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Fever Heat; [P] Rinky 4... IN SPACE!
Topic Started: Thu Jun 14, 2012 10:42 pm (3,794 Views)
Rin
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Nkiruka used her newfound freedom to start pummeling the Sheikh with a chair, which left the rest of the guards for Rin. Three more were in the small interrogation room. One of them lunged for the table where the anti-magic tools had been left, but the remaining two had drawn weapons and were closing on the girl. She grinned at them and settled into a fighter's crouch, her shackled hands held near her waist. The first man lunged at her with a shortsword, but she ducked out of the way, catching the tip of the blade between two of the links on her shackles. She twisted her wrists in a complex motion, twirling the hilt of the weapon and ripping it out of the guerilla's grip. It flew up into the air, spinning slowly as she closed with the man and landed a two-fisted punch in his gut. The blow sent him falling back into his comrade, giving Rin enough time to jump up and snatching the hilt of the shortsword.

With the weapon in hand she made short work of the terrorists, carving through their defenses and skin with almost contemptuous ease. She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see the last man leaving the room at a sprint, closely followed by Nkiruka. Rin grunted and left the guerilla to the soldier, kneeling down and rifling through the pockets of the guards. One of them contained a key that she gripped with her teeth and used to unlock her restraints. She also stole one of the pairs of azure-tinted goggles, slipping them on and converting her field of vision to various shades of blue and black. Rin also liberated a bandoleer of throwing knives from one corpse, slinging it across her chest before stepping out into the middle of the terrorist complex.

At least a dozen men and women were waiting for her, alerted to their attempted escape by Nkiruka's mad dash down the tunnel. The soldier was nowhere to be seen, which meant that she was probably still chasing the man with the dangerous interrogation tools. Rin smiled at the guerillas, her pupils dilating unseen behind the opaque lenses of the goggles as she descended into a martial trance. While not quite as powerful a full berserker rage-state, it still significantly augmented her already impressive combat abilities. She charged forward, grabbing two throwing knives from their sheathes with her left hand and hurling them to one side without slowing her gait.

Grunts of pain sounded from the terrorists that got in the way of the missiles, but the construct didn't even glance in their direction. She rolled underneath the strike of the nearest guerilla, the shortsword jabbing up as she careened past him and stabbing deeply into the armpit of his extended arm. By the time she shot to her feet she had another throwing dagger drawn, hurling it at point-blank range into the throat of the next closest guerilla. He dropped with a pained gurgle as Rin raised the shortsword, deflecting a descending saber. Her free hand bunched into a fist, and when she slammed it into her opponent's sternum it was accompanied by a crack of bone and a visible shockwave that threw the nearest three fighters backwards.

She continued on her rampage through the sleeper cell, death given human form. She couldn't completely avoid getting injured, but the wounds she received paled in comparison to the grievous injuries she doled out in retaliation. By the time Nkiruka came jogging back down the tunnel, Rin was the only one still standing, her shoulders heaving from exertion. The entire length of the shortsword was coated with blood and viscera, and she had emptied the entire bandoleer of throwing knives. The goggled has been ripped from her face during the fight, and she stared at the officer with wide, dilated eyes for a tense moment before shuddering and forcing herself to drop out of the adrenaline-fueled combat trance.

Rin let the shortsword fall out of her fingers and shrugged off the bandoleer, smiling tiredly at Nkiruka. "At least we know how to get out of here." She jerked one thumb at a nearby desk. A large map of the tunnels had been nailed to the tunnel wall, with each trap and passageway clearly marked. There were probably more revolutionaries hidden in the subterranean maze, but with a guide to its twists and tricks they would doubtlessly be able to handle the situation.
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Nkiruka
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Eyes half-closed and muscles relaxed, Nkiruka's internal focus centered on her wounds. As she approached Rin and the massacred camp, the bleeding from her neck and hip stopped as flesh wrapped over them. The internal damage would take more time to heal. The place where one of the anti-mages had started to slit her throat was now closed off completely, covered by a jagged scar slightly lighter than the rest of her skin. She came up next to Rin and studied the map. Once she got an overall impression of the startlingly detailed routes, she took it off the wall and folded it up. According to the map, there was an exit fairly close to where they currently were. Shoving the map into her pocket, Nkiruka hesitated leaving for just a bit longer so she could find her weapons. After a short search she came upon a couple dead guerrillas wielding Arivaz and Leviathan's Fang respectively. From there, all they had to do was find the exit.

The "exit" was actually a difficult to reach and heavily hidden hole in the ceiling. Marks on the wall indicated there used to be a ladder here, but it was long-gone and only well-used cracks in the bricks provided anything close to handholds. That was fine with them. Nkiruka put the handle of the case in her teeth and climbed up, digging her fingers and feet into the cracks. She spotted a tripwire spun over the hole, which took a little more time to disarm, but eventually they got out in one piece, greeted by the greys and blacks of Balefire after spending so much time in the dull blue light of the underground. Nkiruka straightened to her feet, looking around. It was impossible to tell how long they had been down there -- maybe almost a full day or night. Either way, they were done.

"It's a shame we didn't spot any of those disappeared orphan thieves," Nkiruka mused as they pushed through some scruffy brush to get out of the crumbled building they were in. They were much, much closer to the city limits now; the officer took an alley past some buildings which led them right into the outer streets. They looked like quite the outcasts even around here, seeing as both of them were covered in blood and injuries. Almost all of Nkiruka's shirt was bloodstained, mostly her own black blood. They got lots of unabashed looks. They ducked into a halfway decent-looking inn and bought a room. After washing all blood off her skin using their washbasin, the Istani put on a clean change of clothes stuffed into the bottom of her pack. She settled onto her bed, sighing.

A few minutes later an Istani messenger-hawk with its distinct red and white plumage landed at their window. Nkiruka noticed it and got up, opened the window and let the bird swoop in. It wore a backpack with a canister secured onto it. She opened it to reveal a staggeringly thick set of rolled-up papers. Her stomach sank. "Lots of reports..." she said carefully, flipping through them. The hawk fluttered back out of the window, leaving behind a red feather that drifted to the floor. Nkiruka sat down, keeping her expression even, and was silent for a while. "Criminal analysis of the murder of Maester Greystein. His entire lab was either looted or trashed, all his research notes taken. His area of specialty was enchantments. Odd." They also included reports on interviews done with other Academy staff and the Maester's students, but she flipped to the next, less thick report behind it to get a sense of everything she would need to chew on tonight.

She read the last, shortest one for a longer time before speaking. The blood drained from her face. Her hands holding the papers slowly lowered until they rested on her lap. Nkiruka looked at Rin directly. "It's an informal report from Nadiyah. Chaitaki attacked again last night." She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a few seconds, taking in a breath. "The victim was Colonel Kito Samir, one of my commanding officers and a good friend. The man who recruited me into the Army of Istan. He was on leave up north. She... it was one of her more gruesome and hateful kills." Letting those words sit for a while, she put the stack of papers down on the bed next to her and folded her fingers on her lap.

