[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
Take them by surprise, draw all their attention on us, and we can play around with them learning how to fight them while the girl goes some fetch and carry work. Sounds like a real solid plan.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Remove The Head: There's always someone in charge, and without them, coordination vanishes. Find and kill the highest ranking Scorpions within and it will be child's play to do what you will with the rest of them.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Find A Target: This is only an expansion, but there will undoubtedly be information you can seek out to find something you can actually use against the Scorpions.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Find A Target: This is only an expansion, but there will undoubtedly be information you can seek out to find something you can actually use against the Scorpions.
Given our biggest weapon is Murder Granny rather than the Blinchiks, I'd rather find a target for the secondary than seize the weapons. Otherwise liking your plan @BungieONI
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Over the Wall: Make your way over the barrier and drop within. Allows you undetected entry into the compound, if you're quick enough.
[X] [Scorpions] Scutter Away: Your time is, frankly speaking, more valuable than their lives. Demoralize them, make them flee, and be done with this errand.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
[X] Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
[X] [Entry] Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
[X] [Scorpions] Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
[X] [Scorpions] Remove The Head: There's always someone in charge, and without them, coordination vanishes. Find and kill the highest ranking Scorpions within and it will be child's play to do what you will with the rest of them.
[X] [Scorpions] Scutter Away: Your time is, frankly speaking, more valuable than their lives. Demoralize them, make them flee, and be done with this errand.
[X] [Goal] Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
[X] [Goal2] Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
[X] [Goal2] Find A Target: This is only an expansion, but there will undoubtedly be information you can seek out to find something you can actually use against the Scorpions.
- Alya (The girl will face some danger, and her capabilities don't measure up to yours, but you will be able to delegate some responsibility to her, allowing her to pursue one objective)
- Write-in: Down and Up. Your fingers and toes are well trained, and your body light - climb down the chasm wall and then climb back up the miner's lines to emerge in the belly of the facility.
- Kill Them All: You came here to inflict restitution, and your price will be extracted in their lives. Aim to kill as many of them as possible, even if you have to prevent them from fleeing.
- Devise Countermeasures: You've honed your reflexes enough to dodge the shots of the Scorpions fairly reliably, but you could always go further. Perfect your timing and learn to strategically deflect their bullets back into them.
- Seize Their Weapons: If you are able to secure enough of their 'pistols', the Blinchiks will find themselves strengthened, and able to aid you to a greater degree later on.
Alya
When you were a young girl, you once sat on your father's lap, looking up at his big bushy beard, and asked him -
Fucking shitting helldeeps why did I go along with this
How he always seemed to know what to do with such ease and certainty, for the world was so big and had so many frightening things in it that could spring out at you without warning. Truth be told, in your younger years it was a position you found yourself in quite often - after your mother was lost at sea, one of the pillars that held up your conception of the world was taken away and you found yourself becoming shy, clinging to your father and hardly daring to clamber in the rigging or tumble freely along the deck as you once did.
His patience for you was arguably saintly, for no matter how many times you posed the same question to him, he'd still only smile, stroke your head with his rough hands, and tell you the woman is crazy oh Crowfather above that's a long way down don't let go don't let go oh fuck me blinkered
He'd tell you that everything was going to be alright, that you'd always had your mother's talent for climbing, that you should have secured yourself before you went down the cliff face, why did you listen to the old prune and not use any equipment, you're going to slip Alya, you're going to slip and fall and splatter like a bug on a rock five miles down and it's going to hurt and you'll be screaming the whole way and you're covered in a sheen of sweat, your arms are trembling and your fingers burn with the effort of holding you in place, why are there no handholds it's only rock why did you do this stupid stupid stupid oh fuck oh gods you're gonna die you're gonna die you're gonna
"If you're quite finished quivering like a leaf and wondering whether or not to fall, young lady, we've a schedule to keep! Let's get a move on, shall we?"
The sharp voice of the old harridan who put you in this insane scenario drags you back out of your thoughts, and as demoralizing as spiraling into a neurotic coma over your impending death was, on an honest reflection you find you preferred that to your current situation.
You're currently stuck spreadeagle, clinging by the tips of your fingers and toes to a white, craggy vertical cliff face of mined-out rock, suspended with no harness or safety net over an unfathomably deep chasm that goes down until it hits the void outside of the world for all you know. A perilous, cold wind tries to worm its way in between you and the rock even as you press yourself desperately against it, and you have to narrow your eye against the biting chill as you crane your neck, attempting to look for your next foothold while moving as little as possible. The moonlight shining off the pale rock makes it hard to see, coating everything in a silvery, washed-out hue.
