Team Huffle Badger [Chapter 7]

[Beckett]

The first shot rang out and his head whipped around to Ysmir. He didn't know the guy, clearly wasn't about to assume he knew better in terms of how to act in certain situations...but discharging a weapon in a series of dark tunnels where the point was to try and be quiet seemed like the wrong way to go. Of course, they were already being met with several skeletons as they seemed to appeared out of the shadows thanks to...whoever that had been through the speakers. To prevent any harsh words from leaving his mouth, Beckett clamped his lips together with his teeth, though it was entirely possible that his gaze said it all, since it was just now hitting him. As far as he had known, no one had had contact with the other team once they separated. He and Renard lacked the ability to use telepathy (thank Christ, Ren would never shut up, otherwise), and he somehow doubted that Arauchia was the one being called a ********. That left Ysmir as the most likely culprit. "So. What did you say to piss her off?" he asked, the irritation fading as he placed his focus on the bigger issue at hand.

A quick glance around the room was enough to assess the situation. Arauchia seemed to have her target well in hand, using the vast shadows to her advantage. It was a neat little trick, and clearly one that she had mastered for the sake of situations a lot like this one. Only problem was that she was breaking away from the group, and as more seemed to be entering from the back of the room, there was a good chance she was going to find herself cornered and having to fight her way out, should they surround her. And while she was clearly confident in her abilities, Beck wasn't sure he wanted to play rescuer in here. Not that he wouldn't, because they were meant to be a team and well...that's not how they operated. So, if push came to shove, then...he would, at least, try. And then rant about the carelessness once they were clear of the dangers, like a mother hen.

God, he was turning into his mother.

With Renard moving to the wall with his own enemy to deal with, that left him face to face with the one to come directly behind it, which happened to have a rather nice hole placed through its skull. Clearly, this had been the first to break out toward the group, only to earn a bullet in the process. It must have slowed the creature's approach long enough to allow the other two to pass, but that was hardly relevant, considering the circumstance. The problem was that even with a clean headshot, the skeleton hadn't seemed phased. And really, all he needed to do was slow them down long enough to get the shots in. He wasn't sure if there were limitations to the power he seemed to possess over the undead, but the skeletons in the catacombs had seemed to respond to it well enough...these guys shouldn't be too different. Right? Other than just being more powerful and vicious.

That thought in mind, he took a steadying breath and trained his eyes on the skeleton, concentrating solely on that ironic aura of death that clung to him like a dark cloud, and the affinities that came with it. He rose his sword in one hand and brought the other up in front of him, fingers splayed.. Slowly, they curled in against his palm, as if his hand alone were capable of squeezing tight enough to keep the skeleton from moving.

A smirk formed on his lips as the skeleton seemed to shudder and then pause, unable to bring its limbs to move to advance any further. The Rigormorits wouldn't last for long, so he gestured with Ysmir with his head. "Finish it off...with a blade, preferably?" A request, not a demand. They really didn't need to make even more of a racket, and even with a suppressor, the sound bounced off the walls like a ping pong ball. If he could slow them down enough, then the other three might just manage to get rid of them before they regained their speed and movement. Noted.

[Storyteller]

==========AUTOMATED POST==========

Beckett attempted to use a power against a standard target, and was successful!

[Storyteller]

==========AUTOMATED POST==========

Ysmir attempted to fight a standard enemy, but the attempt was a failure!

[Ysmir]

Glancing down at the man to his left, Beckett, as he remembered from the brief introduction he’d been given, he twitched a brow at the man’s request. The blade he carried was far from impressive, his ability to instill lasting wounds on a majority of the undead even less impressive. His skill had always laid with firearms, and while not the most idea to their current circumstance, would still be more effective than the three-inch combat knife tucked into the sheath beneath his jacket. Though, it would appear that even his best skill wasn’t of much use against these things, seeing as the skeletal frame with the neat, penny-sized hole in its dome was still attempting its best to lurch toward them, its joints locked in a sort of grotesque dance, like a mignonette with tangled strings.