It sent a very clear message: I keep my word. You continue with this, everyone around you dies. Was anyone really safe? Could she protect her squad back at home? Her old students? Lieutenant Colonel Serelle -- no, Colonel now? Zaki, Skahn, Nadiyah, Khopesh, Zaman, everyone at the officer's academy, Tandorus, the Red Moons, Kalim, anyone and everyone that Nkiruka ever had a positive interaction with were all targets. Maybe even old rivals and enemies, too. Okay, well, Zaki should be safe on her own for a little while. Maybe Nkiruka could secretly send her squad somewhere... no, she would just get in trouble. Chaitaki would probably try to use Skahn before killing her. Nkiruka's mind flooded with half-baked plans to save everyone all at once or at least warn them of the danger, and it made her head swim. She groaned, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm sorry you were dragged into this, Rin, but I need to keep you around for a bit longer. Chaitaki is definitely continuing with her plans to attack the palace. Once we stop that, I can... do... something. I don't know."
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Rin
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Compared to the rest of their adventures underneath the outskirts of Balefire, their escape was rather anticlimactic. The rest of the guerillas in the tunnels had doubtlessly heard the sounds of their comrades being slaughtered and had chosen to flee instead of facing the pair of females responsible for their demise. Nkiruka defused the trap at the exit easily, allowing them to escape from the tunnels onto one of the semi-intact buildings near the edges of the City of Lanterns. The Istani woman expressed some regret at being unable to save the missing orphans, a sentiment that Rin supported with an affirmative grunt. She hoped that the Orphan Prince's subjects had been killed quickly instead of being tortured to death by the obviously insane Sheikh.

Their wounds and blood-soaked clothes earned some curious stares when they reached crowded streets, but most of the populace blatantly ignored them, obviously unwilling to engage with such obviously psychopathic strangers. Nkiruka entered the first inn they found, renting a room so that they could clean up and recuperate from the fight. Rin stripped off her ruined sundress, wasting the iota of energy it took to summon a garment that didn't look like it belonged to a serial killer. She had just finished combing the gore out of her hair and changing her clothes when the messenger bird arrived, carrying a cannister of updates for Nkiruka.

The construct plopped down on the bed as her companion started to read through the documents, wincing slightly as her shoulder ached in protest. The burns looked much better already, with most of the cracked skin healed over with scar tissue, but it would take a while for the pain to fade entirely. Most of the rest of her cuts and scrapes were healed as well, leaving pale scars on her skin. She listened to Nkiruka's concise summation of the information, pursing her lips slightly and giving the soldier a worried look. She was already on edge due to her personal involvement in this case; having Chaitaki actively lash out against close friends of the soldier was like rubbing salt in an open wound.

When Nkiruka apologized for involving her, Rin made a soft noise and waved one hand in dismissal. "Technically, I involved myself. I'm not leaving until we take care of your mother." She fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling of their small room. "The problem right now is that we're forced to react to her actions. She can lead us on a merry chase across Imythess for years and we would probably never catch up. On the other hand, Chaitaki doesn't care how many sleeper cells we eliminate so long as she can still accomplish her goals. We need to find a surefire way to attract her attention." The threat against Nkiruka's closest acquaintances had some potential, but Rin didn't want to endanger others by using them as bait. "Do you think she would expose herself to come after me, or would she be too paranoid of a trap to strike?"
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Nkiruka
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Nkiruka flopped onto her bed, supporting her head and neck with her hand. The other one held up the stack of reports. She looked over the front page while considering Rin's question. "It's hard to predict what she thinks. I'm worried about making the wrong judgment call. Right now, I think she's going to assume I go with my knee-jerk reaction. She should think I'm going to try to hide everyone and protect them all. I could see her getting obsessed over the thought of breaking into a supposed 'safehouse' and killing my friends, making me useless from despair. Hm. You know, that plan might actually work pretty well. I can arrange to set up a safehouse near my home. I'm technically on leave, living up in the Deep Cities. If she wants to break me so badly she'll become blind to a trap."

The soldier tapped her fingers against the papers, chewing her lip in thought. Something was wrong about all this, especially the death of the Colonel, and it became obvious even from applying the minimum amount of logic to the situation. "Its safe to say that Rainfall has a mole in the Army of Istan. Well, that's... frustrating. I guess I'll need Nadiyah to handle investigating that." She put the reports down on the floor, stripped down to her smallclothes. "We'll deal with it tomorrow. I need to visit the Istan embassy before we leave Balefire. Night, Rin." Nkiruka rolled over and went to sleep.

Up at the crack of dawn the next morning -- that is, whatever time her body's internal clock told her that it would be dawn, since it was always too damn dark in Balefire -- Nkiruka was silently, mechanically moving through every aspect of her morning routine. When Rin woke up, she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, diligently penning something on some loose parchment she got from the inn's proprietors downstairs. Her Istani script was hurried and sloppy, nothing like the often painstakingly slow and neat text she was infamous for writing. Once Rin was ready to head out they packed up and hurried through the streets, Nkiruka clearly on a mission. They dropped by the small Istani embassy near the center of the city: the only conceivable place in Balefire that would have a messenger hawk aerie. She rolled up her messages and stuffed them into a canister on one of the hawk's backpacks, told the bird its target in Istani and it flew off.

Nkiruka decided to splurge on tickets for a dingy airship trip that would ferry them across the bay to Taras, where they would layover for a trip to Striberg and eventually the Deep Cities. She told herself that laying over in Taras didn't count as returning to it, so she never broke that vow she made to herself years ago to never return to that godsforsaken city. The rickety, repurposed Balefire corvette was bumpy in the air, knocked them around a lot and made terrible noises which Nkiruka thought might be either the engine failing or loose boards of the hull flapping in the wind. Either way was not good, and they didn't have much chance to have casual conversation while Nkiruka was busily planning what they would do if they found themselves falling a thousand feet down to the ocean.

It was actually a relief to stumble onto the airship platform in Taras. It was busy up here, the multiple layers on the tower servicing what could have been a hundred people at a time. The smoky, ugly metropolis stretched out in all directions before them once they climbed to the topmost platforms, the ones that took trips to the north.
Edited by Nkiruka, Mon Jul 30, 2012 2:51 pm.
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Rin
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Rin gnawed on her lower lip as the soldier spoke, her brow furrowed. She had faced a similar issue before. Due to the nature of her creation and existence, she was almost constantly thrown into life-or-death situations. Anyone who grew too close to her or accompanied her on multiple missions would eventually have to face the same threats and challenges. A week after her initial creation by the Grimoire, she had started to travel with an elderly elven priest named Ezekial. He had helped her recover several pages belonging to the tome, but on their last mission together he had been almost mortally injured. At that time, Rin had sworn to try and keep her friends from being too involved in her struggle to regain the Grimoire's pages. She wasn't always successful; Nkiruka had been placed in danger thanks to her quest on multiple occasions, as well as several other individuals she had encountered in her travels. She could only imagine how incensed she would be if the Grimoire actively started hunting them down and trying to harm them.