"And here I was presuming that cats were supposed to be good climbers! Snuggles could make his way down this slope faster than you, and he lacks the twin blessings of youth and opposable thumbs you seem keen to forget about."
For a moment, impulsive anger overcomes your good sense and self-preservation and you move without thinking, clambering down to the minuscule bit of protruding rock you've been eyeing for the past several minutes. "I'm trying, all right?!" Your ears pressed flat to your skull, you scowl at Mistress Petals' diminutive form, who's perched unconcernedly with her hands at her sides on an outcropping so small you can't even see it, her balance impeccably kept. "I've got a thing about heights. Falling into treacherous waters from atop a mast is … risky," you grumble, drawing even with her. "And I don't climb down cliff faces barehanded if I can help it."
She just shakes her head in that damnably wiser-than-thou way she has. "You're going to have to redefine what you think of as risk if you want to become anyone worth knowing, girlie," she tuts. "Fools and cowards limit their conception of what can and can't be done with words like risk, and always wind up blindsided by those who think with more daring." She splays her fingers outward with a series of grisly cracks and scampers a little further down the sheer edge of the chasm, flowing effortlessly over the bare rock like a spider scuttering down a wall. "Come now," she calls, her voice floating daintily up to you. "It's due to rain soon and if you don't get moving, you'll be stuck there with slick handholds and nowhere to go."
Your fur bristles at the mental image and you open your mouth to yowl in protest, but close it after a moment of silence. You know she's right; you can feel the humidity building in the air, and there had been clouds on the horizon before the two of you made your foray into the chasm. "Aye-aye, Mistress," you groan, carefully lowering yourself down an inch further. "Risk disregarded, I'm moving, and oh by Kathool's sticky beard that's a long way down…"
<<<->>>-<->-<<<->>>
Granny Flowers
You turn your gaze away from the girl once you're sure her bellyaching is just that and not genuine inability, looking across and down to your target here - a great framework of iron and wood creeps partway down the side of the chasm, and extending down from it like the tendrils of a sea-hag's head are thick lines of rope, each set bearing a wooden platform that houses a dozen miners at a time. Operating on strict shifts, the miners are lowered down to the level of known shell-ore veins in the chasm wall and do their damnedest to mine as much of the stuff as they can before the spirits in the rock take notice of their intrusion and violently object. Once their cargo is loaded onto the platform, the team of miners is brought back up to the processing facility, paid in accordance with what they managed to bring up, and the vein is given an appropriate amount of time for the spirits to become dormant once again - unless someone fucks up and tries to fight them, it's usually 12 hours or so, according to what the Blinchiks told you.
"That one," you decide, picking out a particular platform that's weighed down with a large pile of gleaming, pale rock. The minuscule forms of miners scurry in and out of a fissure in the cliff, but the majority of the team is keeping watch from the platform itself, their eyes on the rock to catch a glimpse of any stirring spirits. "They'll extract their last bit of ore and bring the platform up any minute now, and they're not watching for us. We just have to time our jump right."
"Wait, jump?! From here?"
You turn your head to cooly regard Alya, who's managed to painstakingly make her way down to you. "Yes, jump. What, did you think we were just going to climb down and ask to be let on?"
She scowls. "I'm not stupid, you know. I just figured we'd not be so high up when we made the leap." Her eyes flicker down and her throat spasms. "That's at least fifty feet down, and it's not like the platform will be staying still. If we miss…"
You sigh. "By allowing failure to exist within your speech, you permit it to worm its way into your identity. You are no longer allowed to think, speak, or act in terms that have your lack of success as a prerequisite, am I understood?"
Alya's face twists oddly. Perhaps you used too many syllables? "So…" she says, sounding the word out with care. "We should not consider fallback options if something goes wrong?"
You narrow your eyes ever so slightly.
"N-not that I don't trust your capabilities," she backpedals. "But isn't it a good idea to not just assume everything you do will always succeed? There's always a chance of failure."
Ah, youth. They see the shape of things but have no idea how to paint, as your master was fond of saying. You purse your lips and ponder - how can you phrase this in a way that she'll grasp? More importantly, how can you make it stick? It's not a lesson you're interested in teaching more than once, after all.
"If you wish to kill a person, what is the best approach to take?" There, something age-appropriate.
