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Post by artemis on May 30, 2016 7:46:50 GMT
Most people can't shoot two arrows at once without suffering a crippling drop in momentum. Most people are not Artemis. She notches two arrows and lets them fly while she runs to the grate. If the pain won't slow him, hopefully the double dosage of poison will.
aegis | let us reward our female offspring  |
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Post by aegis on May 30, 2016 9:52:26 GMT
 His body is shutting down. He can feel himself slowing, however minutely, and that's something he can't afford. Even before the second round of arrows, it was a struggle to push himself to his limits. Now it's nearly impossible.
Protect the asset. He has a mission.
Aegis' momentum carries him through the grate and halfway up the hill before he's even had time to analyze his surroundings. Then he crests the hill and has a plan. He tosses another grenade behind him--smoke, this time--and rips off the Kevlar vest, ignoring the way it tears painfully at the arrowshafts embedded in his back, and tucks it under his arm.
Then he drops down the hill onto a still crowded street, and tosses his discarded vest into the open window of a passing car before taking off the other way and ducking into an open club.
artemis
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May 30, 2016 15:00:11 GMT
Post by artemis on May 30, 2016 15:00:11 GMT
Artemis closes her eyes and follows the sound of his footsteps. She walks right through the smoke, but she's lost him by the time that she reaches the street. How bothersome.
Suddenly, she's passed by a teenager who's walking five dogs at once. Perfect. Artemis starts projecting her aura outwards, and all of the dogs sit obediently in front of her. Even a few rats show up. The dogs' handler is bamboozled. She hands him a hundred dollars and promises to return the dogs. It's a dodgy offer, but Artemis has enough brand recognition to get away with it. She turns to her loyal canine and rodent subjects.
Find me the man with the metal arm. He's bleeding and he has two arrows sticking out of his back.
She seriously doubts that he's removed them. That would be a gory (and likely fatal) mess. The animals disperse.
Artemis picks a direction and heads off.
L2ncZvcn <50 one of the dogs start barking, otherwise Aegis is safe
aegis | let us reward our female offspring |
#TEAMSAUSAGE |
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May 30, 2016 22:57:44 GMT
Post by aegis on May 30, 2016 22:57:44 GMT
Aegis pushes his way through the club. It's a dizzy mixture of flashing light and noise, swimming like adrenaline through his head. A few people notice his condition and stagger backwards, but for the most part he presses his way through the packed crowd and they're all too drunk or high or both to notice, wrapped up in each other and the music.
He cuts the line for the bathroom, ignoring someone's offended cry, and locks the door behind him. Then he rips the toilet out of the floor, counting on the pulsing beat that thumps through the bathroom walls to hide the sound. Water wells up immediately and he kneels in it, trying to wash the blood off his skin, trying to lose the scent. It's an imperfect job and he's running out of time. What he needs is a river.
Less than a minute after entering the club, he's levering the bathroom window up, having ripped out the metal grille that barricaded it, and climbs up and out. He drops heavily to the ground in the alley, flinching when his injured knees takes the weight, and then immediately hauls himself up the neighboring building's fire escape to take to the roof and keep running.
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May 31, 2016 17:14:47 GMT
Post by artemis on May 31, 2016 17:14:47 GMT
Once upon a time, Artemis commanded an army of dogs, deer, bears, boars, and hawks. That was a long time ago. Now, she's the queen of the Washington mutts and rats.
That suits her fine, so long as she finds her quarry. As soon as the dog had notified her, she had the beasts surround the building. Artemis herself went to the roof to gain an aerial advantage.
She hears a heavy weight landing to her left. Below. Artemis waits. Then she notches her arrow and waits for the man to appear. Perhaps he should lose his arm for good this time. Her hands complete the action before her mind finishes the thought.
aegis | let us reward our female offspring |
#TEAMSAUSAGE |
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Post by aegis on Jun 2, 2016 8:27:55 GMT
Aegis is starting to actually get frustrated. He catches the arrow. He breaks the arrow in half because he can't stab it back into her left eye and he knows it. He briefly considers killing himself to avoid capture, because he's been given that order before, but he tried to kill himself in 1945 and they installed mental overrides. The situation isn't dire enough to break them.
He drops his last four grenades at her feet to try and blow up the roof underneath her and send her crashing into the building while he throws himself over the ledge and catches himself on the metal railing of the fire escape. There's your dumb fucking post.
artemis |
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Post by artemis on Jun 2, 2016 9:14:59 GMT
Despite herself, Artemis can't help but feel impressed when the man catches her arrow. If a man boasts of his skill, then Artemis loathes him. If a man proves himself, then Artemis can respect him.
That doesn't mean that the hunt has concluded.
Artemis transforms herself into a buzzard hawk. She survives. The dogs don't. Suddenly, Artemis wonders if she should have given the dog walker more money. It's too late to worry about that now. She dives down in her hawk form.
She flies to the fire escape and transforms back into a little girl. Artemis points her arrow at the man hanging off the rails.