The next morning, they traveled to the Istan Embassy, dropping off some reports so that they could be transported to Nadiyah via a messenger hawk. Afterwards, Nkiruka led them to the docks. They were nowhere near as large or impressive as the docks at Taras, but a healthy number of vessels were still anchored here to offload shipments and take on more merchandise. Instead of taking a traditional boat, the soldier spent the extra coin required to buy them seats on an airship, which would allow them to complete their voyage in a fraction of the time. Rin smiled slightly as she recalled the last time she had been on such a vessel. Nkiruka had been there as well; the woman had been serving the role of a mentor and had taken the construct back to one of her least favorite sites in Imythess, the ruins of Lugram. She had destroyed the entire town in a blind rage when fighting against a Rogue Page. The consequences of her actions still haunted her, but Nkiruka had helped her to overcome them and use those negative emotions to empower herself.

The creaky, floating barge made the trip to Taras in just a few hours, docking on a berth on one of the huge airship towers that had been built above the city. Rin leaned against the railing on the platform, leaning out almost dangerously far and taking in the sights of the urban sprawl. She didn't visit the metropolis often, and she was surprised to see how much better it looked from high above. It was difficult to see all of the filth and rubbish from this height. They didn't spend very long in the city; the two women climbed up a rickety staircase to the highest levels of the tower. There were less airships at this height. Most of the flying vessels traveled south or east from Taras, to Cascadia or Balefire or Istan City. Only a few made the harrowing trip over the Dragonspine Mountains to Axerise and Striberg.

It didn't take long for them to haggle for seats on one of the merchant airships that was leaving within the hour. Since it wasn't designed for passengers, Rin and Nkiruka were forced to spend the voyage above deck, trying to stay out of the way of the sailors that were rushing to and fro. The temperature steadily dropped as they flew above the Debon Plains and entered the mountain air. The construct barely noticed the cold, crisp air, too distracted watching the scenery unfold underneath them. When the boat finally started to lose altitude to dock, she saw a familiar sight.

Axerise was one of the few major dwarven cities built primarily above the surface. The town had been constructed on the slope of a mountain, spilling down into the valley below. She knew from past visits that many of the buildings had been deserted over the years, meaning that it had a much smaller population than its size would suggest. One of her close friends lived here, a strong Istani warrior named Zaki Kestrel. From Chaitaki's jibes earlier, she suspected that her companion shared a much more significant relationship with the woman. However, Rin had learned that there were some topics that were best handled with discretion, and so she had decided not to press the soldier for details.

Once they had landed, they wasted no time in finding a small house to rent. Rin paid for the property with the wealth she had accumulated through her travels. Her quest for the Grimoire's pages often led into previously undiscovered ruins, with precious gems and golden artifacts just waiting for someone to take them. Selling her discoveries had made her quite wealthy. She made sure to mention her own name to the shopkeeper... and every stranger she met on the street. She greeted each of them with a cheery smile. Later that night, she went to the market and shopped for some groceries, continuing to spread around wealth and dropping her name at every opportunity. When she finally returned to the building, she was sure that almost everyone in Axerise had heard of their newest resident.

She dropped the bag of groceries on a shelf and glanced at Nkiruka, who had stayed indoors during her display. "Well, I don't know how to bait the trap more than that. If any Rainfall operatives are in town, they'll know I'm here by tomorrow." She grinned, glancing around the interior of the house. It was a squat, square building with a single bedroom, small kitchen, and large living space. There were no windows and only one entrance on the ground level. A set of stairs behind the kitchen led down into a half-collapsed basement with another entrance, this one leading into the series of subterranean tunnels that connected many of the buildings in Axerise in case a blizzard made it impossible to traverse the city streets. "I think it's our turn to set up some surprises for unexpected visitors..."
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Nkiruka
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After their experience in the underground of Balefire and their long trip across the continent, it was nice to be back at Axerise. A light snow was falling, weather typical of summer in the north. Lanterns lined the pathways both above and below ground, casting a pale glow through the dark clouds and snow. On their way in Nkiruka was greeted by the blacksmith, a dark-skinned dwarf who was the only person she trusted to maintain Arivaz, as well as the tailor's daughter sweeping the storefront and one of Zaki's friends. All of them she responded to with sheepish waves, trying to keep cool in front of Rin. Nkiruka didn't feel like she had ever really earned the friendliness of the Axerise locals. Their status as the welcoming border state of the Deep Cities and her association with Zaki just put her on good terms with them.

The safehouse they rented was on the other side of town in a low-populated quarter. Simple and subtle, which was good, since they also needed to prevent its discovery from being too easy for Rainfall. Once they were all settled in, Rin went off to buy supplies and make her presence known, and Nkiruka had to go pick up some of her own stuff from Zaki's house. Despite being an entirely legitimate reason for doing so -- after all, that was where her winter coat was -- the nervous way the soldier explained it to her friend made it sound more like a cheap excuse. Just so Rin wouldn't get the wrong idea or anything, Nkiruka hurried up the mountain path to her partner's big house, an old guild hall built over a small hotspring. It was way too big to house a mere two people and a couple drakes, but it worked.

As she came up the snow-dusted path, the image of this beautiful building being destroyed in a fight between Chaitaki and Zaki flashed in her mind's eye. Nkiruka shook off the image, but was reminded of its inevitability.

Nkiruka returned about half an hour before Rin. The soldier was reading a book in front of the fireplace when the front door opened, letting in a gust of cold air. Rin explained that she had broadcast her pesence as well as she could. "Ah, good." Her voice was subtly different -- softer, more natural. She closed her book and set it gently on the floor, got up and faced Rin. "Now... we can use all of their tactics against them." Delicately clasping her fingers behind her, Nkiruka took a much closer look at the house. Simple, Dwarven design, only possible entrances through the front door or the emergency tunnel exit. "Help yourself to some dinner while I start rigging up the tunnels. There's some curried chicken on the table I brought back from Zaki's house. Probably cold, but it should still be good."

She dug through Rin's groceries and pulled out every strange bit of supplies she had asked her to pick up. It was all mundane -- wires, cloth, household building supplies, some stuff better used for cooking. Nothing that would attract too much suspicion. Nkiruka wouldn't return upstairs for a long time, so if Rin were to come down and see what she was working on, the construct would see a bit of a strange sight. If she did, she would see that the soldier's face lost its eery calmness and was back to normal as she single-mindedly worked on forming the parts for some surprisingly sophisticated traps. Nkiruka would glance up at her student, frowning slightly. "You have a question?" she would ask.
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Rin
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Rin eyes lit up at the mention of curry. She had eaten Zaki's homecooked meals before and knew how delicious they were. She tore into the spicy sauce and white rice with zest as Nkiruka withdrew the odds and ends she had instructed the construct to buy. The girl knew that her companion planned on using the supplies to make a variety of nasty traps for any Rainfall operatives that were gutsy enough to strike at this building, although she had no idea how the Istani would convert the various items into traps. The soldier retreated into the basement to work with the materials, leaving the construct alone on the main floor of the house. It didn't take long for her to polish off the meal before she started to prepare herself for the eventual incursion.

She skipped over to the exact center of the room, eying the dimensions to make sure she had chosen her location correctly. The main entrance opened up directly into the living space, a square room roughly twenty feet to a side Once she was certain she had found the exact point that was equidistant from each wall she folded her hands behind her back, staring at the chamber. Over the course of the next half hour she slowly turned in a circle, scanning her eyes over every detail of the room. The construct made not of every scuff on the floor and crack in the wall, how the illumination from the lanterns fell in patterns of light and darkness across every surface, the smell of burning oil and the sound of crackling flames. She committed each and every facet of the room's appearance to memory, making sure that she knew it as well as the back of her hand.