He decocked the hammer on his Glock and slipped the weapon into his holster. He’d honestly hoped to not have to have done any fighting at all. He sighed, and with a click, pulled the knife free from its place at his chest. His hand withdrew from the leather jacket he wore, weapon in hand as he edged around the man at his side, nodding his assent to the man’s logic. "Here goes nothing, ja?" He didn't know who had the volume cranked to eleven, but they were just as much a culprit as he. There wasn’t much that he would be able to do against a being without flesh to wound with such a short knife, but maybe, with enough precision, he could manage to damage some joints. Perhaps enough to cause the skeletal figure to fall apart, piece by piece.

At least, that was his hope.

He rushed toward the seizing skeleton, his knife coming down hard on the thing’s neck, digging between vertebrae as he attempted to pop the skull free from the cap of the spine. Even then, he wondered, would the thing keep coming? How did one stop what essentially amounted to an enchanted pile of bones? At what point did steel overcome magic, as one might think of it? There was really only one way to find out.

The weight of his arm came down in a lightning fast strike, catching the thing's ribs, and, while not leaving any lasting damage, he managed to scar up the bones that would have held the vital organs safe. The thing swung an arm at him, and he ducked, just managing to dodge the lazy, encumbered reposte as he jammed the short knife into the base of the spine, near the lumbar vertebrae, with a quick succession of slashes and stabs, splinters of bone flying away with each strike, while leaving little to the eye of a damage assessor. He took a step back as a jagged stone in the thing's fist came whistling at his face, the tip of the shard catching his flesh and leaving behind a shallow scratch, more sting than anything.

With a grimace, Ysmir surged forward and shoved his shoulder into the skeleton's sternum, sending the thing clattering across the floor with his weight landing on top of it with a crack. He gave a grunt of pain at the impact, as he moved to his knees over the thing, and jammed his knife beneath the jaw, the blade inserted between the skull and neck, and gave a sharp, angry twist. The blade came free with the violence of the wrenching motion, and as he leaned back, a bony arm came up, slamming into his side and sending him rolling away from the skeleton, bringing him back up to his feet.

[Arauchia]

The blonde couldn't help but smile as she and the boys mowed their way through the flock of skeletons. There was something supremely satisfying about the crunch of bone beneath the metal blades and handles. She had wiped out one, Renaud took a second, and the other two men had tag teamed a third. That left two remaining. She could see one of them towards the back of the room, almost standing guard in front of the archway that lead into the next hallway. But where did the other go?

Suddenly, there was a loud creak just behind her as a skeleton lurched towards her and took a swipe at her shoulder. Chia gave a bit of a startled squeak as the bones skittered over the leather of her jacket, causing her to step towards the center of the room. As she settled into a defensive stance, Chia manipulated the shadows to envelop the skeleton a few meters from her. It flailed around in confusion as it stumbled towards the Spaniard, attempting to hit her with its bony fingers. Chia easily dodged its clumsy attacks before turning on her foot and leaping after the skeleton, daggers first.

Metal crunched through bone as the daggers sunk into the pelvis of the skeleton, causing it to start to collapse in on itself as it had its legs effectively severed from the remaining pile of bones. As it started to crumple onto the dirt floor, Chia drew her daggers out bits of bone came with it. Well only one of her daggers came out. The other was taken to the floor with the skeleton, trapped between the femur and the pelvic bone. Slender hands put up the free dagger into its holster before she forcefully stepped her boot on the skeleton's spine so she could reach down and pry the captive weapon loose.

"Someone want to get the one in the back? Eliminate it and we can get out of the open." Chia stated calmly as she yanked the dagger free. As she put it back in its sheath, she gave a disdainful glance to the creature under her boot. How could she be sure it wasn't going to get right back up? Hmm, well they might not have brains but it could be something about the head. That gave her an idea. Chia slowly stepped a foot back off the bones, lined up her aim, and promptly kicked the foul thing's skull much like a footballer would strike a corner kick. If her aim was true, it should smash into the one about twenty meters away.