"You can surrender here, or I can drag you to the compound. Even if you're missing a few pieces."
aegis | let us reward our female offspring |
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Post by ABYSSINIAN on Jun 3, 2016 1:49:46 GMT
 K'shiel flickers into corporeality for a fraction of a second. He's practically on top of Artemis, one adamantium claw reaching out to slice the bow's drawstring in half. He's gone. The next second, he's behind her, snatching all the arrows in her quiver and tossing them over the side. He's gone again--then back again to peer in wide-eyed curiosity at the quiver as it refills itself. "Huh," he says. Then he's actually gone. K'shiel appears out of thin air--out of aether, to be exact--perched on the railing next to Aegis' hand. His 150 kg, give or take, gives the railing a real bad day. "You look awful, grandpa."He regards the wreckage. He would've shown up earlier but for the dogs. He likes Aegis, but he doesn't like dogs. The railing wheezes under his weight. "I tried donuts earlier today. Did you ever like donuts? They're really good. You might look better after a dozen donuts."aegis |
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Post by aegis on Jun 3, 2016 2:28:25 GMT
He blinks. The railing creaks in dismay as his grip tightens. He knows what a donut is but he doesn't know if he's ever had one and he doesn't know why it's important to K'shiel, but then he's never claimed to understand K'shiel. It's likely he wouldn't have understood K'shiel even before Spectre took out his brain and played hackey sack with it for seventy years, but that also definitely hasn't helped.
He has a headache and K'shiel has only been around for about thirty seconds. Which is not to say he doesn't recognize the tactical advantage in the girl no longer having an intact bowstring. If he were someone else, he might even be grateful.
Aegis opens his mouth to say something, but it's going to be a long time before anyone finds out what that was going to be, because the fire escape chooses at that moment to detach itself from the smoldering building wall and crash down to the alleyway below. It probably doesn't help that between them, K'shiel and Aegis easily weigh over half a ton.
There's time to know he's falling, and then he hits ground and rolls, twisted metal raining down. The arrows still embedded in him dig that much deeper and he doesn't rise to his feet.
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Post by artemis on Jun 4, 2016 23:42:58 GMT
Artemis transforms into a hawk and dives after all the metal has collapsed. She transforms back into her human form upon her landing. She grabs one of the twisted metal pieces and yanks, giving her a rather rustic polearm. Artemis lifts the pole over her head, intending to knock the man out cold with a single blow.
"Goodnight, idiot." She brings the slab of metal down.
ABYSSINIAN | let us reward our female offspring |
#TEAMSAUSAGE |
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Post by ABYSSINIAN on Jun 5, 2016 5:00:39 GMT
He falls as an incorporeal spirit. It hurts a lot less, in that it doesn't hurt at all. K'shiel isn't trained to work with others. Then again, Aegis is practically useless, so it's not like they're working together. It's more like K'shiel's safeguarding a package--which he also hasn't been trained to do. He's only been trained to kill, but he supposes he ought to do his best to keep Aegis alive. What was a rusted metal pole against adamantium? K'shiel appears as soon as he strikes, with a faint pop out of the aether and the snikt of his claws. Five claws cut the metal pole into six pieces that rain down onto Aegis. It's more insult than injury. He looks Artemis in the eye. If you had shown K'shiel a photo of Aegis and a photo of Artemis, then asked him to pick out which one was the perfect killer and which was the hero, he might've gotten it the wrong way around. He wouldn't be the only one. He realizes he should kill her before she kills Aegis. He disappears. He's corporeal again behind her, low and close. He swings a vicious slash at her hamstrings, but while it has his full force behind it, it's a distraction. K'shiel takes the momentum of the follow-through with him, teleporting in front of Artemis. He goes for her eyes. artemis |
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Post by artemis on Jun 7, 2016 12:08:44 GMT
Artemis is caught off-guard by the pain in her leg. She didn't think that she would encounter Adamantine here, across the Atlantic Ocean. She drops to a single knee. When her enemy attacks her face, she quickly blocks the claws with her golden bow. The parry connects, though not through Artemis' skill. She doesn't usually use her bow as a staff.
She shouldn't have attempted anything at close quarters with a broken bow in a narrow alleyway. Not the way she is now.
Then a completely idea comes to her. This ... pink animal is a cat. Which means that she can probably exert some influence over it.
She speaks to the catboy, her voice layered with more hypnotism than persuasion. "You have no desire to fight me."
Start low, aim high.
ABYSSINIAN | let us reward our female offspring |
#TEAMSAUSAGE |
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Post by ABYSSINIAN on Jun 11, 2016 7:28:47 GMT
He pops into reality to check Aegis' pulse. It's not good. K'shiel is a lackadaisical fighter. He doesn't fight, he plays. Abyssinian doesn't care for play. He's here for work. She says something. Abyssinian hears her words, and he disregards them as irrelevant noise. He's focused on killing her before she kills Aegis. Her prattling is obnoxious. He's aetherial, unseen, and then he's behind her. This time, he's not aiming for a leg but for her heart. K'shiel aims for legs and even for the eyes. Abyssinian aims for the kill, because this is no longer a game. He strikes without hesitation, without remorse, and with every intention of plunging his claws through her chest. artemis |
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Post by artemis on Jun 13, 2016 0:54:57 GMT
A large hunting dog barrels right into the pink assassin kitty, just as he took physical form. Artemis doesn't turn around. She doesn't need to when she has her ears. Distance. She needs to put distance between herself and her would-be killer, as much as she loathes to admit it. She murmurs an age-old prayer to her dog as she moves.
She can't run away on this leg, but she can fly. Artemis transforms into a hawk and leaves the repercussions for another time.
ABYSSINIAN /end? | let us reward our female offspring |
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Post by ABYSSINIAN on Jun 13, 2016 6:40:39 GMT
Abyssinian moves to give chase. His body dissipates into aether. He stops. He can hear Aegis' breathing. He hears it falter and skip, he hears it start again. He reappears at Aegis' side. Whatever bleeds, he tries to cover and dress. Whatever is metal, he leaves be. K'shiel lifts Aegis over his shoulder. He has no experience in being gentle, but he tries the best he can. [ end ] |
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