When she was finished with her circuit, she folded her knees and sat down in the same spot, closing her eyes and picturing the room in her mind. She spent a few more minutes making sure that she wasn't missing any details before she reached out with her Grimoire-given powers. She set the image of the room in her mind's eyes and strengthened it, making it as solid and substantial as possible. Power flowed out from her slender figure, shimmering as it spread across the room in a ten foot radius, surrounding her in a sphere of semi-visible energy. With a grunt of exertion Rin mired that location in reality, giving it an infallibility that most of existence lacked.

Technically, they had nothing to do with arcane strength and everything to do with the substance of reality. However, in the grand scheme of things, that was all that magic was. Practitioners of the mystic arts were able to absorb and refine mana in ways that allowed them to change reality in a wide variety of ways. The magic simply instructed the natural world how to contort to match their desires. Rin had set this spot in time and space as if it were a constant and never-changing location. A magician that tried to cast a spell within that sphere would find themselves completely impotent. The girl stood up slowly, groaning as she stretched her aching muscles.

After her arms and legs no longer felt like they had been carved out of wood, she held one hand out in front of her and narrowed her eyes. "Excalibur." The air around her fingers rippled as she tried to barrel through her own defenses... and then settled back down as she failed to do so. The construct let out a whoop of success and punched one fist into the air. She had used her powers to target and eliminate a single spell at once before, but this was the first time she had created an entire space where no magic would function. Rin experimented with the nullification field for a few more minutes, but none of her reality-warping abilities could function within the main room. It would leave the kitchen, bedroom, and basement unprotected... but that was what Nkiruka was there for.

She canceled the field soon afterwards to conserve her strength. The effort had left her ravenous, and she dove into the remaining curry with a furious vengeance. After polishing off the last of the delectable meal, she traipsed down the staircase to see how the soldier was faring. The supplies she had purchased were spread out around the woman, and she could see that some of them had been combined in ways she couldn't begin to understand. Rin simply stood at the foot of the steps for several minutes, waiting for Nkiruka to pause in her work. When the Istani eventually acknowledged her presence with a question, the construct nodded slowly, nervously licking her lips before starting to speak.

"Nkiruka... If Chaitaki comes here, you need to leave her to me." The girl walked across the basement, seating herself directly across from the soldier and far enough away that she couldn't get in the way of her work. "This assignment is hitting too close to home for you. She knows that. Your emotions are a liability and she'll use them like a weapon. It could get both of us killed." She jerked her chin upwards to indicate the main level of the dwelling, but her concerned gaze never left Nkiruka's face. "If we can lure her into the main room, I can neutralize her magic... It might be the only chance we have of defeating her. I would need you to hold off any other Rainfall operatives, keep them from distracting me or helping her escape. I won't let her hurt me... or Zaki. I promise you that."
Edited by Rin, Thu Aug 2, 2012 4:58 pm.
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Nkiruka
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Nkiruka kept her hands busy while she listened to Rin. Holding a prying tool in her left hand, she finished twisting another set of fence nails together. She held the tiny object up at eye level, looking at Rin through its simple interlocking structure. It was a tiny caltrop, sharp and stiff enough to pierce the sole of a boot, and it was made of metal dark enough that it would be completely invisible in the unlit tunnels. Rin finished speaking, and Nkiruka's hand lowered and flopped uselessly on her lap. She stared down at her pile of parts, looking almost sad. "This isn't the first time I've tried to trap her. I even had an anti-mage specialist with me back then, too. Nullifying the magic will help, but you should never expect these people to play fair, or think that things will go simply. It's called asymmetrical warfare for a reason."

Either being fastidious or just trying to keep her hands moving, Nkiruka organized all her piles of random household and industrial objects. "I can only do so much. My skills and memory are limited. Therefore, I need you to expect the worst so you aren't surprised." She straightened her posture and tried to look like a military officer as best she could. "First, they may disarm my traps during the approach. I might get cornered somewhere and won't be able to whittle them down for you. They know how strong you are so there's going to be a lot of them. Don't expect a one-on-one fight with her, either, no matter what I can do; Chaitaki would never fight fairly like that. Another possibility is that they'll refuse to be funneled through only two entrances, so they'll just blow a hole in the wall or roof and pile in a third route. If you ever hear ticking clockwork, get out of the building immediately.

But, be wary. They're not going to throw themselves at you unless they're trying to get you to do something. They'll always be frustrating to fight, and they might try to bait you, so keep aware of where you are at all times."
Nkiruka exhaled slowly, slumping back down. There was a long pause. The air in the basement was quiet save for the gentle clattering of objects she moved across the floor and the occasional crackle of the fireplace upstairs. She stopped fidgeting around. Nkiruka ran her fingers through her hair and kind of laughed. "Sorry. You're probably as tired of my long explanations as I am. Well, let's hope that was the last one. I truly hope this ends it for good." Nkiruka pushed herself to her feet, patted Rin on the shoulder. "Finishing this will take me all night, and I need to go visit a friend for something important. Unlikely they'll attack until tomorrow night. If we're really unlucky and Chaitaki is already in Axerise, they're going to strike in the hour or so I'll be gone, so I'll be sure to set up most of my stuff before I leave."

She grabbed all her stuff in big armfuls and moved down into the emergency tunnel. Before completely disappearing into the darkness, Nkiruka stopped and glanced over her shoulder. "You're right that this job's gotten too close to me. I hope I can show you that it doesn't make me a liability."
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Rin
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The construct settled in to listen to Nkiruka's speech outlining the tactics and dangers inherent to fighting guerilla warriors such as these. Rainfall operatives were tricky warriors who combined speed and strength with stealth and cunning to emerge victorious from any situation. She absorbed all of the details of asymmetric warfare as the officer outlined them, committing them to memory and dissecting them strategically. Her combat abilities were not simply restricted to adopting the muscle memory of legendary fighters via osmosis. She also possessed tactical knowledge that amounted to several lifetimes of warfare in a variety of environments. She rarely used this knowledge, preferring to develop her own strategies and plans, but in a situation such as this it was necessary to swallow her pride and use every tool she had available to her.

By the time that the Istani woman was finished talking, there was a slight frown on Rin's face. "You've given me a lot to think about... but I can adapt, Nkiruka. If Chaitaki won't fight fairly, neither will I." She crossed her arms across her chest, tapping one foot on the floor as the soldier continued to work on preparing her traps. "If what you've told me is accurate, we need to find ways to confuse and separate them. Their tactics are partially based on keeping their opponents off-balance. They might not expect having the tables turned. I'll be limited in what I can accomplish thanks to the nullification field, but preparation might help offset that imbalance... and I have a back-up plan in case they try to escape." She smiled reassuringly at her friend. "You are the opposite of a liability, Nkiruka. Your strength and intelligence will be a prominent factor in this ambush's success."

