Group 1: The Search for Monty Python and the Eleventh Pillar

[secondcity_mods]

Characters: (1) Sora, Kaldur, Ninja-Style Dancer, Granny Weatherwax, Franky; (2) Eraqus, Fred Weasley, Agent Derek, Galahad, Linkara, Clare Edwards
Time: After the Bean meeting
Location: The forests of the Nevernever
Content: It’s time to find the eleventh pillar.
Format: Poster’s choice
Warnings: No tag order.

Comments

[skylit_torch]

The size of the unicorns didn't bother someone who had faced off against Ursula, Chernabog, the Hydra, and countless gigantic Heartless and Nobodies. Plus, the odds were in their favor - the frenzied red-eyed monsters didn't really faze him at all. He was concerned, though, with making sure they didn't go galloping after those who were following the owl to the eleventh pillar. Everything depended on what they would do here, and he wasn't going to let the unicorns stop them.

Summoning his keyblade, he turned to face the unicorn that was charging at the group, quickly going through his spells. He didn't know if these unicorns belonged to Summer or Winter and- well, it was far too close to really think about, he really was just going to have to go with instinct or he was going to get impaled and Kairi and Riku would never forgive him-

Except instinct was suddenly reminded of the aforementioned Hydra, and Phil's frantic advice to "get up on the Hydra's back!" and before Sora quite knew what he was doing, he was dodging centimeters beneath the unicorn's horn, Aero magic already boosting him into the air, and suddenly he found himself awkwardly kneeling on the unicorn's back. Grabbing at its thick mane while still keeping a hold of his keyblade, he quickly looked around to see where the other two had gone.

[bailarinja]

The unicorn's kick struck true, grazing Ninja across the face as he flew back against the tree behind him. There was an obvious trickle of blood down his face, but he ignored it, quickly taking a moment to slip his hood back in place as he hurried to his feet.

It was difficult to tell if his strike did any damage at all, as it was clearly still mobile. Now that he thought about it and got a better look through the dark that skin did look like armor. Well that made his job look more difficult. His eyes narrowed in concentration, trying to think.

Sora had leaped onto one of them, standing on its back. It was certainly worth a shot, and now was his chance as they charged at the group. He ran toward the one he'd just slashed, hoping to jump on its tail to climb to its back.

[barefootbadass]

Kaldur manages to keep his balance on the shaking earth. Sora had taken the horse that was charging the group and Kaldur decided to focus on the one trying to make them loose their footing. The horses had armor but surely they had to have a kink in it somewhere. Kaldur pulled his water whip back and swirled it around before swinging it back again at the back legs of the horse that had reared up. Hoping it was unstable, Kaldur used his strength to attempt and pull it down.

[itsasecretmecha]

It takes more than a little trembling to get a man raised on the sea to lose his balance. Looked like bullets alone wouldn't make a lot of difference, but when did they ever? The kid with the big shoes seemed to be having a decent enough idea, though: if they were on top of the unicorns, it would be a lot harder to get poked at with those giant head needles.

The one charging was the closest, and therefore the obvious option, Franky considered. With a grunt, he lifted his arm and launched off his hand, to loop the attaching chain around the beast's neck. Either he'd be able to reign it in and get an easy ride, or he'd choke it. Or he'd miss and get impaled, you know, whatever.

[fey_npc]

The unicorn that had reared up whipped its head to the side, eyes blazing with unbridled fury and suddenly it too was charging at the group from its unguarded flank, even if it had to go through Kaldur and the ninja to do it.

More alarmingly was the fire that suddenly engulfed its horn.

The unicorn Sora had mounted skidded to a halt the moment the keybearer grabbed its mane and began bucking wildly, trying to dismount its sudden rider. Matters were only complicated when Franky tossed the chain around its neck - the unicorn screamed in fury, backpedaling, and finally attempting to just gallop away.

The remaining unicorn seemed to have decided that this was far too much, its head turning in the direction the other group had vanished in. One of its ears twitched, and it abruptly turned to follow the group that had vanished into the forest.