[Storyteller]

==========AUTOMATED POST==========

Arauchia attempted to fight a standard enemy, and was successful!

[Renard]

There were two types of rage. The first burned hot and fast; grew like wildfire and threatened to consume everything in its path. Madness given breath inside of someone’s skull. Renard was known to hold this type of anger like a torch - he had for decades. In fact, as the world seemed to slow down around him, he glanced towards Beckett and thought to himself Do you remember that first time? The first time Beck had seen Ren walk right up to another boy and hammer a fist into his face so hard that a nose had nearly flattened on impact. There was an irony to Beck being named Knuckles and Ren being named Tails. It had been the former who had been forced to drag the latter away from a face up, but otherwise prone form. All Renard had seen was red and the dimming of light around the corners of his vision. All he had smelled was blood and the desire to feel bone crunch under his split and bleeding knuckles. Even before that, he’d had something of a reputation. Like beating a boy with a Harry Potter book. To his credit; it had been the only handy thing at the time.

Beck always had been very good at keeping Renard calm. Distracting him really.

The other type of rage was cold. It spread slowly, methodically. Like crystalline ice crystals; it was carefully ordered and intelligent. He had noticed, since being turned, when he got angry; it normally wasn’t the chaotic emotional storm inside of his head that demanded he act, and act quickly. Without thinking. Without considering. The entire scene seemed to move in slow motion the second adrenaline hit his blood stream. He pulled away from the skeletal figure he had just destroyed and glanced around. He watched the way Arauchia bested another one or two of the monsters. He probably should have been amused by the way her kick took the skull of one and smashed it into the other, a distance away. GOAAAALLLLL!! Except he felt no such compulsion. It was as if he was walking outside of himself.

That was how he also noticed that Ysmir seemed to be having a little bit of trouble with the undead things he was fighting. That was also how he picked up on movement down the hall in the direction they had been headed. “Head’s up. We have some more company incoming.” He called out, his voice strangely devoid of its normal good humor. He moved with uncommon speed, standing overtop the figure which threatened both his mate and Ysmir, a sneaker lifting into the air, only to descend like a pile driver with enough force to crush bone and kick up dust. The moment his foot righted itself, he was reaching under his windbreaker, and ripping out what appeared to be a glass bottle with duct tape on it. The bottle was filled with what looked like some mostly transparent, albeit dirty liquid. He hooked his teeth on the cork to yank it free and then grabbed a rag free of his pocket. He dumped some of the contents onto the kerchief before stuffing it into the bottle.

Seconds later, he reached for a lighter with his non-gasoline soaked hand and brought the thing to life. The cocktail flew through the air, right into the tunnel they had been looking to go down, only to erupt in flames. Of course. It wasn’t going to last very long at all. Really just until the gas burned up. The idea though, was to distract whatever was coming their way for long enough for them to make a hasty get away. “Alright, time for us to get our tactical retreat on.” He said. “We can regroup and go down another of the tunnels." With that, he began back in the direction from which they had come.

[Beckett]

As soon as he saw the knife Ysmir pulled free for the sake of complying with said request, Beckett's eyebrows shot up. He would hardly say that the size of a blade determined skill in its use, and it was entirely possible that the man would be more than capable of wielding it effectively enough to take out the skeleton currently trapped by that unforeseen force. Anything could be used as a weapon, so long as one had the knowledge and practice to know how. He, personally, just preferred to stick with 'the bigger, the better' in regards to his own weapon of choice. Needless to say, he was more than willing to find out by taking the backseat, and at the start, it looked like the situation was well in hand, so he took several steps back to reassess the situation. Such as the sight of Arauchia punting one of their heads like a football and landing right on target. Impressive. But his attention was quickly gained by Ysmir once more as he was forced away like little more than a rag doll, even after delivering quite the beating to the clattering pile of bones. Before Beck could even move to assist, Renard was there, his foot crashing down against the skull and the struggle came to sudden end.