The girl hopped to her feet and walked over to the stone staircase that led to the upper level. She eyed it for a few minutes before summoning Amenonuhoko to her grip. Rin very carefully inserted the curved blade just underneath the flat of the stairs, tracing it along the zig-zag shape of the steps. Once she had left an incision up half of the staircase, she stepped back and slammed the butt of the naginata into the ground. The rock fell away from her cut marks, leaving only a paper-thin layer of stone that was far too brittle to support any weight upon it. Anyone who blindly ran up or down the staircase would go crashing through the floor. She grinned and summoned up several stalagmite-like spikes in the pitfall before raising up a wall of stone to hide it from sight. The trap should fool at least one or two Rainfall operatives.

She went upstairs shortly afterwards. She slowly walked around the circumference of the room, leaving notches and depressions in the walls, ceiling, and floor with terrakinesis. In each location she summoned another one of her mythological weapons, fitting it into the slot and making sure that it was easy to draw. By the time she was finished the walls of the chamber looked like some sort of inverted porcupine, spears and swords and daggers stored for when she would need them. Some of them were too obvious to avoid, while others were cleverly hidden under stone shelves or depressions so that they were only visible from one direction. Rin kept a handful of weapons in the pocket reality that served as her armory, although she knew that while within the nullification field she would be unable to summon them.

Once she had the room prepared she sighed and settled down on one of the few pieces of furniture that had come with the property, a threadbare sofa in the corner of the living space. It was close to sunset by now, and although she didn't precisely require sleep, it wouldn't be a bad idea to try. Rin fell into slumber within minutes, breathing softly and holding Amenonuhoko to her chest like it was a stuffed animal.
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Nkiruka
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It was sunrise by the time Nkiruka returned. Taking the mountain road back to the safehouse, the sun cast a glow that put the Dragonspine in partial shadow. Walking on this overlook path toward the outskirts of town felt like moving across the edge of the world, where just beyond the expanse of snow-filled valleys and jagged peaks the soldier half-expected there to be nothing at all. It was very different from standing in the middle of the Istan Desert, where everything felt frustratingly endless. Nkiruka went left -- going right would lead to Zaki's house -- and was pleased to see that the safehouse wasn't up in smoke. They would attack tonight, then.

Nkiruka came in through the front door, stomping the snow off her boots. She shrugged out of her coat and hung it up on one of the hooks, revealing an obvious change. Underneath her coat she was wearing a sleeveless tunic that left her shoulders bare, clearly showing off the intricate scar-tattoos that were a permanent fixture on her limbs. Now, snaking between the black tribal markings were smooth, blood red tattoos. They curved under the marks on her right shoulder, extending beneath her clothing to also cover the front of her chest and the back shoulder blade on that side. Nkiruka observed Rin's handiwork with raised eyebrows. The interior of the windowless house looked like a deathtrap, what with all of her weapons positioned all around it.

She put a bag of roasted cave salamanders on the table. "After breakfast I'm going to be out for the rest of the day, I'm afraid," the soldier said. Her voice sounded like she thought people were listening in on them: just a little louder than usual, tinged with a sort of unintentional artificiality. "Split-Face has some business for me to take care of." With nothing more than that, Nkiruka disappeared back down into the tunnels.

It didn't take long to finish setting up the traps once they were constructed. Nkiruka came back up the stairs a little less than an hour later, completely oblivious to the pitfall trap Rin had made. She had a few things for the front door, but they were pretty simple. Standing on a chair, the soldier got to work rigging up a trap that, when the tripwire was snapped, would combine a pair of household substances into a boiling-hot mixture that, on account of its own pressure, would spray on anyone coming in. While the concept seemed sophisticated, the trap was not. It was fairly obvious that Nkiruka's knowledge of these sorts of things was limited and partially lost to time; some aspects of the trap looked incredibly crude or jury-rigged to make work as a result of her own ingenuity.

Slipping on her coat again, Nkiruka came up to Rin and motioned to the tripwire hanging loose on the floor in front of the front door. She made a gesture like pulling it taut and tying it to the small stake she'd hammered into the boards next to it. "Alright, I'm off. See you tonight," she said, giving a casual wave as she opened the door just barely enough to step out.



Nkiruka couldn't even sleep a little bit. The afternoon couldn't have come any slower. When it was time, she got out of her bed and drew the curtains. Leaving a lump of sheets and pillows in the vague shape of a sleeping human being, she opened the door and left her small bedroom in Zaki's house. Moving downstairs the soldier grabbed her coat, her weapons, laced her boots and bid the house's only other human resident goodbye. She disappeared down into the stone, past the bubbling underground hot spring, down into the emergency tunnels snaking below every above-ground dwelling in Axerise. As Nkiruka walked through the pitch dark corridors, she really hoped she wouldn't come across any Rainfall operatives on her trip to the other side of town.

Thankfully, she was too early to bump into Chaitaki or any of them. Using a map to navigate, Nkiruka cut across the massive chamber of underground Axerise, then located the entrance to a vacated property up near Rin's safehouse. Snow drifts piled along the corners of the abandoned wood house the soldier emerged into. Since there were no windows, she had to shove her shortsword in between one of the wall boards and pry it open just wide enough for her to peer through. It took two tries, but when she was fully set up Nkiruka had a good overhanging view of the safehouse, one of the only places in this eerie neighborhood that had smoke coming out of its chimney. At the first sign of an attack, she could be there in under sixty seconds if she really pushed herself.

She waited.



An hour past the middle of the night, the faintest sounds cut through the pure silence; just the shuffling of boots, maybe, if one really listened closely. Easily one of many false alarms. They moved like a fog down the tunnel, never speaking a word to one another. Their pace quickened. Above, shadows coalesced around the outside of the house. Nkiruka stirred awake from the pain of her awkward body positioning, then realized where she was. She put her eye to the peephole immediately, and saw them. At least two dozen Rainfall operatives, their black silhouettes congealing together, and those were just the ones viewable from outside. They were around the walls, on the roof, everywhere.

She burst from the abandoned house.

They made part of the roof burst open.

Meanwhile, deep in the tunnels, a Rainfall operative at the point of the approach suddenly screamed in pain, falling forward onto hands and knees, revealing blood seeping from the sole of his boot. Another got one at the same time, but didn't fall. Their approach as a unit slowed, sliding feet across the ground. One of the pointmen spotted strange balloons hanging from the ceiling ahead. By avoiding caltrops, they walked right over pressure plates buried shallow in the soil. Simple mechaniks clicked and snapped. The unit stopped as the crude balloons fell from the tunnel ceiling -- most failed to dislodge due to the trap's shoddy construction -- and shattered upon impact with the ground.

As they passed over it, the operatives soon discovered that the substance now spread across most of the tunnel floor was incredibly viscous, like glue. It only slowed them down. They took position around the basement door as one of the guerrillas did a cursory check for external traps, backed to the side, and safely broke it open. A huge burst of bright red spices exploded out from the door, the tiny flakes light enough to linger in the air. The vast majority got on their true wanderer's helms quickly and piled inside before the powder could get into their eyes or lungs; most of the ones who didn't were far in the back still, out of range and suffering from caltrop wounds.

