Wellspring Attack

[npc_kun]

Characters:NPC Nothing, NPC Charger, NPC Steve and OPEN
Date/Time: Friday, September 23rd, midnight
Location: Wellspring Island
Rating: PG-13 and up
Summary: The beginning of the end.

Questions and general plotting can be done on this post. You can also page the NPC muns on that page or on our mod contact post. Please remember to forward date

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[longnosedliar]

"You, maybe," Sniper said. "I don't have a change of clothes, but I'm covered in eye-monster guts."

He gazed around at their surroundings and once he was content that they were relatively safe for the moment, he gently used Kabuto to flick the eyeball out of the water to wade into the water to get himself relatively clean. He realized that he was just going to get dirty again, but being covered in the stuff was unpleasant.

"It's easier if you just think of the eyes as fish eyes," he said, knowing that Huo as a normal human being would not be particularly happy to walk amongst the field of eyes. Neither was Sniper. It was eerie, as if the monsters were still alive and watching him to get their revenge, and their bloody revenge would be - no, no Sniper, now is not the time for tales.

He submerged his head into the water, and when he re-emerged, his previously curly hair was slick against his wet clothes and draped well past his shoulders. Which would be a pain in the ass, he thought, squeezing the moisture out of it, but there was no helping it.

[getsome_sleep]

“As badges of valor go, there are better ones,” Huo agreed pleasantly, taking the time while Sniper washed himself to finally pull on his clothes. Soaked through, his hair would not cooperate with the usual topknot; he braided it instead with the speed and efficiency of long experience, letting it hand, dripping, past mid-back. Now they could breathe for a moment, now he could potentially see about the issue of having a proper conversation with Sniper. Now it may be a different kind of explosions altogether.

They should not have time for that, but he knew well that people - himself included, even - were rarely that rational.

“That was a rather unusual sort of madness, even as the Sphere goes,” he mused, glancing back into the depth of the dark forest and for now putting the issue aside. “Is there some sort of attack on the island? I have heard sounds that I do not like at all, and if there is more fighting to be done I should like to help as I can. Although,” his voice softened, “I would not wish for you to have to save my life a second time.”

[longnosedliar]

"Yeah," Sniper said, smile dimming immediately at the prospect of what was actually going on in Wellspring, though he didn't know. A shiver ran through his body, both from the chill of wet skin and clothing in the cool night air and from the tales he was working around in his mind regarding the attack.

"There are more monsters than these everywhere," he explained. "I ran into Cloud already, being attacked by a snake, and there were more on the way here. And those explosives are no accident," he added on grimly. "I would know. And the lanterns along the paths have been extinguished."

He crouched beside his bag and did an inventory check, moving all of his possessions around so that his weaponry was easily on hand. "There's no reason for anyone to target the Spa, so unless it's a random explosion, the Clinic's gotta be under attack or something." He straightened up. "There are huge monsters everywhere. You shouldn't be here unless you have something to protect yourself with. I'll take you to the bridge."

[getsome_sleep]

The Clinic? Though he may have concluded as much already, Huo still felt his heart quicken at hearing that confirmed. This was not one of the Sphere's habitual tricks, it could not possibly be - far too brutal and far too focused. And a periodic event like the ant or zombie invasion would have seen alerts beforehand. This was something else, someone else.

Let is be Orca, he thought, before even realizing that he was, let it be Orca, and not the end.

He could not let Sniper take him away, not even for safety's sake. He needed more information. If it was Orca's doing, somehow, then it would be unthinkable of him to leave a situation in which he had a stake, a clear one. If it was not... if it was not...

He wanted to see. He wanted to know.

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "I cannot leave. I need to understand this. You should go ahead, fight and help as you are able - do not be held back on my account. But I must go to the Clinic and see for myself, even if that puts me in danger."

[longnosedliar]

Sniper looked at Huo as if he had just grown two heads, exasperation written clearly on his expressive features. He crossed his arms and sighed. "For someone so clever, you can be awful dumb," he said, momentarily looking more housewife than teenage boy.

"You seriously think that after I come out here and save your ass, I'm just supposed to let you wander right into where all the monsters are that'll crunch you up in a second? Without even a weapon?"