Alya's one good eye blinks. "Uh." She hesitates, clearly thrown off. "Get a lot of men and have them attack them? I mean, I suppose it depends on whether it's someone like you or just some ordinary bozo, one's going to be way easier to snuff out than -"
You raise your hand, and she stops speaking. "Violence, in short," you say. "Good. Consider this - you befriend that person, and keep them safe from harm. You ensure their food is nutritious, their sleep undisturbed, and their spirit sustained with a regimen of meditation and uplifting mantras. You give them wealth and happiness, and watch over them every moment of every day, devoting your entire life to this person, until they die in their sleep as a wizened elder. You are the only one to witness their passing, and everything you have done has brought them to where they meet their end. You give their last rites and usher their soul into what awaits beyond. Have you killed them?"
Alya bites her lip and shrugs. "I guess? Sort of? You might've brought them to where they died, but you didn't really end their life yourself except in a technical sense. Plus that'd take your whole life too - it'd be way faster to just…" She mimes stabbing someone, quickly gripping back onto the rock face afterward.
"Precisely," you say. "Starting a plan by presuming you will fail and then working around that is the same action as committing murder by refraining from violence. In both cases, you must determine what will bring you to success and devote yourself to that end, rather than wasting time on needless contingencies. A notion you can grasp, yes?"
Alya nods, a hint of confidence making its way onto her face.
"Good," you allow. "Now, let's prove you understand it. Jump."
Alya's pupils shrink to slits. "Uh. What?"
"You comprehend that planning for failure is like deliberately aiming to miss that platform. Prove me right, and land on it instead. Come now, we haven't got all night."
She looks down. Oh, so very far down. "I- I don't think I can…" She trails off, and her eyes meet yours as she realizes the danger posed by the words on her lips.
"I'll allow you a momentary lapse this once," you decide. "No more, however. Reminders are all well and good, but I'll only allow so much leniency on account of your youthfulness. Jump."
Alya's mouth hangs open - she clearly wants to say something, but hesitates, caught between the driving force of her own self-preservation instinct and the implied danger of disobeying your order. "Ah, youth," you sigh. "Perhaps a helping hand is in order." With that said, you reach over, grab the girl by the scruff of her neck, and toss her headfirst toward the platform.
To Alya's credit, she's able to twist in midair and roll as she lands so that she doesn't break anything, but her breath is driven out of her by the impact and she sprawls out, struggling to rise to her feet as the Scorpion miners, their nerves already primed by keeping watch for spirits in the rock, crowd towards her with weapons raised.
You land behind them, light as a feather, and the only warning they're given before being swiftly thrown into the depths of the chasm is the delicately-balanced weight of the platform, already disturbed by Alya's landing, shifting a hair further than it otherwise should have. Caught up in the moment, talking amidst themselves, they don't think to look, which proves to be their final error. Their screams follow them into the chasm, fading swiftly as they plummet away,
"Fuck," Alya pants, climbing shakily to her feet. "Please promise me you won't do that again."
"There will be no need," you say, and leave her to ponder that while you glance around the platform. Besides the piles of ore, there is little else of note - it's suspended by four thick strands of rope reinforced with wire, one at each corner, with no evident way for the miners to initiate their own climb back up to the facility. "Someone at the top must decide when to bring the platform back up," you surmise. "I don't see any signaling method, though."
"Oh that's easy," Alya pipes up, and you look at her, concealing your surprise. "We used something similar on the ships I grew up on for when squalls got bad enough you couldn't hear anyone's voice. It's those wires, I'd bet - they probably pluck them like strings in a prearranged sequence to let someone at the top know that they want up."
"And you would have knowledge of these codes if they're reusing that method," you venture.
She shakes her head. "We had so many they were like a second language, and I couldn't guess which signal they've agreed upon," she explains. "For all I know, they change them week to week, and playing the wrong one might just have them drop the platform entirely."
"That takes climbing back up out of the equation as well," you grimace. "They'd hear us coming up the ropes, and have far too much time to prepare for our arrival."
"Well, what then? We're down here now, there's got to be a way we can make use of this."
You nod sagaciously. "Opposition and opportunity go hand in hand. You remember that strike I showed you?"
Alya's brows furrow. "Of course," she says, rubbing her knuckles. As well she should - you've seen her practicing it as she's followed you around, punching at the air, trying and failing to replicate that fearful snap you were able to produce. "I'm … I need more practice," she says, carefully avoiding the word "can't".
"No better time than the present," you say. "You shall break one rope, and I shall sever another. When those above draw the platform back up to investigate what happened, we shall go along with it."
Alya looks from you, to the rope, and back to you, her one good eye growing wider each time. Her mouth falls open, clearly longing to say something but hesitating. "I …"
"Well?" You hum, one eyebrow raised sternly. "Spit it out if you have any objections."
