wagner would approve.

[asklepios]

Who: Laura Kinney and Benevenuta Crispo [CLOSED]
What: Ride of the Goth Valkyries.
Where: The bridge alongside Echomire leading into Dog Fenn and Stoneshell.
When: Shundi.
Notes: Laura and Benny will be fighting a group of these because they’re irritatingly hard to kill and thus we had to make it interesting.
Warnings: Combat, death, eye horror, mutilation and consumption of corpses.

Stoneshell had originally been her plan, if only for curiosity’s sake; that plan (‘sneak through the Stoneshell quarantine, twice’) hadn’t originally accounted for the presence of a pack of seven foot monstrosities on the bridge at the edge of Echomire. There aren’t so many of them, admittedly, but at that size and ferocity even one would be a problem - although not quite as much of a problem as what looks like four, maybe five. She’s aware even before she sights down her scope that there’s going to be little she can do for anyone still alive down there - the best she might offer them is a quick death if they’re lingering - but doing something about the beasts themselves could arguably be considered a preemptive measure for anyone else. Especially if they’re of a mind to move south ahead of her.

Above her, thestrals circle, approach and retreat like great vultures that drift in and out of human awareness; higher, she can see another woman, younger, presently engaged in what looks like much the same tactical assessment. She doesn’t look familiar, but she does look competent; the four of them down there are enough to make even Benevenuta pause about going in alone. Combat of the sort that she’s engaged in over the course of the past few days is not what she’s accustomed to - she’s an assassin, not a soldier, and the fact that she’ll keep getting up doesn’t stop her from getting periodically knocked down. It’s irritating to be reminded of her own limitations in such an indifferently abrupt way - this world doesn’t give a damn what birthright she carries - but she gets back up, rolls her head from side to side, doesn’t make the same mistake twice. And she’s been thinking.

When she moves, she’s not headed down; she shoulders the crossbow and starts moving up, toward Laura, and though quick, quiet and discreet she’s not hiding her approach (or trying to).

Comments

[23rd]

Laura watches on curiously but says very little -- she's good with animals, generally speaking, especially predators, but that's because she's not trying to negotiate with them. Any kind of social interaction -- human, animal, or mineral -- is a minefield for her. It's better she stay back and work on not glowering at everything.

She swears she can see them communicating with each other. Deliberating. It's strange and she wonders exactly how sentient these things are--like how sentient most of the other monsters here are. Certainly many of them display nearly human-like intelligence. Whether that means their lives are worth as much as any human is subjective, but it makes her uncomfortable in light of her own situation.

Of course, it doesn't matter what standard you use to measure humanity when one party is trying to take chunks out of a city full of innocent people. So.

Anyway, Laura watches as the thestrals warily agree to the plan Benevenuta lays out -- provided, of course, they get the leftovers. That's fine with Laura, so she waits until the thestrals move to let them on their backs before awkwardly mounting around those wings.

This is probably the weirdest thing she's done in Baedal yet.

[asklepios]

Riding is something that Benevenuta has always previously done on the ground, but the anxiety she's expecting to have to counter when the beast rises underneath her never comes. Instead it's a strange exhiliration that makes her catch her breath, and she's not immune to that feeling of power and control and something exciting and alien and--

Focus. Focus.

It's not exactly the element of surprise that they have on their side but simply the element of suddenness from an unexpected angle, and they only keep that if they move fast; thestrals aren't discreet (not if you can see them-- and what happened down there means everybody in the vicinity is going to see this). Lacking the benefit of built-in weaponry, she urges her mount higher and back as they realize their company, shouldering the crossbow and sighting down the attached scope.

She isn't aiming for the hide; she can see down there already that her arrows may well break on it. She makes eye contact down the scope, and her expression doesn't change as she fires, holding herself in place with her thighs.

[23rd]

Laura's range is limited by her reach, give about a foot (hah hah), and further limited by her trying to avoid hacking the hell out of her mount's wings, and further complicated by the fact that her seat is terrible because she's never really ridden a horse (or cognate thereof) before. Still, she goes into battle with the confidence of someone who does this all the time, because that is the only way to go into battle.

She might take this way too seriously.

Benevenuta gets her first shot off and Laura watches as the thing claws at its eye -- so, there's a weak point, should she not be able to cut its flesh.

She's sure she can. There are very few substances adamantium can't cut through.

Instead of staying mounted -- which makes sense for Benevenuta, who has range and will stay down for at least a few minutes if "killed" -- Laura uses the leverage provided by her flying to leap from the thestral's back and land behind the deathclaw, her claws sinking into its thick hide where it can't reach her to pull her off. The thestral retreats, out of range of the deathclaws' (aptly named) deadly claws, but remains close enough to swoop back in should she need a quick escape.

It's almost like they've done this before.

[asklepios]

Not only the immediate value but also the potential later value of this kind of teamwork - mainly with the thestrals; Benevenuta doesn't do 'teams', in general, and her genuine respect for Laura's clear capabilities doesn't make her inclined to alter the habit of a very long lifetime - is making itself rapidly clear, but she doesn't have a lot of spare mental energy to devote to it, loading the crossbow and swerving with her mount out of the way of an attempted attack towards the sky.

It's not ideal conditions, as a sniper, but she's getting the job done and she hits the same target again, the second arrow driving directly into the path of its predecessor, slamming hard into the back of the skull behind the already ruined eye.

--no time to get cocky, though, not when one of them has got the bright idea of climbing the nearest ruined building.