The detachment attacking from the tunnels was twelve strong, highly slowed down and mildly weakened.
Edited by Nkiruka, Sat Aug 4, 2012 7:22 pm.
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Rin
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Rin woke up early, feeling completely refreshed. She moved to the kitchen and was bustling around in there when Nkiruka entered their safehouse, knocking clumps of snow off of her boots before tossing some food on the counter for breakfast. The construct nodded her thanks and pulled out one of the salamanders, daintily biting into the flavored meat. She took note of the new, bright-red tattoos curling along the woman's shoulder but didn't say anything. She wasn't sure if the markings were aesthetic in design or an indication that her companion had found another animal to graft overnight, but she was certain that Nkiruka would prefer not having her every action questioned. The soldier went down into the tunnels to finish preparing them for intruders while Rin did another circuit of the house, making sure everything was in place. What followed was one of the most excruciating things the girl had ever had to do: sit around and wait patiently.



Her wait finally drew to a close much later that day. The sun had set behind the mountains hours ago, leaving the streets of Axerise dark and silent. Rin was sitting cross-legged in the center of the living chamber, her eyes closed as if she was meditating. Amenonuhoko was resting across her lap, loosely held with both hands. A casual observer might believe that she was asleep from her slow rate of breathing and stillness, but the opposite was true. By clearing her mind of all unnecessary thoughts, Rin had sharpened her awareness, honing her senses as she waited for Rainfall to strike. It had to be tonight.

It was around midnight when she heard the almost inaudible sound of fabric brushing against stone. Her eyes shot open instantly, neck craning back so she could stare at the ceiling. It wasn't long before she heard another slight noise from the roof. Her lips pulled back in a humorless grin as she stood, tightly wrapping her fingers around the shaft of the naginata and crouching in a strange stance. It seemed almost impossibly low to the ground, her right arm hovering a few scant inches off the ground, her left arm protruding straight backwards and gripping the polearm near its curved blade. "Come on in..."

There was a cacophonous detonation from above, thick cracks spreading across the ceiling in an instant. The building rumbled in protest as the broken stones began to shift, giving in to gravity as they began to tumble towards the floor. The construct spun in a full circle, raising her arms so that she dragged Amenonuhoko through a full rotation around her body. The descent of the chunks of stone slowed as if they were falling through jelly instead of air... and she heard grunts of surprise as people slammed into the suddenly stationary rock. Her grin widened only slightly as she looked up, seeing the black-garbed figures standing in a ring around the hole in the ceiling.

"Boo."

She gestured to one side almost contemptuously, slashing the naginata through the air. One of the largest slabs of intact stone rocketed in that direction, knocking off the Rainfall operative that had landed on it. The rock slammed into the entrance to the basement, wedging itself in the opening to the staircase. She knew it wouldn't stall the operatives from the tunnels for long, but it would give her a few minutes to deal with the enemies falling from above. The man that had been dislodged from the stone twisted as he fell, landing in a crouch and springing forward towards her. Rin grunted and spun, sliding her fingers along Amenonuhoko's shaft to maximize her range. He was forced to catch the blow on one raised gauntlet... and was completely unprepared for the lumps of stone that crushed him to the ground, burying him in a pile of skull-sized rocks and not even giving him the opportunity to cry out.

More guerillas were dropping into the room, and Rin danced backwards to avoid two throwing knives that bounced off of the ground instead of plunging into her flesh. As she moved the air around her shimmered and wavered, reality twisted as she called upon inner reserves of strength. The ribbons on her arms and legs solidified, instantly transforming from supple leather to interlocking steel plates. A bandolier of throwing knives appeared slung across her torso, similar to what she had stolen from the corpse and used against the cell operative in Balefire. However, the daggers were slightly different in shape and size, longer and with slightly curved blades. The metal was a sickly green shade, while the hilt was wrapped in dark purple leather strips.

She twisted the naginata, jerking it to one side then another. Two more operatives found their descent into the room plagued by a cloud of stony missiles, although neither was instantly killed like the first man. She heard the crack of bones as a fist-sized rock struck a woman's femur and the other fell bonelessly after a rock struck him directly in the temple. However, she had expended all of her earthy ammunition by this point and had no way to stop the half-dozen fighters who dropped down into the room unopposed. Rin's grin remained fixed on her face as if it were permanent, but there was a slightly worried overcast to her mien as her blue eyes scanned over the legion of foes still waiting on the roof.

She backed away to keep all of the uninjured operatives in her field of vision. the naginata's tip resting on the ground inf front of her. "Chai-Chaaaaaaaaai... I would have opened the front door for you. Your friends might have had to wait outside."
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Nkiruka
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They kicked in the front door at the exact same moment. The sound of a snapping tripwire was buried in the clamor of falling stones and fighting. Boiling hot mixture sprayed right at the eye level of the insurgents piling in. Whatever cocktail Nkiruka had mixed up not only burned partly through their wooden masks, but got into their eyeslits and blinded them to various degrees. The blinded pointman was dragged out of the chokepoint by her comrades as the trap ran out of material and tapered off. Once it had run its course, they charged through and joined the engagement.

The basement team came to a sudden stop at the base of the stairs, watching as a humongous chunk of the stone ceiling crashed firmly into their path. They didn't hesitate to get working, a couple already pulling out some tools while they called out to each other in a foreign language, trying to bring up a specific person in their rearguard. He was one of the shorter guerrillas, dressed identically with everyone else: loose black clothing with a tight hood, trousers tucked into boots, and a wooden mask painted with designs marking tribal affiliation. In his case, the mixture of blood red, sky blue and claw-like designs on the mask blatantly indicated he was Chomai. Beneath the mask a very distinct pair of eyes peered through: vibrant silver with vertically slitted pupils, just like a rattlesnake.

The group parted around him as he approached the boulder, gathering up magical energy that glowed a sickly green around his fist and became thicker with each passing moment. He stepped onto the stairs, looked down as if noticing they were unstable, and rumbled a few words to the troops behind him while pointing down at the pitfall trap. Being more careful as he ascended them, the rattlesnake Chomai stopped at the top and took a stance. He raised his fist. The air seemed to warp around the magic as the energy built up started to overload. He punched straight into the huge slab of stone. Green cracks radiated from the point of impact, glowing briefly before dulling down. A sizzling sound emanated deep from within the rock. The acid magic broke the obstruction down into smaller chunks fairly quickly. The other guerrillas worked to pull the pieces away.

Chaos prevailed in the main room of the house as guerrillas surrounded Rin, avoided her rock projectiles and worked to rush the wounded out of the building. All of this, which had only happened in the span of a minute, occurred without any indication that Chaitaki was even a part of this group. Despite Rin's goading, no one responded. The crew emerging from the basement looked absolutely livid beneath their masks; many were limping and trailing blood, some coughing, half of them having replaced their normal headwear with true wanderer's helms to filter out the air which gave them an unsettling appearance. The rattlesnake Chomai gestured for the retrieval of the wounded and unconscious as he pulled out a curved knife. The unoccupied insurgents focused on Rin, always trying to feint or move behind her or strike while she was distracted. Throwing knives and chakrams came at her from many directions, even using the construct's own spent throwing knives against her. Thanks to the anti-magic field there were none of Chaitaki's spinning knives to worry about.