The warning came as no surprise. Even without the gunshots echoing around them, they certainly hadn't been particularly quiet in their defense strategy. And on that note, once the molotov cocktail went flying, Becket moved up to one responsible for it, cutting him off from leaving the room just yet. Had the man been anyone else, it would have been perceived as far too close for comfort. but if anything, Renard tended to be more so the less space that existed between them. "We need to talk about this obsession you have with fire..." he muttered, sliding a hand along the man's side until it hit the top of the com on his belt. Without glancing away from those amber eyes, his fingers found the volume control. He dropped it so low the damn thing might as well have been off, completely, for all the good it would do. Better that than having it bring on more of those things. And then, just to be on the safe side, he turned his own off completely. What Arauchia and Ysmir did with theirs wasn't his concern. He knew Ren well enough to know that if he heard anything from the speakers, he'd relay the message.

Moving out of his partner's way so that the Killer could head back the way they had come, he turned his focus back to the room and the flames that blocked the skeletal creatures path to them. "Go ahead. I think I can stall for time," he said with a gesture of his head, encouraging Ysmir and Arauchia to follow Renard, because he had one more idea in mind to keep their enemies busy for just a little bit longer. Raising a hand with his palm face up, he brought the blade of the sword down against the skin, creating a shallow cut that quickly pooled with blood. His fingers curled into a fist as his palm turned, and as the blood began to drip down against the stone flooring, he muttered a few incomprehensible words. As he fell silent, he took several steps backwards as pure blackness seemed to rise from the blood splattered floor. It almost resembled smoke, or a rolling shadow. It twisted and curled in unnatural ways, and from it, a physical body began to form. One of a woman, her blonde hair a striking contrast to the black mist surrounding her. She didn't speak as the darkness dissipated, her icy gaze trained on the flaming tunnel before her and the skeletal creatures just beyond them, lips curled to reveal the elongated canines behind them. As if she knew exactly what she had been brought there to do.

Stationed between the four vampires and the tunnel, she resembled something of a sentry. And then she was moving, racing for the flaming wall as if it wasn't even there to hinder her path to her targets on the other side. "Okay, she isn't going to last very long. The more space we put between them and us, the better!" That hardly needed to be stated, but they had to get out of a combat situation that they weren't necessarily prepared for, and back into stealth mode. Or, at the very least, they needed to regroup. So, he turned on his heels and trailed after the others for the narrow passageway, hoping for a hasty retreat before the female vampire he had raised inevitably fell from the battle she was about to take on and his nose wrinkled.

Yeah, he already hated this place.

Power: Raise Vampire

[Ysmir]

It didn’t take anyone saying anything twice for Ysmir to be in full tactical retreat. Combat had never been his forte. He was a strategist, at best, and a code monkey by trade. He was a server babysitter most days before Sol had pretty much landed him square in the middle of a whole lot of nothing to do for weeks on end. This was one of the biggest things that had happened since, and he found himself mostly incapable of whatever it was that they were needing from him.

He was a man of technology and finesse, of electricity and fine-tuning. This creeping underground among these undead creatures was so far from his realm of comfort that he couldn’t so much as fathom how he even found himself down here. Without his guns, he was essentially a sacrificial lamb. He was useful as bait or distraction, and little else, but even that, he would do to the very best of his ability. He wouldn’t walk away from this with anyone saying that he hadn’t given his best down here in this dusty, dark shithole. He left his rifle hanging from his shoulder, pistol holstered at his hip, and sincerely finding himself wishing he had thought to bring the machine gun. Or, at the least, one of his machine pistols.