He picked Kabuto from off the ground and used the tip of it to poke it lightly into Huo's chest. "If you don't end up dead, one of the other fighters will from trying to keep you safe."

[getsome_sleep]

Wincing back just slightly at the poke, Huo knew that he probably needed to concede the point. Heading in the direction of any monsters at all was almost definitely going to end badly for him, and the comment on one of the fighters dying in order to protect him hit yet harder. The bridge is safety. Get out. You do not belong here.

But heavens only knew what was happening and what an hour's delay in learning crucial facts, a split-second's delay, could mean. If it was Orca. If it was the end. He needed to know. He did not, now, have the privilege of sitting safely and awaiting news, to give advice or directions from a calm distance. Not anymore.

"Sniper-jun, please." It was the wrong honorific, the one that implied closeness, friendship. He had no right to it. Urgency and desperation were talking. "The only way in which I'll be of any assistance here is if I understand the situation. That will not happen from another island. I have friends in the clinic as well." Stellaris' face flashed up in his mind's eye, very much against his will.

I-IT'S NOT LIKE HE STILL SORT OF LIKES YOU OR ANYTHING HUO. JERK. >|

[longnosedliar]

“Friends that won’t like it if you get yourself killed trying to make your plans while a bunch of monsters who want to eat you are running around where they are,” Sniper snapped. “You won’t be any help at all if you can’t think ‘cause you’re too busy running away from this and that.”

For a moment, he was starkly reminded of the tales he entertained himself with when sleep escaped him, thick, musty tomes that looked almost magical by the light of a dwindling candle. Tales of heroes of all shapes and sizes, ones that triumphed over massive creatures and brought peace to their kingdoms, ones that used only cleverness to their advantage to trick their enemy into falling. Huo stood before him, a shock of white in the darkness, asking to go out to help though he couldn’t fight.

And in that same moment, Sniper hated those stories, and hated that this place had brought him to feel such a thing. In those stories, they never spoke of the friends that would grieve should the clever one fall, and fall he often did, a victim of his own cleverness or a martyr reduced to nothing more than a symbol. They never spoke of all the dirty tricks they used, or how the others fell to protect him. Don’t try to be a hero, Huo, Sniper thought, a sudden melancholy seizing his bones. He did not want anyone he knew to be a hero.

He remembered how Hawk was a watchman, and how he that meant his friend was here, fighting no doubt. He remembered how out of breath he had been after turning into a dragon. And he knew without a doubt that Hawk would die in Huo’s place gladly, just as Sniper would act for Cloud or for Krile and how he was sure they would act for him. He had to shake his head to dispel the vision from his mind.

He prodded Huo again with Kabuto. “I should force you to go back to the bridge where you won’t do anything stupid,” he spat out, then set his jaw. “But if you’re gonna stay here anyway, then I’m following you there. I don’t wanna look in my journal in the morning and see some watchman writing about how you died valiantly not-fighting on the battlefield.”

He prodded Huo once more, just for the hell of it. “Dumbass.”

SNIIIPER DDDX I swear this tag was delayed because I was intimidated about replying to it X_X

[getsome_sleep]

Heroics, courage - they were the last thing on Huo's mind at that moment. If only. Instead, as he stood there listening to the distant fires, hearing Sniper's perfectly true and sensible arguments and feeling them fail to reach the part of his mind supposedly in charge of good sense, he realized to his horror that he had simply become that kind of man - the kind who would walk open-eyed into danger. The kind who would act even if he had no foreknowledge whatsoever of how things may fall. This was the second time, now, that he had been forced to play an active part in a tactic, and it was clear to him that it would not be the last. A weapon, he reflected suddenly. I shall need a weapon.

After a long, long year, Edensphere had finally gotten that far under his skin. He could no longer keep his distance.

It startled, unnerved, angered him, reached him in the same way that being unable to rely on his knowledge had done. It struck him as an affront. But then Sniper's sling struck him just as surely, though not nearly as hard, and he looked down and saw another man for whom keeping his distance had never been an option, not even when - and Huo knew that that was often enough - he desperately desired it.

He raised both hands, striking fist against cupped palm, and offered Sniper a military salute.

"I thank you." His voice was warm. Sniper would not want to hear any more apologies for him, time wasted in praise of how honorable it was of him to be protecting a man very nearly his enemy. Huo had talked enough. The rest he will win through action. "We work well together. I shall do my utmost to be of service."