Nkiruka was already a blur, deep in a martial trance, running, sprinting down the hill as fast as she could, pumping her arms. Her coat felt like it was in the way; she tore it off mid-stride, vapor rising thick from her dimly glowing tattoo on her shoulder, large clouds of warm air puffing fast from her mouth. As she got closer, just a bit further, she thought she heard something. A strange noise. It tickled at the edges of her tunnel focus. It was getting louder. Loud... buzzing, displaced air. It was coming so fast and spinning so quickly almost invisible in the dark and aimed right at her right eye, going to cut it clean out, Nkiruka didn't think she just turned her head at the last moment and then it hit, and she was falling, rolling down the last bit of the hill, but recovered instantly and was back at full speed again, going right there toward the house, not thinking about the pain or the heat burning in the cut, just attack, attack, kill every single one of them. Protect Rin.

There was a loud impact outside the house, followed by a scream and another impact. Three more Rainfall operatives jumped down from the gaping hole in the roof, their outlines framed by the moon. Two immediately got to work, but one lingered there for a moment, scanning the room. Female in form, average height, mask patterns showing she was Chomai. A gap parted in the chaos for just a moment, and she locked eyes with Rin. They were dull orange, like lion's eyes, and the pupils were permanently half-dilated.

The part of Chaitaki's belt covered in throwing knife sheathes were empty. She reached down to her hips and pulled out two very distinct weapons: a sickle and a flyssa, both ornate but lacking in their enchanted sheen. Pivoting to face her, she watched as several guerrillas attacked Rin at once if the construct was distracted by the revelation of her identity. The leader of the Rainfall Rebellion was oddly silent; her movements seemed tensed and somewhat mechanical, like barely restrained rage. Like the calm in the middle of a storm, Chaitaki took slow steps toward her target as the chaos of the battle roiled around her, sizing Rin up.
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Rin
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Rin had fought against skilled opponents before. She had defeated both cultists and paladins, soldiers and highwaymen. She had defeated mechanical men that felt no pain and slain a dragon without getting singed by its breath. The Rainfall operatives put all of her past opponents to shame. Individually, none of them were a threat to her. As a unit, they were dangerously lethal. They fought with a cohesion that made her think of a hive mind, staggering their attack times and angles to keep a constant barrage on the construct. The masks made it difficult to tell them apart and made it difficult to tell which were normal humans and which had their physiology improved by the Chomai grafting ritual. Their own wounded were hauled away almost before they hit the floor, dragged out of the way so that they wouldn't trip their comrades. Against almost any opponent, they would have been successful in mere moments.

Thankfully, Rin was anything but normal.

She had wielded Amenonuhoko only until its length and bulk grew too unwieldy to face attacks from every direction. Two men had fallen by that point, neither with mortal wounds but with serious enough injuries that quick medical treatment would be required to keep them from bleeding out. A third had been incapacitated when she threw the naginata into his torso, punching straight through his chest cavity and pinning him to the stone wall behind. With both hands momentarily free, she had drawn a dagger in either hand and blindly flung them to either side, hearing a pained grunt as at least one of them connected. She twirled around and jumped over a whirling chakram, reaching p with both hands and gripping a pair of hilts protruding from the ruins of the ceiling. Using them as leverage, she lashed out with both feet and struck another guerilla in the sternum with her steel-plated heel. She tore Solarnis and Lunarnis out of the stone as she dropped back to the ground, the axes whirling and knocking two daggers out of the air.

The fight seemed to continue for hours, weeks, months. Rin knew that roughly two minutes had passed since the roof was blown open, but it seemed like infinitely longer. She hooked both of the axes around the sword of a guerilla, ignoring their soft murmuring as she twisted her arms and tore the sword out of his grasp. With the dexterity of a circus baton-twirler she spun his blade, hurling it across the room and forcing a chakram-wielder to dive to the floor to avoid being speared. The unarmed woman growled and lunged forward, trying to wrap Rin in a tight hug and hold her in place so her companions could finish the job. The dual axes lashed out, lopping off both arms at the elbow. Rin shouldered her backwards into another fighter and gasped as she felt a line of fire trace across her shoulders. A loose, wet sensation spread from the injury, but all that the construct could think about was how often the Rainfall operatives coated their weapons in poison.

Let's go up a notch...

Her pupils grew darker and expanded in a flash, dilating until her irises were a slender ring between them and her sclera. The augmented speed and strength of the martial trance allowed her to avoid being killed for the next few seconds, although it was still a close thing. A moment later, there was one of those momentary lulls in the fight as the operatives readjusted their positions and drew out more ranged weapons. Rin stood in a ten-foot circle of clear floor except for the amputated arms, her body splattered with blood and gore. She looked up and froze as she met the wide, orange eyes of Chaitaki. The older woman was simply standing on the edge of the hole in the ceiling, her weapons unsheathed but otherwise looking like a mere spectator to the battle.

Rin growled and threw one of the axes straight at the woman, a blur of silver metal as it spun through the air. Several Rainfall operative fell on her in the next moment, striking with deadly synchronization. The construct reached down with her free hand as they flew through the air, grabbing the weapon she had hidden under a small, semi-covered bump in the stone. She tore free Morpheus's Shame, the nightmare blade easily shearing through the stone floor. The unexpected presence of the weapon caught her attackers completely off-guard. Rin cleaved two of the guerillas in half with one terrible stroke, the black sword easily cleaving through their clothes, skin, muscle, and bone. The other three operatives struck quickly and viciously, leaving a shallow laceration across her stomach and a deeper puncture wound in her thigh. They retreated hastily, jumping out of the range of Rin's weapons.

OOC
 
Injured Count: Two down with deep wounds, one dead from being pinned to the wall, one without arms, two chopped in half. So six down in this post (and 3 from the post before).
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Nkiruka
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Chaitaki twisted out of the way just barely enough; Rin's axe whirled through the air and struck the wall behind her. The casual way she'd done it and the absolute minimalism of her movements almost made it look like Rin had missed. She continued stepping toward the construct, but stopped when she revealed the massive dark blade Morpheus' Shame. It looked like she wasn't entirely sure of the weapon's dimensions, since only by ducking under the first sweep was the guerrilla leader able to gauge that she was a few inches out of its range. Nearby operatives that were as surprised as her were cut down, gushing blood from stumps of fallen limbs and torso segments.

Against all logic, Chaitaki broke into a run straight for Rin. She picked up speed faster than was humanly possible; she ducked under sweeps, danced around chops, and in seconds stepped to pivot around Rin so they were back-to-back. Chaitaki swung her sickle down in an arc, attempting to catch her enemy's shin to cut and trip her while she got behind her. At the same time she flipped her flyssa into an inverted grip, stabbed it in towards Rin's lung, pulled it out, spun to face her and then aimed a series of rapid-fire elbow strikes at pressure points in her neck and back, all in the span of a few moments and all while more guerrillas poured in and engaged Rin from the front.