<<<->>>-<->-<<<->>>
Alya
Your mind races as you struggle to find a way to tell the pint-sized engine of death in front of you that there's no way you'll be able to break a rope that's thicker than your leg. Her flinty eyes bore into you, the unwavering resolve in them warning you that saying anything even close to "I can't" would result in … you don't actually know what she'd do, if you're being honest. The old woman seems to have taken a liking to you, but the favor of those masters who've delved into the furthest reaches of kung fu are notoriously fickle - there are countless fables that tell of legendary masters wreaking disproportionate carnage on individuals or families after being unknowingly slighted in some way. You've seen for yourself what Mistress Flowers is capable of, and if anything, the stories undersell it.
Her raised eyebrow beckons you to say something, an insistent invitation fraught with implied peril.
You mutely shake your head. What could you possibly say that she'd take as a valid excuse? You'll just have to … go and break the rope, or risk disappointing an old woman.
You trudge over to the closest corner of the platform and take up your stance, doing your best to imitate the way Mistress' weight sinks into the wood below her. "So," you venture, "Does this technique only work with a fist like you broke the lock with, or is there any way I can, uh, modify it to be a slicing motion or something?" You wave your hand in a demonstrative chop as Mistress looks over at you. "I figure that'd be more suited to cutting a rope than a blunt strike would."
The crone rolls her eyes. "The technique isn't about what it looks like on the outside - you could precisely replicate every movement I show you from now on and end up with nothing more than the Myriad Katas my employees and kin practice - nothing to dismiss, certainly, but not the art I stand as the keeper of."
You blink, your whiskers twitching lamely as you process what you just heard. She's showing you her personal style? If dealing with a kung fu master of her caliber and coming out intact is rare, getting instruction in what they actually do is almost unheard of. It's something of an open secret that when a master passes down a style, particularly if they're doing it to a large number of people, they've neutered it in some way. Usually, this is for ease of training en masse, but it's just as often the will of such masters to wait until they find someone worthy to learn the true form of their kung fu. What your - what the Powder Scorpions know of Burning Venom Palm and Infernal Meteor Fusillade is much the same - what the Captain can do is on a completely different level than even his direct subordinates.
Whatever Mistress' reasoning, this is an opportunity you'd be even more blind than you already are to not seize, and so you focus in on her as she continues, every word landing heavy across your mind.
"I am Violet Petals, given the name Death Orchid by my master Onyx Chain, who was chief chime-minder of the Nightshroud Xuan-Tai and the last survivor of his kin. Under his tutelage, I achieved mastery of the Thundering Bell, which is not limited by patterns or forms, and draws its strength from the resonant tones of the world. Used correctly, it can shatter bone-forged steel with less force than it takes to lift one's foot from the earth. Misstep and the rhythms of existence will cripple you with your own movements. There is nothing I cannot destroy," she pronounces, not a hint of doubt in her words. The moon, rising to its peak in the night sky, catches her in its light and casts a disproportionately large shadow, stretching almost fully across the platform. It's the kind of moment that will stick with you forever.
"So … what am I supposed to do to harness those rhythms," your big stupid overtalkative mouth asks. "Do I listen to the wind or something?" The solemnity of the moment shatters, and you wince, expecting a reprimand at minimum.
Only a sigh with the faintest hint of exasperation reaches you, however, and you open your eye in confusion. "Despite your irreverence, you grasp unknowingly at a piece of the truth," Mistress Flowers (are you still supposed to call her that, or should you say Violet Petals, or -) informs you. "The technique you will use is one that marries wind and water - Typhoon Beneath The Waves."
Your confusion fades, replaced by rapt attention as she walks you through the component movements, nudging you here and there as you mimic what she's showing you. You set your feet in a line and sink your center of gravity down in a spiral, tighter and tighter until your legs feel oddly twisted from the tension. At the same time, Mistress Flowers has you draw your chest and ribs inward, drawing your breath in a spiral that you can literally feel coiling through your guts until it sits just above your pelvis, humming with suppressed energy. You aren't doing much external movement other than hunching over a little in a slightly awkward way, but you feel as if the force you've gathered will explode out of you at any moment.
"Adequate," Mistress Flowers hums after the dozenth time. "Now look at the rope you will cut. It is not one solid object, and so striking at it as if you intend to break simply one thing is folly. Consider each minuscule fiber that makes up its mass. Each supports the others, making the whole stronger than the sum of its parts. It is therefore vital that you strike not at the entire mass, but its component threads, breaking each in isolation. At the same time, some fibers are protected by others, so you cannot simply strike at one segment of them. Allow your strike to wash through the entirety of the rope like a wave, and carry the cutting wind of your force to every strand simultaneously. Do you understand?"