[skylit_torch]

Sora held on for dear life the moment the unicorn began bucking wildly beneath him - man, this thing was worse than the Hydra and it was smaller. He glimpsed Franky throwing something at the unicorn he was still trying not to fall off of, and only had a moment to wrench himself backwards to avoid getting smacked in the head with the chain.

In doing that, he caught sight of the one of the other unicorns making a break for the woods.

"No!" he shouted, one hand still clasping the unicorn's tangled mane while he used his keyblade as balance. Swinging the blade in the direction of the retreating unicorn, he shouted, "Blizzara!" The sound of ice cracking along the length of the blade snapped through the air, and blue magic, sprinkled with tiny flakes of ice, shot from the tip of the blade and towards the unicorn's legs.

[thisoneis]

Granny scowled as the flare of Sora's magic drew her attention to the third unicorn. The damn fool thing was leaving. Running away so as to get at the other group of people and as much as Granny couldn't stand cowards* there was something else worse. When she extended her protection to someone, if by implication then they were damned well going to get it, and no unicorn was going to sneak past her, no matter what the thing looked like.

There were no grandiose gestures. Granny had never stood for the kind of flash that wizards seemed to think magic needed. Instead, she simply drew herself to her full height and stabbed an accusatory finger at the retreating unicorn. Mere seconds later, a flare of octarine** light split the air, leaving behind an unscathed, but very confused unicorn; now laboring under the fact that it thought it was a frog - and thus was a little uncertain as to just was, exactly, it was meant to do with its legs.

The cat resting across Granny's shoulders had no real comment throughout the whole affair, save to shift slightly at the flare of octarine that the magic had caused.

*No matter their species.
**Octarine, naturally, is the eighth color of light and is generally referred as the color of magic, due to the fact that only magic users are capable of seeing it. Attempts to describe its color are thus somewhat awkward, but the general consensus is that it's a sort of greenish-purple.

[barefootbadass]

Kaldur's eyes widened at the charging unicorn, but he wasn't going to back down. Instead of dodging Kaldur ran at the unicorn and jumped up at the last minute. He was taking a page from Sora's book and was planning on landing on the thing's back. Kaldur barely got over the flaming horn, but he twisted at the last minute and avoided it. He landed on the back of the unicorn and his tattoos glowed as Kaldur sent a surge of electricity from his arms and into the unicorn. If his water was not going to work then perhaps he could shock it down.

[bailarinja]

He barely evaded the unicorn's fierce hooves, leaping and grabbing onto its tail and clinging as it swayed back and forth as it galloped. Just out of the corner of his eye he saw Kaldur jump onto the beast's back. It was a bit too risky to attempt getting down now; he thought of a better idea. A contingency plan in case there was no way to bring them down from the top.

With no one looking at him, he pulled his mask down just enough to hold the knife between his teeth, and he swung forward on the tail, finding a handhold in the plated armor and grabbing it. Feeling around in the dark, tossed about in the horse's stride, he managed to climb a few paces onto the underside of the beast, where he held with one hand and both feet, raising the knife again and driving it towards the horse's stomach.

[itsasecretmecha]

With a grunt and a whoop, Franky grounded himself against the unicorn's thrashing and attempts to escape. If it had been so damn eager to rush the group, why should he let it back away so easily?

Giving the makeshift reigns of chain a good yank, the cyborg glowered at the screaming fae. "Whoa there, nelly." Every tug it gave against him was met with a hard pull and stern word. He had beaten more than enough animals into being his steed before, and this fussy little thing wasn't going to break his streak.

[fey_npc]

The unicorn that Granny had enchanted, utterly confused by the spell that had woven itself into its mind, trotted uncertainly over to a small patch of dirt near the edge of the forest. Shaking its head, it snorted a bit before seemingly finding itself content with just staying there for the moment.