The house shook from a dull impact. Then another one. And another. The screams outside got more desperate, and then there was another impact, this one so powerful that it clearly came from a specific spot on the wall next to the fireplace, across from where Rin and Chaitaki were fighting. As the hits got louder and louder, chunks of stone broke off and cracks extended from a central point. There was a pause, and then the wall shuddered inward, chunks flying into the house as someone's skull loudly smashed through the stone. A Rainfall operative fell on her back into the newly created hole in the wall, the twisted horns of an ikal-nayati distinctly coming out of her hood. A dark form that looked like Nkiruka stepped in through the crumbling bricks, holding the broken-off part of one of the nayati-Chomai's horns in one hand. The bovine witch-warrior was unconscious but not dead.

Nkiruka, on the other hand, looked like she had just come from the middle of a warzone. Steam rose from the spiraling tattoo on her shoulder, which was glowing red-hot. Slashes covered the edges of her clothing, and her limbs were dripping with blood -- both red and black -- mixed with dirt and dust. Her busted-up face was the worst of all. There was a gash splitting her flesh all the way down to the bone, extending from her cheekbone dangerously close to her eye, across the side of her face, and then splitting her ear in half. The grisly wound was bleeding terribly, covering her whole neck and shoulder with a lot of it wiped over her nose and mouth, with parts disgustingly half-coagulated or caked on with dirt. Despite all this, the soldier looked eerily calm as she stepped over the pile of broken stones and the witch-warrior's body, entering the house proper.

Two guerrillas converged on her but she ducked under their strikes and came running toward Rin and Chaitaki, ripping her bloody shortswords back out of their now equally bloody sheathes. Chaitaki, darting out of both of their ways, shouted a quick command in her native language K'eshuma which was important enough for her to repeat. She couldn't say it a third time as Nkiruka loudly swept through the whole house, tearing into anyone still inside the building and nearly getting in a passing hit on Chaitaki too. The Istani officer stayed mobile, vaulting over obstructions, hitting and running, wearing them down and keeping their attention off of Rin. The rattlesnake-Chomai took a kick to the knee and got a lot of Arivaz's blood shards embedded in his mask before he ducked out to help collect the immobile and mortally wounded. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the nayati-Choma getting carted away. Witch-warriors, especially ones with tough skulls, were notoriously hard to kill; she'd definitely be back later. Operatives that could still move poured out of the house and began to surround the outside of the building, and Chaitaki darted off to join them.

Soon enough it was just Rin and Nkiruka standing in a wrecked room of dead or dying people. Chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, the soldier held her blades out to either side to let blood drip from them. "What now?" she breathed, eying Rin across her blood-covered and half-deadened face. She could hear them outside, which meant they weren't necessarily retreating yet, but they were definitely trying to get them out of Rin's magic-dampening field.

OOC
 
Before this post we were down to 27 out of 36. Nkiruka knocked out the nayati-Choma and probably took down for the count about... let's say 5 people to bring it down to 21 out of 36 still in action as of this post.

There is an unknown number of additional dead/injured people outside, too.
Edited by Nkiruka, Mon Aug 6, 2012 4:34 pm.
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Rin felt her blood run cold when Chaitaki suddenly sprinted forwards, charging straight for the construct. The situation had gone from manageable to incredibly dangerous in the blink of an eye. The girl brought up the blade that had been crafted from nightmares, the air screaming as its jagged edge was torn through a frantic defensive pattern. The witch-warrior moved with dizzying speed to avoid the weapon, always in motion, never moving a hairsbreadth further than she needed to to avoid the slashes and jabs. Rin was forced to redirect all of her concentration from the ring of operatives to their leader, leaving herself open to attack from every other angle. A chakram sliced across her bicep in a spray of blood, followed by a short dagger that struck her upper thigh and sank to the crossguard into her muscle.

The next instant Chaitaki was behind her, lashing out with both weapons at once. The sickle sliced across her shin, and if ti wasn't for the steel graves Rin would have lost the leg. Instead, the curved edge skittered across the metal plate, leaving a deep scratch along its surface. The flyssa was much more difficult to deal with. Its point found Rin's back and sank into her skin, clearly aiming to pierce an internal organ. The girl snarled and threw herself forward faster than Chaitaki could finish the movement, throwing Solarnis straight forward with so much strength that it split the skull of the first Rainfall guerilla that had tried to close the distance between them.

She turned to face the witch-warrior as the unarmed blows began to rain down, catching an elbow across her shoulder and jaw before she could bring her open hand up to block the next attack. The sheer strength behind the blow snapped three of her fingers outright even through the steel armor. She blinding swung Morpheus' Shame in a broad slash behind her, feeling a tug as the nightmare blade caught an unlucky foe. Her other hand was a blur, trying to block or redirect as many of Chaitaki's strikes as possible. Two out of every three got through, smashing her nose and shattering one cheekbone. Another dagger thudded into her back, but the pain was secondary now, a minor concern that she forced herself to ignore. Eliminating Chaitaki came first.

She whipped the blade around straight towards the Rainfall leader, ignoring the dull impacts that ran through the structure. The older Istani dodged it as fluidly as she had avoided every attack to come her way thus far. Rin snatched a throwing dagger off of her bandolier and hurled it at the woman before her feet had touched the ground, but the flyssa intervened and sent the poisoned knife falling to the floor. The construct was about to press forward when Nkiruka appeared in her peripheral vision, her face split by a terrible wound as she flourished her dual shortswords. Chaitaki pulled back and shouted at her warriors in a foreign tongue, clearly knowing that getting trapped between the two berserkers would be a death sentence no matter how skilled she was.

Instead of mirroring the soldier's tactics, Rin stay relatively mobile, striking out against any of the guerillas that turned to face her comrade. She opened one man from shoulder to hip in a single stroke before turning and catching a descending axe. An open palm to the woman's throat crushed her windpipe and larynx, and when the operative staggered backwards she stumbled into the path of one of her comrade's chakram. Before she could find another target the rest of the revolutionaries had withdrawn to outside the ruined house, trapping them inside.

Rin's teeth were bloody when she grinned wildly at Nkiruka. Knives were still protruding from her thigh and back, and the deep wound Chaitaki's flyssa had left between her shoulder blades was oozing a dangerous amount of blood. Her face was disfigured from the elbow strikes she had been unable to block, with two black eyer nose starting to swell. There was a manic undercurrent in her words, a combination of exhaustion and adrenaline and battle frenzy that made her seem slightly unsteady. "Now, Nkiruka? Now they burn." With a gesture she canceled the nullification field; with another she summoned Laevateinn to her hand. The construct had checked with the realtor when she purchased the property; their closest neighbor was three buildings away.

Hopefully they would be fine.

She sank the tip of the flame giant's sword into the blood-drenched earth, growling out the incantation that activated its power in a singsong voice. The ruby on the pommel of the weapon burst into crimson light as she called upon its full power, tripling the strength of the conflagration it could summon. The earth shook underneath them, fissures cracking open on every side of the house. Fire cascaded out of the earth, gouts of bright flame half a mile tall. The heat was excruciating even within the house, making it impossible to breath for a second as all the oxygen in the air was sucked into the conflagration. Rin laughed as the fire exploded outwards towards the ranks of Rainfall operatives, eerie chortles that seemed to tear their way free of her lungs.

OOC
 
Three dead, one injured. Then fire. Fire.
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