical training than her.
Quest Day One: Lost Lake Villiage, Oregon to Nampa, Idaho