Aww well I'M GLAD YOU LIKED IT (if that is indeed what you meant) <33

[longnosedliar]

"If we wanna stay alive, then you're not gonna be of service, we'll work together," Sniper retorted, then pulled a sheathed knife from out of his bag, inside of one of the outer pockets. "Here. I just use it for whittling, so it's not a great weapon, but you can probably use it to take a monster's eye out if you're in a tight spot."

He surveyed Huo for a moment, judgment in his eyes as he debated whether Huo would be more of a help or a burden with a slingshot. Merely a burden, he decided. Huo's aim was abominable, and Sniper wasn't about to trust him with explosives lest he accidentally blow himself up. There was a time and a place for training, and this was neither. "Nah," he mumbled to himself.

Sniper dug the handle of Kabuto into the ground now and leaned on it as he considered their options, weary from his already long day and daunted by the fight he knew was ahead of them. His clothes being wet was uncomfortable, but he gathered that he would be lucky if the only damage he sustained from this was a nasty cold.

"If we come across something really b-big and strong and I say run, you'll run," he said, nothing in his tone leaving any room for further debate on the subject. He hoped that if Huo saw the shiver that ran through him, he would simply write it off as the cold. In his mind, he could still see the earwig's stinger as it lurched unsteadily towards him, then white hot pain and terror so bad that it stilled his tongue and froze his limbs and no no no he didn't want to die again, it was way too hard to even try to be a brave warrior now, and he was so, so scared he was going to be sick, please oh god don't let there be another one of those.

And no, stop panicking Sniper, because when you panic you become insensible and you'll be of no help to anyone at all, let alone this man in front of you, stubborn as a mule yet as weak as a fish in the jaws of a mighty sea king. He squashed it down the best he could and told himself that they would not run into a giant earwig, for he did not think that he would be able to do so much as move if he encountered one. "If it's that big," he continued, a little more steadily this time, "then I'll be useless unless I can get enough distance to actually snipe. Got it?"

LOL yes that is what I meant~

[getsome_sleep]

He saw that moment of judgment, that decision, and understood it - there was nothing Huo could do but agree. His hand was clammy closing about the handle of the knife, even in its sheath. I shall need a weapon, and now he had one; he may well bloody it before the night was through. It was simple, really - the man that he had to be now, had to become, could not afford to be frightened of steel. He tried to resolve himself to that, to breath in and breath the fear out as had once been so natural to do, but in this neither body nor mind would obey him. He could not even properly conceal the fear on his face as he took the weapon from Sniper, though he knew that the last thing the other man needed to see now was another's fear.

Oh, they worked well together, so much was true. Yet it was still some cruel jest of Heaven's to pair them up like this.

"I defer to your judgment in this," he said, nodding. His voice, at least, he managed to keep steady, as well as his pose - straight-backed, alert, tense with powerful self-control. The ability to hold it was one of his few assets and he used it as much as he could. From a distance he may even have seemed truly confident to one who did not know his usual easy serenity. It may have been quite useful, had there been anyone watching from a distance. As it stood, he was really putting up the show only for himself. "We both, I think, have an understanding of what we are and are not qualified to tackle."

I don't want to 'tackle' anything. All he truly desired was information. But he tightened his fist about the handle of the knife and knew the thought to be completely useless. He caught Sniper's gaze and held it, as he had not truly done since their fateful conversation in the Yard. "But if I have an idea and no time to properly explain it - will you trust me?"

[longnosedliar]

Will you trust me? Huo couldn't have found a worse way of putting it, Sniper privately thought, for trust was no longer something he chose to invest in this man. Yet wasn't it merely days ago that he had told Ginko that he would think about forgiveness and that Huo's plots had a tinge of desperation to them?

Besides, this man would never throw him knowingly to the dogs, he knew. Never would he intentionally toss him into battle to execute a plan. Oh, a treacherous corner of his mind entertained the idea, but that wasn't him. He wasn't the type of guy to suspect such things from others, and more importantly, he never wanted to be.

And, well, they defeated a dragon together. That was worth something. Sniper held Huo's gaze right back and merely said, "Okay. Let's go."