If you'd picked Remove the Head as a focus for this expedition, that'd be more likely - as it is, the combination of Kill Them All and devising bullet countermeasures has lead to Granny Flowers taking her time to perfect her bullet-catching technique rather than going after the leadership specifically.
Alya, who meets an old friend amidst her struggle to secure a gun stockpile
Your goal here is to kill all the Powder Scorpions. In the process of doing so, you will hone your bullet-catching skills. You've brought Alya along in order to secure whatever weapons she can while you do this.
Just so you're aware, there is an interrogation scene in this that gets a little intense, so if you're not into reading vaguely-defined torture involving pressure points, skip past the <<<----->>> to the voting section.
The mining bay is quite shortly painted with blood and viscera as your master sets about her bloody craft. She moves with a blinding speed you're still not used to seeing from a woman as outwardly old and frail as she is. The tree man who pulled her rope up is thrown into the chasm before she even touches her feet on stone, sailing past you with a breathy whisper as you frantically clamber up your own rope and into the mine. By the time you've heaved yourself up to the top, three other miners are already dead, Mistress' lashing blows having folded them nearly in half.
She glances over her shoulder and spies you as she sways out of the way of an orc miner's looping overhand blow before seizing his flaming hand by the wrist and jamming it with a gruesome sizzle into his face. "Good of you to finally join me, girl," she calls, raising her voice over the sound of the miner's screaming. "Behind you," she warns, and you whirl around to see another miner leveling a pistol at you. You freeze, the barrel looming impossibly large and dark in your vision. There's no way to dodge it from this close. You can see his finger clamping down on the trigger. Everything seems to slow.
The spell is abruptly broken as the orc miner's body crashes into his fellow, and the both of them go down in a heap. You don't hesitate, leaping in and stomping at the miner's hand. Distance is death, your father once told you, and doubly so with firearms. You slam your heel down twice more, snatching the gun from his fingers and following up with a knee to his face as he gets up from under his fellow's body. Staring imminent death in the face has gotten your blood rushing, and your limbs move without your conscious input, laying into the miner with everything you have. It's a frenzied few seconds as you back him up against the wall, slamming ugly, frantic blows into his ribs, his face, short and sharp and heavy. When his back hits the wall and he stops backing up, you seize his head and knee him in the groin as hard as you can, and he goes down in a whimpering heap.
You stand over him and breathe, blood pumping hot through your temples. You can't help but feel disappointed in yourself, in a way - that wasn't at all up to the standard of what martial arts you'd been taught before. Sure, you'd only really just started to reach beyond Smoldering Palm when, well, things went wrong and you wound up in that cell, but even that was enough to give you an appreciation for what a well-struck blow was, and none of what you just did was even close.
A thunderous krak snaps you out of your thoughts, and you whirl around to see Mistress Petal standing a short distance from the last of the miners, her arm outstretched oddly. His pistol is extended and the barrel is smoking, and your heart skips a beat for a moment. Did he…?
A moment later, your fears are quelled as the old woman springs forward like a flea and drives a knife-hand into and through the unfortunate miner's chest before flicking him off, somehow shedding the layer of gore on her arm entirely off. She grumbles something to herself, glancing around for you.
<<<----->>>
"Over here," you call, and her gaze snaps over to you. "Ah, good, you left that one alive," she says, daintily stepping over twisted corpses as she makes her way over to you. "There'll be more of them on their way here soon, and we need to determine your destination."
You wrinkle your brow in confusion, but before you can ask what she means, she reaches down and hefts the insensate miner at your feet, pinning him to the wall with a single hand. "Up and at 'em, sonny," she crows, and jams a finger into the side of his neck. His response is immediate - his eyes shoot open and he takes a strangled breath in, looking for all the world like a fish caught on a hook. His eyes nearly pop out of his head and he thrashes side to side in a vain attempt to escape Mistress' touch, but she relentlessly keeps her finger pressed into what you suppose must be a nerve cluster or something. Several seconds of agnoized silence pass as the unfortunate man writhes and spasms, unable to even cry out, until your master releases her hold and he slumps, kept from falling in a heap only by her iron grip.
"You've seen what I did to your fellows, and now you've felt it yourself," Mistress informs him. "That was me being polite, because I'm going to ask you a question and I need you to be able to think. Where do you keep your weapons stockpiled here? Those pellet throwers you lot lug around must need a supply of shot and whatever other supplies are required to keep them functional, and I'm not keen on letting them just be carted off."