To your own surprise, you find yourself nodding. Looking at the knotted fibers of the rope, it makes sense, in a way. You can see how the strike she showed you would chop quite cleanly through one or even a few of the smaller strands that make up the whole of the rope, and if you just allow your energy to carry through…
"Good," Mistress says, and you snap out of your introspection to find her already standing in front of the rope opposite you, her hunched back shifting slightly in a way you suddenly see, where before it hadn't even registered. "On the count of three, then."
Oh. Oh, this is actually happening.
"One."
Oh shit how did it go you've forgotten everything shit shit shit. Sink your breath, spiral, lift up? She never told you if it was a punch or a chop.
"Two."
No that feels wrong, it was down wasn't it, root your feet into the floor and pull your chest in and coil inwards oh fuck you're not doing this right are you-
"Three!"
The humming ball of tension you've built up in your abdomen expands outwards in a rush, force rippling down to your fingertips as your arm lashes out without particular thought of form or motion. It feels as though your breath has left your body all at once, leaving a momentary sucking emptiness in your chest, and it's such an odd sensation that you almost miss the sight of the thigh-thick rope snapping like a ribbon underneath the force of your blow. It almost seems to happen in slow motion, and you're so transfixed by the severed fibers retracting back on themselves that you forget for a moment that you're standing on a platform that's now only supported on one end.
The wood falls away under your feet, and your breath heaves back into you in a dreadful gasp as you grasp wildly at the rope you just broke, barely managing to grab on as it starts to rise back up the cliff face at a breakneck pace. You hold on with a white-knuckled, claw-like grip, shrieking internally - and maybe outwardly too, you can't quite tell - as you rocket towards the sky and the underbelly of the factory, the demented cackling of an old crone ringing in your ears.
<<<->>>-<->-<<<->>>
Tawler was resting his eyes - not sleeping, couldn't sleep on the job, just a quick doze - when a dreadful peal of sound tore him into full alertness. Acting on well-honed instincts, he sprung out of his chair and straightened his hat where it had fallen askew, looking for what had made the commotion. Never knew when someone might be coming to check on you, after all, and not everyone had the same view on resting one's eyes as Tawler did. Best to avoid commotion at all, in his experience, but when it did come about, it was better to look official. Now where on earth had that warbling snap come from?
His eyes alighted on the rope wheels, great contraptions hoisted on the walls that held the ropes that held the platforms below, and he paled. "Oi," he shouted, concern over propriety forgotten. "Grund, get the boys in here! Three and Four are full slack! Full slack," he bellowed, near tripping over himself on the way to Crank Three, which was the closest. Usually, if all went well, they'd stay fully taut the whole time a platform was loaded, weighed down by the weight of a platform, the crew on it, and the stones brought back up. For two ropes out of four to abruptly lose all their tension like that, it could only mean they'd snapped - they might very well have lost the whole crew, if no one had managed to grab onto the remaining ropes.
The rest of the boys rushed in, but Tawler wasn't really watching, instead hauling on the crank and bringing Rope Three up as fast as he could. Decker joined him, the orc's beefy arms grabbing the crank shaft and spinning it as though it were light as a feather. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Grund and Jans on Rope Two, Feener and Faaner on Four, and Nug the tree-man handling One all by himself. The air was filled with heaving breath and the sound of groaning timber as the rope wheels turned, coiling the metal-clad roped around themselves, bringing whatever survivors might still be down there up at the fastest pace they could manage.
In their haste, none of them thought to look down at what had happened to the platform itself, and so they were all caught by surprise when an old, feeble-looking granny suddenly leaped up from below just as they'd gotten the platform nearly to the top, landing spryly on her feet before picking Nug up with a single hand and tossing him down into the chasm like an empty fruit peel.
"Hello boys," she grinned, and cracked her knuckles. "Our thanks for the ride up."
Choose a perspective to focus on in the upcoming struggle:
[] Alya, who meets an old friend amidst her struggle to secure a gun stockpile [] Granny Flowers, taking some time to re-tool her old Pollen Plucking technique to work on bullets
[X] Alya, who meets an old friend amidst her struggle to secure a gun stockpile
This sounds interesting. I love Granny Flowers, but she's not emotionally invested in the battle specifically (well, no more than any other) and it sounds like Alya is.
[X] Alya, who meets an old friend amidst her struggle to secure a gun stockpile
I wanna see if she improvises anything *new*. Will the principles of Thundering Bell penetrate her thick skull and allow her insight into the principles of flesh and fire? We'll have to see!
The chance to see Granny increasing her skills from her perspective is a sad technical kung fu moment to miss but hey. Alya's internal screaming is funny.