While Sora and Franky attempted to tame the first unicorn (and somewhat succeeding as the first unicorn was unsuccessfully trying to make a break for it), the second one abruptly shuddered by the violent shock that rippled through its body from Kaldur's attack. It nearly tripped over its own legs and only the pain of the Ninja's knife slicing through its tender underbelly kept it from completely falling over. It had neither the energy to attack both young men at the same time nor the prowess, and it stumbled to its front knees, foam dripping from its muzzle and it whinnied piteously as the flames vanished from its horn.

Abruptly, the ground shuddered again, but this time, the quake was not centering from the immediate area. Instead, it seemed to be coming from the direction the other group had vanished in. All three unicorns' heads turned towards the source of the disturbance, but none of them made any attempts to actually go towards it - one because it thought it was a frog, one because it was currently being restrained by Franky and Sora, and the other because being electrocuted and stabbed wasn't conducive to chasing after anything.

[barefootbadass]

As the beast buckled and went down Kaldur leapt back off of it. He hadn't realized the ninja had attempted to gut the horse and was surprised to see him down there. It was not his first choice of dealing with the unicorn but it was very much subdued now at least. It appeared that the others had also succeeded in taming the steeds in one way or another. The glow from Kaldur's tattoos began to fade just as the ground shuddered beneath his barefeet.

Kaldur looked up, at first thinking it was more unicorns coming. However, this shaking was of a different sort and didn't appear to be the type accompanying large hooves. "Was that the direction the others went in?"

[skylit_torch]

Sora was only a little confused when the unicorn his Blizzara attack had spiraled off to suddenly seemed to have a change of heart. He wasn't able to watch it for too long since the unicorn that he was still having trouble holding on to was determined to shake off its rider, and he had to dismiss his keyblade in order to grab hold of the unicorn's mane with both hands.

It seemed to finally be calming down as Franky reined it in - although "calm" for this thing still seemed to meant trying to bite Franky's arm off.

He was so distracted with trying to keep the cyborg from losing a body part, he didn't notice the minor earthquake at first until Kaldur said something. Snapping his attention to the direction the others had gone off to (and just managing to keep from falling off the irate unicorn), he said, "Yeah, I think so. Do you think something happened?"

What if there were even more dangerous creatures than the unicorns protecting the pillar? What if the others were in trouble?

"We need to go!"

[thisoneis]

If Granny had had any particular faith in the younger generation's desire to see a think through, it would have promptly atrophied at Sora's words. This was exactly the reason she hated dealing with heroes. They always were too shortsighted; too willing to leave things half-done to go rushing in to save people from something they might have been perfectly capable of taking care of on there own. Besides, couldn't the fools see that running off now was only going to lead the creatures right to whatever they were supposed to be keeping them from?

"Ain't never seen a group of people so willing to lead their enemies to a thing that was supposed to be protected," she spoke up, her voice carrying easily over the crowd and the assorted circumstantial noises despite the fact that she didn't seem to have raised her voice at all. "But if you lot are set on bein' fools and riskin' the last chance we got in this world, I ain't going to be the one to stop you. I just got to say I expected more, that's all."

And if she was getting another spell ready even as she spoke, well, no one needed to know that she was prepared to make sure that nothing left the area until the unicorns were dealt with to her satisfaction.

[itsasecretmecha]

"Don't be such a crab, y'old coot," Franky shot back at her, though he was grinning as he patted his half-tamed steed, seeming to be completely ignorant of any attempted gnawing on his arm. "Can't see why us going and bothering them'd make any difference in whether or not trouble finds 'em. Stuff sorta tends to go that direction anyway, y'know?

"And b'sides. These guys ain't putting up much of a fight, anyway." He shrugged, then punched his captive unicorn in the neck. "Cut that the hell out, asshole!" It spit out his hand, and he huffed.

[fey_npc]

With the three unicorns otherwise occupied and a mild argument breaking out between the group, it would have possibly been easy to miss the sound of the approaching group of the woods.

At least, until the unicorn that was still standing suddenly bent low on its knee as if bowing its head in the direction of the noise, stopping its attempts to bite Franky's arm off.