The miner hardly seems like he's heard her, more focused on getting his breathing back under control, and it takes several seconds before he's able to get a coherent word out. "Why … why tell you," he pants. "You'll just kill me … like the rest anyway. No reason to … help you," he manages to spit out around gags and gasps as his diaphragm continues to seize up.
Mistress cocks her head to the side. "You know what, you're right," she allows. "I've given no incentive for your behavior, so it's only logical that you wouldn't cooperate. You show more sense than some traders I've dealt with." She lowers him down to the floor, steadying him until his legs are able to hold themselves up. "I'll make a deal with you, then, out of politeness," she says.
Then she takes the thumb from her other hand and jams it underneath his sternum, punching through cloth and flesh with a disgusting squelch. His exhalation turns into a squeal that shoots up in pitch so quickly you can no longer hear so much as feel it, and the tendons in his neck ripple and strain like a mass of squirming worms. It's the most pain you've ever seen anyone experience from the outside, and it brings a sickly familiar queasiness to the forefront of your mind. You know that sort of pain, and you keep your stomach from emptying itself only by an effort of will.
Mistress pulls her thumb out of the man's insides after what seems like minutes, and wipes it off on his clothing. "I've introduced a severe imbalance to your blood system, along with not a bit of air," she informs him in a tone you'd use to discuss the weather. "In a few minutes, the disharmony will fully saturate your heart and brain, and you'll die. It will be unfathomably agonizing, even more so than it is now."
The miner slumps against the wall, his breathing rapid. He looks down at the hole in his chest, then up at Mistress, then back down, and begins to hyperventilate. His chest rises and falls, but you can see his muscles beginning to seize up even now - whatever Mistress did, it's setting in quickly.
"You have two choices now," she informs him, her tone remaining impeccably calm. "You can say nothing, hold to your principles, and we leave you here to suffer what some would argue is worse than simple death. Or you can tell me where the weapon stockpiles are, and I stop your pain. A suitable incentive, no?"
She's hardly even finished speaking before he's nodding frantically, words beginning to spill from his lips in a rush. "Middle of the complex," he blubbers. "Up past the smelters and just before the mine carts that lead up to the surface. Up the exit tunnel from here and keep to the right side as you go through, it's the set of double doors with the scorpion logo on it. It's kept locked but I don't have the key, it's with -"
He curls into a ball and you can hear something crunch as Mistress' technique sets in. "They'll be there, they'll be there you can open the door if you get it from them oh gods above make it stop please I can't please." He trails off into inarticulate gurgling.
Mistress nods in satisfaction and looks over at you. "Remember all that?" She asks, and you nod, your eyes fixed still on the agonized shell of a man in front of you. "Good," she says. "You'll handle that then, yes? Go to this stockpile, take the key from whoever has it, and stop the Scorpions from taking the weapons inside once it becomes clear to them that they cannot withstand me. I will attract the bulk of their attention, and meet you there once I've cleared my way through them."
Your queasiness fades as you focus on the facts. You can do that, just take that list of tasks and complete them one after another. Like checking inventory of a ship's stores, making sure everything's in place. Check, check, check. Nice and clean. You look at her and nod again.
"Now then," she says, turning to regard the curled-up miner once more. "I set terms, and I intend to fulfill them. No reason not to use this as a learning opportunity, however. Girl. Tell me one of the five elements, and I'll give you an example you can use on this little excursion."
You blink, and for a moment, can't even remember what she's talking about. A few seconds later, your brain cues you in, and it comes back to you. The foundations of the art she talked about on the platform, she mentioned their names. You strain your memory, not wanting to say the incorrect name, and make a decision.
Article:
Granny Flowers, not that you know her by that name, has offered you a primer to one of the five elements that form the foundation of her kung fu, Thundering Bell Fist. It's implicit that if you do well, she'll teach you further, but for the short-term future this will likely form the bedrock of your fighting style. Choose one of the below:
[] Wood/Flesh: Crushing techniques that apply even force. Good for battering or pushing. Lacking in precise or penetrating applications.
[] Fire/Yolk: Techniques with all their force concentrated into a small point. Good for fracturing things. Not so good at moving people around, and hard to sustain for long.
[] Earth/Shell: The primary source of grappling in Thundering Bell, full of techniques to destroy balance and take an opponent down. Not many techniques that directly damage the opponent, mostly preferring to hit them with the ground.