Anything to provide covering fire to the group as they found their way back through the darkness of the tunnels to find their way around the hell they had just let loose in that narrow chasm. He exhaled, the sound hushed, but long as he lifted a hand to push his dark hair back from his face. They were coming out of a potential shitshow essentially unscathed. He was impressed, to say the least. He let his hand pat at the radio at his hip, checking to be sure that he hadn’t dropped it. He’d left it just barely turned on, a thin string of his attention directed its way. He would feel the pulse of electricity that meant the radio was receiving a message. He would know when to pay attention. Otherwise, the unit was silent, the only indication that it was working was the small red LED on its face.

It was then that he felt the thing, like a vibrating in his teeth, an itch he couldn’t scratch, an irritation he couldn’t sate. He let his fingers reach for the volume dial and took it up just a single notch, hearing Jesse’s warning about the traps as the light of Renard’s Molotov flared to life, fueled by the flesh of the vampire that Beckett had sacrificed to it, the woman’s wail of fury lost on a pitched screech of agony as she crashed into the skeletons beyond. “Let me take a stab in the dark. Our resident unicorn served herself up as your reminder, yeah? Somebody make sure she’s being careful. She’s twice as grouchy with extra holes in her.” He murmured into his mic as he turned his eyes to the man that had asked him moments before the **** had hit the fan what it was that he had said to set the woman off. He let his lips twist into a grin, then, as he finally had a moment to give the man his answer.

As he spoke, he let his mind wander to the woman that was caught up in her own predicament at the time. ::I can see you're perfectly good at putting yourself into danger without my help. You can't pin that one on me, you know. Now, try and be more careful. I like you most in one piece.::

“To answer your question, I just asked her a simple question. Nothing big. I didn’t think anyone had their radio on so loud. I don’t ah…” he lifted a hand and tapped at his temple. “I don’t need it on very loud, ja? Gives me a headache.” He chuckled, then, and lifted a hand to brush dust and dirt from the shoulder of his jacket. He had kept moving, falling in line with the rest of them once they had put enough distance between themselves and the scene of the little battle they had found themselves in. His eyes moved over the other three of the little group and he glanced around them, then. “So, any ideas on how to proceed? Any of you see a way down in all that running?”

[Arauchia]

The next several events unfolded in what felt like the blink of an eye.

The bruiser of the couple apparently had brought toys down with them and made no mention of it. She was all for tactical preparedness, especially as it seemed like the path they were taken was overloaded with nasty undead things present company excluded. Chia couldn't help but offer a devious grin as she watched the cocktail fly, even though moments later when it busted open and created a fire barrier between them and the skeletons she was hissing at how bright the light was to her darkness-loving eyes. The back of one of her hands came to rub at her eyes as she hurried back to the group, as she pondered how she got so sensitive to the light. Maybe it was a byproduct of her training with the wraith so she could explore the fade like Jesse had been when he found her. Or her extended time in the darkness. It was likely both, so Chia resolved that she would have to get some sunglasses to put in her backpack for situations like these.

She stuck close to Ysmir's once she returned to her fellow explorers, watching with a bit of amazement as a vampire rose from the ground before her very eyes. What sort of magic was this trick? She asked herself internally as violet eyes would watch Beckett. She was fairly certain she never saw another vampire do that, so he had to be a different kind of vampire than her. There was much she still had to learn, and relearn. Perhaps one day, she would learn tricks from all the different flavors of tricks their species had. It certainly would make fighting big bads if you had creatures to do the work for you. But that inquiry was for another time as she took off down the corridor behind the boys, hands stuffing her knives in heir holders as they retreated to fight another time.

Fingers reached back to make sure her radio, which was affixed to her backpack, was still in the muted position. She wanted no more distractions from whomever was making a ruckus on the other team. As they scooted away from the skeleton den they were in, the Russian inquired as to if any of them had a better plan. Chia's pace slowed as she gave a shrug. "I think our only option is to pick a different hallway to try to go deeper in this maze thing were in. So let's just take this next right up ahead. A slender finger pointed to the upcoming fork in the corridor. They had to find a way to get deeper if they wanted any hope of finding what they were coming down here for.