[] Water/Albumen: Piercing techniques that damage a target's internals, causing pain and additional damage over time, and can even kill an opponent outright with the right strike. Lacking in upfront brute force, and their effectiveness can be mitigated by armor.
[] Air: Blindingly fast techniques that tear and mangle an opponent's extremities. Excellent for seizing the initiative and disabling an opponent, but struggles to inflict substantial damage with any individual blow.
A/N: This isn't an entirely cosmetic vote, though it will primarily influence what Alya's fight scenes look like - she'll have to put her skills to the test in the next few updates.
I would say that at least against the scorpions, stuff that does internal organ damage or shatters bones are good.
Both ideas stem from the principle of making their bodies physically unable to perform the endurance they are known for and the actions a fighter wants to do. It doesn't matter if a Burning Venom Palm wants to grapple you if both their arms are shattered. Their endurance runs out of breath if you collapse their lungs and internal organs.
Or put another way, if the spirit is willing but the body falls out from under them then that's it. The cardiovascular training they go through is of course a concern.
I'd probably go with water > flesh > fire in terms of preferences.
[X] Water/Albumen
Also I'm not sure how much it matters but in Thundering Bell elemental discourse as explained by the info post on the style, water suppresses fire so that's another detail influencing my pick.
E: Thinking about the real best counter its probably combinations of Water + Fire or Fire + Earth.
Also I'm not sure how much it matters but in Thundering Bell elemental discourse as explained by the info post on the style, water suppresses fire so that's another detail influencing my pick.
That's more to do with fire-type movements and energy as performed in Thundering Bell rather than literal fire and water, at least at a beginner's level of things - it'd be more accurate from a layman's perspective to say that Water moves sap vitality, and make it hard to perform the sort of short, explosive bursts of power that Fire movements emulate. Though of course, damage to one's internals does make it hard to do the sort of intense cardio that Burning Venom Palm relies on, so there's a point to be made there as well.
That's more to do with fire-type movements and energy as performed in Thundering Bell rather than literal fire and water, at least at a beginner's level of things - it'd be more accurate from a layman's perspective to say that Water moves sap vitality, and make it hard to perform the sort of short, explosive bursts of power that Fire movements emulate. Though of course, damage to one's internals does make it hard to do the sort of intense cardio that Burning Venom Palm relies on, so there's a point to be made there as well.
[X] Fire/Yolk: Techniques with all their force concentrated into a small point. Good for fracturing things. Not so good at moving people around, and hard to sustain for long.
Added an A/N just to make things clear - Alya's got a fight coming up in the next little bit, so what you choose here will influence what sorts of tactics you can successfully employ in a boss fight.
I stole the cyclical thing pretty much wholeheartedly from the Wu Xing of Daoist theory (or at least I'm pretty sure it came from the Daoists) so it's to be expected, yeah. Every element has another one it feeds off of (and thus is dependent on), another it nurture, and a third that it destroys.
Added an A/N just to make things clear - Alya's got a fight coming up in the next little bit, so what you choose here will influence what sorts of tactics you can successfully employ in a boss fight.
I stole the cyclical thing pretty much wholeheartedly from the Wu Xing of Daoist theory (or at least I'm pretty sure it came from the Daoists) so it's to be expected, yeah. Every element has another one it feeds off of (and thus is dependent on), another it nurture, and a third that it destroys.
And then there's like, the breath/cardio damaging properties of Fire based torso blows which shatter the ribs, collarbones, or scapula into the internal organs.
Armor can also consist of a hardened body, such as that produced by a body conditioned martial artist. Of course, most mooks won't have anything worth the name.
While water could work, the chance of facing off against guns with whatever miniboss Alya's old friend will be has me leaning more towards seizing the initiative to keep ahead of wherever the barrel is pointing and mangling hands to make them unable to operate it effectively.
[X] Fire/Yolk: Techniques with all their force concentrated into a small point. Good for fracturing things. Not so good at moving people around, and hard to sustain for long.
@Xantalos would a lightning fast blow to the throat with tip of the fingers or toes meant to damage or rip open an artery fall under Air's strike methodology?
What about artery blows in general to other parts of the body, such as to the subclavian (shoulder) and femoral arteries?
@Xantalos would a lightning fast blow to the throat with tip of the fingers or toes meant to damage or rip open an artery fall under Air's strike methodology?
What about artery blows in general to other parts of the body, such as to the subclavian (shoulder) and femoral arteries?
